{"id":1145,"date":"2013-04-02T12:55:51","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T09:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/?p=1145"},"modified":"2013-06-07T20:00:07","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T17:00:07","slug":"interview-with-christian-chensvold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/interview-with-christian-chensvold\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Christian Chensvold"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 {\n\t\t\t\tmargin: auto;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-item {\n\t\t\t\tfloat: left;\n\t\t\t\tmargin-top: 10px;\n\t\t\t\ttext-align: center;\n\t\t\t\twidth: 50%;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 img {\n\t\t\t\tborder: 2px solid #cfcfcf;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {\n\t\t\t\tmargin-left: 0;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes\/media.php *\/\n\t\t<\/style>\n\t\t<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-1145 gallery-columns-2 gallery-size-thumbnail'><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-content\/pictures\/2013\/04\/Interview_with_Christian_Chensvold_at_Keikari_dot_com.jpg' title=\"\" data-rl_title=\"\" class=\"rl-gallery-link\" data-rl_caption=\"\" data-rel=\"lightbox-gallery-1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"116\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-content\/pictures\/2013\/04\/Interview_with_Christian_Chensvold_at_Keikari_dot_com-116x200.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-content\/pictures\/2013\/04\/Interview_with_Christian_Chensvold_at_Keikari_dot_com-116x200.jpg 116w, https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-content\/pictures\/2013\/04\/Interview_with_Christian_Chensvold_at_Keikari_dot_com-174x300.jpg 174w, https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-content\/pictures\/2013\/04\/Interview_with_Christian_Chensvold_at_Keikari_dot_com.jpg 583w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 116px) 100vw, 116px\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-content\/pictures\/2013\/04\/Interview_with_Christian_Chensvold_at_Keikari_dot_com02.jpg' title=\"\" data-rl_title=\"\" class=\"rl-gallery-link\" data-rl_caption=\"\" data-rel=\"lightbox-gallery-1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"139\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-content\/pictures\/2013\/04\/Interview_with_Christian_Chensvold_at_Keikari_dot_com02-139x200.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-content\/pictures\/2013\/04\/Interview_with_Christian_Chensvold_at_Keikari_dot_com02-139x200.jpg 139w, https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-content\/pictures\/2013\/04\/Interview_with_Christian_Chensvold_at_Keikari_dot_com02-209x300.jpg 209w, https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-content\/pictures\/2013\/04\/Interview_with_Christian_Chensvold_at_Keikari_dot_com02.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 139px) 100vw, 139px\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt><\/dl><br style=\"clear: both\" \/>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>VR: Your age and occupation?<\/p>\n<p>CC: I&#8217;m 43 and a freelance writer.<\/p>\n<p>VR: Your educational background?<\/p>\n<p>CC: Alas, my education is not in line with my IQ. I suppose I&#8217;m a classic underachiever. The\u00a0primary distinction of my alma mater is its close proximity to Disneyland. I did, however,\u00a0attend on a fencing scholarship and trained under a Hall of Fame coach, and was the\u00a0conference champion my senior year. After graduation I spent the summer in a French\u00a0intensive at Cal Berkeley, then enrolled in the master&#8217;s program in Comparative\u00a0Literature at San Francisco State. But after one semester I was bored, disillusioned with\u00a0academia, and restless to move on.<\/p>\n<p>VR: How did you \ufb01rst become interested in clothing, and when did you turn your eyes\u00a0towards classic style? Why classics instead of fashion?<\/p>\n<p>CC: I was de\ufb01nitely born with the gene for enjoying clothes and was sensitive to which items\u00a0felt right on me even as a young boy. In my senior year of high school I saw several\u00a0\ufb01lms that made a big impression on me, including &#8220;Wall Street&#8221; and &#8220;The\u00a0Untouchables,&#8221; and I started buying fashion magazines and Flusser&#8217;s &#8220;Clothes And The\u00a0Man.&#8221; By the time I left high school I was already deeply interested in tailored clothing\u00a0and taking most of my style cues from the past.<\/p>\n<p>VR: How have you gathered your knowledge of clothing&#8211; from books, in-house training,\u00a0workshops or somewhere else?<\/p>\n<p>CC: That \ufb01rst interest was sparked 25 years ago, and I&#8217;ve never stopped being interested in\u00a0clothes. Since about 2004 I&#8217;ve been writing about style and the apparel industry for a\u00a0wide range of trade and consumer publications.<\/p>\n<p>VR: A career in menswear journalism is a rare thing. How were you lead to this path?<\/p>\n<p>CC: Certainly not the direct route. I became interested in the history of dandyism while in\u00a0college, and some of my \ufb01rst articles were dandy-related. But in my &#8217;20s I mostly was a\u00a0general features writer, and also worked at a couple of business and \ufb01nance\u00a0magazines. After moving from San Francisco to Los Angeles that business experience\u00a0enabled me to start taking assignments from an apparel industry trade newspaper,\u00a0which led to other work writing about menswear and related lifestyle topics.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the media outlets are very trend-driven, however, and I&#8217;m not a fashion guy. The\u00a0Rake has enabled me to do articles and essays that are more tied to the social history\u00a0of clothing, or even what you might call style theory, and those have been more\u00a0enjoyable.<\/p>\n<p>VR: How would you describe your own dress?<\/p>\n<p>CC: I&#8217;ve had certain preferences since the very beginning, but there&#8217;s certainly been a lot of\u00a0change over the years, the curse of those with dynamic personalities and wide-ranging\u00a0tastes. So my dress is always evolving, though within more \ufb01xed parameters lately.