The Musgrave Manifesto

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Black Ivy: A Revolt In Style

Monday, March 14th, 2022

A fine new addition to my library looks at the way in which black men in the USA during the 1960s adopted and adapted Ivy League style for themselves.

The uniform of white privilege became the uniform of Civil Rights campaigners.

Prominent politicians, acedemics, artists, musicians, sportsmen and regular guys are featured in the beautifully illustrated “Black Ivy: A Revolt In Style” by Jason Jules and Graham Marsh.

All aspects of Ivy are covered and the images from around 60 years ago still look so damned good.

Possibly my favourite image is this one of Duke Ellington’s arranger Billy Strayhorn, who makes me want a seersucker suit.

While I am personally drawn to the tailoring of the Ivy Look – even though it is very softly tailored – the casualwear looks are very desirable as well.

The 224-page hardback book is published by Reel Art Press (RAP), which can always be relied upon for a high-quality job. “Black Ivy” is a great companion volume to “Hollywood and The Ivy Look”, published by RAP in 2011.

I can also wholeheartedly recommend other books co-produced by Graham Marsh, especially the ones on the art of Blue Note record sleeves.

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Nino Cerruti’s personal wardrobe

Sunday, January 23rd, 2022

Nino Cerruti, one of my personal heroes, died on 15 January, aged 91.

The Italian menswear maestro was an innovator on many fronts, as I discussed with him in Biella, north Italy in 2012.

My interview with him can be seen here https://www.ericmusgrave.co.uk/index.php/archive/consumer-titles/therake/the-rake-issue-21/

The highlight of my day with him was seeing the archive of his personal wardrobe, which was being organised at the former mill building of his family’s cloth business Lancificio Fratelli Cerruti.

Each garment was identified with a paper luggage label. The highest number I saw was 702. The selection ranged from bespoke suits made for Signor Cerruti to examples of his early ready-to-wear brand Hitman and his celebrated Cerruti 1881 lifestyle collections. Here are a few selections of what I saw. It would be great if this archive could be put on public view. RIP Nino.

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My top topcoats

Sunday, November 21st, 2021

As winter is fast approaching, it is a good time to take a look back to some of my overcoats, aka topcoats.

First up is an American 1950s or 1960s model bought at the huge vintage store Flip on Long Acre, Covent Garden, London in about 1982. I am here on the wintry East Yorkshire coast with my pals Katy Wheelwright, her husband and my oldest friend Jeff Wheelwright, plus Sara and Gary Armitage, chums from Hull University.

Thousands of these American garments were shipped over to Flip. They were such a craze we featured them in Men’s Wear magazine, where I was deputy editor from 1982 until 1984. Like Alfred Hitchcock, I appeared in one of my own productions. I once discussed the wool tweed coat with an American colleague who told me it was a “Spring weight” cloth. The idea of different qualities of topcoats was then a new concept to me.

Somewhat heavier was this brown wool British coat that was warm enough to keep me insulated from the Russian winter when I visited Moscow and Leningrad (now St Petersburg) in December 1986. Apologies for the poor quality shots – it was a simple single-breasted model with a fly front.

I did without a conventional tailored topcoat for years, relying instead on parkas and the like. Then c 2012 I borrowed this Made-in-England Aquascutum “shorty” coat from the company for a few years. Had I known the once-mighty brand was going to go pop, I probably would not have returned it to them.

My longest-serving topcoat is this rather handsome cashmere example by Polo Ralph Lauren (Blue Label). It was made in Italy by Corneliani and I bought it in a sample Sale from my pal Gerry Dixon, who was the Italian firm’s UK agent. It’s a classic.

It was a treat to be given this Made-in-England topcoat in 2013 by Marks & Spencer‘s menswear design chief Tony O’Connor. It was made, I think, by the now defunct Cheshire Bespoke factory in Crewe using a lovely soft wool cloth woven by Abraham Moon in Yorkshire. It was part of M&S’ Best of British collection.

My latest and current favourite topcoat is this one, which I designed. It was made for me by Stewart Christie in Edinburgh and they kindly created a matching cap. The excellent cloth is from cloth merchant W Bill.

 

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Fine Scottish knitwear from Scott & Charters

Friday, August 27th, 2021

A very welcome addition to my wardrobe this year is this fabulous pure cashmere cardigan from Scott & Charters.

