Person Of Interest: The man in the suit.

Person Of Interest is three different genre shows stuck together. For Detectives Carter and Fusco it's a police procedural drama, whereas John Reese lives in a spy thriller and Harold Finch's story is gradually edging towards being a full-on dystopian cyberpunk sci-fi. Overall it's marketed as a crime show, more or less, which is what it mostly looks like on the outside. Like the majority of characters in procedural cop shows Carter and Fusco have very boring dress-sense, for practical and professional reasons. In costume design terms, the real interest lies with Finch and Reese.
Before I even saw the show, Reese had been described to me as a man who wears his clothes like a uniform. When he first appears he has nothing: no home, presumably no money, no real identity... until Finch comes along and sets him up with his very own apartment and a wardrobe full of identical black suits. Mysterious benefactors are a popular theme in fiction -- who doesn't wish a nameless billionaire would show up and randomly gift you with a new house? -- but Person Of Interest has a refreshing way of tackling the subject. Rather than twisting himself up in knots about receiving so much help from a total stranger, Reese just takes it.

What with his CIA training, subsequent betrayal, homelessness and total lack of friends or family, Reese is a man who has been stripped down to his bare bones. The things that normal people care about just do not bother him any more. Actually, Finch is like that as well, but for him it's more because he's been elevated beyond ordinary society thanks to his wealth, genius, and devotion to the Machine. With Reese there are scenes in almost every episode where you see him just fail to react to things that would have any normal person shying away in discomfort.
He doesn't care about people touching him or getting in his personal space. He doesn't care about money. He doesn't care about being watched and tracked constantly via CCTV. He doesn't care about getting beaten up, except in the sense that it's an inconvenience. When Finch picks him out of the gutter and sets him up in an enormous loft apartment with his own private arsenal, the only thing Reese is openly thankful for is that Finch has given him a purpose again. When you get right down to it, the only thing he really cares about is efficiency, which is why he wears the same outfit every single day of his life -- barring necessary disguises. Not having to think about clothes or look in the mirror every morning just removes another obstacle between him and his mission.
From a purely practical standpoint, Reese's monochromatic wardobe of identical suits is a stroke of genius. For all that you can compare the John Reese/Harold Finch duo to Batman and Bruce Wayne, Reese's main strength lies in his complete lack of distinguishing features. Although he's definitely good-looking enough to get by with a little superficial charm when the need arises, Reese is forgettable enough to be the perfect spy. The fact that his nickname during the police manhunt was "the man in the suit" tells you all you need to know, because as soon as he changes out of the suit? They don't even have a physical description. The sheer boringness of the outfit just amplifies how forgettable he can be, never mind how ridiculously easy it is to get into almost anywhere when you're a white, middle-aged man in a suit.

Finch's attitude to clothes is the polar opposite of Reese. Just by looking at him you can tell that he really enjoys dressing up -- even before you find out that he's a tailoring nerd. While Reese dresses to look as forgettable and generic as possible, Finch dresses for himself. Despite the fact that he spends most of his time alone in a disused library, he wears a three-piece suit almost every day, often including a pocket square. He definitely has different grades of suits, though. When he's just going to be sitting in front of a computer he wears softer, more comfortable outfits in warm colours like brown and maroon, whereas on days when he's going undercover in one of his millionaire personas he wears suits that are more obviously businesslike and luxurious in appearance.

Both Finch and Reese's suits have been cleverly matched up to the physical appearance intended for each character. Jim Caviezel, who is in reality beginning to look rather thicker around the middle than is ideal for a elite special-forces agent, looks far slimmer in his black suits than in anything else he wears on the show. His jackets are very rarely buttoned, both because an open jacket allows for more flexibility during fight scenes and because it's far more flattering to Caviezel's broad-shouldered frame. Finch's suits are typically quite soft by contrast and the waistcoats make him look a little rounder, which fits in with his list of harmless, birdlike cover identities: Finch, Crane, Wren, Partridge. Like most stories that focus on a partnership, the two characters have to balance each other out. While brains/brawn would be an unfair description considering Reese's skill as a tactician, it's certainly the case that much of Reese's strength lies in his ability to physically intimidate, whereas Finch relies on people mistaking him for the boring, fussy middle-aged man he appears to be.

