BOAT RACE 2019 | Rowing Blazers

December 31, 2018–It's nearly 2019, and time to starting thinking again about The Boat Race(s), Men's and Women's, in the early afternoon of 7 April 2019.

The Women's Race will be at 2:15 pm and the Men's Race at 3:15 pm. I plan to be in Oxford or London that day.

The Boat Race Dinner in New York City will be on April 25, so it is time also to think about getting a Rowing Blazer (the required dress for men is Black Tie or Boat Club Blazer). I rowed in the Second Eight for Trinity Oxford in 1963 and 1964 and have stayed in touch with the Trinity Boat Club, so a Trinity blazer would be nice to have.

Hours of Rowing Blazers,
except holidays.

So a few days ago I tried to look at the blazers in Rowing Blazers, the new store in Soho, NYC opened by Jack Carlson. 

Carlson is the author of Rowing Blazers. When it was first launched at a Ralph Lauren store, I posted about the book in 2014. Carlson's store, unsurprisingly called Rowing Blazers, is at 161 Grand Street, at the corner of Centre Street in Lower Manhattan.

Before we stopped by Rowing Blazers, Alice and I and our daughter Caroline went to lunch at the fabulous Le Coucou restaurant, founded by Daniel Rose, the American-Chef-Who-Opened-Four-Restos-in-Paris-and-Was-a-Success, and Stephen Starr. 

I once chatted in a Paris café with Daniel Rose's father, who was surprised and impressed that his son got a rapid following in the challenging environment of Parisian cuisine. Daniel Rose's first resto, Spring One was too small to make money, but Spring Two was three times as big and the numbers worked better, both a popular place and a financial success. He has opened two other restos in Paris since then and they are doing well; but he reportedly plans to close Spring Two as he did his first resto.

He opened Le Coucou with a partner, Stephen Starr, a high-flying restaurateur. The restaurant has been widely exalted, with the James Beard Foundation picking it as the country’s best new restaurant.

Le Coucou is formal for an American resto,
but informal by the standards of some
cathedrals of French cuisine, like Maison
Pic, in Valence. 

We were lucky to snag a lunch reservation at Le Coucou on fairly short notice. Everything at Le Coucou was perfect. The waitstaff were formal by American standards but laid back by French ones, at least the top French restaurants that we have visited.


Le Coucou is at 178 Lafayette St, a block away from the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), which we passed on the way from Rowing Blazers.

Book talk
at MOCA.

MOCA is having a book talk on Chinese typewriters. 

As the photos in this post show, Rowing Blazers is an upscale store for people interested in rowing. I talked to a friend in mid-December who purchased an English rugby shirt (red rose badge), and he recommended I pay a visit to the store.

Alas, it was closed when we stopped by, but management was away between Christmas and New Year's for a vacation, a very European decision. Alas, we don't expect to be back from Florida until April, so these photos will have to suffice as my report on the store.

Rowing Blazers is at Centre and Grand Streets.

Much of the inventory is available on their website, to which I have provided a link above. I checked out a blue rowing blazer that Rowing Blazers sells. It is cotton with European/ American tailoring, vs. the synthetic fabric used on the blazers sold by Ralph Lauren, which is tailored in Asia. Rowing Blazers is clearly going for quality in this case. 

However, the Ralph Lauren blazer may well be higher quality than the blazers I looked at in Oxford. The Oxford blazers seem designed for student, not alumni, budgets.

BLAZON, BLASON | Differences in Pronunciation and Meaning

Pronunciation Lesson from Sir Henry
Bedingfeld, Bt. (center), September 2018.

EAST HAMPTON, 26 September – This is about the pronunciation of the word "blazon", a word that is at the very center of heraldry.

The blazon is a coat of arms reduced to words. From a blazon a scholar of heraldry can generate a "trick" – a black-and-white sketch of the coat of arms.

Then the heraldic artist, someone like my friend Lee Lumbley, can generate for you a colorful drawing of the coat.

The blason is different... But let's first focus on the blazon.

Two Pronunciations of Blazon

Most people who are not heraldic scholars pronounce the word "blazon" so that the first syllable is the same as the word blaze, or the first half of the word blazer, which has an Oxbridge origin. The Ur-blazer was the flaming red boating jacket of Lady Margaret Boat Club, named after Lady Margaret Beaufort. Beaufort founded St John's College, Cambridge and is the nominee of Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford. The first recorded reference to a blazer was in the 1852 Cambridge General Almanack and Register, says Jack Carlson, on pages 12 and 126 of Rowing Blazers (New York: The Vendome Press, 2014).

A couple of pronouncing dictionaries say that the word blazon should be pronounced BLAY-zun.

But heraldic scholars pronounce blazon more like a Frenchman would, BLAZ-un (the de-accenting of the second syllable is a common byproduct of the Anglicization of French words).

