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“There are just two classes of men in the world, men with suits whose buttons are just sewn onto the sleeve, just some kind of cheapie decoration, or—yes!—men who can unbutton the sleeve at the wrist because they have real buttonholes and the sleeve really buttons up.”

The Secret Vice, by Tom Wolfe

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In 1952, a promising young pitching prospect out of Washington and Lee University showed up for a tryout with the New York Giants (the baseball Giants, that is– they hadn’t yet decamped for San Francisco).  The prospect made a decent showing: three innings, three men on base, no runs scored.  Good screwball, nice sinker, not much heat.  “If somebody had offered me a Class D professional contract,” says the prospect– whose name was Tom Wolfe– many decades later, “I would have gladly put off writing for a couple of decades.”  But the Giants cut Wolfe after two days, and he became a giant of another kind. (Via)

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From the desk of Contributing Editor, Eli M. Getson–

Recently, in the wake of the recession, Wall Street greed, and the wreckage of Lehman Brother, Merrill Lynch, Bear Sterns et al, the term “Master of The Universe” keeps getting thrown around to describe these fallen titans of Lower Manhattan.  Whenever I hear this term I always think of the man who penned it, my nominee for the TSY Style Hall of Fame, Tom Wolfe.

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1970s, New York City — Author Tom Wolfe — Image by © Bob Adelman/Corbis

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Cultural Chronicler is another term that also gets thrown around a lot– I mean one well reviewed novel and Bret Easton Ellis was the voice of his generation (I remember I lived through it), but few American wordsmiths can actually lay claim to writing about the people and events that shaped a lot of the last 50 years of the 20^th Century as a largely inside observer, and in the process coining some phrases that became part of the popular lexicon.

Tom Wolfe always managed to get underneath the surface of events and reveal the most primal of human emotions-greed, arrogance, courage, humor, longing-and come up with phrases like “Radical Chic”, “The Me Generation”, “Social X-Ray”, “The Right Stuff”, and one of his favorites “Good Ol Boy” which he used to describe the racecar driver Junior Johnson.

Other than being an avid reader of Wolfe’s work I have a somewhat personal connection.  For a few years we lived in the same NYC neighborhood and while I can never say I spoke to him, he was impossible to miss.  A tall man, with an aquiline nose Wolfe was always decked in an immaculate white suit, high collar Jermyn Street custom dress shirt, splendid tie, pocket square that screamed dandy, white shoes, and occasionally white hat.  His style was very much like his writing, elegant but with a sense of humor and irony.  I mean who dresses like that anymore!  Yet Tom Wolfe looked crisp on the hottest of days.

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Tom Wolfe — the American journalist, pop critic and novelist, 1980. — Image by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

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The thing I have always admired about Wolfe’s writing is he always seemed to hit the mood of the era he was documenting– The New Frontier enthusiasm of the early space program in The Right Stuff, the sixties East Side liberalism in his now epic account of Leonard Bernstein’s party for the Black Panthers in Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing The Flak Catcher’s, and of course the hubris of the Wall Street of the mid 1980’s in The Bonfire of The Vanities. If you look at a lot of the photos of Wolfe, he has a wry smile– disdainfully ironic and somewhat amused.  Not surprising, here was a guy who wrote about people who took themselves way too seriously at times, and ultimately some of them fell from spectacular heights.  He also chronicled some of the most diverse strains of American culture– Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, NASA during the space race, The Black Panthers, New York Socialites, and was able to make you feel like you lived and travelled in that world.  I’m curious if Tom Wolfe will write another classic about the last decade and the financial crisis that ended it.  I know he’ll get the tone of the times just right and be immaculately attired the entire time.

Eli M. Getson

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Oct. 1966, corner of Haight and Ashbury streets, San Francisco — Author Tom Wolfe talks with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead and the band’s manager Rock Scully. — Image by © Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS

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NEH Chairman Bruce Cole discusses fashion with Tom Wolfe–

Cole: One final question. As well known as you are as a writer, you cut a figure in and out of literary circles for your white suits. A friend of mine wanted to know if Vincent Nicolosi is still your tailor.

Wolfe: Yes. In England, you’re not supposed to tell the name of your tailor, but I want to make sure that the tailors flourish.

Mr. Nicolosi is a perfectionist in details. He does his own sewing for jackets. There’s a million stitches. And he does nice little things with curves on the end of cuffs and so forth. He’s very attentive to details. But he’s much more flexible than British tailors. The British tailors will tell you that they will do anything for you, but they won’t. They have an idea of what a suit should look like and that’s it.

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1988, Paris, France — American writer Tom Wolfe — Image by © Sophie Bassouls/Sygma/Corbis

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Cole: When I lived in Italy as a graduate student, nobody bought suits. You’d have your suits made. That was absolutely incredible for me.

Wolfe: I think today, given how much suits cost in the department store or a boutique, you might as well have them made. For a little more, you’re going to get exactly what you want.

My father lived in a small town in Virginia and there was no such thing as a department store. He was born in 1892. All men had their suits made.

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Tom Wolfe Image by © Sam Falk/New York Times/Getty

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Cole: Why is fashion important? What does it tell us?

Wolfe: Every man and every woman is equally fixated on fashion. Men who would bridle at that suggestion are usually men who want to fit in in whatever milieu they want to be in. They do not want to stand out in any way, shape, or form. That’s just as true in the stands at the stock car races as it might be at Sullivan and Cromwell, the law firm.

Somebody like myself, perhaps, stands out on purpose with just minor variations on the conventional. My suits are conventionally cut. They just happen to be white. The same with shoes, everything else.

I feel it’s to a writer’s advantage, since he sells a mass-produced product called a book, to catch attention any way he can. This is not shared by my fellow writers, you understand. But you’ll notice how few writers are willing to appear on the back of a book with a necktie on. That’s a bohemian fashion that’s supposed to show one way or another you’re thumbing your nose at convention. Then it becomes a convention itself. If I saw one more writer with an open shirt, the wind blowing through his hair, I was going to stop buying books. They’ve calmed down a little bit, but still the tie is anathema.

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1966, New York City — Tom Wolfe at Leo Castelli’s gallery under a Roy Lichtenstein painting. — Image by © Bob Adelman/Corbis

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