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Fall 2013 Menswear: Alexander McQueen.

Previously on Alexander McQueen.

The backdrop for this show was more like a movie set than a traditional catwalk, with models traveling between wood-panelled rooms that had the look and feel of vintage train compartments. But while the decor was old-fashioned, the clothes were all about extreme, disturbing smoothness. Every outfit focused in on classic tailoring (a nod to McQueen's recently-opened Savile Row menswear store), with an overtly creepy tinge thanks to the smooth, almost android-like appearance of the models. Some even wore transparent masks, giving their faces a glassily inhuman appearance to match the sculpted  Brylcreem hair.

pics from Style.com unless captioned otherwise.

These outfits are proof that it's entirely possible to make a supposedly sombre black pinstripe suit look loud and weird. McQueen wisely kept the tailoring slim and subtle while experimenting with pattern work, meaning that almost every suit was a recognisable one-off without looking too out-there. The main on-trend detail was the lack of tie, which in this instance actually worked quite well. First of all, a full suit, buttoned to the neck but without a necktie, is traditionally the outfit of nebbish weirdos -- which fits in perfectly with the unsettling, serial-killerish vibe of this collection. Secondly,  these suits are far more mature than the typical buttoned-to-the-collar shirt outfits we've been seeing on the catwalks (and on hipster guys. And Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock Holmes.) for the past year or so.

There's a trick to wearing a collared shirt with no tie, and it's mostly to do with the shape and spread of the collar. As a rule, the distance between the points of the collar should correspond with the width of the tie, meaning that wider ties go with collars that spread out at a wider angle, and so on. If you think about it, this makes sense because the closer together the points of the collar, the less room there is for a tie. If you look at the shirts in this McQueen show, the collars are all long and thin, and point almost directly downwards. If you were to wear a tie with these shirts, there would barely be enough room for the knot.

Also, if you take a look at the outfits as a whole, there isn't really any "need" for a tie. Ties are an essentially functionless object, and these suits are already busy enough that they don't need to be accessorised. Either the gap between the collar and the top of the waistcoat/lapels is so small that the presence of a tie would make it seem cramped, or the collar itself serves the decorative purpose of a tie -- for example, the bright, contrasting red of the collar in the picture below.

Probably the two most old-school nods to Savile Row tailoring are the wide lapels (not usually seen with narrow-spread collars, since lapels also tend to correspond with the width of the tie) and pagoda shoulders. Pagoda shoulders take their name from the smooth, concave curve (like the roof of a pagoda!) formed by the peak at the edge of each shoulder, the best example in this post being the jacket pictured above.

The stained glass patterned outfits were undoubtedly the most modern in the collection, tying in with current womenswear trends for soft but brightly-patterned trouser suits.

The show closed with some of the most old-fashioned ensembles, taking inspiration from 19th-century smoking jackets, evening coats and velvet dressing gowns.

from here.

Previously on Fall 2013 Menswear: Dior Homme and the Illuminati.

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Fall 2013 Menswear: Dior Homme and the Illuminati.

This show was very important to me for two reasons:

1. Ferociously minimalist suits. 
2. Fucken ILLUMINATI, YOU GUYS:

Ferociously minimalist suits are a major area of interest to me. From what I've seen so far, the extremely pared-down, knife-smooth suit is a main fixture this season -- and before you point out that at least 50% of Menswear Fashion Week is always grey suits: yes. I know. I'm aware that this distinction isn't necessarily important to everyone, but I tend to home in on every infinitesimal alteration made to the overal generic suit pattern. And as for the whole Illuminati thing: read on.

pics from Style.com

For whatever reason, Illuminati-inspired triangles are everywhere at the moment. Look up "Illuminati" on Tumblr, and half the tag is full of hipster teens taking pictures of themselves making triangle symbols with their hands. Ke$ha's latest music video was a mess of triangle/Illuminati imagery. There is even a subReddit for triangle enthusiasts. Dior Homme has taken this idea to its cleanest, most formalised extreme, with a single geometric pattern emblazoned across the chest and arms of several outfits in this season's show.

