March 21, 2010 world of men's style / fashion / grooming RSS
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KEMPT

A blog dedicated to the interesting, scandalous, useful and cutting edge in the world of men’s style, fashion and grooming.

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“George Clooney”
01/08/08 ·

LinkOut

IPOs, Wide Loads and Heath Hearts Gemma

Gemma Ward

You Look Like $4,257: A complete price breakdown of MOTH Patrick Dempsey’s Versace ad wardrobe. [FWD]

Public Affairs: Hilfiger to lead parade of fashion IPOs this year. [WWD]

Man of The Moment: On what is quickly becoming our (second) favorite blog, Adam Kimmel takes over T’s Pitti Uomo coverage. [The Moment]

Billionaire Bling Club: Pharrell teams up with Louis Vuitton for jewelry line. Be afraid/excited. [Now Public]

Name Dropping: “Yeah, aren’t you the guy who’s not getting through my security checkpoint?” [StyleDash]

Slimboy Fat: Clooney rocks the wide look, perhaps hastening the eclipse of the skinny tie. She Knows Best [Magnificent Bastard]

Aussie Love: Heath Ledger squires model Gemma Ward. Not bad for a balding single dad. [Nimoy]

01/24/08 ·

LinkOut

Narciso Dumps Men, Tommy Dumps Stock and Tony Dumps Jess

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“Help Us, George”: If A-list Hollywood can’t end your 40-year civil war, no one can. [AP]

FutureSex: It may never amount to love, but at least a robot won’t ask you to shave your stubble. [Sun Herald]

Bull Market: No fool he, Tommy Hilfiger holds back on his IPO due to the falling Dow. We, meanwhile, watch Apple tumble. [Bloomberg]

Red Carpet Disaster: Ok, we totally didn’t know this “Cojo” guy was a dude. [Forbes]

Unmanned: Narciso Rodriguez, who’s had a strong showing for the guys over the last few seasons, pulls his upcoming men’s collection without comment. [FWD]

The Square Mile: London’s men keep it sharp. [Vogue UK]

Kiki’s Capsule: Kirsten Dunst trains her little, blue sights on a signature fashion line. [The First Post]

Highway Fascist: Roll like Il Duce for around $2,000,000. [BBC]

Deep In The Heart of Texas: The Daily News writes, “Tony Romo punts Jessica Simpson.” Given his position, we would have called it, “intentional grounding.” [NYDN]

02/25/08 ·

LinkOut

Little Gold Men and Aliens in Your Drawers

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Leading Man: Sure, Daniel Day-Plainview may have drunk George Clooney’s milkshake last night, but with his shawl-collar tux and styled arm candy, Dr. Ross walked away with our award. [Observer]

Fit to Be Tied: Speaking of the Oscars, a few attendees, including Scientology’s unofficial co-pilot Ms. John Travolta, can’t manage a bow on their own. For shame. [Manolo for Men]

Sparkle, Sparkle: Dear Diablo Cody, remember that those snarky, insipid style critics have a job to do and tearing you apart is just part of it. It’s nothing personal. As far as we’re concerned, you’ll always be the second or third hottest former stripper to win for best script. [Beauty Fashion Life]

Hand Me Down: Adrian Grenier says vintage style is good for Mother Earth. Damned hippie. [Hoopla]

Watch out for Klingons: Ted Baker goes zoom! zap! bleep! bleep! in your underwear. [Retro to Go]

The White Pages: Social injustice, the class system and America’s yawning racial divide arrived bundled with P.C. Richards circulars this Sunday. [PSFK]

03/07/08 ·

LinkOut

Cro-Magnon Chic, Bisexual Shoes and An American Girl

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She Was a Young American: Come for the impassioned defense of American Apparel mastermind Dov Charney. Stay for the sexpolitative photography. [Radar]

Fancy a Game of Footy?: Solid unisex, yes unisex, kicks from Jonathan Saunders and Goa. [JC Report]

Francophila: French women - now more sexual than ever. C’est Magnifique! [Time]

Changing Seasons: In Spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of seersucker. [A Suitable Wardrobe]

Our Girl Friday: It’s been a long workweek. Don’t you think you deserve two minutes of Rachel Bilson being impossibly cute? [Nylon]

Sex Change: The TMagazine site has switched over from women’s fashions and a shot of Natalie Portman to a George Clooney pic and menswear stores, which is pretty much an even trade. [The Moment]

Unintelligent Design: A sartorial history of the cinematic caveman. [The Globe and Mail]

Caught Red Handed: Pikey Colin Farrell tried to steal someone else’s model girlfriend because, hey, why not? [NYPost]

Courtly Love: Our favorite low-tops ever go back to their roots. [Hypebeast]

