Victoriana Forever
To some style-setters, the vintage craze might be, well, old hat. But for Nathan Marsak, retro is a way of life--from his car to his tooth powder. As for his clothes, everything in a sizable room Marsak uses as a personal closet dates from about 1880 to 1970, with a heavy concentration of items from the 1930s. His wardrobe? Well, that would be 60-plus suits, 40 or so pairs of shoes, several dozen hats and about 1,500 ties.
“I think new clothing would itch or something,” says the 33-year-old Highland Park resident. “I don’t even know what it feels like.”
Marsak’s case of what he terms RCD, or “Retro Cognitive Disorder,” isn’t limited to threads. He and his wife, Nigel Cox, who also has advanced symptoms of the disorder, live in a 1907 house that they are painstakingly restoring, drive a ’49 Packard and use rotary phones. Marsak, a writer, also favors fountain pens, old postage stamps and 1940s boot black, which he uses on a newish pair of steel-toed work boots. Until his supply ran out recently, he brushed his teeth with Colgate Tooth Powder. Never mind that the stuff has an arguably dangerous level of aluminum. “I do take it to an absurd extreme,” says Marsak. “It’s a lot of upkeep, but it’s rewarding. It’s what I have to do. [Just like] some people really need to go to sports games.”
As to the source of his passion, Marsak offers: “I come from a long line of crazy people.” But some of the credit (or blame) would seem traceable to Marsak himself. Let’s face it, not every 7-year-old with nutty forebears decides to be Edgar Allan Poe for Halloween.
“It may have started because I always wore hand-me-downs,” theorizes Marsak, the youngest of three children. “I was the only kid in 1980 who looked like I was torn out of a Sears catalog from 1971. I was wearing corduroy bell bottoms and Hang Ten shirts when all the other kids had Nikes and ‘Star Wars’ T-shirts.” At 14, he started buying suits. “Thrift store shopping in the early ‘80s was a gold mine, a nonstop festival of zip-up jackets from the ‘50s and ‘60s,” he recalls. “I really wanted to look like an early 1960s mortician.”
Then Marsak went Victorian. “I was wearing frock coats and top hats.” These days, his favorite suit is a greenish-gray three-piece, double-breasted, belt-back number from 1935 with a shirt reminiscent of the Art Deco days of Bullocks Wilshire or Alexander & Oviatt, the long-departed downtown haberdashery.
“I’m just making my meaningless little life amusing to myself,” he says. “There is a special feeling when you’re in a ‘40s suit driving down Figueroa in your ‘40s Packard. People wave and shout, ‘What year is your car?’ I don’t even notice them.”
