Slippers Should Be Worn More Than They Are

Slippers should be worn more than they are currently. They are after all surprisingly versatile if you think about it, unless that is they are the kind that look as though they were hacked from the hide of the woolly mammoth. Those aside, slippers can be worn almost anywhere.

Now I have written in the past about velvet slippers but the choice is hardly limited to those. Indeed, my own preference is for the canvas versions with a finish that looks like suede. Lightweight and more comfortable than their velvet relations, they accompany me on airplanes, entertain guests at home, and, sockless, serve as warm weather drivers. This in addition to their regular duties which routinely find them helping take out the trash and insulating my feet from the cold floors of the laundry (life has not been all champagne and cigars at the ASW manse since She Who Rules determined that if my pajamas truly must be cold water washed on the delicate cycle then the housekeeper would no longer be responsible for laundering them; a change that did at least mean that they are no longer regularly shrunken two sizes).

There is of course some controversy about color. Just as a few traditionalists insist upon black oxfords for town shoes, some men will have nothing but black slippers. Personally, I find brown works better with navy blue pajamas in the morning. I will wear black at night of course, though dark green are visually more interesting and a better complement to gray. And then there is the leopard printed pair, which are particularly nice with linen trousers though I will admit that they sometimes attract puzzled glances at the grocery store (your mileage may vary, depending on the habitués of the grocery in your neighborhood).

Slippers should be worn more than they are, really.

An Easy Overnight

Travelling overnight by car? The duffel (the name comes from a town in Belgium where the thick cloth that made up the original exteriors was woven) bag makes for an easy overnight. Capacious, casual and easy to carry, a single duffel holds toiletries, clean underwear, pajamas, a change of shirt, the obligatory sweater, that unfinished book and just about anything else a man can convince himself he needs for a quick trip (the thoroughly thought through version in the photo is by Ettinger).

In our case we were headed South to Atascadero, a town in central California that is roughly equidistant from San Francisco and Los Angeles, to pick up a Manx kitten. Marriage does things like that to a man. With temperatures in the 40s (perhaps 7 degrees C), it was hardly top open weather but a duffel's flexibility is even more useful when a man is cramming luggage into a small boot. The trip is about three hours in either direction, law enforcement willing, and could be done in a single day if it were not such a literal pain in assorted body parts.

For myself, an overnight trip that includes a resort restaurant dinner and then a return drive to San Francisco the next morning means a blazer, odd waistcoat, very light gray flannel trousers that cause me to direct negative thoughts at Ambrosi when I put them on, and a pair of crepe soled bluchers that are all worn two days in a row along with a change of shirt, necktie and pocket square.  Easy work for a duffel, and that is the point.

My Favorite Socks

My favorite dress socks are on the ASW store this week, cotton over the calf hose with a vertical rib that hides a discreetly contrasting color so it appears and disappears as the stock stretches and contracts.  I am offering them initially in blue with dark green, charcoal with gray, navy with brown and beige with light blue. Try the latter with a tan suit and a light blue shirt.

My favorite socks are joined by three other new over the calf designs for warmer weather. Two are all cotton and the other is a blend of 75% cotton with 25% silk that makes it a little more formal.  Like my wool hose, these are not the usual one size fits some but actual half sizes from 10 ½ to 12 for feet that wear shoe sizes 8-12 ½ (41-46). Do yourself a favor and invest in socks that actually fit.

I hope to see you on the store.

Add Personality to Your Clothes

To paraphrase something I wrote earlier this week in another context, a man in a charcoal suit, white shirt and navy necktie may be dressed impeccably but still be lacking in style unless he adds some of his personality to what he is wearing. In the photo, for example, Luca Montezemolo wears a necktie with the dancing horse of Ferrari to an auto racing event. And though he is otherwise turned out in perfect taste, that emblem adds personality to his dress.