Unless you really know your knitters based in Hawick, Scotland’s “cashmere capital”, you probably will not have heard of the firm, but it has been based in the Borders town since 1955. Although it has had its own brand for most of its history, it’s mainly been a manufacturer for other brands and retailers worldwide.

Happily, the name itself is to be promoted again. In 2020 the business was acquired by Ayr-based scarf specialist Alex Begg whose products are among my favourite Made-in-Scotland pieces. Great potential is seen for Scott & Charters and its team of skilled people as an authentic top-end specialist Scottish knitter. I agree with that assessment.

I received my super cardigan for helping out Scott & Charters with some editorial work for its website and press information. Sometimes it’s called the Yacht Cardigan, but officially it’s Style No CH03212, described as a “men’s 5N (five needle) cashmere full cardigan stitch shawl collar cardigan”.

For the technically-minded reader, it’s made on a 5 Needle Shima Seiki knitting machine using 4 ends of 2/28 Nm 100% Cashmere from Scottish spinner Todd & Duncan

Knitted seamless on the Shima Seiki machine, the cardigan is made on a saddle shoulder shape, which fits really well. It closes with 32 & 24L horn buttons. Containing about 2lbs (1kg) of pure cashmere yarn in the College Red shade, it is a truly luxurious garment. Fine Scottish Knitwear indeed.

 

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The Modern Shetland Sweater by Skippers Mill

Wednesday, August 18th, 2021

Autumn is not that far away. If you are in the market for a great-looking sweater Made in Scotland by experts, check out The Modern Shetland series from new brand Skippers Mill

Made in Annan in Dumfries & Galloway, the sweaters are 100% wool, so they are soft, warm and light. Knitted on advanced Japanese machines using 100% renewable electricity, they are seamless and waste-free.

In five sizes from XS to XL, the sweaters are in one style only, with a refined saddle shape that echoes the human shoulder and fits like a glove. The branding is very appealing too.

Although there is only one style, there are 31 superb colours to choose from – one for every day of even the longest months.

I was thrilled to be given my Skippers Mill Modern Shetland in the Goldcrest shade. They are so well-priced at just £89. Highly recommended by me!

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Leeds Then And Now evolves

Monday, August 9th, 2021

It is scarcely two years since my book about the buildings of my home city, Leeds Then And Now was published by Pavilion but Leeds city centre is continuing to develop and evolve.

Just on the left of this 1928 image of Kirkgate is the department store Matthias Robinson, which was opened in Leeds in 1914. The Hartlepool-based business built a new store with Art Deco details on the site in 1936. The store is seen here in 1968.

Matthias Robinson was acquired by Debenhams in 1962 and the store was renamed Debenhams in 1972. Last year Debenhams collapsed and the Leeds store, seen here in 2019 in a photo by David North, was closed along with all the rest.

Permission has now been given to convert the building into student accommodation. Some retailing units may be retained on the ground floor. Let’s hope the lovely details of the 1928 building are maintained and protected.

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Celebrating Sportswear International

Wednesday, August 4th, 2021

Since last December on my Instagram account @musgraveeric I regularly have been highlighting the brilliant magazine Sportswear International, which flourished from 1975 until spring 2021.

This was the first IG post https://www.instagram.com/p/CIRWUshLi-W/

As a freelance writer, I was UK correspondent for SI from 1987, then from 1994 I worked in the magazine’s head office in Milan for about 18 months as deputy editor (although my title was managing editor).

Covering almost a decade, this was an exciting period for the fashion biz.

Sportswear International had been founded as Jean Intern in Germany in August 1975 by Peter Schindler, who created what became the No 1 trade title for the jeans, casualwear and young fashion sectors. Originally publishing only in German, he hit on the idea of giving SI international appeal by producing an identical edition with the same images but with the text in English.

The Sportswear sub-brand – used in the American sense to mean casualwear – was introduced in 1978. By 1983 the magazine was known as Sportswear International. By the time I joined the excellent team, which by then had its head office in Milan, the magazine’s reputation was rock solid. By 1987 the frequency followed the fashion trade fair calendar, so we had three issues in the spring (Jan, Feb and March) and three in the autumn (July, August and September). They were sizable productions – heading for 200 pages was not uncommon.

The original large almost-A3 format (which was slightly reduced in later years) and the high-quality paper and excellent production values meant the publication was brilliant for impactive fashion shoots. Skilled photographers and stylists loved working for Sportswear.

