How the black turtleneck came to represent creative genius

When the disgraced well being entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes was indicted on fraud costs for her lab-testing firm Theranos final 12 months, a lot of the media dialogue rested not on her alleged company recklessness and staggering abuses of belief, however on her sartorial selections: black jackets, black slacks, and — most significantly — black turtlenecks.

Steve Jobs has lengthy been related to turtlenecks. Credit score: Justin Sullivan/Getty Photos North America/Getty Photos

Trivial because it appears, that element appeared to make clear her character. In keeping with one former worker, Holmes’s style in sweaters was a acutely aware channeling of the late Apple supremo Steve Jobs, who was not often pictured with out one of many many black Issey Miyake turtlenecks he owned. His maverick fame was related along with his trusty wardrobe staple, his black turtlenecks projecting a cool mind and basic unfussiness. They prompt that he was a special form of businessman — a “visionary” who didn’t play by the boardroom guidelines. Had he dressed like Invoice Gates or Jeff Bezos, would we actually keep in mind him as something aside from an uncommonly shrewd CEO?

There’s an apparent query right here: How did a primary merchandise of clothes come to build up such lofty signifiers? The reply lies in its very simplicity. The turtleneck’s enchantment rests largely on what it’s not: It makes the basic shirt-and-tie mixture look priggish and the T-shirt seem formless and slobbish, hitting that in any other case inaccessible candy spot between formality and insouciance. It’s sufficiently sensible to be worn beneath a swimsuit jacket, but informal and comfy sufficient for repeated on a regular basis put on.

Audrey Hepburn pictured on the terrace of the Restaurant Hammetschwand on the summit of the Bürgenstock, Switzerland. Credit score: Graphic Home/Archive Photographs/Getty Photos

Developed within the late 19th century as a sensible garment for polo gamers (therefore the British identify for it: the “polo neck”), it was initially a utilitarian design largely worn by sportsmen, laborers, sailors and troopers. However by the daybreak of the 20th century, European proto-bohemians have been already seeing prospects within the garment’s elegant performance, which chimed harmoniously with embryonic modernist design beliefs.

A lot of the credit score for the turtleneck’s subsequent reputation may be attributed to British playwright Noël Coward, who usually sported one for a interval in his 1920s heyday. Although he stated his adoption of the garment was primarily for causes of consolation, it grew to become a trademark that instantly prompt a disdain for conference. In any case, it caught on, in no small half attributable to its risqué prospects. The tirelessly androgynous actress Marlene Dietrich relished the turtleneck, pairing one with a saggy, masculine swimsuit and a understanding grin in an early 1930s publicity . Author Evelyn Waugh, in the meantime, believed it to be “most handy for lechery as a result of it dispenses with all unromantic devices like studs and ties.”

German actress Marlene Dietrich, pictured right here in 1971, continued to put on black turtlenecks in later life. Credit score: George Stroud/Hulton Archive/Getty Photos

However the turtleneck’s second of true glory didn’t arrive till the tip of World Conflict II, when the post-occupation cultural renaissance of Paris made it essential for aspirant existentialists the world over. The garment grew to become related to the glamorous writers, artists, musicians, and movie stars related to the town: Juliette Greco, Yves Montand, Jacques Brel and Miles Davis, to call just a few. Audrey Hepburn notably co-opted the look within the Paris-set 1957 Fred Astaire automobile “Humorous Face,” and the place Hepburn went, different Hollywood stars adopted.

Extra importantly nonetheless, the French associations — moody, stylish, deeply critical — earned the turtleneck an underground credibility within the US within the 1950s. Over the subsequent 20 years, everybody from Lou Reed and Joan Didion to Eldridge Cleaver and Gloria Steinem was pictured carrying one. Bob Dylan was not often seen with out one in his so-called “Electrical Interval” of 1965-1966. That very same decade, Andy Warhol adopted the black turtleneck as his signature look, pairing it with shades and a floppy wig. It was arguably the simplest makeover in artwork historical past; his pre-fame apparel consisted of preppy fits and ties.

But the turtleneck was at all times too helpful, too sensible, too cool, to ever be consigned to the dustbin of historical past. If doubtful, take a look at these basic monochrome pictures of the Velvet Underground, or Steve McQueen in “Bullitt” (1968), or Angela Davis in full-on radical garb circa 1969. The checklist may go on.

However as a devotee of the turtleneck, my favourite picture of the garment will at all times be the earliest depiction of it I am conscious of. Painted in 1898, when he was simply 26, the German artist Bernhard Pankok’s greatest self-portrait captures himself from simply above waist-level, framed towards the window of a merely adorned room. His wild hair, wispy mustache and expression of supreme confidence look backwards to the younger Rembrandt, however the art-historical homage is skewed by the tight-fitting black turtleneck he sports activities.

In each compositional and sartorial senses, Pankok’s selection of clothes foregoes the extraneous frippery of the period’s fashions — shirt collar, jacket, necktie — and leaves us to ponder the necessities of the portray and its topic’s options. Lengthy earlier than the remainder of the world had caught on, oblivious to the pop-cultural connotations this singularly sensible merchandise of clothes would purchase, Pankok distilled the essence of modernity right into a single picture. He presents himself as a person of the 20th century earlier than the very fact and, with out understanding it, one for the 21st, too.