Now there are not all that many opportunities to add personality to classic dress while still remaining tasteful, but with imagination they will suffice. The necktie is probably the riskiest of these, for some will think a tie embroidered with yachting flags declaring one's initials a little over the top (though I enjoy wearing mine). At the other extreme, a penchant for unusual cufflinks is undoubtedly so discreet as to remain virtually unnoticed. Wild socks fall somewhere in the middle, glimpsed as they are only periodically and having plenty of precedent.

Consistently wearing the less often seen can also make a statement. A boutonniere worn daily will over time be memorable. So may the silk pocket square these days when most jacket pockets are empty, or at best filled with white linen. And though I am reluctant to mention it and do not endorse it, so can the consistently unbuttoned jacket cuff button.

Whatever you choose, do add personality to your clothes. But do also limit yourself to one expression at a time, no matter how large a personality you may believe you have.

PSA: Scarves on Sale at Drakes London

Drakes London scarves from Autumn/Winter 2010 are on sale starting today. The designs in the photos are some of the Shetland finished cashmeres that are £105.00 (about $168), reduced from their original £155.00 (about $248).

There are 17 styles in the sale, including wool reversing to silk, lambswool, merino and other cashmere weaves.

Photos: Drakes London

Keep Things Varied

Repetition of color in an ensemble is reliable but easy to overdo. Try to limit yourself to one repeated color, such as a white breast pocket handkerchief that complements the white ground of a shirt, so as not to look overly studied. 

Keep things varied.

Photo: DETTAGLIO FOTO

Sources: Ettinger

I think of French leathergoods as a pink alligator belt, so refined, to paraphrase early Flusser, that it is suitable for little more than shopping. British stuff, on the other hand, is bridle leather: sturdy, hard wearing and every bit as attractive.

London's Ettinger is one of those bridle leather firms. I recently acquired another of their products, the card case in the photos, as a gift for my wife. Like the tote and the duffel bag that are already in my closet, the case is thoughtfully designed, very well made, and reasonably priced as these things go (£94 on the site plus a remarkably low £14 for fast shipping to the U.S. by FedEx came through as a $173 charge to my credit card).

On the Internet of course, the service is often the factor that determines whether an experience is a happy one. I still recall purchasing some scent from a well-known house and having to call them a week later to ask them to check their ecommerce site where my order was languishing. Ettinger, on the other hand, is close to perfect.

Recommended.

Vive la Différence

Feminine Fashions columnist Kennedy Fraser wrote in the New Yorker forty years ago that a perfectly plain white silk shirt and perfectly plain black cashmere pants are not style. They are good taste plus timidity or fear. For feminine style requires boundary pushing.

Perhaps the modern exemplar of feminine style is Daphne Guinness, the woman in the photo. If I were ever to assemble a best dressed list, she would be on it, for her clothing combines a restrained palette with smashing-the-envelope textures and shapes. And what a challenge that must be for her escort.

You see, I was thinking about Ms. Guinness and those of her ilk in relation to how a man should dress to accompany a stylish woman. After all, pedal to the metal extravagance is rarely effective for any pair - look at photos of Mick and Bianca Jagger when both were young and dressing to impress. All that complexity is dizzying. There is a reason that the peahen is dull next to the peacock, for both look better when only one shines.

When the observer's eyes finally leave the dazzle of the female of a pair and turn to her companion, they are best rewarded with quiet familiarity. This was the reason for the long running success of first the tailcoat and then the dinner jacket, where a man could distinguish himself by the cut of his clothing or the quality of his dress set but little else (and it was also the reason for rejection of the dinner jacket's uniformity by publicity seeking males of all persuasions).

Now this is not an argument for drabness. A man's clothing should be the best he can afford, well cut and interesting in its own right.  But it should not be remarkable relative to that of a stylish woman.

Vive la différence!

Socks With A Story

Most of the makers I write about about are craftsmen, many second and third generation, who acquired their skill over the years.

One interesting exception to that pattern is a new company with a nice story. Mes Chaussettes Rouges (My Red Socks) is a Parisian provider of socks that the founders, Jacques Tiberghien and Vincent Metzger, are almost certainly unable to make themselves. Instead, they talked their way into becoming the agents for the socks worn by the Roman Catholic hierarchy and have grown from there.

