Innovation

Clothing innovation has always required a highly visible public profile, significant resources and more than a casual interest in the subject matter. Before there were designers attempting to create markets, some men who simply liked to dress changed how the game was played with new styles for themselves that were were widely copied. The late Duke of Windsor, for example, popularized items as diverse as Fair Isle knitwear and suede oxfords.

There are few individual men with the required combination of taste, visibility and interest to be innovators in classic menswear today. Most of those who have everything required are content to stick with the tried and true, limiting themselves to the occasional experiment with a new tailor. I admire the style of Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones because he is one of the rare exceptions who pushes the envelope without taking things to excess. Not content with his Huntsman double breasteds and shoes resurrected from the archives, Mr. Watts has commissioned several very individual shoes from George Cleverley these past few years.

In the photo, Mr. Watts wears one of them, slipons in black crocodile with a blue buckskin apron. We may like or dislike his choices just as we have with every style leader who has come before, but innovation still thrives.

Photo: Getty Images

One Final Summer Day

There is terrible weather in the East but here in California the day was warm and it was the last week for the good local tomatoes. Though it was the end of October we decided to observe one final summer day and so for an early dinner we chose a menu from the South of France for half a dozen guests. Antoine Bouterin's recipe for blanc de volaille pané aux herbs was the centerpiece served with tomatoes Provençal and diced sauteed potatoes. They were followed by greens with goat cheese and finished with mixed fruit and more cheeses.

I emulated Luciano Barbera by wearing Napolisumisura's cream linen jacket out of season. It was Mr. Barbera who said, "Everyone knows you wear wool in the winter, linen in the summer, and a straw hat from June 15th to Labor Day. Everyone is right. And therein lies the problem. Follow these rules and you will look like everyone else. Better that you display a little originality. On the gravest days of winter I put on my gray flannels, a cashmere tie in a sober color and my white linen jacket."

Gabardine trousers and a knitted silk necktie were not flannel and cashmere but they were a better match for the 75 degree (24 C) temperature. Afterwards the jacket went back into storage and I went back to wearing Harrison's mid-weight Moonbean.

Casual Domesday

It isn’t the selection of accessories that make a bespoke shirtmaker or tailor great. However, on occasion a visit can disgorge an antediluvian trove of classic items acquired back when quality was still a manufacturing priority rather than a marketing phantasm, or whose offbeat design means they have survived years in the shop until your excavation and rediscovery. As to the former, French fashion Falstaff Marc Guyot gets a wolfish gleam in his eye recalling the rows of old Lyle & Scott cashmere sweaters at the shirtmakers Rhodes & Brousse, with price tags that never got updated as they sat there year in year out. Rhodes & Brousse is now just a memory, but a few old stock quality cashmere sweaters are still in evidence at its former neighbor Hilditch & Key Paris. Following my piece of last year however, Hilditch & Key Paris sold out of its last few hand-printed, medieval-themed cashmere-silk scarves. (The Paris branch of Hilditch & Key was under separate management for decades and sold certain items, such as those scarves, that were not available at the parent Hilditch & Key shops in London, or, indeed, anywhere else.)

Hope is not entirely lost for the man seeking particularly luxurious peculiarity. For the variety of different items offered in Charvet’s bounteous, decadently ornate flagship in the Place Vendôme made it a favorite destination as well as a favorite shirtmaker. Above and below the bespoke floor with its thousands of bolts of fabric and skilled cutters spread multiple levels of what is now unusual and often otherwise impossible to find: robes whose sumptuousness defies simple description or any necessity, some of the best cashmere sweaters ever made, every color imaginable of fine over-the-calf truly sized socks in cotton or cashmere, ties both in the instantly recognizable jewel tones favored in Charvet’s export markets as well as in no less creative but somewhat less typed motifs. And, spread out under marble or onyx weights on tables on its ground floor, cashmere-silk scarves in various patterns, including the Bayeux Tapestry print shown above. Sadly, they didn’t do them with the “All Your Base” Internet meme-style captions, although that would have been an amusing variant.

Perfect to wear with an open-shirt and a sweater for a sort of “Casual Domesday” look, arrow in the eye not needed. The colors are a bit more sober than those on the old Hilditch & Key Paris La Dame à la Licorne scarves, but if that’s what worries you about wearing a neckscarf, you either need to be a lot more secure about your identity or need to have some discussions with that conservative politician about what happened between you in that dream that took place at the boathouse. Anyway, it’s thoroughly worth the trip as a vaguely historical evocation of the elegant and unexpected.

Words and photo by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

Tan Shirts

I don’t like fussing too much when I choose clothes in the morning, and I suspect many men, even those interested in clothes, don’t like it much either. There are a number of ways to simplify the process, of course, the most common being to keep suits on a rotation and wear whatever is next. While that is a functional approach for most, I find that neither my lifestyle nor my neurosis lends itself well to a rotation. One problem is that I mainly wear odd jackets and trousers, and putting them together successfully can require some extra consideration and time, the last a singularly disheartening problem when one’s four-year-old son learns to cross his arms, frown, and say “Again?” when one reaches for a different necktie.

My solution so far has been to limit the range of colors in my wardrobe. For jackets and trousers that means mostly navy, brown, tan, and gray; and for shirts it means blue, lots of blue, in many shades, patterns, and weaves. Earlier this year, though, I became bored with blue shirts and found myself reaching more often for others in my closet, pink linen or chambray, pine green Bengal stripes, and maroon on cream graph checks, all three of which I find more versatile than lavender, peach, or gray, which I don’t keep. The problem I encountered is that regardless of how versatile these other colors, it remains odd to wear them three or more days out of the week without looking the dandy, or as if one’s color sense was acquired from the costumes of comic book characters. Men a bit more insouciant may be able to pull off such colors repeatedly, but I can’t, not without triggering the snickering laugh-track in my mind anyway, something I suspect is the result of having lived mostly in university towns where wearing a necktie is a type of academic dishonesty. This, of course, is simply a verbose way of saying it has taken me years to realize something Will noted long ago: tan shirts help cleanse the palette and are more versatile than one might assume. In my own case, I would have kept assuming tan shirts weren’t very useful had I not done the completely impractical thing and acquired ten of them. A bit of what I learned follows.

