Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Sharp Stylings #66: George Best

We can learn so much from yesterday’s fashion icons.  And living in a post-Mad Men world means we can even enjoy aspects of current male fashions! Every Friday (wait, today's Tuesday!), I’d like to start your weekend off right with a little style inspiration from either then or now. Hopefully, my fellow Mod enthusiasts will find the whole or some detail of the whole to appreciate and maybe even adopt.

I'm not a sports fan. I don't tune in to Superbowls, March Madnesses, World Serieses, or even World Cups. Heck, the last time I kept up with any 'sports' at all was about 10-15 years ago when The Rock was layin' the smackdown on jabronies across the country.

But I'm not a total sports ignoramus. I know who Wayne Gretzky, the Refrigerator, and Fernando Valenzuela all are. (Valenzuela was actually a hero to all us Mexican kids growing up in our neighborhood in the 1980s.) And, yes, I even know who George Best is.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that many of you are football fans who don't need me to waste my time copying and pasting a Wikipedia entry, the extent of my knowledge, on him. Let's skip the sports stats and get straight to the style:
George Best with Mike Summerbee in front of Edwardia, the clothes boutique they owned.
This jock was so sharp he had to go and open his own boutique! (Bradley Wiggins, ball's in your court.) And check him out, kickin' it with ease in his double-breasted suit, pressed shirt, and polished boots. Sure, he would have done well to leave that bottom button undone, but I wouldn't have told him that unless I wanted to risk a head-butt to the noggin'.

Really, this post is for any sports fanatics or jocks that might stumble across this blog. Hopefully, they'll learn a thing or two. After all, these days, most sports heroes are happy just hanging out in their workout clothes or a t-shirt, shorts, and sideways baseball cap with signature sneakers. Or, worse yet, like this:
But George Best is proof that you can sport a stylish suit-oriented look in your off-time while saving the sports gear for the field. Seems his style sense has been passed on some 45 years later, too.

And now I get why Paul Weller featured him on this cover:

Alright, jabronies, I'm outta here.

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5 comments:

  1. Love the blog, get excited for every post, keep up the good work!

    The Ivy League Style staple: O'Connell's Clothing of Buffalo, N.Y. was founded by 3 members of the NFL's Buffalo Bills sometime in the mid-1950's.

    Football and sharp clothing...who knew

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    1. Thank you Douglas! And thanks for the info on O'Connell's. I gotta look into that later.

      These guys had style back in the day!

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  2. I have a Mike Summerbee label shirt - pale pink near transparent cotton with a white collar.

    Too small and probably too flimsy to wear any more, but too precious to just give away.

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    1. Oh man! I hear you, though. I'll admit that I have a couple of shirts that don't fit, but I just can't let them go due to the labels. I'll save them for my future future museum.

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  3. Georgie Best! I met him once back in the 90s when I used to frequent Scooter's Records in Hermosa Beach. He owned a bar called "Bestie's" that was across the street and he would hang out there all the time. Great post, Carlos!

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