Compared to the severity of the rest of this collection, the simple red or white lines of the triangle/circle pattern seemed almost garish. The pinstripes on Dior Homme's suits were so slim as to be practically invisible, and anything so ostentatious as a necktie was exchewed in favour of a tiny, airplane-seatbelt style buckle. Although there were relatively few alterations made to the classic menswear suit silhouette, the fabric, accessories (or lack thereof) and ultra-narrow cut made these outfits seem like a very distant relative to the suits one sees in everyday life.

The creases and pinstripes on these trousers will be the death of me. Truly, I overidentify way too much with the protagonists of Jon Armstrong's Grey, a cyberpunk/sci-fi novel about minmalist suit enthusiasts.

There was something almost inhuman about the cleanliness of this show. Even the models wearing warm-weather gear looked as if they might not have a natural pulse, or were crafted entirely from plastic. And as we'll see in future posts, this is actually a popular theme among several other Menswear Fashion Week shows this season.

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Menswear Fashion Week, Fall 2013: Agi & Sam, Astrid Anders, and Craig Green

All three of the following labels appeared in this year's MAN show, an initiative partly funded by Topman to help up-and-coming British menswear designers. I hadn't heard of any of them until today, but I expect at least one of them will make it big in the next couple of years. Perhaps I'm overthinking things, but it seemed to me like each of these three labels represented one of the tenets of Topman's success as an affordable fashion mainstay: Agi & Sam as the dapper traditionalists, Astrid Anderson for larger-than-life street style, and Craig Green representing the cutting-edge trend junkies.

Agi & Sam
Agi Mdumulla and Sam Cotton's ideal client is, apparently, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. 

pics from Style.com

Their muse this season is Alexander George Thynn, seventh Marquess of Bath, which at first made me go "oh no" because shows inspired by British aristocrats are invariably dull and/or baffling. But then I googled Alexander George Thynn, and wow:

source

TOTALLY VALID CHOICE OF STYLE ICON. I'm now kind of disappointed the show doesn't look more like him, because he's clearly an incredible role model if you want to look like a walking stained-glass window and/or cartoon magician.

This collection combined three things I always like to see in men's runway fashion: good shoes, non-traditional models, and a decent grasp of how to use bright colours without making everyone look like a children's TV presenter. I don't think I'll ever be in favour of padded bodywarmers/gilets as fashion items -- especially when they're layered over a coat -- but the interesting mix of fabrics and patterns more than made up for that.

With some predictability, this next outfit was my favourite of the collection. The cut of the suit is sleek and dapper, and the studiously bland jacket balances out the loud patterns of the trousers and waistcoat. Also, this is a rare moment when I can get onboard with the trend of men buttoning their top buttons but not wearing a tie, because in this particular case another colour or print would have overloaded the overall look.

(N.B. I'm not sure if the garment between the jacket and the shirt is a waistcoat or not, as it appears to have sleeves that overshoot the cuffs of the jacket. Is this a second shirt, or is the yellow cuff just another part of the jacket made to match the waistcoat?)

Astrid Anderson
Cartoonish exaggeration is pretty much the only context in which I can muster any interest in sportswear. Astrid Anderson's designs, partially made from mink, are just about glam enough to make the grade -- particularly since they're paired with gold lipstick.

Craig Green
CLEARLY THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENT OF MENSWEAR FASHION WEEK THUS FAR. Taking Derelicte to a whole new level.

I'm a-flutter with curiosity. Will Craig Green's burnt-out plank headpieces be available for purchase?? Are all of his models latter-day Dementors? Do they really represent a battle between good and evil, as represented by the dark and light sections of the runway show? All I know is, the inspiration for this show was: "SHADOW".