• Tan shirts work with all but the darkest of blue jackets, but do best under those from powder blue to the deep mid-blue now regrettably known as blogger blue.
• Brown and tan do well next to one another, especially a deep chocolate brown or a brown with some black in it. Both shades add some contrast to the combination, and save it from the muddled look one is often warned against with earthy colors. Choosing a light tan shirt helps in this regard, too.
• Next to olive, tan can look yellow and thus make many men appear sallow, despite a few AA illustrations that suggest otherwise.
• Paired with gray, tan shirts may do once in a while, but it can be a pedestrian combination, the success of which is largely contingent upon one’s necktie, and no color works quite so well there as black does, adding to the potential drabness of the look.
• In the colder months tan shirts look best with a pattern. In the past, Will has suggested white stripes on a tan ground, but I think the tan shirt’s country origins makes it well-suited for a puppytooth pattern. If puppytooth is too informal, however, nailhead may dress up the color just enough for wear with suits that aren’t too formal.
• While tan linen trousers and jackets do best when they are background to the stronger colored shirts and accessories of the warmer months, tan linen shirts do best when they have a bit more brown, giving them a mottled look where the white in the weave nearly looks like a pattern. That is, tan linen shirts look better when they are deeper in color than the light tan appropriate for the rest of the year.
• Tan shirts are a very nice accompaniment to white trousers, and for this reason tan might be the second best color for polos after navy. This was an important realization for me because the humid and lazy Mediterranean city where I now live makes wearing a jacket in July and August almost impossible. The stark contrast of navy and white in summer, furthermore, seems now nearly taken over by women, at least here, and replacing navy with tan allows for a more subtle look that calls to mind sand awash in bright summer light.
• Other uses for tan shirts include wearing them with air force blue flannel anything and under navy sweaters, a useful combination because a navy sweater usually looks better when worn without a jacket and blue on blue in this instance is quite dull.

If one needs yet more reasons to own a tan shirt or ten, I’m sure one could find them, but tan doesn’t have to be endlessly versatile. Providing a respite from blue and washing away the spice of the green, pink, burgundy, yellow, gray, or lavender in your shirt wardrobe is enough, particularly if you can look good without having to fuss in the morning.

Words by Anthony Eleftherion

Rainy Season Begins

The most noticeable impact of climate change so far in Northern California is that rainy season began this week, a month early for the second or third year in a row. And complementing our SWIMS overshoes for wet conditions I am happy to introduce for your consideration three gentleman's umbrellas hand made by Milan's Maglia Francesco, supplier of umbrellas to the likes of Hermes, Chanel and more than one of the best English names.

The two most renowned handles in the classic umbrella repertoire are Malacca, a species of rattan, and Whangee, a type of bamboo. John Steed carried the latter. So did Bertie Wooster. I offer both.

In stock in solidly constructed regular and travel sizes (the latter rather cleverly unscrews into three pieces for packing), with navy blue twill canopies because the well dressed man looks better in blue than he does in black.

And if you do not yet have the aforementioned SWIMS overshoes, they are also in stock, in no fewer than five colors,

Daytime Neckties

Neckties for daytime can be lighter in color than the ones worn after 6PM, consistent with the brighter lights of day. That is can be, not should, as dark ties are perfectly acceptable whatever the hour. But they do leave an opportunity for a splash of color untaken, if you will.

The reverse is not true, and a light colored tie ought to be changed before dinner for much the same reason that we wear black or mighnight blue bows with our dinner jackets and eschew colors.

In the photo, a bright red 50 ounce Royal Twill tie from Drake's London is worn with a navy suit, tan broadcloth shirt and an old Holland & Holland pocket square with bunny rabbits gamboling about a field of blue.

Grooming: Facial Care

I was ruddy faced as I dressed for Petaluma, the small town where the ASW warehouse is located, the other morning. I had had a masseur work on my tight neck the day before and topped that off with a facial and shiatsu massage that involved still more neck work.

Now, traditionally males do not speak of this sort of thing for fear of being perceived as less than manly. But it just makes sense for men past the prime of their youth to get facials several times a year in my opinion (the people who give them for a living recommend a frequency of six weeks to quarterly). Facials consist of a series of procedures for cleansing the skin, exfoliation, a facial massage, steam and a cream or moisturizer. Combined with a daily regimen of still more cleansing and moisturizing, the result is a younger, healthier appearance. And since one of the purposes of our dress is to raise other peoples' eyes to our face, it only makes sense that taking care of one's skin goes hand in hand with dressing well.

Now if only I had the self discipline to do something about my figure.

The Oldest Cuff

The older the garment, the more formal it tends to be, as witness the robes worn for ceremonies in Academia that predate the the advent of tailored clothing. And when it comes to shirt cuffs, in case you were wondering, the single layer link cuff style worn by Gabriele d'Annunzio in the photograph is the oldest of them all, dating back to the time when buttonless shirts were pulled over the head. Not coincidentally, as the only acceptable cuff for use on a shirt to be worn with a tailcoat, the link cuff is also the most formal cuff style.