A. Gammarelli, a small Roman firm, provides vestments to the Pope, cardinals and bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, including socks in cardinal red, bishop purple and deep black. Gamarelli provides Mes Chaussettes Rouges with nicely made cotton lisle over the calf hose in those same colors (apparently aware of my propensity towards colored socks, they sent me the red and the purple).

Not content with three colors, the co-founders have since developed a range of Egyptian cotton socks that began with the olive green worn by members of France's Academie Francaise as trim on their coats and has expanded to encompass most of the rainbow.

I am not certain how much inventory the company holds as they state that orders may take 15 days to be dispatched but the socks arrive nicely packaged for about $27 a pair plus shipping. And they make a great story.

Illustration: Mes Chaussettes Rouges

Spring Knits, Part 1

New on the store this week are several spring knits from Inis Meáin, and Smoking, a politically incorrect name for a beautifully woven new handkerchief from Simonnot-Godard.

Inis Meáin Knitting Company produces modern, luxury fibre versions of classic designs from the Aran knitwear repertoire. For this season, I am featuring their brown and navy blue mélange linen crewneck, a long sleeved linen polo overshirt in navy blue or camel, and a spectacular linen mélange vee-necked vest in two colorways. These are perfect pieces for temperatures between 50 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit (10-27 degrees C).

The polos are really sweaters rather than shirts and look their best layered with cotton polos underneath. The latter, when they arrive, will be part 2 of ASW's Spring Knits offering.

And then there is Smoking. It is only a cotton handkerchief, but frankly cotton handkerchiefs are rarely if ever this good.

I hope to see you on the store.

Not Dull Enough

I wear turnback shirt cuffs in the city every day I am there and have been looking off and on for several years for an acceptable-to-me pair of dark red cufflinks. Enamel on gold would be perfect and of course I have yet to see a pair. I did come across the pictured pair of Trianon links a while back but have been unable to pull the trigger, so to speak. The darned things just look too much like gemstones.

Now a gentleman can wear whatever cufflinks and shirt studs he likes for evening. Diamonds, rubies, emeralds and their ilk are fine and dandy, to the limit of his pocketbook and even a little beyond. But, during the day, the flashy stuff is just too, well, flashy. Dull stones are to be preferred. Or plain gold, like the classic Tiffany knots that we should all have purchased when gold was $35 an ounce. But gold is obviously not dark red.

At any rate, I keep coming back to these garnet links that have been sitting on a jeweler's shelf for some time now. But I will let them continue to sit there. They are just not dull enough somehow.

When to Wear?

The usual colors for shoes in the West are black and brown, with dark red finding an occasional place. Though no generalization is ever entirely accurate, the French have been known to add navy blue and dark green to that list, as has the author of Red Flying Pig, a low volume of publication Chinese language weblog. In the photos, the author's John Lobb (Paris) Woodcote oxfords in dark blue.

Blue of course is an interesting choice of color because at night it will look like black under artificial light, and evening is a time when these shoes would be at their best. Other than the color, they are nearly as formal as shoes can get. That makes me think of pairing them with suits, but personally I would be more comfortable wearing them with cotton or linen during the day, and that in turn makes me wonder if the color might not be more useful in a more casual design. Monkstraps perhaps.

Beautiful things nonetheless.

Photos: Red Flying Pig

Wear Your Monks Like Bluchers

Most men have heard the admonition that open laced shoes are not for wear with suits. There are exceptions of course, but the reduced formality of the open lacing is good reason to reserve it for tweed and flannel and preferably odd jackets rather than suits.

The same guideline is a good one for monkstraps, which, as the photo illustrates, are usually open laced shoes with a strap and buckle replacing the lacing (the double strap version in the photo and some other monks are more generally comparable to oxfords and there we enter no man's land as they do not seem to me to be any more formal than their brethren).

So wear your monks like bluchers, with sports suits, blazers and odd jackets.

