MAN STYLE

There are people who care more about the way their clothing feels, how it Junctions, than about the cut and colorplay, the to-cuff-or-not-to-cuff question. Most of these people are men. To prove that point, one need look no farther than a man’s feet. Men do not wear cruel shoes. Not way back then, not now, not ever. And what’s more, a man would never even think about buying expensive cruel shoes. And then wear them because they look really good.

Does this mean men don’t think about the way their clothes look, don’t buy GQ and occasionally even converse about what designers are doing? Absolutely not. It means a man usually manages to keep one eye on the comfy, practical side of things, scan trends and retail offerings with the other, and keep both feet firmly grounded in the knowledge of what will work on him, in his existing wardrobe. If this attractive man looks up one day and finds his life lacks glitz, he considers having an affair, not a makeover. Men rarely buy a garment, even a scene-stealing envy-inspiring, specially priced piece of clothing if liposuction and fits of consumer madness will be required to recoordinate the closet.

On the other hand, there are some people who change personas, peplums, earbobs, and automobiles to accommodate irresistible new fuchsia contact lenses. Most of these people are women. Some of these women are married to the man who is thinking about having an affair.

But this is less a question of sex and more a statement of self. Man or woman, this outward and visible sign of inner awareness is called having personal style. It’s an elegant, happy condition. And it looks really good.

Shannon and Sam Wynne

He stands still for the moment, a tall, thin man with cool spectacles and tousled salt-and-pepper hair. His tone is dipped, calm, get-the-job-done. Just out of arm’s reach, a black-haired, black-eyed cherub scrambles up scaffolding and fingerpaints dust drawings on what will be the bar in Dad’s new place. It’s not yet 9 a.m., but Shannon Wynne and four-year-old Sam are early risers. The phone rings. “I’ll get it, Dad-8.0-It’s for you, Daddy.”

“This is the dawning of a new age,”says Shannon Wynne. A plausible statement from a man with a plan. At thirty-seven, Wynne is on a bounce back. The designer of Nostromo, Tango, Rocco, and so on-o is coaching the rebirth of 8.0.

“There just hasn’t been a place for real people to go for a while,” says Wynne. “This is going to be a place for adults, but the kids can come, too.” There are stacks of 8.0 coloring books and fresh, waxy packs of Crayolas. Shannon Wynne is still hip, but now he’s Sam’s Daddy-O. It shows, and the karma is good. But what of Shannon Wynne the dashing, known for dropping a cool thou on Susan Bennisl Warren Edwards shoes?

“I have a pair on” laughs Wynne, “Baby alligator, resoled three times.” They are part of a wardrobe of good stuff Wynne developed when a lot of money was de rigueur in Dallas. “Not shopping like that is something you take one day at a time.”

He calls his look thrown together. At Hippolyte in the Quadrangle, he found a graphic linen jacket by Gianfranco Ferre and deemed it suitable for spring over a white cotton shirt from Neiman Marcus

“Everything now is accessorizing the great pieces you bought five years ago. My favorite place to accessorize is The Tie Coon Trading Company,”says Wynne. “My look is a constant attempt to keep up with Leon Morrison, who owns that store.”

The one item in his wardrobe he could not live without? His tortoise shell Oliver Peoples glasses. “I bought these at Peepers in Highland Park Village,”says Wynne. “Then I went into Alain Mikli in Paris, the greatest glasses store in the world, and they were going crazy over them,”

Sam Wynne’s cotton polo and cardigan were a steal: $125 per piece on sale for $5 each on the last day of Torie Steele’s store.

“Not shopping trends is something I’ll teach Sam, shopping for quality stuff. But there are other priorities for now. I’m worried about making the world a safer, better place for him. We need to do that.”

Scott Strasser

My look is like my work,” says Scott Strasser. “It’s about change. Not revolution, but definitely change.” Strasser is the kind of designer we need to shove us into the Nineties. He designs corporate interiors that are decidedly un-corporate, and he does it very well: on time, often on a budget as low as $20 per square foot. At thirty-four, he is the director of design of the Dallas office of CRS Sirrine Inc. He has been named Interiors magazine’s 1989 designer of the year. Strasser is a man with a gleam in his eye. His interiors are striking visual collages that work. His stoic presence in a world of suits is a challenge, his renegade appearance a gauntlet he tosses out with a grin every morning. It helps him weed out those ready to risk and win big from those who’d prefer to stay in their cubicles.

“In college, Ihad hair about two feet long and lived in jeans, cowboy shirts, and boots,”says Strasser. “When 1 graduated, I thought I had to straighten up. Things were severely dress-for-success then, which was deadly. I bought a two-fer, you know, two gray, pin-striped, three-piece suits. It never worked for me, but I ware this stuff during the day. Gradually I realized it was a way for them to keep you down, keep you under their thumb. Horrible.”

