By Tony Sylvester.
“On the nice shore of the French Riviera, about half manner between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a big, proud, rose-colored lodge. Deferential palms cool its flushed façade, and earlier than it stretches a brief dazzling seashore.
“Currently it has turn out to be a summer season resort of notable and trendy folks; a decade in the past it was nearly abandoned after its English clientele went north in April.”
So begins F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel Tender Is The Night time, his story of American ex pats en residence amongst the palms, firs and golden seashores of the Cote D’Azur on the twilight of the Jazz Age – that fertile period of pleasure and enchantment between the wars.
Nearly a century later the time period ‘Riviera’ nonetheless resonates: a shorthand for glamour and relaxed opulence that the novel helped foster, alongside Hemingway’s The Backyard Of Eden, Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse and others, and the nascent celeb gossip {industry} that fed the general public’s urge for food with images of the wealthy and well-known at play.
What Fitzgerald says is right. The lodge he fictionalised for the novel, The Lodge Du Cap in Cap d’Antibes, had all the time shut from Might to September, following the vogue for the Riviera being a resort for wintering Brits.
They started popularising the advantages of winter solar there within the Eighties, following the arrival of the railway from Paris, extending the Victorian custom of the wholesome seashore go to to additional flung locations.
Then within the mid-Nineteen Twenties, Cole Porter rented a chateau down the highway from Lodge Du Cap for the summer season, and the People began to reach in power, intermingling with English aristos, Russian emigres, native artists and the cream of Paris society. This inspired lodge house owners to remain open for this faddish new endeavour.
Right here we hand over to Farid Chenoune, the French menswear author: “American socialites not solely frequented Palm Seashore, Newport, Nassau, et al however might additionally now be discovered on the French Mediterranean Coast the place wealthy, solar in search of Europeans (notably English) vacationed through the interwar interval. It was thus within the early Thirties that the Riviera turned a trendy spot for spring and particularly summer season holidays whereas prior to now it had been a winter resort.
“When it comes to the historical past of style, this shift represented the approaching of age of summer season as a completely fledged “season” in itself.” They have been witnessing not solely the delivery of concept of the ‘summer season season’ but additionally the invention of the clobber that went together with it.
In addition to the tabloid press, we’re fortunate that we’ve got modern menswear publications such because the industry-targeted Attire Arts and extra customer-friendly Esquire, to offer us an perception into what these new vacationers have been sporting.
What’s attention-grabbing to me now could be that 10 a long time later, lots of the garments look not solely fashionable, however completely sensible and sound. Not the entire outfits, after all, however items from every picture.
As Chenoune goes on to clarify, “Summer time style unfold from one spot to a different, like pollen carried by a swarm of cosmopolitan bees. This explains its cross-bred, worldwide nature, the product of speedy a number of borrowings from fishermen’s gears, sailors’ uniforms, sportswear and colonial costume (each navy and civilian). On this respect, summer season clothes was already extra fashionable than some other…”
I’m lucky to personal a few summer season problems with Attire Arts from the interval (1932 and 1933) and the modern resonance is putting. Aside from one-piece wool bathing fits, there may be little that may be misplaced in as we speak’s vacation put on rotation. I’d have added males’s lace-up espadrilles to the checklist, however that’s my explicit desire.
A few of the items Chenoune lists are:
- Summer time suiting(in seersucker, shantung, linen and ‘palm fibre’)
- Gaberdine, blazers, bush shirts(safari jackets)
- Polo shirts, sailor smocks
- And maybe the one anachronism of the bunch, the ‘Spencer’ or mess jacket – basically a dinner jacket reduce quick like a bolero, or a tailcoat with out tails.
The important thing to referencing Riviera model as we speak might be sustaining a stage of relaxed formality, whereas utilizing material, color and texture to reveal the distinction from a workaday wardrobe – in an identical method to the distinction between a lounge go well with and a dinner go well with for instance.