We are today used to French, or turnback style cuffs, with a double layer of fabic. Despite their ubiquity however, turnbacks are a relatively new innovation. So far as I know, they were introduced by the late Duke of Windsor when he was Prince of Wales and rebelling against starch in his evening dress. There is no way to wear an unstarched single cuff with cufflinks, but a turnback can be worn soft. So he did, with his double breasted dinner jackets and other innovations. And so now do the majority of the rest of us when we choose to wear cufflinks.

Given their history as evening wear it should come as no suprise that the vast majority of the link cuffed shirts extant are white, but link cuffed shirts can be worn in any situation where a white, cufflinked cuff shirt is appropriate (note that linked cuffs are not the same as convertible cuffs, which do not have the thicker interlining required to provide the linked cuff's required stiffness). It is a cleaner look, completely appropriate, and with the small added advantage that few men other than the wearer will be wearing it. That latter point of course makes it yet another collectible for the dedicated.

Adding link cuffs to the shirt wardrobe presents a couple of small challenges. Chain-linked cufflinks as worn by Mr. d'Annunzio tend to be too long, allowing the linked cuff to gape open. Lighter weight stirrup or snap links work better, which may come as a potentially expensive surprise to the man who does not already own a pair.

The other obstacle between linked cuffs and your wrists is likely to be whether your shirtmaker offers them in the first place. The construction as I have said is different internally from run of the mill cuffs, and not every maker will have had cause to figure out a design. But surely a small batch of three white linked cuff shirts from someone who does know how to make them is a minor barrier.

Consider the oldest cuff.

A Good Time To Wear A Hat

Dress has changed a bit between Skyfall, the about to be released James Bond film, and 1963's From Russia With Love. For example, among the less remarkable differences, I will wager that Daniel Craig is hatless throughout this years' film, unlike the trilby wearing Sean Connery in the screen capture from the earlier production.

Craig would find it difficult to keep his hat on of course, given all his jumping from one explosion to the next in the teasers for Skyfall. The best hat wearing occasions are usually more sedate ones: shading the head from the sun and keeping it dry in a sprinkle (the downpour that occurred while the San Francisco baseball franchise was completing its National League Championship Series victory over the visitors from St. Louis yesterday was better suited to umbrellas). Still, the producers of Skyfall could easily have had Bond hatted throughout the action scenes, stimulating headwear sales for most of the coming decade, and almost certainly would have done so had some hatmaker offered a suitable product placement fee.

I watched the baseball game (did I mention that the San Francisco team won the series?) from the comfort of my apartment, however the weather provided an excuse to emulate Mr Connery with a brown Lord's hat above my own gray suit during the afternoon's scattered showers. It was a good time to wear a hat.

Theme Of Today

If my memory serves me correctly, one of my favorite TV shows, Fuji Television’s Ryōri no Tetsujin, used to begin each episode with this quote from the French gourmet and writer Brillat-Savarin: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.” However, it seems a more apt epigram for today is “Tell me who you wear, and I will tell you what you are,” as evidenced by the omnipresence of logos and other signifiers. Today’s conglomerates have realized that the formula for fashion success involves creating items whose brand is aspirational, and whose branding is visible and recognizable enough for one’s observers to recognize and credit. This is an exchange that can take place instantaneously in passing on the street, signifying membership in a club or class that is purely superficial: it does not matter that the item in question came from the outlets that in fact support the brand’s existence, that the item’s quality is mediocre and that its interlocked C’s (for example) might as well stand for “made in China” despite the little paper pamphlet it came with touting its American heritage, or for the credit card debt that that the wearer has taken out to purchase it. This is what passes for modern luxury, just accessible enough to be worn by many, its value concentrated in its recognizability, meaningless without initials or logos or some other signifiers that matter far more than materials, construction or esthetics.

Every time there is an economic downturn, clothing and fashion media herald a return to traditional values and heritage brands, which by coincidence are the older and more expensive brands that were plastering their logos everywhere during the relative boom right before the bust. Longevity is now heritage, even though many historic brands have survived by carving off their historic manufacturing arms and letting them die, surviving as just a brand – an ethos that can be applied and communicated superficially onto anything, as superficially as those printed logos, flamboyant external tags or designer’s monograms.

This is not to let the more expensive or obscure clothing subcultures off the hook. Some of my fellow clothing weirdos no doubt can recognize the John Lobb William (as pictured double-unbuckled in the photos of today’s August Sander with ADHD, the Sartorialist), a Berluti patina or Arnys lapel notch, the Turnbull & Asser (RTW) collar, the Bottega Veneta weave or an Anderson & Sheppard shoulder.

I like to think that I don’t dress to participate in the furtive congress of visible branding, but as with so many things, an exception proves the rule. Herewith, the theme of today, and the only visibly branded item I intentionally wear, this pair of silver Hermès clou de selle cufflinks.

Like their maker, little tarnishes them. The only major luxury brand with any integrity, Hermès has consistently maintained high standards in all of its activities. Contrary to the trend of hiding behind marketing and moving production to cheaper subcontractors, it has retained inhouse production and, in order to keep quality high, taken controlling stakes or ownership of many of its suppliers, including its own glovers in Saint-Junien, one of only two comparable in the world (and trust me, by God I’ve looked), crystal through Saint-Louis, its maker of leather jackets that can still do justice to those evoked by Fitzgerald in Tender is the Night, the exotic leather sourcers Roggwiller, and on and on. In addition to these, of course, are its more famous competencies in silk scarves and ties, leathergoods small and large, and, at the beginning of it all, saddlery, to which the name of this cufflink style refers. The clou de selle is a stud nailed into an Hermès saddle. These cufflinks are designed to look like its head.

