In Defense of Monograms

A status symbol that stretches back centuries suddenly has new meaning.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In Defense of Monograms by Chris Rouser read by Bob Danielson.
When I reached the final section of Graydon Carter's delicious
new memoir When the Going was Good, one paragraph caused
me to let out a sharp gasp. It wasn't a
celebrity anecdote like the one about the time a Vanity
Fair editor got locked in the bathroom at cann and

(00:22):
couldn't get out until the door was kicked down by
Jean Claude van Dam. It wasn't even the fact that
magazine's writer Brian Burrow was once paid five hundred thousand
dollars to write three stories a year, though that did
make me choke a little. Instead, it was merely this.
In a section about his rules for living, former VF
editor Carter writes, monograms are idiotic. Don't put them on

(00:44):
your clothing unless you have two or three family members
living under the same roof and you all wear roughly
the same clothes and in the same size. If you
aren't a member of the Kardashian family, he continues, it's
highly unlikely that you face such a problem. It is
not an exaggeration to say that this stance has shaken
me to my core. I am a proud monogrammer. My

(01:04):
initials are emblazoned on everything from my cuffs to my
stationary to my belt. I am from Maine, so I
have a monogrammed ll bean boat and tote in every size,
and so does my daughter. If having your mom write
your initials in the back of your underwear when you
go to summer camp counts as monogramming, then I've been
doing it since I was nine years old. Monogramming is
a lifestyle choice, and the life chose me. I'm also

(01:29):
frankly stunned that Carter is against the tradition. I worked
at Vanity Fair in the early teens, and it did
not take long to learn that the boss was meticulous
about his crisp Northeastern style. Every detail mattered. No one
was allowed to wear dress shoes with rubber soles in
the office. Carter's suits were from the savile Row Taylor,
Anderson and Shepherd. I looked up to him so much

(01:51):
I started writing in monogrammed mole skin notebooks, always CRR,
never cr because it seemed to me like something a
Vanity Fair editor would do. Carter was so high wasp
that during my job interview through curls of smoke from
the three cigarettes he smoked while we chatted, He asked,
with utter seriousness, do you canoe? And this man doesn't

(02:12):
believe in monogramming. I've been thinking a lot about personalization lately.
It's been in the luxury news cycle. In April, Louis
Vetan launched it with great fanfare, a new mon monogram
program for its leather goods. You can now get everything
from passport holders to giant trunks decorated with bright patterns
and bold stripes alongside your initials and flashy colors. At

(02:35):
an event in the lobby of the Louis Vatan store
at Fifth Avenue in fifty seventh Street, I saw all
the city's top fashion editors crowded around the hot stamper
oohing over the woman hand painting luggage and mixing and
matching patterns and colors on a digital tablet. The results
are absolutely adorable and unforgivably unsubtle. I like the way

(02:55):
it looks, but it's definitely not for everyone. At the airport,
do you want your passport holder to say I'm a
spy look away or do you want it to say
look at me? I'm expensive again, that's a lifestyle choice.
But is it chic? I needed to know, so I
called an array of stylists and people I regard as fashionable.

(03:16):
Levi Higgs, the popular jewelry influencer and head of Archives
in Brand Heritage at David Webb, assured me it's quite
on trend when it comes to jewelry, pointing me to
custom carvers like Castro Smith who have long waitlists for
their personalized work. I think it's stylish, Higgs says. Jewelry
is subtle, it's small, it's personal. It's worn against your body.

(03:37):
If anyone is seeing a monogram or engraving, they're pretty
close to you physically. But when I asked the experts
if monogram in clothing and accessories beyond jewelry was chic,
several uttered the dreaded phrase it depends, which almost always
means absolutely not. Elizabeth Saltzman, a creative style director who

(03:58):
worked at Vogue and Vanity Fair and Whostar aisles a
roster of celebrity clients between the US and UK, says
it's all about the person and how they do it.
I couldn't wear a pink toutu, but somebody else could
and make it look chic, she says. If it's a
mel de Marcos in the old days with three hundred
and seventy suitcases, all matching, all monogrammed, tacky. If it's

(04:18):
my father, a spiffy dresser who traveled with a hard
case with his RBS monogram on it, that's super chic.
When I finally got in touch with Carter to inquire
as to the root of his anti monogram position, he
clarified that the stance is actually rather specific. Whatever objection
I have to monogrammed shirts rests largely on the men
who wear them, he says, to my relief, the shirts

(04:40):
are the gateway lettering to vanity plates and putting your
name in a large block typeface on the side of
your plane. There is only one person I know who
has done all three, the current president. Indeed, context matters,
and this monogram moment exists in a broader cultural one.
If you take the subway in New York City, you'll
see plenty of good fake luxury bags perusing resale sites

(05:04):
like the Reel Reel makes clear just how many used
products are competing with new ones. A monogram painted by
Louis Vuitton is a certificate of both ownership and authenticity.
It's no coincidence that the original LV monogram canvas that
adorned the brand's famous trunks was crafted in eighteen ninety
six as a method to discourage counterfeiting. These luxury items

(05:26):
have become such emblems of aspiration that it's good strategy
to invite people to outwardly communicate that they've acquired it,
that it's theirs, that they haven't borrowed it, that it's
not fake, that it's not been resold, explains Gabriella Karifa Johnson,
a stylist and fashion editor. As a society, we've created
an economy, or even mythology, around rarity in luxury. She says,

(05:49):
holding a pricey item that has your initials on it
proves you're in the club. That exclusivity has been a
part of the appeal of monograms for hundreds of years.
The habit was first adopted by my royalty in ancient Greece,
who put their initials on currency so everyone knew who
was in charge in the region. After the Middle Ages,
nuns and elite seamstresses would sew monograms onto the fine

