The Rake Personified: Jay McInerney

Did you go structuralist or drape?
[Laughs] Both. The first thing I did was I tried Anderson &Sheppard and Huntsman to get an understanding of their house styles. I honestly liked both. I think Anderson, with it chest drape, made for a beautiful double-breasted suit. But you know how it is. The double-breasted jacket was really big in the 80s, then it kind of went away in the 90s and didn’t really come back until relatively recently. Anyway, as it was the 90s and I was wearing a lot more single-breasted jackets, I decided that Huntsman’s single-breasted coat was more to my taste. Then I went over toCleverley, where George Glasgow was set up, to make some shoes. It was the mid-90s, I was doing quite a lot of screenplay writing and I was feeling quite flush. What’s amazing is I still have all those suits that I made and I recently had Huntsman recut them slightly to make them feel more modern. You know the jackets were really long back then. But how great is it that you can take a 25-year-old jacket, have it adjusted, and wear it and feel great?

You are now a client ofCifonelli. How did that happen?
I met LorenzoCifonellithrough PrinceDimitriof Yugoslavia, who is a good friend of my wife. I was admiring his jacket and asked him who made it. He replied,“LorenzoCifonelli”. Then there was a second time I saw him in a different jacket I really liked. I asked,“Is this the same guy?”And he nodded and said,“Yes, it’sCifonelli”. At that time I hadn’t heard ofCifonelli, butDimitriexplained that Lorenzo was coming to New York City. What I like about theCifonellicut is thatit has great mobility thanks to the special shoulder, but the chest is actually relatively narrow. And I have a really big chest now, and with a double-breasted jacket that tends to add bulk, you have to be very discerning about how it’s cut, so you don’tlook like a whale. As you get older and you no longer have a stick figure you have to be smart about the silhouette of the clothing you make. In fact, I stopped wearing double-breasted jackets until recently, when I had Lorenzo [Cifonelli] make me a double-breasted suit and a blazer.

Was it fashionable as an author to be well dressed?
Not at all.I always found it amusing that in the literary world a badge of authenticity was to dress badly and not care about appearances. And I think the reasons I was occasionally considered suspect in the literary world was that I care about the way I dress, I don’t teach at university, I got a little bit of tabloid attention when I was younger, and I love the good life.

Where do you get your love ofstyle from?
My father was a dandy. He was an executive and he worked for several paper companies. He worked for the Crane paper company, for example. He wasn’t particularly wealthy but he loved to dress well. He used to love hisOxxfordsuits. That was his thing. He was the kind of guy who used to love to wear white shoes in the summer. He had all thesemulticolouredblazers in red or in green. I got my love of clothes from him. I’ve always just been interested in clothing. I wouldn’t mind wearing a suit every day. As it is Igo out most nights and I always put on a suit. But the average businessman really has no idea how to dress.

Why?
I think in a lot of cases it’s because they dress out of obligation rather than pleasure; America pushing forward the deracination of dressing up. I think when casual Friday became a staple of the Americanwork week, that was definitely a bad thing. It’s good that you’re fighting the good fight against‘athleisure’wear. When did sweat pants become an acceptable form of dress outside of the gym? New York is certainly better dressed than the majority of American cities, but it’s nothing like Milan or Naples or any European capital where men still take pride in dressing up.

Back toCifonelli.How does it make you feel to wear something made by Lorenzo?
I make quite a bit withCifonelli, and Lorenzo has this eye and he knows how to make a guy look good. It was funny but when I came to your party [The Rake’s 10th-anniversary party at Ralph Lauren’s flagship in New York], there was a bunch of guys there who immediately knew I was wearingCifonelli. But perhaps the greatest compliment of a tailor’s ability is, for example, when I’m wearing aCifonellidouble-breasted jacket and women just say,“Holy shit, you look great”.

I got intoCifonellibecause I saw a man in the elevator in PlazaAthénéewho I thought looked amazing. I asked him who his tailor was and he said,“Young man, go toCifonelli”.
[Laughs]Lorenzo is great. The only challenge I think he has today is keeping up with the huge global demand for his suits. Sometimes you’ve got to be direct and just say,“Lorenzo, where thefuckaremy clothes?”I’ve introduced him to at least two guys in New York who’ve become huge clients, probably much greater than me. But at the same time I sometimes need to remind him a bit that I was his client first [Laughs]. He might be a little overworked right now. But I guess that’s a testament to his skill and hisability.

