RJ's Cabinet of Curiosities Part I

A recent car commercial featured various very serious-looking men earnestly rhapsodizing about their fetishized possessions, A v-neck-sweatered man describes with delicate gestures his pen’s warthog tusk barrel and solid titanium trim. Another fellow poses by his tube amplifier and states smugly, “It reproduces frequencies only dogs can hear.” And so on. While (prior to looking it up in order to write this) I had forgotten what the commercial actually was for, it absolutely nailed the mannerisms of a particular male demographic that collects and obsesses over the minutiae of the overdesigned.

Thanks to Internet message boards and forums, the obsessed now know they are not alone. Both a sounding board and an echo chamber, these communities encourage members in their mania, spread a creed of received ideas and insulate them from skepticism – but not from rationalization. Insulated though we are, those of us obsessively focused on acquiring the rarest, best performing or most prestigious widget are still only slightly less obsessed with coming up with ways to justify our possessions. (I understand some members of the audiophile forums got their thousand-dollar power cables in a bunch over tube amp man.) I come to my thesis: We become ridiculous when we try to justify luxury. I henceforth adopt the following working definition of luxury: that done well which does not need to be done at all (Commenters, feel free to quibble below, but parsing that is a subject for another article). And with this piece I open my cabinet of curiosities, little luxuries that may be interesting or entertaining to the casual internet punter. These are things that are different, amusing, that at one time or another made me happy. Stop me if I start trying to intellectualize them.

Whether it’s shaving, skiing or cooking, the best part of any new hobby is the new toys it forces you to buy. Years ago, fed up with the latest nasty shaving gels, I tried old-fashioned shaving creams and was pleased with the results. The traditional creams and shaving soaps lasted a long time, were less harsh on my skin, and seemed to make for a closer, more comfortable shave than the modern stuff in most drugstores. Of course, then I needed a shaving brush for the ritual of applying the cream. (Real enthusiasts would add a proper shaving mug to foam up shaving soap in hot water and a straight (a.k.a. cut-throat) razor, but I try to be neither pedantic nor suicidal.)

I started unassumingly enough with the sort of brush with floppy nylon bristles that comes bundled in shaving gift packs. Those occupy the bottom of the shaving brush hierarchy, along with prickly and painfully stiff boar-bristled brushes. Infinitely preferable are brushes made with badger hair (humanely removed so that he can go boating with Mole and the Water Rat afterwards). Supposedly, badger hair possesses the ideal properties (for shaving brushes and, one assumes, badgers) of being able to absorb a great deal of water while being both springy and soft at the tip in order to lather up well without irritation.

As with any obsession, there are multiple grades of badger quality, florid names, and disputes over standards of nomenclature, with various companies offering “Best Badger,” “Super Badger” (great image) and “Silvertip.” Generally speaking, Silvertip is the top of most makers’ lines, and may be conflated with Super Badger by certain makers. I worked my way up to the luxury of a Silvertip with what the catalogs call a “faux ivory” handle, which is a euphemism for off-white plastic. (That’s fine, I don’t begrudge Tantor his tusks.) The Silvertip was a hell of a lot better than the cheap synthetic stuff. However, as with all obsessions, there is no limit on how far one can go up the hyperbolic curve of diminishing returns.

After Pure Badger, Best Badger, Super Badger and Silvertip, there are a few outliers offered by a couple of companies. What I had my eye on and eventually acquired was something called High Mountain Badger, a bristle step above Silvertip and so appealingly rare (I saw a badger in the Alps last spring, but I didn’t get a chance to ask if it was high). As an added draw, the brush itself was made with polished oxhorn handles instead of the usual plastic, adding that sensual element of visual pleasure which attracts the over-thinking enthusiast. To my knowledge, horn is generally a byproduct of the food industry and comes from the common cow, so my indulgence wasn’t plundering an endangered resource.

