In Praise of Albert Thurston

Men should not need to pull their trousers up several times a day.

That's the principal advantage of wearing braces with suit trousers. You put them on once and your trousers stay in place. They hang better too.

Albert Thurston braces like the blue ones pictured on the left are made from boxcloth with white hand stitched ends. The advantage of white is that you can wear them with brown or black shoes instead of maintaining a separate wardrobe for each color shoe.

The ends used to be made from a natural material called cat gut (and fortunately wasn't) which aged to a cream color, but they are now made from an unnatural material. It's too soon to tell whether they'll become equally mellow over the years .

Thurston's are sized, as you would expect. That's an advantage over the competition because on properly sized braces the brass adjustors sit where they are supposed to, near the waist.

You can also get lighter versions made from barathea for warm weather wear. These normally come with brown or black leather ends, but Thurston is happy to accommodate requests for white hand stitched versions.

Thurston has an online ordering facility and shipping is included in the price.