Russian Leather

In 1973, divers off England's Plymouth Sound found the wreck of the Catharina von Flensburg, an eighteenth century brigantine that sank in 1786 with a cargo of reindeer hides. They had been cured in baths of rye or oat flour and yeast, hand embossed before being soaked in wood liquor and finally hand curried and soaked in seal oil and birch tan oil. The result is a unique finish that cannot be replicated.

Though covered with mud for centuries, the hides proved to be water resistant and still very serviceable. Bundles have been periodically brought to the surface and sold by the divers who discovered them. They are dried, cleaned and sorted in a small workshop in Cornwall where some are made into attaché cases, belts and other leathergoods on the spot. Others are sent to London to be made into shoes in London by bespoke shoemakers G. J. Cleverley .

There is some question as to how long the supplies of hide will be available. I have heard it estimated that half of them still lie in the mud of the seabed, but the diver who was given rights to them has retired and there is no successor in sight. For now, Cleverley continues to deliver a small supply of products from two hundred year old Russian leather.

Photos: G. J. Cleverley

Three Sock Drawers

Socks should also complement a day's ensemble. Consider the three sock drawers of three mythical (but I know each of them) men. The first is full of navy socks in wool and cotton (navy being a bit less of a black hole than black). A pair for each day is about right, plus a couple of spares (hrow in a pair or two of black silk for evening wear). Easy to choose each morning and particularly awkward with light gray trousers. Comparable to a closet containing nothing but navy worsteds.

The well dressed man's sock drawer should at least mirror his suits and odd trousers. For example:

-dark gray
-2 navy
-3 mid-gray
-2 brown (tan in summer)

The third drawer, my personal preference, adds some less than obtrusive pattern:

-dark gray with a black clock pattern
-navy birdseye, navy with a gray clock pattern
-silver ribbed, mid-gray birdseye and mid-gray with dark gray pinstripes
-brown ribbed, beige heather mix

And into that same drawer might go an extra pair of prune.

In the photo, mid-gray flannel colored Bresciani socks worn with gray flannel trousers and black suede shoes (the combination of flannel and suede is every bit as good as that of flannel and a grenadine necktie). The combination is quite a bit better looking than navy would have been, in my opinion, though a birdseye might have been even better.

Acquiring The Wardrobe

While we were discussing clothing acquisition yesterday, I realized that a twenty-first century interpretation of Mr. Waugh's budget allocations could suffice to build a well-rounded wardrobe for the five day a week suit-wearing man over a period of five years, independent of his budget. And by that I mean that, as I have written several times in the past, a man can do a lot worse than to make himself a list of what he needs each year and compare that to his budget to determine how much he can spend on each item. It is a process that is just as effective for thrifted clothing as it is for hand-made bespoke stuff.

The objective of a clothing budget ought to be to stock the closet so that it offers reasonable variety and enough of a rotation so that the contents do not wear out prematurely. Further, most of us live in temperate areas where a selection of clothing is required for both warm weather and cold so the quantity of suits and odd jackets should be adequate for each season.

Once the budget has been in place for half a decade, it should produce a wardrobe consisting of at least:

-Six cold weather suits
-Six warm weather suits
-Six pair of shoes
-One raincoat with zip-in lining
-Two odd jackets and trousers for each season
-Fifteen shirts
-Twenty neckties

Acquiring this list means purchasing three items of tailored clothing and a pair of shoes each year. In one of the years there will be an extra pair of shoes. In two others, an extra suit or odd jacket. In those years, no dress shirts are purchased in order to keep expenses roughly level. In the other two years, the budget is filled out with half a dozen shirts.

Allocating funds to each item is fairly simple. Take the annual budget and divide by five. Spend that amount on each suit, odd jacket and trousers, pair of shoes (that might be a tad high on the shoes but most men need to spend more than they do on their footwear) or the year's shirts and neckties.

Few of us will approach the late Baron de Rede's shoe collection in the photo but with a little planning we can all have well rounded wardrobes.

