21 March/22 March 2020 ★ FT Weekend 9changing and moving away from con-
servative business attire.” The loafer is,
according to Fox, a smarter choice than
sneakers for those looser codes of pro-
fessional dress.
Mr Porter has likewise seen a rapid
rise in demand for the penny loafer,
reporting sales spikes for brands such as
Edward Green, Cheaney and Grenson.
The e-tailer has also started stocking GH
Bass, which claims to have created the
first loafer silhouette, called Weejun, in- Swiftly adopted by John F
Kennedy and Paul Newman, the shoe
earned its name in the 1950s,when Ivy
League students, who wore them with
their sporting socks, would reportedly
keep a penny in the saddle of the shoe in
case of emergencies. (Greenleaf wore
his with chinos and a preppy navy
blazer, in true campus style.)
“We’ve seen double-digit growth in
our loafers over the course of the sea-
son,” says Cyril Crentsil, head of mar-
keting at GH Bass in Europe — Browns in
London has also picked up the label for
the first time. He says the shoe’s appeal
is down to its “epitomising a preppy
American cool” — it lends itself well to
this “new way of dressing that has a cer-
tain classicism to it. Interestingly, you
have everyone from Virgil Abloh of
Louis Vuitton and streetwear bible
Hypebeast all championing it.” This
seamless mash-up of collegiate prep
with contemporary athleisure is typi-
fied by the American rapper Tyler, the
Creator, who regularly mixes cricket
sweaters, baseball caps and loafers —
worn with, you guessed it, a pair
of bright white socks.
Becky French, creative direc-
tor of shirting label Turnbull &
Asser, is noticing this shift too.
“We are seeing customers
gravitate towards our less
formal pieces and casual col-
lections,” she says; this season,
she introduced a Wes Anderson-
inspired palette of lemon yellow,
soft lilacs and candied pinks into her
camp-collared shirts. (The US direc-
tor is renowned for hisplayful nostal-
gia.) “It’s certainly more relaxed than
many would consider to be traditional
Turnbull,” she says.
While the idea of a high waistline and
a wide leg might make many men nerv-
ous, one need only peruse photos of
Cary Grant or Paul Newman to know
how flattering a pair of pleated trousers
can be. “Where they sit is just in line
with your belly button, so they give you
length in your leg and pull your whole
waistline in,” says Simpson, who teams
hismade-to-order trews with camp-col-
lar shirts or vintage knits.
They’re also comfortable. “When you
sit down you don’t feel like you have to
green carrot-legged chinos that pack
neatly into a holiday valise, easily evok-
ing the spirit of the golden age of travel.
“Nineteen-fifties menswear is so rele-
vant right now because it’s very weara-
ble,” says Sam Kershaw, buying man-
ager at Mr Porter, who has noted an
uptick in brands offering pieces of
“elevated casualwear” synonymous
with the era — he says it’s an anti-
dote to the streetwearthat has
dominated for several seasons.
The e-tailer’s own label, Mr P,
takes its cue from the ’50s for spring/
summer — think varsity cardigans in
pastel hues with pops of reds and greens,
and cropped, pleated trousers.
“Younger men are welcoming
this shift towards a more clas-
sic proposition, registering that
it’s time to freshen up and dress
more maturely,” says Kershaw.
“They can incorporate key items like a
[lightweight] blazer or a pair of tassel
loafers into their wardrobe [knowing]
that they will be versatile and have lon-
gevity, as they do not align as much with
seasonal trends,” he says.
But the era is alsopopular nowthanks
to the more relaxed mode of office dress.
As sneakerheads smarten up, suits are
dressing down — and 1950s references
are a middle point.
“We’ve just finished our best-seller
reports from 2019 and for the first time
in the company’s 140-year history, a
penny loafer sits right at the top of the
list,” says James Fox, director of North-
ampton-based footwear brand Crockett
& J ones, which is beloved by the suited
set. “In the past this has always been an
Oxford lace-up. Times are indeedStyle
O
n a normal day, LVMH’s
factory outside Orléans
churns out lavishly col-
oured bottles of perfume
for its Christian Dior
brand: gold for J’Adore, deep purple for
Poison, and candy pink for Miss Dior.
But in the early hours of Monday
morning, something a bit less polished
rolled off the production line: the first
plastic bottles of hand sanitiser destined
to be used by doctors and nurses in Paris
hospitals on the front line of the battle
against coronavirus.
The project came together at light-
ning speed, a mere 72 hours after the
French government issued a call to
industry on Friday to help fill gaps of
key medical supplies as the spread of the
virus accelerated. It showed how bil-
lionaire Bernard Arnault, who built
LVMH into a luxury giant and France’s
big gest company, can marshal
resources quickly and draw upon infor-
mal yet powerful networks of influence.
