Miles,
Chet, Ralph, & Charlie tells the story of the Andover Shop, and how our
co-founder
Charlie
Davidson transformed a tiny store into an unlikely literary and cultural salon
that brought together musicians like Miles Davis, Chet Baker, and Bobby Short,
as well as writers like Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. Yet the story was not
who he dressed, but why. This book explores the unexpected role that Charlie's
particular style of patrician clothing played in making people visible in the
years before full civil rights.
The book
is an "oral history" told through interviews with three of the
leading voices in American style writing: G. Bruce Boyer (a former editor at
Esquire and Town & Country), Alan Flusser (who dressed Gordon Gekko for the
Wall Street movie, and who has written several of the canonical style books),
and Richard Press (the former CEO of the iconic American menswear firm, J.
Press).
https://www.theandovershop.com/products/untitled-sep14_11-29
Author Interview: Constantine Valhouli
Posted on July 24, 2024 by Byron Tully
https://theoldmoneybook.com/2024/07/24/author-interview-constantine-valhouli/
Recently, I had a moment to sit down with
Constantine Valhouli, author of Miles, Chet, Ralph & Charlie, which details
the fascinating history of The Andover Shop in Boston.
If you were ever wondering how Old Money Style
clothes intersected with jazz, politics, and American history, read on…
And thanks again, Constantine.
BGT: Hi Constantine. Thank you for making the
time to sit with me today. I know you’re promoting Miles, Chet, Ralph, &
Charlie here in Europe as well as in the US, in addition to the other book(s)
you’re working on. So, time is precious.
CAV: Those clever fellows at CERN tell me that
time and space are infinite quantities, but my attorneys still bill by the hour
…
BGT: Ha! Okay, first, let’s address the title.
Who are the people you refer to?
CAV: Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Ralph Ellison … and
everyone thinks the eponymous Charlie is Charlie Parker but it’s the founder of
the Andover Shop, Charlie Davidson. One of main voices in the book, the tailor
Mor Sène, said that Miles, Chet, Ralph & Charlie was a brilliant title
because Miles Davis embodies east coast jazz while Chet Baker is west coast
jazz personified, and Charlie Davidson bridges the two. I nodded and said that
was exactly what I was thinking (but of course it wasn’t) and I’m happy to take
credit for that accidental insight after the fact.
BGT: And Charlie Davidson comes across in the
book as quite a character…
CAV: He was fascinating, complex, complicated,
generous, ornery, and volatile. And sometimes contradictory. If you asked two
people their opinions of him, you’d get such different answers that you’d
wonder if they were even discussing the same person. Which makes for great raw
material for a book.
BGT: Of course, The Andover Shop is a legendary
clothing establishment that defined what we call Old Money Style, or Ivy Style.
Can you give us a little background on the store—I wouldn’t call it a
boutique—to provide a some context?
CAV: The look was very much an insider’s thing
until it was democratized by the GI Bill and jazz, in roughly that order. Until
the GI Bill after the Second World War, there were fewer colleges and even less
financial aid. The students at these schools developed a distinctive look ––
navy blazers and tweed jackets; corduroy and grey flannel trousers (khaki
wouldn’t be introduced until after the war, but that’s another story). It was
very much a look of privilege. Each of the major colleges had a shop serving
the campus: J. Press at Yale and Princeton, The Andover Shop at Harvard, and so
on.
Alumni from J. Press went on to start many of the
defining clothing companies, and one of these was The Andover Shop. Each store
had something they did very well, something which reflected the founder’s
interests. For Charlie, it was jazz. He met Miles Davis and Chet Baker (as well
as other influential figures like the legendary jazz columnist and bon vivant
George Frazier) shortly after starting the shop. He began dressing them when
their sound was changing, and this called for a different look than the uniforms
of black tie or zoot suits. These musicians were playing on college campuses,
and saw how the members of their privileged audiences dressed. It was
fascinating to see how outsiders, in a time before civil rights, adapted the
look of consummate insiders.
BGT: So this is about music, a collision of
cultures, people who don’t ordinarily mix together getting to know one
another…but it’s still about clothing, right?