You also make quite a bit at Huntsman, where my buddy DarioCarneracuts your clothes?
Yes. And I don’t want to put downSavileRow. For example, a really nice winter-weight hacking jacket, no one is better than Huntsman, especially if you have it made intheirhouse tweed. And strangely enough I have a bunch of formal clothes from Henry Poole. I figured since they invented the tuxedo I had an obligation to have evening clothes made there. So I have a couple of tuxedos, a couple of smoking jackets made with them. And honestly these clothes are pretty great. I am, however, working on aCifonellituxedo, but I’m trying to decide on the style. I think with him I’d like a peaked lapel, possibly a double-breasted. He’s got these really great lines that are very dramatic, and I think the angles on a peaked lapel jacket would be great. I must own six tuxedos, but the thing is I don’t have a Lorenzo tuxedo, and so I have to have one.

Do you buy ready-to-wear?
I love Ralph Lauren and I’ve got this amazing white double-breasted shawl lapel dinner jacket from him. I mean, it’s [Purple Label], really expensive for ready-to-wear.Almost the price of bespoke.But I saw it hanging on the mannequin at Bergdorf and I just had to have it. And I think that’s the power of Ralph Lauren—his clothes have such a compelling narrative.

When we first met you were wearing a lovelyPatekPhilippe. I take it you are a watch guy?
Yes, I’m a total watch guy. The watch I’m wearing, it’sactually the onlyVacheronConstantinI own, and it’s from the 1940s [Jay is wearing a reference 2431 with stunning flame lugs]. How did I get into them? I suppose the same way I got into clothes. And if thereisany one brand I have a particular affection for, it would bePatekPhilippe. I think there has to be a connection between the watch you wear and the way you’re attired. I see in New York a lot of guys wearing big, oversized sports watches with suits, and I find that inconsistency disturbing.

I was in high school when I read your book and you inspired me to start sneaking into nightclubs, because I wanted to be part of this world you described.And nice clothes wasthe only way I could get in, so I attribute your book to starting my style journey.
[Laughs] You know, it’s funny. When people look at images of Bret Easton Ellis and me banging around these seminal nightclubs of the era, we were almost wearing suits and ties. That is how men dressed back then. I think it was a carry-over of the European culture, from the famous nightclubs in the decades before, but you would not be considered properly dressed without a suit on. What I always found amusing was that we were often mentallydishevelledbut always dressed up on the exterior.

This would carry on throughout the iconic New York clubs of the nineties, with places like Nell’s, M.K., and Au Bar.
Absolutely, and those were all my clubs. You know, I hate to be one of these older guyswho’stalking about‘back in my day’. But I do think club culturetoday is very different. I don’t think there are places any more like this, where the objective was to curate the very best crowd in its diversity and coolness every evening. That was certainly the case in Nell’s. Nell’s was very cafésociety. Its crowd was really beautifully curated. I really don’t think this exists [now]. The objective today is just aboutmaximisingprofit, which goes in the opposite direction of taste.

Which generates and rewards a prevailing sense of crassness and banality. What was cool back then was that once you got in, there wasa certainegalitarianism. You were in, you were cool,soeveryone was friendly…
Exactly. Nell’s was really like that. M.K. was perhaps a little less glorious in that regard, but it was still really fun. And some amazing moments happened there. I remember I was sitting at a table—it was Bret Easton Ellis, TamaJanowitzand my publisher, and this guy came over and introduced me to Anne Hearst, who many years later would become my wife. And I remember him saying,“You’ve got to meet these guys, they are the coolest authors of this generation”. Now she was a real uptown girl. She was wearing Chanel. But I instantly had a rapport with her. So we always stayed in touch over the years. But that was an unlikely meeting in a way, and speaks of the serendipitous nature of the New York nightclub back then.

What were yourfavouritehaunts?
Well, myfavouriteclub back then was Area. That was a little more downtown and [had] a little more of a gay vibe, and I loved the place. But I also loved going to theMuddClub. It was glorious in its punk seediness and this dynamic sense that you could meet anyone inside. Andy Warhol, Jim Carroll and Lou Reed would be in there. It was in some ways the coolest. But I wasn’t. Because I was dressed the way I was, and because I didn’t know anybody there, I would sometimes have a hard time getting in [Laughs].

