The Library of Style

a style blog focusing on formal looks from every tradition (formerly Suit Distracted)

[omgthatdress]

ily, menswear guy

[rongzhi]

English added by me :)

[deramin2]

This might be Derek Guy's greatest masterpiece.

(The Twitter thread is probably easier to read and easier to look at the images, but I wanted to make sure it got preserved. Images are the tweets.)

(Continued in reblog)

[deramin2]

(continued in reblog)

[deramin2]

End thread.

[cornistasiathecoblinking]

@buginateacup

[flawlessgentlemen]

Ben Barnes photographed by Wanda Martin for FOXES Magazine (2022)

[libraryofstyle]

Just today I was looking for print button-down long sleeves and the only good looking ones were hundreds of dollars.

I’m not up to date in couture but if we’re on the cusp of that coming into style, the trickle-down to bargain fashion is a few years away? Alas.

Anyway, live long enough that your teen heartthrobs become mature leads in menswear shoots.

[vinceaddams]

"This is one of my favourite extant late 18th century waistcoats!" I say, as if I had it narrowed down to just a few.

[vinceaddams]

@flintandpyrite replied:

I humbly request an image post of your top ten picks

Oh man, it's hard to narrow it down that much, but here are 10 Really Good ones. I shall restrict myself to the ones that are squared off across the bottom, and only ones that are sewn up and more or less intact.

Silk, c. 1795, Cooper Hewitt collection.

This one is made of satin with a net overlay, and if you zoom in you can see the net is made of teeny tiny little ribbons all hand knotted together. Wonderful! I've seen this kind of netting in a few dresses and purses, and some much finer lace netting used on waistcoats, but this is the only example I've seen of this kind of fairly large handmade net on menswear. The edges have a binding, which is a nice way to finish them off, and it's got lovely little death's head buttons. It doesn't have pockets, which is very unusual for an 18th century waistcoat, but which I think was the right choice in this case.

Silk, c. 1780's according to The Met but with that high collar I'd put it more 90's.

Look at those appliqué velvet triangles! I love them!! All the dark bits are embroidery and tiny metal spangles, which have tarnished but would have originally been silver and very sparkly.

Silk, c. 1780's, Cooper Hewitt.

There are plenty of weirder embroidery designs from the era (I have a whole pinterest board for them) but I'm just so fascinated by the choice to put all these bizarre fish on here, along with a mixture of chenille seaweed and normal land flowers. It's in pretty rough shape, but when it was new the colours would have been brighter, and there were more black lines and whiskers on the fish.

Also silk, c. 1780's, and in the Cooper Hewitt collection.

Lookit all the bugs!! There are multiple other bug embroidered waistcoats on the aforementioned pinterest board, but this one has an especially nice layout.

This one was posted in a facebook group, so all I know is that it was photographed at an exhibition in Bilbao, but I'm going to guess it's also silk and 1780's.

It's just.. sublime. I love the tone on tone embroidery and the way the tree branches up to cover the whole thing in leaves, and the fringe around the edges. I'm not a huge fan of fringe in a lot of cases, but I think it works here. There's also a monkey swinging from the tree, and it looks like there are some metal spangles on the trunk.

Silk, Cooper Hewitt collection.

This one is printed to shape! It's got all these funky little neoclassical designs which they engraved into a metal plate and then printed right onto the fabric!! It's far from the only example, and some other waistcoats have similar little oval shaped printed scenes that are sewn on and mixed with embroidery.

Silk, 1780's, V&A museum.

Aesthetically this isn't really one of my favourites, but you've got to admire it for the strips of green rabbit fur. It's also got some tarnished silver spangles that would have originally been sparklier, and I love the contrasting velvet lapels.

Wool shag, c. 1790.

Isn't it awful? I love it! It looks like someone skinned Elmo and made him into a waistcoat. You sometimes see this kind of thick piled fabric woven from silk or wool, and sometimes it's used for the outer fabric and sometimes for linings or facings. Most of the ones I've seen are more restrained than this.

Silk, Abiti del Passato. This one might be 1800's instead of 1790's, but I'm counting it anyways.

