Enduring Style's Enduring Lines

Jammed, crammed and loads of fun.

The Cooper Union

Gary Cooper, photographed by Cecil Beaton, Hollywood, 1931


Gary, Malibu, 1937


Rocky Cooper, Los Angeles, 1933


Gary, Los Angeles, 1940


Rocky & Gary, Southampton, NY, 1934


Gary, Van Nuys, 1933


Gary, Santa Barbara, 1937


Rocky, Colorado Springs, 1942


Gary, Colorado Springs, 1942


Rocky & Gary, Van Nuys, 1934


Gary photographed by Robert Capa, Sun Valley, 1942


Robert Capa, Sun Valley 1942


Ingrid Bergman, Gary & Clark Gable, 1940


Gary, on set, year unknown


Gary & Ernest Hemingway, Sun Valley, 1942

Rocky & Gary, Beverly Hills, 1959


David Douglas Duncan photograph of Pablo & Jacqueline Picasso, Gary & Maria Cooper, Cannes, 1956


Gary, Athens, 1956


Rocky & one of many championship Sealyham Terriers bred by the Coopers.

I first saw proofs of 'Enduring Style' last Febuary during a visit to the publisher. The small B&W images didn't look like much -- until you got close. Close enough to see an intimacy family snaps share. Imperfect exposure. Worn edges. Tape residue. The simplicity of a pose for a spouse or a friend. A happy terrier chases a ball with the shadow of Gary Cooper in the corner. If you love to look at pictures...I mean really look at pictures -- for the stories in the details --you will love looking at this book.

Enduring Style is a return of G. Bruce Boyer during a time when 20 somethings are hoisted sockless up fashion media's flagpole. Finally... there's something to salute. The book is slip cased, monograph-ed and written by three experts. Ralph Lauren contributes the introduction and sums up with a feeling about 'Coop' that proves even Mr Lauren can't always get what he wants.

Maria Cooper Janis, Gary & Rocky's daughter, writes of the charmed, but in no way entitled life of America's premiere movie star who told her, "There ain't never a horse that couldn't be rode, there ain't never a rider that couldn't be throwed." Rather than 'celebrity' and 'star', her description of her father is 'average,' 'good mannered' with 'natural elegance.'

What the photo's leave out, G. Bruce Boyer fills in. The history, the career, the marriage. Like Cooper, Bruce keeps it simple with an eye for detail. Cooper's tailors, shoemakers, colors and jeans. Boyer underlines the contrast between Cooper's celebrity and, 'your average Joe' from Montana.

No doubt Cooper took great care in his appearance and had a passion for the cloth. A vanity that must come with the occupation. But his understanding of what he was doing is breathtaking. Even if he stayed a cowboy extra, his presence in a photograph would tell anyone a hundred years later that this man had something.

The lesson? Style is everywhere, but your inner compass must be followed. Stay true to yourself and with time as your judge, like Gary Cooper, your tie will never be too short, your trouser break never too long and your shoes will never have too many buckles. Simplicity was Cooper's mantra. In the roles he selected and in the way he lived his life. He wasn't a god. He just looked and lived like one.

Enduring Style is available for pre order on Amazon here. Limited advance copies are also available tonight at a book signing. Join G. Bruce Boyer and Maria Cooper Janis at Leffot, 10 Christopher Street, at 6:30 PM.

Joe Williams: He Just Sang

G. Bruce Boyer contributes his third Jazz review to The Trad. Count Basie and Joe Williams could be hard to handle at 8:30 on a Monday morning. But, today's Friday, and that all important, "Time, Place and Occasion" ain't just for getting dressed. Cue the cocktail shaker.

For me, Joe Williams always was, is, and will be the perfect male jazz singer. I say this with the greatest respect to Armstrong, Sinatra, Nat Cole, Johnny Hartman, Torme, Bennett, and anyone else you can think of from that fifty-year classic period of jazz singers, 1925 – 1975.

