2:17pm The National Weather Service issues a flood watch for New York City. I clock the notification on my iPhone. I look up at the sky. I look back down at my phone. An iCal notification for the 3:30pm screening of The Royal Tenenbaums sits atop a red and blue Cubist mixed media David Hockney self-portrait reduced to a wallpaper on my uncased iPhone. I look back up at the sky. It’s ominous.

2:23pm It’s Thursday and I’m playing hooky. I mean, at this point, the flash flood warning is a convenient excuse from the film gods to catch Wes Anderson’s 2001 The Royal Tenenbaums on the silver screen…again. The last time I saw my favorite film in theaters was eight years ago in 2017.

2:47pm I lock up the shop and head one block south to catch the uptown 1 train at Franklin Street station.

3:13pm Surfacing at Lincoln enter some 65 blocks later, I whip into a bodega for some sour gummy worms the concession stand is all but guaranteed not to stock (a custom I’ve maintained since my adolescence).

3:29pm The rain begins to descend upon Manhattan with a vengeance typically reserved for Caribbean islands. Come hell or high water, I take my red velvet seat three rows back, center. The lights go down. For the next hour and 49 minutes, the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center is heaven on earth.

If you’re new here, think of Dying Breed as a monthly missive from your New Yorker cousin a little too into fashion, music, film, art, and books. The general idea being to turn you on to the motley of muses, influences, and references that inform the menswear label I design, F.E. Castleberry.

FILM FORUM

DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME you looked at a Twombly? The decadence of a beautifully cut suit having never known it before? The first time you heard The Clash? These moments…these firsts, they taste like the first time you dove into an ocean wave or made something good or touched her lips.

Fashion, art, film, music, literature…taste, and good taste at that, make a convincing case for a beautiful life. If we’re lucky, we encounter portals of taste—whether it be family, friend, mentor, or muse—that provide entrée into worlds of beauty, enrich our lives, and shape how we experience our existence.

The Royal Tenenbaums begins with a bomb going off. The rest of the film unfolds in the aftermath. The third film by American auteur director Wes Anderson is by in large my favorite film…of all time. I would argue (ad nauseam) that it is Anderson’s best film. It is set in New York, but not really. It is a Texan’s idea of New York who’s never actually been…having only possessed a second hand knowledge of it through movies and books.

It was the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat that said, “Art is how we decorate space; Music is how we decorate time.” If I may be so vulgar, I would add with reciprocal gravity, Fashion is how we decorate being.

The Royal Tenenbaums is perhaps the most enduring imprint on my sartorial psyche. I watch this film like most people listen to their favorite song. Religiously. Indulgently. Shamelessly. To even speculate the number would be an exercise in vanity…but if I had to guess, I’d say easily over 117 viewings.

Anderson’s films notoriously reward repeated viewings. This is a testament to the complex characters, narrative strength, and rich visual worlds of his films. The tailoring, done by Mr. Ned in New York, has served as a true north for my sensibilities since I first discovered the film in L.A. in 2007. More than a beloved film, Anderson’s Tenenbaums is what I would refer to as a taste portal; a befitting appellation for a film that wholly baptized me into a world of music, fashion, art, film, and literature that had, until 2007, been entirely foreign to me.

Without further ado, let’s get into it…

Anderson swiped this Scalamandré dazzle wallpaper from the New York spot Gino of Capri (affectionately known as “Gino’s” by New Yorkers) and then introduced it to his world. Scalamandré’s reputation with the old moneyed wasps is gold.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen or heard of Rimowa luggage. I’m instantly in love with the aluminum travel cases. I’ve been traveling with my own set ever since.

The prestigious Hermés Birkin bag (likely handed down by her mother Ethylene…or nicked from her closet). The Birkin is less a bag and more a passport into a rarefied universe where craftsmanship borders on alchemy. Unbranded yet unmistakable. It’s silhouette architectural but unfussy. Notoriously difficult to acquire. The nonchalance in which Margot lugs it in the crook of her arm alludes to the heights at which the Tenenbaums were once perched.

Legend has it, that in 1983, British-French singer and actor Jane Birkin found herself on an Air France flight beside Jean-Louis Dumas, then–chief executive of Hermès. The wicker bag she was carrying toppled, its contents cascading across the cabin in a landslide. Birkin lamented that she could never find a leather bag both elegant and practical enough for her life. Dumas, not one to let a good crisis go to waste, began outlining a solution right there on the plane—an impromptu blueprint that would quietly alter the luxury landscape.

The Birkin bag emerged a year later: structured yet accommodating, timeless yet born of a thoroughly human inconvenience[1]. Hermès crafted it with the same near-monastic devotion it gives all its leather goods, and over time the bag gathered its own mythology—waitlists, craftsmanship lore, and a cultural gravitas that feels almost gravitational.

The bag, if you can even secure a pre-owned one, will cost north of $25,000.

The Hermés Kelly bag. Fun fact: the Kelly bag is the most difficult bag to construct despite it being smaller than the Birkin bag—in fact, it’s because it is smaller that the degree of difficulty is greater. It is named after Grace Kelly, who carried it in Alfred Hitchcock’s film To Catch a Thief.

This is the first time I come across a United States Air Force N-3B Snorkel parka. I love how Anderson endorses costume designer Karen Patch’s utilization of it on a women. The beautiful ying and yang of the masculine and feminine. I have a vintage Air Force issued model in olive that boasts a real coyote fur hood…worn over a navy blazer, it’s brilliant.

Anderson dressed up his sportswear and dressed down his formalwear in this iconic uniform for Richie Tenenbaum. The sport jersey or track jacket under a camel hair suit is a look I iterate on ad infinitum.

This is the first time I become aware of what velvet smoking slippers are. I take great joy in designing these for F.E. Castleberry.

The red hunting coat, colloquially knows as “hunting pink” is introduced to me for the first time in this montage of Royal with his grandsons Ari and Uzi. The hunting jacket is a house style in the F.E. Castleberry world, only with a Sid Vicious bent.

Anderson scores this deftly funny breakup scene with Vince Guaraldi’s “It’s Christmas Time.” This moment opens up jazz music for me…a rabbit hole I’ve still not crawled my way out of yet. More on this album in a bit.

“Police and Thieves” is piped through the car stereo as Eli Cash drives to his drug dealer’s apartment. This is the first time I’ve ever paid attention to The Clash…the only band that matters.

Scoring Margot Tenenbaum’s sexually promiscuous montage is “Judy is a Punk.” I’m immediately reminded of how great The Ramones are.

Bjorn Borg is largely brought to my attention because he serves as a muse for Anderson when developing the character of Richie Tenenbaum. Borg, to this day, possessed the best style in tennis. He is the only player I know to have arrived to matches in a fur coat. Did this influence Margot Tenenbaum’s costume? I wouldn’t rule out the possibility.

It is Anderson’s taste level that is subtly (and not so subtly) on display in his films; and none more so than The Royal Tenenbaums. A world-maker of the highest order. This film serves as a taste portal…granting me (and anyone else for that matter) entrée into his secret society, should they only be willing to visit the alter with a devotion typically reserved for saints.

CRATE DIGGING

THERE IS A DISTINCT PLEASURE in discovering old music…music that’s not only made its dent in the universe prior to your lifetime but that’s influenced many of the bands that you love while managing to sound modern in the present day and age.

Crate Digging is about discovering old music. The classics. The obscure. The looked over. The uncut gem. The minor masterworks. It’s a liberal arts audit of the music that scores the world of F.E. Castleberry. Alternative. Classical. Rock. Pop. Grunge. Blues. Punk. Post Punk. Jazz. Bossa Nova.

The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions is an album I revisit with a regularity second only to that of a devout Catholic and confession. This conceptual cinematic album is a charming tight rope act between pop and bossa nova. It is not the official film soundtrack—while that is a wonderful listen in its own right, but an expanded sonic companion by Seu Jorge of…wait for it…David Bowie covers.

So the story goes…[Wes] Anderson had seen City of God, and loved this character Knockout Ned. Anderson tells his producer, “I’d like to see if this actor might be interested in playing this part we have, Pelé dos Santos. He’s Brazilian, but he has to play music in it.” The actor is Seu Jorge. When Anderson sees Jorge auditioning, he realizes Jorge could not have possibly learned to play guitar this well prior to the audition. Of course, Jorge isn’t really an actor. He’s a musician. And not just any musician but a Portuguese pop star.

Once Anderson realizes what luck he’s fallen into, his vision for the Pelé dos Santos role opens up, significantly.

Once I saw here’s what he can do, and here’s what he sounds like, and here’s what his music is like…then I just said, Well, let’s do I think like, twelve of these or something. Let’s just have him be a sort of chorus all through the movie.