Actually, I almost feel like I have to defend this show. It's not uncommon for either menswear or womenswear collections to feature one "extreme" accessory like a mask or hat, but have the rest of the outfits look perfectly reasonable. Taken individually, most of Craig Green's designs have a definite appeal -- especially the patchy sweaters and striped trousers, which show signs of a particular talent for the kind of rugged texture-mixing designers like Yohji Yamamoto are famed for. Plus, I think this is the type of show that one must view as a single unit rather than a selection of possible outfits. Craig Green is in a near-unique position in that he's critically acclaimed (and well-funded) enough to present his first collection after graduation as an art-fashion show featuring both body-sculpture and wearable menswear styles. I'm certain that I'll have seen some pretty ridiculous shows by the time Menswear Fashion Week is through, but this wasn't one of them.

(That being said, I was not hugely surprised to learn that Craig Green worked with Walter Van Bierendonck while Green was still finishing his degree at Saint Martin's.)

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Now I, too, can look just like Joseph Gordon Levitt and Sherlock Holmes...?

It's a while since I wrote a genuinely stupid post (see also: my immortal treatise on the topic of wallpaper in BBC Sherlock), but I got some new shoes today and they're OMG totes amazing, you guys. OK, "new" may not be the most accurate word, but believe me when I say that when it comes to spending £20 on men's shoes, going vintage is infinitely better value than buying something new from, say, Primark. These particular shoes are in a style I've been vaguely admiring for a while, now: a kind of cross between desert boots and wingtips.

I've never written a post about Inception (one of my very favourite movies for contemporary costume design) because the topic has already been covered very skillfully by someone else. But I will say that one of my favourite details in the movie is the pair of boots worn by Joseph Gordon Levitt's character, Arthur. All of the main characters in Inception are snappy dressers in their own way, but Arthur is definitely the most dapper and fashionable of the lot. And in almost every scene in the movie he's wearing this particular pair of John Varvatos spectator boots:

Arthur's style is neat as a pin and very tailored, but these boots are clearly a favourite of his because not only does he wear them in the "real life" scenes, we see him wearing them during the dream sequences as well. As an extractor, Arthur is on the run for the duration of the movie, so it makes sense for him to have a relatively limited wardrobe. But since Arthur is kind of a clotheshorse, that wardrobe is very carefully coordinated and the boots must fit in with his palette of brown, green and beige. In the real world he's restricted by that palette because that's all he has to work with, but when he's performing an extraction he has the option of wearing whatever he likes -- and yet still often dreams up his beloved old spectator boots. I like seeing characters who genuinely enjoy their clothes, and I think this is a great bit of characterisation -- particularly since the boots are so appropriate for Arthur's job. As he regularly has to take on the role of a corporate spy, it's useful that the spectator boots can easily pass for wingtips when worn with a formal suit. But they're still practical enough for running or fighting when the going gets tough.

At the other end of the scale we have Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock Holmes, another character who only owns one pair of shoes -- although in this case it's because he doesn't care about clothes at all. Seriously, Holmes' costuming in Elementary is a walking example of "it takes a lot of money to look this cheap". Money from the costuming department, that is, because I'm pretty sure the character himself bought all his clothes in bulk from the local Goodwill. I'm certain that a lot of thought has gone into how scruffy he looks at all times, particularly since it's now been acknowledged onscreen that Holmes sees absolutely no point in dressing up to align with other people's standards. While his shoes aren't exactly the same as Arthur's, I enjoy the way two such similar items of clothing can mean completely different things -- stylishly scuffed vs lazily unpolished, favourite accessory vs the first thing he could lay his hands on, and so on.

I don't usually post pictures of my own clothes, partly because I'm a shiteous photographer and partly because it feels kind of awkward to put oneself up for public scrutiny on a blog dedicated to overanalysing clothes. But in this case: whatevvvvs, because I love these shoes. They're scuffed as hell, but I'm chill with that. Also, they go with my pewter trousers, which I wear constantly. A similar style to Holmes and Arthur's shoes, but with a little Adam Lambert thrown in for good measure. ;)

Link: Costume design in CBS's "Elementary".

