Is ‘I Love Lucy’s’ Fred Mertz a Secret Menswear Icon?

Jonathan Wertheim (@berkeley_breathes): The Nick at Nite joke, and the joke anyone with a functioning brain and Conan O’Brien’s sense of humor would make in 2021, is obviously that Fred’s clothes are comically old-timey, with pants up to his armpits. But when we see him in a full suit—and next to Desi—I think Fred looks more timeless here.

Ethan Wong (@ethanmwong): [Fred’s] proportions and silhouette pale in comparison to Ricky’s much bolder (and much costumier as a result) look. Ricky’s shoulder pads are massive, with exaggerated room in the sleeves, a low buttoning point, and an equally wide bow tie. At the time, Fred probably looked boring, but today, his look (apart from his wild tie) is pretty classic.

Spencer Otte (@spencerdso): I don’t care much for that tie, but I love the proportions of that jacket! Great lapels, great button spacing—if you remove some of the shoulder padding, this would be wearable today.

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Jeremy Kirkland (@thekirkland): This is a fit I’m literally wearing today: high-waisted trousers with a Hollywood waistband and a utility shirt.

Wertheim: The pants! Honestly, I’m less interested in the pants than in that really thin belt, which looks great, and his double-flap pocket shirt with that big collar, which really screams the 1940s and 1950s to me. Notice how flattering that trouser rise is — no gut hanging over the belt. It seems odd to say that Fred Mertz’s pants are slimming, but anything is possible in our new reality.

Pete Anderson (@breathnaigh): Black and white makes it a little hard to discern but this looks like a nice tonal, casual look from Fred that makes good use of texture rather than pattern or bold color. The proportions still read as vintage these days—long shirt collar; obviously the high waisted, full cut pants—but the details are pretty current, especially the flap pockets on an open collar shirt with large-ish buttons. Looks like something Christophe Lemaire might design. Also, personally, I like a pretty substantial belt, but elegant, narrow belts like Fred’s are more on-trend than the 1.5-inch wide leather straps a lot of us usually wear with jeans.

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Otte: I love Fred’s hat collection. As a fellow Bald Guy™, I know the value of a good hat. This one has wide brim with a tall crown—a very 1940s style. Fedoras can be hard to wear if you don’t have the wardrobe to support it, but they’re incredibly practical hats and really good ones will last for years and only improve with age.

Wertheim: Look at Desi’s face. He knows he’s being outclassed here. Fred’s single-breasted jacket with a printed motif tie and dark pocket square — he’s straight out of a 2021 lookbook.

Anderson: Fred’s sport coat look is world’s better than 90% of the tailoring you see on screen these days. In accord with mid-century tailoring, the cut leaves a lot more room than most current sport coats (you can see some extra fabric in the chest on the left—Derek Guy’s written about this before). It’s probably more room than you’d want today, but the effect is that you don’t get the pulling and wrinkling a lot of modern tailoring can’t avoid because it’s cut so close to the body. Everything looks pleasantly three dimensional. Replace Fred’s tie—which appears to be printed with fans? Shells? Shuttlecocks?—with a simple silk knit and this would be a hit on #menswear Instagram.

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Derek Guy (@dieworkwear): Really nice pattern mixing. The rule of thumb for mixing patterns is to vary the scale and pattern. So if you’re wearing a Bengal striped shirt, choose a tie with a thicker stripe or maybe even paisley. If you wear a patterned jacket, choose a check with a different scale. But I think it’s easier to just stick to two patterns so you don’t have to figure out all this stuff, and vary just those two. Using two patterns can be a good way to keep an outfit looking interesting without requiring you to second guess yourself. The paisley tie and checked topcoat here work beautifully.

Otte: Plaid overcoats like this are really wonderful. I don’t live in a climate where they’re really necessary, but I’ve always wanted one. As Fred is demonstrating here, it’s a great way to dress down an otherwise more formal look.

Wong: I absolutely love this look; it’s something similar to what I would do in fall/winter! The best touch is the plaid balmacaan coat with a dramatic collar. They’re currently having a moment in classic menswear circles, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw tasteful versions of this at Pitti Uomo (when things open up again).

