On Ormonde Man

Ormonde Jayne is a very well regarded London perfume house launched earlier this century. After hearing about my search for long lasting fragrances, the company sent a sample of its signature scent for men, Ormonde Man, and I promptly sprayed it on.

Released in 2004, Ormonde Man arouses strong feelings, both positive and negative. Of the 19 reviews on the Basenotes.net fragrance site, eight were positive and six neutral and five negative. Most of the positives were raves, and most of the negatives just the opposite. And the people that post on that site know something about fragrances.

Now I do not pretend to be an expert on scents, but I do wear Creed's Tabarôme during the winter and anyone who has sniffed that understands strong feelings about these things. On my own skin, Ormonde Man is modern and very well put together. I was puzzled it by initially and then my puzzlement began turning into a favorable impression.

Ormonde Man opens with a burst of spices that dry down to a masculine woods and musk scent that on me lasts as long as my Creed products, hitherto the longest lasting I had found. The stuff is also priced comparably to the Creed parfums. 50 ml is £68.00 (about $95 ex VAT) at the company's web store.

Well worth a sniff.

A Car Coat

The above the knee overcoat, often called a car coat in America, came about to accommodate the restricted space in automobile seats. All right for spring and fall, on truly cold days chilled knees make the wearer realize what a compromise a short coat can be.

A car coat is probably a fifth or sixth coat in the wardrobe, for men like Charlie Watts who may enjoy having that many. Most of the rest of us should start with a raincoat and liner, adding a day overcoat, a topcoat, an evening coat and a tweed according to our need and our circumstances.

Accompany the coats with a selection of scarves which, like the necktie next to the suit, are a relatively inexpensive way to add variety to the daily look. Unlike the necktie, they also serve the practical purpose of keeping the upper chest warm and dry.

Nothing they can do about the temperature of the knees though. Short coats have that problem.

Photo: Fulvio Iazzaro

Three Hat Styles for Autumn

We no longer wear hats most days, but in Autumn the things are too useful to be without. Open topped cars on sunny days are one occasion. Spitting rain is another. A wardrobe of three types will suffice.

I recall seeing two very large gentlemen in a Jaguar convertible looking smashing in their Homburg hats. That is the model at the upper right in the Esquire illustration and it is the most formal of the three types. Have one of them in the more casual Lord's hat version, colored either black or midnight blue, for semi-formal dress and dark city suits.

Then there is the Cavalier felt, at the lower left. In lightweight beaver it is to my eye the best looking of the general purpose hat shapes, and a brown one strikes the right note with flannel suits. The more frequent hat wearer may want a second, in gray, to wear with his worsteds.

Finally, every wardrobe should have at least one cap, like the one worn by the young man at the upper left, for casual days and they are so useful that four of them are not too many. In tweed, cashmere or corduroy, and properly full cut - the versions offered by London's Lock & Co today are too skimpy - they are worn when other men might don baseball caps, about which nothing need be said.

And those are three hat styles for autumn. Or spring for that matter.

The Evening Four in Hand

When the occasion calls for lounge suits in the evening, a dark four in hand necktie is usually the appropriate choice. Light reflecting satin, like the tie worn in the photo by Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, contrasts with the light absorbing jacket. And after dark is the time to wear a white dress shirt.

Photo: Getty Images

Time for Darker Colors

The coming weeks are when the clothes of spring are slowly packed away, to be replaced by more robust stuff. The first things to go into storage are the lighter colors, for early Fall is the time to wear mid-weight worsteds, and light-weight tweeds and corduroy.

Straw hats are gone, replaced by felt, and what had been the spectators' space on the shelf is filled with boots. Linen suits and trousers are cleaned and hung in their bags.

It's time for darker colors.

Somewhat About Trousermaking

A reader suggested that I might enjoy a new book and multimedia sewing workshop titled Making Trousers for Men & Women, by David Page Coffin. And I am so far, though not in a way anyone might have predicted. For the book was open on my desk when Salvatore Ambrosi and I worked out how to get some trousers made.