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Skyfall: The Costumes

Previously: Part 1: Bond as a blunt instrument. and Part 2: The new Bond Girls.

You thought Bond Season was over? Well, it's never over. I gotta be suitblogging 24/7, or else I wither away and die. Bond costumes are always a big deal because the films rely so much upon 007 coming across as the coolest guy you could possibly imagine, which can sometimes be a little tricky when you're dealing with a man who wears a two-piece suit every day of his life and spends most of the time interacting with other men in two-piece suits. But hey! They managed it. And will almost certainly be ignored at the Oscars for their trouble, because when it comes to costumes nobody ever nominates movies set in the present day.
The lynchpin of Bond's style is his timelessness. His staple outfit in the novels is a navy blue suit with a black silk knit tie, a costume that can be handily reintroduced at any point during the five-decade history of the films. While Bond's style does evolve somewhat over the years, the only slip-ups have been when he tried to be too on-trend, such as that period in the '70s when Roger Moore thought it would be a good idea to start wearing flares. In many ways 007's character is rather conservative, meaning that while he does come across as stylish and timeless, he's also the type of guy who'd be tremendously out of place in mainstream modern culture. Even back in the '60s he was overtly and manfully ignorant of popular culture, claiming that the Beatles were unlistenable. The James Bond brand has survived this long in part because it's so damn hard to make him seem out of date.

It goes without saying that Bond films are going to be immensely stylish all round. But if you know me at all (or my philosophy re: character-driven costume design, anyway) then you may be able to guess why I enjoyed the costuming in Skyfall so much. Much of the film's success stems from the fact that all of the side characters are fully-fledged people rather than being two-dimensional stereotypes, which immediately makes them easier to design for. And of those characters, pretty much all of them (the exceptions are Kincaid and Sévérine, and to a certain extent Eve) wear some variation of a suit most of the time they appear onscreen. For a high-profile, high-budget movie like Skyfall, a great deal of thought must go into costume and character design, but when so many of the characters have to wear "similar" outfits then it gets much more interesting.
More detail on Bond's own costumes is hardly even required. Once again Daniel Craig goes into battle wearing a selection of fashionably tailored suits that look so tight they might as well have been sewn around his body. Like several other movies in the franchise, Skyfall's first act shows Bond getting knocked down and having to drag himself back from a combination of gunshot wounds and alcoholism. Luckily, Naomie Harris is there to help him shave off his angst-beard. (Gotta love an angst-beard.) For a while he slums it on the beach with an unnamed girlfriend and predictably Bond-like quantities of booze, but soon enough he ditches the wrinkled trousers and grungy leather jacket and it's back to Tom Ford menswear for the rest of the movie. Since the filmmakers expect the audience to have at least a passing familiarity with Bond already, there isn't much need for any further extrapolation, costume-wise.

Tanner is the Agent Coulson of MI6. Bland in appearance, he nevertheless seems to be fairly high up in the hierarchy, and cares deeply about his job. He wears the most "normal" suit of them all, looking like an everyday businessman compared to Bond's expert tailoring. Ralph Fiennes' Mallory is at the other end of the scale, wearing old-fashion and heavily masculine suits with high-waisted trousers held up by wide braces. This fits in very well with his character, who at first represents the British government before evolving into a younger version of the type of gentleman's-club, ex-military M we saw in the earlier films.
I really liked the new Q. While Ben Whishaw looks like a bit of a dweeberoo, his character was unexpectedly confidant and funny. Most action/adventure movies require a geek character to do some dramatic typing and shouting about subroutines and firewalls while the hero shoots at things, but they generally tend to go the route of one-note nerd stereotype. But rather than reeling off Whedonesque pop-culture references or freaking out in the face of danger, Q is calm and witty, an excellent foil to the dark sarcasm of the rest of the MI6 crew. He and Bond are physical and philosophical opposites, but they warm to each other quickly as Q earns Bond's respect with far more ease than most people. Q's clothes have a vintage/hipster aesthetic, with him wearing a no-doubt expensively geek-chic zipper cardigan and an oversized anorak that makes him look even tinier and younger than he already does. (N.B. The day I found out Ben Whishaw was an entire decade older than me was the day I started looking up cursed portraiture on Etsy. That is some Dorian Gray shit right there.)
As the female head of a government agency, M's fashion choices are in some ways more limited than those of her male counterparts. Appropriately for a person who relies upon anonymity, she wears the most unobtrusive suits possible, in dark or neutral colours and with a reasonably feminine cut. My favourite outfit of hers was for the journey to Scotland, where she was bundled up in a warm woollen coat and a blanket for the long ride in Bond's chilly and uncomfortable Aston Martin. (N.B. I very much enjoyed this hint at Bond's value of style over substance: the beautiful but impractical vintage car.) Oh and as a side note for the true nerds: I'm pretty sure the grey trenchcoat she wears to visit Mallory at the beginning of the film is meant to be the same one she wore in Casino Royale.