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Wong: Shirts today have gotten so slim. Fred shows that it’s perfectly fine to get a full cut and still look good. Even though he’s got some room in the sleeves and sides, it still looks pretty good, thanks to being snatched by a high waist trouser and thin belt. The tie is also quite nice, being bold, but not too much so. It’s very related to his apparent love of abstract geometrics (which I have an affinity for too).

Otte: This is a great illustration of why we love thin belts. They just look so clean, and work perfectly with his high-rise trousers.

Wertheim: I mean, that windowpane check suit is straight fire, and Fred knows it. Again, the proportions are really good here. The best thing about double-breasted suits, probably, is that it’s really hard to mess them up. They’re incredibly flattering when they’re tailored well, and they age really gracefully. There’s a reason Prince Charles has been wearing them since the 1980s. It’s the perfect suit for Fred’s body type, and you could easily wear this suit today without looking like you walked off of the set of I Love Lucy. Try saying that for anything Desi wears.

Guy: A bit of meaningless trivia, but that Tautz lapel—see how the lapel “notch” is almost horizontal? The style was invented by Edward Tautz, founder of the West End bespoke tailoring firm E. Tautz & Sons (now owned by the very well-dressed and handsome Patrick Grant). Anthony Drexel Biddel, who George Frazier once described as the best-dressed man in the United States, wore this style. So did Noel Coward. As tailoring has mostly disappeared, double-breasted suits have become a rarity and niche lapel styles like this are almost all but gone.

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Kirkland: I feel like there’s a reason classic menswear looks so good. This look here with the double breasted suit looks good on anyone. More and more brands are also lowering the lapel gorge too. It’s just such a classic look.

Wertheim: My first impulse when I saw this frame was to look up how tall Desi Arnaz and William Frawley were. I think both their looks here do them a lot of favors. This is easily the best look we’ve seen from Desi, those shoes are fantastic. But I still think Fred knows his body better — Desi’s head just looks so tiny.

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Kirkland: Replace his head with Harry Styles and you have the newest Gucci campaign: high waist, full leg, wider tie.

Wong: I know that many people might have an issue with this, but hear me out: high waisted pants are great. Just look at how slim Fred looks. The high waist emphasizes the leg line while the straight cut provides a clean drape that goes down to a shivering break. His trousers are neither cropped nor pooling at his ankles. It’s actually a really nice silhouette that looks comfortable!

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Kirkland: Me, once the crew is all vaccinated.

Wertheim: I see this look on Instagram every day. Berets are huge right now. Fred gets it.

Anderson: Is this Tony Sylvester??

Otte: Old vintage aloha shirts had such beautiful designs. Unfortunately today, you can only find stuff like this if you’re buying vintage or from a repro brand like Groovin’ High or Bryceland’s.

Wong: I wish guys dressed like this for spring/summer. I can’t tell if this is a cabana shirt, terry cloth shirt (lined with towel fabric), or a guayabera style, but I’d definitely wear this to the pool, including the summer beret and chic sunglasses. I’m past the days of a tee shirt and baggy swim trunks.

Guy: My favorite look of the bunch. Does he look ridiculous? Yes! But he’s clearly dressed for joy. I feel like this past year has shown how much getting dressed can add to our lives. Who cares if you look stupid anymore? Wear stuff cause it makes you feel good.

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Guy: I’m sure this is accidental, but that slightly off-to-the-side belt buckle move is very cool. Menswear writer Bruce Boyer sometimes wears his belts this way. Supposedly, so do some musicians, so as they don’t scratch thier guitar while playing.

Wong: A lot of people think that suits are supposed to be some high status thing that is meant to be worn “properly” at all times. Fred doesn’t think so. Not only is he fisting his jacket pocket, but he’s got the other hand in his trouser pocket! Between this, the thin belt, tucked tie, and floppy shirt collar caught on the lapel, there’s just so much to appreciate about this cavalier attitude. It’s almost slouchy!