—Wes Anderson

What makes the album especially captivating is the way Jorge reframes Bowie’s work through a distinct cultural and emotional lens. Mind you, legend has it, Jorge had never heard any of Bowie’s music…he’s creating these acoustic Portuguese translated covers having only heard the original songs for the first time. What Anderson thought were translations, in fact, turned out to be an eventual realization that Jorge had made up his own lyrics. Upon this eventual realization, Anderson says, “Okay, well, at least get, you know, some of the key, you know, some of the, you know, ‘Rebel, Rebel.’ We need to have those words.”

These covers are really Jorge’s interpretations—at once familiar and entirely new. The Portuguese lyrics lend the songs an intimate, almost handwritten quality, as if they’re being rediscovered rather than covered. “Rebel Rebel,” for instance, becomes soft and contemplative, while “Life on Mars?” takes on a bittersweet calm that contrasts with the sweeping drama of Bowie’s version. They’re much more Jorge than you might think right off the bat…a testament to how a great artist can illuminate the work of another without diminishing the original.

Watch Seu Jorge perform his Bowie covers live on the film set of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE. I would be remiss to not share what I consider to be the quintessential holiday album—Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas. It is one of the rare holiday albums that transcends its seasonal genre and becomes something closer to a cultural touchstone. Commissioned somewhat unexpectedly for an animated special about a quiet, introspective boy and his friends, Guaraldi delivered a jazz score that felt both sophisticated and deeply childlike. His trio’s feather-light touch—cool-jazz piano lines, brushed drums, and melodic, almost conversational bass—created a soundscape that matched Charles Schulz’s gentle melancholy. Arrangements like “Skating” and “Linus and Lucy” radiate an effortless charm, the sort that feels improvised yet perfectly inevitable, capturing both the innocence and the emotional complexity of childhood.

The album serves as a sort of epochal sonic milestone…before A Charlie Brown Christmas and after A Charlie Brown Christmas. Before Guaraldi, holiday music leaned heavily on orchestral bombast and crooner warmth; afterward, the idea that Christmas could swing with a wistful, understated cool became part of the canon. His arrangements of traditional tunes—“O Tannenbaum” and “What Child Is This” among them—are reverent but never stiff, suffused with jazz harmony that opens them up rather than weighing them down. Decades later, A Charlie Brown Christmas remains not just a soundtrack but a ritual: a cue for the season, a reminder of childhood gentleness, and a masterclass in how simplicity and restraint can achieve a kind of quiet perfection.

Anderson discovered it could also score a melancholic separation.

Footnotes

1. Jane b. par Agnès v. 1988

Jazz never feels better than in Manhattan in autumn. Cue up Stan Getz with his tenor saxophone. Or Gerry Mulligan on the piano (Night Lights). Or Chet on the trumpet…and aimlessly wander the city in your oversized wool blazer and horsebit loafers. Pick up a coffee. Daydream. Light a cigarette (what the hell?). It’s New York after all!

If you’re new here, think of Dying Breed as a bi-monthly missive from your New Yorker cousin a little too into fashion, music, film, art, and books. The general idea being to turn you on to the motley of muses, influences, and references that inform the menswear label I design, F.E. Castleberry.

FILM FORUM

LAST WEEK, I DUCK INTO one of New York’s treasured independent theaters in Greenwich Village, Quad Cinema. It is now one of the oldest independent cinemas in the city, having opened in 1972, but you might not know it from its recent Pentagram facelift. It’s chic. Tucked away in the middle of a side street at 34 West 13th, the Quad is this small four-screen theater boasting a 50 foot long, sinuously curved, candy apple red concessions counter of the late 1970s Italian design ilk. The kids working the joint are total stoners. Long hair. Aloof. But courteous. It’s brilliant. The Quad is exactly what you want it to be. Andy Warhol used to come here. I like to think his ghost still lingers.

Film Forum is the corner of Dying Breed for film recommendations (or in today’s case, independent movie theaters) I believe enrich the lives of all of us geeks, freaks, and aesthetes. Important films…not only to culture but to F.E. Castleberry especially.

On a Saturday night at 7:11pm, I am one of seventeen in a viewing room with 81 seats. Yes, I’m here by myself and I have no stigmas about it——mostly because my girlfriend is out of town this weekend and my two cinephile friends haven’t replied to my last minute texts——it’s actually one of those activities perfectly suited to doing alone. It’s dark. There’s no talking for 120 minutes. And your attention is completely directed at the screen. Anyways, I digress. Seated directly behind me is this darling septuagenarian couple, or maybe they’re in their 80s. The gentleman is in a wide wale corduroy sport coat, dad jeans, and grey 999 New Balance sneakers—a look Jerry Seinfeld pioneered in the 90s but went largely unappreciated until recently. We’re all here to see Saturday Night (a fantastic film by Jason Reitman, go see it in theaters). It is perhaps a modern masterpiece, but given how masterpieces work, we won’t really know until the passage of some 25 years of time. But Saturday Night feels like it could be one.

After the credits roll, I linger outside, taking in the brisk evening air. The old couple meanders out onto the sidewalk, take a beat as if they’re unsure of which way is home…then head west. I watch as they head toward the 6th avenue. Not even 50 feet from the theater entrance, they stop and begin making out. I smile. And then I laugh to myself. Rascals. You don’t get that streaming Netflix from your couch.

The independent movie theater is the closest contraption we have to a time machine. I have had the privilege and pleasure of experiencing some of my favorite films of all time on the big screen long after their initial theatrical release. The Royal Tenenbaums, when it played at the Lower East Side’s Metrograph theater some seven years ago, I watched twice. I’m telling you, it is a completely different film in a sold out room with other Tenenbaums lovers. You watch differently on the big screen. You laugh differently. It’s magical. I may have cried at one point.

I took my sons to see Rushmore at the IFC Center in the West Village. And then there’s the Paris Theater tucked between Bergdorf Goodman and The Plaza Hotel on West 58th Street. The landmark theater, with its single screen and 535 seats, is the epitome of arthouse cinema elegance in its distinctive Arte Moderne style. Watching director Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film Network is a particular highlight, the Writers Guilds of America having voted the screenplay one of the ten greatest in history. When you visit New York, shoehorn “time travel” in between an afternoon at MoMA and dinner at Le Veau d’Or.

CRATE DIGGING

ONE OF MY FAVORITE JAZZ ALBUMS was recorded in 1964 by Stan Getz and Brazilian singer and guitarist João Gilberto. It is a masterpiece…pulsing with restraint. Complete. Comprehensive. It was an immediate sensation. The 34 minutes of bossa nova on Getz/Gilberto spent 96 weeks on the charts and garnered the pair an armload of Grammys.

Crate Digging is about discovering old music. The classics. The obscure. The looked over. The uncut gem. The minor masterworks. It’s a liberal arts audit of the music that scores the world of F.E. Castleberry. Grunge. Blues. Punk. Post Punk. Alternative. Classical. Rock. Afrobeat. Jazz…especially jazz.

Certainly listen to the landmark recording Getz/Gilberto featuring pianist and composer Antônio Carlos Jobim, who also composed many of the tracks. But we don’t read Dying Breed for the blatantly obvious. It’s the Getz/Gilberto ‘76 live album recorded twelve years later at Keystone Korner in San Francisco that’s the uncut gem. This is the one you get on vinyl.

The vinyl album cover prominently features the artwork of Puerto Rican artist Olga Albizu, an abstract expressionist plastic artist.

Sidebar: Of Albizu’s relationship to bossa nova, the art critic and historian Susan Noye Platt wrote:

There is a controlled and subtle sensuality to her [Albizu's] work, that speaks of hidden layers of emotion, rather than letting everything appear on the surface to be consumed. In the case of Albizu, the connection to music, and particularly bossa nova, as well as her exposure to Hans Hofmann's ideas of "push and pull", allows for the work to exist without other reference points. The colors do indeed move like large full sounds, a connection that takes us all the way back to Kandinsky.

Accompanying himself on nylon-stringed guitar with (and without) Getz's quartet, Gilberto reshapes samba classics into perfect pearls of rhythmic subtlety while singing in a throaty, attention-commanding murmur. There’s something spellbinding about Gilberto’s intensity when facing a live audience, close-up. Although half the tracks on this brilliantly intimate live album feature breathy and lyrical saxophone solos from Getz, this is Gilberto’s album. The crown jewel being not any particular song but the profound introduction Getz bestows upon Gilberto that plays more like a panegyric before the two begin their set:

Drop the needle, light a jazz cigarette, and close your eyes…you just might be whisked away to the long since shuttered Keystone Korner for an evening; João Gilberto’s half-whispered Portuguese lyrics incandescently drifting in mid-air like burning Chinese lanterns.

