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Fred
Astaire: A Kind of Magic
by Richard
Torregrossa
A heavenly hoofer, a dashing dresser, Fred
Astaire still thrills audiences today. Here, for the firs time, are some
of the legendary dancer’s most guarded secrets.
He was lean and lithe, dapper as any London dandy,
a flash of light on film like spilled mercury. The laws of gravity
didn’t seem to apply to him. It was as if he invented his own rules, a
man of movement, free as a sprite, unhindered by the clanky grind of
joints and bones encased in flesh, the assemblage that keeps most of us
earthbound, rooted to our seats as awed spectators or wishful
participants.
Fred Astaire had a rare gift—the ability to uplift
us, to take us with him when he danced. The very air seemed to embrace
him and when he left the ground he imparted a joy that is still felt by
today’s audiences, whether they are fans of Hollywood’s classic films or
members of the hip-hop generation.
Andre Benjamin, also known as Andre 3000, a hip-hop
artist as well as an actor, made GQ’s list of the 50 most stylish men.
Benjamin has often credited Astaire as an inspiration not only as a
dancer but as a sartorial model.
At first, this might seem incongruous. What could
Fred Astaire and a rapper have in common? Well, quite a lot actually. To
begin with, they both share a talent for mixing patterns, now a lost
art.
In “The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle” (1939)
Astaire wears a carnation in the buttonhole of his jacket, a pocket
handkerchief, a tight-check tie, a checked vest, and a striped shirt. It
sounds like a dizzying array of elements, but they blend together with
an effortless harmony, no easy feat, and one not lost on Benjamin.
“I love contrasting patterns/colors,” Benjamin told
Vanity Fair when he made their best-dressed list, “and wearing
pocket squares gives me another chance to freak it just when you thought
the ensemble was perfect.”
Despite the generational differences, they also
share a fondness for another menswear detail: pleated pants.
“Pleats,” said Benjamin, “ makes trousers more
exciting to the eyes. They break things up a bit.”
Astaire had the physical grace of an athlete and
the eye of an artist that enabled him to blend not only colors and
patterns, but also textures, such as silks and worsteds, tweeds and Sea
Island cottons, most famously in his use of a silk scarf instead of a
leather belt to hold up his trousers.
When he was making movies in Hollywood’s
haberdashery heyday—the 1930s and ‘40s—the competition was intense.
Clark Gable, David Niven, Gary Cooper, Ronald Coleman, George Brent, and
Adolph Menjou were just some of the stylish gents he was up against, so
he was always on the lookout for the sartorial nuance that would satisfy
his own aesthetic development and at the same time distinguish him from
his well-dressed peers.
An example of this can be found in a chance
encounter he had with one of the most influential menswear mavericks of
the 1930s.
One night after a performance in the London play
“Stop Firing” he was visited in his dressing room by the Prince of
Wales, aka, The Duke of Windsor, who was, as always, beautifully
dressed.
Astaire, never one to miss an opportunity to learn
from his betters, studied The Prince’s evening tails and took particular
note of his very smart waistcoat.
The next morning he hurried to the Prince’s tailor,
Hawes & Curtis, who also made the Prince’s shirts and suits, and asked
them if they could make him a waistcoat just like the one worn by The
Prince.
But they refused, explaining that they couldn’t
possibly be an accomplice to what they considered to be a sort of raid
on the royal raiment.
So Astaire, not a man easily deterred, especially
when it came to acquiring smart attire, walked down the street to
Anderson & Sheppard, a Savile Row tailor who was happy to comply with
his request.
Hawes & Curtis’ loss was Anderson & Sheppard’s gain
and thus began a long and fruitful relationship between not only
Anderson & Sheppard and Fred Astaire, but also Savile Row and Fred
Astaire.
He found his bespoke shoemaker in a similar way.
Astaire noticed that men who wore Savile Row suits more often than not
wore them with shoes that had a distinctive chiseled toe that was both
sleek and elegant.
George Cleverley who worked for the shoemaker
Tuczek in Mayfair pioneered the look of the shoe. Cleverley had
developed a signature style called “the Cleverley shape,” which was
popular with Rudolph Valentino, Sir Lawrence Oliver, Winston Churchill,
business tycoons, and royalty.
Astaire selected, among other styles, a two-eyelet—
most shoes have four or five—crocodile wingtip.
Cleverley went out on his own in 1958 and continued
to attract some of the most famous feet in the world. Before his death
in 1991 at the age of 93, Cleverley appointed his successors, George
Glasgow and John Carnera, co-owners who carry on Cleverley’s tradition
of top-notch quality in a small shop located in London’s Royal Arcade
where all the shoes are made on the premises. Nothing is made in a
factory; everything is the product of hard-working craftsmen.
“The crocodile shoe favored by Astaire is still
very much a part of the Cleverley line,” says Glasgow. “It’s a classic,
very elegant with a slim styling. You can just see Astaire in it.”