Photo: Edward Green

An Elegant Jacket

Among the most most elegant articles of clothing for men is a well executed smoking jacket, which is why I am unable to resist re-posting the photo of Girolamo Stabile from Rubinacci Club's photos taken at a party they threw for the London launch of the self-published book about themselves (and if that is not self-referential what is?). Like most elegant things, the challenge with the smoking is finding an appropriate place to wear it, which is probably why Mr. Stabile wore his in what is usually considered an inappropriate venue (English custom reserves smoking jackets for wear at home or at one's club).

The two principal components of the best smoking jackets are silk velvet rather than the cotton stuff that is usually substituted, and the jacket frogs, so named because those things that replace the button on the front of his jacket look vaguely like the amphibians. London's Henry Poole had been the only firm I knew with a supply of silk velvet, which they stock principally for making ceremonial court dress, but apparently Rubinacci also has some since the photo caption, which admittedly I might have misinterpreted, appears to state that they made all the black tie garments pictured.

There were a number of years when I attended a rather dull New Year's celebration at my club simply for an excuse to wear the green velvet smoking jacket that may be the greatest extravagance in my closet in terms of cost per wearing. I would not wear mine at a book launch party, black tie or not, but I will admit that the thought is tempting. For, like Mr. Stabile's, it is an elegant thing.

Definitely Not Run of the Mill

There are nine brand new end-of-winter and start-of-spring necktie designs on the ASW store currently, two from Drake’s London and seven from E&G Cappelli, and they are definitely not run of the mill. There are a hard to find blue and white silk knit, a couple of paisley madders with electrifying colors to complement patterned odd jackets, another wool challis and three cashmeres made with ¾ linings and hand rolled edges at the tips. All but the knit are offered in two lengths to properly fit most men.

Browsers will also find a selection of my first printed silk pocket squares from Cappelli as well as a lightweight Luciano Barbera cashmere and silk crewneck pullover with an outstanding hand for warmer weather (assuming some remain available by the time warmer weather appears). There is also the first of four planned made to measure sock offerings for men for whom ready to wear over the calf sizing is inadequate.

I hope to see you on the store.

 

Are You Ready for Summer?

The colors of the season change as warm weather begins to replace cold next month. Charcoal and navy will turn to khaki and white as the gentleman's burgundy, bottle green and gold accents are replaced by the palette of the garden.

Summer means light gray suits for business sometimes worn with white shoes. Mustard linen versions take their place on casual occasions, complemented by summer scarves. And there are cream gabardine jackets for evenings, with gardenias in their buttonholes.

Are you ready for summer?  I am.

Photo: Mac Wallpapers

Where Great Clothing Comes From

In one of the better things I have seen from that organization in recent years, Esquire commissioned an eight part series of short videos on English clothing manufacture, featuring the ubiquitous Patrick Grant of Norton's as the principal narrator. Over an eight day period the crew drove two thousand miles to film seventeen British institutions, including William Lockie, John Lobb, Fox Brothers and Drake's London.

Highly recommended, but for the advertisement at the beginning. The remainder of the series is here.

Dressing to Match Your Date is a No-No

It is 6AM. I do not have a post written. Protests continue in Egypt. England is telling me that the neckties they have sent me are the wrong size and, according to my calendar, the highlight of the current waking cycle will be meeting some fellow Style Forum habitués for cocktails later. I find myself considering just starting with the cocktails and forgetting the rest of it.

Being the kind of day that it already is, I thought we might as well share this photo of one of the visiting dignitaries at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Berlin wearing what appears to be a dark red dinner suit with belted trousers that, presumeably not coincidentally, matches the palette of the the woman by his side. I am not certain whether the trousers are the largest sin in this context though they are definitely in the running but if ever a photo has demonstrated the folly of attempting to dress to coordinate with the clothing of your date this one does.

Dressing to match your date is a no-no. 'Nuff said. Where are we meeting today anyway?