Clothing is central to the story of The Andover
Shop. Aspects of the story would be the same if it were a restaurant (a similar
focus on, literally, taste) or a music venue (I’m thinking of the ones founded
by impresario George Wein, which broke racial barriers by integrating
audiences). But Charlie’s kind of clothing is loaded with meaning: what we
aspire to, how we see ourselves, how we wish to be seen.
He understood the Boston Brahmin and how they saw
themselves, and sold clothing that appealed to that crowd and those in their
orbit. The details are very specific to New England. It’s Anglophile, but not
British, Italian-accented but not Italian. Over the years, I’ve visited similar
clothiers in places like London, Naples, and Stockholm, each reflects something
deeply local in its aspiration –– a nuance which I, as an outsider, am unable
to read. But for New England, Charlie understood how the traditions of Boston’s
aristocracy were codified into taste.
BGT: ‘Codified into taste’, that’s a phrase. But
this book is different from what readers might expect. It’s not a straight
nonfiction title detailing the names, dates, and events surrounding the
principal characters involved in The Andover Shop. You’ve compiled an ‘oral
history’. Why did you opt for that format in order to tell this story?
A: One of my favorite books is Nelson Aldrich’s
George, Being George, an oral history of his friend and Paris Review colleague
George Plimpton. Nelson and I ended up unexpectedly working together on The
Master of Eliot House, a book about a legendary Harvard figure named John
Finley. I mentioned to Nelson that I’d
gathered all these interviews for a book on Charlie Davidson, but didn’t want
to do a traditional narrative nonfiction approach. Almost everyone I spoke with
was a natural raconteur; Nelson suggested doing it as an oral history to
foreground these wonderful storytellers and preserve their distinct voices.
BGT: So the book’s a biography. It’s a tribute.
It’s about music. It’s about a changing America. And how The Andover Shop
contributed to and participated in all those. Was it difficult to maintain a
focus while putting the book together?
A: Heh. It’s difficult for me to maintain focus
in general. Especially before coffee. But Nina MacLaughlin of The Boston Globe
rather generously described the book as “kaleidoscopic,” which I think may be a
kind way of saying that I have the editorial focus of a ferret on amphetamines.
When I began, I had no idea where the book would
take me. Oral histories offer a parallel to documentary filmmaking, in that the
story emerges in the interviews and editing. The individuals in the book were
fascinating, and the deeper I got into the research, connections emerged among
these people. I tried to highlight the overlaps among the narrative threads,
and how Charlie and the shop were the nexus for many of these connections.
Miles Davis, sporting an oxford cloth button down
shirt in the studio.
BGT: Your contributors are a veritable pantheon
of men’s style icons—I wouldn’t call them ‘fashion’ icons, but men who’ve made
some tremendous contributions to the way we think about clothes and the way we
dress. How did their participation come about?
CAV: Bruce Boyer is a former editor at Town &
Country and Esquire, and has written several of the definitive books on
traditional men’s style. Alan Flusser is an author and clothier who may be best
known for dressing the characters in the Wall Street movie –– and in turn
influencing how actual financiers chose to dress. And Richard Press is the
former CEO of J. Press, and the grandson of that firm’s founder, so he has a
direct connection to how this look began and how it evolved in relation to a
changing America. I think this book may be the first time they’ve all appeared
in such depth in one volume.
Their participation? It was during the pandemic,
so we were all bored and I just reached out to mention the project, and what
followed was a wonderful, ongoing conversation.
BGT: Charlie Davidson spots a young Barack Obama
from a mile way—and a few years ahead of his time—proclaiming that the young
senator would eventually be president. How did owning The Andover Shop put
Charlie— and so many other players in your book—at the epicenter of politics?
The shop is in Boston, not Washington DC. What was going on there?
CAV: Malcolm Gladwell described Charlie as one of
the most connected people in the United States. It helped that the shop was
across the street from Harvard, and next to the “final clubs” on Mount Auburn
Street. The shop drew a cross-section of professors, students, and
distinguished guests who were all deeply immersed in their fields. It’s no
surprise that he’d know of Barack Obama long before the public did.