Mr. Ambrosi you see is the junior member of the Ambrosi trouser-makers of Naples, Italy. Ambrosi trousers are beautifully detailed, and I have thought about wearing a pair. Alas, the obstacles were daunting: I do not travel to Naples; the Ambrosis do not visit San Francisco; the principal payment option apparently consists of sending currency by FedEx; I wear a different style of trouser than the Ambrosi house style; and communicating promised to be difficult given the lack of a common language. That had been quite enough to leave me completely happy with my current trousermaker.

Fortunately, there is Facebook. I have a page, Salvatore has a page, and over the months we have found that we are actually able to communicate. So a pair of my trousers will soon be winging its way to the Ambrosi atelier, where they will be measured and then re-imagined a la Ambrosi in some of Dormeuil's cream colored worsted flannel.

While that important work is going on, gentlemen interested in the technical details of how trousers are and should be made are likely to enjoy the book. There will be a test when the flannels arrive.

Photo: David Page Coffin

Trying Too Hard

Probably the greatest couturier of all time, in the photo the late Yves St. Laurent shows the rest of us how not to dress. His clothes are too perfect, too coordinated, and trying too obviously hard.

It cannot be said too many times that the essence of a man's dress is that it should not look as though he spent time thinking about it. Every ensemble needs a note of discord, or a sloppiness of some kind, and on this day at least St. Laurent lacked that bit of grace. His shirt picks up gray in the jacket and in the trousers and his tie and square pick up the maroon of the jacket. Indeed, tie and square may actually match each other, though we can hope that the photograph is simply not picking up the differences. In the end one is led to suspect that he is wearing maroon shoes.

Change a couple of items to related but different colors and textures, perhaps a black knit necktie and a dark silk paisley square, and the man would look a lot less posed and a lot better dressed. His shoes should be tan, or something equally uncoordinated.

It takes time to look as though a man spent no time on his clothes.

Socks with Clocks

The global decline of small things that are time consuming to produce has meant the near disappearance of many a small pleasure of years past, and socks with embroidered clocks are not the least of these.

The rarity of socks with embroidered decoration makes little sense to me, as the designs I have seen appear machine-stitched and unlikely to add a significant amount of cost, especially when compared to the stratospheric prices commanded by Sea Island cotton, silk and cashmere blended hose in the first place.

Sadly, I never thought to check the maker on the pair or two remaining in my sock drawer and, rather like the practice of embroidery, the names are no longer visible.

The Twelve Fold Ties of Napoli

There are at least two great necktie providers in Naples. One of them of course is Marinella, the tiny store with the mythic reputation. The other, less well known but perhaps better value, is E & G Cappelli of Via Cavallerizza a Chiaia.

More than one friend with whom I've discussed the ASW web store (yes, the same one that never seems to open even as the goods pile up in the stockroom) has suggested that a selection of Sr. Cappelli's printed silk, cashmere and wool neckties might be a worth while complement to Michael Drake's three folds and the lined six fold woven silks that continue to arrive from another UK tiemaker. And so began the dance, which has progressed to swatches and samples.

Cappelli is a smaller operation than the other two makers, but no slouch when it comes to quality. The ties he dispatched are beautifully made, and they drape perfectly. Thanks presumeably to my inadequate command of the Italian language, instead of the requested six folds the samples appear to have twelve (six on each side and most of them are visible in the photo), which means each tie contains an enormous amount of silk.

It would be nice if the extra folds were some form of blessed event, but they do increase the price of a tie considerably. My closet now contains two twelve fold neckties, and they are likely to remain the only examples of that construction.

In Praise of Flannel

It is, to my mind, only a slight exaggeration to say that the best thing about the onset of cool weather is that it lets us wear flannel once again. My favorite suits are of the stuff. It is soft and warm-wearing, because its nap traps pockets of air against the skin.

The classic flannel is the gray chalk stripe like the one on the man in the Esquire illustration. The weave gives it a somewhat casual air, making it not quite formal enough for serious business. And that is of course also a good thing, for few men should look serious every day.

