The Musgrave Manifesto

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The launch issue of For Him magazine

Thursday, April 11th, 2013

It was around Eastertime in 1985 that the first edition of For Him magazine appeared, distributed solely on a complimentary basis through menswear shops. It was the first of the modern crop of so-called men’s style magazines. I was the launch editor. I have scanned here all of its 32 pages and covers.

To clear up a popular misconception, For Him was never a trade magazine. As these pages show, it was always aimed at the consumer. It was the brainchild of Chris Astridge, who was the owner and publisher. We also produced a menswear trade magazine called MAB News. Chris’ view was that the days of fashion trade mags were numbered as the number of independent fashion shops was declining. Advertisers wanted to reach the end-consumers and that’s what For Him was designed to do. Its rather clunky name is an English translation of Per Lui, an Italian fashion title of the period.

The idea was to produce a style guide, a celebration of good clothes and good dressing, with the American title Esquire of the 1960s our most obvious inspiration. To circumvent the reluctance of national newspaper chains to stock this new magazine, and to get round a possible reluctance of British men to pay for a fashion publication, Chris hit on the idea of distributing the mag for free (note there is no cover price) only through independent menswear shops. This distribution served For Him well for several years and even when a cover price was added and it was sold via W H Smith and the rest, menswear shops still stocked For Him. 

We published For Him every six months; I was the editor of the first three editions, from Spring Summer 85 to Spring Summer 86, before leaving to work in the Netherlands for International Textiles magazine..

I returned to be the editor for most of 1990, by which time the magazine was well established and had been joined by Arena and GQ, and was soon to have Esquire as a competitor also. Chris eventually sold For Him Magazine to Emap in 1994 and it was quickly converted in to an amazingly successful “lads’ mag”, which, as these pages show, was quite different to our original concept.

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Still on camera in Scotland

Saturday, April 6th, 2013

Proof that I bring sunshine into people’s lives wherever I go was evidenced on Friday when Glasgow was bathed in spring sunlight to coincide with my visit. Following on from my previous blog for Thursday,the first stop on our filming schedule for Textiles Scotland was the screening room within the rather smart Blythswood Square Hotel.

 

Here each of the 40 comfy cinema seats is covered with a different Harris Tweed – and very impressive is the effect. The hotel uses Harris Tweed for most of its furniture, a classy reminder of the cloth’s suitability for interiors as well as apparel. In the screening room. we filmed pieces-to-camera on Scottish luxury knitwear (the best kind) and on Harris Tweed itself, which is the only textile in the world that is defined and protected by an Act of Parliament.

After an adventure negotiating the mystery that is Glasgow’s one-way street system, the happy band from Speakeasy Productions and I descended on a brilliant incubator unit for fashion start-ups called Fashion Foundry. After an adventure negotiating the mystery of the signage in the huge building it is in (it’s jam-packed with creative studios and workshops), we finally found our lovely collaborators:

Laura Ironside, who works in beautiful Scottish leather and suede to make corsetry-inspired pieces, as seen in the background here:

 

Pea Cooper, who does a brilliant job in creating stunning headwear – including ones in Harris Tweed!;

and Jennifer Kent, whose impressive men’s knitwear collection is presented under the Edition Scotland label.

I finished off my filming by disrupting the Friday afternoon of Mairi McDonald, another Fashion Foundry member. Mairi has worked as a designer for a number of luxury brands and large retailers but now runs her own business that uses Scottish lace and leather to create striking stylish womenswear with a rock ‘n’ roll inspiration. She also finds time to write a fashion column for The Herald. Clever lass! As the photos show, we had an amusing time.

And with that it was time to say goodbye to my new best friends – David Miller, Robert Anderson, Jean Devlin and Cassi Thompson. Let’s do it all again soon, guys!

If all goes to plan, the Textiles Scotland video should be available for viewing in early May. I’ll keep you informed.

 

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On camera in Scotland

Friday, April 5th, 2013

Bright sunshine greeted my visit to Edinburgh to start two days of filming a video for Textiles Scotland, the promotional body for the 600 companies in the fashion and textiles sector north of the body. After filming at Harvey Nichols in the morning, the crew and I descended on the charming and talented Judy R Clark, who is a keen exponent of mixing Harris Tweed and Scottish lace from Ayrshire-based MYB.