THERE IS A DISTINCT PLEASURE in discovering old music…music that’s not only made its dent in the universe prior to your lifetime but that’s influenced many of the bands that you love while managing to sound modern in the present day and age. English post-punk band Gang of Four’s debut album Entertainment! pulls off that feat in rather convincing fashion, often regarded as one of the most influential debut albums of all time. Really. And if the effusiveness sounds like that of a someone who has just stumbled upon them, that’s because it is. For anyone here familiar with Gang of Four’s 1979 debut album, you owe me one for not turning me on to it. For everyone else, you’re welcome.

If you’re new here, think of Dying Breed as a bi-monthly letter from your New Yorker cousin a little too into fashion, music, film, art, and books. The general idea being to turn you on to the patchwork of influences and references that inform the menswear label I design.

Crate Digging is about discovering old music. The classics. The obscure. The looked over. The uncut gem. The minor masterworks. It’s a liberal arts audit of the music that scores the world of F.E. Castleberry. Alternative. Classical. Rock. Pop. Afrobeat. Grunge. Blues. Punk. Post Punk.

If I would have discovered Gang of Four’s Entertainment! 30 years ago (at age 13), my high school punk band would have been a much better punk band. A much more socially and lyrically nuanced punk band. Instead, we wrote “original” songs and people would ask us what Blink-182 song we just covered. Entertainment! kick started the post-punk sound of the late 1970s with its sharp and angular guitar riffs, driving baselines, and politically charged lyrics—lyrics laced with left-wing ideology critical of capitalism, war, and the their alienating effects on society.

The album art alone was a damning socio-political critique of mid-20th century advanced capitalism. A critique that today, while certainly still applicable, seems to be one we’re all too apathetic to continue hurling. The corporations have won. A diatribe for another time.

Entertainment! is a landmark release within the post-punk genre. Kurt Cobain regarded the album as one of his favorite 20 albums (having disclosed that Nirvana essentially began as “a Gang of Four and Scratch Acid ripoff”). It’s a minor influence to a handful of modern bands I love like Spoon, Radiohead, and Arcade Fire. All hits. No skips. “Damaged Goods” (a Marxist critique of the transactional nature of everyday life, including romance and sexuality, illustrated through a breakup), “Natural’s Not In It”, and “At Home He’s a Tourist” serve as particular highlights.  Have fun dancing to this one.

FILM FORUM

I RECENTLY WATCHED A DOCUMENTARY, well a semi-documentary, called The Cry of Jazz. I delineate semi-documentary because it explores—by way of a [scripted] heated conversation between a group of Black and white jazz aficionados—the relationship between jazz and race in America. Made in 1959 and directed by Edward Bland, at arguably the height of jazz, the short proved explosively controversial both for its frank discussion of race and its bold proclamation that “jazz is dead.”

For anyone who loves jazz and for anyone who doesn’t for lack of understanding it, The Cry of Jazz provides a concise primer on the plight of the Black American and the consequential birth of the art form. While I have loved jazz for the better part of the last ten years, The Cry of Jazz deepened my understanding of why the black man created jazz and why he is the only one with the necessary musical and human history who could have created jazz. More importantly, I found the film enlightened and heightened my empathy around the suffering and struggle of our fellow man.

The proclamation that “jazz is dead” is simply a claim that the music, as an art form, no longer truly served the black man. Jazz is dead, but the spirit of jazz would reincarnate in the form of hip-hop some 25 years later…furthering a future filled with hope where America begrudgingly would allow one.

It’s a relatively short watch at just over half an hour. The Cry of Jazz can be currently streamed on The Criterion Channel’s streaming service (it’s $10.99/month and they have over 3,000 titles in the library—a cinephile’s dream).

BOOK CLUB

MANY OF YOU UNDOUBTEDLY, like me, were haphazardly tuning into the 133rd French Open over the last two weeks. It is perhaps my favorite tennis grand slam. The iron oxide clay. The Perrier green. And if you haven’t watched the William Klein documentary The French which I mentioned a few weeks ago, you’ll be treated to an incredibly intimate behind-the-scenes look of Roland Garros that few had entrée to up until 1981 or have seen since 1981.

The summer grand slams (i.e. Roland Garros and Wimbledon) usually lure me back to a David Foster Wallace essay: “Federer Both Flesh and Not”. Wallace wrote about tennis because life gave it to him—he had played well at the junior level—albeit in an unimaginative fashion. “I couldn’t begin to tell you how many tournament matches I won between the ages of twelve and fifteen against bigger, faster, more coordinated and better-coached opponents,” Wallace wrote, “simply by hitting balls unimaginatively back down the middle of the court.” Regardless, Wallace wrote about the game as someone who not only played it but as someone who understood it, loved it, and had his heart broken by it.

“Federer Both Flesh and Not” first appeared, as “Federer as Religious Experience,” in The New York Times’ ill-fated sports-themed PLAY Magazine, August 20, 2006. It is perhaps the most intelligent and beautiful piece of writing ever written about the sport of tennis or its luminaries. The essay is gathered, along with four other Wallace's tennis-themed nonfiction originally written for various publications, under one cover in the book String Theory. The following is a particularly poignant excerpt by Wallace on Federer’s game, or more aptly, his genius.

There are three kinds of valid explanation for Federer’s ascendancy. One kind involves mystery and metaphysics and is, I think, closest to the real truth. The others are more technical and make for better journalism.”

The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws. Good analogs here include Michael Jordan, who could not only jump inhumanly high but actually hang there for a beat or two longer than gravity allows, and Muhammad Ali, who really could “float” across the canvas and land tow or three jabs in the clock-time required for one. There are probably a half-dozen other examples since 1960. And Roger Federer is of this type—a type that one could call genius…and genius is not replicable.

THERE ARE APPARENTLY NO MORE RULES in fashion. Why? Because rules, much like tradition, must be passed down in the written word or taught orally. Kids don’t read anything longer than a caption these days and a majority of the menswear elders are gone. Or not on Instagram Reels anyway. Nobody knows anything [if I had a dollar for every time someone was sporting a tacked jacket vent, I’d be Bernard Arnault].

When it comes to “dressing the man”…an updated Bible would need to be compiled by a new authority on menswear. Sadly, it wouldn’t be a hard bound book so much as a mediocrely executed TikTok account by a Gen-Zer who’s never laid eyes on Alan Flusser’s crucial source material (read Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion). Anyways, I digress. Rules…

Rules look backwards…at what’s behind. Style looks forward…toward new frontiers. And yet, style, without a foundation in rules, veers into camp rather quickly. It is this sartorial alchemy that intrigues me most in menswear. In the ever increasing informalization of dress, what is the way forward for tailored clothing in fashion…much less menswear?

A couple years ago, I ran into Alan Flusser at a party on the Upper East Side. He was in black tie…black double breasted dinner jacket, white tuxedo shirt, and black velvet smoking slipper but he’d paired them with a black Adidas track pant. It blew my mind a little. Thinking Flusser had suffered a minor stroke on the back nine of his illustrious career, I leaned over to his right hand man and discreetly inquired, “How long’s this been going on?” to which he replied, “Oh, this is a thing he does now. He’s absolutely serious about it.”

For me, Flusser’s formalwear-athleisure cocktail left a little to be desired (the design of his particular track pant wasn’t the best choice in my humble opinion, and the execution was a little sloppy) but the idea excited me for a couple reasons.

One: here was the author of the menswear Ten Commandments publicly toying with the high/low of a black track pant in a formalwear ensemble.

Two: in Flusser’s old age, it was inspiring to witness that clothes, and new ideas about wearing them, still held his imagination.

But here’s the thing, informality must be earned.  For example, at most investment banks on Wall Street, analysts at the bottom typically abide by a more formal dress code than the managing directors in the corner office.  And when I’d first met my girlfriend’s father, I called him Mr. Kolmansberger until he eventually asked me to call him J.K…the nickname all his friends and family knew him by. Informality is earned.

Flusser exercised the informality that he’d earned in order to reinterpret the tuxedo just as Ralph Lauren had many years ago when [radically] introducing westernwear into his eveningwear.  Their reinterpretation of the tuxedo being a skilled, considered, and daring effort to look more like themselves…bending the black tie uniform and its rules at will.  All that to say, don’t even think about attempting such a feat until you’ve mastered the black tuxedo as prescribed and can tie a bow tie (with some personality).  More importantly, truly know yourself. I left the party that evening tucking the idea into my back pocket for the next black tie occasion.

When I took in the opera Champion at the Met last year, I found it to be the perfect “formalwear-optional” occasion to play my hand at the high/low ensemble.  What I attempted to great effect was this: double breasted cream jacket over a blue Oxford cloth tuxedo shirt.  Then, the pièce de résistance that truly makes the track pant work—a black cummerbund, cleverly concealing the elastic waistband—polished off with an F.E. Castleberry evening opera pump.

