Xavier Layton likes to hit the town after work as many 22-year-olds do—jeans and Under Armour short sleeves might be standard at the local gastro pub in San Antonio, but Mr. Layton’s wardrobe typifies an older manliness: the attire of a gentleman.
A Victorian silhouette suits Mr. Layton just fine: pigeon-breasted frock coat and top hat—“You can’t wear the rest of the outfit without the top hat,” he tells The Epoch Times—sometimes with a pipe to complete the look. Knocking about the town on jazz night with the boys all suited up makes it sing.
But, donning a visage from “Wuthering Heights” on evenings and weekends, he wears normal clothes as an electrician by day. Jeans and T-shirts. Modern life has demands for a tradesman. And the Texas sun is merciless. However, “I don’t feel as confident as I do when I wear more historical formal clothing,” Mr. Layton said in his distinctive New York accent. He moved to San Antonio after high school in 2018.
He doesn’t think he looks as good in normal clothes but finds it looks uninteresting.
He enjoys living history. In the Romantic era, he said, people really had to think about their outfits, and it suited more the spirit of a man.
The pigeon-breasted look “makes you look and feel more stately and more confident,” he said, but he warned not to become a corseted “dandy” by overdoing it.
Dandies were foppish young aristocrats, usually, who cared so much for fashion and achieving that pompous silhouette that they would sacrifice comfort for looks, binding their waists with corsets, adding excessive padding to their coats, and so forth.
Mr. Layton strikes an upper-middle-class balance that still has that silhouette but doesn’t go overboard. “It’s more down to earth, but you still get that historic, iconic look,” he said.
A connoisseur of that look aims somewhere between 1830 and 1850, after which clothing became looser and baggier. Before that, the frock coat emerged from the Napoleonic Wars to become the distinctive Victorian pigeon-breasted silhouette. The precursors to the top hat were the more antiquated sugarloaf and tricorn hats of earlier centuries, which are markedly less modern. Together, the smoke stack top hat and frock coat carry forward an old pedigree to a place more familiar.
It is recognizable as the attire of a gentleman.
Historically accurate clothing feels natural and comfortable, Mr. Layton said, while still being elegant.
One great flourish of that era was the cravat. “After you put on the shirt and the pants, that’s when you put on your necktie,” he said. “It’s more of a precursor to the modern bow tie than it is to the modern necktie.” And they wore long ones, some over 70 inches. “You just wrap them around your neck one or two or three times, and then you tie a bow or some sort of fancy knot in the front to keep it in place,” he said.
The dignified beauty of the original tie is lost in today’s utility.
“After that, you'll put on a waistcoat,” Mr. Layton said. Some men even wore two coats with one peeking out from underneath the lapel, though he admitted, “That’s a little excessive living in Texas.” The top hat literally tops it off. Then he accessorizes with a pipe and pocket watch.
Mr. Layton admits he is a cross between a history buff and a hipster—a man-bun on steroids, if you will. The history buff manifested in his Civil War and cowboy costumes as a kid and partaking in historic reenactments with the San Antonio Living History Association today; his artsy side steered him toward fashion and just wanting to wear what makes him look good. He began acquiring increasingly authentic suits.
As his collection of Romantic clothing grew, it attracted a following of people on social media who shared his love for Victorian-era fashion. There is a vast international community of period clothing enthusiasts out there. He tapped in and found a craftsman whom he paid to make him an authentic top hat. He has several now.
The practicalities of workaday life and wearing jeans and T-shirts have their place today, but therein lies the danger of losing the beauty of traditional wear. We are losing our appreciation for the cut of the cloth, the weight and texture fabric, color combinations, and overall silhouette, he said.
Mr. Layton counts as his friends the community he connects with at large, whom he shares his passion with, though he has a closer-knit circle on the home front. They don’t necessarily need to dress a certain way to hang out.
“I believe anyone has the right to wear whatever they want,” he said.
If you look good in Under Armour short sleeves or a hoodie, wonderful.
“As a history lover, in general, I like to immerse myself,” he said. “Instead of just studying history, I’m experiencing history, right?”