Beau Brummels on $14,000 a Year

The following piece, "Beau Brummels on £60 a Year," was written by author Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited) in 1929. The strategy remains valid today.

Of course, there is really only one way of being perfectly dressed - that is, to be grossly rich. You may have exquisite discrimination and the elegance of a gigolo, but you can never rival the millionaire if he has even the faintest inclination towards smartness. He orders suits as you order collars, by the dozen. His valet wears them for the first three days so that they never look new, and confiscates them after three months so that they never look old. He basks in a perpetual high noon of bland magnificence.

It is useless to compete against him. If your object in choosing your clothes is to give an impression of wealth, you had far better adopt a pose of reckless dowdiness and spend your money in maintaining under a hat green and mildewed with age a cigar of fabulous proportions. If, however, you have no intention of deceit, but simply, for some reason, happen to like being well dressed, it is essential to have at least two tailors.

There are about a dozen first-rate tailors in London whose names you may always see quoted by the purveyors of ‘mis-fit’ clothing. Below them are about a hundred rather expensive eminently respectable unobtrusive shops in fashionable streets, where your uncles have bought their clothes since undergraduate days. Below them are several hundreds of quite cheap very busy little shops in the City and business quarters. The secret of being well dressed on a moderate income is to choose one of the first-rate and and one of the third-rate tailors and maintain a happy balance between them.

There are some things, an evening tail-coat for instance, which only a first-rate tailor can make. On the other hand, the difference between a pair of white flannel trousers costing five guineas in Savile Row or George Street and one costing two guineas in the Strand is practically negligible. The same applies to almost all country clothes. It is not necessary or particularly desirable that these, except of course the riding breeches, should be obtrusively well cut.

The chief disadvantage of small tailors is that they usually have such a very depressing selection of patterns. It is a good plan to buy all your tweeds direct from the mills in Scotland and to have them made up. Another disadvantage of the small tailor is that he never knows what is fashionable. At least once every eighteen months you should spend fifteen guineas in getting a suit in Savile Row, which will serve as a model for him.

It is never wise to allow any one except a first-rate tailor to attempt a double-breasted waistcoat; in some mysterious way this apparently simple garment is invariably a failure except in expert hands. But you can safely leave all trousers which are not part of a suit, even evening trousers, which ought, in any case, to be made of a rather heavier material than the coat, to our less expensive shop. The most magnificent-looking traveling coat I ever saw had been made up for four guineas from the owner’s own stuff by the second -best tailor in a cathedral town.

It is usually an economy to buy your hosiery at an expensive shop. It is essential that evening shirts and waistcoats should be made to your measure; cheap ties betray their origin in a very short time.

There is only one completely satisfactory sort of handkerchief - the thick squares of red and white cotton in which workmen carry their dinners. Socks wear out just as quickly whatever their quality, and are the one part of a man’s wardrobe which ought never to attract attention. Expensive shoes are a perfectly sound investment, particularly if you keep six or seven pairs and always put them on trees when they are not in use.

Waugh goes on to calculate that by using a mix of the great and the merely good a man could be well tailored for the sum of £60 a year in 1929 money. Converting the cost of a Savile Row suit in 1929, some 13 pounds and change, to the current price lets us estimate that Waugh's proposed purchases (a couple bespoke suits, shoes, accessories, country clothes and fractions of outerwear and evening wear) could be made today for roughly £9,000 (about $14,000) a year.

$14,000 is of course still a contemporary millionaire's budget, or that of a man who makes a priority of his clothing, but when Waugh was advising his readers how to look like Brummels without the resources of the 'grossly rich' he was referring to his own upper middle class struggles to look good in the company of people with Mitt Romney's sort of income. And that can be done for $14,000 a year.

