Tender Type 915
The quest for the explained, for affirmation, often leads writing about men’s clothing to be about ticking boxes instead of a search for meaning.
Stitch per inch, weight of cloth, tales which fizz the brain with desire, yet, never truly swell the heart.
A must be quenched thirst; otherwise life will never be right.
The problem is, the prescription is diet, not full fat.
Chemical and flatly sweet, it helps push an agenda of online narcissism, where a man is judged by the drink in his hand and the likes on his post.
It makes me wonder why we don’t sell clothes with instructions, less the flat pack, more how to take off the rack, slip over shoulders, button just so and off, we, head.
Double tapped likes and respect guaranteed.
Of course, I may be part of the problem… Isn’t this just a form of online naval gazing?
Right now, this is all part of an ongoing debate in my head, what is the point?
Why do I do what I do?
Why have I spent my life, enthralled?
I occasionally like to think of myself as fairly rational, sometimes sane and in a blue moon nuanced. But ever since that day, aged 12, when I persuaded my daily missed Grandmother that I couldn’t live without an orange long sleeved Paul Smith t-shirt, I’ve been under a spell.
Bought from Floral Street, with Come Together by the Beatles bouncing off the dark wooden panelled walls. Then peering over counter as it was carefully folded in tissue paper and then in the bag. It was religious.
It could be argued that said spell was always there, but this moment sticks out.
I thought I was the nuts, not knowing what it meant, and batted away comments with an internal shrug of pity for the non-believers.
The start of a long love affair with the good stuff.
One I’ve occasionally downplayed, pushed aside and pretended wasn’t that important.
“Things are just things, come on don’t waste your life”. Etc etc.
The thought tumbles through my head as I see my contemporaries racing off in the distance, with all the meaningful things, the things we should want, but bloody hell they look bad. Those shoes? No mate. That shirt? I’d rather die.
Reading it back, I’ve probably exposed some flaw, a hole in my character to be filled, well with the stuff I talk about.
Is it some sadness? Not really, I just like what I like and know too much. Unable to see why I can’t have both - of course I am aware of the important stuff, life, love, a crisp cold pint on a hot day and Swansea City…
Because here is the thing, certain objects are just, soulless and bland, they offer a brief glucose high, nothing more.
Less the buy cheap, buy twice, more this sweatshirt is just for Christmas. Which right now is unforgivable.
Then there are objects which are works of art, placed on high for us all to desire and admire, look at the brilliance of their designer and maker. They have a power, a story which is almost too great for us to shape, to make our own. We are simply brief custodians.
All of which so far, is in part that quest for affirmation.
Now, I could try a witty remark, call it a day and go back to searching online for some new sneakers.
But…
What about those things, those beautiful, sensual things, which showcase the designer and the maker, inestimable talent’s both, things filled with story, and soul but with pages left blank. Those things, which answer my ‘why?’ questions far better than I could.
They want you to engage with them, to use them, have them help you. The hit isn’t instant or even brief, more of a slow burn, that on initial listen difficult second album which becomes a classic over years.
Those are the things for me. That’s what it’s all about.
The jacket in the photo above is a type 915 from SS12 in mattress ticking with contrast calico facings from Tender.
William Kroll from buttons onwards get’s it.
Products with a story, a past, but more than that, things which want to help you with your own tale…
This made in England 915 was a style I sold in my store, one which like many of Will’s coats at the time found it’s way into my wardrobe.
The cut and construction are simple. Nothing is wasted, there are no extraneous flourishes, simplicity used as a tool.
It is something I wear unthinkingly often.
Last week I re-watched Nick Broomfield’s wonderful and heartbreaking film about Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen.
On the surface a story of blue eyed seas, Grecian sunsets and Cohen’s taste in large shoulder’d and nipped-in-waist safari jackets, of the naïve desire and simplicity of 60’s electricity free living on Hydra.
Underneath a parable, man sets off in search of his spiritual home, he find’s it, a place of salvation and love, but his feet itch, so he sets off again, spending life struggling to find his way back.
Story of life really. Nothing monotonous, moment’s of joy, but not always great. Living not existing.
It stayed with me all night, haunted my dreams and next morning, when about to leave the house without thinking I put on that Tender jacket.
So what is it about this piece, this simple, subtly eye teasingly striped, almost austere item of clothing, which fascinates me so? Why do I turn to it during moments of need?
Well, it is, as it is. Nothing is hidden, but’s more than that.
It’s the way that it tells a story.
Great denim taken from raw does that. This given the fabric is slightly trickier but more rewarding, from the curved stitching across the chest, the now oxidised exposed rivets, edges stuck twisted from wear, the rippling pockets from years of filling and emptying of books, papers, the stuff of daily use.
Of places been and things done.
2D made three.
Anish Kapoor talks of the skin of an object, from his pigment works which look as if about to blow off in the breeze, through to the daily cleaned ‘Cloud Gate’ in Chicago, his work appears ever changing yet static at the same time. But it’s ‘Svayambh’ made for Haus der Kunst which get’s me.
A large block of red wax on a track pushed slowly backwards and forwards through a door. Over time the wax leaves its mark on the door and the door leaves it’s mark on the wax. A satisfying process, a reminder of the brief moments of friction between objects which lead to indelible marks.
A work which begs us to engage with it as a pleasing, but sticky and messy singular object, and also as a metaphor for the realities of daily life.
So this, coat, looks, no longer a simple cut of fabric, stitched and shaped, riveted and buttoned. But, of me. My story, my life.
From the moment I ordered and its arrival in store, opened box and millisecond of thought, before new life in mine.
Gone from worn on Welsh shop floor, to being stopped and admired on Rue Saint-Honoré, then across the world, briefly stolen by many, before I pinch back, quietly mine.
It was never of the moment, far too good a thing for that, so it will never not be.
One day, long after me, someone might pick it up and marvel at it’s practicality and durability and wonder of the person who wore it, and they should know that the story, unwritten, is that by doing his own thing, he was happy.
