MAD MEN INSPIRES YOUNG MEN TO DRESS FOR SUCCESS

The television Show “Mad Men” has inadvertently become a fashion icon for young men. Some people think that “Mad Men” is to young men what “Sex and the City” was to savvy young women.

“Young men are embracing the “Mad Men” elements of style in a way that the older men never did, still don’t and just won’t. The result is a kind of rift emerging between the generation of men in their 20s and 30s and those in their late 40s and 50s for whom a suit was not merely square but cubed, and caring about how one looked was effeminate,” said an article in the New York Times.

At Paul Stuart and Brooks Brothers, the “Mad Men” style has been a retail boon. And at Topman, the men’s division of Topshop, the dressy category called smart clothing, has been one of the best performers in their New York store.

“I think it’s a reaction against the homogeneity of casual wear,” said Gordon Henderson, the design director of Topman. “There’s nowhere to go with that in terms of personality, whereas a suit sets you apart. And now there are suits that are cut for young people. There’s never been that before, so it’s new to them.”

Sales of tailored clothing among men ages 35 to 54 was down 17 percent, but up four percent for men aged 25 to 34 (according to NPD Group).

“It’s these young guys rebelling against their boomer dads,” said Russell Smith, 45, the author of “Men’s Style: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Dress” and an advice columnist for The Globe and Mail in Toronto. “But it’s very amusing and paradoxical that the new anti-parental paradigm involves a pinstripe suit and a pocket square.”

There’s a sense that this return to style, or to a consciousness of how you look, is an attempt by young men to recover a set of values that were at one point very much present in American society and then lost,” said Samuel Rascoff, 36, a law professor at New York University.

Young people pay attention to authenticity and quality, and to whether something is organic or local. They stand for a rejection of the idea that all consumer goods are ephemeral, made in China and bought at Wal-Mart, he added.

And guess what, this obsession with the 50’s and 60’s sense of style is great news for hatters. Because we all know that hats were de rigueur for men in those days (and hopefully a hat revival will follow along with this award winning show Mad Men).