An article in NYT on SF and AAAC in 2004.
A sampler:
Styleforum.net is one of about a half-dozen Web logs and Internet discussion sites that have emerged in the past few years to cater to the sometimes fanatical interests of those immersed in the world of classical men's clothing. Styleforum, with about 1,100 members, and AskAndyAboutClothes.com, with about 1,600, are probably the most popular. They attract recent college graduates just entering the business world; midcareer bankers, lawyers and financiers; and a handful of custom tailors who appear on the sites to offer counsel and also to defend themselves when the particularities of their cutting and sewing methods are maligned or questioned.
Oddly, neither Styleforum nor AskAndy were begun by men with encyclopedic knowledge of lapel widths. As Jeremy Jackson, the founder of Styleforum, put it, "I have no idea what these people are talking about." Mr. Jackson, a 25-year-old office manager at his stepfather's construction company in Seattle, had a mild fascination with clothes when he started the site two years ago. He had participated in an online fashion forum run by GQ magazine but found it too vituperative in tone. "There was a lot of fighting," he said. Moderating Mr. Jackson's site to make sure tempers don't flare too aggressively is a San Antonio writer named Steve Brinkman, whom Mr. Jackson has never met.
Andy Gilchrist, of AskAndy, started his site in 2001, two years after retiring from the aerospace division of TRW in Redondo Beach, Calif. "I'm shocked sometimes at the level of involvement here," Mr. Gilchrist said. "I thought I was pretty obsessed but I've never paid $1,600 for shoes." During part of his tenure at TRW, Mr. Gilchrist, now 60 and coming up on his 35th wedding anniversary, indulged his fascination with men's tailoring by taking a second job on the weekends at a branch of Polo Ralph Lauren. He was the top salesman, he said, for five of his six years at the shop. "I couldn't sell cars but I could sell clothes because I love them," he said. He owns 300 ties.
And the Russian reindeer joke...
One afternoon last week, a member of Styleforum.net, a Web site devoted to the discussion of men's clothing and lifestyle, asked fellow members about a shoe that had aroused his curiosity. The shoe, a cap-toe lace-up from the British cobbler Poulsen Skone, was not the sort of thing one finds at Brooks Brothers. Costing $1,500, it was made of Russian reindeer hide salvaged from a shipwrecked Danish brigantine -- the Catherina von Flensburg -- that had sunk off the coast of Cornwall in 1786.
"I understand that both Cleverley and John Lobb of St. James obtained some of these hides too," the Web poster wrote, referring to two London-based purveyors of custom shoes. "If anyone has bought any please post pictures. I understand that Prince Charles has got a pair, but he has yet to join the forum."
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