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Kirkland: You absolutely cannot do better than this. I’m not sure who the wardrobe [supervisor] was for the show but Mertz’s tailor was legit. A strong shoulder to help frame his wider face, the tiniest break in his trousers to make him look taller. Nailed it.

Guy: Just a beautifully cut tuxedo. In many of these episodes, you can see how the jackets are heavily padded, but this one is padded just as much as it needs to be to build up Fred’s shoulders. He has a nice silhouette and the perfect single break on his trousers—you rarely see tailoring like this anymore unless it’s bespoke.

Anderson: Fred seems pretty committed to the double-breasted cut and it works particularly well for him in formalwear. Men sometimes worry that double-breasted jackets aren’t flattering but I don’t think that’s the case. This is a pretty unimpeachably styled formal look: (satin?) peak lapels, simple point collar, bow tie, simple white pocket square. Looks like jetted/besom pockets. Also sits like a no-vent jacket, again pretty “correct” when it comes to formalwear. It’s possible that there was a more uniform look to formalwear at his point so less opportunity to stray from a classic ensemble, but I think Fred shows why it makes sense for a lot of men on formal occasions. It keeps the focus on the event rather than the clothes. It’s formal, but not flashy.

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Wong: Sportswear done right. The long sleeve knit polo that Fred wears might look familiar to some of you: its similar to the ones you see worn by Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley and Henry Hill in Goodfellas. With its close fit in the chest, deep placket, and long collar (with piping), it’s a far cry from the polos worn by the sales staff at Best Buy. When worn with odd trousers (the stripes seem to indicate that it’s part of a suit), it provides a classically elegant take on American casual wear of the ’50s. Ricky has more of a youthful look.

Otte: I love that Fred isn’t afraid to break up a suit. It’s cliche, but rules are meant to be broken. Once you start getting more confident in your style, don’t get bogged down with a bunch of menswear do’s and don’ts.

Guy: How crazy is it that both Ricky and Fred here look like models in a Todd Snyder lookbook? The retro-styled knits, bomber jacket, and wide-legged pants feel so in right now.

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Kirkland: Notice how low the buttoning point of his jacket is here. The whole look draws your attention towards his head and again, makes Mertz look taller and those bigger shoulders frame him perfectly.

Guy: One of the interesting things about this scene is how Fred’s jacket is clearly a bit more dated than Ricky’s. Both men are wearing coats influenced by the zoot suit style of this era (this scene aired in 1955, which is right around the time the zoot suit started to feel stale). You can see this in the heavily dropped buttoning points, extended shoulders, and big chests. But Fred’s jacket has a lower notch on his lapel and oddly placed pockets (very close to the hem). I wonder if that was done to make him look a bit more heavily dated, and perhaps frumpy, than Ricky at the time—a man still holding on to the excess of yesterday’s fashion.

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Wertheim: Yes. I’m so glad we ended here. This is such a 1970s look to me. This could be Bob Newhart. Also, I feel like if I did this, not only would my leg fall asleep, but I’d look like a bag of rocks. Fred looks positively svelte, and yes, I just looked up when William Frawley died to make sure I wasn’t complimenting a man in his last days. Look — this outfit isn’t exactly making him look like a fresh-faced kid, but as dad style, you could do a lot worse.

Kirkland: My look in quarantine. Loud shirt, big cardigan, staring off into the distance.

Wong: I love this so much. It’s just so easy and yet with a lot more personality than a certain friendly neighbor and his keds. Fred appears to be wearing the same tiki-esque shirt from earlier, this time with a great cardigan. Note the high closure, wide ribbing, and high arm hole, making it look tailored rather than something ratty. This is a good example that simple looks can still be interesting rather than boring!

Otte: Honestly, this is basically what I’ve been wearing for the last 10 months.

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How do Fred’s looks compare Ricky’s?

Otte: Fred is definitely a more “classic” dresser. His style is a little more 1940s than 1950s. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have fun with his outfits, especially with his ties and apparent love of pattern mixing. While he may have seemed old-fashioned to audiences in the early ’50s, I think he’s fared much better style-wise than Ricky.