The 71-year-old tycoon green-lighted
the effort on Saturday night in a brief
text message to LVMH’s general secre-
tary Marc-Antoine Jamet, who had been
liaising with health officials and staff
internally all day as they raced to get a
test batch approved.
It read simply: “Excellent!!”
LVMH is on track to donate 12 tonnes
of the hand sanitising gel to the 39 hospi-
tals of the Paris system known as theFrom scent
to sanitiser
Report LVMH is on track to donate 12 tonnes of|
hand sanitising gel to Paris hospitals this week.
Leila Abboud xplains how it happenede
APHP by the end of this week. It will also
ramp up production with two additional
production lines soon at the Givenchy
factory in l’Oise and another for the
Guerlain brand near Chartres.
“LVMH will continue to honour this
commitment as long as necessary,” said
the company in a statement.
The move came as France entered
shutdown on Monday and as cases of
coronavirus were doubling every 72
hours, with more than 7,700 people
diagnosed and 175 dead as of Wednes-
day morning. President Emmanuel
Macron declared the country “at war”.
How did LVMH, a sprawling conglom-
erate with 76 companies in its portfolio,
manage to do this all so quickly?
One reason is the decisiveness of
Arnault. Speaking of his boss, Jamet
says: “He bombards you with questions,
and then goes off to think. It’s a family-
owned company with a guy at the top
who makes decisions very quickly.”
Another reason is cosmetics manu-
facturing is actually a close cousin to
pharmacy, and the factory equipment
could be quickly repurposed. Sanitising
gel requires three main ingredients —
purified water, ethanol and glycerin —
all of which LVMH already had on hand.
In addition to perfumes, the Dior,
Givenchy and Guerlain factories also
make liquid soaps and moisturising
creams for the brands. Those products
are similar in viscosity to hand sanitis-ing gel, so LVMH could use its usual fill-
ing machines, plastic bottles and pump
dispensers. A tall metal tank at the Dior
factory usually used to distill scent
could be used to mix the ingredients,
and a machine for filling up soap bottles
drafted into packaging the gel.
The last thing that helped LVMH
move quickly is that in a crisis, France
turns out to be a pretty small place. The
cliché that the business and political
elite cluster in the same Paris arrondis-
sements, attend the same schools and
socialise together exists for a reason.
“In the French system, we know all
each other,” says Martin Hirsch, a medi-
cal doctor and high-ranking civil serv-
ant who runs the APHP. “It can be
inconvenient in normal times, but it’s
great in a crisis.”
LVMH’s Jamet first texted Hirsch last
Saturday, offering to help make gel. The
two had been friendly for years and first
got to know each other from their days
in L’École Nationale d’Administration —be tested for efficacy and approved by
the health minister.
Again, LVMH’s network went into
action. Jamet knew the health minister
Olivier Veran from when the two had
worked together on an industry charter
to stop using runway models with very
low body mass index. He called his
office, and the ministry soon sent some-
one over to test the batches.
By 4am on Monday, the workers at
the Dior perfume factory wereset up
and ready to go. The factory director
Nicolas Ambolet surveyed his staffers as
the production line began to run. “Ourwhole team is very proud to rise to this
challenge together,” he said.
Other French companies have also
risen to the occasion, mirroring what
happened in China and Italy, which
were hit by the outbreak weeks earlier.
At the APHP network, BNP Paribas
donated 500,000 masks to Paris hospi-
tals, while Renault has
loaned out 300 cars
for medical personnel
to use. L’Oréal said on
Wednesday it was also
retooling factories from
its La Roche-Posay and
Garnier brands to make
millions of units of hand
sanitiser for nursing
homes and hospitals.
But corporate philan-
thropy remains rare in a
country dominated by the
state, so it sometimes
backfires when the billion-
aires swing into action.
Arnault and Kering owner
François-Henri Pinault faced criticism
from some after they pledged to donate
millions to help the reconstruction of
Notre-Dame after last year’s fire.
This time around, LVMH’s charity has
been well received. On Tuesday night,
Romain de Jorna, a worker at Hospital
Saint-Louisin Paristweeteda photo of
the bottle of LVMH hand sanitiser:
“Thank you ... The product is magnifi-
cent in every sense of the word!”Cosmetics manufacturing is
a close cousin to pharmacy,
and the factory could bequickly repurposed
S
o many people ask me for that
Dickie Greenleaf top, that this
season I’m going to reproduce
it.” Scott Fraser Simpson, the
30-year-old designer behind
London-based menswear label Scott
Fraser Collection, is recalling a garment
worn by Jude Law in Anthony Ming-
hella’s 1999 filmThe Talented Mr Ripley.
