Esquire: The Look of Summer, July 1959

(click image to enlarge)

GQ's Ireland (1962)

GQ Magazine, April 1962

While GQ seemed to be the smaller and more intellectually challenged little brother of Esquire, and I've waded thru years and years of both….GQ, for a time, stood on firm turf in the early to mid '60s... both visually and in the writing.  This April issue celebrated Ireland and it has a moody and dark attitude.  I love it.

An GQ is not easy to find and this came from a bound volume so scanning was a challenge.  However, inspirational ideas, fashion jargon for 'stealing,' are everywhere despite the binding.  Not only in unique layout, photography and stories but in the apparel itself.  The nubby stripe shirt reminds me of nubby silk Rooster tie stripes -- A mitre madras shirt reminds me of…nothing. It's unlike anything I've ever seen and I'd kill to have one today.  A rain coat with hacking pockets and sleeve turn ups?  I'd buy that.  I'm even saving up for a Jill Gill - - the NYC artist of all those beautiful whiskeys.

I know fashion designers dig thru these old mags but do fashion editors?  I'm guessing most do not.  And for the very first time, during NY Fashion Week, my hunch was confirmed from widely divergent sources regarding what we'll call,  "Fashion editor illiteracy."   "He didn't know shawl from peak."  "Zip knowledge of apparel history."  "I had to explain canvas construction." "All he liked was black." You get the idea.

I sat in front of Nick Sullivan at Esquire and in a couple minutes he showed me a 1950's Mac hanging on the back of his office door and pointed out the construction suggesting it might even be my size.  We discussed the military influence of clothing and why stealing unit insignia was not only vulgar but unnecessary.  And sure, there was the 24 hour "shoe-cam" which was monitoring what he wore on his feet everyday…but the man was fashion literate.  That much you could not argue.

G. Bruce Boyer bemoaned the GQ of today doing a 20 page spread on jeans and t-shirts.  It's what they know, Bruce.    But I'm guessing there's an archive somewhere in that GQ office and I'd like to suggest it would be a lot more fun to go thru than the PR pitches.

O'Toole On The Ould Sod by Gay Talese

Peter O'Toole, Esquire Magazine, August 1963, Photo by Brian Seed

"When my father would come home from the track after a good day," said Peter O'Toole, leaning against the bar, "the whole room would light up; it was fairyland. But when he lost, it was black.  In our house, it was always either a wake...or a wedding."

My Esquire, purchased from the double maduro - double corona chomping used magazine vendor on the upper west side, is yellowed and crumbly. Gay's profile of O'Toole, and it reeks of beer, cigarettes, whiskey and how I like to think I'd handle that kind of success at 31, can be read here.  It's a pisser of a story.

The Dude... in '68

Esquire, 1968 (click images to enlarge)

Inspiration for the Dude?

The Great Lebowski, 1998

A 1968 Esquire piece on the Monterrey Pop Festival looked innocent enough.  Grainy Tri-X images of Joplin, Hendrix and Dylan fill oversized 11x14 pages along with descriptions of pot smoking and free love. I have to tell you, it is one of my great joys to read the old Esquire.  Not only can you find great writing but it's a bottomless pit of inspiration and I'm far from first to make that discovery.

Tucked in a side column  of, "Anatomy of a Love Festival" is a small B&W shot of a 'hippie' wearing a familiar cardigan sweater.  Maybe I'm the only who sees it but the man bears an an uncanny resemblance.  Jeff Dowd has been accepted as inspiration for the Dude and that may be so -- Charater wise.  Did the Coen Brothers read this old Esquires or was it just a costume designer?  I guess we'll never know. 

Thanks to Steven Tater of Ohio Knitting Mills we do know the origins of the sweater:

"The Dude's sweater was made by Winona Knitting Mills, in Winona, MN under contract to Pendleton. It was originally based on a Chief Joseph blanket design from Pendleton, and a big seller for the company. It was in production from the late 60's through the early 80's or so. Winona made a number of knitwear items for Pendleton, but most of the sweaters for Pendleton were made by the Ohio Knitting Mills in Cleveland, Ohio; whose founders were partners in the Winona mill starting in 1947. We manufactured hundreds of styles of knitwear for the Portland label starting in the mid-sixties, and continued to work closely with them until around 2003, when they finally took all of their production off-shore."

Blazing Saddles... in 1965?

Esquire, 1965


Blazing Saddles- The French Mistake by smartwatermelon

Inspiration... it can come from the darndest places.  Having said that, I reckon we're all products of our culture and times.  Mel Brooks, who is featured in the new issue of M, might well have seen this cartoon by Rowland Wilson in a 1965 Esquire.  Only a year after marrying Anne Bancroft... I like to think Anne pointed it out to him.

Brooks breaks the fourth wall in 1974's Blazing Sadlles with a final fight scene kicked off by a Busby Berkeley musical number called the 'French Mistake.' I assume you know what the French Mistake is but I also assume you've seen Blazing Saddles.  I could easily be wrong on both counts.

Boss Tweeds

B&W houndstooth with red over-plaid

Black & red shepherd check

Now these are Black & Red jackets every UGA football fan should have in his closet.  Finding black and red apparel in natural fiber is no easy task.  I remember Florida - Georgia games in the '80s being awash in flammable black and red polyester contrasted against Hog Town's bright blue and orange cotton.  