I imagine that Hermès likes to draw on equestrian imagery not only as a reminder of its 1837 genesis, but as an evocation to customers attracted to all the trappings associated with the horsey lifestyle. It’s a rich vein rewarding to many of its miners recent and removed, and while the term “the carriage trade” no longer has much significance to most, a name like “Polo,” for one, reminds us of the power of that evocation. At any rate, while saddlery must be a very small part of its business now, Hermès is quite serious about it.

I confess that it wasn’t the name of the style that drew me in as much as Hermès itself, and whatever Hermès, ineffably, meant to me. Despite Hermès’ heritage and image, like most Hermès customers, I generally have very little to do with horses, but that’s OK – most wearers of Savile Row bespoke aren’t actually country squires or gentlemen of leisure (except for Will), and I imagine most wearers of today’s Abercrombie & Fitch probably aren’t actually date-raping douchebags.

While I love my cufflinks and have found my few Hermès leathergoods to be, essentially, unimprovable in quality, I’d be reluctant to wear other immediately recognizable Hermès items: the cartoony ties that shout Hermès are unwearable unless you are French or wish to look like an investment banker (although the older ones with odder, larger images have a certain ironic charm); and the H-logoed belt buckles are simply unfortunate on most people. You can pull anything off as long as you look completely unself-conscious doing it, but this is not a challenge I encourage.

To return to my first paragraph, in a world where the onus is on the beholder to validate the wearer’s statement of class or style or whatever it is exposed brands and logos are supposed to do, it is preferable to be both wearer and spectator, participant and judge in the overheated stadium of daily interaction. Wearing these links, generally not decipherable to anyone except myself, is one course utilizing but not overpowering with the theme of today.

Words and photo by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

Madrid's Gonzalo Larrainzar

So much of the discussion about bespoke clothing lights upon makers in England and Italy that one can easily overlook (or simply never hear about) artisans from other countries. One such country is Spain, which has quite a concentration of tailors in its capital, some of whom have been making mens’ clothing by hand for generations. News of these tailors hasn’t spread much outside of Spain in part because few have ever tried to promote themselves abroad (a failure of Spanish firms of all sorts). There is, moreover, nothing overly distinctive about a Spanish suit. Though the quality of the make of (most) Spanish tailoring is obvious to anyone with eyes, there is nothing about it that is particularly unique––no soft, pleated jacket shoulders; no supple folds of cloth at the chest; no flared skirts; and no pronounced shoulder padding. These may seem trivial points, but one tends to covet (not to mention eulogize on clothing fora) the things one sees, and with few men outside of Spain wearing Spanish bespoke and little to delineate a well-made Spanish suit from that of other countries, it is not surprising that Spanish tailoring is not well-known.

There are however some aesthetic consistencies here. Cut tends to be conservative, and so one sees few jackets with very open quarters, big bellied lapels, or dramatic waists. Cloth, too, is restrained, as it is almost always worsted and only occasionally patterned. This may surprise some because it does not fit the sartorial reputation of Spanish men, which, not unlike that of Italian men, is likely slapped together from photos of Pitti attendees. Most men here, though, hope not to stand out, something that is obvious from the waves of simple and unaffected (read: no double-stitched seams) navy blue two-button suits on the streets where men wear them.

One of the tailors responsible for a good deal of those suits is Gonzalo Larrainzar, third generation cutter and owner of Lopez Herbon, a firm that through the years has dressed President Manual Azana (during the second Spanish republic), General Franco (shortly after), Henry Kissinger (in his aphrodisiac days), Ronald Reagan, Ahmet Ertegun, and King Juan Carlos, a group whose taste in clothes can rightly be called sober. While Larrainzar couldn’t say if that is the result of the firm’s influence on its clients or the clients’ influence on the firm, he did say that a man’s clothes should be masculine and sedate, a notion he reinforced by stating that a man should only rarely veer from a navy or dark gray two button suit, white or light blue shirt, and a dark necktie. No revelation, that, but he didn’t say it in the manner of an Esquire “Things You Must Own” editorial, he said it as someone who believes there really are only a few reasons ever to wear anything else.

The matter of style most important to Larrainzar, however, is proportion, a word he must have used a dozen times during our meetings. His aim, he said, is to create a balanced silhouette, and his suits show it. Lapels invariably extend halfway to the shoulders and no farther. Gorges are neither so high as might be currently stylish nor so low as they were thirty years ago. And sleeves are not too voluminous (as that of, say, many Savile Row tailors), nor too narrow. In the chest, Larrainzar’s jackets are shapely, though not exaggerated, and the shoulders are structured (one might even call them strong) yet have very little padding. As one Spanish bespoke customer said to me with a bit of disappointment in his voice, “Spanish suits look sort of perfect,” and by that I took him to mean orderly, flush, and just a touch stiff, a reputation that sends many young men here to Italy for clothes.

Hoping to bring some of these men back to Spanish tailoring, Larrainzar has been making an effort to modernize lately. The clothes he makes for his younger clients are more fitted than in the past, and he cuts more 3 roll 2 lapels now, especially for the less structured summerweight odd jackets he makes. The firm also shows more lightweight cloth than it used to (mostly from Loro Piana, Dormeuil, and Holland and Sherry), even though Larrainzar concedes the stuff doesn’t drape or take the needle as well as heavier cloth. More recently, the firm moved from its large baroque flat on Calle Cedaceros, the business district where they kept shop for more than half a century, to a space near Calle Serrano, Madrid’s main retail area. The move is mostly a practical one. The lease was up and they no longer needed so much space (at its peak, Lopez Herbon employed ten cutters). But it is also to make the firm more accessible to clients, and perhaps to begin rubbing away at its conservative reputation.

Larrainzar's suits start at 2200€ ($2,866) in Madrid. He also visits New York twice a year. Reach him at gonzalolarrainzar@gmail.com.

