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PHOTO COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS ivid Sulaski, an investment banker In Chicago, wears a classical menegildo Zegna suit with a Movado watch. Young generation suits up for stiffer dress standards BY WENDY NAVRATIL CHICAGO TRIBUNE (KliT) CHICAGO — When rebellion wears a suit and tie, you know that times and guys are changing. “You don’t want to dress like your father. Fathers have done the khakis for several years now,” said Arnold Brant, a Canadian designer who outfits CBS Sports anchors and has contributed to “The Bachelor.” He was in Chicago recently for the “Sharp Dressed Men 2003” event at Saks Fifth Avenue’s Men’s Store. From sports to business, dress codes tend to stiffen in tough times. But Brant rattles off evi dence that a new generation ife choosing to dress up: “Dumb navy blazers” of sports an chors are being replaced by pattern-on-pattern coats, shirts and ties; Justin Timberlake is trading slouchy looks for sleek suits at awards shows; “The Bachelor’s” Bob Guiney has gravitated toward “more sartorial offerings” dur ing fittings. The same goes for many others. “I put the jerseys and jeans away,” Chicago Bulls center Eddy Curry, 20, said. “I’m get ting older now; I’m not a teenager anymore. ” In a suit custom-made by a Detroit clothier — “It’s a lot more comfortable than my bag gy clothes” — with 3-karat-plus diamond studs in each ear, Curry was among the 12 “Sharp Dressed” honorees at Saks’ first such event a couple of weeks ago. This season, Bulls general manager John Paxson and coach Bill Cartwright are re quiring players to wear at least jackets when injured and on the bench for the game; sweaters are not enough. The policy stops short of requiring leagues are leaning toward formality again. His relatively conser vative profession had loosened up in recent years. “The go-go days of the ’90s are over, and there’s a return to traditional values all over the place,” he said. “I won’t go so far as to use old labels like business dress or business formal. I think those are yesterday’s rules. “But classic is in.” Suits have gained strength from new sportswear-like fab rics and construction, which al low the parts to be worn sepa rately, said designer Alexander Julian, who launched his “Private Reserve” menswear last fall. “Particularly the younger guys are choosing the suits be cause they can get more versa tility out of them,” Julian said. “The idea is to be able to do a Clark Kent-to-Superman (transformation). ” Accessories and underpin nings follow suit.; Julian’s Convertible Shirt has a squared-off bottom and vented sides, dark buttons and dfago nauy cut button placket, so that it looks fine with or without a tie, tucked or untucked — or un tucked with a tie and coat. “It’s a look I call South Beach Formal,” Julian said. Retailers, such as the 185 year-old Brooks Brothers, are reversing course and empha sizing tailored offerings again. And designer Ike Behar, whose CEO shirts ($155 each) were highlighted by Forbes maga zine as a holiday best buy, scheduled stops at Saks, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus in Chicago recently to promote his expansion into leather goods. Analysts have said that clothing sales figured into high er gross domestic product in re cent months. Sulaski certainly feeds into that. “Either as a direct result of (dressing up more) or my opti mism about the improving economy, or both,” he said, “I have never bought more clothes in my life.” He likes Nordstrom and Saks. He also just tried Tom James (www.tomjamesco.com) for the first time. A representative of the menswear maker went to Sulaski’s office, measured him and will deliver clothing. ’ “Talk about a timesaving de vice,” Sulaski said. “In 20 min utes you can have two new suits, four new shirts and six new ties.” That points to the distinc tion between the formality trend and the metrosexual one, which posits that men are em bracing shopping and other rit uals previously associated with women. “I have a friend in Milwaukee who comes down for facials, but that’s not for me,” said Dan Shapiro, 31, who was speed-walking out of a Marshall Field’s store around noon on a recent workday. “I’m uncom fortable even with a massage.” He wears suits for his job in corporate real estate and said the Thomas Pink shirtmaker shop lured him back into “Field’s for the first time in a long time. He bought a couple of colorful shirts, left them to have the sleeves tailored, and was on his way. suits. Similarly, even at com panies where suits aren’t compulsory, investment banker David Sulaski, 35, said his col “The go-go days of the ’90s are over, and there’s a return to traditional values all over the place.” DAVID SULASKI INVESTMENT BANKER ^ Queer Eye’ food guru talks straight about his new television fame YSTEVE JOHNSON ICAGO TRIBUNE (KRT) .CHICAGO — Six months ago, it flk [aid have been just a sandwich itween two Chicago journalists. But now, almost overnight, it’s sandwich created by Ted Allen, Uionally known food expert, ste guru, man over whom the ilden wand of television has issed. And it’s a whole lot heav r than the usual ham-and-turkey semblage. There is reputation on the loaf, 1 image between the slices. And smoke in the kitchen. Suddenly, as the conversation >out the new season of Allen’s trprise TV hit, “Queer Eye for e Straight Guy,” distracts him om his lunchtime creation, the intest hint of smoke curls up am over by the toaster oven. Pvllen rushes over to rescue the caccia. “Do not say I burned the •ead. Do not,” he mock-com ands, his voice as booming and ithoritative in his North Side >me as it is on the show, where, ost people are aware by now, *’s the “food and wine expert,” irt of a “Fab Five” of gay men ho