Equally importantly, the large format and SI’s position as THE authority in the denim jeans market, the young fashion market and, from the late 1980s onwards the new Fashion Sport sector, made it a very popular and effective choice as an advertising vehicle for big brands in the market. The impact of editorial and advertising made this a visual feast.

Working for Sportswear was one of the highlights of my career as I was allowed to interview and feature anyone who I thought would be of interest to our readership. A significant part of my time was spent visiting interesting retailers around the UK, with special emphasis on innovative independents. Occasionally I would also cover a major new developments for a big brand, such as the Emporio Armani store in Knighstbridge, London.

Peter Schindler sold SI to the German trade publishing house Deutscher Fachverlag (dfv) in 1994. I have featured lots of pages from Sportswear International on my @musgraveeric Instagram feed since December 2020 but when I started the sequence I had no idea that dfv planned to close Sportswear International in spring 2021 and replace it with a new publication called The Spin Off, which has as its focus sustainable fashion.

I was pleased to see SPortswear INternational referenced in the word Spin.

Good luck to all involved in The Spin Off. I hope you have as much fun on it as I had on Sportswear international.

 

 

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Good luck to Brooks Brothers

Tuesday, August 4th, 2020

“I wear Brooks clothes and white shoes all the time…”

In the first line of “Harvard Blues”, a 1941 tune by Count Basie and his Orchestra, vocalist Jimmy Rushing lets us know exactly what sort of cool Ivy League student he is. Since 1818 the firm of Brooks Brothers has been dressing America’s leading lights and power brokers, along the way developing an unmistakeable look that became known as preppy (after the preparatory schools where Ivy League university undergraduates begin their expensive education).

I am a big fan of Brooks Bros, simply because its signature styles are, well, simple. In my experience they are well-made, long-lasting, neat and easy to wear. They offer the comfort and familiarity of a uniform – and they are often as recognisable as a uniform.

Its button-down shirt in an oxford-weave cloth is a classic, as are its short-sleeved polo shirts, available in a huge palette of colours and decorated in an understated way with the firm’s logo of The Golden Fleece (or The Hanging Sheep to those of a less romantic nature).

With a single-breasted navy blue blazer and khaki cotton chinos, finished off with cordovan-coloured penny loafers on my feet, I can pretend I am a WASP from New England as opposed to a White Anglo-Saxon (lapsed) Protestant from Olde England.

Another huge attraction for me over the years has been Brooks Bros’ confident and enthusiastic use of pattern and colour, whether in solid shades, stripes or checks. For a “conservative” brand, it avoids dullness very easily.

On trips to America, whenever possible I would head to a Brooks Bros outlet store and then head for its Sale rail, where I’d hope to find the sort of clothes that did not attract a mass of followers, such as salmon-coloured summer slacks, wide-legged apricot-coloured linen trousers or heavyweight chinos in a vivid apple green. Happy days indeed.

One of my favourite Brook Bros garments is my boldly-checked sports jacket in Pure New Wool. It was given to me as a present around Christmas 2005 by John Hind, who was running the then fairly-new London operation for Brooks Brothers. When he saw me admiring the jacket in the City of London shop, John revealed that not one had been sold during the autumn season and if I wanted one, I was welcome to it. Every time I have worn it since I have been complimented on it.

Sadly, lots of other things have not been selling in recent years, even in the USA. After 202 years, the business founded by Henry Sands Brooks in 1818 and renamed Brooks Brothers by his sons Daniel H, John, Elisha and Edward in 1850, has lost its way and in early July declared itself bankrupt. It might be rescued yet and will hopefully survive, but probably as a much smaller concern. As long as it stays true to its style and quality – and that’s a big if, obviously – I’ll be happy.

I might even look out for some white shoes to wear with my Brooks clothes.

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Carve his (correct) name with pride

Saturday, June 27th, 2020

Having spent too much time in my adult life explaining “It’s not Musgrove, it’s Musgrave”, I am particularly keen on getting people’s surnames right.

Examining the handsome and poignant World War One memorial in the village of Norham, Northumberland, I noted that the fourth-mentioned fatality was Corporal Thomas Quin of the Northumberland Fusiliers. Now that’s an uncommon version of Quinn, I thought.