As a fixture of these clubs, it became something of a community, no?
Absolutely. What was interesting was there was thisinternational community that you would run into at nightclubs around the world. If you went to LesBains-Douches in Paris on a given night in the eighties you would run into friends from New York, of course friends from Paris but also people you knew fromMilan or London, and there was this wonderful shared sense of camaraderie.

So why has New York lost this coolness?
It’s real estate prices. I lived here on and off for four years before I published my first novel. There were places to live for people with no money in Manhattan. I have no idea where in the city an impoverished freelance writer/editorial assistant,whichI was, could live today. In my case I lived on Elizabeth Street just off the Bowery. [He paid $375 a month.] I mean,it was filthy and completely infested with homeless people. Today it is theepicentreoffashionability, but it wasn’t back then. They would just pile into our little foyer and you had to step over them to get to work in the morning. But I actually had an affordable one-bedroom apartment in New York in the 80s.

You are an inspiration to me also in how you’ve become one of the world’s most revered wine experts. But don’t you think prices for burgundy have gone a little crazy?
Absolutely. I had to wake up early this morning because there was aDomainede laRomanée-Conti auction from theDrouhincellars, becauseDrouhinwas at one point the importer of their wines. Some of these older ones, they are possibly the only ones left in the world. But the prices have become so nuts. I was in a consortium of guys and we were going to go up to£150,000 for a magnum of 1937. And we thought beforehand that we would get the bottle. But in the end it went for 240k. They had two bottles of 1945Romanée-Conti, which is the ultimate vintage; there has never been a wine that is its equal, except for maybe the’69Lafite. The first one hammered for $450,000, which means with premium it was 558k, which is a world record.The second bottle was won by a friend of mine. And I suspect he’ll drinkit. He’s a very generous real estate guy. He has probably a $50 million cellar. He had offered me a share if he got it for 250k. And I was flattered he offered to cut me in but I was like,“I don’t want to pay $60,000 for a glass of wine”. It was just crazy. People were calling in from all over the world. I’m sure a bunch of it went to Hong Kong.

Do you getrecognisedby sommeliers a lot?
It’s funny, the other night I was eating on top of Lincoln Center, where I never really go. The reservation was in someone else’s name, and so I sat down. And the sommelier came over and was slightly quivering and asked how long I had been writing about wine. Actually, it’s fun. And I get treated to a lot of nice things, so I have to say I enjoy being part of the wine community.

What are New York spots with great lists?
Babbofor Italian wines. Daniel and LeBernardinhave great lists. Gotham Bar and Grill is great. I got a bottle of 2015Colombiere(Comte Liger-Belair’s) for like 220 bucks and it was insanely good. Andthat’s less than retail.

I love the fact you loveCondrieu. So do I!
It’sfunny,I have some friends who collect Chaves’whites but almost no one that likesCondrieu. I love it.

Have you had theSaint-Josephand Hermitage Blanc fromDard&Ribo?
I lovethem. I discovered them about 15 years ago in Paris. TheDard&Ribowhites, you almost never see over here. I got to Paris toAugé(Les CavesAugé) to buy those wines. Good place.

Another interesting white is theAligotein Morey St. Denis, theMontsLuisants. I thinkit’s only made byPonsotandDujac…
I love that stuff, and it will age forever. I’ve got some really old ones and they are amazing.

So without these seminal nightclubs, how do you amuse yourself nowadays?
My friend GeorgeFariasis an Anderson & Sheppard guy but I managed to convince him to visit Lorenzo for the first time. Now every year we host a big Christmas party here in New York. It started about 10 years ago, when he asked my wife and me if we wanted to co-host a Christmas party at 21 Club. Then we moved it over to Doubles, which is the private club under the Sherry-Netherland hotel. And it has somehow become this institution. People fight to get into it. It’s always named best party of the year in some of the social magazines. So aspart of the planning I have to go to the Upper East Side to eat at a restaurant called Fleming, whichwas opened by the people behind the originalBilboquet. I would normally never go to the Upper East Side otherwise.

What will you wear at your Christma s party?
GeorgeFarisand I decided to go to Huntsman and make matching tartan dinner jackets to wear.

Amazing. Of course you did.