A Bleak Prospect

A link-cuffed and signet ring wearing T. S. Eliot, the naturalized English poet and playwright known for The Wasteland, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and other modernist things is shown in the photo (probably taken before the second world war) wearing a heavy worsted suit which I will guess weighs in at 18 ounces (540 grams). That would make a topcoat today but was once a standard English suiting.

Worsteds of that weight predated central heating and passed from the scene as homes and offices grew warmer. Indeed, the 16 ounce (480 gram) suit is about as heavy as a man can comfortably wear for hours indoors in a place like New York where the steam heat is always turned up, and 13 ounces (400 grams) is more common. But the best cloth of those weights makes for clothing that is comfortable and lasts decades.

The move to Super wool qualities has done much to cause these weights to go on life support. Not too long ago, good quality wool from an entire fleece averaged about a Super 80s, where the Super number refers to the width of the wool fibers (higher numbers represent finer fibers). Then came demand from mills in emerging countries weaving cloth in great volume for lower end ready to wear, whose indicator of quality became the Super number. These Supers are in turn woven into suits that are lighter in weight and less expensive because they use less wool. The result is that most of what was once suiting quality wool has had the finer fibers sorted and as I understand it what remains is less than satisfactory for tailored clothing. So it is relatively easy to make more fragile lightweight cloth and much more difficult to weave heavier stuff with a nice hand. My one suit from Smith Woolens now sold out 15 ounce (450 gram) Whole Fleece has a lovely feel without being in any way Super, but only five or so years after it was offered Smith can no longer replicate it.

This is obscure stuff of course, that matters only to those few who understand that heavier cloth drapes better, wrinkles less and is warmer in the cold while remaining comfortable indoors. Cloth for summer is easier than ever to obtain, but the best worsteds for winter may rarely be seen again.

Mr. Eliot would have found that a bleak prospect.

Best Friends

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I believe it was G. Bruce Boyer who wrote that a grenadine necktie is the best friend that a flannel suit can have. Grenadine is certainly in the top two, along with cashmere. It is the texture, you know.

We have the weather for 14 and 16 ounce (420-480 gram) woolen flannel only a couple months of the year here, but it is unquestionably my favorite suiting. When it is cold, wearing a flannel suit has the positive characteristics of being wrapped in a blanket. Its only negative to my mind is that it takes an extra day of rest after wearing and that can make it less practical than worsteds for airline travel.

Woolen flannel is not the only type of course. The stuff is also woven as a worsted, which makes it amenable to weights under 13 ounces (400 grams). I think of worsted flannels as a compromise though, with all the negative implications of the term. While worsteds do not require the rest of their woolen relations, they also lack texture, not to mention most of the mottling that gives flannel its surface interest. And that same smoother surface means worsteds are also not as warm, which might be OK if one is trying to wear a nine ounce (270 gram) flannel on a sunny day. Personally, in those circumstances I would rather wear gabardine or something else that is meant for warmer temperatures, and save my flannels for the cold.

In the photo, a flannel suit by Thomas Mahon, grenadine necktie from the ASW store and a square from Ralph Lauren.

Complement Your Coloring

Someone on Style Forum asked how many solid navy suits other people have and when I went through my closet in my head I was surprised at how few there are. That's partly because I prefer patterns that will blend over solids (see More On Blended Dressing), but it is principally because I wear a lot more gray than blue. Indeed, I tend to reserve navy for the evening, sticking to gray (and tan to a lesser extent) for day wear. In this I am unlike most of the men I know who pay attention to their clothes and wear a lot of blue.

Now that I think about it, I wear gray instinctively, light to mid-gray in particular, because it complements my coloring. There is a bit of gray in what remains of my hair these days, unlike those same clothing friends who tend to have shocks of dark hair that complements navy. And that is how clothing should be. Every man should have a little gray and a little navy in his wardrobe, for there are occasions when only one or the other will be ideal, but once that is accomplished he should acquire the things that work for him rather than heedlessly following recommendations that he needs so much of this and so much of that.

In the photo, a lot of gray, livened up to a very small extent with burgundy monkstraps.