<\/p>\n<p>I started out a kind of Anglophile traditionalist, then had to get a lot of other\u00a0experimentation out of my system. I&#8217;ve returned to that taste for classic dress, though\u00a0with a much more American bent. In the Ivy League Look I found a genre of clothing\u00a0that is fairly \ufb01xed, which perhaps appeals to my sense of order. But it&#8217;s also \ufb02exible\u00a0enough to appeal to all the sides of my personality. It can be cool, elegant, sporty,\u00a0conservative. I also strongly identify with the approach of being relatively dressed up\u00a0with casual attire and relatively dressed down with formal attire.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never been a retro-eccentric vintage wearer, though I&#8217;ve always taken my\u00a0inspiration from the past. These days I&#8217;m playing with this kind of &#8220;beatnik chic&#8221; idea,\u00a0which basically comes down to wearing my Ivy gear with, say, a black corduroy cap,\u00a0black cable-knit cashmere sweater, and black penny loafers. But ask me next year and\u00a0I&#8217;ll likely be working a different vibe.<\/p>\n<p>VR: Which tailors\/RTW makers do you favour?<\/p>\n<p>CC: I have some made-to-measure items from H. Freeman, and the rest comes from the\u00a0usual suspects in the trad genre: Ralph Lauren, Brooks Brothers, J. Press, O&#8217;Connell&#8217;s\u00a0and various others.<\/p>\n<p>VR: You&#8217;ve set up several interesting sites. How did they come about and how have these\u00a0been received? Any ventures ahead my readers should know about?<\/p>\n<p>CC: With Dandyism.net and Ivy-Style.com I took two topics that had great interest for me\u00a0and rich histories \u2014 two centuries for dandyism and one for the Ivy League Look \u2014 and\u00a0combined the presentation of historical documents with dashes of my own personality.\u00a0It&#8217;s a combination I think really works, and I&#8217;m not sure there&#8217;s another topic out there\u00a0that would provide the same opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>It started in 2004 when I had a number of writings on dandyism that were lying about,\u00a0some published and some not, and was aware that there was not a proper central\u00a0resource for dandyism on the Internet. I began thinking about starting a website that I\u00a0originally envisioned as a scholarly resource that would primarily be a kind of\u00a0bibliography. But then I became aware of the rise of blogs, which was happening at the\u00a0same time, and once I banged out the \ufb01rst couple of posts that combined a sort of\u00a0personal narrative along with news geared towards a reader with an interest in\u00a0dandyism, a seemingly endless creative vista opened up.<\/p>\n<p>I think the \ufb02exibility that the blog format provides, along with the combination of working\u00a0a narrow beat for a niche audience while providing personal commentary, is the perfect\u00a0venue for my particular temperament and talents.<\/p>\n<p>VR: Ivy-style, the exhibition and its accompanying book seem like the perfect success story.\u00a0Please describe how they came to be.<\/p>\n<p>CC: I was very glad that my website and its posts from many contributing writers provided\u00a0the chief inspiration for the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and was\u00a0pleased to have them use my Q&amp;A with Richard Press in the accompanying book.<\/p>\n<p>VR: What other hobbies or passions do you have besides clothing and writing?<\/p>\n<p>CC: I&#8217;ve played many sports in my life, and taken on other pursuits such as swing and\u00a0ballroom dancing, billiards, chess, and so forth. I&#8217;m always up for learning something\u00a0new. These days I&#8217;m playing a lot of tennis and piano, and am deeply obsessed with\u00a0golf, which I consider the most dif\ufb01cult activity mankind has ever created.<\/p>\n<p>VR: Over the years you must have learned quite a bit about apparel. Is there something you\u00a0wish more men would know?<\/p>\n<p>CC: I don&#8217;t particularly care about what other men know or don&#8217;t know. I&#8217;m not a style\u00a0evangelist, though some of my busywork involves educational pieces that point out the\u00a0traditions of menswear or make style suggestions. Over the past couple of years I&#8217;ve\u00a0realized I have almost no interest in what other men are wearing, how much they spent\u00a0or where they got their clothes, or if they take a medal and knock me off the podium.\u00a0Since moving to New York I&#8217;ve really enjoyed the company of the friends and colleagues\u00a0I have in menswear, but let&#8217;s just say when talking shop with them I lost all compulsion\u00a0to evaluate what they&#8217;re wearing and whether or not I approve. Let others do what they\u00a0want; the only person whose clothes I&#8217;m interested in are my own.<\/p>\n<p>VR: Many of my readers are young or have only recently opted for a more formal style. What\u00a0tips would you give to those who have only recently become interested in more or less\u00a0tailored clothing? This is an extremely useful chance to have a lasting effect on many\u00a0young men.<\/p>\n<p>CC: Looking back on my more impoverished and less enlightened youth, I&#8217;d say I made\u00a0sacri\ufb01ces in the \ufb01t department in the interest of having something I liked or could afford.<\/p>\n<p>Today I&#8217;d say quality is less of a concern and would advise a young man to devote his\u00a0resources to tailoring alterations and to choose his items carefully in regards to \ufb01t, and\u00a0to not be overly concerned with quality, which he can become a connoisseur of later\u00a0when it&#8217;s not so \ufb01nancially punitive. If you&#8217;re young and healthy and charismatic and\u00a0radiant with life&#8217;s possibilities, you&#8217;ll probably make a great impression in just about\u00a0anything you wear as long as they \ufb01t you.<\/p>\n<p>Pictures: \u00a9 The Rake, Free&amp;Easy<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ivy-style.com\/\">http:\/\/www.ivy-style.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dandyism.net\/\">http:\/\/www.dandyism.net\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VR: Your age and occupation? CC: I&#8217;m 43 and a freelance writer. VR: Your educational background? CC: Alas, my education &#8230; <br \/><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/interview-with-christian-chensvold\/\">keep reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8,57,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arbiter-elegantiae","category-bloggers","category-interviews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1149,"href":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions\/1149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}