Two lengths of flannel sit on the ledge behind my desk, waiting to be turned into wearable art. One is the years in the making Eden in Paris from the London Lounge Cloth Club, a subtle blue and white check on gray in a 15/450 gram ounce weight. The other is a lovely 13 ounce/400 gram glen check, also in gray. Each will become a single breasted, to be worn with a white cashmere waistcoat.

I do love flannel.

Book Review: History of Men's Fashion

Nicholas Storey's History of Men's Fashion: What the Well Dressed Man is Wearing is now available in the United States (though at a considerably higher price than Amazon UK is currently asking for it). Well researched, it's a slim, idiosyncratic but, in the end, very worth while work that displays what I imagine to be Storey's biases as a former British barrister. For example, he devotes considerably more pages to formal and semi-formal dress than he does to general day wear, by which he means the suit that, in America at least, has generally replaced morning dress and evening clothes as the most formal dress in the relatively few closets that contain them. Suits, that is.

And so, for all its importance near the top of the contemporary dress pyramid, I do not think that the pages on the lounge suit do it justice. On the other hand, I enjoyed Storey's discussion of leisure, casual and sporting dress, despite some surprising assertions. For example, and for no stated reason, he warns against gray flannel trousers with blazers, and states that the tan cavalry twill trousers that, in combination with the blazer, constitute the English uniform are equally inappropriate.

Throughout the book, Storey does a thorough job of mentioning contemporary sources for each item of clothing as he discusses it, though his world view means that the sources for the items he mentions are, with few exceptions, located in London. That attention to detail extends to coverage of some remarkable items, like the Sola topee, or pith helmet, and a wonderful extract from a 1914 lecture by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch titled 'On Style.'

The section on Necessary Accessories is typical. In one long paragraph Mr. Storey provides very useful advice on miscellaneous jewelry (after beginning by stating that he will not), not only on cufflinks but also pins for formal day wear and collar studs for shirts with detachable collars.

Eccentric, perhaps, by contemporary standards but to my knowledge there has been nothing like History of Men's Fashion published in the past fifty years.

Bits of Flusser Lying About

No visit to Manhattan is complete without a stop at the Alan Flusser Custom Shop in midtown. Though I was there to inquire about a banana colored Mackintosh for the coming rainy season, I was struck by several small displays lying about the store, each with elements both classic and unexpected. Consider, for example, the silver and purple checked necktie in the photo.


Admire the knotted wool neckerchief on the tailor's form.


And take a second look at the paisley sports shirt, in a print that looks surprisingly appropriate under an odd jacket.

Linen Knits for Cool Evenings

Just as cashmere is best in the cold, linen makes the most useful knitwear for the moderate temperatures of spring and early fall. Just porous enough to breathe when it is knitted properly, linen is another of those handy fabrics that wear cool when it is warm and warm when the temperature cools.


Like cashmere though without much of the expense, linen can be dyed a variety of colors. The ones that suit it best are natural tones, particularly greyed blues, soft, moss-like browns and greens and, well, natural. Wear it in crew neck form or as a to-button cardigan that works as a jacket but, please, for humanity's sake, eschew zippers and remember that vee necks are meant to be worn with neckties.

The examples in the photos are from Ireland's Inis Meáin Knitting Company.

A Gentleman and Two Icons

I visited two clothing icons and a well-dressed gentleman at Turnbull & Asser in New York the other day, one of the icons being the T&A smoking jacket that is, in my opinion, the best version of its kind. In green velvet it is the model I would choose for myself should I ever feel extravagant enough to want another (smoking jackets and the term need are rarely associated with each other).


The other icon was this made to measure robe in yellow silk, one of the great clothing related luxuries to which a man can aspire. Once the specialty of the late and lamented Sulka, a properly detailed silk robe is hard to find except at either T&A or Charvet in Paris.


The well dressed gentleman is of course Robert Gillotte, senior bespoke manager at T&A and the man to see to chat about clothes while purchasing a robe or a smoking jacket on 57th Street.

