News
Article Published: Sunday, October 1, 2006
Grooming guys to be gentlemen
Skip the fedora, men, but please dress up!
The room is packed with guys who look perfectly styled - goatees, spiky hair, leather jackets, crisp white shirts, not a single fashion faux pas - ready to hear about "How to Be a Modern Gentleman."
That, or to mingle with gorgeous Colorado Crush dancers, who are here at this men's style salon to spill the secrets of what it's like to date men who have no clue about how to be gentlemen.
That's the tease, anyway.
"They'll talk about when guys don't follow a proper grooming practice, or just didn't have one at all," says Jung Park, the 35-year-old owner of Metroboom on Platte Street, hinting of hot tips to come.
But first, straight talk about the art of being a contemporary gentleman. On the wall are black-and-white photos of classic gentlemen like Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra, guys who inspire Park to live his best life now.
"I grew up in New York City, where you make sure you look your best when you walk out the door, which was part of life for us," he says. "When I moved here in 2000, it was culture shock, because people go to the ballet and opera with their sweatshirts on."
Locally and nationally, the retro trend is touting the image of the modern-day gentleman.
"Being a gentleman like Frank Sinatra was about having your hair combed, your shoes always shined, and you always carried a handkerchief," says Park. "You had a certain level of integrity and pride."
At Metroboom, the idea is not to get everyone dressing in fedoras and three-button suits like Frank Sinatra, but to give a guy some fashion options.
"I've never been to something like this before," says Jeff Chen, 37, who works in finance at IBM. "It's really interesting, to get this kind of feedback, both men's and women's perspective."
Ideas abound. Fashion makeovers include transforming a 27-year-old engineer, dressed in understated geek-wear, into a hipster Hollywood type.
And baskets of skin-care products made the rounds, passed from one guy to the next, American Crew and Pangea Organics.
Guys squirted, rubbed, sniffed, and spritzed. Bemused or amused, they stood two-fisted, hands wrapped around a beer and a bottle of tea tree lotion.
"There's a really fine line between turning men into women, and letting men be men," said Greg Tilley, a 34-year-old software businessman, after all the presentations. "Too many products."
Just about everyone was transported, however, by how-to-be-a-gentleman advice from a panel of women that included Colorado Crush dancers.
Like contemporary gentlemen, that advice was timeless:
1. Open all doors, especially car doors.
2. Always walk on the outside of the sidewalk.
3. If your car runs out of gas on a date, don't hand her the gas can and tell her to start walking.
Naturally, there was a long list of what not to do:
1. Don't wear athletic socks with slacks, even if it is Colorado.
2. Ditto for socks with flip flops.
3. If your car runs out of gas on a date, don't hand her the gas can and tell her to start walking.
4. And when it comes to grooming, grunge is definitely out.
"I once dated a guy who never clipped his nose hair, and he had dirt under his nails, " says Crush dancer Andrea Thompson.
Cary Grant would never do that.
Staff writer Colleen O'Connor can be reached at 303-954-1083 or at coconnor@denverpost.com.