Words and photos by Anthony Eleftherion

Be Warm And Well Dressed

You can be both warm and spectacularly well dressed this season with any of my five new sweater styles from Ireland’s Aran Islands. They include a ribbed Donegal tweed crewneck, a warm fisherman’s knit rollneck, an Aran patterned button jacket, lightweight alpaca and silk crew necks and my personal favorite, a navy pure cashmere crewneck with Donegal-style flecks of orange and light blue that is one of the best looking sweaters I have ever seen. Sizes S to XXL, in a natural palette of grays, blues, cream and brown.

See them all in New Arrivals.

The Neutral Color Scheme

The best dressed men rarely limit themselves to one or two colors in the day's clothing. The pinnacle of dressing well is, as we have discussed many times, the appearance of carelessness. Hours spent acquiring, maintaining and choosing one's clothes should be obscured by what appear to be unconsidered pairings in a day's dress.

Perhaps the easiest but also the most difficult way to appear careless is to minimize or altogether avoid repeating colors, using instead a neutral color scheme comprised of white, brown and grey with navy and no more than one other accent color. That is easier said than done - repeated colors require little thought to look good together, and most of us take the easy way out. But we should set our sights higher.

In the photo, Matteo Marzotto illustrates the neutral scheme with a brown overcoat, gray suit, navy necktie and red and white striped shirt.

Travelling Light Is Over-Rated

I do not believe those men that claim they can go on the road for a week with little more than a carry-on. When I was living in hotels three weeks out of four years ago, I wanted three suits and two pairs of shoes for five days in addition to whatever I was wearing to go to and fro. Not to mention the travel umbrella, workout stuff and power adapters. That meant a 70 pound (32 kg) bag, and though I might need a porter from time to time I never wanted for clothes.

I tried travelling light recently, on the assumption that I had only four days in cities and would not need to be very formal for wandering around the rest of the time. Expecting weather in the 70s (20s C), I wore a shirt jacket for the flights, and packed a blazer and the ten ounce (300 gram) suit in the photo. Unfortunately, the weather was like August, or so the locals told us. Alternating two jackets meant I was wearing said middleweight suit on a sweltering day in Naples when my inability to find a taxi meant several sweaty miles of walking. Had I packed a larger bag, I would have had space for a linen suit that would have been a lifesaver.

Upon my return, the pinstripes were off for a most necessary cleaning. Travelling light is over-rated.

Photo by Chloë Lederman

How To Wear A Blazer

How to wear a blazer? Tan monkstrap shoes, mid-gray flannel trousers, striped shirt, foulard necktie and a pocket square that picks up some minor element in the tie or shirt. Luciano Barbera conducts today's lesson.

Photo by Andrew Seibert

Coordinating The Odd Vest

The odd vest can take three forms if you will, those being:

- unrelated to jacket or trousers

- matching vest and jacket with contrasting trousers as worn by André Churchwell in the photo, or

- matching trousers and vest with contrasting jacket.

Matching nothing, the truly odd odd vest is by far the most common sight but let me recommend to you the other alternatives. Either requires the vest to be made at the same time as the trousers or jacket in question and for that very reason is rare enough to add interest to the day's clothing.

Photo by Jenny Cao

Idle Musings

Shoemakers G. J. Cleverley are on their appointed rounds in the United States this month, and one of the shoes featured is the elastic sided half brogue pictured here, which is an unusual take on an already unusual shoe in that there is elastic only on the instep instead of both sides. It is definitely a cleaner look compared to its double elasticized cousins.

My own contribution to shoe consumption this year will be a pair of black calf and white buck slipons in the style favored by the late Duke of Windsor. The combination is the appropriate one for summer evenings when solid black just looks wrong under cream colored trousers. I had held off on this order for some time, thinking it rather frivolous to have a pair of shoes just to wear with my only cream suit, a double breasted from some one-off tropical Rangoon that J&J Minnis ran for a customer and which eventually found its way into my hands. But after turning it over in my head for a while I concluded that the shoes will be useful paired with gray odd trousers generally, and I wear those with some frequency. And so, perhaps, not so frivolous.

Frivolity aside, I have to say that the linen jacket Napolisumisura delivered the other day, just in time to be stored for six months, is a thing of beauty. Soft shouldered and buggy lined, it is by far the best made thing I have for warm weather. And, being a cream linen double breasted itself, it also helps assuage my conscience when I think of those black and white spectators.

Photos by John Park

Hollywood Stylists

Great God in Heaven, where to begin? For clarity, I’m not talking about the stylists who work for female stars; since I myself know little of women’s fashion, I’ll just assume they know what they’re doing. But the ones who work for the men…

Ho-LEE mackerel…

They get paid. Actually paid. And not in buttons or wooden nickels or stones but in hard currency, which you can legally use to buy, like, useful stuff. Blimey, how do I get in on this gig?

You don’t need to be color-coordinated. You don’t need a fashion sense. As far as I can tell, you don’t even need to be a sighted person. The stars they work for clearly aren’t sighted. None of them seem to be aware that they’ve been dressed by Ray Charles...

If Charles Ponzi were alive today, he’d be tickled right down to his larcenous toes. He and his disciple Bernie Madoff were definitely in the wrong racket. Imagine--a scam where you can get rich and never, ever go to jail…

It wasn’t always like this. Homework assignment for you (figure of speech; I’m going to do it for you right now): look at the opening credits of any movie made in the thirties (it really is a shame we must reference thirties Hollywood movies, which were the American equivalent of Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda—but it was the best decade for men’s clothes). You’ll see ‘Gowns by Edith Head,’ ‘Gowns by Adrian,’ ‘Gowns by Dolly Tree,’ etc. Now try to find the credit for the men’s stylist. Look long and hard. Can’t find it? Well, don’t feel too bad, because unless you’re looking at a period-piece costume picture, it ain’t there. All of those fabulously attired male movie stars of the thirties?