At first glance you think "oh neat, ikat, I've not seen very many examples at all of ikat used in 18th century menswear" but no! If you look at the closeup you'll see that instead of warp dyed threads, it's actually embroidered to look like warp dyed threads! (The post about ikat I linked to has some technical difficulties that messed up the punctuation somehow, and some of the pictures won't load, but it's still a good post)

I can only assume that this was made because someone couldn't afford the expensive imported fabric, and did their best to imitate it with what was more readily available.

Museo del Traje but I cannot get the damn source link to work and can't find it on the website. It's also probably silk and 1780's-90's.

I mentioned that some waistcoats have little appliqué bits with printed pictures on them, and this is one of those. I've seen very few examples of this weird lapel shape, and I can't recall ever seeing another diagonal band like that. It's strange to see such asymmetrically sized lapels, but somehow it works.

Ok, that's 10! There are plenty more beautiful and interesting ones that I don't have room for here, even without getting into earlier styles and ones on portraits and fashion plates (like that one triple breasted one).

I've got tons more on my extant 18th century waistcoats pinterest board, and if you want to see them sorted by more specific things like fringe or contrasting lapels I've got some sections for that on this board, and for pattern things like being woven to shape or having vertical stripes I've got more sections on this board. (Though the woven to shape section needs adding to, I only have a few late examples on it and that was waaayy more popular in earlier decades.)

[libraryofstyle]

#fiber art #fabric art #embroidery #historical garb #waistcoats #Western historic clothing

[pedrito-pascal]

PEDRO PASCAL Entertainment Weekly | 2020

[libraryofstyle]

I am at the very least ready for the return of fun sweaters and debonaire robes to the world of style.

[the-point-of-sanity]

[mrkmja]

High School Fashion, 1969

What a trip.

[coolglasseskyle]

Wow these photos are stunning

[glitterymisanthropy]

Some of these outfits are the raddest things I’ve ever seen.

[knitmeapony]

Can we talk about the tights.

[emmagrant01]

The existence of photos like these (and similar photos from the 70s and 80s and so on) makes me wonder yet again why current-day movies set in this time never seem to be able to get the hair and clothing right.

[ummmfeminism]

Okay, so the photo’s are really good, the outfits are on point, it’s very natural. but I’m going to call bullshit on that they are 1969 high school freshmen. For one they are all too beautiful to be high school freshman, of any era. And another the photography doesn’t look like photo’s from the 1960’s or 70’s, it’s much better. I’m no expert but, for the most part, i’m pretty sure black and what was still standard, and color photo’s didn’t look nearly this good unless they we’re taken by a professional camera, which I doubt many high school freshmen just had lying around.

[romantashas]

Even a professional camera in this era wasn’t this good. It would still be more grainy. Just going by the surrounds and people in the background who obviously aren’t intended to be in the photo along with the hair, this is some modern college kid’s pop culture project.

[jamestherocketscientist]

I don’t know, considering I have owned a Leica M3 from 1959, and a few other cameras from that era, a Nikon F, a 1962 original Minolta Hi-Matic and others from that era , and have got awesome shots with those cameras which are all35mm cameras, I fucking rent a Hasselblad 500C/M, introduced in 1957 for paid jobs because with good reversal (slide) film you can get super sharp 120 megapixel shots for a fraction of the cost of renting a 40 or 50 megapixel medium format system like a H4D because the negative is 6 by 6 cm. Okay, going back to the photos, grainy film can be the result of a lot of factors, mainly people not exposing correctly, people over developing or “forcing” film so that you can shoot with less light, or the use of high speed film for low light, those are exterior shots in the sun, so it was probably not “fast” film, or pushed film, it would probably be Kodachrome or Kodacolor X. Kodachrome is a colour reversal film, or slide film, it means you get a positive right after processing and it is meant to be projected via optical means, it can be printed but the process is different, it usually has higher contrast and more saturated colours, and also a really FINE GRAIN, also Kodachrome was invented in 1935. 

This is Kodachrome in 1949, It doesn’t say the format, but considering its not blurry with all the moving objects it’s not a large format view camera (which have slow lenses and are not for action shots) It could be a 6 by 6 medium format but it’s not square, it probably is 35mm. I don’t think it’s Kodachrome because of the contrast and the saturation of the colours. 

