Paradox of dress

[Matt Deckard]

So what's the deal with old guys in their 60's or 70's calling me a gangster? I know the guys in the 1960's scene get called Blues Brothers all the time by the older crowd as well. Some see me and say I used to wear that, and others say "look, it's al capone".

... I have pictures you know, You older fellas once used to dress like this yourselves.

What's your take? Have they forgotten?

 

[flat-top]

I get that, and also get a ton of Zoot Suit comments, although I don't wear Zoot Suits. Maybe the styles we're wearing were worn by the "cooler" guys of their generation..Gangsters or Zoot Suiters etc.

 

[herringbonekid]

unimaginative people with a narrow frame of reference.

 

[Brad Bowers]

It's the other way around for me

It's usually folks a lot younger than myself that call me a gangster. Just yesterday, a young woman working at the local Wally World asked me, "Are you supposed to look like a gangster?" I replied, "No, just a well-dressed man."

It's the older folks that usually give me compliments.

Brad

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

Guys in their 60s were born in the '40s. They didn't grow up wearing '30s styles.

 

[flat-top]

My mom was a little kid in the late 40's/ early 50's, and she tells me I dress like her older brother who was 20 years older (yes, Grandma was busy!). He was apparently known as the neighborhood heartthrob/ hoodlum. I guess the older folks in question would have to be very old to relate to our style!

 

[BellyTank]

My vintage brother tells me I dress like him- but I know I dress better-
although I still take it as a compliment- he doesn't know any better.

B
T

 

[Rosie]

Throwing in my two cents

I agree with Tony. My mom's in her 60s but grew up mainly wearing the style of the '50s. Whenever I dress in vintage (a lot these days) she always comments on how I look like her mom. Sometimes I ask her opinion on clothes, hair makeup, etc. and she has to think about her mom, and older sister, who was 15 years her senior.

 

[jake_fink]

Guys in their 60s and 70s may not have been old enough to dress the way you do now. My old man was born in 1929 so his formative years, his fashion years, were the fifties and into the sixties. My old man was stylin' in his day, but never, ever, ever wore a hat. His look was all about the hair. Trousers were pegged or drain pipes, lapels were narrow and nothing was cooler than a Sammy Taft raincoat when the stars were shining.

 

[Robert Conway]

It's usually folks a lot younger than myself that call me a gangster. Just yesterday, a young woman working at the local Wally World asked me, "Are you supposed to look like a gangster?" I replied, "No, just a well-dressed man."

It's the older folks that usually give me compliments.

Brad

Nicely played, sir.
:eusa_clap

 

[Robert Conway]

So what's the deal with old guys in their 60's or 70's calling me a gangster? I know the guys in the 1960's scene get called Blues Brothers all the time by the older crowd as well. Some see me and say I used to wear that, and others say "look, it's al capone".

... I have pictures you know, You older fellas once used to dress like this yourselves.

What's your take? Have they forgotten?

I think a lot of it has to do with the movies and how they shape the public perception of a time period. During the past few decades the gangster film has become the mainstream reference point for the 1930's era. So, almost automatically anyone with a lid and a suit is a gangster. I suspect that it really is the fedora that causes people to make that connection. People still wear suits, but rarely hats. The average Joe or Jane associates a fedora with the 30's/40's. Their main reference material for that period comes from movies and gangsters are the subject of many of them.

 

[Senator Jack]

Posted by Brad Bowers:
...a young woman working at the local Wally World asked me, "Are you supposed to look like a gangster?" I replied, "No, just a well-dressed man."

Zing! Okay, Brad, now I have to steal that one and try it out on the streets of NY, which, by the way, you should have been on two weeks ago. You better not miss the next event.[bad]

What Feraud and I found humorous was that when we had all of us together at the event, passersby thought it perfectly all right to keep asking us, 'What are you people doing?' Yet I shouldn't think anyone would ask a biker gang, 'Are you guys making a movie,' or a group of Hasidics, 'Why are you all in costume?' But we had to explain to everyone why we were dressed the way we were, which really doesn't need any explanation. At one point, after answering the usual questions, Feraud just shrugged his shoulders at me in wonderment and said, "I'm just going to go around asking people "What's in your pocket?'"

What annoys me about the Blues Brothers comment (yes, we've had this discussion before) is that I get it from people who should know better. A black woman made it to me the other day, and I really wanted to tell her she should be ashamed of herself for not knowing this look was stolen from her own people. That two white comics have become the reference point, the icons, of and for blues and soul, is a national embarassment. I cringe every time I hear it.

Regards,

Senator Jack