The Governor Warner Mansion at 33805 Grand River was built in 1867 by P. D. Warner, whose son Fred became governor of Michigan and served from 1905 to 1911. It’s a house museum now. Standing in a building where a family lived a hundred and sixty years ago tends to concentrate the mind on what survives a person, and the honest answer for most of us is: a house, if we’re lucky, and photographs.
The photographs are the point
A man will be in perhaps a dozen photographs in his life that people still look at fifty years on. His wedding. His children’s weddings. One or two occasions in between. In nearly all of them he is wearing a suit, and it is worth about an hour of thought that most men never give it.
What ages badly in a photograph
Not the color, and not the cloth. The proportions: a lapel far from ordinary width, a jacket cut unusually short, a fit that was fashionable in one particular five-year window. Those date a picture instantly.
What doesn’t
Navy or charcoal, ordinary proportions, and a fit that follows the man rather than a silhouette. Roman, master tailor at Lincoln Tailor, on site in our store, handles the last part, which is the only part a photograph really records.
Also for Farmington: A High School at the End of School Street. More on style consulting, or plan your visit to our Oak Park showroom.