Formalwear. Streetwear. Westernwear. Athleisure. Tailored clothing. It’s everything everywhere all at once. It’s this mix that sustains my curiosity in fashion…and in menswear, more importantly. This is our present and our future. This is nouveau black tie.

THERE IS A RULE IN BLACK TIE DRESS that it is never, ever, ever, ever, ever to be worn before 6:00PM. To do so would be uncouth. The tuxedo is reserved for formal dinner parties, awards ceremonies, milestone birthdays, weddings, and galas. I’ll let you in on a little secret…I’m uncouth, often. Let me explain.

Eveningwear undoubtedly carries the highest cost per wear (cost of garment divided by number of times worn within a given period of time), especially if those pieces are being cut made-to-measure. It doesn't matter how many weddings or fundraiser galas you’ve got queued up this year, your formalwear simply doesn’t clock the mileage that your suit or blazer does. This doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.

Fashion kid that I am, I’ve found some pleasure in co-opting elements of the black tie uniform into the everyday. Admittedly, I’ve been doing this for the past decade with velvet slippers. But not with tailoring. I can’t quite recall when I first saw this stunt pulled, but it was by a woman. Then my girlfriend did it with a vintage Bill Blass black tuxedo jacket last year. I found it chic, so naturally I nicked the idea.

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THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT A UNIFORM. It’s an introduction to yourself. A security blanket. A rig (what us Ralph Lauren alum call an outfit). At best, rigging is an unrecognized art form. At worst, it’s one less series of decisions to make at the beginning of your day. And I would be remiss to not mention the number of creative geniuses (e.g. Steve Jobs, Wes Anderson, Tom Wolfe, Karl Lagerfeld, Fran Lebowitz) and high-level decision makers (e.g. the President of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg, The Pope) who’ve adopted uniforms for this very reason.

A uniform, as loose as it may be, is integral in shaping one’s personal style or…persona. Over time, it defines how you look. Consistency is key. If you always wear a uniform, you make a statement. And what you’re saying could be any number of things.

Wes Anderson’s films exemplify this idea. His characters often live in one costume that identifies what that character does, is into, or their associations. Often, the costume design is an actual uniform. Bellhops, concierges, shipmen, private school students, Khaki Scouts, tennis pro, police captain, and inmates to name a few. Quirky sartorial touches serve as the main vocabulary, often communicated through a singular signature piece.

Anderson’s oeuvre taught me that you could wear a suit every day for the rest of your life and you’d never be overdressed, under dressed but seemingly just right. Whether you’re climbing the high school social ladder, traveling across India by train on a spiritual journey, or surviving a dysfunctional family reunion while confessing you’re in love with your (adopted) sister…all can be carried off effortlessly in a suit.

As a menswear designer, I choose to wear suits; they aren't required. What they are is a uniform. And not all uniforms are created equal, mind you. After all, just because you’ve developed a signature uniform consisting of a hoodie and flip-flops, doesn’t mean you look great—or even good for that matter.

MOST CREATIVE EFFORTS require some iteration of workshopping. A script. A recipe. A musical. Hell, even a marriage proposal—especially a marriage proposal (gentlemen!). A uniform is no exception. But how often do we try something out and later forfeit at the conclusion that it doesn’t look quite right or make us feel like the best version of ourselves?

In the fall of 2021, when I conceded it was finally time to wear a black Schott Perfecto biker jacket (my mid-life crisis may have had something to do with this), I didn’t immediately know how to wear it…I’d been living in suits for the past decade, after all. While the Perfecto is arguably the sexiest singular piece of fashion I’ve ever encountered, how to wear it wasn’t exactly self evident. My Perfecto rig needed workshopping.

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I LOVE FILM. Yeah, I used the “f” word. I know it sounds pretentious, forgive me, actually—no, I’m not sorry…it’s necessary. Movies are a business. Film is a medium. Film is art.

Film Forum is the corner of Dying Breed for film recommendations I believe enrich the lives of all of us geeks, freaks, and aesthetes. Important films…not only to culture but to F.E. Castleberry especially.

An executive at the gates of Roland Garros warns his deputy as spectators push and shove to get back into the clay court grounds following a rain delay. He’s in a grey three piece suit, pale blue shirt, and beige tie. The crowd, waving stubs in the air and faces of ticket agents, is effortlessly chic in a style that can only be described as very Parisian. Tailoring. Trench coats. Lacoste. Adidas sportswear in primary colors…all come barreling back through the gates in order to catch John McEnroe.

This is Roland Garros…or more commonly referred to as The French.

It’s 1981. Paris, France. William Klein, the American-born French artist and visionary filmmaker known for his sociopolitical documentary films and feature films, has wriggled himself into every corner of Roland Garros Stadium. Court side. The training room. The locker rooms. The announcer’s booth. Player’s boxes. A private birthday celebration. The intimacy and access granted Klein is unprecedented…alarming by today’s standards. There is a moment when Yannick Noah is receiving a massage post match in nothing but a jock strap. Klein’s lens encountered almost no boundary as he and his three cameramen had their run of the grounds.

This is what makes The French so special—the sheer intimacy of the entire affair. Klein’s critical yet affectionate look at the quirks and complexities of French life is easily his masterpiece (the cinematic influence on Woody Allen and Wes Anderson alone is significant). Each aspect of the tournament is observed in a seemingly unassuming and desultory manner as the film proceeds joyously and with ardent curiosity through a succession of 14 loosely formed chapters—demarcated by an eclectic range of music and Fujifilm primary-color blocks that are as Godardian as they are emblematic of the French tricolor flag. Moving chronologically through the stages of the Slam, The French begins with the preparations of the stadium and grounds—their adornment with flowers, the warm-up sessions, the charity events—and continues through to the women’s and men’s finals and the ceremonial hoisting of the trophies by the champions: the Czech player Hana Mandlíková and Swedish superstar and that edition’s poster-boy Björn Borg.

It is this poster (pictured second above), as a lithographic print by the artist Eduardo Arroyo, that hangs in my New York shop—an illustration of tournament favorite Bjorn Borg, from behind. The back of his head crowned with his iconic red, white, and blue striped headband over flowing orange Viking-length hair.

Tennis is a minor but significant influence on my sartorial vocabulary. Specifically Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe. More specifically, Bjorn Borg versus John McEnroe. Nobody had more off-court style than these two. They possessed a keen understanding of the match being played outside the lines. Fashion was a form of gamesmanship for these two rivals and on this clay on this day, it’s Borg who takes the Musketeers’ cup.

Klein foregoes voiceover commentary, relying instead on sly dialectical editing and name placards. Borg and McEnroe are featured but it’s the Roland Garros milieu that is the star. Adidas, Fila, and Sergio Tachini warm ups along with fine tailoring provide a masterclass of French dressing…the fashion alone is worth the price of admission (currently streaming on The Metrograph website for $5.00).

BOOK CLUB

Before former fiction editor of The New Yorker, Bill Buford, gave up his day job to study cooking at L’Institut Bocuse, possibly the world’s most elite cookery school (recounted in his book Dirt), or slaved in the kitchen of Mario Batali’s Babbo kitchen (detailed in his book Heat), Buford was an English  hooligan. For eight years to be exact. In the seminal Among the Thugs: The Experience, and the Seduction, of Crowd Violence, he naively plunges head first into a firm of young lower class football supporters as they travel around the world to follow their team, Manchester United…all the while exploring sociological concepts of the mob mentality and the anger of youth. What follows is just simply wild.

Set in the 1980s, Among the Thugs is an enthralling account of the last days of hooliganism in English football. Buford is known for a style—more of a literary movement—he coined “dirty realism.” The emphasis here being placed on dirty. While he starts as an outsider, an American living in London for many years without ever attending a football match, Buford soon participates in a number of soccer riots, attends a white power party in a pub in England, and befriends thugs with names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin' Sammy. His description of how the sound of glass breaking animates a crowd and lends an aural stimulant to escalate violence is incredibly evocative.

In the 90th minute, at the moment when defeat appeared inevitable, Celtics scored another goal. Again, could I have appreciated the significance? Rangers and Celtics. Protestant and  Catholic. The cup final. And Celtic had tied in the last minute of normal time. It was the second time that the police had to unlock the gates. Once again, there were injuries. So many that there were not enough stretchers. Several people were taken off on folding metal chairs. The back of the chair held by one policeman, the legs by another. The injured supporter flopped over it. Head dangling dangerously. Others were placed on the advertising placards that encircled the pitch. One casualty disappeared atop a promotion for Marlboro Lights. The police returned to their positions at the bottom of the aisles, the gates were locked.

