|
COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Georges de Paris, tailor to every American President since Lyndon Johnson, dresses beautifully at all times. He nearly always wears a suit, regardless of errand or weather. He has never owned a pair of jeans or khakis; his most casual look is a blazer worn with wool trousers and an ascot, and all his winter suits are three-piece. He wears his trousers high, on what was once his waist, rejecting the style of so many men of substantial middle sections who wear their pants below the belly and look, he says, like pregnant women. He never wears shirts with button-down collars (they are for sports), or even with buttoned cuffs: all his shirts have French cuffs, often monogrammed, and he favors the formal spread collar over the commoner narrow-point one. He owns forty suits, eighty shirts, and sixty-eight pairs of shoes, fifteen of which he has never worn. He prefers suspenders to belts, and he carries a walking stick ("Is personality," he says). He approves of hats but feels they do not suit him, because he is short and has too much hair. Close up, he emits the fragrance of a delicately floral cologne.
De Paris is a historic figure, in senses both lofty and elegiac. When, in 1976, Brooks Brothers, which had outfitted almost every President from Lincoln to Ford, stopped offering custom-made clothing, it marked the end of an era. De Paris is conscious of his professional lineage, and he reflects it not only in his dress but in his grooming. His glossy white hair is styled in the fashion of the late fifteenth century, center-parted and brushed straight to his shoulders with, on moister days, a curl or two appearing around his face. He is only five feet six, but his head is that of a man twice his height. The over-all effect is a happy union of Benjamin Franklin and Hercule Poirot.
These days, de Paris wears a matching set of cufflinks and tie clip, each bearing, on the front, the Presidential seal and, on the back, the engraved signature of George W. Bush. Reagan was his favorite Presidential customer and, in his opinion, the best-dressed one--Reagan was very chatty and gave him jelly beans, perhaps as a propitiating gesture, since he was always afraid that de Paris would stick him with pins during a fitting--but George W. Bush (a forty-four long, who favors navy and charcoal) runs a close second. "So nice! So friendly!" de Paris says of Bush, whom he sees sometimes three times a week, at the White House, for fittings. President Ford remembers him fondly. "When I was in the Congress, we were not as persnickety about our appearance," he says, "but when I became Vice-President and President it was almost mandatory that I spruce myself up, and Georges was just the person to make me look Presidential. My wife was always nagging me--'Jerry, you've got to improve your appearance'--so Betty was very happy that I began using him as my tailor." De Paris generally prefers Republican Presidents to Democrats. Carter and Clinton were cold in the dressing room, and the less said about Carter's fashion sense the better. Lyndon Johnson used to tease him about being short, and asked him whether he played American football. Over all, he feels that French politicians, who are always formally attired, are more dignified than American ones, who sometimes appear in public dressed like laborers. But the only person on the political scene who really upsets him is Howard Dean. "Oh!" he moans. "Bad suits, bad dress, put the sleeves up."
American Presidents, it must be said, do not tend to put their stamp on the sartorial world in the way that other leaders do. They do not have instantly recognizable looks that are imitated by, or pressed persuasively upon, millions of citizens, like Castro and Mao. They do not generally wear signature hats, like Karzai or Mobutu or Nehru. (Indeed, Kennedy was partly responsible for the demise of the American hat.) They don't lead fashion in directions so original and outre that no one dares follow, like Qaddafi. But every now and then there are modest innovations. Reagan made the brown suit acceptable again. F.D.R. wore capes. Andrew Jackson introduced supercutaneous padding to make him seem less skinny.
In addition to his Presidential customers, de Paris has cut cloth for Tony Blair, Kofi Annan, Dick Cheney, Mario Cuomo, and Al Gore. He does not work only for the high and mighty, however. A few years ago, he made a forty-five-hundred-dollar suit for a New Jersey taxi-driver whose dream was to have a suit just like the President's, made by the Presidential tailor. The taxi-driver gave de Paris a two-hundred-dollar tip, and de Paris, moved by the poignancy of the occasion, presented the taxi-driver with a free tie and a free shirt. "I tell him, I can't make you President, but I can make you suit," he says.
De Paris is willing to work on any style of dress, but he...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
