Tea at Trianon: Cary Grant Style

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, February 2, 2015

Cary Grant Style

From The Telegraph:

The most beautiful thing in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 film North By Northwest is undoubtedly a luminescent Eva Saint Marie in the role of Eve Kendall. However, for men interested in style, the suit worn by Cary Grant’s character, Roger O. Thornhill, comes in a close second.

Three factors came together to produce the outfit, one of the most celebrated male costumes in cinematic history. The first was the intention of the director. Eva Marie Saint told Cary Grant biographer Richard Torregrossa, “Hitchcock made everybody in the picture dress in a classic style… He didn’t want the picture to date because of the clothes.” The second was that Grant, largely free to choose the clothes he wore on camera, understood what flattered his physique. The last was the skill of his tailors. The suit has confusingly been credited to both Kilgour, French & Stanbury, of Savile Row, and Quintino, of Beverly Hills. Both establishments probably made clothes for the film; as Grant appears to wear the suit almost throughout the movie multiple versions would have been used.

Judged by the shrunken proportions of today’s fashionable tailoring, Grant’s jacket is much too long and the whole suit is too loose. It’s telling that despite this, the outfit is still hugely admired. Grant knew that a suit with the appearance of an unbroken vertical line (albeit with powerful shoulders) makes a man look tall and elegant; for this reason his trousers are cut wide through the hips, in order to meet the hem of his jacket, and the jacket doesn’t have flaps on the hip pockets, or vents at the back.

Grant’s suit was based on the shape of the American sack suit, and it bears an almost indistinguishable glen check. He wore it with a white shirt, a gunmetal grey tie, long grey socks and oxblood-coloured shoes. Any man would be impeccably dressed in the same ensemble half a century later. (Read more.)