From the moment I first heard his recording of “Smack Dab in the Middle” in the early '50s ( I believe it was his only recording to ever make the charts), it was clear to me that he had everything a jazz singer ever needed. Actually, there wasn't any kind of popular music Joe Williams couldn't sing supremely well. He could have sung Handel's “Hallelujah Chorus” all by himself if he'd wanted to.

Sinatra could break your heart with slow, soft songs of lost love or swing with as much force as a whole trumpet section, but he couldn't really sing the blues. Nat King Cole could swing lightly and give you a refined version of blues, but his true métier was the ballad. Mel Torme could slide across lyrics as though they were butter, and he could scat with the best of them. Johnny Hartman may well have had the best natural voice and clearest interpretation. But Joe Williams had it all. You struggle for comparisons in vain.

The man Basie called “#1 Son” grew up in Chicago and played the clubs with the likes of Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, Andy Kirk, and Hot Lips Page before joining the Basie crew. Basie had hired him to replace the great blues/swing singer Jimmy Rushing, that rotund and affable veteran of the famous Territory bands out of Kansas City in the 30s and 40s. Rushing had a voice that could pierce steel and seemed an impossible act to follow.

When he retired from the Basie Band in 1950, it took four years to find a replacement. By then Basie had constructed the swingingest big band there ever was, and every orchestrated punchy, bluesy note had that perfect “in the pocket” feel. It was a newer, harder driving, more sophisticated band, and, arguably one that no one could have stood up to other than Joe Williams.

The thing about Williams – something that's almost unheard of today – is that he just opened his mouth and sang. There wasn't any body language, no pyrotechnic movement, no arm-slapping gyrations. He just stood there behind the mike and sang. And the room filled with the wonder and awe and rapture of it.

I remember the night I saw him with Basie at a small club in the autumn of 1960, just a year before he left Basie to go it on his own. The room was long but very narrow, at least 100 feet long, but only around 30 feet wide, with a bar running down one long side, tables scattered about, a dance floor the size of a cuff link, and the small bandstand which accommodated the dozen or so musicians tightly jammed together.

The place was packed four deep at the bar and the small tables were jammed with 4 to 6 people each. Basie did one 50-minute set, starting off with his theme, “One O’clock Jump” and several other standard numbers.

Williams strode purposefully onto the small stage in a beautifully cut navy blue mohair suit, straightened the mike and surged into a rocking, pulsating version of Memphis Slim’s “Every Day I Have the Blues”, segued into “Who She Do” and “Goin' to Chicago”, then slowed down for a few ballads, and finished up with a slow-but-powerful “April in Paris”.

After two ten-minute encores – the crowd wouldn't let them go – of “Roll 'em Pete” and “All Right, O.K., You Win” , I couldn't believe the walls were still standing, they seemed to be throbbing with the beat. It's funny, I can't remember the young lady I was with.

Williams could sing Ella Fitzgerald to a draw in a scatting contest, do Rogers and Hart as poignantly as Sinatra, and shout the blues with all the vibrancy and soul of Big Joe Turner or Rushing himself. His was an unmatchable, cross-pollinated art of down-home Delta blues, Kansas City swing, Broadway ballad, joyous early Rhythm 'n Blues, and unforgettable versions of both gospel and protest music.

In his life (1918 – 1999), he seems to have sung with every great jazz musician of the 20th Century. It would also seem that, when Duke Ellington wrote “Doesn't matter if it's sweet or hot/ Just give the music everything you've got”, Joe Williams had it to give, took it to heart, and gave. The range of his abilities has never been approached.