How does it perform? The hairs are pretty dense, the brush feels very good and foams up well, and in general seems better than my late Silvertip. So in other words, the difference could all be in my head. The price? At this place on the hyperbola, nothing is worth it from a sheer cost-benefit standpoint. Quality is remembered long after price is intentionally blotted out of one’s memory. In the end, our continued attempts to justify the unjustifiable luxury aren’t just aimed at others, but at ourselves and the impending recognition that even our latest, most elaborate acquisition can’t keep the doubts away for long. Perhaps the badger brush arms race will ramp up once someone finds a way to harness the power of Internet phenomenon the honey badger. At a certain point, though, to keep your sanity you need to make like him and just not give a shit.

- Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

Tie One On

Tan, gray and blue are the triumvirate of menswear colors, and they can be combined many ways. In the photograph,the usual gray jacket and tan shirt are reversed while the blue comes in the form of a navy bow tie, adding an unexpected bit of interest for a social afternoon.

Gray shirts should be more common than they are. Gray is more flattering than pure white on most men during the day and as adaptable as cream with navy jackets. I particularly like gray when it is combined with white, either in an end on end or similar weave or as a gray pattern on a white ground.

And then there is the bow tie, which would probably occupy a more important place in our wardrobes if more of us knew how to tie it. The knot is slightly more difficult to achieve than a four in hand, but the infrequent bow tie wearer can overcome his lack of practice by keeping a how-to-tie-it diagram handy. The result is a lighter hearted air, in my opinion, one that is particularly appropriate for occasions like the approaching St. Valentines Day.

Just tie one on.

The Cream Flannel Project

I am proceeding with the project (see last week's post) to offer lengths of 13 ounce/400 gram cream colored woolen flannel. That weight will work well as a suit or vest for temperatures up to about 75F (24C) as well as for trousers to be worn with ten or twelve ounce mid-weight (300-360 gram) or heavier jacketings.

The cloth will be made by Fox Brothers of Somerset, England, the 240 year old firm that originated flannel and is still generally considered the premier flannel weaver in the world. Delivery is promised for early March.

This offering will not be a pure white in color but rather the traditional English cream. The photograph's colors should be accurate on color-corrected displays.

Men who do not have an existing relationship with a tailor may elect to be measured by MyTailor during one of their visits to the nearly 200 cities they serve in the United States and Canada. MyTailor will make your garment(s) up in Hong Kong and deliver it to you. Exclusive of the cost of the cloth, tailoring prices will be:

Jackets – $595.00 for a fully canvased, hand tailored coat with sleeve button holes, inclusive of shipping charges. Most men will need 2.5 meters of cloth for a jacket.

Trousers – $200.00 – Fully or half lined slacks inclusive of shipping. Most men will need 1.5 meters.

Vests - $200.00 inclusive of shipping. Most men will need half a meter.

Pre-orders of the cloth itself will be $80 per half meter through February 18, including shipping in the United States (The ASW store's standard per order shipping premiums of $15 for Canada and Mexico and $27 for the rest of the world will apply for destinations outside the U.S.). A 50% deposit is required to hold a length and guarantee the price should the offering sell out as appears likely (the men who contacted me this past week will receive priority). After February 18, if any cloth remains unspoken for it will be priced at $90 a half meter.

Visit the ASW store to reserve your length.

Vintage Hermès Auction February 17

Our own Réginald-Jérôme de Mans, the interweb's most comprehensive cataloger of luxury goods, points out that Arcturial, the French auction house, is putting 450 lots of vintage Hermès goods under the hammer on February 17. The expected prices almost look reasonable given the declining Euro, reasonable being a totally unexpected event in France these days, at least until one calculates the buyer's premium and shipping.

Prices aside, the sale offers a good selection of Hermès printed cashmere scarves, silk squares and pochettes and those prices appear to compare favorably to what a specialist in the vintage stuff would ask (this with the caveat that my experience in vintage Hermès comes from a few eBay auctions). Unless of course they get bid up. Bidding is a competitive sport and the danger is always that one can overpay in the heat of battle.

Both telephone and online bids will be accepted from pre-registered bidders.