(06:10):
garments and linens of the aristocracy, often with gold and
silver threads. By the sixteenth century, a rising upper middle
class caught onto this relatively simple symbol of wealth and sophistication.
Monograms became common on clothing, jewelry, and household items. In
fine homes and in most households, women and girls were

(06:30):
trained in the art of sowing them. The practice was
especially in vogue in Victorian Europe and America. Today, antique
shops across both continents are filled with vintage linens and
jewelry adorned with delicate monograms. Saltzman, the stylist, says she
likes to check flea markets for objects with her or
her kids initials on them, because then you wonder who

(06:52):
is that person. I make up a whole story about it.
It could be on a bag, it could be on
a T shirt. I don't care. It's just fun. For many,
the idea of passing down an item with a monogram
is half the point. Family silver, a well loved goyard bag,
a tag bracelet from Tiffany. They all become personalized, well
used tokens that are imbued with meaning. There are a

(07:15):
few pieces more consequential than a well worn necklace with
your mother's initials, or a personally inscribed watch that your
grandfather's comrades got him after the war. I write a
lot about watches, and people frequently ask me which ones
to get as gifts. I often recommend buying one that
has a metal case back and engraving it with a
monogram or a personal message, because it lends so much

(07:36):
more gravitas to a gesture. It provides your loved one
with a story they can tell over and over. Thus
the item becomes an experience. It's an emblem not merely
of style or purchasing power, but of a relationship. Here
Carter and I are aligned. He tells me on things
like wedding presents, graduation watches, or commemorative silver boxes. Monong

(08:00):
Gramming personalizes things and indicates that the giver planned ahead
of whatever event they are meant to celebrate, and yet
the practice can be viewed as anathema by some, especially
since watches in pristine condition are particularly valuable on the
secondary market for the famously cash strapped gen z and
millennial generations dominating the luxury resale market. Swing your initials

(08:22):
into the lining of a coveted bag or hot stamping
them into the side of your sneakers is more of
a dicey proposition. Younger shoppers expect to be able to
resell luxury purchases more than seventy percent of the real
Real customers go on the platform to look at resale
prices before buying something at retail, to see what they
would eventually be able to get for it. But in

(08:43):
this way, a monogram actually pulls off a neat double trick.
It can make something relatively cheap, like a notebook or
a shirt from a mass market brand like Charles Tirett,
look more expensive and special. And it can make something
costly like a pricey handbag or a Rolex watch look
like it's not too precious to mess with. It elevates

(09:03):
the humble and makes the elite more approachable. Besides, if
you're getting someone a gift, why are you thinking about
your friend hawking it before you've even given it to them?
What if you presented them with something they wanted to
keep forever. An American watch brand out of Chicago has
debuted a clever solution to this problem. Hamden is a

(09:24):
family owned company that specializes in personalized watches and jewelry.
Brand director and fourth generation family member Daniel Wine recently
told me about a new patented removable case cap they
created for Hamden's Sullivan watches. You can engrave a watch
as a gift, and if the wearer gets tired of
the engraving or wants to admire the Swiss made movement inside,

(09:46):
they can just pop off the silver dollar sized case
cap and revert to the transparent sapphire underneath. According to Wine,
whose company sells thousands of personalized watches every year, the
most popular watch engraving types fall into two groups, handwritten
notes for gifts and monograms for personal branding. Somewhere along
the line, my own monogram became my general trademark. I

(10:09):
sign email CRR, and some of my friends call me
by my initials instead of saying my name, spelling it
out the way you would say OMG instead of oh
my god. You know who else knew a thing or
two about personal branding, Gangster al Capone, And for those
hunting down monogrammed antiques, it's worth flagging that his Patek
Philippe pocket watch is coming to auction on June tenth

(10:31):
at Southeby's. It is estimated to sell for eighty thousand
dollars to one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, not because
it's an rologically interesting timepiece, but because Capone didn't like
the plain case it originally came with. He ordered up
a customized platinum shell with his initials spelled out in
ninety single cut diamonds. The pocket watch is not in

(10:53):
particularly good shape, but it will probably sell for even
more than the estimate. The dial has dramatically aged over
the u s and the minute hand is no longer
with the watch. The Sotheby's listing warns we can only
speculate as to how or why this happened, but suffice
it to say this watch has more than a few
stories it could tell. Don't ask too many questions about

(11:14):
that minute hand, folks. All my best monogramed items have
stories behind them. There's the smathers In Branson lobster belt
that my mother in law got me after I told
her to. There's the Italian leather briefcase I proudly bought
on the recommendation of my old pal, Washington Post fashion
critic Rachel taesh jen Wise in one of her early
opulent tips emails. And then, of course there's my wallet.

(11:38):
In twenty sixteen, I attended a celebration of Montblanc's one
hundredth anniversary at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center in
New York. It was very glam black tie and hosted
by Hugh Jackman. In one corner of the soaring space,
they were offering monogrammy I happened to use a mont
Blanc card case, so I eagerly brought it over, guessing
it would be hot stamped with some kind of gilded lettering. Instead,

(12:03):
a woman in a lovely dress took out a red
marker and wrote my initials c R across the bottom
like it was the coat check ticket, not even c
R R, just c R and her penmanshim wasn't particularly good.
I'll never know why that was the party trick at
this particular fete, or how many leather goods were defaced

(12:23):
in similar sharpy fashion. But a decade later, I still
carry that wallet every day. The marker has almost worn off,
but I love pulling it out and telling the story
of how I got it monogrammed. It always gets a laugh,
and it's definitely more valuable to me than it was before.
Maybe I'll even pass it along to my daughter