Select Discography

Joe Williams Live (Fantasy)

Joe Williams: Nothin' But the Blues (Delos)

Joe Williams: A Man Ain't Supposed to Cry (Label M)

Joe Williams: Having the Blues Under European Sky (Denon)

The Overwhelming Joe Williams (RCA)

Havin' a Good Time: Joe Williams and Ben Webster (Hyena Records)

Joe Williams: A Swing' Night at Birdland (Roulette)

The Greatest: Count Basie Plays, Joe Williams Sings (Verve)

Joe Williams Every Day: The Best of the Verve Years (Verve)

Joe Williams: At Newport/ Jump for Joy (Collectibles Jazz Classics)

Double Breasted Rules

He's not nine but you get the idea... (from The Trad Library)


DB with unbuttoned button down


The highly evolved Mr Boyer

"It's over yonder -- by that Fry-toe Lay truck. " I looked 'over yonder' to see a Frito Lay truck in a shopping center parking lot somewhere in North Carolina. 'Frytoe Lay.' 'Over yonder.' Language I'm still unsure of but understand.

Beth Hyer gave me a small bag of Frito Lay chips in 4th grade at St Thomas More in Chapel Hill. She was stunning in her plaid jumper and crisply starched white shirt with Peter Pan collar. I wore a blue blazer, dark grey trousers, a white shirt and a navy clip on tie. There was one kid in my class who wore a double breasted blazer. I didn't like him. Not even a little.

It's hard to write about a double breasted blazer. Not because it's too damned hot to even think about it but, like a middle aged purchase of a Porsche Boxster, it comes with a whole lotta baggage. The rules are simple: Navy only. Peak lapel. Side vent. Six button. Never with a button down collar shirt. Good rules. Nothing is more vacuous than a notch lapel DB blazer -- unless it has a center vent and comes in maroon. One shudders at the thought.

A small detail overlooked by ready made retailers is the required button hole on each peak lapel. For some unknown reason, I'm guessing cost, ready made double breasted usually has only one button hole. This is as criminal as a notch lapel to the cognoscenti.

A simple fix is to have the retailer add a button hole to the other lapel. It's not easy and they'll try to talk to you out of it, but stand your ground or go someplace else. Chicago's Michigan Avenue Brooks Brothers did it for me and they did a good job. The head tailor also told me what a pain in the ass it was but he assured me he understood my desire for balance.

A friend lives in Los Angeles and he's mastered the not so balanced West Coast casual look. Sockless & Gucci-ed, open collared & waistcoated, he runs every day and looks 10 years younger than his age. He also has custom shirts made with double cuffs, button down collar and a monogram on the pocket. And while he likes to wear this shirt with a DB blazer, I blame this lapse in judgement on L.A. and not him.

There is an old rule about never wearing a button down collar with double breasted anything. Once aware of the rule, it's easy to see the clash between soaring peak lapels and a constricted collar anchored with buttons. It's just wrong. Spread collar is preferred even if it's open which the English like to do. But what about a unbuttoned-button down collar?

The highly evolved know they're breaking a rule so they leave the collar unbuttoned. This is language to those in the know that you know, you know, what's going on. The DB is complicated language.

Yanks prefer the blazer buttoned up to the Brits who prefer to wear it unbuttoned. Wearing it unbuttoned in the States or buttoned up in London leads to more language problems. It's another language I understand but am never sure of. This much I do know -- Never give a double breasted blazer to a nine year old.

GQ's Ireland (1962)

GQ Magazine, April 1962

While GQ seemed to be the smaller and more intellectually challenged little brother of Esquire, and I've waded thru years and years of both….GQ, for a time, stood on firm turf in the early to mid '60s... both visually and in the writing.  This April issue celebrated Ireland and it has a moody and dark attitude.  I love it.

An GQ is not easy to find and this came from a bound volume so scanning was a challenge.  However, inspirational ideas, fashion jargon for 'stealing,' are everywhere despite the binding.  Not only in unique layout, photography and stories but in the apparel itself.  The nubby stripe shirt reminds me of nubby silk Rooster tie stripes -- A mitre madras shirt reminds me of…nothing. It's unlike anything I've ever seen and I'd kill to have one today.  A rain coat with hacking pockets and sleeve turn ups?  I'd buy that.  I'm even saving up for a Jill Gill - - the NYC artist of all those beautiful whiskeys.

