sartorial sär-ˈtȯr-ē-əl , sər-, sə- adjective
1. of or relating to clothing
2. of or relating to a tailor or to tailoring
3. of or relating to the sartorius muscle
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The word sartorial has appeared in 119 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Sept. 17 in “Was the Gap Ever Cool? A Look at 50 Years in Denim and Khaki” by Jonah Engel Bromwich:
By 1986, The New York Times was already calling the transformation driven by Mr. Drexler “one of the most remarkable turnarounds in retailing history.” Five years later, The Times reported that the Gap’s clothes were the second most popular in the United States behind Levi Strauss.
… With business success came cultural ubiquity. And with that ubiquity came widespread contempt.
In a recent interview, Thomas Frank, the author of “The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism,” confessed that it had been some time since he had thought about the Gap and “the mysterious union it once achieved with my generation’s sartorial taste.”
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