Then Kodacolor X was invented in the 1950′s as a mean to make colour photography available for the general public, before that you could only get colour by using slide film which was much more expensive than B&W so it was used mainly by professional photographers. Kodacolor X is what is known as a Colour print film, it produces a negative, which is only viewable after printing it, and it’s way more cheaper than slides, but still even those “amateur” films can get pretty nice results for example: 

1968, it’s square so probably is a Rolleiflex TLR or other 6 by 6 camera. so not really a fair comparison, then maybe this one: 

It’s 35mm because of the format, and you can see that the grain is more noticeable but not terrible, it looks like the pictures the OP posted. And Kodacolor X while not as cheap as B&W was pretty used by amateur photographers, and if it was a “special” occasion, I don’t know the last day before summer or something like that it is plausible the photographer used colour print film. Finally to conclude the pictures aren’t that great composition wise, sure they are not terrible, but they are not good, all the subjects are at the center, there is too much air in some subjects are cut, or from their backs, this totally makes sense as a photo club kid taking colour pictures of their friends because it was a special occasion, or just wanted to test the film. Hell I don’t know how many times I have gone to take pictures of empty streets and buildings just to test a camera/film combination, and now that’s the most expensive way of taking pictures. 

[bzangy]

I’m with @geekyastrophysicist on this one: there is no compelling reason to think those pics are fakes / not from the era stated. The grain and lens quality look very late ‘60s to me, comparing them to slides my Dad took around that time. Judging from the bokeh (and assuming 35mm!), a lot of the shots are at around f/4 which isn’t super-huge-aperture for back then.  To me, the colours look classic, creamy Kodachrome. They have that magic. There’s a reason Simon & Garfunkel wrote a song about it. 

I’m also slightly puzzled by the claims that modern digital tech is so much better than older tech. The truth is, digital imaging has been trying to equal film since the very first blocky images. We’ve had the megapixel race and now we’re in the dynamic bandwidth race. I took the below shot with a (then) very expensive digital camera and prime lens: 

But I was still trying to re-create the look of classic film photography, the warmth and colour gamut. 

Which is why a lot of photographers just simply cut out all the fuss and use film cameras with film when they want a film look. Neither digital nor film are ‘better,’ it’s a question of what best fits what you want to do. 

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

Friendly neighbourhood librarian here with a source! 

These photos were taken in 1969 for LIFE Magazine by professional photographer Arthur Schatz, many (but not all) at Beverly Hills High School in Southern California. Time Magazine ran a retrospective of the photo series a few years ago called Feelin’ Groovy: High School Fashion, 1969.

The girl in the headband is named Rosemary Shoong, and she apparently made the outfit herself (that being said, it’s described here as a “leather Indian dress” by which they mean Native, and I’m not sure if she herself was part native or not, so it may or not be appropriated). A few of the other girls are named, but not all of them. 

My favourite image though, isn’t of one of the students, but rather of the teacher, Sandy Brockman: 

That outfit. That headband.

ICONIC.

Update: I found they actual article in Google Books; they are definitely real high school students! https://books.google.com/books?id=CVEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=rosemary+shoong&source=bl&ots=fqIC__55CX&sig=JUrEammCB_SQwrGXL8rgULURaek&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis0ILcyPLTAhVL6mMKHcc-CRsQ6AEISjAL#v=onepage&q=rosemary%20shoong&f=false

[feralsshinycat]

Bless you, research librarian!

Also, I would wear the fuck out of that ruffled yellow crop top!

[dollsahoy]

I’m also reblogging for the facts about the whole range of film and the cameras that used it, and glad that it was thoroughly addressed by someone else because my eyes were still rolling too hard from reading the idea that the image quality was entirely due to the cameras used and not the film in those cameras

(every time I’ve reblogged this before was to point to the LIFE magazine source.)

[pluckyredhead]

Rereblogging for the photos and also because I will never stop being annoyed at the “I have no idea what I’m talking about but I’m pretty sure there was no color photography in the 70s” comment. Which, by the way, starts with “I’m going to call bullshit that these are freshman” when no one ever said they were - the original caption is “high school fashion.”

[thathealeygirl]

I knew they were real immediately, and not because of the film - because of the shoes.