I know fashion designers dig thru these old mags but do fashion editors?  I'm guessing most do not.  And for the very first time, during NY Fashion Week, my hunch was confirmed from widely divergent sources regarding what we'll call,  "Fashion editor illiteracy."   "He didn't know shawl from peak."  "Zip knowledge of apparel history."  "I had to explain canvas construction." "All he liked was black." You get the idea.

I sat in front of Nick Sullivan at Esquire and in a couple minutes he showed me a 1950's Mac hanging on the back of his office door and pointed out the construction suggesting it might even be my size.  We discussed the military influence of clothing and why stealing unit insignia was not only vulgar but unnecessary.  And sure, there was the 24 hour "shoe-cam" which was monitoring what he wore on his feet everyday…but the man was fashion literate.  That much you could not argue.

G. Bruce Boyer bemoaned the GQ of today doing a 20 page spread on jeans and t-shirts.  It's what they know, Bruce.    But I'm guessing there's an archive somewhere in that GQ office and I'd like to suggest it would be a lot more fun to go thru than the PR pitches.

"Gone is the romance that was so divine…"

The second you see it - It hits you.  I was last here for the Ivy exhibit but the space has grown up.  Men and women are in residence having nudged the college kids into storage.  The elegance of this space is simple.  I run into a young man whom I respect immensely and he tells me he thinks it, 'uncompleted.' I tell him it only gives way, as it should,  to the glorious respect of the cloth.   Beautifully cut... for men and women both.  It is damned near... other worldly and I don't think I'll ever forget it.

The Fashion Institute of Technology is not the kind of place you'd suspect has a museum --  Especially in New York City.  It stands at 27th and 7th Avenue looking more like a concrete federal office building than a fashion institute.  The museum entrance is on the south side of 27th, usually blocked off, adding to the federal feel of the place.  Inside, a flight of stairs down, is an exhibit area darker than the inside of a goat.  A quiet calm settled in as the 1930s stood, and sat, in front of me -- Men and women and the clothing they wore and, I like to think, took off each other.

Co-curated by the museum's, Patricia Mears and writer, G. Bruce Boyer, the clothing hails from the 1930s. It was a time of economic and political, 'shit hitting the fan'  but as Boyer has often written, it was, despite the uncertainty,  the golden decade for apparel.  I've always said that today's popularity of menswear has much to do with our own economic hard times.  When you're broke and out of a job,  there's something to be said for getting dressed up.

Bespoke is everywhere in the exhibit.  In that respect, it belongs in a museum's humidity controlled steel locker, wrapped in acid free paper and tucked far from the public's oily fingers.  Sorry, I once worked as a museum technician but as clothes mad as I am, I couldn't help but admire how interesting the women's clothing was... it's so alive.  Silk clings to a breast and falls off a nipple.  Shape forms around a tight waist and bottom while a hip is cocked and a long finger seems to point to my crotch.  Wasn't there a very bad '80s   movie about a mannequin coming to life?

Menswear saw both the Italian and British represented generously by loans from Rubinacci Napoli London House and Savile Row's Davies and Son.  Luca Rubinacci and I stand together admiring a trench coat from his grandfather's company which began in the early '30s.  I point to the gorge of the collar and Luca tells me a story about his father's obsession with collecting vintage London House for a family museum.

Handed down over three generations, his father acquires a Rubinacci white tie jacket made in the '30s and most recently owned by a circus clown who patched it with bandana cloth. Luca tells his father to restore it but his father refuses telling his son, "I don't want what it was --  I want what it became." So do I.

Elegance in an Age of Crisis:  Fashions of the 1930s
Fashion Institute of Technology
Exhibit runs from 7 February 2020 to 19 April 2020