That's how, for example, Sir Henry Edgar Paston-Bedingfeld, Bt., of Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk pronounces it after a lifetime in the business. He was once Rouge Croix Pursuivant, York Herald, and then Norroy and Ulster King of Arms (the two Kings of Arms were separate until 1943). A long career in the College of Arms.

The first syllable of blazon, he confirms, is pronounced like the first syllable of the current Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, with a short "a" as in black or blast.

So how should we pronounce it? If you are among the hoi polloi, blay-zun will probably pass without comment. If you are mixing with folk from the College of Arms, it is blaz-un.

A Blason Is Something Else

Meanwhile, I have come across the word blason, which is pronounced differently from blazon. Fewer people would be tempted to mispronounce, for two reasons: (1) fewer people know what it is in the first place, and (2) blason is a French term of art and would therefore be assumed to be pronounced with a short "a", as in "blasé", and with a full-throated "on" (as in garçon) at the end.

Blason is a form of poetry that originated with the heraldic blazon but took on a whole new specific meaning.  Both in France and in Holland (the Dutch term is blazoen), the word can refer to a description of a coat of arms or to the coat itself. It was used often to describe a "chamber of rhetoric", which was a dramatic society once popular in Belgium and Holland that had aspects of Japanese karaoke and community theater as well as welfare aspects associated with civic associations.

The term blason, along with related words, was used in 16th-century French literature by poets who followed in a tradition pioneered by Clément Marot in 1536.  The blason draws on the tradition of chivalry that is exemplified by the 14th-century book of poems of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), Il Canzoniere. Petrarch addresses his poems to his beloved Laura, but doesn't describe her all at once, referencing only parts of her person, invariably with reverence and extravagant comparisons to something in nature, such as (to make up a couple of examples) "Your eyes are stars; they light up my night." Or: "Your lips are pools to dive for." It is still a device used often by precious poets and writers.

However, the extravagance of the French blason tradition became oppressive, and many post-Petrarchan voices emerged, of which three types endure:

• Extension to groups. One approach was to up the ante with the blason populaire, extending the extravagant praise to an entire culture or ethnic group, puffed up by belittling others. The original seems to have been a travel book by Alfred Canel, Blason Populaire de la Normandie (1859), in which Norman travelers scoff at the primitive culture of other regions. Samuel Johnson, for example, says in his dictionary: "The noblest prospect which a Scotsman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!" In modern times, the blason populaire endures in Donald Trump, who seeks to elevate U.S. status by belittling that of foreign nationals, starting with but by no means limited to Mexicans and other Latin American citizens seeking to emigrate to the United States.
• Parody. Another prominent set of voices were the parodies. In the 16th-century parody, Don Quixote, Cervantes describes the adventures of a madman who decides he is a knight on a quest. The girl of his dreams is a local peasant girl, whom he calls Dulcinea. In her honor, Quixote devotes countless inflated assessments of her beauty. 
• Denial. Another approach is to attack the Petrarchan genre by denying its validity. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 rejects several Petrarchan clichés:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks,

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,

That music hath a far more pleasing sound.

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

VIEWS | 230K. Top 10 Most-Read Posts in Last Month.

October 18, 2017 – This blog has had 230,000 page views since inception.

Thank you for reading!

The ten most-viewed posts in the last month are shown below, with dates and links.

Post Title and Link, and Date

HITLER: Why Didn't He Bomb Oxford? (24K Views, Sep... Jun 8, 2013, 3 comments

ROWING BLAZERS: Ralph Lauren Launch, Carlson's Boo... Sep 24, 2014

WOMEN AT OXFORD | Rhodes, Trinity, St Benet's Sep 18, 2017

OXFORD MUSIC: Schola Cantorum in NYC at Trinity Ch... Sep 16, 2014

OXFORD IN FICTION: Top Six Fictional Colleges (Upd... Jul 2, 2016

TRINITY | Alumni Weekend Sep 17, 2017, 2 comments

OXFORD IN WW2 | Felicity Tholstrup Oct 6, 2017

HERALDRY: The College of Arms and Windsor Herald Aug 15, 2015

OXFORD OPEN DAY | Selling the Colleges, 2017 Oct 9, 2017

OXFORD | Russian Heritage Sep 24, 2017

ROWING BLAZERS: Ralph Lauren Launch, Carlson's Book (Comment)

Alice Tepper Marlin, John Tepper Marlin and Jack
Carlson at Ralph Lauren's 55th Street store.

Ralph Lauren did another smart thing a few hours ago and opened its Fifth Avenue at 55th Street store to a launch of a new book by Jack Carlson, Rowing Blazers.

The author of the book coxed the winning boats this year at the Henley Royal Regatta, the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta, and the Head of the Charles Regatta.

