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<\/a><\/p>\nWhen I was 7 or 8, I began to go to Saturday art classes in Honolulu.\u00a0 I lived in the suburbs, and my mother thought that dressing for the city meant a button-down collared shirt, chinos, a belt and polished lace-up shoes.\u00a0 I got to the Academy of Arts early, and was waiting in front for the building to open when a green Jaguar XKE pulled up.\u00a0 A girl, my age, jumped out wearing tennis whites\u2014she had clearly come from an early lesson\u2014but barefoot!\u00a0 I realized immediately the status implications of her deliberate casualness.\u00a0 The next week I didn\u2019t come barefooted, but I did insist on flip-flops.<\/p>\n
Individuals of great style generally appreciate being noticed for their appearance, enjoy the creative process of dressing which requires no small amount of attention and discipline, tend to have a strong aesthetic focus, and a willingness to dedicate the time to their efforts.\u00a0 As a disorganized person who prefers to be judged on other aspects of my personality than my taste, a uniform of classic dressing is expedient.\u00a0 The codes are established, and though menswear is susceptible to change over time, those trends are relatively diurnal compared to the more rapid and quixotic shifts in women\u2019s wear, so it is possible to have an established look or style, even while subtly adapting to the current mode with rather little effort.\u00a0 Also, I love fashion, but unlike the person of style who tends to edit to a very personal and individuated sensibility, I am completely omnivorous.\u00a0 If I dressed in the styles I appreciate as a curator, I\u2019d be in debt AND I\u2019d look so erratic as to be thought insane.\u00a0 It is best for all that I sublimate my appreciation for fashion into my work and not my personal style.<\/p>\n
My first job as an associate curator at the Fashion Institute of Technology was to go through the whole collection to review it for deaccessioning.\u00a0 The Director at the time, Bob Riley, was incredibly knowledgeable, but so much of his connoisseurship was intuitive, having been derived from decades of seeing historic examples.\u00a0 When I\u2019d ask him, \u201cHow is it you know that this bustle dress is from the 1880s and that from the 1870s?,\u201d he\u2019d answer, \u201cYou just know.\u201d\u00a0 I was left to really look at the pieces to understand how he immediately just knew:\u00a0 the length of the waist, the slope of the shoulder, the types of fabrics, all the separate elements that contribute to the gestalt.\u00a0 Nothing, nothing is better than the simple looking at an object, and really studying its details, to learn about it.<\/p>\n
Men today are so much more literate about style than when I was younger.\u00a0 It is a given now that how you dress is a language that can be manipulated to your specific intentions and advantage.\u00a0 Other than suits meant that you were Establishment, and cotton shirts and bell-bottoms meant that you were counter-culture, I don\u2019t think there was among most men in the 1960s, the self-awareness that what you wear is something that could be a proactive means of communication.<\/p>\n
In the 1980s and \u201890s I wore a lot of Armani, always some Ralph Lauren, and now Thom Browne, and shoes from John Lobb.\u00a0 With every designer, though, I pick the most Brooks Brothers looking examples from their designs.\u00a0 Brooks never fitted me, but that is what I think of myself as:\u00a0 the man in the grey flannel suit.\u00a0 Today when I wear Thom Browne, it doesn\u2019t actually look very Thom Browne unless you\u2019re someone who really follows fashion and notices the small details like the grosgrain touches and lifted button stance.\u00a0 The reason is that as someone short, Thom\u2019s sizing fits me perfectly in a conventional way.\u00a0 On me the sleeve lengths are not cropped, but fall exactly where they would if I had the jacket ordered to fit.<\/p>\n
When my former boss and colleague, the great fashion critic and curator, Richard Martin, died, I was asked to take over his role.\u00a0 Richard was intellectually, on a plane of his own, of a level not usually seen in our field.\u00a0 Clearly, a new path had to be established, as no one could easily have continued with the scholarly rigor and accelerated calendar that Richard had established.\u00a0 My intention was at first to simply keep up the level of thoughtfulness and conceptual focus introduced by Richard\u2019s exhibition themes, but with an additional focus on the mise-en-scene.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always argued that as good a job as we do as curators, we are relinquishing our responsibility if we do not make an effort to get as many people to see our exhibitions.\u00a0 You cannot educate, if the public hasn\u2019t shown up for the lesson.\u00a0 In this regard, The Costume Institute has been very successful.\u00a0 We are among the most widely attended exhibitions in the category of the decorative arts in the world.<\/p>\n
I love food!\u00a0 I\u2019ll eat anything if it is appealingly plated.\u00a0 I just returned from a long weekend centered on a reservation at Noma.\u00a0 Unfortunately, we are part of the recent group that caught the norovirus from eating there.\u00a0 But, and this is an important point, despite everything, the experience of the meal was sublime.\u00a0 I want to go back in every season to see how the menu changes with the sourcing of the dishes.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not restricted to farm-to-table or foraging, globalized cuisine fascinates me.\u00a0 When I was in Hawaii a few months ago, I ate at a restaurant called Mavro.\u00a0 There was a side dish with white truffles, from the South of France where the chef had just been, shaved onto a chestnut puree in HONOLULU!!<\/p>\n
Always get the best version of whatever you can afford.\u00a0 Great materials and construction make a difference.\u00a0 But, whether formal or informal, the most important thing in dressing is proper fit.\u00a0 Sometimes proper, fit especially in sports clothing, does not mean the same as in tailored apparel, but there is always a proportion and cut that is intended for a garment.\u00a0 The closer a man comes to wearing items that relate to his body as they were intended to appear, the more comfortable he will be.\u00a0 And when we are comfortable, the projection of confidence is effortless.”<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.metmuseum.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n Picture: \u00a9 Karin Willis,\u00a0Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “63 years old,\u00a0Curator in Charge, The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.\u00a0BA\/BFA English Literature\/Art History, University of Hawaii,\u00a0MLA (Masters …
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