NOTHING LIKE THIS happens in any other sporting event…anywhere.

Buford didn’t conduct formal interviews with the hooligans as much as he simply befriended them. He didn’t talk with them as much as he conversed with them. He more than observed their behavior—he participated in it. He drank with them. He smoked with them. He traveled with them. He ate with them. He, for the most part, became one of them (save for the one small caveat that Buford never committed any acts of violence, just observed them, which included him getting his ass handed to him by a police officer). And he’s funny. Especially if you allow him to read it to you himself in the audiobook.

At the time of its 1990 publication, Among the Thugs was a timely and urgently relevant work. The media was having a heyday with English football supporters. Cities were vandalized beyond belief by the supporters. There were deaths due to crowd violence inside and outside of football stadiums (96 youths at a Nottingham Forest versus Liverpool match, famously in 1989). In short, football hooliganism was a societal problem and the journalist in Buford wanted to investigate. On page 217 lays the heart of what he attempts to get at…

I had not expected the violence to be so pleasurable….This is, if you like, the answer to the hundred-dollar question: why do young males riot every Saturday? They do it for the same reason that another generation drank too much, or smoked dope, or took hallucinogenic drugs, or behaved badly or rebelliously. Violence is their antisocial kick, their mind-altering experience, an adrenaline-induced euphoria that might be all the more powerful because it is generated by the body itself, with, I was convinced, many of the same addictive qualities that characterize synthetically-produced drugs.

What Hunter S. Thompson did for the Hell’s Angels, Bill Buford achieves for the English Hooligan in this wild and strange time capsule of a sub-culture now long extinct.

CRATE DIGGING

For the sake of brevity, there is arguably only one Stones album you need on vinyl: Hot Rocks 1964-1971.

BLASPHEMY???

Admittedly, Hot Rocks is a beautifully packaged, purely mercenary best of strung together by the Stones’ former record company as a cash grab in the name of the Mod Princes they once owned. But here…it worked. The compilation speaks for itself and is a near perfect encapsulation of their British invasion era. Truly a record you can drop the needle on and let play uninterrupted. “Under My Thumb”, “Play with Fire”, “Gimme Shelter”, and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” are particular standouts.

CRATE DIGGING

IT WOULD BE FITTING IF the most influential rock band of all time pioneered the stage dive. Reckless. Brash. An assault on an unsuspecting audience. James Newell Osterberg is oft credited as the father of the stage dive. When he dove, he dove as Iggy Stooge. Iggy Stooge of  The Stooges. That was 1970.

The older I get, the greater my appetite for older music becomes (I find most current music to be tragic, a get-off-my-lawn rant for another time). While the term “older” is relative, for our purposes here, it’s a barometer for music that predates what we grew up with. Having been raised in a conservative Christian household all but ensured pop culture would not touch me until my sixth grade year in 1992. Everything older than Nirvana’s significant sophomore effort Nevermind is music I came into much later in life.

Crate Digging is about discovering old music. The classics. The obscure. The looked over. The uncut gem. The minor masterworks. It’s a liberal arts audit of the music that scores the world of F.E. Castleberry. Alternative. Classical. Rock. Pop. Afrobeat. Grunge. Blues. Jazz. Punk. Post Punk.

On a recent Monday evening, I sat down to Jim Jarmusch’s documentary Gimme Danger (stream it on Amazon Prime)…a in-depth oral history of The Stooges. I was gleefully reminded of not only how much I love their sound but that of their sonic descendants.

The Sex Pistols.
Bowie.
Blondie.
The Clash.
The Smiths.
The Ramones.
Guns N’ Roses.
Nirvana.
The White Stripes.
The Strokes.

All highly influenced by The Stooges. And those are just the bands you’d recognize. The magnitude of semi-oblivious albums that surfaced in the wake of The Stooges numbered in the thousands.

They were the epitome of anti-establishment…often starting gigs late, tuning up their instruments for ten to fifteen minutes before ever playing the first number if they started the gig at all (the kids did not mind). The Stooges simply did not give a shit about showbiz. Iggy felt that rock music had been co-opted by business interests—tamed, streamlined, and market-tested to the point that no new ground could be gained with it (granted Iggy was a full blown addict at this time but that’s punk rock!). The Stooges possessed an honesty about them.

By 1973 The Stooges (now Iggy Pop and The Stooges), having already recorded three groundbreaking albums, were quite literally falling apart. Critics called their music bizarre, insane, tasteless, physically abusive, decadent, sub-literate, amateurish, UNIMAGINABLE, and childish. And those were the positive reviews. Now, over five decades later, The Stooges are one of the most influential bands in the history of rock and roll.

Start with the David Bowie produced Raw Power (1973), it’s their third and best of their landmark albums. It’s a record you turn up to 11 in your car while speeding, screaming at the top of your lungs, on your way to a night out. “Search and Destroy,” an anthem that launched a thousand bands, punches you in the face from the first distorted note and never relents. I’m not sure what’s more unbelievable, that Iggy Pop is still alive at 76 after the parade of drugs he ingested or that The Stooges’ proto-punk sound from over half a century ago still sounds…current.

ART DEPARTMENT

I CAN’T REALLY PINPOINT WHEN I FIRST came across Michael McGregor’s drawings but it was most certainly on Instagram. Each illustration he posted seemed to strike a chord with me—a memory I carried, a meal I’d shared with friends, or a hotel I loved. McGregor is an L.A. based illustrator who has made a name for himself sketching postcard snapshots on hotel stationery. Room Service is a monograph of 118 ‘point & shoot drawings’ made between 2016 and 2023 in hotel rooms, bars, cafes, airports; in restaurants while McGregor was waiting for a friend; in beds and bathrooms, on balconies, aboard trains, planes, ferries, and on buses. The gestural drawings explore luxury, leisure, and travel. The book itself fittingly resembles that of a hotel guest book.

In the pink water closet of my shop hangs McGregor’s Like a Sunday in T.J., It's Cheap But It's Not Free, a limited print of what feels like the morning after a hotel room party amongst friends. A yellow Sony Sports boombox. A McDonald’s fry box. A Gucci loafer. His work tends to celebrate the high life in the objet of leisurely living…ordinary everyday objects such as flowers, shoes, food, lighters, drinks, bottles, plane tickets depicted in a hand that somehow reanimates them. This high/low in McGregor’s work is not only evident in the subject matter but the medium itself—swanky hotel letterhead drawn on in a simple and naive way.

Personal favorites include a Bjorn Borg Fila polo on Tokyo Inter-Continental hotel letterhead, Chanel No. 5 perfume on The Warldorf-Astoria stationery, a Barcelona chair on Chateau Marmont letterhead, a bottle of Heinz ketchup and Grey Poupon on Beverly Wilshire Hotel letter paper. McGregor’s work, like much of my favorite art, has a childlike quality to it, a bit of ecstasy…taking us out of the awfully boring adult state, even if just for a little while.

P.s. Room Service can be purchased on Amazon and you didn’t get the idea to rip and frame your favorites sketches from me.

DRESS CODE

WE NOW LIVE IN A DAY AND AGE when the majority of men wear a neck tie on only two occasions: when they wed and when they’re dead. The 2020 pandemic was the most recent death knell for the tie since casual Friday two decades earlier. I’d relegated my neckwear collection at home to sartorial wall decor. When I was designing my inaugural ready-to-wear collection for the new F.E. Castleberry shop last year, I passed on designing ties. What was the point? Ties don’t really sell and there were more interesting ways to decorate the walls.

There was little excitement left around it for me. Perhaps it was boredom. Lately, it’s been tailored clothing sans tie that’s largely occupied my imagination. The alchemy of sportswear, streetwear, atheleisure, and western wear with formalwear (essentially a synonym now for tailored clothing) has become a working thesis of sorts defending tailoring’s place in a wardrobe that no longer requires it for the office. Or for date night. Or for any occasion save weddings with a cocktail dress code. In my business of made-to-measure tailoring, the suit (sadly) is often regarded as occasion wear.

Earlier this year, I attended the preview of Elton John’s former Atlanta estate sale at Christie’s. John’s collection of graphic Versace silk print shirts were all on display and felt really cool. WILD, but cool. While I couldn’t see them on me, it got me thinking about the tie again...90s vintage graphic designer ties—the silk baroque print ones with Medusa heads, bold colors, and exaggerated equestrian motifs, specifically Versace. I curated a collection of vintage Hermès, Gucci, and Versace neckties to retail in the New York shop. Keep the shirt white or light blue. The jacket navy, gray, or brown…with minimal pattern (although texture is encouraged).

The tie is essentially a fashion piece now. If you’re going to wear one, look like you wore it on purpose. Wear it like you mean it.