They dressed themselves.

Now if I’ve left you scratching your head, or your nether regions, I’ll try to help you out. In a generalized sense, this is how it worked:

You take one young man; very rough around the edges but good-looking enough to land a movie studio contract (say, a Clark Gable or a Gary Cooper). To this, you add an older, wealthier, more sophisticated woman (a Ria Langham or a Countess Dorothy di Frasso). Older woman takes younger man under her wing; teaches him etiquette, grooming, and restaurant French. They take the ‘Grand Tour’ (of Europe), and hit all the ‘right’ tailors, shirtmakers, and shoemakers, guided by the latest photos of the (then) Prince of Wales, and other European aristocrats. Younger man pays older woman tuition for this education, but not with money.

Having picked up the tab for everything, the older woman now sails the younger man home. He left as a rube; he now returns as a polished, well-mannered, elegantly attired movie star. In gratitude for this, younger man now kicks older woman to the curb, grabs himself a hot young dame, and, in that pre-viagran era, cheats on her as often as his personal stamina permits.

As I say, this is somewhat generalized. If you were a Fred Astaire, you were so over-the-top-potty about clothes that you could educate yourself on the subject. Or, if you were a Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., you had a dressed-to-kill movie star father to serve as a role model.

Here I started to write, “All this is gone now.” But that’s not exactly true, is it? The key elements still exist: young actors, older women, the tailors, and all the rest. For reasons unbeknownst to this writer, they simply don’t want to play together any more.

There was a time when, if men wanted to learn to dress, they looked to three geographic locations: London, New York, and Hollywood. The London and New York boys are still trying to hold up their side of the bargain, but in Hollywood there has been a total collapse. And Jethro, when I say ‘collapse,’ I mean like Nagasaki—ain’t nuthin’ goin’ on in the ‘Wood (George Hamilton excluded, of course).

I would really, sincerely, like to turn these actors on to the treasures that exist in Milan, Naples, Florence, London, New York, and elsewhere. They are genuinely doing a disservice to themselves by not being aware of this stuff. It would be fun to walk them through it. But I’m a realistic person; I just don’t see them going for it, and for one simple reason: in today’s Hollywood, true style will always be beaten out by whatever the masses perceive to be ‘cool’—tiny brimmed hats, unshaved faces, unwashed bodies, no fewer than three DUI’S under your belt, etc. But in all fairness to Hollywood, we really shouldn’t be too demanding of a town where vegetarians smoke cigarettes.

In sum, the only practical advice I can give Hollywood actors on style (that is to say, the only advice I think anyone out there will actually listen to) is this: take up blind-folded dumpster-diving. You’ll be much better dressed, and you’ll save an absolute fortune in stylist’s fees.

Words by Barry Pullen

Old World Iconoclasm

"To its devotees the bow tie suggests iconoclasm of an Old World sort, a fusty adherence to a contrarian point of view. The bow tie hints at intellectualism, real or feigned, and sometimes suggests technical acumen, perhaps because it is so hard to tie. Bow ties are worn by magicians, country doctors, lawyers and professors and by people hoping to look like the above. But perhaps most of all, wearing a bow tie is a way of broadcasting an aggressive lack of concern for what other people think."

-Warren St. John in The New York Times, 2005

When the desire to be an old world iconoclast strikes, pay a visit to the ASW store for a selection of bow ties in silk and in wool.

The End Of Summer

The other day saw the last wearing of my lightweight jackets for this season. With exceptions for cloths like linen and fresco that wear cooler than their weights, I organize my wardrobe into warm (8-9 ounce/240-270 gram), shoulder season (10-12 ounce/300-360 gram and cold weather weights (13 ounces/390 grams and heavier) (your seasons may differ and so then should your cloth weights). With temperatures fallen by 25 degrees (F) from their summer highs, it is time for shoulder season cloth.

Shoulder season to my mind is the time for worsteds. The aforementioned linen and fresco work well for summer, and tweed and flannel are all any man needs in cold weather. Worsted wool is relatively tightly woven, smooth, and clear finished, all of which mean it wears warm compared to true summer cloth, does not trap heat as well as woolen flannel and tweed and tends to be both harder wearing and more wrinkle resistant. Which is to say that it fits exactly in the middle.

If winter is the time for double breasteds, which wear a touch warmer due to the overlap of cloth across the chest, and summer the season for single breasted jackets, then either of them works in shoulder season. Best of all is probably the vested single breasted, where the vest helps keep a man warm on cooler days and is not worn at all at the other end of the temperature spectrum (and a reason why that latter configuration is also arguably best for the first half dozen suits in a wardrobe).

That said, shoulder season suits do not have to be ordinary twills. Several of what used to be considered summer suitings - gabardine, solaro and dupioni for example - are among my favorites. And I look forward to wearing them.

Book Review: Ivy Style

Before the failed mish-mash of today's designer menswear, the most important influence on mens' dress was the Ivy, or prep, look. Until sometime in the 1970s when the whole thing fell apart, a man paid little attention to labels, dressing himself from a palette of British cloth and traditional styles. Gone now for the most part (the principal exception being some of the work of Ralph Lauren), Ivy Style is currently the subject of an retrospective at New York's Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

The book coming out of that exhibit, Ivy Style: Radical Conformists, is due to be released on October 16. Edited by Patricia Mears, deputy director at the museum and the individual most responsible for the exhibit (which runs until January 5), the volume's essays trace the evolution of the Ivy look from the end of World War I until the present day.