 

Other companies to be featured in the film, which will be posted on the Textiles Scotland site are cashmere spinner Todd and Duncan, Lochcarron Tweed, leather producer Andrew Muirhead and Son, technical textiles firm Scott & Fyfe and tartan specialist MacNaughton Holdings. It’s a fascinating selection of some of the fine work being created in Scotland. I’ll post details of the video as soon as I have them.

The film is being produced by Speakeasy Productions and I am having a great time working with Robert Anderson, Cassi Thompson, David Miller and Jean Devlin. I was appropriately attired in my jacket and waistcoat from Kathryn Sargent in Scottish “Gamekeeper” tweed by Robert Noble and cashmere tie from Drake’s.

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My blue heaven

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013

Chatting to denim dynamo Tim Browne not long ago, I was bemoaning the fact that it seems impossible to find a good chambray shirt these days. In its classic construction, this plain-weave mid- or light-weight cotton fabric has an appealing hue thanks to the blend of a blue warp (the threads running north-to-south in the cloth) and a white weft (the horizontal threads). Tim promised me he had one in the pipeline for his new brand Blue Collar Worker.

Good as his word, ex-Levi’s designer Tim delivered this fine item to me recently. Thanks, Tim! It’s got the sort of good generous cut I like, just enough practical workwear details and – praise be – the logo is printed discreetly out of sight on the long front tail. I am wearing it here with my dark-wash Carhartt wide-leg jeans and an Armadillo Merino undershirt.

 

I am going to get a lot of wear out of this well-constructed Blue Collar Worker shirt, which will find plenty of indigo-dyed company in the Musgrave wardrobe.

This is not only double denim – it’s double G-Star Raw Essentials denim – two really excellent pieces from the Dutch masters of jeanswear. The shirt fabric is particularly interesting, displaying lots of horizontal flecks. The jeans wash results in a particularly intense blue.

I like the shade contrast here between the slim-fit Wrangler shirt and the vivid blue of the Candiani jeans that I had made for me at Bread&Butter last summer. (Candiani is an Italian denim mill that was creating customised jeans at the Berlin fair, as explained towards the end of this blog).

Another option for a warmer day is the pale blue chambray-esque (hurrah!) Wrangler shirt with the lightweight Candiani jeans.

Currently, my oldest denim shirt is this loyal favourite from Wrangler, which has become so washed out over maybe a dozen or more years that it sometimes needs the lift from the red 5-pocket jeans from Boggi. The bandanna is from the Swedish brand, Denim Demon Jeans.

Woolrich provided me with another near-chambray quality in a very useful grey-blue shade. I like the utilitarian look of it with a pair of white Levi’s Sta-Prest pants.

Another version of double denim – Woolrich shirt and G-Star Raw Essentials jacket.

And why not triple denim? In this instance, my new Blue Collar Worker shirt, Carhartt jeans, and my old Blood & Glitter jacket. Even the bandanna has indigo roots – it’s from The Rising Sun Mfg Co in LA. The herringbone-patterned silk cap is from Bates in Jermyn Street.

My mild obsession with denim has a long history. This 1980s favourite was from Replay – today a good black denim shirt is hard to find. I wish I still had this one. (The Wayfarers date back to when Ray-Ban didn’t insist on having that bloody annoying and unnecessary logo on the arms!)

This photo was taken at Annandale, Minnesota on 4th July 1976, so I was in a Levi’s double denim outfit to celebrate the USA’s 200th birthday. The shirt once had long sleeves, so it was quite ancient by this time.

This pic reminds me of Hardy Amies’ pungent assessment of denim jeans in his 1964 work, The ABC of Men’s Fashion: “Jeans are more attractive when well worn, being made in a cloth of a colour and texture which is improved by frequent rough washing, as are most peasant clothes.”

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Gentlemen of Style to dowload

Monday, April 1st, 2013

Less than a week after I called for a revival of the use of illustration, my inbox receives a welcome note from Sven Raphael Schneider, who runs the rather splendid Gentleman’s Gazette website in the US.

Raphael, as friends like me call him, has an enviable collection of vintage men’s style magazines and he has produced an eBook of some fine American illustrations from the 1930s. Generously, it is available for download for subscribers to his newsletter – so sign up here. What a nice start to the fourth month of the year. Thanks, Raphael.

 

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