Something I picked up on during my second viewing -- and probably qualifies as costume design conspiracy theorising -- is the similarity between Helen McCrory's outfit during the enquiry scenes and one of the suits worn by M earlier on in the movie. Helen McCrory's character is a government minister who leads the questioning during the enquiry into MI6, and she seems particularly keen on taking M down. The suits in question are both made from a kind of rough, tweedy fabric tailored softly around the body with a collarless neckline. I think I noticed the similarity partly because M's suits are usually rather more traditional in cut and fabric, and partly because Helen McCrory's character bears more than a little resemblance to M herself. Not only do they have the same upper-class accent, but Helen McCrory is somewhat facially similar to Judi Dench -- although of course this could all just be coincidence. But I like to interpret this scene as the younger, more idealistic and rule-abiding M interrogating her older and more cynical counterpart.

Eve's costumes showed a very strong sense of personal style, mostly following a warm colour palette of golds and oranges that suited Naomie Harris beautifully. Although the gold dress she wore during the casino scene was the most memorable of her costumes, I particularly enjoyed the outfit she wore at MI6 headquarters. The soft blouse and mustard-yellow skirt stood out from the horde of grey-blue suits in the background and fit perfectly into the kind of Topshop business-casual fashion one sees a lot of in central London. When she returns at the end of the movie to begin her new role as Moneypenny she's considerably more formal, wearing a tight blue dress with asymmetrical seams similar to those of the gold casino dress.

Sévérine undoubtedly wears the most ostentatious costume in the movie, in the form of her translucent black evening gown. As the polar opposite of Bond's low-key, timeless suits, this costume will start looking dated almost immediately, for all that it took six months 60,000 hand-applied crystals to create. The whole look, from Sévérin's dramatically dark lipstick to her claw-like false nails, is purposefully attention-grabbing, but it only really works because Berenice Marlohe is so stunning. My opinion is that the dress is a lot of effort for comparatively minor effect, since tattoo-inspired crystal patterns on sheer black are kind of tacky, and the whole style seems about ten years too old her. I guess Sévérine is meant to look vampy, but the reality is that she's crammed into a weirdly rigid bustier and ultimately ends up looking rather more Liza Minelli than femme fatale. This was my least favourite of all the outfits she wore throughout the film, although I admit that it does fit her character fairly well.

Despite the importance of Silva's role, I actually found his costumes to be among the least interesting in the movie. Appearance-wise, most of Silva's impact was down to a combination of styling (the unnaturally blond hair and eyebrows) and Javier Bardem's performance. Silva is a character who looks far, far better in motion than he does in pictures, mostly because it takes a very skilled actor to sell that level of ridiculousness. Not everyone could carry off that wig, for one thing. And as for the costumes, I suspect he was intended to have slightly bad taste? He isn't badly dressed, as such, but the loud Prada shirt combined with a dark waistcoat and pale jacket looked purposefully weird compared to Bond's more sombre style. Still, I far preferred that outfit to the black leather coat he wore for the final showdown, which almost made it seem like Silva was purposefully dressing up as a supervillain.

Click here for previous James Bond posts.

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