Photo: Brauer Photos fuer Mercedes-Benz

A Tactile Delight

Clothing designer Alan Flusser referred to cashmere neckties as "tactile delights" sometime in the latter part of the last century and his turn of phrase has remained with me ever since. Cashmere ties complement worsted suits on all but the most formal cool weather occasions, and their light absorbing properties counterbalance the sheen of a silk pocket square. I find myself reaching for them whenever I am headed to my suburban office, and not infrequently for trips into the city.

The Cappelli cashmere in the photo is a black and dark brown glen check with a muted purple overcheck. The 3/4 lined three fold construction has hand-rolled edges at the tip. It is worn with a vintage Holland & Holland pocket square, a royal oxford shirt and my gray herringbone worsted (I doubt that I would wear the tie with navy blue but it should look good with brown jackets as well as gray). Below the waist are dark brown Edward Green brogues and dark gray wool socks with pin stripes.

What is Flannel?

Regular readers know that I consider flannel, a woolen cloth with a soft, felt-like surface, the best type of cloth for cool weather tailored clothing (like the suit worn by the man in the photograph). But for all those complimentary words, I have never actually defined the stuff, probably because I do not have words that do it justice.

Flannel you see is woven from yarn that is spun from wool fibres of varying lengths, which are mixed together so that they lie across each other in all directions. A fibrous, compact, but rather uneven thread is produced that bonds together when milled, making a comfortable-to-wear cloth with an uneven surface. That surface traps air against the skin where it is warmed by the body and in turn helps keep the body warm. It also tends to absorb light instead of reflecting it, so after dyeing its colors are soft and rich.

Medium English wools are used for ordinary flannel, and merino for the best quality stuff, known as Saxony after the area where it was first produced. Either may be mixed with 5-10% cashmere to make it softer still, though in my experience the cashmere mixes are less desirable for trousers as they have a harder time holding a crease.

Flannel is woven into solid colors of course, with mid-gray being the most familiar. Stripes of the wider sort like the ones in the photo, known as chalk stripes, are classic, as are glen checks in grays or browns.

The combination of the process and the mixed wools used to produce flannel mean that it cannot be produced in weights lighter than 12 ounces, or about 360 grams. The lighter cloth that goes by the same name is actually a worsted that neither looks nor wears exactly like the woolen versions but has its place in warmer weather.

And that is flannel.

Suits and Socks, Installment XXI

One of my current projects is to add heavy odd trousers to my wardrobe so that I am consistently able to wear trousers that are heavier in weight than the odd jacket chosen for that occasion. A man can wear heavier cloth on his legs than he can his upper body without over-heating and the heavier stuff of course drapes better which is the objective.

On the day of the photo, I was test driving a pair of light gray 17 ounce/500 gram flannels made by Salvatore Ambrosi. They are paired with light gray Bresciani socks with navy pin stripes and a pair of SW1 monks in dark brown textured calf. Above the waist, a blue serge odd jacket worn with a light gray on white striped shirt, navy cashmere necktie striped with white and a white linen handkerchief with a lilac border.

For More of Winter

February means more of winter in much of the Northern Hemisphere and for a few men who may be tiring of their over-used cold weather accessories I am happy to introduce to the ASW store six (only six!) hand sewn one-of-a-kind scarves, from E&G Cappelli of Naples. These are exceptional 64”/162cm long pieces with a pin fringe. Four are madder silk and the other two are wool challis.

Mr. Cappelli’s scarves are complemented by a new assortment of 16”/42cm square silk pocket squares with hand-rolled edges as well as the season’s final shipment of cashmere, challis and madder necktie stock (the latter will be on the site next week).

In addition to scarves, squares and neckties we are newly re-supplied with suede cleaners, oxhorn shoe horns and combs, and have added a new clothing brush with natural bristles and a beautifully polished horn back.

I hope to see you at the store.

Use Thumb and Forefinger

MyTailor was in San Francisco earlier this week and browsing the cloth books to recommend a gabardine and a flannel for a colleague's trousers reminded me that a reader wrote in recently to ask how he might go about learning about cloth. I replied that the best way was to see his tailor often and browse the books, for talking to tailors and feeling cloth with thumb and forefinger are the best ways to learn.

