A Concise Men's Lookbook

Brian Jones & the Birds

2011-02-01T00:02:00.000-05:00

Anita Pallenberg

Francoise Hardy

via Nerd Boyfriend

Donyale Luna

Nico

Penelope Tree

via Ghost Parties

Scott Schumann (aka The Sartorialist)

2011-01-13T08:41:00.001-05:00

Watch Mr. Schumann on the prowl here.

Vince Guaraldi: Skateboarder, etc.

2010-12-19T12:46:00.016-05:00

"The sight of this short, bespectacled and mustachioed man, clad in old sweater, khaki pants and tennis shoes, flying down the sidewalk followed by whooping children, almost caused a traffic jam on San Rafael's Court Street."

--Mary Leydecker, Marin Independent Journal, 1965

Danzig

2010-11-14T15:11:00.003-05:00

Glenn Danzig (5'3"). See also, The Misfits, Samhain.

It was all

about

the hair.

Just like that other guy.

Thanks to my friend midcentury mozzer for turning me onto that last pic.

Nick Wooster

2010-10-14T23:27:00.005-04:00

For a ripping good yarn


Prepidemic

Read H. Ryder Haggard's

Stockholm Street Style

King Solomon's Mines.

Prepidemic

But for modern-day Adventure,

Citizen Couture

Follow this 21st-Century Allan Quartermain

Bill Gentle for GQ

Into the Wild.

Bill Gentle for GQ

P.S. Really. Victorian adventure novels won't steer you wrong.

Bill Gentle for GQ

Neither will Nick.

Marc Bolan, 1965

2010-09-15T00:33:00.002-04:00

No, you won't

fool the

children of the

revolution

via The Ballrooms of Mars on Flickr

Jason Wu

2010-09-10T21:24:00.000-04:00

Jason Wu in his NYC studio, photographed by Max Vadukul for Vogue's September issue.

via Jason Wu's Blog

Kanye West

2010-09-01T22:22:00.000-04:00

"Just looking at my closet, wool suits, fedoras, trenches and furs… I’m bout to put fall in the hospital … Ima hurt the season"

— Kanye West’s Twitter (via This Fits)

Photo by The Sartorialist

Photo by Jak & Jil

Lil Wayne: Keepin' It Lil

2010-06-10T19:59:00.006-04:00

How do you pull off ultra-baggy hip-hop steez if you're a short man?

If you're Lil Wayne [5'6"] you pair baggy, low-slung jeans with comparatively form-fitting shirts. So while the pants shorten his legs, he's also lengthening his torso. He also favors simple T-shirts and tanks (or no shirt at all), which further reinforce the lengthening effect, and draw attention to his slim, athletic physique.

You've got to give it to the guy. While Lil Bow Wow and Lil Romeo dropped the diminutive descriptors in their names, Wayne maintains. Props for keepin' it Lil.

1968: Malcom McDowell in if….

2010-05-25T22:04:00.003-04:00

Malcom McDowell [5’8”] in his debut role: Lindsay Anderson’s 1968 feature film if....

Rushmore by way of Clockwork Orange. The violence in the final 10 minutes hasn't aged well in the days of actual school violence -- but otherwise, a decent flick. Malcolm's '60s British prep-school get-up is still on point. As well as the lovely Christine Noonan. And that sweet-looking BSA motorbike he steals.

Thom Yorke

2010-05-19T20:35:00.006-04:00

Thom Yorke [5'5"] and much taller photog

Been a Radiohead fan since day one. Despite the odds at the time. I was big into punk in high school, and “Creep” was in heavy rotation on that much-hated (but secretly watched) bastion of corporate rock, MTV.

I liked it. Sort of in an ironic, tongue-in-cheek way. But I liked it. It had a certain I-don't-know-what. My good friend Corey went so far as to dub that single over and over again on both sides of a 60-minute cassette. Half ironic, half serious. I think Side B was the ironic side.

Another friend and I spent a lot of time trying to find another halfway decent song off of Pablo Honey to play on our show at the local college's radio station (that broadcast from a puny 10-watt tower). Pretty hard to do. “Anyone Can Play Guitar” was the closest contender, but it paled. One-hit-wonders...

And then freshman year of college: The Bends. All the potential in that first single was fully realized -- and then some. It’s still my favorite album.

Saw them live with my new girlfriend at the Worcester Centrum, April 15, 1997. Spiritualized opened. Radiohead played most of their new album OK Computer, but the best thing I've ever heard them do was the OK Computerization of a lot of Bends songs.

I snagged a UK work visa after college and headed to Oxford, England, with my friend from the radio show. Kid A had just come out. I didn’t mind that they’d traded mind-bending riffage and smart lyrics for repetitive bloops and garbled haikus. The ghostly monotony was a great soundtrack to the barren, wintry English landscape I watched pass by the windows on many bus trips through the Oxfordshire countryside.

While I was over there, my roommate and I saw a few shows at a club around the corner from our flat – The Fall, The Soft Boys. The club was called The Zodiac. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it’s where they shot the video for “Creep.”

Amnesiac seemed like an collection of Kid A outtakes. It just didn’t go anyplace new. But I caught them live again when I returned home to the states. Big racetrack in Rhode Island. The live treatment – droning, extended jams, a lot of tambourine, Thom shaking his ass – and suddenly it clicked. Radiohead was now a hippie band for the 21st century. Not sayin' that's a bad thing.

After that, I lost interest. The last few albums have been OK, nothing more. And I’ve tired of their themes (the banality/horror of modern life/love).

But I still break out The Bends every now and then. And man, what a voice that guy has, huh?

Leo Castelli, Pope of Pop

2010-05-12T01:07:00.000-04:00

Leo Castelli [5'6"] had a reputation for being a dapper dresser. He also had a rep for being the man who single-handedly "revolutionized the status of the artist in America and changed all the rules of the art market," according to Leo and His Circle, the forthcoming bio by Annie Cohen-Solal.

Here's a take by some artist buddy of his:

Who says short guys shouldn't wear double-breasted suits?

Google Image Search the guy. In almost every shot, he's either off-center at the bottom of the frame...

Sitting down while famous painters tower over him...

Surrounding himself with the very tall...

Behind, beneath or otherwise dwarfed by one of his gallery's large works of art...

Or trying his best to appear shorter than even himself...

"I don't like it when people say that I'm diminutive. I'm small, but not diminutive."

--Leo Castelli

Tony from Michael Apted's 21 Up

2010-05-10T22:59:00.003-04:00

Title shot from the third installment of Michael Apted's documentary series Up! If you squint hard enough, Tony's sitting in the upper right corner of the 'one.'

Peter: You haven’t changed.
Tony: Don’t you think so? I think I got bigger…

Michael: You’re very short. Has that been much trouble?
Tony: Well, a bird said to me the other day, she says: ‘Ain’t you small?’ So I said ‘But you’re ugly; at least I can grow.’ What can they say to that? They can’t say nuffink, can they?

Tony: I’m a pest. I don’t mean to be a nuisance to the other patrons at the track. They don’t want to see a little boy nipping between their feet, running, putting a bet on. But that’s how you gotta do it: Just keep on and on and on, drive ‘em mad and they’ll go: ‘Oh, go on then. Get rid of ‘im.’

Tony: All I understand is dogs, prices, girls, Knowledge, roads, streets, squares... and mum and dad in love. That’s all I understand, and that’s all I wanna understand.