Put Some Shine On

Limited quantities of several new silk items arrived at the ASW store this week, including a red ascot and an expanded selection of silk belts that will dress up a blazer during the day (dandies might pair them with my suede house shoes), and red satin bow ties that will do the same with a navy suit during the evening. And they will be joined next week by very hard to find flat black silk shoe laces that will dress up your oxfords for black tie occasions.

One thing I like about my silk belts is the positive reaction they elicit from the fairer sex. Paired with an otherwise conventional jacket and trousers, they add flair without taking things too far. Add a pair of tan or light gray socks for a Fred Astaire look without the self consciousness of tieing a necktie around your waist.

Summer Scarves From Scotland

In 1869 Alex Begg established a business making traditional hand-woven shawls in the Scottish town of Paisley, the place that gave its name to the now-ubiquitous textile pattern. In 1904, Begg relocated his business 35 miles down the road to the coastal town of Ayr, whence it has established a worldwide reputation for luxurious scarves, stoles, shawls and soft furnishings.

If you were seeking an ideal place to site a scarf manufacturer, Ayr would be high on your list. The wind comes in cold and damp from the Firth of Clyde and the reliably heavy rainfall makes the many nearby golf courses, such as Turnberry and Royal Troon, startlingly green.

The unprepossessing Begg factory is in a residential area of the town, which is a lonely outpost of textile manufacturing, a few hours’ drive from the cashmere knitting specialists in the Scottish Borders. Yet Begg in Ayr is now a regular stopping-off point for designers from many of the most prestigious luxury brands from the UK, Europe, America and the Far East. The company uses techniques barely changed in 150 years to produce the most sumptuous cashmere accessories for men and women for a stellar line-up of leading names.

Lambswool, angora and cashmere-silk blends are also specialities for Begg, which offers a massive collection of plain colours as well as sophisticated woven jacquards and prints. Its expertise in weaving and finishing, using the soft and pure local water, makes it one of Scotland’s best-regarded manufacturers. Almost 30% of the production time involves painstaking handwork, including brushing the nap of some scarves by hand with natural teasels, the spiky plant heads that resemble thistles. In fact, the teasels Begg uses are grown to its specifications in Italy.

Despite its obvious concentration on cosy products for the autumn and winter months, for summer Begg Scotland, as the company now styles itself, produces a fabulous super-lightweight cashmere scarf known as the “wispy”, which is woven from a yarn exclusive to Begg. Ideal for travel and using on a plane, the 27.5 x 79 inch (70 x 200 cm) scarf folds into the smallest bag or pocket. The wispy is also great for cool evenings or to defend yourself from the terrors of air conditioning. To locate a retailer, contact the company.

-Text by Eric Musgrave

-Photo by Begg Scotland

Fast

A lace came untied on on my pigskin slipons in late April and in my clumsiness I somehow managed to trip over the thing and tear the tassel off without noticing, meaning I had no choice but to return the shoe for repair. Having received my education about shoe turnaround times from a Northampton maker that takes six months to do anything asked of them, my expectation was that I might be able to wear the things again once before the end of the year which was disappointing since I'd only had them for a couple of weeks.

Lo and behold, the repaired shoe arrived less than a month after it was dispatched which is nothing to sneeze at when you consider that it must have spent two weeks of the intervening time in transit.

Thank you to the gentlemen at G. J. Cleverley.

Driving Shoes

The two great casual shoe styles of summer are the boat shoe and the driver. Boat shoes are of course the domain of what remains of American prep, worn for leisure with either madras shorts or a madras shirt and sometimes both. The driver on the other hand is Italian, evoking in its wearers' minds the image of themselves on the Amalfi Drive in a Ferrari California with Monica Bellucci in the passenger seat. It is typically a moccasin with nubs on the heel and the sole that are intended to help the driver work his pedals without wearing the finish off his dress oxfords, and from the maker's point of view the brilliance of the design is that the nubs wear out quickly when worn to walk on concrete so the shoe requires frequent replacement (a characteristic that has helped make Diego Della Valle, founder of Tod's, one of the world's richer men).

Drivers are to the best of my knowledge a phenomenon of post-War Italy. I have written in the past about the firm of Calzaturificio Miserocchi, which may have originated the driver. There were two brothers involved in that company and they apparently had a falling out. One brother kept the brand name, which he later sold to Prada who now makes Car Shoes in great volume by machine in Eastern Europe. The other kept the factory, where he apparently makes similar shoes in an artisanal sort of way. These latter became well known among those of us who follow this sort of thing when the late style icon Gianni Agnelli was photographed on several occasions wearing a pair of red ones (he must have sent someone to pick his up in person as the artisanal brother took my money six months ago but has never sent me any shoes).

