Fashion Monday with JJ Lee

This season smallish, modest trilbies and fedoras will suffer an inferiority complex as wider hats will be donned by men, especially those who have a flare for the dramatic. Dsquared²'s menswear collection featured on the runway deep covering brimmed chapeaux with bowlish crowns. Style.com reports they are Borsalinos . Which makes them the official supplier of the trend as Junya Watanabe also featured bigger brimmed fare by Borsalino in the form of bowlers (also called derby or coke - and, yes, they can have big brims) and Homburgs (Germanic upturned brims). In both runway shows, the hats seem peaky. That is they are slightly misshapen as if by rain and snow, lending the hats a recession-era ruggedness. If not, they should be. Some have called the whole trend towards bolder head cover the "Amish hat trend," but more often than not, they will be in fact be flamenco/Cordobes, gaucho hats, or any number of larger hats. While shorter men, may need to be careful...

I spoke with Carly Lenarduzzi of Mintage Vintage in Vancouver about a few tips on how to buy a classic prom dress that's a blast from the past. I shared them with Stephen Quinn of CBC's On The Coast  in Vancouver. She's online on Etsy and has a store in Vancouver: www.mintagevintage.com carly@mintagevintage.com 1714 commercial drive, vancouver, bc 604.mintage

John Fluevog gets the retrospective treatment this week at the Museum of Vancouver ! For CBC's On The Coast with Stephen Quinn , I interviewed Fluevog this week about his 40 years designing and what makes a good shoe.

This photo by Steve Bosch links to the Vancouver Sun story. Read the Vancouver Sun article by Gerry Bellett , newspapers matter! With apologies to Rory Duffy (27) of Henry Poole and Co. and David Wilkes (29), bespoke tailor, young tailors are hard to come by. And when an old tailor retires a light goes out in the sartorial firmament. A star disappears. Renzo Montagliani (75) is calling it quits this month. Trained as a tailor in Italy at the tender age of 11, Renzo has become a fixture on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. (His retirement was covered in the Vancouver Sun, here .) With nothing more than a jerry-rigged straight stitcher and one order to alter ten double breasteds into singles for $10 a pop, Renzo started the business that lasted 50 plus years. I visited him today:

Visited former CBC host, Tetsuro Shigematsu, on January 2. I scored him a pair of comp jeans in October from Banana Republic as we were part of a UBC Almuni event. He loves them - Heritage Straight with an Antique Wash, I believe. Thing is he's wearing them to death. So he had me patch a hole while I was there. To find material we had to sacrifice another pair of well-worns, GAP 1969s. Now, all you premium-selvedge-Italian-Japanese-spun-by-organic-mutated-orphan types might scoff. But there's no doubt these pants took on some personality. So much so I had to photodocument it and share it with you.

A pair of jean leggings (jeggings)-- Joe's Zip Ankle Legging in Dark Blue A visit to one of the city's best, the world's best?, emporium of jeans, Dutil Denim on Cordova Street in Vancouver with Kayleigh Orman, buyer. Note it Kay-LEE not Kie-LEE. Here's Kayleigh giving pointers on how to buy denim. A perfect way to renew the wardrobe in 2010. Basic info but a good coaching session for a beat-the-January-blues-with-denim-blues shopping spree. Try on those JEGGINGS! Interesting note: Dutil will be coming out with it's own denim line this MONTH! Look here for an update on those jeans soon!

Looking for little things that are luxurious but won't bankrupt the average shopper. Pocket luxury is about buying the best of ordinary things to create pockets of luxury in your life. Be it the best hand-made toothbrush in the world or a silver pen to write the shopping list. I visited Louis Vuitton (very nice people there, no joke) on Burrard in Vancouver, Tiffany & Co (they were hopping, what recession?), also on Burrard, and Holt Renfrew (with the nicest guide to the luxury department store) on Granville.

JJ in the Vancouver Sun : VANCOUVER — To rent or to buy is not the question. What really matters when it comes to wearing black tie is looking like you belong in a tuxedo. Admittedly, all men can't be James Bond or Barack Obama, but it is possible to achieve some true panache, thereby avoiding any associations with Batman's flightless adversary, the Penguin (who technically wore a tailcoat and therefore was dressed in white tie), or high school graduation. Guy Voglino, New York-based divisional merchandise manager for Brooks Brothers, offered the following advice.... (read the rest in the Vancouver Sun)

One woman, one year, one promise . To wearing clothing, shoes and accessories made exclusively by her own hand. I mean, shoes!