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ROTHKO WAS A GENIUS. But do you know how to look at a Rothko? Do you even know what a Rothko is? Or who he was?

Welcome to Art Department, the Dying Breed column devoted to the art and artists that inform and inspire the world of F.E. Castleberry.

Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, Russia (now part of Latvia), 1903. After immigrating to the United States, attending and then dropping out of Yale university, and then moving to New York City to become an artist, he arrives at his medium in 1949 at the age of 46…the medium that will define his classic work: the color field paintings.

If you’ve been to a modern art museum, you may recognize Rothko’s color field paintings, even if you can’t recall the artist’s name: tall canvases of bold, floating blocks of color. Engulfing. Typically three to four colors. Their titles, such as “The Green Stripe” (there isn’t a lick of green in the painting), “White Center,” “No. 14, 1960,” even “Untitled,” are just as abstract as the paintings themselves. Even within the Abstract Expressionist movement, his style was recognizably his own. The term Abstract Expressionism refers more to a process than a style. The point is to express feeling through the act of painting itself, the process, without fixating on the actual product of that act, the artwork.

The young painter William Seitz defined the Abstract Expressionist movement as follows:

Beginning in 1957 and continuing into his later years, Rothko tended to adopt an increasingly dark palette. He used fewer reds yellows and oranges, instead choosing less bright colours such as brown, gray, dark blue, and black. These works tend to be less accessible unless you’re also suicidal like Rothko was in his final years before ending his own life. And if that’s the case, they could perhaps be therapeutic, cathartic even.

I stubbornly prescribe to the school of thought that the intent of the artist is crucial in experiencing a work of art. The point of a Rothko is not color or the relationship between color…it’s human emotion. So if Rothko is expressing human emotions in order to communicate or draw out those same emotions in the viewer, how should we be looking at a Rothko?

Benjamin Schmidt, the editor of the online The Interior Review, mocked up ten guidelines on how to look at a Rothko, specifically the color field paintings. I have found them helpful in my own viewing of Rothko at the Museum of Modern Art here in New York. I’ve included them here below with a few modifications of my own:

1. Stand exactly 18 inches from the work (Rothko’s own recommendation)…for at least the next fifteen minutes.

2. Initially, there's nothing on the edges of a Rothko, so do not appear inquisitive about the edges of a Rothko. Do not pretend to examine them.

3. Do not look at the sides and do not look at the corners right now.

4. You must look into a Rothko, not at it.

5. You must not focus. Do not try to focus your eyes. Let the colors go where they must.
   

   

6. Start in the center of the work. Let your eyes melt the color. It is like butter, it is like a sponge. The background is the pan. Soon it will sizzle.

7. Your vision will become increasingly fragmented. The compartmentalized colors will soon unleash. The bottom will drop out and flood the canvas. This miracle will never get tiring. It is a phenomenon that will make you want to look at every Rothko in the world a hundred times over each.

8. You've grown increasingly familiar with the work. Allow your eyes to shift around the canvas but not gain focus. In fact, my findings have shown that even if you attempt to focus, it is not easy. You must recalibrate your eyes by looking away. Even closing them does not aid in exiting a Rothko.

9. Toy with the power of the color you've been calibrated to. Look down, look left. Absorbing the colors will let them do things you cannot imagine.

10. Look at the upper portion. Elements of a Rothko will vibrate or seem to enlarge; undulate or hover. Let this happen. You have not looked at a Rothko properly until you've smiled at least once. This is awesome in the most classic sense of awesome is. It is awe. It is addicting to know Rothko.

The more time you have with a Rothko the more one will experience from a Rothko. For those privileged enough to have one on display in their private residence, they will know Rothko’s work the most intimately. Perhaps this is for their benefit as copious amounts of money can often divorce one from their own humanity. Rothko beckons one back to it.

DRESS CODE

I LOVE WOMEN IN MENSWEAR. Girlfriends in boyfriend jeans. Tomboys. Something magical happens when the mystery of the feminine is framed in the masculine of menswear. The proverbial sum being greater than the parts here.

Diana Spencer, a young Jodi Foster, and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy (among others) are canon in the F.E. Castleberry style Bible for their irreverent appropriation of androgynous dress. With all of this rampant (and inspired!) borrowing from the boys, it is worth echoing Twain’s rhetorical question, “Why not adopt some of the women’s styles, (men)?”

If you tuned into the Oscars earlier this month, you may have noticed a certain gold hardware making more than the occasional appearance on the lapels of Hollywood’s leading men. The brooch, once relegated to the jackets of mid century socialites and your grandmother, has finally caught on for men. That’s right, men (albeit only formal occasions at the moment).

I first began affixing a brooch to my lapel in lieu of a pocket square back in 2018. This was largely informed by my admiration of Gabrielle Chanel’s style…better known as Coco Chanel. It was the iconic French designer that introduced the idea of costume jewelry to high fashion, more specifically the high-low alchemy of the two. She reveled in mixing high-end luxury with the what she called the "poor girl" look. The contradiction was a reflection of where she’d come from (a convent-run orphanage in which she was raised by nuns) and where she was going.

Sidebar: I place the emphasis on her style here because Coco Chanel the person was a wretched human being. Anti-Semitic, homophobic, social climbing, opportunistic, ridiculously snobbish, addicted to morphine, and actively collaborated with the Germans during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Alas, I digress.

When your mother is the first person you see with a seemingly intentional approach to getting dressed, you learn to steal from the fairer sex at an early age. My penchant for pattern and color can be traced directly back to her 1980s aerobics sportswear heavy wardrobe. Jewel toned Reebok Pumps. CMYK solid color leotards. Off-the shoulder sweatshirts. Today, my point of view is as much informed by borrowing from the girls as it is founded upon classic menswear.

Ladies, you can get away with practically any motif. Bows. Insects. Flowers. Swans. Large rhinestones. Horses. Crowns. Wear multiples! The world is your oyster. For us guys, a certain finesse is required. Keep to masculine designs like horse racing, polo, crowns, and apex predators such as leopards, cougars, and crocodiles. I prefer my brooches costume and vintage, like Coco. When a rhinestone inevitably falls out (and it will), it won’t be the end of the world. Estate sales, Etsy, eBay, vintage shops, and The Real Real are all great resources for vintage costume brooches. Givenchy, Dior, Balmain, Valentino, Celine, Swarovski, and of course Chanel all made costume jewelry in the 80s and 90s. You can also shop a highly curated selection at my F.E. Castleberry shop in TriBeCa New York. Do a lot of browsing to get acquainted with the designs and prices before buying.

For the guys, the key to pulling this off in a fashion that should be perceived as “effortless” is that it shouldn’t feel as if the theft is coming out of left field. In order to achieve the aforementioned high-low alchemy, the jacket the lapel is being affixed to needs to be high (end/quality/fashion). I cannot stress this enough. Cheap on cheap just looks…cheap. And even though the brooch is costume, it should still look refined…expensive. Workshop it. Until it feels native to your existing aesthetic dialect (start by losing the pocket square when accessorizing with a brooch, it’s overkill). Fashion has always been about feeling…just don’t lose yourself in the stealing.

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THE WESTERN RENAISSANCE IS HERE. What began as a whisper with Raf Simons sending Kaia Gerber down the Autumn Winter 2017 Calvin Klein runway in a silk color-blocked western shirt and cowboy boots has swelled to a choir in 2024. The modern-day western tv phenomena that is Yellowstone. Post Malone’s pre-pandemic Nudie Suit phase. Scorsese’s period western Killers of the Flower Moon. Pharrell Williams’ wild, wild west Louis Vuitton AW24 show, his inaugural collection for the Parisian house, was wildly over the top western. Bella Hadid is dating a professional cowboy (and was even TikTok’d in the Target parking lot in my hometown of Weatherford, Texas). Even Beyoncé’s gone country.

So how to get up on the horse per se…the boots, the hat, the bolo tie, the western shirt, the bootcut jeans, the western belt, the fringe…not all at once, obviously, unless you’re auditioning as an extra on Yellowstone. Keep the western pieces to two, at most three, in most rigs. As a native Texan, I eagerly embraced the domino Simons tipped over at Calvin Klein seven years ago.

There are certain patterns and cloth in menswear that inherently possess a western bent. Rob Roy tartan—also known as buffalo plaid—as seen in the Vuitton show above and the F.E. Castleberry dinner jacket I designed below. Dogstooth, guncheck, tweed, and of course solid navy round out the bunch.

But think more Andy Warhol than Louis Vuitton (albeit done extremely well at the high fashion level). Warhol’s best uniform consisted of a navy blazer, repp stripe tie, Brooks Brothers white oxford, jeans, and cowboy boots. Sometimes he’d swap the white shirt out for a sportier tartan plaid oxford. Forty five years later, it still works. I think the Versace tie ASAP Rocky pairs is incredibly chic. Below, I’m wearing a vintage Gucci equestrian motif tie with black boots…but opted for the double breasted grey dogstooth jacket.

