Douglas Fairbanks on stage – Everlasting Fashion
By Tom Mastronardi.
Anybody that is aware of me appreciates my resolute affection for being well-tailored. At the same time as a child raised in a decidedly blue-collar neighbourhood on Chicago’s South Facet, I by no means required any coaxing to don a jacket and tie.
However of all the reasons for my embrace of bespoke, the very best and positively the truest has its genesis in a primary date: one which marked the end result of a teenage crush on an outstandingly beautiful (after all) younger woman.
Now, in my dotage, I realise my reminiscence could be barely porous, however nonetheless, I’ve the fondest recollection of an unforgettable night spent with mentioned beautiful – and, extra to the purpose, with the (distant) presence of Mr Douglas Fairbanks, Jr (above).
Okay, then – a boy and a woman and a Hollywood icon. However how does a story of younger romance – even one with a Hollywood model of a Fairy Godfather – result in my enduring enthusiasm for tailoring?
Let’s return even additional to 1958, when a brand new play entitled The Pleasure of His Firm by Samuel A Taylor and Cornelia Otis Skinner premiered on Broadway. (The New York Occasions discovered it to be “totally pleasant.”)
The plot of the play follows the return of a wayfaring bon vivant father, one Biddeford ‘Pogo’ Poole, who has returned to San Francisco for the marriage of his now grown (however lengthy uncared for) daughter, in addition to to pursue his former woman, the mom of the bride. Charming hijinks ensue – which is why the French title is, with good purpose, Mon Séducteur de Père. Racy stuff in Eisenhower-era America.
Quick ahead to 1971 when, on the eve of my 16th birthday, I used to be within the throes of a mad crush on the aforementioned woman (whom I’ll henceforth consult with as ‘Olivia’, owing to discretion and her overwhelming resemblance to Olivia Hussey of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, additionally a major presence in my youthful aspirations).
Find out how to win her coronary heart (or at the very least get her consideration)? The planets aligned once I was given a pair of tickets to a road-company revival of The Pleasure of His Firm at Chicago’s Drury Lane Theater, starring the nonetheless esteemed Douglas Fairbanks, Jr, who toured the play for various years each within the US and internationally.
(Full disclosure: again then, we had solely the Late Present to offer context, so my familiarity with the actor was confined primarily to movies like The Prisoner of Zenda, Gunga Din, and Sinbad the Sailor – nonetheless, all of it sounded good to me).
I used to be sure that this is able to tick all of the packing containers for a memorable first date:
- Cultural uplift? Definitely.
- An unchaperoned public transit journey to a glittering metropolis? Passage on the Orient Categorical couldn’t be finer.
- Two-plus hours at the hours of darkness, sharing an armrest with the main woman of my private romantic reveries? The sheer pleasure of the thought thrills even at this time.
- Topped off with the pleasure of an precise film star’s firm…Huzzah.
I requested, she accepted.
On the appointed night, I sported my most interesting three-piece swimsuit. As I recollect it was the very best Robert Corridor needed to supply, and featured a reversible vest that cunningly matched each the self and the accompanying odd trousers. Olivia wore a velvet mini-dress (no points with recollection there) that solely enhanced her lit-from-within magnificence.
Off we went – by ever-so-romantic Chicago Transit Authority – from the previous neighborhood as much as ‘Downtown’ Chicago. Dinner someplace that was optimistically, madly, elegant (learn: white tablecloths) and at last, the theatre.
Curtain up.
Act 1, an interlude, Act 2, and last curtain.
Adopted by tumultuous applause.
Within the midst of that good night, I realised that, along with younger love, one thing extra, one thing distinctive had marked me for all times. I used to be, after all, riveted – gob-smacked – by Mr Fairbanks Jr’s wardrobe.
To this present day, I can’t inform you precisely what he was sporting; simply that it appeared nice (though that in all probability had as a lot to do with Himself because the aptitude of his tailor) and was largely realised in shades of gray (completely complementing the nice man’s silver mane).
What he wore was, looking back, clearly much less vital than how he wore it: with grace, with appeal, dignity, pleasure, and positively with out pretense – all key components of his distinctive type, and all attributes which, callow youth that I used to be, I now desperately yearned for.
And by chance, past Mr. Fairbanks Jr’s specific sophistication, I found one thing that supplied a certain and sure utility – a handbook, if you’ll – for me to attain the singular sophistication I hunted for myself.
One thing that, conveniently, I held in hand. The Playbill.
Regardless of all of the issues unfolding round me – the younger woman’s shoulder brushing mine (for the lifetime of me, I nonetheless can’t bear in mind the rest in regards to the first twenty minutes), the glow of the stage lights, the air redolent with cultural sophistication – it was the Playbill, which famous the supply of every merchandise of Fairbanks’ impeccable wardrobe, which has stayed with me all of those years.
As in:
Mr Fairbanks’ fits by STOVEL & MASON, London
Mr Fairbanks’ hats by LOCK’S, London
Mr Fairbanks’ footwear by GUCCI of Rome and by A. CLEVERLEY, of London
Mr Fairbanks shirts and ties by TURNBULL & ASSER, London and by ASCOT CHANG, Hong Kong
Mr Fairbanks high coats by HUNTSMAN, London
All this and his signature crimson carnation. Identical to that, I used to be hooked. Take care of the Satan dealt — and marked delivered.
This, I concluded, was how a correct gent progressed.
All you wanted to be well-dressed was the precise names (as sartorial icon Adolphe Menjou’s autobiography made clear within the title, It Took 9 Tailors – plus assorted shoemakers, hat makers and so forth) and I used to be henceforth ready to affix that line of worthies that stretched again at the very least so far as Beau Brummell.
It could be a decade after which some earlier than I may afford my first bespoke garment – and there was a full run of designer fits within the meantime, beginning with Pierre Cardin, extending via Giorgio Armani and working right into a bevy of different erstwhile Italian RTW.
However his preliminary lesson took. There was regular however not rash accumulation of those craftspeople since.
Fairbanks himself mentioned the tactic of acquisition in in Salad Days, the primary quantity of his autobiography: “I’m moderately conservative about fits…Nobody in public life can afford to overstep. One has a accountability, and earlier than I get something new, I brood about it, strive it out on my spouse and daughters, and maybe on somebody within the Membership.”
If ever there was an angle to emulate, it was this. The notion of extra — or at the very least enthusiasm – tempered by moderation.
(Although I do surprise what Mr Fairbanks would make of Instagram— moderately than the approval of the spouse, or attaboys on the Membership, utilizing social media because the laboratory for proposing and analysing reduce, color and mixture.)
Importantly, I do imagine Olivia loved herself; and I did get a kiss at night’s finish — which I thought-about a wild success. A line from the play comes again to me: “I’m nonetheless full of the glow and romance of it”.
Nonetheless, I can’t assist however surprise all these years later, if younger Olivia realised the bullet she dodged, had issues turned out otherwise. Presumably the very best particular person to ask is the girl with whom I’ve been sharing a closet — albeit lopsidedly — these a few years (“why sure; my love, however that does certainly seem like one other new swimsuit…”), and to whom my solely excuse is yet one more bon mot courtesy of The Pleasure of His Firm, this one delivered by Pogo:
“Oh, I do know. I’m sorry. I get carried away.”