Kirkland: Back then, everyone wore things relatively the same. Men wore suits and there’s a bit more of an unspoken and assumed uniform. The big difference was most men would dress according to their shape, and the best example is Fred v Ricky. Ricky had very big extended shoulders in his suiting to make his head look smaller. This was something Cary Grant was doing too. Fred wore higher waisted trousers (higher than the standard) to make him look taller. People dressed a bit more geometrically sound in that time.

Wong: Despite being old school, [Fred’s] look is actually the most classic and could be worn today! It’s funny because Ricky is definitely meant to look more modern and youthful, exuded by his giant shoulder pads, closed/squared quarters, and fat knot ties. Ricky ends up looking pretty dated and very costume-y.

What would Fred Mertz’s Instagram account be like?

Wertheim: If he wants followers, I hope he’s posting that beret and sunglasses fit every single day. But I think we all know it’s more likely to be pixelated jpegs of The Lockhorns and blurry, badly lit shots of food.

Anderson: I don’t think Fred would use stories much, or take selfies. I would expect his photos to be mostly Ethel-shot images of himself. She could write captions just roasting him. While I might expect him to be proud of his fits, I don’t think he’d tag brands—although maybe, in order to get free stuff?

Guy: I feel like the easy answer is all the classic menswear stuff that some guys put on their IG today, but many of Fred’s looks were also clearly influenced by the culture of his day. His zoot-suit-esque tailoring presumably was influenced by jazz musicians; his casual-wear was influenced by vacation-wear, American tiki culture, surf culture, golf, and other mid-century obsessions. So perhaps he would be as equally “modern” today, but with an eye towards semi-classic dress. I’d like to think that his IG wouldn’t necessarily be about clothes, but just cultural things happening at the time—music, movies, leisure spots, etc.

The big one: should Fred Mertz be considered a menswear icon?

Guy: Yes! His tailoring is great and he showed he was willing to have fun with things.

Kirkland: On being a menswear icon? I imagine the gentlemanly Mertz would playfully deny it all and say something along the lines of, “I’m just being myself and loving life, now watch me tap dance.”

Otte: Maybe he’s not an icon, but he’s clearly a guy that sticks with what he likes and doesn’t worry too much about trends. I think there’s something to admire in that commitment to personal style.

Wong: I’m not sure if menswear icon is the right word, but I definitely think guys should look at him more! I think most guys out there get caught up with Fred Astaire and Cary Grant, but there’s also something to gleam from less famous dressers. There’s much more ease and slouch to be found here, without sacrificing a good silhouette or classic pairings. More guys should be able to fist their pockets, wear high waisted pants, and berets without being prim and proper. Sometimes it’s good to just wear great clothing and deal with your wacky tenant’s shenanigans.

Wertheim: When I think about the most celebrated menswear icons in my particular area of expertise, Ivy style, I think of Miles Davis, Steve McQueen, Anthony Perkins, Sidney Poitier, etc. These are men who wore their clothes with a carefree, “set it and forget it” attitude. Fred has that in droves. However, all these Ivy icons—and, I think, icons of any style—have an edge and a flair to their choices, like Robert Redford’s jewelry and boots, or Gianni Agnelli’s watch worn over the shirt cuff. That’s where Fred suffers. The looks I liked best were the ones that went beyond well-fitting clothes and into the realm of conscious choices, even silly ones like the beret. There just weren’t enough of those choices to convince me that Fred is doing more than rolling into a suit in the morning and hoping everything goes together. So—and Fred, believe me, I am so, so sorry—I just can’t say that Fred rises to the icon level. But that doesn’t mean I’m not about to go rewatch all of I Love Lucy.

Anderson: Fred seems to own his looks pretty well, and even enjoy nice clothes, so those are points in his favor. I’m all for having more “non-traditional” style icons—guys who wear interesting clothes well and aren’t merely handsome and fit and wearing clothes. Maybe this can kick off the Fraw-naissance.

So happy birthday, William Frawley. Maybe you’re not a menswear icon, per se, but you are an inspiration. Now, let the Fraw-naissance begin!

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