Tobacco brown is a jacket color all its own. I like it best with a maroon/brown necktie or a purple one and that is perfectly understandable when I look at a color wheel, where crimson is only two shades counter-clockwise from purple.
I resisted tobacco suits for many years, no doubt influenced by the adage against brown in town and/or Charles Revson's more recent (and pungent) comment. Now that I spend more time outside the city, those days have passed, and I realized the other day that I have not one but two brown suits in the works and neither of them is tweed. One is a tobacco gabardine double breasted and the other a single breasted worsted with one of H. Lesser's subtle glen checks on a dark brown ground.
I have always worn tan, and the odd brownish tweed, but the cotton suit in the photo was my first recent venture into brown. I realized that it was not enough when I found myself meeting a supplier for the second time and he pointed out that I was wearing the same suit I'd worn to see him the week before. That got the brown thing going, and purple ties have followed close behind.
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7 comments:
I love the tie, specially that dimple in half-windsor? knot? Wich ties is this?
Iñaki Aguirre
A piece after my heart ... based on personal experiments with relative success, navy blue ties are another excellent complement to Tobacco suits. Purple socks with that are just the finishing note
Will, I very much appreciate reading your blog. Your knowledege of menswear is far beyond mine, and I almost always get educated reading this blog. Also, I have to mention that I especially like the lifestyle posts (which in my opinion makes this blog way better than most of the subject of menswear), wheter it being about that special cocktail or about a proper wetshave.
However, I wonder if it is on purpose that Facebook updates of new posts is always delayed by at least a day or so?
Facebook updates are an automated process and I honestly have no idea how it works. :-)
Will, I enlarged the picture to have a good look at the colour. I have a linen suit identical or very close in colour and I've always struggled to find the right shirt and ties to complement it.
I've usually plumped for white shirts (blue seems to fail) and often no tie, which is not really my preference. I've had to add any colour with a pochet or scarf. I would never had considered purple, but it looks very good.
Have you ever done a comprehensive post on complementary suit/shirt/tie combos for colours outside the usual blue/grey spectrum?
Wonderful combination as always, Will.
Wearing a yellow shirt with a brown jacket or suit seems like a no-brainer to me, and that is why purple works well, too: yellow and purple are opposite each other on the color wheel.
Whether or not a blue shirt works with a particular brown jacket (or suit) depends on the shade of brown (and of blue, of course). Rather than blue, I often reach for a pink shirt to go with my browns.
I find that a tie with some green in it often works well with brown (as I am not a preppy, I don't wear such ties with pink shirts). Since green works nicely, it also means that its color wheel opposite, red, is often a good tie color to match with brown, though, as always, it depends on the specific shades involved.
Brown or black shoes Will?
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