It has always been a little puzzling to me that there does not seem to be a comprehensive non-technical book about cloth for men's clothing. The out of print The Elegant Man: How to Construct the Ideal Wardrobe, by Ricardo Villarosa & Giuliano Angeli (Random House, 1992) devotes as much as a third of its pages to the subject but it is increasingly rare and expensive ($250 for a copy the last I looked). Online, The London Lounge is probably the best English language resource, but it is a forum so the information there is not organized for fast access. Still, there is a lot of material and it definitely rewards browsing.

The purpose of that reading about cloth is to learn about cloth types, weights and their uses. The stack of hundreds of sample books that my first tailor hauled around is overwhelming without context (the books themselves are provided to customers by the mills and are actually quite expensive to produce, which is why retail customers may request individual swatches but are rarely given books of their own). Once a man knows that, for example, 13 ounce/400 gram  flannels are the most worn weight for winter currently he can at least begin comparing one mill's stuff with another's and seeing the patterns that are available.

Comparison should begin with the aforementioned thumb and forefinger. Begin with swatches of the same weight and pattern from different mills. They will feel slightly different - flannels from J&J Minnis are stiffer than those from Fox, for example. Ask the tailor which is better and why, and the learning has begun.

Lessons

Few men wear suits or odd jackets generally to attend sporting events any longer, no matter how well-heeled the audience, but what was once clothing for spectator sports still has lessons to teach us. The odd lovat or Donegal tweed suit is deserving of consideration on days when an odd jacket might be the automatic choice, and either suit or odd jacket benefits from the accessories worn by our man in the Esquire illustration.

The suit itself is a change of pace from the odd jackets that flood American streets. Eyes today are less used to seeing trousers that match jackets unless both are black, and the effect is a pleasant one, often accompanied by "I need one of those" or a similar thought.

Scanning the accessories from bottom up, we first see snuff brown suede chukka boots with natural crepe soles. Shoes with properly maintained crepe soles are still as comfortable as shoes ever get, and I am including every pair of athletic shoes I have ever worn in that comparison. Brown suede of course makes about the best looking casual shoe a man can have.

Above the trousers, the eye stops at the tattersall waistcoat, something that in one of the plainer patterns is quite wearable. It makes for an interesting accent with flannel suits, blazers, and the kinds of tweed suitings that some of us might wear to the office in Manhattan. Which is to say twills, herringbones and the like.

Finally, for I will not consider the Trilby hat, there is the oxford cloth shirt, a thing popularized by Brooks Brothers during its heyday as arbiter of the dress of the American male, with a club collar worn pinned. A man would need to have a shirt with that collar made for himself  but would be well rewarded for doing so, particularly if he were to eschew pre-made eyelets and just pin the thing through the collar as nature intended.

And there is the bell.

Illustration: Esquire

Suits and Socks, Installment XX

The first time out of the house for a new pair of shoes warrants a shoe shine, which is where the shoes in the photo have been. Saphir wax imparts a gloss at the same time its creamy composition helps condition the leather.

For the trip, the trousers to English Cut's charcoal hopsack suit are seen with Bresciani's dark gray pin-striped hose and chocolate brown semi-brogued slip-on shoes from W. S. Foster. Above the waist, a white linen pocket square, gray and maroon on white striped shirt and a black silk necktie with white micro-dots.

Everybody You Meet Has Something To Teach You

Alfred Dunhill's Spring Summer 2011 advertising campaign features a series of interviews with British men, accompanied by portraits of them dressed in Dunhill clothing of their choosing.

The photos are of journalist Sir David Frost, who said "Everybody you meet has something to teach you."

Word.

The double breasted's shoulders are rather strong for my taste, but I like the look. I like the dinner jacket better, particularly the jacket's lapels and the use of shirt studs instead of the buttons that crept into celebrity evening wear along with the four in hand necktie.

Photos: Alfred Dunhill