Old School - Personal Style · Real Men Real Style Community

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1d (edited) • OOTD 👔

Old School - Personal Style

I was getting ready for my weekly Wednesday 6:30 AM men’s group while my wife was still sleeping. So as I grabbed 501 Levi’s I wore yesterday and in my dark closet put together my OOTD by iPhone flashlight, I was contemplating my personal style. Over the past couple of day’s I’ve blathered on about the terms old money and preppy and how each is fraught with the danger reducing Classic Timeless Menswear to merely another fashion category. Antonio’s recent video I spoke about yesterday did a brilliant job of describing why “ old money” style is so much more than just a fashion term:

https://www.skool.com/rmrs/mia-culpa-antonio?p=9d9bbd8d

Rather than create a name for my personal style myself, I choose to borrow from Harold Powell for whom I worked in my 20’s. He private labeled his casual wear Old School and I remember him telling me why that best described what he was doing and how that differed from other stores in the South Central USA. Harold was a product of The University of Oklahoma -Established Dec. 19, 1890 -17 years before statehood.

https://journals.shareok.org/soonermagazine/article/download/11147/11146

https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=HA028

Like many other state universities, the school song and school colors were “borrowed” from east coast colleges. (Boomer Sooner is the Yale Boola Boola song for the Bulldogs and OU’s Crimson and Cream are Harvard’s colors). Harold worked for the McCalls brothers ( a firm I worked for before Harold’s ) but his mother owned the building they were in and when they moved he opened his own shop in their old location in 1948 across Boyd Street from the OU campus. He chose to go a different direction in styling than most west coast clothing oriented stores in Oklahoma and focused on the East Coast, a bold and risky move at that time. His philosophy was to adopt styles that were more perpetual and rather than have a vast array of colors and designs (wide and shallow), he would provide an extremely limited design and limited colors with a lot of minute details (narrow and deep) Explained further - all his coats had a 3/2 roll and all his trousers had deep double forward pleates. Beyond the tweeds in fall or shantung silks or seersuckers for summer, every brand was offered in Navy, multiple shades of Grey, tans, and olives. Ties were classic stripes and foulards primarily and shirtings were mainly oxfords with some stripes and tattersalls. Footwear was of very high quality but clearly defined traditional styles.

The art came in composing outfits from this relatively limited palette inspired by a proven array of Ivy League styling that gave one the ability to construct powerfully impactful combinations with subtle tweaks. This is the basis of what I try to do. When I moved to Richmond VA one of the things I gleaned from there was the folks who actually came from “old money”, wore their Classic Timeless Menswear oxford shirts to work with frayed collars, worn out khakis and beat up ties and drove their big American station wagons with the fake woody sides to work. This was the antithesis of the flashy new and latest looks I had just left coming from the oil bust in the South Central USA. I say this last part because it made an impact on my mid twenties sensibilities. These so called Old Money Virginians showed their respect for timeless styled clothing that never waxed and waned to the folly of fashion.

I’ve spoken many times how I view my self as a perpetual student of Classic Timeless Menswear and as such I figured out in my dark closet this am that Old School is the perfect term to describe my personal style.

OOTD

MTM blazer (I chose a blue suit pattern and stole the Harold’s Logo brass buttons off an old blazer to put them on this coat and make it a blazer)
thirty year old Polo tattersall that I had the frayed collar flipped to keep it functioning
45 -48 year old classic navy green rep tie bought at McCalls 1978-1980?
Reversible grey seersucker/tattersall cotton pocket square
Levi’s button front shrink to fit 501s in black
Pendleton socks
Martin Dingman (he had been an accessory designer for Cole Haan for years) bridle loafer and belt
Weneger field watch and blue/green NATO band