(photo credit: davidwilkesbespoke.com/Jonathan Cruz) David Wilkes, bespoke tailor, who will be featured in my fall menswear piece for the Vancouver Sun, not only got the big thumbs up from Douglas Coupland, now the writer is praising Wilkes at GQ UK ! The word: Your website contains an index of "Couplandisms," one of which asserts that "Once you establish a look, and once everybody recognises that look as your look, you never have to think about fashion again." What's your look? Headwise, I always kind of knew that everyone goes grey in our family very early—and I was like, it works for me. I started growing my beard and it changes the shape of your skull and your face, and I started seeing my mother's side of the family in myself for the first time. I always get jealous of Prince William because he looks so much like his mom, so that's why I keep this [beard] but it makes me look so old fashioned—I look like an Antarctic explorer or an old Civil War pho...

Two of the more intriguing fashion trends this fall. I discuss with the lovely, the beautiful and deftly clever designer Allison Smith of Allison Wonderland how-to pointers. We're talking about asymmetrical dresses and You Can't Touch This Hammer pants on Fashion Monday. And let's be clear here: Allison Smith doesn't offer harem pants in her line, she did wear denim, low-crotch jeans this spring. More on her clothes next week when I spend a bit more time at Dream , the boutique!

Dora Lee is a recent Kwantlen fashion design graduate. This month she won the LG Denim DIY competition . It was a national contest for under-25-year-od designers. The goal: dream up a pair for Sears' Nevada line of casual wear. Usually priced between $20-50, JJ Lee of Fashion Monday asks, "How do you put the chic in cheap?" With the always gracious Stephen Quinn, host of CBC's current affairs show, On The Coast , in Vancouver.

If you've always suspected that I'm too conservative when it comes to menswear, this may prove your point. Brooks Brothers is opening its first Canadian store in Vancouver and I'm absolutely stoked. As an alienated teen of the eighties, I was a pure, unadulterated nerd (not remotely in a cool way) or, on occasion, I aspired to appear as an art punk/new waver. Some of my peers would have had some elements of proto-Goth (I'm thinking of you, Ms. Watson) but I was too pop for that. Even when I went for half-shaved hair, torn shirts and black, army surplus high tops, or just plain ugly jeans with baggy t-shirts, I always looked with envy and lust at the preppies of Hudson High School and Chambly County High School. Somehow all of this manifested now as a passion for Trad or Prep clothes. I'm a HUGE fan of J. Press in New York. I do wear bowties and button downs but alas it doesn't change the past. I'll never have a tryst with M. Spriggs . She was simply beauti...

If you care about local fashion, you had to be worried when Colleen Miller closed the doors to Button Button last year. Well, rejoice: the Vancouver style institution has found a new location in Gastown. Vegetable ivory, horn, and exquisite leather buttons can be had again. Bravo, Colleen. I will be there soon, my on hold projects are back on track.

In the run-up to Vancouver Fashion Week , I did this live hit from the Fashion Exchange during a fitting.

A quick check up with all this talk of tuxes....a sign of taste and quality is whether or not tux rental shops offer simple classics. Many don't. I called around Vancouver and these are the one that have the "classic". Black and Lee offers the classic one-button, peak lapel called style "780" - romantic isn't it. But it is a catalog service which means, you can't try them on before ordering it. They do have a shawl collar with is a style I very much like, "700". I lost my shawl collar at my old tailoring shop. I think my master tailors sold it to someone else. True story! Freeman does, it's style 1000 (admittedly, two-button) but it's Calvin Klein and has a narrow fit. My good friends wore this cut last year and I was impressed. Plus you can have style 2087 (one-button, yeah!). Debonair , one of the few rentals which house suits on site, carry a two-button peak, style 270. NB the best part of renting from shops that have their own sui...

At least for another 40 minutes and maybe more. Here's my interview last week with designer Kim Cathers (label, Kdon) about the battle to be Canada's top designer on Project Runway Canada . Of course, this was with Stephen Quinn on CBC Radio One's On The Coast .