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musings on men's formal wear from the creator of The Black Tie Guide
Browsing All posts tagged under »After Six«
All the Trimmings
Most people are familiar with the use of lapel facings to add flair to a tuxedo but likely few are aware that the jacket’s collar and cuffs can be used for this purpose as well. The history of formalwear trimmings can be traced back to the first evening tailcoats produced during the English Regency. They […]
The After Six Saga Continues
March 12, 2012
The formalwear industry has undergone enormous change in the new millennium as it tries to cope with a dramatic downturn in business that began with the fallout from 9/11 in 2001 and worsened with the ongoing recession. Long-time retailers and manufacturers across America merged with one another to stay viable, either voluntarily or through bankruptcy […]
Havana Nights
March 3, 2012
I came across this 1958 ad photographed at Hotel Nacional in Havana shortly before vacationing in that city last week. I subsequently made a point of visiting the hotel that was once the haunt of American mobsters and movie stars to see how it had held up in the years after the Castro revolution (which […]
Flashback: The Continental Look
January 6, 2012
A reader from Greece recently asked for help in identifying the neckwear in this vintage picture of the acclaimed bouzouki player Gianni Stamatiou aka Sporo. It is actually a variation of the continental tie that snaps together in the back rather than in front, much like a ladies choker. It’s still available from at least […]
Black Market: African-American Tuxedo Advertising
November 17, 2011
Perhaps it was the multicultural makeup of my hometown Toronto that led me to notice the absence of black men in American tuxedo marketing campaigns of the past. In particular, the ads and pictorials in vintage issues of Esquire and GQ were lily-white up until the 1980s when a smattering of African-American models began to […]
Flashback: The Powder Blue Tuxedo
November 10, 2011
When researching the tuxedo’s history for the Guide I thoroughly enjoyed reviewing vintage menswear magazines and observing the tuxedo’s elegant evolution through the decades. However, once I got to the late 1950s the research became somewhat nausea-inducing. Each year the formalwear pictorials and advertisements featured progressively more awful tuxedo separates (ostensibly for summer or less […]
Flashback: Dynasty and Miami Vice Tuxedos
November 6, 2011
In 1984 formalwear giant After Six capitalized on the hugely successful Dynasty series, a prime-time soap opera about a wealthy oil family. It was a perfect pairing because the show emphasized glitz and glamour and its characters were regularly cloaked in formal finery. It was also perfect timing as the global economy was booming and […]
June 18, 2012
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