In powdery hues reminiscent of the
Positano cliffs, this short-sleeved knit-
ted shirt with a floppy collar and pearly
buttons perfectly exudes the carefree
nonchalance of a shipbuilding heir galli-
vanting around the Italian Riviera.
Simpson collects vintage knitwear
and, for his label, makes contemporary
versions from 1950s patterns in Italy. He
first sawRipleya decade ago, and was so
captivated by its style he immediately
watched it again. “I’ve never used those
colours together before, but so many
men are interested that I’m doing accu-
rate screen replicas,” he says, of the two
styles oftop he’s releasing this month, in
lemon and pale blue. He thinks such
“leisure” shirts, which retail for £235,
have an easy appeal. “They’re the per-
fect balance between casual and smart.”
With flaxen hair smoothed back into
a swoosh, bespectacled Simpson looks
like he too could belong on Greenleaf’s
yacht; he commutes around London on
a silver Vespa, and says his everyday
uniform consists of “loafers, white socks
and pleated trousers”. His label has
become known for its modern take on
mid-century dressing; high-waisted,
A-line Riviera shorts (£170) and pastel-
striped lido shirts (£140) look straight
off a Capri beach —and his wide-legged
Deck trousers in off-white (£210) would
lookat home on a sailing vessel.
Simpson isn’t the only one enam-
oured with the easy elegance of the
1950s. This season, Marni designer
Francesco Risso was partly inspired by
Truman Capote, whospent summers
writing onIschia in an apartment over-
looking the sea. The inspiration culmi-
nated in high-waisted slacks with
turned-up hems, worn with tucked-in
varsity tops and canvas tennis shoes.
London labels King & Tuckfield, E
Tautz and Turnbull &Asser have
looked to the decade too, offering cool
pleat-front trousers, retro-striped
T-shirts and camp-collar pyjama-style
shirts respectively. Tom Ford, mean-
while, proffers polos in a luxe baskety
weave, and French label Ami has minty-For a style escape, look to ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’
Trend |Two decades on,
the film’s easy, mid-century
elegance continues to
captivate. ByGrace Cook
Clockwise
from above:
Gwyneth
Paltrow and
Jude Law in the
1999 film ‘The
Talented Mr
Ripley’;the elite postgraduate
institution. Hirsch was
immediately receptive to
the idea. Shortages of
hand sanitiser had not
yet cropped up in the
hospitals that he over-
saw but he knew that
would not last long.
“We were not com-
pletely safe with the gel
stocks and suppliers
we had, so we were
actually looking into whether we could
make it ourselves,” he recalls.
He senthis scientific adviser to the
LVMH research facility that evening to
check on whether their recipe would
pass muster with regulators. The World
Health Organization advises using an
alcohol-based hand rub against corona-
virus as an alternative when soap and
water are not available. French regula-
tors had issued guidelines but LVMH’s
recipe was slightly different so it had toHigh-waisted Riviera
shorts and lido shirts lookstraight off a Capri beach
Crockett
& Jones,
Richmond
II loafer,
£435; Scott
Fraser
Collection,
mint-and-
white Lido
shirt, £140;
Marni SS20;
E Tautz AW20
AlamyClockwise from main: Christian
Dior’s factory in Saint-Jean de Braye;
the LVMH hand sanitiser rushed out
amid the pandemic;Dior bottles
being repurposed for the medical
community —Leila Abboud; LVMHadjust yourself, they feel like you’re
wearing pyjamas. They fit far more peo-
ple than a skinny-fit trouser ever
would.” He says his customers wear
them withsneakers for weekends and
shoesin the office. “They can be dressed
up or down, with a shirt or just a
T-shirt.”E Tautz creative director Patrick
Grant is likewise known for his high-rise
trouser silhouettes; for his AW20 show,
he styled them with baggy shirts and
boxy T-shirts in sky-blue hues. “Soft
powdery colours [were] a counterpoint
to the drabness of the immediate post-
war era,” he says. “It was almost as if the
’50s were springtime for fashion.”
Colour and comfort aside, he thinks
the global political climate could also be
contributing to the resurgence of Ripley
style. “There was a sense of optimism to
the 1950s that we really need in our
clothes today.”MARCH 21 2020 Section:Weekend Time: 19/3/2020- 17:15 User:jane.lamacraft Page Name:WKD9, Part,Page,Edition:WKD, 9, 1