Search for suave turns up shorts, T’s

By Brendan Buhler

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Sure, many of them looked snazzy in the multithousand-dollar loaner suits and some guys even posed in their own clothes, but did any of them have what it takes to succeed Frank Kelly?

Kelly is Esquire magazine’s Best Dressed Real Man in America (2007), who has used his fame to propel his pursuit of his dream of being a motivational speaker (so far he’s motivating on nights and weekends). Do any of these guys have what it takes to be Frank Kelly?

Probably not.

But they’re here anyway, inside the Blush nightclub in Wynn Las Vegas on this sunny Saturday afternoon. To help fill the room, several scantily dressed models wave passing tourists inside. If they didn’t care about the cattle call, there at least were free drinks and a cheese and fruit platter, the classy kind, with blue cheese and figs.

If that wasn’t enough, there were also free cigars, complimentary shoe shines, straight-razor shaves, massages and manicures, plus endless tiny samples of a cologne that, depending on your distance from it, smelled like a taxicab’s lemon air freshener (far away) or extracts of small woodland creatures (up close). The package describes Armani Code as “a sexy fragrance blend for the contemporary man in the know.”

The purpose of the party is promotional — it’s promoting the magazine, the luxury products sponsoring the contest and the marketing department’s ability to spend a weekend in Vegas.

The drill for the wannabe real men was to be lured into this casino nightclub between noon and 6 p.m., be dazzled by the decadence and pose for three glamour portraits, the best of which will be given to them on a CD so they can take it home and enter the contest online. Along one wall, there’s a photo studio — a cloth draped down a wall, lights, two cameras and a laptop.

Standing before the camera is a man wearing a brown and pink plaid shirt, over which is a brown T-shirt with a pink-shelled turtle on it. The man is wearing a pink and brown bow tie and his name is Andre Westbrook. He is the 24-year-old president of Henderson-based Layop, a line of T-shirts that features a turtle logo. He got here early, before a couple of other engagements, to display his style, and the shirt.

“We do T-shirts, but I’m more of a classy dressy, and a bow tie is kind of like my signature,” Westbrook says. “It’s clean, comfortable, confident.”

Next up for photos is man in a pinstriped suit and hair that has been very carefully moused and mussed to look like the underside of a dead duck. Andre likes his chances.

Meanwhile, four middle-aged guys wearing motorcycle shirts, mostly Harley-Davidson, blow past the photo shoot and pick up cheese, drinks and cigars. They sit on the patio, smoking and telling extravagant lies about women.

Last year’s Best Dressed Real Man arrives. Frank Kelly is looking natty in a linen suit and a square-tipped tie, shaking hands and smiling. He’s 31 and a product manager for Johnson & Johnson in Miami, though as we said, that isn’t his dream. That would be the motivational speaking, where he tells you how to “unleash your A.C.E.” It stands, he says, for attitude, communication skills and external image.

“Through unleashing your A.C.E. you create a superbeing,” Kelly says.

He says he recently spent a month (nights and weekends) motivating two homeless men, one of whom is now a VIP host for a hotel chain. The other is now a telemarketer.

“One thing I want to make clear is that when it comes to the homeless, I can’t help everyone,” Kelly says. He estimates the percentage of the homeless he can’t help — the crazies, the addicts — is about 65 percent.

The guys in the Harley shirts are going back for thirds.

Young guys in shorts and flip-flops are lured in, have a drink and soon enough are heading for the rack of photo-shoot suits provided by luxury tailor Pal Zileri. (The suits go for $1,500 to $6,000; the shirts are $200 to $250 and will probably have to be given to charity after this outing.) They try on glossy suits and ties, amble over to the women with the loaner luxury IWC-brand watches and pose for pictures, cigars in their mouths. Luckily, their hair was already moussed.

The guys in the Harley shirts are getting manicures.