News
Dressing for Success Coming Back in Style?
AMC’s Mad Men TV show is thought to be giving better dressers a boost, according to a New York Times Fashion & Style article.
The show features well-dressed advertising executives battling over the sell. The article draws a correlation between age and style. “Today the well-off 55-year-old is likely to be the worst-dressed man in the room, wearing a saggy T-shirt and jeans. The cash-poor 25-year-old is in a natty sport coat and skinny tie. Young men are embracing the “Mad Men” elements of style in a way that the older men never did, still don’t ad just won’t. The result is a kind of rift emerging between the generation of men in their 20s and 30s and those in their late 40s and 50s for whom a suit was not merely square, but cubed, and caring about how one looked was effeminate.”
Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at NPD Group, a retail sales tracking firm boiled it down further. “The older generation, say 45-plus, look upon success as being able to dress down. They think being able to wear jeans is the epitome of achievement.
“But the younger generation is looking at getting dressed up and making their mark,” Cohen continued. “It’s a real generation gap here. I teach at three different colleges, and I am amazed how dressed up some of the students are. Girls still come in their hoodies and pajamas, but boys come in their suits.”
Russell Smith, author of Men’s Style: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Dress, quipped, “It’s these young guys rebelling against their boomer dads. But it’s very amusing and paradoxical tat the new anti-parental paradigm involves a pinstripe suit and a pocket square.”
DLI FIGHTS MISINFORMATION WITH FACTS
“Drycleaning can reduce the life of an item by 50% or more.”
This major piece of misinformation lay hidden in a seemingly innocuous article in the recent American Laundry News. The author meant only to impart a list of ways to keep up appearances and dress well. In truth, the rest of the article is quite sound advice for good grooming practices, but that line about drycleaning wearing out clothes is simply not true.
Author Ken Tyler is a former representative for the Association of Linen Management on the Clean Executive Committee. He is also a mid 1970s graduate of DLI’s School of Drycleaning Technology when it was located in Joliet, Illinois. When asked about the statement he said he thought he’d heard that drycleaning shortens the life of garments from DLI’s lead instructor from that period, Pappy Reeves. Mr. Taylor later acknowledged that there was no justification for the 50% figure.
DLI CEO Bill Fisher spotted the offending line in the article and asserts that “it is inconceivable to me that Pappy would have ever said something like that.” Fisher immediately responded to the article, pointing out two key areas.
In his response, Fisher first explained that drycleaning does not shorten the life of clothes. “As we note in our DLI Consumer Brochures, ‘in more than 100 years of textile research and testing, DLI has never seen any indication… (of drycleaning) wearing out fabrics during their useful lifespan,” Fisher wrote.
Secondly, Fisher pointed out that solid materials left behind when the water portion of perspiration evaporates can cause problems with garments. “All of the ’stuff’ in [perspiration] stays behind when the water evaporates. However, not having a garment professionally cleaned on a regular basis can result in an unusable or ruined garment with permanent stains, holes, odors, or fabric discoloration,” he wrote.
The assertion that drycleaning wears out garments has been a thorn in the industry’s side for decades. Where the myth originated is unknown.