Tasseled Arrivals

A pair of pigskin momentos of the late Alexis, Baron de Redé, who, as I have mentioned in the past, had so many Cleverley shoes that the firm named a slip-on shoe after him (actually they named two of them after him despite the confusion that engenders), arrived this past week.

I will be the first to point out that the shoes have tassels and that detail relegates them to odd jackets and gray flannel trousers in my book. One should after all be an attorney, Nicholas Sarkozy (who adopted tassels along with much of the French right in the 1980s) or much more of a preppy than I am these days to wear tassels with suits except perhaps once in a while during the summer. But, even if the shoes were free of decoration, the pigskin itself would relegate them to informality.

Pigs are aggressive animals, with skin scarred and otherwise damaged from their social interaction. In addition, the grain side of those less than perfect skins is pitted. and the pits of the grain do not take the dye that gives them color very well (these were dyed after they were made). The result is a variegated surface, though one that is usually less obvious than it is under the spotlight used for these particular photos. It is that same variegated surface, so much more interesting than the regularity of machine-stamped calfskin for example, that is the principal reason to wear the stuff.

Cleverley did good.

Sin City

I have to make a day trip to Sin City next week (the place, not the movie despite the fact that the film of that name and actress Carla Gugino who plays Lucille are each among my personal top ten of all time, while the city is not). At any rate, that (the place again, not the film, which you should see if you have not already done so) brought travel clothes to mind. It may be true that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but tailored clothing wearers should not want a place's memory of them to be one of wrinkles.

It is the business day trip where travel clothes come into play. On journeys involving six or more hours in the air, the only people who see a man after landing are the driver and the person at the desk of the hotel. For travel of that nature comfortable cloth is fine as rumples are less relevent. But, fly or drive, take a meeting and return kinds of trips with no opportunity to change clothes require things that will emerge unscathed from a couple of hours in a seat.

Other than the old 60% mohair suitings that do not seem to be made any longer, high twist cloth like Smith's Finmeresco and Minnis' fresco is as wrinkle resistant as anything natural these days. A blue jacket with horn buttons and mid-gray trousers in those materials combined with a pair of dark slip-on shoes will suffice for most occasions during the day as well as an early dinner before heading for the last flight home (I will be the guy in the bouclé necktie). Still more formal and bulletproof would be a navy or charcoal suit made entirely from the 15 ounce/450 gram Minnis stuff, but it would be somewhat scratchy and away from London and to a lesser extent New York few cities really insist on that level of formality to say the least.

Sin City (the place, not the film) is definitely not one of them.

Lifestyle: Various Obscurities

I spent my morning coffee time writing an explanation of how to wear a watch chain and fob in answer to a reader inquiry the other day only to find that, as happens all too often, he had mis-typed his email address. And though I am tempted to re-use that work, I should not subject the 99.9% of my readership that will never have a reason to wear a pocket watch to such arcana.

The exercise did however remind me of Lucius Beebe's 1935 Herald Tribune column stating that the well-dressed gentleman wore a fouet on the end of his watch chain, said device being a small whisk intended to eliminate carbonation from champagne. I do not intend to demean Mr. Beebe, whose lifestyle I only wish I could emulate, but this strikes me as an example of unclear on the concept if I have ever heard one. Originally invented to remove inadvertent secondary carbonation, the fouet may have filled a need until perhaps the start of the 20th century. But why on earth would any man go to the trouble to de-gas a modern wine that was designed to sparkle, thereby undoing all the work required to add bubbles in the first place, when he could simply order a still wine? Such are the mysteries of life.

In turn this reasoning led me to a consideration of champagne, to which I say bring it on generally. But given that we were considering Russian leather the other day, it occurred to me that I have never mentioned Hiedsieck's 1907 Diamant Bleu cuvée, 2,000 bottles of which were found in 1998 in the wreck of a freighter sunk in the North Sea on its way to the Czar during the first world war. Being still highly drinkable the stuff has come to a better end than the Romanovs and it has been sold at auction around the world, averaging a price in excess of $3,000 a bottle. That is the very definition of obscurity as none of us is likely to ever come across it of course, but it makes for a good story nonetheless.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.