BOOTS: I love a black snip toe boot. They pair easily with tailoring and the toe shape feels more fashion than farmhand. Consider Lucchese or Wythe (I love mine). Try eBay at your own peril if you’re contemplating vintage.

COWBOY HAT: It doesn’t get better than the Stetson Open Road if you’re wearing a hat in the city. Iconic silhouette with the cattleman’s crease, not too big. The silverbelly color (which I wear) keeps you from looking like a sheriff or park ranger.

BOLO TIE: I’ve designed a couple bolo ties with Master Jeweler Isaac Dial, who is of Navajo and Lumbee descent. They’re really special. Direct message him on Instagram for a custom piece or scour eBay or Etsy for vintage ones made of sterling silver, preferably with turquoise stones.

WESTERN BELT: One of my most prized accessories, my honey brown western alligator belt with sterling silver hardware I sniped for a song on eBay. I’m still hunting for a black one. The western belt on its own in a dark suit and tie ensemble is chic enough to carry the entire operation.

JEANS: I wear RRL jeans (straight fit), Ralph Lauren’s western label, in large part because of the wide array of fits, they’re made in the USA from Japanese denim, and I used to design there. The Wrangler Cowboy Cut is a solid economical option for those on a budget.

CRATE DIGGING

Crate Digging is about discovering old music. The classics. The obscure. The looked over. The uncut gem. The minor masterworks. It’s a liberal arts audit of the music that scores the world of F.E. Castleberry. Alternative. Punk. Post Punk. Classical. Rock. Pop. Afrobeat. Grunge. Blues. But let’s start with jazz, shall we?

LEGEND HAS IT that when drummer Rashied Ali walked into the Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey for his latest session with John Coltrane, he was confused as to where the rest of the saxophonist’s band was. The quartet that had laid down the masterpiece Love Supreme was nowhere to be found. Coltrane looked up and simply said, “It’s just going to be you and me.” The year was 1967.

Over text, my friend Alex Beh and I sustain a long rally of jazz albums from the 1950s and 60s. Our mutual love of this particular era of jazz is one of the great joys of our friendship. The more obscure, the more deft the shot. John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space was one such album I’d sent over the net to Beh…certain it wasn’t in his library yet.

If you aren’t familiar with 1958’s hard bop masterpiece Blue Train, 1960’s harmonic breakthrough Giant Steps, and 1965’s majestic modal prayer A Love Supreme, take those in first, buy the vinyl, get lost. Those recordings are cornerstones in the jazz canon. Interstellar Space is something different entirely…an unqualified free-jazz masterpiece veering so far out into the ether that HIS OWN SON, growing up, admits his “ears could only make it up to 1965,” alluding to the year when Coltrane’s so-called “classic quartet” of the early-to-mid-Sixties began to splinter. A critic once called the “Late Coltrane” era’s Interstellar Space “rousing if somewhat inaccessible music.”

Drummer Rashied Ali on the session:

What intergalactic dimension Coltrane and Ali entered that day in ‘67 sat in the ABC archives, the Impulse! label’s parent company, until 1974. The name Interstellar Space and album art were not chosen by Coltrane (as only the songs had been given planetary titles) and eschews the industry practice of the day of featuring the saxophonist in favor of a serene scene of the sun above clouds. Art work more befitting such a transcendent effort. What at first sounds chaotic—the gravitational colliding of notes, bangs, and bells—settles into what could only be described as the genius of a planet being born.

Sax.

Drums.

A minimalist deconstruction of all jazz as we knew it, joining the painter Cy Twombly in the abstraction of their respective mediums. Interstellar Space will sound like a foreign language, albeit a Latin based tongue in that the vocabulary will sound vaguely familiar (we’re acquainted with the sound of drums and a saxophone), but still foreign…until it’s not. This is Coltrane’s last (and formerly lost) masterpiece.

Sit cross legged.
Drop the needle.
Light the incense.
Receive the sermon.

BOOK CLUB

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME you read an obituary? Toss that quarter in the fountain during your next date or dinner party. For the last two years, I’ve been reading Adrian Dannatt’s Doomed and Famous, a collection of improbable obituaries celebrating the obscure and the eccentric. That’s right, obituaries. I indulge in them as bedtime stories [I’ll unpack the intricacies of what that means in therapy at some point but I suspect it provides me some odd comfort in knowing that nobody has all their shit together at any given moment in life]. Dannatt’s specialty, much in demand among even the most mainstream publications, was to memorialize those whose eccentricity or criminality made them unlikely candidates for the fleeting immortality of a newspaper necrology.

His subjects have largely lingered in the creative arena, whether artists such as Dash Snow, Ray Johnson, and Dorothea Tanning or filmmakers such as Sandy Whitelaw and Gian Luigi Polidoro. He documented the premature demise of novelist Robert Bingham (a personal favorite) as well as a scattering of dangerous poets, including Rene Ricard, Gellu Naum, and Bernard Heidsieck while memorializing a leading downtown Manhattan dominatrix along with a conceptual artist who blew up a museum…to name a few.

What Dannatt achieves in the medium of the 1,000 word obituary is nothing short of inspired. Here, the obituarist's final words on the life of one Pierre André-May, a personal favorite from the selected obits presented in the book.

THE large role of the little magazine in twentieth-century literature is exemplified by the French journal Intentions whose founder, editor and owner Pierre André-May recently died aged 98. Intentions only existed for three years, between 1922 and 1924, but in thirty issues published an extraordinary range of major talent whilst encouraging a whole generation of younger writers. This was all the more remarkable as André-May was then in his early 20s, had never before been involved in publishing, and created and sustained Intentions entirely by himself without even a secretary; soliciting, selecting, editing and printing everything that appeared in its pages.

Publishing was, however, in his blood. Born in Paris in 1901, André-May's maternal grandfather was editor of Le Moniteur de la mode and his father, a doctor, was director of the Journal de Médecine. André-May grew up between his parental apartment in the Rue de Phalsbourg, in the seventeenth arrondisment, and their petit Château de Blanchefort in Nièvre. At this chateau, André-May, a single child reading in rural seclusion, developed his obsession with literature and theatre. As he later wrote, “I spent the time of my adolescence in too large a solitude.” After Lycée Carnot he began law studies to please his father, and having done well in exams the latter offered him the chance to start his own publication as a reward. His father put his own printer at André-May's disposal, and gave him financial backing for the entire undertaking. He was already an habitué of the famous bookshop Maison des Amis des Livres run by Adrienne Sonnier in the Rue de l'Odéon. Monnier and her shop were central to André-May's enterprise, and it was thanks to her recommendation that he secured contributions from many major writers.

In December 1921 André-May published a press release for his new journal in several newspapers, and as promised the first issue of Intentions was distributed on January 2, 1922. With its elegant gray covers and deep black typeface, Intentions was noted for its design as well as its editorial statement. Acknowledging that many new literary journals rubbish their predecessors and claim most contemporary writers without value, by contrast André-May wanted to reestablish the cult of veneration and pay humble homage to many living masters. This was an intelligent position in keeping with the journal's taste for Classicisme moderne rather than radical avant-gardism, and though only a modest thirty-two pages, selling for two francs, the first issue garnered attention and praise. André-May ran the entire business from his parents' apartment, where he was "at home" every Saturday between four and six to receive potential collaborators. He continued to live at Rue Phalsbourg for much of his life.

Marcel Proust was one master, who André-May visited on his deathbed, after having published two rare texts at a time when it was still a risky choice. Indeed, one reviewer called the extract, “a heavy slice of the new 'pudding-psychologique of Monsieur Proust.” Paul Claudel, who never published his work in journals, sent Intentions a suite of twelve poems from Tokyo where he was then ambassador. André-May also managed to persuade another writer-diplomat, Saint-John Perse, to contribute, as well as Jules Supervielle, who divided his time between Paris and Montevideo. André-May's persuasive powers resulted in a long roll call of distinguished contributors: poems by Pierre Reverdy and the very young Michel Leiris, texts by Philippe Soupault and André Breton, works by François Mauriac and Raymond Radiguet, and topical reviews by everyone from Paul Eluard to Robert Desnos.