03/25/08 ·

LinkOut

Clooney's No Clothier, Lapin's Playboy and Tibetan Team Colors

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Je Le Lis Pour Les Articles: Naughty, naughty Amy Odell loves French Playboy almost as much as we do. [NYMag]

Whew, That Was Close: For one horrid moment we thought George Clooney was about to join the celebrity-clothing-line craze. Thank God for hoaxes and hearsay. [WWD]

Flip Floppers: Desperately fashionable Men.Style reverses its position on mocks - looses several key superdelegates. [Men.Style]

Against The Grain: Sit down with out-of-the-box outerwear makers Wood Wood. [The Pop Manifesto]

Dapper Don: Mr. Mort shows the Ivy League how it’s done. [A Continuous Lean]

Free Tibet: A strangely eloquent protest you can wear to the gym. [V Magazine]

Advantage, You: If nothing else, at least you can beat Andy Roddick at Wii. We’re sure the girls will be impressed. [Vanityfair.com]

03/27/08 ·

LinkOut

Playboy Under Wraps, Emo Wars and Going on The Pill

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White Wash: The massive DKNY advertising mural turned Soho icon at Manhattan’s Houston and Broadway is, like all the other signs of the neighborhood’s 80s heyday, not long for this world. [WWD]

NFL Lock Out: Football may ban excessive hair use, putting an end to those Thors and rastas of the gridiron. [Styledash]

Chaste Bunnies: The Philippine version of Playboy will be a fully-clothed, demure affair with, “maybe one nipple,” here and there. No fun. [Canadian Press]

Forever in Blue Jeans: Mike “Muffin Top” Albo searches for recession-proof denim. [NYTimes]

Panic at The Mexico: Emo kids are facing systematic beat downs south of the border and uniting to defend their rights and feathered hair. March on, wasted youth. March on. [The Daily Swarm]

Forged Signature: Refusing to let a little thing like legal permission hold it back, an Italian clothes maker bravely strikes out on its own to create the George Clooney collection. [WWD]

The Holy Grail: Bring on the male birth-control pill. [Altpenis]

05/27/08 ·

Filmic

The Middlebrow

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Kempt bids a fond farewell to Sydney Pollack today, a filmmaker who made his name on restraint, subtle humanism and consummate professionalism. In short, a man in full. As his recent co-star George Clooney put it, “Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better. A tip of the hat to a class act. He will be missed.”

More on Mr. Pollack»

10/08/08 ·

The Biz

You Are Being Watched

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Like any business, show business has a lot of inner workings that they would prefer you didn’t see. Unfortunately, thanks to some loose branding, the celebrity endorsement racket is getting a very public airing.

The lovely Charlize Theron has been appearing in ads for Raymond Weil for a while now, but apparently she had a little trouble keeping her brands in order and accidentally showed up at a film festival wearing a Christian Dior watch. That bit of brand treason may end up costing Theron $20 mil if Weil’s lawyers get their way. Oops.

More on the hectic world of celebrity endorsement»

10/23/08 ·

Good Idea

Taking Names

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AskMen just put up its list of the 49 most influential men of the year and, naturally, we’re furious we didn’t make the list. Of course, we would have been the only blogger other than Kanye

Now that we’ve gotten over the initial shock, we have to admit it’s pretty good work. It’s got its share of our favorite movie stars—The Cloon (22) and Robert Downey Jr. (4)— mixed in with who-the-hell-is-that picks, like Jonathan Ive (23), the design mastermind behind the iPhone, and Rob Kay (8), the brains behind Guitar Hero. On the style front, Kempt favorites Thom Browne (43) and Tom Ford (4) also weigh in, although we’re surprised Ford is so high and Browne is so low. Maybe the accountant look isn’t as popular as we thought.

But any list that puts Kanye two spots ahead of Ben Bernanke can’t be all bad.

11/07/08 ·

Icon

The Birth of the Cool

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We’ve been scanning our latest tumblr obsession The Impossible Cool for a while, and we’ve detected a couple of patterns.

First, in addition to the usual actor suspects—Mr. McQueen, Mr. Clooney—there’s a healthy spattering of genuine genius, including Robert Altman and our personal favorite, Mr. Kurosawa. For all the cross-cultural fun we’ve had over the past twenty years, it’s easy to forget he was the first one importing American staples like the shoot-em-up western to eastern shores.

Second, they’re almost all sporting shades.

03/13/09 ·

Current Affairs

Soylent George

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Is it us, or is PETA getting kind of wacky lately? We first noticed it with their bizarre hatecrush on the Olsen twins, but a few tin-eared pickets later, they seem to have gone completely off the rails.

Let us be perfectly clear: Protesting is one thing, but stealing George Clooney’s man musk to create a Cloon-flavored meat substitute is just creepy beyond words.

Perhaps more explanation is required»