[libraryofstyle]

The unabashed color and pattern usage of these clothes is delightful. Also, other high school kids of the era also probably though Beverly Hills high school kids were fake.

[theatlasofbeauty]

Today is the National Day of Norway, that special day when many Norwegians wear the bunad, a sophisticated folk costume. I walked in the morning on the streets of Oslo, the capital of the country, admiring the thousands of bunads all around me. Some were new, but others were inherited from grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Julie didn’t use to wear the bunad before, but a few years ago, during a cold and snowy National Day, she decided to give it a try. She felt so warm and beautiful while wearing it that she decided to wear it every year.

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Elizabeth Jennings, from Collected Poems; “The Way of Words & Language,”

[libraryofstyle]

Salutations!

Folks, suits are still beautiful, yet I don’t have a ton more to say about them. (There are exceptions. Some of them are in my dusty drafts folder.)

I’d love to expand the scope, and return to posting. So much beautiful design is out there in the world of clothing, both present and past. I plan to rename this blog The Library of Style, and start posting again soon!

This notice is so a) if you begin to think you have posts from a blog you never followed there is a papertrail to find and b) declaring intent is a great way to help yourself follow up.

Ready?

Name change will initiate next week!

[waytoseoul-blog]

kang dong won & song hye kyo for VOGUE;  강동원/송혜교

[libraryofstyle]

This shoot is a vintage cute dream.

Which nearly obscures the odd striping mismatch on the jacket Kang Dong Won wears. I’m not sure I like it, but I’m also not sure I dislike it.

While not very business-like, a playful pinstripe like that would be perfect for (like here) and entertainer who had to dress up but didn’t want to go full salaryman.

The simple white dress Song Hye Kyo is wearing is a look reserved, also, for a few occasions. Like having iced coffee with an entertainer in a fool’s motley pinstripe.

[koreanboyilike]

[libraryofstyle]

I was going to make a joke about how no winter coat shoot is complete without a lot of skin showing in at least one shot, but it then it dawned on me that there are dogs in almost every shot here, too.

Wintry walks with dogs on beaches are a perfect occasion for these coats. Wear the third, which has no merit in form, when it’s absolutely disgusting out, because you have a dog who needs to go out.

Wear the top two handsomely draped light coats as a gesture to winter when it’s really still fall outside.

[sputniksea]

Ann Demeulemeester FW1718

[libraryofstyle]

I don’t know what the point is of this, but I love it.

A harsh black suit, some stark white blouse of odd form and underneath, at the cuffs--ecru lace. Sheer. Doing nothing except asking to be put down as a dandy and written into a vampire urban fantasy.

[thomasthomaslondon]

Autumn is here, rusty flowers British tailoring. Love this jacket #princeofwales #tailoring #driesvannoten #menswearforwomen

[itmfwi]

[libraryofstyle]

Maybe it’s the part of me that wants manga fashion to be real, but I really like the dramatic lines on the white shirt and jacket. Certainly the photography and shoes play up the dynamic of them. I’m not convinced by the two-tone blazer type jacket, but I feel like it’s just missing one element--the colors strike a good note.

[libraryofstyle]

Celebrating that I accidentally updated the theme for SuitDistracted with a nice fall post of dark button-ups and a blazer on newcomer Woo Do Hwan.

Pretty excited about the textured shirts and jacket--when I think of more visible-weave fabrics like tweed and denim to me they’re a little retro. But considering that solids have dominated suit style for a while now, and denim has come back, maybe tweed will, too. Especially in a thinner fabric like the bottom image shows.

Not sure what to think of the wide stripe on this trouser. Definitely not pleased with Vogue Korea for making it look OK to be wearing loafer shoes.

Any shoe that shouldn’t be worn with a sock should not be worn with a dressy shirt. Not that Vogue asked me.

[iamnotexotic]

Harry Uzoka, Henry Pedro Wright, O'Shea Robertson, and Sacha M'Baye are the most beautifully dapper in “THE 606” for Carbon Copy, May 2013.

[libraryofstyle]

I’m not sure I can add anything to “beautifully dapper” but those zoot-suit reminiscent pants are working for me real well.

The detailing of the waist shape is particularly fascinating. Could something with more attention to form than “tight-as-possible” come back for the trouser? Is it too late to ask?