Joseph Abboud on Happiness and Why American Men Don't Dress Well

The April 2011 issue of MR (Menswear Retailing) magazine features an interview with Joseph Abboud, President and CCO of HMX and its flagship brand Hart Schaffner Marx.

For those who aren't in the know, here's a fast crash course: Abboud is a great, classic-but-not-stuffy (if you know what I mean) designer of American men's apparel. He's worked for a few different companies, including Ralph Lauren, but he's most famous for his eponymous label, Joseph Abboud. A few years ago, he decided to sell this line (and its company, JA Apparel) because he was spending more time administrating than designing and he wanted to get back to the more creative aspect of the trade. Trouble ensued, however, when he founded a new label, Jaz (get it...Joseph abboud z), and JA Apparel successfully sued him for violating his non-competition clause. After spending two years in litigation and losing Jaz, Abboud went to work for HMX, who hired him as their chief designer with more or less carte blanche authority.

In the interview, Abboud talks about his legal battle as well as a number of other subjects, but two points in particular caught my attention, his comments about the American male's lack of sartorial awareness and his views on happiness. Regarding the former, he says:

My goal is for more men to embrace fashion and style rather than be afraid of it. As an industry, we've done a terrible job of conveying an appreciation for fine clothing. The Europeans grow up with it; it's in their pasta. Here, we turn guys off with ridiculous runway presentations so they think fashion is totally frivolous. If you're a major New York newspaper, don't show a guy on a runway on a horse with war paint and expect that your reader is going to understand your message. Talk to guys in a language they can understand.

So, part of the reason American men don't dress well is that the fashion industry makes the whole enterprise seem ridiculous.

Then, regarding happiness, he says:

I'm not much of a socializer: I don't have lots of friends, I don't go to many events or parties beyond what I have to do. My real happiness is my work and family. In fact, I had a great evening last night teaching my daughter Ari some tricks for memorizing the American presidents...

Last summer, my older daughter Lila interned at HMX. One of her jobs was to straighten out these boxes of old swatches and she came to me with this mushroom-colored Donegal piece of sweater that she thought I might like. It was so gorgeous that I built an entire collection around it; it was one of our deliveries for fall 2010. And the next time she was at our offices and saw that collection, she was beaming; she was like, "Daddy, I discovered that swatch!" Now that to me is happiness.

Work and family equals happiness. What can I say? The guy has his priorities straight.

Be Nice and Clean

Recently, my girlfriend and I decided to go to NYC with no plan, thinking we'd figure out what to do when we got there. (We live in Connecticut so this isn't too radical.) Among other things, we ended up roaming around the upper east side, where we stumbled upon a couple gems.

The first one was Tender Buttons, a very vintagey closet of a place that sells fasteners of all sorts, from classical and custom to novel. I was drooling. My girlfriend was drooling for me. It was closed.

Then, just two doors down on 62nd street, we bumped into an equally manly operation: The Art of Shaving. Now, I've since learned that this is a multi-city chain with locations all over NYC that I never even noticed and that they have ads in GQ, Esquire, and so on. At the time, however, all I had to go on was the experience I was having and it was fantastic.

The 62nd Street store is small, about the size of an efficiency apartment. It has an affable manager, Angelo Ramirez, whose inexhaustible knowledge and obvious shaving prowess makes you want to take out a straight razor and shave like your grandfather.

After several weeks of mulling it over, I finally decided to pony up for a starter kit and I'm happy to report that I'm really into it. I love the ritual, the different steps in the process, the pre-shave oil and the after-shave balm. I love the way shaving like this slows down and elongates the part of my day devoted to taking care of myself.

This got me thinking. Women spend all kinds of time on their hair, their make-up, their clothes, their everything. Why do we men cheat ourselves out of the few things we used to take this seriously? It's not as if we give up virility by lathering up with a shaving brush or making our beards look regal. If anything, men were manlier in the days when they did these things as a matter of course. And we can't blame being "too busy" because most women are just as busy as we are and they don't stop doing their hair. So what gives? Why don't we do this very cool, multiple-step shaving ritual thing anymore?

Dressing the Man or Dressing Like Him?

As you may have guessed (from this, this, and this), I wear a tie most days, regardless of occasion. Now, some people might ask, as one friend recently did, "Why do you want to dress like the man?" ("the man" being used here in the 1969 sense of the term). Why not, the logic might go, just wear "whatever" during the day and put on something special when going out? Since I think this is a fair question, I thought I'd address it here.

For me, "the man" shouldn't be the only one who gets to dress respectably on a daily basis. If we avoid wearing something simply because "the man" wears it (a development he may even welcome), he is just as instrumental in determining our attire as he would be if we flocked to wearing it in imitation.

Furthermore, our age of any-garment-goes makes our decision to dress especially independent. Far from "dressing like the man," wearing a tie and so on every day in the current climate, where it's not required (or even preferred), demonstrates agency; we dress because we want to.

In contrast, when we just wear "whatever" most of the time, putting on "something special" for swanky social functions, we indicate that, on certain occasions, we don't wear what we really want but allow others (usually "the man") to dictate an apparel we wouldn't normally don.

Or so it seems to me. What do other people think?

Hey, Comb It Like Dapper Dan!

In another June 2011 piece, Menswear magazine hails the coming of a new old hairstyle: the slicked back look. Crediting Mad Men's Don Draper for the advent of the recent trend, the article names several prominent offenders: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and George Clooney. The following pictures should do for reference:

Some of these guys have been wearing their hair slicked back on and off, in the movies and out, for years so attributing the resurgence of the look to Mad Men might be overstating the case a bit, but the hairstyle does seem fairly prominent on red carpets these days. Some other personalities famous for sporting the do at one point or another: Zac Efron, Johnny Depp, and Alec Baldwin. But if all this feels just a little too close to Gordon Gekko, the upside is that if the style does take off outside celebrity land, at least we'll be able to wear hats again without looking like we just got out of bed.

Beckham: On the Tar Heels of a New Image

Tracking the ways in which football (soccer) megalosuperstar David Beckham emulates his hero Michael Jordan is not really even interesting anymore, but here goes. The new Menswear (June 2011) reports that, next February, Beckham will unveil his new cologne, "Homme" ("man" in French for those of you who took the easy way out in high school).

Said his business manager, Simon Fuller (the brains behind the British Pop Idol, its stateside spin-off American Idol, and the Spice Girls): "The next ten years will see David evolve into being recognized not just as an iconic sports figure but also as an important entrepreneur" (p. 13).

Sound familiar? As the all-too-real press kit on Aaron Sorkin's fictional dramedy Sports Night put it, "'Jordan by Michael' [MJ's actual cologne] reflects Michael's transition from inimitable basketball legend to dashing, on-the-go businessman."

Ahem.