Fashion Week in NYC was and remains Tartan-ed up like a Robbie Burn's dinner in Glasgow.  Tartan's "fookin'" everywhere. I'm backed up on Fashion Week pieces so you'll see lots more plaid on this blog in the coming week.  Designers tend take the classic goods, raise them to idolatry levels, then regicide the royal cloth about the time it lands in Ft Wayne. 

I think tweed will replace tartan but not your typical somber Harris.  Color is too damned important. If nothing else has been proven in the last five years of menswear hoo-ha it is this; dudes like color.  What we used to call 'loud.' But these are sport coats and are not to be worn in an office unless you sell radio advertising in Cincinnati.  These jackets go with dark grey or black flannel trousers and will speak Shakespeare folios of your unmitigated taste. Just make sure the pattern matching is up to snuff and you stay out of Alachua County.

Rain Falls Mainly on the Plain

"Grab all the Koratron you can find" 1967

"For the rich guys we make Gold Alligator - We suggested green to match their money, but they seem to like matching their tie tack, their cigarette lighter, their gilt edged securities better." 1967

"Not traditional but excellent nonetheless, the classic officer's trench coat updates these days with a button-out flannel lining."  1964

"Scotchgard sheds rain even after repeated cleanings." 1961

"First really smartly styled waterproof coat - it's Alligator 725.  Popular already in cities, towns and colleges..." 1961

Keith Darrow from 1961

Alligator 1961

Rainfair 1960

Alligator 1960

Rainfair 1956



It's the understatement of our elders.  Men who did not name drop, change their last name to suit their profession or take Instagram pictures of their first class plane tickets.  They did not tattoo barb wire on their arms nor did they ask a woman in public where her tattoo was located.  If they tried self promotion -- they usually failed at it.  They shaved.  And when they looked in the mirror each morning -- they didn't stare.

Esquire's Subliminal Seduction

When I was 12, I had a cousin who was a golf pro, somewhere on Hilton Head Island. He drove a white Porsche 912 (he wasn't that good of a golf pro) and was dating more women than James Bond.  I worshiped him. As an only child his parents kept his bedroom, just as he left it, sometime in his early 20s. Whenever we'd visit, I was lucky enough to get his room and his room taught me a lot.

A giant plastic bottle of VAT 69, holding what must have been over $299 worth of pennies, sat on the corner of a desk with a piece of glass covering snap shots of girl friends. Steel drum albums from the Carribean waited for me under bookshelves filled with paperbacks, a few dirty,  and piles of Esquire magazines.

I would sit on the edge of my cousin's bed and stare at the Esquire pages of adults living out their happening lives as steel drums danced from a Marantz receiver.  Booze ads were everywhere.  Large breasted women were everywhere. And everywhere people in Esquire smoked.  20 years later my ex-wife would rightly observe that my idea of being a man was limited to smoking, drinking and breasts.  She wrongly attributed this to Playboy. It was Esquire and... I've always been a leg man.

When I look back at old issues of Esquire, I see where my idea of manhood originated.  Those  old Esquires, smelling of dusty years that make me sneeze, still grab the 12 year old in me --still unsure of being a man.  Of having paid the right dues, made the just sacrifices and fought the good fights to hold  onto my character.   This'll  be my 55th new year.  I still don't think I write well. I know I can't balance a check book. I have no discipline.  There's an awful lot I know I can't do.

But when I look at the January 2013 issue of Esquire  -  I'm reminded of who I am. Sure, most of the smoking is gone but the booze ads are still there as are the large breast-extruded actresses who offer up what they find attractive in a man.  Happily, it's always for sale but I ain't buyin' anymore.  A watch isn't going to define me. Neither is the scotch I drink, the tobacco I smoke or pictures of girl friends under glass.

Having said all that -- I have no idea why I just bought a bottle of Old Crow. I should'a bought the White Horse.

Gideon by Paddy Chayefsky

Esquire, December, 1961

The Angel

"It is passion, Gideon, that carries man to God. And passion is a balky beast. Few men ever let it out of the stable.

It brooks no bridle; indeed, it bridles you; it rides the rider.

Yet, it inspirits man's sessile soul above his own inadequate world

and makes real such things as beauty, fancy, love and God...

Passion is the very fact of God in man that makes him other than a brute. I must own, Gideon, yours was an old and cold and settled soul, and I huffed and puffed quite a bit before I found the least flame of passion in you."

"Someone Make a Time Machine Already" 1961 Fall Weekend In New York

Friday Night with a Debutante: "Skim the roofs in a helicopter and a suede-cloth suit"

Friday Night with a Poetess: "She's in the clouds anyway, so take her for a walk in an all-weather coat"

Saturday Before Dark: "A pull-over for a ferry ride --"

"A suit of tweed takes you to a twilight concert"

Saturday Night: "For an elegant evening (and Barbara Bel Geddes backstage), a vested blue serge --"

"For a casual one, a sweater, but dressier"

Sunday- The Week End's End: A Donegal tweed jacket..."

...or a wool sport coat will see the day out." The Peacock Caffe'

Esquire Magazine, September, 1961  (click on image to enlarge)

Nicely written & shot without credit to writer or photographer.  A contrast to today's fashion spreads of actors and rappers with half naked women, extruded  by LA,  holding their crotch or flipping the bird while credits go to every strap hanger and coke-pourer in the room.

The old Esquire was a big mamma-jamma.  It's hard to describe what reading one was like when I was 10 years old.  Not only because I didn't understand a whole helluva lot of it  -- It was almost taller than I was.  But like reading Shakespeare, you don't always need to understand every word to get the gist of what's happening in the play.

It's good to be a man.