spend a TV hour each week rning a straight fellow from ain apple pie, at best, into pie a la ode. Allen apologizes for the sand tch not being what it might have ;en had the interview not been heduled so hastily, on one of his .re free weekends home from 3w York, where the show is now | ing a 40-episode second season, " oich began airing Tuesday (10 m. EST, Bravo). And before taking a picture of e sandwich, he and his partner, ilumbia College journalism pro ssor Barry Rice, scramble to ake it over, selecting just the ght place mat and napkin, Iding silverware, fretting about >w “tragic” the potato chips look i the plate. This is what sudden celebrity ill do to you, the appearance of public reputation to maintain here before there was none. The 38-year-old is casual and onic about the leap from being lown a little bit, by a few people, being stopped in airports by rangers, but he also recognizes hat comes with that. t ;‘Barry jokes about me dressing ^ (y a Straight guy so as not to be cognized. “The weirdest thing is just the tensity of feeling which some ■ople seem to have about famous ;ople — which I have to, I still nd of stumble over the word, ac lowledging that I’ve become ... hatever.” Whatever, indeed. Since the iow exploded from an oddly and, some, offensively named cable iriosity into the talk of summer ne television, he has appeared, ith the gang, on “Today,” “Oprah” and “Tonight.” He has had his new salary, a re ported $8,000 an episode, printed in the trades, a figure Allen doesn’t deny. He has been to a din ner thrown by “Will & Grace” ex ecutive producer Max Mutchnick at the home Mutchnick was rent ing from photographer Herb Ritts. He has seen lunch with him and his four TV partners auctioned off for more than $20,000 for charity. There is only a little evidence of financial reward: new land scaping in the back yard of his and Rice’s Chicago home and a costly new apartment in Greenwich Village, only partly subsidized by the show, to make spending most of next year in New York more tol erable. But more than any of that, he says, the “Queer Eye” experience has helped his family, “a fairly conservative Republican opera tion” from the Indianapolis sub urbs, come to terms with who he is and how it fits into society. “They were, to put it mildly, not at all happy about me doing the show,” he says. “Now they’re pissed off when we run reruns. They’re fans. My mom e-mailed me an Andrew Sullivan column about gay marriage, in favor of. And she was sending it around to her friends. “It was a huge evolution. My mother was affected by the show in the same way that a lot of people seem to be.” She was part of a spreading of the show’s popularity that Allen noticed anecdotally, even as the Nielsen ratings were demonstrat ing it statistically. “First it was the gay guys in Chelsea,” he says. At a restaurant, “people would stare or ask us to talk to someone on their cell phone. And right about the same time, it was the single women. Then we started hearing from ladies my mother’s age, you know, around 60. “Now we’re starting to get high school boys and college guys, straight guys, in airports coming up to us and saying, ‘Dude, thanks for that shaving tip, man.’ ‘Dude, 6 ounces, 10 minutes, 400 degrees, to make a filet of fish. I did it on this date.’ And they’re just like the straight guys on the show. They’re proud of it, and they want to tell it.” The show turned out to be sweeter in tone than the use of the edgy “queer” in the title would im ply. And while it certainly exploits stereotypes of both gays and straights, it also undercuts them, Allen says. “People concerned about the stereotype question totally miss the subversive, accidental, best as pect of the show, I think, which is that we’re taking those stereo types they’ve made fun of all these years and teaching them to them in order to help them get the girl, which I think is kind of hilarious,” Allen says. It’s also, straight up, a service. “We all want to know how to dress cool,” for instance, he says. “Everybody does. And it was not acceptable for us to ask about it. You couldn’t go into a men’s shop and ask another guy, ‘Do these pants look good on me?’ It was just way too ‘gay.’” higher test scores m“7 guaranteed “ or your money back Attend all required classes or make-up sessions, complete all scheduled tests, and do your homework. If your score doesn't improve on test day from your Kaplan diagnostic or a prior official test score, you can choose to repeat our program for free or get a full refund of your tuition?* It’s that simple. MCAT classes: 1/10,1/24 FEB LSAT classes: 1/4,1/10 World Leader In Test Prep GRE & GMAT starts in Jan! and Admissions ■Test twras an regrtWM trade™* <t aw omm. ■ S | ■ ’M H j ■ . < B *• To be eligible for this offer, you must be enrolled In Kaplan’s full classroom, tutoring, or online courses. In addition, you must 1 -800-KAP-TEST I present a copy ot your official score report and your course materials within 90 days. K3pt6St.C0m PHOTO COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS Magazine writer Ted Allen, now famous as a host of “Queer Eye,” plays with kitchen utensils in his Chicago home. .. ■ ■ Advantages: Summer and $300 ^^^^^academic semester stipend Undergraduate research opportunity Faculty mentoring Academic & graduate school counseling Graduate school admissions assistance Travel to national conferences ^Qualifications: L- Must be willing to consider pursuing a doctoral degree US Permanent citizen First-generation college student '(Parents or guardian have not received a 'college degree) -Low-income student (visitwww.ed.gov/ r rabout/offices/list/ope/trio/incomelevels. rhtml to see if you qualify) ^-Must have 60 credit hours be the start 'of Summer Session 2004 -Mu§t have a 3.0 GPA ^_