Like many compendia, Ivy Style is uneven, but the worthwhile sections outnumber the filler. There is a very good essay on the influence of the Duke of Windsor by Peter McNeil, a piece on jazz and the Ivy look by G. Bruce Boyer and several classic excerpts from Boyer's 1985 Elegance that are worth the purchase price by themselves for anyone who does not already have the original.

Perhaps the best of the good things about Ivy Style are the more than 100 photos ranging from a selection of wonderful full page shots of the clothing on exhibit to old Apparel Arts drawings. The striped blazers, seersucker suits and Weejuns delight the eye and recall what was probably the best dressed era of modern times.

Lifestyle: The Wines Of Chateau Palmer

Bordeaux has not escaped the au courant fashion of excessive grape ripeness, new oak barrel aging and higher alcohol levels. Fortunately, classic Bordeaux wine reigns at the venerable Chateau Palmer located in the Margaux appellation.

Bordeaux is divided by the Gironde River into two sections known as the Left Bank and Right Bank. I have always viewed Margaux as the transition appellation. By that I mean it uses more merlot than its northern neighbors St. Estephe, Pauillac and St. Julien, and more cabernet sauvignon than the Right Bank wineries of St. Emilion and Pomerol. At its best, Margaux is a velvety, plush wine, with less force in the mouth than wines from the northern appellations because of a lower percentage of cabernet sauvignon in the blend.

Margaux’s use of all five Bordeaux grapes- cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, petit verdot, and malbec- combined with its diversity of soils, gives its wines the broadest palate and makes it the viticulture crossroads of Bordeaux. If there is any grape that is superlative or problematic in a vintage, you’re most likely find it in Margaux.

Chateau Palmer’s conception began in 1748 when the heirs of Chateau d’Issan sold 125 acres to the Gascq family, who introduced Chateau Gascq wines to Cardinal Richelieu and the court of Louis XV. In 1814, the final Gascq heir sold the property to the English general Charles Palmer. Palmer invested in the vineyards and its reputation and price became among the highest in London. However, Palmer’s financial problems caused him to sell the property in the 1840s; the gradual deterioration of the vineyards lowered the wine quality, resulting in Chateau Palmer’s Third Growth rank in the 1855 Paris wine competition that would eventually calcify the standings of Left Bank chateaux. (The 1855 classification was established at a trade show made by the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce and the Union of Brokers Attached to the Bordeaux Market at the 1855 Great International Exhibition in Paris. The Union of Brokers established five Categories from First to Fifth Growths covering 61 Chateaux all from the Left Bank. This classification has remained nearly immutable regardless of a chateau’s quality over the course of 157 years).

I have been drinking and collecting Chateau Palmer since the mid-1970s and have bottles and magnums in my cellar from 1985 to 2005. With proper cellaring, enjoying Chateau Palmer from very good to great vintages at your 50th wedding anniversary is a realistic possibility.

During the last 30 years, Chateau Palmer’s owners and managers have applied a laser-like focus on vineyard management, winemaking, and winery technology, raising the level of Chateau Palmer to a Second Growth, in my opinion.

If you have the opportunity to purchase at auction from a pristine cellar Chateau Palmer from 1985, 1989, 1990, or 1995 do not pass it up. In the current market, buy from a retailer with temperature-controlled storage the world-class 2000 and 2005 wines. And the superb 2009 vintage is the most recent arrival. Slightly less prestigious, but certainly pleasing are the 2001, 2004 and 2006 wines of Chateau Palmer.

Prices range from $200-375 for the listed auction wines; about $400 for the 2000; $250-300 for 2005; and $300-400 for the 2009. The lesser vintages can be purchased in the range of $175-250 (be certain the wine has been in temperature-controlled storage).

Words by John Foy

The Greatest Of Them All

One of the American style forums currently has a prominent thread asking members to list what they think are the 50 greatest menswear brands of all time. Needless to say, some of its content could drive the reader to lobotomize himself, if the thread weren’t already doing it for him. I don’t have enough Vaseline in the house to name 50 greatest menswear brands, but I can confidently state the greatest, and explain why I am completely, unassailably right: Pierre Cardin.

No doubt a reader of this blog might expect me to name a famous tailor or shirtmaker, or one of the departed men’s emporia that my fellow Wardrobe denizens (no closet jokes please, we’ve made them all already) and I like to evoke so often. But the question as posed isn’t about the best makers, the most creative designers or the most visionary curator of a retail selection. Instead, the greatest menswear brand is that which has capitalized the most on its reputation, penetrated the world most thoroughly, and had the most influence, for better or for worse, on menswear, because brand greatness is not about actual or current skill in making or designing things, but about creating a construct, a brand, that is abstract from the maker or designer and then perpetuating itself. And Pierre Cardin has been the brand whose financial success, penetration of awareness and range of branded products every men’s designer since him, whether admitting it or not, has tried to emulate. And menswear indelibly bears his eccentrically logoed stamp, whether we like it or not.

Cardin is now 90. Starting a few years ago, he acceded to a sort of Grand Old Man status in the fashion world, with retrospectives and monographs on his forays into interior and furniture design. It’s a sort of valediction for an old man whose continued eccentricity no longer threatens the status quo of menswear fashion. Rewinding back to the early part of his career, we see a man who helped create the menswear brand, fashion section (and currently, there is little else). Like many other midcentury designers and couturiers, Cardin trained as a tailor, later spending a stint as head of the atelier at Christian Dior at the same period that designer launched the New Look. Cardin launched his own couture house with a bang in early the 1950s at a famous ball at the Palazzo Labia in Venice hosted by the dandy Carlos de Beistegui. Thence followed sallies and battles with the French fashion guilds for transgressions like unexpected moves into ready-to-wear and, by 1960, menswear. A favorite photo from the period is Cardin in front of his menswear models wearing a collarless crocodile 3/4 –length coat of his own design. The look was sharp, iconoclastic, unexpected and creative, words the Cardin name no longer often evokes. But at the time, that design stood for a new modernism and functionality, influencing the collarless suits the Beatles wore, famously attracting Cecil Beaton away from Savile Row, and paving the way to the sort of Space Age utopian fantasy later that decade that Cardin’s designs are famous for. In fact, Cardin did dystopia just as well – a 1970s publicity photo features A Clockwork Orange-style jumpsuits with a model who looks like Malcolm McDowell leering rapily.