This driving shoes with a suit thing is what makes drivers special to my mind. They look good, in a sprezzatura sort of way, and the combination can almost be justified if a man is within a couple hundred feet of his car and arguably has not had an opportunity to change back to conventional shoes. In red calf of course. The red socks are optional.

The Spanish Shirtmaker

There is no shortage of shirtmakers in Spain. This is particularly so in Madrid, where in the city’s center one can’t walk three blocks without happening upon a sign for a camiseria. Few are worthy of the title, though, and of those only one firm is esteemed locally and abroad. That firm is Burgos, the small, century-old atelier located amid the neo-classical splendor of the city’s main banks. Part of Burgos’ fame has to do with its clientele, which has included entertainers and autuers (Cary Grant and Orson Welles were customers) as well as royalty, most currently the prince of Spain. The firm is also known for its Teba jackets. What sets it apart from its competitors, however, is an intense focus on craft. No fewer than five artisans play a part in each shirt’s construction, a process that from bolt to iron takes about seven hours.

Most of those hours are devoted to the sewing, a good deal of which is done by hand in the homes of seamstresses, each of whom performs separate tasks. One seamstress stitches together the collar and cuffs. Another does the yoke, front panels, and also attaches the collar, the last by hand and reinforced by machine with 18 stitches per inch. Yet another seamstress, the finisher, sews the plackets, buttonholes, hem, and gussets. She also attaches the cuffs to the sleeves and the sleeves to the armholes. All but the plackets are stitched by hand, and each is done painstakingly and beautifully, the evidence of which lie in the subtle rolling of the hem, and the clean, taut stitching of the buttonholes, themselves oblong and possessing that particular plump liveliness of a thing shaped by a human hand.

Of course, there is no distinct qualitative difference between machine-stitched and hand-stitched shirts, so long as both are well-made, but for Burgos the choice to stitch largely by hand is an aesthetic one. That is to say, the artisans at Burgos consider hand-stitches more refined than those made by machine. This is because they require a great delicate finesse to do and an even greater restraint to do well. Indeed, it can be difficult to refrain from placing such work where it will garner the most attention, and some firms don’t seem to try. But with a Burgos shirt, the only hand-work visible on the outside are a few pick stitches by the shoulder seam, a detail that is usually known only to the wearer. Now, a lot gets made of such details, these things hidden from view, but Burgos isn’t out to sell a sartorial ethos either, discreet decoration is just what they’ve always done and what they find pleases the eye most. For them, the hidden details are for pleasure and admiration, and, like any object of beauty, to help buoy the spirit.

There is much else to like about Burgos (their willingness to work on client requests, the lack of pretension inside the shop or coming from any of its staff), but it seems a special accomplishment that despite the hours of attention each shirt receives, most of the shirtings they show (sturdy 2x2’s from the Spanish mill Textivea, voile from Simmonot-Godard, and poplins from Alumo, among others) are priced around 200€ ($250) in Madrid. Even with an unfavorable exchange rate, those prices rival the more competent MTM firms.

Mrs. Carmen Olave, the third generation proprietor, visits New York a couple of times each year. Men looking to inquire about an appointment there or in Madrid should contact her at camiseriaburgos@gmail.com.

-Text and photos by Anthony Eleftherion

The Start Of A Season

Summer does not begin officially until June 20 in the Northern Hemisphere, but in the United States the Memorial Day holiday of the last weekend in May is generally associated with the start of the season. It is the traditional time to honor our war dead, watch the Indianapolis 500 motor race and dine outdoors.

In the photograph, summer outdoor dining clothes including a Milan straw hat, Minnis fresco jacket and trousers, banded slipon shoes, a linen shirt, houndstooth socks and one of my knit ties.

Looking To The South

It being spring and all in the Northern hemisphere, the shirt jacket comes back into its own. Oh, we have them in tweed and in moleskin for running errands in cooler weather but the things really seem to make more sense on tieless days in cotton drill and, even better, linen. A man needs his pockets after all and, being unstructured, shirt jackets serve that function while wearing cooler than their canvassed brethren.

There being no summer in England to speak of, English clothes accommodate the heat reluctantly at best and the shirt jacket finds more of a place in the South of Europe, namely France and particularly Italy where Luca Montezemolo wears his natural colored linen version (despite its apparently pocketless state) in the photograph. In the über casual United States it may be even more at home. Tailors do them best by the way, for though you might expect that they would be sourced at bespoke shirtmakers that is hit and miss for many of those lack the equipment to sew 14 and 15 ounce (400-450 gram) cloth properly.

Finally I should point out that Montezemolo's black cotton mock turtleneck and cream cotton drill trousers are affordable basics that should be in every wardrobe. The triad of natural, black and cream colored clothing is as home in the North as it is in the South.