Brrr

Esquire illustrates golf dress as I learned to expect the game would be played in the Northern hemisphere on the first day of July.


The man on the left depicts reality on the Northern California coast today, minus the pipe, but right down to the correctly scaled tweed cap.

Brrr.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday America.

The Cart Before the Horse

There is an ASW post scheduled for Monday that will show a bit of Mariano Rubinacci's Mount Street store in London, the source of the slippers in the photo. But for today, we'll put the cart before the horse and show the slippers themselves, canvas house shoes that could be Belgian Shoes were it not for their leather soles.

The soles of course may be the principal reason to choose the Rubinacci version of these slippers over the Belgians. The price, €280 including VAT or about $350 without, is roughly the same for each, and both makes have a bow on the apron that puts some men into a cold sweat for fear that they might somehow be thought effeminate for wearing shoes like these.

I, on the other hand, have been wearing slippers with little bows on the apron for many years, and have learned to cope with my insecurities. After all, the only people who see the bows are family and house guests. The former are used to my idiosyncracies and the latter are usually too groggy to take in the details of their surroundings.

All that being said, we can return the cart to its customary position.

Maintenance: Madame Paulette's Stain Removal Kit

I know little or nothing about the cleaning services of New York's Madame Paulette, but the company's Professional Stain Removal Kit is unsurpassed in my experience. The point of on the spot stain removal is that the sooner a stain is removed the less it is likely to cause irreversible damage, and one of Madame Paulette's kits demonstrated this just the other day when it removed a salad dressing spot from the lapel of a jacket.


There are three primary stain groups that attack tailored clothing, those being earth, protein and oil based, and there is a formula designed to remove each of them in each kit. Just tear open the proper envelope, apply the wipe with its embedded formula to the stain, and then treat with the supplied rinse wipe. All the contents are biodegradable and rinse out with water.

Men who value their clothing are likely find the kit a great bargain at $12.50 per, or $50 for five.

In the Pink

Sunny day clothing recently that included suede shoes from Gaziano & Girling, a chalk striped fresco suit by Thomas Mahon, striped shirt by Hemrajani, and a Charvet bow tie.

Pink is perhaps the most complementary color to combine with gray, as light blue is with navy. White in the square, tie, shirt and suit serves to blend the elements together. And medium and dark grays are the best time to wear black shoes.

On that day I was definitely in the pink.

Of Stingray and Antelope

Dimitri Gomez is one of a handful of the world's best bespoke shoe makers. He works by himself in a space within the Crockett & Jones store in Paris.


Gomez is one of the few makers who makes a fitting shoe (the black shoe in the photo) before he begins work on the final product. The fitting shoe is open, so he can see exactly how foot and shoe are interacting.


A man who obviously enjoys his work with exotic skins, Dimitri is holding a pair of golf shoes in blue stingray and white antelope which, sadly, are considerably more expensive than the regular bespoke quality calf offerings. The other pair is crocodile.

Bespoke shoes begin at €2500 including VAT (about $3,100 ex VAT for visitors from outside the EU). When he has time, Gomez will also hand make shoes to existing patterns on standard lasts for €1200 (about $1,500 ex VAT). To my mind that latter option may be the best shoe value in Europe.

Orders require four to six months as well as a minimum of two further visits to Paris, for fitting and then pick-up of the final product. Packing and shipping services are not available. Dimitri would rather make another pair of shoes than take time to ship a pair he has already made, and who can blame him?

Waiting for Guyot

The front sidewalk of Marc Guyot's Cape Cod Shop in Paris is a pleasant place to spend an hour smoking a cigar in the sun. The scenery is always the same and yet ever different - women in summer clothing and the occasional well dressed male.


Inside, Goyot's store is beautiful as if by accident. It is a small space that has been crammed with cloth and clothing from top to bottom until there is room for just one customer at a time. To find the neckties, move two boxes of scarves. To reach the socks, push a stack of shoe boxes aside.


The Cape Cod Shop sells accessories, shoes and made to measure clothing of Guyot's own design. Much of the stock consists of bolt after bolt of shirting, tweed and worsted.


Waiting for Guyot is worth the time.