Soul and romanticism

The two words of the topic might not be the first to pop into mind when discussing Jeremy Clarkson, of Top Gear fame. Yet I've been reading Jeremy's I Know You Got Soul and can't help but agree with some of his views. Back before people started to worry about 4Q2006 and whether or not they could leverage the economies of scale to help create a sustainable competitive advantage, the world was a lot more romantic. Or at least that's what intuition would say; of course back then people were just as interested in viewing themselves as important, efficient, etc. But concepts like heroic failure and such fit fairly well as some of the ventures of the older times have been completely useless, yet they have this certain appeal. Clarkson talks about, for instance, the Zeppelin (not Led, but the other flying kind) and how its purpose isn't really to take people from place A to place B as quickly, efficiently and cheaply as possible. In fact the primary purpose of the Zeppelin might not have been to really go anywhere in the first place. It would be fairly nice to just float around in one and observe how the world goes about its business.

I think a certain sense of naivety is precisely which makes the older times so romantic. Especially around the time of the start of the industrial revolution, a maybe a bit before then. Judging by today's yardsticks, the methods of those times were, well, not very good or efficient. And not everything made economic sense. Such as the Zeppelin, for example. But people did it anyway. And there were Barons and whatevers. There was this whole gentleman-esque aura to the thing. Now it's all pinstripes and quarterly reports and the like. And we've lost the cute, innocent, naive view of the world. Granted, this is premature again as in 100 years people will most likely think we were so cute and gullible with our ways.

Some thoughts on clothing

I ordered Nicholas Antongiavanni's The Suit a while back and apparently it arrived today. Too bad I was leaving Helsinki in the morning and when I checked the emails on the train, it was already too late to pick the book up from Sanomatalo. I should be reading Organizational Behaviour for the Work Psychology & Leadership exam right now, but instead I've been reading Antongiavanni's articles online. And I must say that I have fairly high expectations for the book right now.

It's obvious that I don't agree with everything he writes, but that's not an issue. I actually prefer when instead of being all politically correct people actually offer something provocative to bite into. Especially when the person has demonstrated a fair bit of knowledge on the subject. And in this case I would think that the aforementioned author is quite knowledgable in said field.

Anyway, some things I don't agree with him are, for instance, that men shouldn't wear black suits. His argument ran along the lines of black being such a dominant color that it eats up all other colors. I personally, however, like black suits for the crispiness and contrast. And besides, formal wear is something that is worn less often these days, so I don't really feel that tuxedos and tailcoats own the exclusive right for black any more (ok, dark blue might, according to some sources, be an even more preferrable color for a tux than black...).

Then there's the issue of stripes and tapered suits. The issue with pinstripes or chalkstripes is understandable in the context of tall men. I won't argue with that. But I happen to like stripes and because I don't need to please anyone except myself, I'm fairly content in wearing stripes. The second issue was with slim suits. I've already given my views on slim suits before and I don't really like this ultra-slimness. But Antongiavanni suggests in one article that tall men should prefer more cloth over less cloth. I would prefer to take the route of doing some exercising and trying to develop a somewhat, shall we say, bulkier physique to compensate for the tallness. And I would also offer the point that if a slim and tall man wears suits with more cloth and which don't bring out the physique of the wearer, there may be a problem that the man is lost inside this big pile of cloth. And that's not a pretty sight.

Granted, I'm sure that Antongiavanni has mastered the art of clothing and that his suggestions are very good and knowledgable. However, I personally prefer some things over others and my personal preference overrides other things, where possible, and I feel that instead of trying to hide the slim and tall body, effort should be spent into developing the body itself and then embracing the good features, not trying to hide the slimness with various trickery. And as said, I like pinstripes...

Is this it for tailcoats?

I just finished reading an article from a few years back by Nicholas Antongiavanni on the status of tailcoats. I have to agree that the tailcoat is one of the most brilliant items of clothing today. I personally don't own one, but I've worn one on some occasions. But Nicholas outlines some points and trends in fashion and style and without a doubt I can believe that tailcoats will be all but extinct in the near future. Americans already consider the Tux to be the most formal thing. At least the rather small group which I've talked to regarding this seemed to believe so...

But Finland seems to be perhaps one of the last standing bastions of the tailcoats. There are essentially two types of white tie events in Finland these days; the ball held by the President of Finland on the independence day and then academic ceremonies. Even in the student world, white tie is the preferred form of dress for the annual celebrations for different guilds and student bodies. Naturally there's an increasing trend to use a dark suit with this latter event, considering that acquiring a complete white tie attire will be fairly steap to your average student who looks to stear clear of loans and finance his/her studies with the dismal student allowance and by working on the side.

As such, however, be the tailcoat as brilliant as it is, I will not see myself purchasing one anytime soon. Unfortunately.

(Oh, and I finally got around to ordering Mr. Antongiavanni's book, The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men's Style.)

I have retaken my bedside table!

It's true! I finally decided that instead of keeping the enormous pile of unread books, magazines and articles on my bedside table, I should instead just put them in my bookshelf. So for the first time in over a year my bedside table is now essentially empty - only five books, my diary and my calendar. It looks so empty...

Customer loyalty & buying books

We had some guys from the Boston Consulting Group a while back talking about various current trends and other things. They also touched on the trend of "trading up" as they called it. The idea is that more and more consumers start buying premium brand products in the segments that they value and then to finance these premium purchases, they offset the difference by buying cheap stuff in other segments. So for example, to finance my new Boss overcoat, I'm going to eat rice for the next month. So the natural evolution, then, is that the middle-class players who aren't quite competing with the premium brands but also aren't in the price game will just die a boring death.

In the past few years when I've been buying something, I've been preferring small, local companies. Even if they charge a bit more, but at least I get good service and that the money goes to financing Finnish entrepreneurship. For instance, I could purchase my contact lenses online through some company and save a bit, but instead I use the small, privately owned optometrist in Salo. The service is always nice and personal and they know my name. The same thing goes for clothing, fairly often. There's this nice place in Salo called Eino Heino, which has brilliant service and quite a decent inventory. And history.

So I tried to order some books from BookPlus last night. Nothing fancy, just some stuff from the list I keep on my homepage. I gather the books into the shopping cart, go to the check out and start filling out the forms, and... Database connection error! Brilliant. Oh well, they're still a decent company, so I restart the process, select the books, check out... Database connection error! And it happened a third time too. Long story short, ended up ordering the books I wanted (and then some) from Amazon.com. If the service becomes degrades or something in the process doesn't click, then that's it. I know what I want, I know what price I'm ready pay and if something doesn't just work, I'm not going to jump through hoops, especially if I'm the customer.

However, depending on how this Amazon.com venture (I've never bought anything from there before) goes, I may just move back to BookPlus. We'll see...