BGT: And for some reason, this same man and this
same store were neck-deep in cutting edge culture.
CAV: Towards the end of his life –– and he lived
past ninety –– Charlie was getting into rap music. But his first love was jazz,
which we now think of as serious, something to be studied. But at the time, it
was pop culture. Instead of Jazz at Lincoln Center imagine “Heavy Metal at
Lincoln Center” in fifty years, and you get a sense of the arc that jazz has
traveled from the cultural margins to a place in the American pantheon. (I
should add that the two Andover Shop figures were closely involved with Jazz at
Lincoln Center: social critic Albert Murray, and his protégé Quincy Jones.)
Al Murray and Ralph Ellison understood that jazz
was never just entertainment, it was always political. It reflected, and was
part of, the struggle for civil rights. Clothing was, too, which is why it
played such a central role in jazz. Clothing made status visible, and was a way
of claiming space publicly. After doing this book, I’m no longer surprised that
a clothier would find himself at a nexus of the cultural and political
spheres.
BGT:
Yankee patricians and jazz musicians, trying on sport coats in the same
shop. This just seems like a soap opera or a novel that no one would believe.
CAV: The marvelous Bruce Boyer described both
this book and The Master of Eliot House as “having a cast of characters that
would be improbable in a work of fiction.” I think back to Twain’s dictum that
“fiction is constrained by what’s plausible but reality only by what’s
possible.”
BGT: Was it just Charlie’s personality that held
it all together? Or was it just a particular time in history—and a particular
man and place—that might never come around again?
CAV: Yes. A number of people tell stories of
Charlie kicking people out of the store if they couldn’t handle being in a
racially integrated space. And it was his personal interests that drew these
people together in the first place. He loved jazz, literature, history, and
politics and had a rare opportunity to turn his shop into a salon where those
subjects were discussed on a daily basis by some of the leading minds. And then
he’d sell them a sweater or some socks.
I feel that there was always, will always be, a
Charlie of some sort. He’s almost an archetype. When I was in Copenhagen, there
was a museum exhibit about clothing of the royal court. I sent Charlie a note
saying that one of his collateral ancestors had probably put those together ––
and combined technical skill with the knowledge of the social dynamics of the
royal court. He was amused.
BGT: One of the chapters of your book bears the
title, “When Substance Had Style”. That really resonated with me, and left me a
little sad. Were there any points during the final review of the manuscript
that you felt a little depressed? Like we’d lost something we might not get
back?
CAV: Oh! That was a particularly melancholy
chapter, but I think it reflected the price that Charlie –– and all of us who
try to gather remarkable circles around ourselves –– must pay: the eventual
death of all these friends. The gradual tightening of that circle, and the
ever-present question of whether we’ve made some small difference in the lives
of the people around us.
The short answer to your question is an emphatic
yes. Those decades were certainly not a golden age for everyone, but there was
an elegance to them that seems impossibly distant now. The majority of people
aspire towards something very different, one which I find much less compelling.
BGT: I know you’re very private, but can you
share with us your own personal experience at The Andover Shop?
There was this one time involving the volleyball
team, a sloth that escaped from the Franklin Park Zoo, and an open bar, but my
lawyers have advised me not to discuss it until The Andover Shop’s insurance
company settles the claim. But I think the damage to their building has finally
been repaired, and there’s talk of putting up a historic plaque to mark the
memorable (if unfortunate) events.
BGT: Very diplomatic! And what’s next for you?
When is the next book going to be published?
The Master of Eliot House comes out, in limited
edition, in September. And in the meantime, I look forward to catching up on
sleep.
BGT: Very much looking forward to that. Rest a
little, and we’ll talk again soon.
Miles, Chet, Ralph & Charlie can be found
here:
Cambridge, MA: The Andover Shop (LINK: https://www.theandovershop.com/products/untitled-sep14_11-29)
New York, NY: J. Mueser: https://jmueser.com/
Stockholm: Tweed Country Sports (https://countrysports.se)
Stockholm: The English Bookshop (bookshop.se)
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Miles-Chet-Ralph-Charlie-history-ebook/dp/B0CH6HZ8Q9/
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