The New England Edition - GANT HOME

Kennedy was born and raised in Boston,
educated at Harvard, owned a large summer
residence on Cape Cod and nurtured an
interest in sailing that bordered on the
obsessive. He was often photographed
on his boat, dressed in tan chinos and a
lambswool sweater. Jacqueline Lee Bouvier
and John F. Kennedy, who were married in
the small church of St Mary’s in Newport,
spent all their free time away from the
White House in the Hyannisport compound
that is still in the family today.
“I always come back to the Cape and
walk the beach when I have a tough
decision to make. The Cape is the one place
I can think and be alone”, is a quote that
drives home the point that this 70 mile long
and oftentimes windy “pile of sand” has
had just as large an effect on world politics
as on fashion.
Where sailing and chinos are religion.
On a clear and sunny morning in June,
we land at Newport. If not the heart of all
of New England then at least the heart of
Rhode Island, the smallest state in the US
and commonly referred to by locals as “The
Ocean”.
Newport was the fi rst vacation spots
in the nation. It was here that pioneering
summer guests for the fi rst time ever in
the US sailed and played tennis, polo and
golf. And it was here that the wealthiest of
New York’s fi nanciers and their families
spent their summers from the late 1800’s
to 1930. Aside from tennis and golf, these
families also challenged each other in an
ongoing contest to see who could build the
most impressive renaissance palace and
who hosted the most lavish, talked-about
summer parties (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel
“The Great Gatsby” gives you a good idea).
However you usually left your “cottage”,
which was the modest moniker used for the
family summer palace, after just a few weeks.
Next stop on the social calendar: hunting
and fi shing at your fall residence in the
Adirondacks. Thanks to private donations
and the Newport Restoration Foundation,
many of these “cottages” have been
preserved and are open to the public today.
Of equal historic importance for New-
port are the classic America’s Cup races.
Between 1870 and 1983, the US team was
so dominant it was said that if another
nation should, God forbid, manage to win,
the trophy displayed at the New York Yacht
Club would be replaced with the head of
the man responsible for the loss. But after
132 straight victories the longest streak in
modern sports history was broken. The
unthinkable became a fact one beautiful
September day in 1983, when a band of
Aussies aboard “Australia II” vanquished
the American boat “Liberty”. The head of
skipper Dennis Conner is reputedly still
attached to his shoulders, and Newport,
which dreams of hosting the America’s
Cup again, is with its 156 other races and
regattas every year still the undisputed US
sailing capital.
With this come countless opportunities
for socializing. An active yacht club that is
serious about dress codes is bound to infl uence
fashion. Wearing black, jeans, high heels or
socks in the summer months are telltale signs
that the person you’re talking to is an out-oftowner.
The local uniform consists of a pair
of chinos with a polo or a button-down shirt
– and of course no socks.
GANT going back home.
White wooden houses with porches,
Adirondack chairs, lighthouses, gray slates,
the Star Spangled Banner, signal fl ags,
woody station wagons, graduation gowns,
boardwalks leading to the beach, chugging
fi shing boats, labradors… and Katherine
Hepburn just walked by.
Or did she? Even if you’ve never been
here you know what it looks like. A myriad
of images from endless American fi lms and
TV shows spring to mind, perhaps mixed
with illustrations by New England-born
artist Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), who
managed to capture the essence of American
everyday and family life better than anyone.
Where Europe ends and America begins,
a meeting occurs that never ceases to
fascinate. This cross-fertilization between
worlds is a constant source of inspiration.
Famous artists, photographers and other
creative people have benefi ted from this
throughout the years. One of them was
Bernard Gant, a visionary man who started
making shirts in New Haven, Connecticut
together with his sons 61 years ago.
A fashion that, via campus stores at Yale,
Harvard and Brown has since traveled out
into the world, and has made GANT’s roots
grow ever stronger as more of us have taken
to this way of life.
That’s why we always stick around.
Through fall when nature’s mesmerizing
color fi reworks make “leaf peepers” of us all,
through winter when skis carry us down the
slopes of Vermont and New Hampshire, only
to experience the gardens of Maine bursting
into full bloom again the following spring.
But we’ll have to leave all that for some
other time. First, another classic summer
awaits us.
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