Throw a fit over today\u2019s style<\/p>\n
Joseph Abboud has been dressing men for decades<\/a> \u2014 so how did he start?<\/p>\n Joseph: \u201cBorn in Boston. Watching old films with Errol Flynn and Gary Cooper, I fell in love with Hollywood style. So I went to work for Ralph Lauren.<\/p>\n \u201cQuestion is, what happened to style? Like men wearing shorts in an office<\/a>? COVID slammed that door. Men worked home in their pajamas. People don\u2019t dress to go to the theater anymore, to go to the office. New York, America\u2019s style capital, was glamour and elegance. It disappeared. At the theater, they\u2019re wearing T-shirts, schlepping brown paper bags. In the old days, they\u2019d study GQ, Esquire, couldn\u2019t wait for the September issue with all the fall fashion.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need a navy blazer and a gray suit because of a wedding, funeral or to meet your girlfriend\u2019s parents once after dinner. Then, strolling afterward to see the windows at Saks, Bergdorfs or Barneys, and you\u2019d see style and feel comfortable. Not now. New York deteriorated because of what\u2019s going on politically in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n Worse for wear<\/p>\n Cindy: Females are now on city streets in shorts <\/a>and with their things hanging out. What is happening to us?<\/p>\n Joseph: \u201cCOVID was disastrous for young men understanding what\u2019s appropriate. Listen, we knew Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, Ralph Lauren \u2014 the greatest icons in American fashion. Giants like Giorgio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld. I had the privilege of knowing these people. A man needs a suit. For a wedding. Job interview. We need to figure out what to do in New York City. Half the shops are closed. People sleeping in the hallways. You\u2019re afraid for your safety. New York City, greatest city in the world, should be ashamed of itself.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going back into archives and picking out pieces I loved 20 years ago. I\u2019ll style it differently. Maybe take that suit jacket and wear it with a cargo pant and cashmere turtleneck. Not buy less, but buy better. Our European counterparts do that very well, especially the European women. They know to tie a scarf or to wear a jacket they\u2019ve had 10 years. I\u2019d made maybe 7 million suits here in the United States and am proud of that.<\/p>\n \u201cBut today, when someone will have a bikini for $800, I say to myself, how can a bikini that\u2019s made of a quarter of a yard of fabric be $800? Or a handbag be $25,000? How can that be? Point is you don\u2019t need five or six suits. Buy one nice suit. Listen, when I launched in 1987, there were 100-plus great department stores in America \u2014 probably four or five left.\u201d<\/p>\n Tell me if you had a lousy person you ever dressed. Didn\u2019t you ever have a pain in the ass?<\/p>\n Joseph: \u201cYeah. I did the Olympics with NBC and CBS. Occasionally, some were appreciative. I want to dress the American man, but I am unthrilled with their long hair and tattoos up the behind.\u201d<\/p>\n City Yves-dropping<\/p>\n Wait. More stuff. Saint Laurent dressed Claudia Cardinale, Catherine Deneuve and Capucine. So Metrograph downtown is doing this one now through the end of August. It\u2019s a series of flicks and flacks<\/a>, \u201cDressed by Yves Saint Laurent.\u201d It\u2019s seven movies in all. Go. Tell me about it.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, everybody else not in a theater is rushing to that whatsisname zillionaire who is heading for Mars every Thursday. I can understand that. They want to get on line. Neither Elon nor whatever our vice president\u2019s name is \u2014 not everyone can make another baby every week.<\/a><\/p>\n Only in space, kids, only in space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throw a fit over today\u2019s style Joseph Abboud has been dressing men for decades \u2014 so how did…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[17479,29934,9,56,63,65,64,299],"class_list":["post-306196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-fashion-designers","tag-mens-fashion","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}