Style, however, no matter how elegant or chic, was
not the sole criterion that informed Astaire’s choices. His suits as
well as his shoes had to be functional as well as fashionable. After
all, he was first and foremost a dancer.
“The jacket has a very small armhole which when you
first tell people they wonder why you do that,” says John Hitchcock, the
current managing director of Anderson & Sheppard, “but when you do a
small armhole, it’s more comfortable to move in. You can move a lot
easier and Astaire found he could do this.”
But small arm holes are just the beginning.
“You need to balance the entire suit,” he explains.
“The secret is in the cutting as well as the small arm hole. If you look
at the way we cut our shoulder, the seam of the shoulder is not in the
center; it’s going backwards. This keeps the cloth on the slight bias,
which makes it easier to stretch and then spring back again.
“You do need to do a big sleeve with a little bit
of fullness trapped in it all the way around and it needs to be sewn in
by hand. When you sew by hand, you use silk which actually gives a
little bit. If you sew it in with a sewing machine then it just breaks;
it doesn’t have the same give in it.”
Form follows function at Anderson & Sheppard, a
principle that is also applied to the way they cut their trousers.
“We have a comfortable style, I would say,” says
Hitchcock. “There again, we sew the seat of the trousers by hand which
makes it more comfortable. It’s exactly the same as sewing the jacket
and sleeves by hand. They are a comfortable cut but at the same time
they mustn’t look baggy. Nobody really wants old-fashioned baggy
trousers. It’s got to be just right.”
Anderson & Sheppard is the only firm to have a
trouser expert as well as a jacket expert on staff, so if you visit
their shop, now located in Old Burlington Street, just around the corner
from their former Savile Row premises, you’ll be measured by their
trouser person first, Mr. John Mallone, and then by somebody like Mr.
Hitchcock who will handle the coat and waistcoat.
“Basically we’ve got a system here where the
trouser man cuts everything from the waist down,” says Hitchcock, “and
we cut everything from the waist up, all the waistcoats and overcoats
and smoking jackets and that sort of thing. We all specialize in certain
parts of the garment and they all come together very nicely at the
end.”
The process is virtually the same as it was in
Astaire’s day.
And lest you think that Fred Astaire received
special treatment just because he was a celebrity, Mr. Hitchcock is
quick to point out that “we do this for everybody, not just for film
stars.”
To say that Astaire would not be the icon he is
today without the assistance of the bespoke tailoring process would be a
bit of a stretch. It would be an insult to his enormous talent and
onscreen charisma.
But it is certainly reasonable to say that the
bespoke process facilitated the Fred Astaire performances we celebrate
today.
The films he made with Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly
live on. As classics of the American cinema they’re pretty hard to
beat.
But so do his clothes and the personal imprint he
put on them. They are, at least in some circles, as memorable as his
many virtuoso dance routines.
Some of us hope that one day we too might be
blessed with the exuberance he expressed when dancing. Those of us of a
more sedentary nature just want to wear clothes with his dash and
aplomb.
An exhibition sponsored by Pitti Immagine in the
spring of 2007 further proved that there is just as much interest in
Astaire’s style today as there was when he was making movies. Pitti
Immagine invited a group of Savile Row tailors to display their best
garments in Italy at “The London Cut.”
“We didn’t go to Italy to try to sell clothes,”
says Hitchcock. “We went there to show people what Savile Row was all
about. We came up with the idea to do a creation of an Anderson &
Sheppard jacket worn by Fred Astaire. It worked very well because people
could see that the quality of our work is the same today as it was in
the 1930s. A lot of people were criticizing Savile Row at the time,
saying that Savile Row is hanging on by a thread. But it isn’t true.
We’re having some good times here.”
Former Gucci creative director Tom Ford, who
recently opened his own menswear store on New York’s Fifth Avenue,
loaned the exhibition the white tie and tails Anderson & Sheppard made
for him several years ago. Displayed alongside the Astaire jacket, the
old and the new were praised equally, evidence that true elegance is
timeless, that Fred Astaire can hold his own with even one of the most
fashion-forward designers working today.
Like most film stars or men who have a passion for
things sartorial, Astaire did not patronize one tailor exclusively.
Kilgour, French, & Stanbury, also of Savile Row, created the iconic
white tie and tails Astaire wore in “Top Hat” (1935). Astaire was also a
patron of quality menswear and luxury brands from Italy to Hong Kong.
Ultimately, though, Fred Astaire’s impact comes
down to a je ne sais qua, that certain something that elevates a
movie star into a screen legend. It’s an intangible quality, much more
than just his talent as a dancer, his suave demeanor, or the wonders of
his wardrobe. It’s a quality I can only describe as a kind of magic.
This feature story about Fred Astaire
originally appeared in Classic Style magazine. |
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