Yesterday's post about the Concours d’Elegance triggered an email exchange with a reader who mentioned wearing raspberry linen trousers with his white summer dinner jacket, and I was contrasting that preppy vignette with my mental picture of how most of the attendees at the Concours will be dressed. Not that shorts, sandals and a tee shirt aren't practical (though they will be very impractical at Pebble Beach if the fog comes in), but they are definitely light in the elegance department.
Which brought my mind to this Leslie Saalburg illustration that's about as elegant as a man sitting on sand can be on a summer's day. I think Bentley (one of the Concours partners) should strike a blow for elegance and give an ensemble like this to every Continental GTC purchaser. I know some Bentley buyers could use it because I saw a guy wearing a really bad pair of jeans pumping gas into his GTC last week. As the saying goes, there oughta be a law.
Have a great weekend.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Car Watching Clothes
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7 comments:
Thank you for the posts Will. I own and show antique cars, and like most things in life how you dress to a show has a direct relationship to how you will be treated and the access you will have. I'm more likely to open the door to one of my cars to allow a stranger to look around for someone wearing a sport coat than cargo shorts and polo.
I guess on a subliminal level it tells me that if they pay attention and care about how they dress they'll do the same for my cars.
At least he's not wearing a tie!
That's a matter of opinion, depending on what you call that silk around his neck. :-)
Leslie Saalburg was a terrific fashion illustrator who also specialized in automobile illustrations. George Frazier said of Saalburg "He has been both an influence on, and an example of, the best practice of the art of wearing men's clothes".
About 45 years ago my two uncles, Doug and Morris, and I piled into Doug's shiny black Olds and headed up north to the St. Jovite Formula One Grand Prix. Upon arrival we settled down on a grassy knoll with the picnic lunch to watch Graham Hill and other soon to be lengends whizz by.
Doug, having bad knees, perched on his leather and chrome foldable pogo stick stool. Even with good knees he wouldn't have sprawled out on the grass. He was wearing white linen slacks, what appeared to be tassled high top polished pumps, white spats ( that I still have ), some kind of grey starched shirt with cravat and a coarse weave navy jacket. No hat - he liked to show off a full head of white hair. Of course his teeth were yellow from years of pipe chewing and smoking.
Have a good weekend Will. RB
That's a great memory RB. Thanks for sharing.
I would probably call it an ascot (cravat) or a scarf. In my lexicon, ties dangle out front ;)
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