Meandering into the peaceful graveyard of St Cuthbert’s Church behind the cenotaph, I located an impressive headstone for the man. Its inscription informed me: “Sacred to the memory of 291016, Cpl. T. Quin. N.F. Only son of Tom and Annie Quin, who died in Hornsea Hospital, 23^rd Nov 1918, aged 20 years. Enlisted 28^th June 1915, served 11 months in France, and 10 months in Salonica.”

This caught my eye as I have friends in Hornsea, a small coastal town in East Yorkshire. How sad that the young lad died aged only 20, I thought, less than two weeks after the Armistice, and away from his folks.

Also catching my eye was the Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone alongside the family memorial. On here, annoyingly to me, gallant Thomas’ surname is rendered in the more familiar form of Quinn.

Surely, I reasoned, that’s a mistake as the family and the village memorial cannot have got it wrong.

A quick online check confirmed that the Army records do indeed have Northumberland Fusilier 291016 as Quinn. This looked to me like an Army clerk’s admin error.

On 28 May I posted my photos and a brief text on a Facebook group I belong to called Britain in detail: quirk, charm and craft in the built environment, which highlights interesting stuff we can see around us. Within no time at all, Nick Basden, an Edinburgh-based member I didn’t know, had searched the 1911 England Census and confirmed what I had suspected – the family and village had it right and the Army had made, to use a wartime military term, a SNAFU (Situation Normal, All F*cked Up).

I planned to contact the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to point out this anomaly because anyone searching for Thomas Quin in Army records will not find him, but Nick beat me to it. The reply from the CWGC Enquiry Support team was prompt, courteous and pleasing:

Re: 291016 Lance Corporal THOMAS QUIN, Northumberland Fusiliers

Thank you for contacting the CWGC.

I have amended our records to show that Thomas QUIN is his true family name, and that he only served as Thomas QUINN.

Please allow 24 hours for the amendment to show on our records.

I doubt the commission will go to the trouble of replacing or correcting the Norham headstone, whose design – created in 1917 by a panel including architects Edwin Luytens, Herbert Baker and Reginald Blomfield, plus font expert Leslie MacDonald Gill – leaves little room for amendments. It is possible, however, the local branch of the Royal British Legion could request a replacement.

In any event, I am pleased to have helped to cherish and protect the memory of young Tom Quin. Like his thousands of fallen comrades he deserves to be remembered accurately as the man he was.

The CWGC is responsible for the commemoration of 1.7 million war dead, whose graves and memorials are at 23,000 locations in more than 150 countries and territories. In the UK alone there are 300,000 war graves in the Commission’s care, across 13,000 locations. I wonder how many others have been affected by the slip of a clerk’s pen.

 

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45 years in an Hawaiian shirt

Sunday, June 14th, 2020

The ideal garment for a sunny day is an Hawaiian shirt. I’ve been wearing them since I was in my early twenties. Soft and drapey, ideally in viscose (aka rayon), they are cool in all senses of the world.

Here I am in the late 1970s in what was possibly my first Hawaiian shirt. I don’t often wear them with a suit. It was almost certainly made of viscose fabric.

This cotton version, from 1977, is more a Hawaiian-inspired fashion shirt than a true aloha shirt, but it’s a jolly print.

Another inexpensive viscose one from the late 1970s, possibly bought at Flip, the large store selling vintage American clothes on Long Acre, Covent Garden, which had tons of old aloha shirts.

A couple more I wore on a road trip to the USA in the early 1980s. The full-length image was taken in Las Vegas, the darker one in Los Angeles.

Another related shirt: This heavy cotton number with the charming and naive print had a label bearing the slogan “Hechado in Mexico” (Made in Mexico). I bought it from a thrift store on a visit to the USA and kept it for many years.

Another favourite aloha from the late 1990s (my son Teddy was born in 1994). This is a very sophisticated print with lots of colours. I probably bought it new in the USA.

On a trip to California in the late 1990s, I bought new some aloha shirts by the Hawaii-based maker Reyn Spooner which today has a website to sell in Europe.

As the label explains, they are made in Hawaii of Japanese spun rayon fabric. My favourite example is one that features a print of Hawaiian shirts. Even the pocket is matched neatly.

This remains my No 1 shirt. All I need is for the summer to arrive and it will be on show again.

If you want to know more about Hawaiian shirts, seek out the book “The Aloha Shirt” by Dale Hope & Gregory Tozian (Thames & Hudson 2002). Its a superb history of the phenomenon with 725 illustrations. Highly recommended.

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