Still the Season for White

Summer may be over but the season for white trousers has not ended. Wear them at least until the leaves fall. And if you are fortunate enough to have a pair of white flannels that will keep you warm when the temperature is near freezing, wear them on sunny days all winter. I think brown shoes a touch smarter than black in this context however.

Wearing One Pattern

Limiting the day's clothing to one pattern can be a bit boring, but in the photo a young James Stewart manages quite successfully despite his empty jacket pocket.

Keeping things interesting are his yellow sweater, which has a textured weave to complement its color, and a navy necktie that contrasts with the pale blue shirt.

One pattern need not be dull.

Off to New York

No time to take the train but it is off to New York today for meetings and a few days of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

And, as the otherwise dapper gentleman in the Esquire illustration is realizing as he sees the date on his wristwatch, yesterday was the end of straw hat season. It is all felt hats all the time from now until mid-May in the northern hemisphere, for those of us who pay attention to that type of thing.

Securing the Necktie

As the waistcoat disappeared and three button and double breasted jackets were replaced by the two button style, men began to notice that the lower button point on the new coats left their neckties more inclined to swing in the air. Enter the tie bar, that particularly American bit of metal intended to affix the necktie firmly in place (there are also the tie tack and sundry other devices but they all tend to have serious flaws that render them unworthy of consideration).

Now I will admit to having threaded a gold safety pin through a knit tie once upon a time, but generally I think the tie bar too flashy. In this I am not alone, as several hundred million European men seem to be of the same opinion. I do not however place wearing a tie bar into the category of venal dress sins either. That is, so long as the bar is a reasonably plain length of gold worn at a rakish slant. No matter how justifiably proud a man may be of having been a guest at the White House, the Presidential seal is too ornate in my opinion. There are many better ways to display one's patriotism.

Men who absolutely cannot stand to have their neckties moving around do have an alternative to jewelry for securing the necktie and that is to knot the thing so that the rear blade is longer than the front, with said rear tucked into one's trousers. For that matter, there are those who insert the entire bottom of the tie inside the waistband, but I do not recommend the practice as the tie usually works itself into some undesireable attitude and is then held firmly in place.

For myself, I think the the Italians have the right idea in this regard. Most of the ones of my acquaintance just let the necktie swing. And so do I.

The 4x1 DB

The 4x1 double breasted jacket (a DB with a four button front, only one of which is working) that is frequently seen in photos of the late Duke of Windsor was actually popularized during the 1930's by the man in the photo: Windsor's late brother, the Duke of Kent.

When made properly, the 4x1's two lower buttons are in line with the tops of the side pockets and the two upper, non-working, buttons are keystoned out above them. The spacing between the upper and lower buttons is quite a bit closer than it is on a more conventional 6x2 double breasted.

The 4x1 DB is a great look on men of average stature or less as the longer sweep of the lapel relative to the jacket gives the impression of height. Despite this, the style is usually only available from bespoke tailors today, and even here a man needs to be careful and precise when he is placing the order. I attempted to order two of them within the past year, from two different tailors. I got one jacket that was a 6x2 minus the top buttons and another that was a conventional 6x2. I still do not own a 4x1.

But I intend to continue trying.

A Black Tie Night

It was opening night at the San Francisco Symphony a few days ago, an occasion calling for evening clothes. I wore the heavier of my jackets - a DB of H. Lesser's 12 ounce/360 gram midnight blue barathea that is blacker than black even in daylight. On close examination there is just the faintest hint of blue, and personally I prefer a faint hint to cloth that is too obviously blue in natural light early in the evening.

If a man has two dinner jackets, it just makes sense that one should be single breasted and vested and the other a DB. The DB is the less formal of the two and can be worn correctly without a vest or cummerbund. The weight of the heavier jacket is too much for cavorting on a dance floor but just right for walking a couple of blocks outdoors on a cool evening.

The original dinner jacket was of course single breasted and worn with a vest. A man's other jacket should probably be made from lighter cloth, such as a 10 ounce/300 gram mohair and wool combination, for over-heated rooms. On warmer days, a cummerbund can replace the waistcoat.