Strasser began fashioning his own look. “My uniform was black pants, white shirt, and an Armani tie: most avant-garde at that point. Then I went through an Italian period, which in retrospect was a burden almost immediately: all that matching, perfect stuff, and the silhouette. It never realty felt right, and it’s possible that I looked like an idiot.”

For Scott Strasser, the first wave of Japanese clothing was love at first sight. He saw, he tried on, he bought black. He put on the robes of the intelligent iconoclast.

“I like black as a base, and then I add to it, mixing up the textures and balancing the shape,” says Strasser. “I’ve had some pieces in my closet for years that I still wear, and I couldn’t live without my stainless steel spats.”

Jean-Paul Gaultier designed Strasser’s spats, and they are the ultimate in street chic: terminally hip types have been known to salivate profusely and ask for directions. But, like Strasser’s interiors, the spats have a practical side. Beneath the metallica are simple, thick-soled work shoes that can be replaced for a pittance.

“We all need a little contrast in our lives,”Strasser says.

Joseph Vento

Joseph Vento is a photographer bucking a trend, or perhaps beginning a new one. More than a few artists packed the rucksack, said adios to Dallas, and headed for the East or West Coast when the squeeze hit the creative community, hard. Vento has just arrived. A thirty-five-year-old New York native, he had been living in Santa Ft for a couple of years, where his photography drew national critical acclaim. But it was on the streets of New York’s East Village that Joseph Vento developed his sense of style.

“When I was a kid I really thought a lot about fashion,” says Vento. “When you grow up cool in New York, it’s how you let people know who you are, and I was always cool.”

One of four brothers in a first-generation Italian family, Vento would work on his dad for a couple of months to convince him to drive to the heavily black parts of Brooklyn to find the stuff he needed to pull his look together.

“I have a picture of myself when I was ten, and I was very serious about the way I looked. I looked really different,” laughs Vento. “I began to shop for and wear old clothes at that age.”

Vento has a collection, more than a wardrobe, and it works for him. There is a silk shirt that belonged to Ravi Shankar, there are fabulous brown alligator boots, gently worn, that were a find at the Salvation Army Store, and there are current odd-ins from the seasonal collections of designers that happen to catch Vento’s eye and fit into the mix.

The one item of clothing he could not do without – this week-is a pair of silk man’s pajama pants from the Forties. For his self-portrait, he adds a seafoam linen shirt by Ronaldus Shamask, and a floral damask vest by Andrew Fezza, both finds in the Men’s Store at Stanley Korshak at The Crescent.

“What’s important is knowing that no one else is going to be looking like you,” says Vento.

Jack Vroom

Jack Vroom is a forty-four-year-old man who refuses to wear socks. He has three pairs, all by Ralph Lauren. Me wears them when he feels it’s compulsory. Which means whenever putting on a suit and tie, also probably Ralph Lauren, is compulsory: not often. He doesn’t like the feeling. Feels stifled. He has some white socks to wear with the handmade boots that stand tall on the floor of his closet. There are a few good ties, some cotton sweaters, a tux. He stopped wearing a watch three years ago: time is relative. He works till he gets the job done, plays the same way.

Work is Vroom Inc., several successful risks that began with the idea for an independent organization to help match people and companies with the right computer system and teach them how to use it. That was Jack’s right brain. With his left, he saw a need for a creative catalogue company that could put together talented teams for direct mail retailers.

Even before Vroom Inc. did the American Eagle Outfitters catalogue. Jack Vroom was a customer of that company’s retail store. It is there he purchases the item without which he could not function: Rough Hewn khaki pants.

“I have fourteen pairs of them in varying stages of wearability,” says Vroom. It’s a systematic approach. Pull a pair on, add a shirt and a pair of topsiders, and move out.

Few tailored shirts fit. Patagonia, the catalogue, offers some, like the bright blue cotton one in the photograph. But the best answer for Vroom’s wide shoulders and height is handmade cotton shirts from Two Moons Trading Company. He orders a dozen or so a couple of times a year.

He turned himself in at The Polo Shop a couple of years ago, and bought several winter suits. The next spring, he returned and bought lightweight suits.

“Six months later, the guy from The Polo Shop called me and said, ’We’re ready for you,’and I said ’Hey! See you in about ten years, guy.’” There are no fashion victims at this man’s house.

The fact that Jack Vroom likes his life is apparent, appealing. Ruggedly handsome and at ease, he is what my grandmother would have called a man’s man, Energy held in check, just under the surface, ready for action. His home is an ad hoc warehouse designed by architect John Mullen, snugged into a smallish lot off Lower Greenville. There is art, there are books; it’s welcoming and open. It suits Jack Vroom.