FROM ANGLOMANIA TO ABLOHMANIA

Why the disruption of elegance is a sign of progress

Do you know what elegance is? If so, bravo! Because so many very clever people have tried to put their f inger on the nature of elegance – the subject of this issue of L’Uomo – without ever hitting the spot. Diana Vreeland def ined it as “refusal” (which sounds fabulous – elegant, in fact – but means l ittle. See also Sarah Mower at page 68). Proust asserted that its possession depends of being “morally pure” ( but think of all the elegant villains in the world). Diana Vreeland also said it exists solely “in the mind” (which is absolutely true, but still no def inition). Perhaps best of all, Albert Einstein f lipped the question on its head when he said: “if you are out to def ine truth, leave elegance to the tailor”.

And yet there are three things we can truthful ly say about elegance. Firstly, it is an aesthetic property whose perception is subjective – l i ke beauty, it lives the eye of the beholder. Secondly, elegance can apply to anything and everything; a wel l-executed Cruyf f turn, a Shakespearean turn of phrase, a phase of music by Mozart, the shape of a concert hall by Zaha Hadid, a certain dance move by Fred Astaire, the way in which Edith Head dressed Grace Kel ly – al l of these very d ifferent t hings a re, a t l east to me, elegant.

So far, so lovely. Point three, however, is less so. For elegance is a beautiful concept often used to do something ugly: it excludes.

Just consider where elegance – which just happens to be Made In Italy – f irst came from. In Latin, elegantia meant ‘choicenes s’ and appl ied to object s whose desirabi l it y was def ined by the status and ref inement of t hose who selected them. It was derived from eligo, to choose, which also birthed the words ‘select’ and ‘elect’. The word jumped to Middle French, then French, where it was at f irst associated with the ornate aesthetic values of France’s royal rul ing el ite. Here elegance became closely al igned with cour t l i ness and ref inement: a property that applied to conversation, manner, clothing, art, and architecture. In the masculine realm, it was a lso a l lied to gentilesse – which i n English morphed to gentlemanliness.

Which is where menswear – and everything that has for centuries been said to be ‘elegant’ about it – steps centre stage. In the mid-18th Century France and the rest of Europe was gripped by ‘Anglomania’, an obsession with Engl ishness sparked by the disruptive Enl ightenment modernity encapsulated by the democratic phi losophy of John Locke and the revolutionary scientif ic theor ies of Isaac Newton. The f ashionable aristocratic men of Paris began to dress in a more Engl ish style. This process only intensif ied when that ar istocracy was swept away by a revolution partially i nspired by Locke. Menswear found its original inf luencer in Beau Brummel l, who col lided English codes of menswear – functional ly a by-product of r iding-wear – with a phi losophy of sumptuous pleasure in dressing: proto-dandyism. The shirting shops of Jermyn Street and tai loring houses of Savile Row evolved to service a new international clientele with clothes in the English style – a style tailoring houses in Italy would l ater i ndustrialise.

And so the codes of suiting took shape as the pre-eminent wearable expression of successful mascul inity, whether in business, pol itics or popular culture. The foundation of masculine elegance in clothing was tailoring, and those who wore it beautifully – extraordinary conformists such as, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Gianni Agnel li, or John F. Kennedy – were rightfully deemed its paragons.

Today, however, the Empire of tailor ing is in decline – and it certainly no longer def ines elegance in menswear. That’s because i n the t wo centur ies since Brummel, what was once an emblem of democratic Enlightenment has become a uniform for the establishment. And that establishment is no longer the source of the consensus that gets to select and elect elegance in its own image. Thi s t i me round it has been social change and technological i nnovat ion that have created the conditions for a new disruption of elegance. In a globalised world connected by social media, a world newly-enlightened by still-ongoing upgrades in civil, gender and social rights, the privilege of defining elegance in menswear has been thrown open to everyone.

To me, Virgil Abloh is the 21st century’s Beau Brummel l: both a personif ication and an agent of change whose f ame and i nf luence si multaneously encapsulates and escalates the positive disruption of elegance. Louis Vuitton has given him the keys to its menswear citadel – a very prescient move – and t here he i s using hi s own codes of streetwear, ethnicity, music, and technologically-driven community to create exclusively-priced but democratical ly appeal i ng bui lding blocks for a new elegance. His predecessor Kim Jones, now at Dior, was t he pioneer who f irst incorporated the post-tai loring codes of s por t s wear- s pawned- s t reetwear into the highest menswear echelons of the Paris fashion system. But as Lucas Ossendrijver said after his f inal show for Lanvin, creat i ng meaningful and beautiful menswear now is “not about streetwear or not streetwear, or do you like streetwear or do you not like streetwear? To me it’s about f inding a new kind of elegance, a new kind of sophistication, a nd a new k ind of l anguage.” The changes we are lucky enough to be l iving through have emancipated elegance, made it open to al l and owned by nobody. For elegance to be beautiful both inside and out, it must be radical, not conservative, not exclusive but inclusive.

In this issue of L’Uomo we want t o give elegance today the space and consideration it deserves. Elegance, like the society that def ines it, is a work in progress. What’s so exciting about elegance in 2019 is that its progress seems to be evolving as never before. Or as Einstein probably wouldn’t have put it, Elegance = Mens’ Clothes squared by the state of men’s’ minds.