A choice of evening clothes should also mean a choice of evening shoes. Black patent oxfords are the more useful alternative as there is less chance of losing one on the dance floor, and they look especially nice with wide silk grosgrain laces. Less secure on the feet but better looking overall are highly polished opera pumps of black calf, though the bows on these do require a certain amount of self-confidence.

Since there would be no dancing at the after party, out came the pumps. For the rest, maroon silk hose, a silk pocket hank, pleated shirt with turndown collar and a sized Charvet bow made from silk grosgrain that is a bit shinier than my lapels.

Tweed Time Part II

When the occasion is too casual for an odd jacket, but does require lugging around assorted paraphenalia, a shirt jacket can be just right. Mytailor.com made the unlined version in the photo from a 14 ounce/400 gram Scabal tweed that is no longer available.

I go back and forth on the buttons for this style. Some of my shirt jackets have shirt sized buttons on the front and some have the larger style that close odd jackets. I believe I am coming round to the view that I prefer the larger ones as there are fewer of them to button and unbutton.

Shirt jackets of course are worn much like odd jackets in that only the center buttons are closed normally. That shows some shirt and a bit of silk at the neck, and makes for a more graceful line in my opinion.

In tweed, flannel, cotton or linen they are perfect for walking the dog amd sundry similar tasks.

Best Sweater of the Year?

Busy fiddling with the the sweater that is named after him instead of attending to his cavalry brigade during the Crimean War, James Brudenell, the 7th Earl of Cardigan, might have saved his reputation had he simply waited 150 years for Michael Drake to perfect it. The sweater, that is, rather than Brudenell's reputation.

Not a waistcoat but a jacket replacement that is tightly knitted from four ply cashmere, the leather buttoned sweater is entirely too warm for California but just the thing for Crimean winters and the like. It is available in navy, gray and natural from stock, and ivory, chocolate, loden or black by special order. £650, or roughly $1,000 ex VAT.

I raved over this piece when I saw it in Drake's studio earlier this year, and it deserves the praise. Without exaggeration, it may be the best sweater of the year.

Tweed Time

September means it is time for tweed. The lightweight variety of tweed, that is.

Now, there are cloths that look like tweed and are lighter than the 14 ounces/420 grams cloth that is the lower boundary of the real thing, but all incorporate some form of compromise. For example, the excellent 12 ounce/360 gram Porter & Harding Glorious Twelfth patterns are worsteds posing as tweed. That does not make them somehow inferior, but they are not tweed.

Another approach to lighter tweed is to use a 2x1 weave instead of 2x2, with or without a worsted yarn in combination with the woolens. That makes for lighter weight but also greater delicacy. Still, it has its place, so long as there are no expectations that a jacket from the stuff will be passed down to future generations.

In the photograph, a 10.5 ounce/310 gram herringbone combines with a (not so) hidden buttondown chambray shirt and the first wool tartan necktie of the season.

The End of Summer

It is Labor Day in America today and that is generally considered the end of summer, even in Northern California where our two months of sunshine are only beginning.

Today's clothing choices are simple, and aptly demonstrated by the man on tee in the Apparel Arts illustration. Just wear loud trousers.

Prudence for the Imprudent

Cashmere is stratospherically priced in most tailored clothing these days unless it is mixed with less expensive fibers, but there remains one relatively affordable application for it and that is the odd waistcoat. Done, for example, in cream and preferably double breasted like the version on the spat wearing fellow in the illustration, the odd cashmere waistcoat adds depth to a variety of fall ensembles. Wear it under a jacket that has some white in the weave, such as a glen check or a chalk stripe, to blend it in.

Now the odd cashmere waistcoat is only more affordable because it requires significantly less of the precious stuff than do jackets or trousers, and that may be why Beau Brummel himself chose it for his. Just half a meter will suffice for most men as the back of a waistcoat is usually made from Bemberg or other lining material.

That puts the odd cashmere waistcoat in the prudent expenditure category for the imprudent among us.

Book Review: Sharp Suits

2009 looks to be a banner year for books on or relevant to classic men's clothing, with four or five titles in print and on the way. The newest of them falls into the relevant to category: Sharp Suits, by Eric Musgrave.