He has also coxed the U.S. boat at the world championships and Oxford in the Oxford-Cambridge boat races.

Cover: Kenny McMahon. 

The principal photographer was F. E. Castleberry, a fashion photographer who frequently takes photos for Ralph Lauren.

His photography in the book captures the glamor of rowing, with photos that do justice to the blazers and ties and the young men and women who wear them. Castleberry says he worked on the book for three years with the author.

The cover of the book on display featured Kenny McMahon wearing the University of Wisconsin blazer. A friend in Canada says that the Canadian edition uses a different blazer for the cover.

Oliver Williams with Taurus Boat Club boating uniform.
Photos by JT Marlin.

Published by the Vendome Press in New York City, the book is listed at $50 and can be ordered online for about $15 less.

The Three-Piece Boat Suit

Oliver Williams gets a two-page spread wearing the three-piece uniform of the Taurus Boat Club in front of a white topless motor vehicle.

His club is attached to Oxford Brookes University, the polytechnic that has grown in size and stature since I was at Oxford in 1962-64.

Williams was at the book launch and cheerfully autographed my book in the white space created by the car.

Origin of the Blazer

Jack Carlson's Dad with friends.

Originally, oarsmen wore "boating jackets" while they were rowing. The idea was that rowers should be uniformed like seamen or midshipmen.

The word "blazer", Carlson tells us right up front, was originally applicable only to the jacket of  Lady Margaret Boat Club of St. John's College, Cambridge. This was reportedly the first boat club to be organized on the River Cam.

The Lady Margaret Boat Club color was red, a "blazing" red. Hence the name. As other college boat clubs rose to the competition and developed their own colors, the term "blazer" became a generic word for the boat club jacket.

The blazer-makers that Carlson recommends are retailers in Cambridge (both England and Massachusetts), Eton, Henley and Oxford. A friend who was buying a Trinity College, Oxford blazer didn't like the one sold by Walters in Oxford so he had one made by a tailor in London.

Comment

Regatta wear with Henley ticket in lapel.

My friend Denise Seegal, a fashion guru and executive who has headed up several major clothing brands, was there and is acknowledged by Jack Carlson for helping him with the book. Denise found him a publisher and that interest was leveraged by the author into an even better deal.

Denise got to see rowing from the inside when she was married to Peter Darrow, a fellow Trinity Oxford alum who was an avidly competitive rower (he was a strong backer of the Sag Harbor Rowing Club) sadly died of cancer last year.

The Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race Dinner in New York City is held every year – 2015 will be the 82nd dinner – and it has many oarsmen in attendance. They are permitted to wear boat club blazers instead of black tie. I suspect/predict that the number of people wearing blazers will increase in 2015, for two reasons:

• Now that Ralph Lauren has attached his influence to the boat club blazer, those who rowed but never bought a blazer may be tempted to do so.
• Those who already own blazers and still fit in them will be tempted to ante up the money for a ticket or two to the dinner next year.

Denise Seegal and Jack Carlson. 

Meanwhile, I hope that Jack Carlson can appear before the Boat Race Dinner or an Oxford event, or both. He has done a thorough job of research on blazers.

A portion of sales at the book event will go to making rowing accessible to more young people, a project that helps keep the sport from being exclusively for students at prep schools and boat-friendly colleges.

Too bad Carlson didn't include the Trinity College, Oxford blazer. He includes only Trinity College, Hartford and Trinity College, Toronto. He did, however, immediately recognize my Trinity College Boat Club tie, at right – to my mind, one of the best-designed boat club ties around.

Trinity College, Oxford Boat 
Club tie. Two griffins on a crown. 

Personally, I hope to see the following developments in a putative boat-club-blazer bubble:

• Fashion designers for the mass market "club blazers" should respect existing club designs to prevent their being sold to customers with no connection to the boat clubs.
• It would be great if a quality clothing store would sell college boat club blazers, some of which are poorly made. Some rowers have their blazers custom made because none of the ones on the racks are good enough. 
• Support of rowing programs for teenagers ought to be incorporated in every boat club activity.
• It's great to see experimentation in boating attire. However, personally I would not cry over the disappearance of the most egregious expressions, such as the three-piece boat-club suit exemplified by that of Oxford Brookes University. A club blazer paired with the rest of a black-tie or boat-club tie outfit looks better to me.

Other rowing posts: 2012 NYC Boat Race Dinner . 2014 NYC Boat Race Dinner

Update September 2017: This post has had 2,600 views. Thank you for reading.

BOAT RACE: Photos, 2014 BRD in NYC

The 186 photos are posted here: http://on.fb.me/ZcAmMS.

With Jack Carlson's glossy new book on Rowing Blazers just launched with a splash in New York City at Ralph Lauren's flagship on Fifth Avenue, we may see a lot more boat club blazers at the 2015 dinner...