GQ Personal Style: Gay Talese

In celebration of his newest book, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold and Other Essays, Gay Talese was the subject of a fascinating and rather comprehensive interview in the latest GQ UK. Famous not only for his literary endeavors but also his career as a journalist, and renown as a professor and uncompromising sartorial splendor, Talese offers some noteworthy insights into his past, his creative process, and how to dress like a million bucks even if you’re on a budget. Check out the full interview over at GQ.

I was interested in style from the earliest days of my youth, when I began to observe and judge the style of my parents. Both were professionally engaged in the world of fashion: my father, a fastidious tailor who considered himself an artist with a needle and thread, and my mother, who ran a dress shop in my hometown that represented the best in women’s fashion in our community – an island resort called Ocean City on the southern tip of New Jersey.

Buy the best you can even if you can’t afford it. I learned early, being the son of a remarkably prideful tailor, that one cannot put a price on quality. You buy quality and don’t worry about the price tag pinned to the garment. There really is not that much difference in price from the very best to the middle-ranged commodity. If you buy the best, it will last longer, and it will also look good longer – it will hold up, the shape of the garment will not lose its shape and how it hangs on your body. The material lasts longer, the buttons do not pop off, the lining does not become unhinged, the shoulders retain their shape etc etc. I now have my suits custom-tailored for me, although I still in some cases buy suits off the rack (at Brioni, at Zegna, at Armani, at smaller boutiques as well) and then I might take them to a tailor for moderations with reference to a perfect fit or some other minor adjustment.

The advantages of a bespoke suit? It begins with selection of the material. I go to my tailor – as I mentioned, my father was my first tailor, and then my cousins belonging to Antonio Cristiani’s family in Paris – and select from swatches of material the fabric I want to have shaped into my newest suit. I determine what it will look like before I buy the material. I imagine its shape. Is it going to be double-breasted, or a single-breasted with a vest. Will the vest have lapels? Will the trousers have pleats? Will there be cuffs or not? What else? What else? What else? I am thinking all this through, even making a small design on paper, and then I discuss it with the tailor. Later, after he has crafted the outfit along the lines we have described- it may take a month or more since our first meeting – he will summon me for the first fitting. This will lead to other alterations, of course; perhaps there will be four or five fittings before the garment is ready for me to walk it out of the store and call it my own.

The biggest style mistake men make is selecting suits that are like other suits they already own. There is a sameness about men, by and large, when it comes to clothing. Look in the closet of the average corporate executive or publishing tycoon – let’s take Rupert Murdoch, for example – and what do you find? A row of suits that pretty much look like one another. A row of “business suits”, dark in color, wearable to the office for executive gatherings and conferences, and also wearable to a dinner party afterwards. Distinguished? No. Just serviceable.

You can dress well on a limited budget. It is a matter of how you appropriate your money. I don’t spend much on anything that doesn’t matter to me. Lots of people will think nothing of spending $3,000 for a new set of golf clubs, or $10,000 for a sloop, or $60,000 for a swimming pool that they’ll use four times a summer. I think nothing of spending $5,000 for a suit, or $2,000 for a pair of hand-made shoes.