There are additionally garments suited to the seashore and sunbathing – shorts, trunks, flip-flops, however right here I’m extra involved with dressing away from the water, for the day or night.
The modern pictures of the day, the wealth of commercial pictures in these magazines, and the evocative illustrations from the likes of Laurence Fellows and Robert Goodman can all be used to assist construct appears to be like.
The primary and maybe most blatant alternative is the collection of an odd jacket and trousers moderately than a go well with. That is maybe probably the most putting change from the English holidaymakers of the late Victorian age to post-WWI travellers.
The English nonetheless holidayed in two-piece fits of linen or gentle wool, paired with starched collars, ties and costume footwear – so the one variations between their lounge fits on the town and their vacation garments have been the lighter weight and paler palette. The swapping for odd jackets of visibly tactile and slubby cloths – uncooked silk, dry weave ‘Panama’ wools and even Terry material – made for an immediately seen leap ahead.
This goes hand in hand with the opposite principal pattern: splitting color throughout an outfit, as a substitute of retaining a uniform tone. Darker jackets have been out of the blue paired with gentle trousers and vice versa.
That is seen most clearly within the illustrations of Fellows and Goodman, moderately than the black and white images of the day (a difficulty we encountered earlier than in the PS article on color and tradition).
Fellows pairs coral trousers with ecru jackets, tan shirts with forest inexperienced slacks, in addition to displaying the extra accepted maritime palette of navy with cream. Only a few of the gents drawn are in a singular hue.
Different tips are just like the concept of holiday-specific tailoring supplies. Shirts ought to be particular and seasonal, not merely costume shirts unbuttoned. A band collar or open lido-collar work effectively on this division.
Equally, whereas ties are restrictive and impractical the general accord usually misses that pop of color and sample. The obvious reply is a silk or cotton scarf, which is greatest tucked behind the collar moderately than sprawled out throughout the chest. Suppose Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief: his red-and-white neckerchief gives simply sufficient visible raise behind the stripe of the round-neck matelot knit, with out overpowering the whole lot else.
For footwear, it’s attainable to maintain the benchmade high quality however dial down the formality. Unlined loafers are the plain alternative, however I’d make the case for closed-toe sandals as effectively.
Sadly, not lots of the large names make them for males lately – Edward Inexperienced used to have the ‘Rangoon’ mannequin and John Lobb the ‘Olympe’, however like most good issues, they appear to have vanished.
Whereas Cheaney, Church’s and Ralph Lauren nonetheless do variations, I used to be blissful to see Ludwig Reiter add the ‘Triestiner’ mannequin to their catalogue this summer season, a closed-toe sandal on a very good, elegant final in brown or black perforated calf. That is completely the ticket, worn socked or sockless, and I choose the black color myself – not the standard alternative for summer season months, nevertheless it does give me probably the most choices throughout my wardrobe.
Extra informal footwear will be added, if approached with warning. Espadrilles are a robust candidate (Manish’s piece was a pleasant in-depth look) and I’m moderately keen on CVOs – cotton vulcanised oxfords, which appeared across the identical pre-war time we’re referencing, morphing into the ever-present deck shoe over time.
After all, regardless of having this historic highway map, there isn’t a substitute for exhausting fought expertise; trial and error. I shudder once I recall one private outfit that fell very a lot on the facet of error.
Invited to a summer season marriage ceremony in Liguria years in the past, I delved into my considerably dilettantish sartorial information of the time and got here up with a cream-linen go well with from Mark Powell, with peaked lapels and a slight kick flare to the trouser, worn with a white penny-collared costume shirt, purple knit tie and tan bucks.
It was a catastrophe. I used to be making an attempt to emulate the spirit of the jazz age however overdid it. Evaluate that to the photograph from final summer season beneath, with a black fresco blazer worn with white herringbone slacks and espadrilles, and I feel the result’s way more harmonious.
Free and straightforward, that’s the important thing.