The format of Intentions was to introduce a writer's work followed by a critical essay on the author, and thus some figures appeared both as contributors and critics. Max Jacob, for example, wrote an essay on the notorious Marcel Jouhandeau (whose novel Monsieur Godeau was published in long sections in five consecutive issues, to as much protest as praise, and was even sent by Gide to Arnold Bennett) as well as his own poetry. At the nightelub Le Boeuf sur le Toit, André-May met the composer Darius Milhaud, whom he persuaded to write essays on contemporary music including an early appreciation of American jazz. Intentions also published special issues, the first of which was dedicated to Valery Larbaud, for whom André-May also hosted a celebratory dinner after his Légion d'honneur: Larbaud, still enjoyed today in France, is perhaps best remembered elsewhere for his championship of Joyce, on whom a special number was planned for January 1924. In the end this did not appear, nor did an issue on Gide, but Joyce's short story, “The Sisters,” was published in translation in 1922. Larbaud was also behind a special Spanish issue which introduced the “Ultraïste” movement to France, and such writers as García Lorca and Ramón Gómez de la Serna.

Distribution was always a problem, as it remains for any small literary journal, and though Intentions was placed in bookshops from Japan to Chile by its contributors, no issue probably sold more than three hundred copies. Thus despite strong letters of appreciation and support from Max Jacob, Proust, Gide and Cocteau, Intentions was forced to close when André-May's father decided he could no longer cover costs. The last issue, a triple number (28-30), came out in December 1924 and still owing money to the printer, André-May was forced to sell some of his rare books via Monnier. André-May was then only 23, and after working in his father's office he began dealing antiques, later opening a shop on Rue de St. Père where he bought and sold beautiful objects for the rest of his life.

This impeccably discrete retirement from literary life was only interrupted by the publication of his novel Le Matin in May 1945, a bad year to issue a book, not least because as an aesthete André-May must have been horrified by the cheap paper Éditions du Pavois were obliged to use, which by now is as brown and brittle as toast. Le Matin is not without its charms, a very French coming-of-age romance heavily indebted to Proust. André-May kills off his father as a doctor at the Front and details his adoration for his mother, stealing into her bedroom to watch her sleep and falling asleep himself with her letter pressed to his heart. The atmosphere of adolescence at a small chateau is charmingly caught, creating his own marionette theatre complete with candles, spying on a beautiful local servant boy with blonde curls in the enchanted domain of the jardin d'hiver.

Despite relative poverty, André-May always lived in a beautiful apartment, which cost almost nothing having been rented from before the war, surrounded by exceptional pieces saved from his shop and portraits of his many adored dogs. His only luxury was a full-time butler, a difficult man only a few decades younger than himself, who would often forbid guests due to his reluctance to cook. This life of elegant obscurity was mitigated through his rediscovery by the young literary scholar Béatrice Mousli, who dedicated her thesis to André-May, the oral defence of which the great man himself attended with his even more elderly female coterie. Mousli published a fascinating book, Intentions, histoire d'une revue littéraire des années vingt (Ent'revues, 1995), without which no appreciation of André-May- including this obituary-would be possible. Thanks to Mousli, André-May's place in literary history has been replotted, as the French diplomat and critic Henri Hoppenot foresaw: "It is something for you to be able to say that one could never now write the history of three major years in French literature without citing Intentions.”

Pierre André-May, literary editor and antique dealer; born Paris, January 15, 1901, died Paris, April 1, 1999.

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Wait. He did teach me one thing: get dressed for church. Tie, jacket, comb your hair, the whole nine. It was a “deep respect for The Higher Power” thing. Like going down on a knee to approach a medieval king or proposing marriage. You get dressed up for such occasions. And by “you” I mean him. He got dressed up for church. Dad was a purveyor of high end vacuums that trapped dust in water (fancy speak for traveling salesman). That required a suit. No middle American was going to hand over a $1,200 check for a “home environment cleaning system” unless a suit was on the other end of it. Dad needed those clothes for work. Us kids were left to fend for ourselves. We weren’t well to-do enough to have kid size dress clothes like a tie and jacket. And if we did, my little brother would have just started a collection of permanent stains on them.

I don’t remember what kind of knot dad tied for church, but he tied it approximately 831 Sundays. He never actually showed me until the night of my high school graduation. It was performed on this intricately woven boardroom tie too fancy for anyone under 40. It was nicer than the suit I was wading in.

A girl friend's dad helped me pick out that suit. It was my first. You never forget your first suit. It was an anemic shade of beige. It was pleated. It was RALPH. No, not Ralph Lauren, sorta Ralph Lauren. It was a department store diffusion line once removed. It was $400…then marked down to $200 for a Labor Day weekend sale. I was shamelessly there for the sale. The date had been circled in Sharpie for weeks on one of those wall calendars with inspirational quotes across the bottom of a mountainscape. On especially inspiring months like January, there’d be an eagle soaring.

I bought that suit with my hard-earned pizza joint money. There was an inherent sense of pride in that milestone purchase even though it felt like cardboard and fit like my fourth grade Reebok Pumps—they didn't fit, but they “did.” My mom always bought shoes for us kids a full size too big. I’d lace up one shoe and we’d never make it to the register without her perpendicularly pressing her thumb down on the tip of the toe. “Room to grow,” she’d say in her Mandarin Chinese accent. Reebok Pumps were a double edged sword. They gave mom license to go up two sizes instead of one since you could just pump them up until your foot turned blue. They were the shoe to have but I was going to look like a hobbit in them—four foot tall, big feet. Five months later they eventually fit. But you don’t grow into a suit. And certainly not one without The Pump mechanism.

My dad grew up a hippie. He was 16 when the youth movement was born in the U.S. Cut off jean shorts and a white chain knit tank top capped with flowing blonde hair served as his uniform in every other snapshot scattered throughout early photo albums. He was free. You can still see it in his smile. With my mom under his pale sleeveless arm, they were footloose and fancy-free.

He wasn’t the smartest. He’ll be the first to tell you that. But he had an appetite for what was beyond the city limits of Weatherford, Texas. A decision to eschew college in favor of a blue collar gig on a merchant ship awarded him with a deck view of the world and a Taiwanese wife. He loves God, is suspicious of country, and serves man. He instilled those things in me and my siblings. He just didn’t teach me much about dressing. The furthest we got was that tie knot before graduation.

What I did learn about dressing I learned from my mother. She loves color and she would go a little crazy with the patterns.

BY THE AGE OF TWELVE, I was an incipient clotheshorse. I arrived for the first day of fifth grade in white jeans that looked like they’d been grown out of the year before. For the early 90s, they were glaringly short. Pee-Wee Herman short. I didn’t care. I know what you may be thinking: white jeans, how stylish at 12. No no no. And no again. The color white was the price of admission. And it was a high price to pay to get into a pair of Marithé + François Girbaud jeans.

Girbaud was a French brand that became famous in 1982’s Flashdance. It was a long decade later that they reached our modest north Texas suburb of 18,545. Every kid (that had any inkling to be "in") at Raymond E. Curtis Intermediate School wanted to wear them or be friends with someone who wore them. Girbauds weren't cheap. Only the popular kids, whose parents had money, wore them. My parents had money, just not a lot of it. Certainly not enough to be dropping $85 on prepubescent French designer jeans. I begged my mother for a pair. Incessantly.

As a dad, I said “No” a lot to my boys. And they understood that there was a big fat period at the end of it. There's no negotiations. They [at least pretend to] understand it's for their own good. With my mom, that period was more like an ellipsis. “No” was never a complete sentence with her. It was never the end of a matter. It was the beginning of a negotiation. And I was a master negotiator in matters of enrolling her into my latest juvenile pursuit. Notable negotiations include, but are not limited to, $300 Bauer aggressive inline skates during my half-pipe phase, $139 Bauer inline hockey skates for my roller hockey phase (yes, I spent a large part of my 90s in roller blades but you have my word I did trade them in upon receiving my driver license), a $450 complete wardrobe overhaul from Abercrombie & Fitch mid-semester of my sophomore year. I had a flare for the dramatic so every pitch was, “My entire future trajectory is going to be in jeopardy if I don't have [fill in the blank]!” But that's what she gets for having an Aries son.

On a tip from another thrifty mother, my mom found Girbaud jeans at a modern day equivalent of T.J.Maxx. Socially acceptable indigo blue was absolutely out of the question. Only close out styles from the previous season were on display in colors nobody wanted. That meant purple, orange, white, and other eye gouging hues Girbaud was known for at the time. I was a late bloomer as a kid but even the sizes they carried were too short on my 4’5” frame. They were sizes like 25” waist with a 21” inseam. Determined to make it work, my mother would take them home, let out the hem, and refinish it. I ended up with jeans just a half-inch longer.

WE’RE ALL JUST TRYING TO FIND OUR CREW, our coterie, our band of outsiders. It’s in our nature to belong. DYING BREED is about rallying these coterie members—the black sheep, the unruly heirs, the geeks, the freaks, the fashion kids—interested in style, art, books, music, and fashion missives from the cultural capital that is New York City.

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