Greetings from Canada, where I’m watching the sun set over the Comox Glacier on Vancouver Island.
Here are a few things on my mind to round out 2023.
1. The Perfect Pack & Other Travel Conundrums
Every time I go through airport security I think of the opening montage of Up in the Air: George Clooney’s character’s choreographed mastery of unzipping, unloading, partially disrobing, and slipping through security with the swiftness of a ballerina.
Cut to: Reality. Fumbling with your luggage, momentarily losing your passport, being barked at by a security worker, confused by the inconsistent rules (shoes on? off? belt? toiletries out? watch OK?). Getting through airport security is one of the many indignities of modern air travel, which feels like scarcely an improvement to travel by Greyhound. Then you board the plane, and it’s downhill from there.
En route from New York to Vancouver yesterday, I got to thinking about the question of packing and dressing for travel. What is the perfect pack? I’m not sure I’ve ever achieved it. I’ve come close, but have always just missed the mark.
Here’s what it would include:
First, you don’t forget any essential items
Second, you wear everything you bring—every single piece of clothing
Three, you have items for every occasion you encounter on your trip
Four, all pieces should be interchangeable. Each bottom should go with each top, etc.
I failed on this trip. I couldn’t fit everything I needed into one carry-on and a backpack, so I needed to bring an extra tote, which meant even more fumbling at security and on the plane. I also dressed too warm for the flight, electing to layer a thick sweater with a top coat so I didn’t have to pack one of the two. I looked less Clooney, more Woody.
It wasn’t pretty.
I imagined how Anthony Bourdain would travel. He’d be wearing a versatile jacket—a bomber or a casual blazer, depending on the journey—a pair of well-worn jeans, chukka boots, a soft T or button-down. He’d be towing a beaten up aluminum Rimowa and would definitely have a perfect leather weekend bag from Ghurka.
I failed this time, but there’s always next year…
2. Maestro is the Most Stylish Movie of the Year
I loved Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s biopic of conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein—the music, the set design, Cooper’s incredible performance, and, notably, Lenny’s personal style.
Bernstein, according to the movie at least, had the perfect outfit for every occasion. Bespoke double-breasted suits for booze- and cigarette-fueled parties, black tie for performances, and an epic collection of knitwear—mostly polo-necks—for everything else. “Archive images of the great man at both work and play suggest a wardrobe of multiple roll-necks in many hues and knits, worn either solo, with slacks, or, jazz style, under a jacket,” according to a recent piece in Esquire. “Bernstein died in 1990, aged 72. His music lives on, and so does his taste in knitwear. In the pantheon of American style icons, there’s a place for him.”
Amen.
3. Brown is the Color of the Year
Chocolate, espresso, hazel—whatever you want to call it, brown is everywhere. When asked in T Magazine about what cultural trends creative leaders expect to see in the next year, fashion designer Thebe Magugu said, “Brown — the more ‘off,’ the better. It’s subtle and confrontational: Not a lot of colors have that versatility.”
Maybe we have Succession’s Kendall Roy to thank. Little Lord Fuckleroy’s brown linen Loro Piana suit in season 3 is a thing of exquisite beauty. Jeremy Strong, who played Kendall, wears brown constantly in real life, so perhaps it was the actor’s choice instead of the costume designers. There’s an Instagram account devoted just to Strong wearing brown. Regardless, I’m all in.
4. Front of Book Recommends: Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being
This book came recommended on Spotify the other day. It’s a New York Times #1 bestseller but I missed it when it was released. It’s perhaps the best book about the creative process I’ve ever come across. Rubin breaks down creativity into its smallest components, demystifying what it means to create and be creative, offering some guidance on how to do it, and emphasizing that creativity and success are not the same thing and that we can all create and be proud of what we come up with. He narrates the audiobook himself and listening to it is a Zen experience in and of itself. 10/10
5. Another Note From My Dad
Last week I did the first installment of my wardrobe favorites, and it got my dad thinking about some of his most treasured clothing over the years.
When I was in England I took note of sheepskin jackets. At that time the best and most beautiful of them were made in England, were incredibly warm and beautiful, and never wore out. So, somehow, I gathered together enough pounds and pence to buy one. It was my treasure, the perfect outer garment for England, Saskatchewan, or Siberia, for that matter. I was a university student at the time, and one day I wore my treasured jacket to a concert there and, thinking wrongly that a university was a crime free zone, I hung it up with all the other hundreds of much more ordinary jackets at that Sunday evening concert. This was about the second time I’d worn my jacket as I’d been waiting for an evening that was cold enough to stand wearing any kind of outer wear. Of course you know what happened. My treasured, English-made, gorgeous and durable, and above all, expensive sheepskin jacket was gone, never to be seen again.
He did, however, get another sheepskin jacket—in Victoria, B.C., in the late ’70s—and a few years ago he gave it to me. Now it’s in my closet in New York and one of my most treasured pieces of clothing. Thanks, Dad.
Merry Christmas, happy new year, and see you all in 2024.
Mitch
Question? Comment? Suggestion? Caught a typo? Email me at mitch.moxley@gmail.com
Hey, Mitch! Thanks for highlighting the Maestro movie, watched it the other day and it's a real find in terms of costume history. Mark Bridges (also worked on Phantom Thread) did a great job.
The movie inspired me to write a little post, an idea I've had in my head for a long time: "The conductor style". Much less recognized in the endlessly-repeated #menswear selections, talents like Bernstein or Karajan dressed sometimes as cool as, for example, Agnelli, Onasis and others. And received much less attention! There is almost no material on the subject in English, no matter how much I look.