Musgrave, a UK writer about men's fashion for more than 25 years, has assembled an impressive collection of more than a hundred mostly new-to-me photographs, many of them from the Woolmark Company (formerly The International Wool Secretariat) Archive. The photos occupy more than half the pages and are the principal reason to own the book, in my opinion. I wish only that there could have been fewer examples of "look at me" stage costumes and runway fashion and more illustrations of elegant dress.

That said, several of the shots, including one of a seated photo of Calvin Klein wearing a bespoke gray flannel chalk stripe DB with a maroon necktie and another of HRH Prince Charles in beautifully accessorized morning dress, are worth the price of admission.

Mediterranean Style

I believe I first saw the pictured Francois Pinton sunglasses on Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, or perhaps it was one of his other films shot in France. On the other hand, I may be thinking of a photograph of Aristotle Onassis. But whereever I first saw them, in my opinion they are the best looking sunglasses on earth.

Worn with a linen suit in a shade of blue that may be perfect for any place on the Mediterranean coast where men wear suits, a shirt from mytailor.com and a magenta spots on dark navy necktie from Drake's.

An Experiment With Limes

During my most recent visit to On the Fly in San Francisco I happened to notice the display of Truefitt & Hill products. T&H is an English company offering several lines of grooming items as well as barbershop services in London, Chicago, Las Vegas and Toronto (an unexpected collection of locations, that).

By coincidence, a couple weeks later Todd Fisher, the head of T&H North America emailed. I had been thinking about evaluating a citrus scent and thanks to Todd a box arrived containing The Trufitt & Hill West Indian Limes line of cologne, after shave, shampoo, shave cream and soap.

This was opportune. Trumper's Extract of Lime had long been a favorite of mine because of the wondrous way it bursts on the nose, but I have not worn it for years as it fades within a couple of minutes and leaves nothing at all on my skin. I was curious to try the T&H take on limes to see if that company has figured out how to keep its citrus hanging around longer, particularly when applied in depth using multiple products.

After an evaluation that included being the object of sniff tests by more than one female house guest, the consensus opinion is that the answer is yes and no. West Indian Limes definitely lasts three to four hours, though the scent that lasts is not the citrus but rather a floral base that takes over after the lime dissipates roughly ten minutes after application.

Not limes but a lovely and masculine smell nonetheless that is a worthy choice for warm weather wear.

Consider the Black Necktie

One line in a 1967 book, A Dandy in Aspic, stayed with me for decades. The principal character, the aforementioned dandy, noted that he only wore black neckties.

Impressionable in my youth, I emulated that practice for twenty years before broadening my choices. Of course, my decision was reinforced by the observation that many elegant men wore only black ties. But that was before clothing retailers chose to offer wardrobe variety by substituting relatively inexpensive inventories of colored neckties for relatively expensive stocks of patterned dress shirts.

The effect of this emphasis on color was that many men never developed the understanding that light reflection and texture are more important roles for the necktie than color alone. The tie should always contrast with the wool of the jacket, and either texture or reflection provides more contrast than color by itself. In the context of the black necktie, grenadines and silk knits perform the first task and satin solids or herringbones the second.

Reinforcing the choice of the black necktie was the ubiquitous and highly complementary gleam of black leather on a man's feet, but that no longer applies. Since brown shoes have equalled or surpassed black during the day for many men, the black necktie has become just another choice in the wardrobe rather than the principal or only choice. But it continues to shine, literally as well as figuratively, with gray suits like the one on the man to the right in the Esquire illustration.

Consider the black necktie.

Be Bold

The gingham necktie does not receive its fair share of respect in my opinion. Indeed, it is a rarely seen pattern these days and that is surely something to be remedied, for a silver, gray and ivory gingham combines beautifully with navy suits.

Now here it must be qualified that the pattern must be a certain size. Eschew the small, discreet check in favor of a bolder version, emulating in this respect the man emerging from the motor car in the photo. For in a smaller scale gingham might be confused with a wedding tie check, and that is not the idea.

Be bold.