The Measure of a Man The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit

by Lee, JJ

• ISBN13: 9780771046483
• ISBN10: 0771046480
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-05-15
• Publisher: Emblem Editions

Summary

Taking as its starting point a son's decision to alter his late father's last remaining suit for himself, this is a deeply moving and brilliantly crafted story of fathers and sons, of fitting in and standing out -- and discovering what it means to be your own man. For years, journalist and amateur tailor JJ Lee tried to ignore the navy suit that hung at the back of his closet -- his late father's last suit. When he decides to finally make the suit his own, little does he know he is about to embark on a journey into his own past. As JJ moves across the surface of the suit, he reveals the heartbreaking tale of his father, a charismatic but luckless restaurateur whose demons brought tumult upon his family. He also recounts the year he spent as an apprentice tailor at Modernize Tailors, the last of Vancouver's legendary Chinatown tailors, where he learns invaluable lessons about life from his octogenarian master tailor. Woven throughout these two personal strands are entertaining stories from the social history of the man's suit, the surprising battleground where the war between generations has long been fought. With wit, bracing honesty, and great narrative verve, JJ takes us from the French Revolution to the Zoot Suit Riots, from the Japanese Salaryman to Mad Men, from Oscar Wilde in short pants to Marlon Brando in a T-shirt, and from the rareified rooms of Savile Row to a rundown shop in Chinatown. A book that will forever change the way you think about the maxim "the clothes make the man," this is a universal story of love and forgiveness and breaking with the past.

Author Biography

JJ Lee is the author of the memoir The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit, which was a finalist for the 2011 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, the 2012 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, the 2012 BC Book Prizes’ Hubert Evans Prize for Non-Fiction, and the 2012 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Non-Fiction.

In 2012, his essay “ELLE First: You are beautiful” was awarded a gold for Best Short Feature at the National Magazine Awards. In 2014, he hosted the CBC Radio summer show Head To Toe. In 2015, he served on the jury for Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. Lee contributes to ELLE Canada and currently is writing a sequel to The Measure of a Man.

He was the fashion columnist for CBC Radio’s On the Coast, a producer at Sounds Like Canada, and worked on and contributed to such CBC Radio programs as Basic Black, Out Front, The Current, Richardson’s Roundup, and Ideas, for which he prepared the radio documentary on the social history of suits that inspired this book of the same name.

Lee grew up on Montreal’s South Shore, studied fine arts at Concordia University, and holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of British Columbia. He is now a mentor at Simon Fraser University’s The Writer's Studio. He lives in New Westminster.

Excerpts

There is a suit in the back of my closet. Over the years dust has gathered on its shoulders. I own other, better suits but I hold on to this one because, for me at least, it is special.
 
The suit attracts and repels me. It came to me under the saddest of circumstances, and I’ve dared to wear it in public only once. I wore it to test myself, to see if it would fit – not only in its cut and dimensions, but to prove to myself I could bear the mantle and wear it without feeling like an impostor, a boy posing as a man. Most of the time I try to ignore it, and so years can go by without my touching it. But even so, I always know it’s there.
 
Once in a while, I feel compelled to run my hand along its lapels and think of the man who wore it. I see the line of his jaw, his broad torso and its incipient roundness. I see the pores on his fleshy, bulbous nose. I remember the feel of his thick skin and the dryness of his hands, and I wonder if I look like him.
 
This is my father’s suit.
 
The coat is single-breasted with a notch lapel. A boy would say it is black; in fact, it is dark navy. I lift the hanger off the rod and turn the suit this way and that in the morning sun breaking through the blinds. When the angle is just right, the colour has more depth than I remember, flashing with casts of royal and cerulean blue. Perhaps it is only my imagination, or a trick of the light.
 
Even without putting the jacket on, I can tell it won’t fit me, although I have grown heavier and thicker over the years. The chest is too full and the shoulders are too wide. My father was always the bigger man, but the exaggerated proportions are as much a by-product of dated tastes as the measuring tape. The button placement is low and swaying, evidence of Giorgio Armani’s early louche influence on menswear. It has been decades since it was considered stylish to button jackets below the natural belt line (think of the days ofMiami Vice).
 
Contemporary fashion dictates the crucial fastening point must be closer to the sternum, far above the belly button. (The higher “button stance” creates the illusion of longer legs.) In nearly every detail – the broad shoulders, the low notch on the wide lapel, the two heavy brass buttons hanging at a low, testicular altitude – the suit is old, outmoded. Why does it matter? If it doesn’t fit, why not throw the suit out and buy a new one?
 
Outside of a Konica camera he gave me as a wedding present and a pair of metal eyeglass frames I found in his apartment after his death, this suit is the only thing I have from my father. Though I have been tempted to abandon it by the back door of the Salvation Army store down the hill, the suit won’t let me.
 
A suit is never just a suit.


From the Hardcover edition.