Clearly by then, though, Cardin knew that collections didn’t need to have any relation to the commercial, having signed the first of the licenses that would make him one of the richest designers in the world. While monogrammed Gucci toilet paper is just a myth from the 1970s, Pierre Cardin actually did put his name on a signature toilet, along with almost anything else imaginable, from socks to calculators (sold together in the same gift pack). He created wardrobes for television characters, including John Steed in the 1967 series of The Avengers, and redesigned the national costume of the Philippines at its dictator’s invitation. Through his ownership of Maxim’s restaurant, he expanded into food and hospitality, opening a luxury hotel years before Bvlgari co-branded with Marriott and Turnbull & Asser gave its name to a theme room in some British country hotel. He showed in China and India decades ago, the first major designer ever to do so, long before all of today’s most prestigious menswear brands began scrambling to get their heavily logoed accessories into the hands of those growing markets’ thrusting nouveaux riches.

In the last several decades, of course, Cardin has been less relevant for his design than for his commercial prowess. The price to pay for ubiquity without creative control. Today’s brands may simply be a little less far along the curve in that degradation. Barneys used to remind customers that it was the first American store to sell Cardin in the 1960s and Armani in the 1970s, an apt juxtaposition. Now Armani has a wide sliding scale of different labels and sold his most widely available mall brand A/X for an enormous amount, supporting the empire of his more prestigious lines, including homewares and cafes. Armani can also focus on promoting his halo lines, the top boutique lines that shed prestige on the rest of a brand, so the world is treated to a man who looks like a deep-fried Cheeto in Simon Cowell’s T-shirt making disparaging comments about real tailors in order to sell factory-made clothing. For decades, Cardin has also had a halo line of sorts, vestigial though it is – his dusty flagship on Faubourg St-Honoré, which though empty of customers some years ago when I visited was full of boutique-only items, including shirts proudly labeled as being made in Argenton-sur-Creuse, which happens to be the home of the French Museum of Shirtmaking (and is located in an area that was a historical center of shirtmaking). Despite being a UN goodwill ambassador and a member of France’s Légion d’Honneur, Cardin’s name in fashion circles may seem as dated and embarrassing as the Tour Montparnasse. But today’s most prestigious brands are generally following his example, lining up lucrative licenses for eyewear and perfume before opening their flagship (as did Tom Ford), or diluting the initial quality of their debut collections by moving to cheaper contractors a year after all the press releases and adulation. No one brings down, prospectus supplement-like, a fluffy magazine article.

What does this have to do with this site, where Will and assiduous contributors like Storey and Pullen work indefatigably to relay new sources of classic clothing for the well-dressed reader? Well, to me, the exercise in “greatest brands” onanism serves as a reminder that there is no substitute for empiricism, for informed personal experience and evaluation. Any time that information about a shop/designer/maker/whatever is relayed from one person to another, whether that information is about an expensive established designer or about some ambitious yobbo making trousers in Naples, something is taken on perhaps misplaced faith and that, to me, is the essence of branding.

For a brand is hearsay, a brand is meta, a brand is reputation and supposition and lifestyle, branded hotel rooms and fragrances and bathroom slippers and a lazy slippery slope, a brand is being able to sell out and about reconciling the presumption of integrity with the monetization of putting your name on anything. On this topic, I begin to sound like Cardin in his famous tirade against jeans (“the destroyer! It must be stopped!”), and yet in his flagship shop on Faubourg St-Honoré, there they were, a selection of dark denim that might even have been Japanese, a testament to Mammon over (somewhat baffling) principles.

So in reaction to searching for greatest brands, I can only advise the reader to use his (or her, hi ladies) own experience, and if it is not feasible to gain your own firsthand experience, then use your own critical thinking abilities, your own esthetics and taste rather than accepting a picture of something pretty pinned to perfection on a mannequin or model as a sign of anything more than nice photography. But I know that many people visit clothing blogs to see a picture of something colorful and patterned on someone cute, with all the content of a short caption, before proceeding on with their day. So I apologize for a long post that asks you to think about clothes, instead of contemplating snapshots of Savile Row softcore.

Words by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

The Perfect Shade of Blue

The perfect shade of blue for a suit is not navy, though navy has its (very important) place in the wardrobe of course. No, in my opinion the perfect blue is an intermediate tone like Mr. Watts' suit in the photo. Balancing between formality and informality, the perfect blue is neither too casual, like Mr. Jagger's jacket, nor too somber. Suitable for wear during the work week, it is also a nice touch for daytime social occasions, standing out without shouting if you know what I mean.

The perfect blue is actually a range of course, going by several names. Egyptian blue is one shade, cobalt another and klein blue a third. Wear it with brown shoes and a navy necktie and you will be ready for any stage.

For Autumnal Sporting Events

He might have done better with a flannel gray rollneck instead of the blue, but in the photo Luca Cordero di Montezemolo demonstrates Autumnal dress for a outdoor sporting event such as an October baseball game.

As temperatures dip into the low 50's (10C), flannel is better than worsted. The single breasted jacket is perhaps more traditional, but either single or double breasted is perfectly appropriate. Pair it with a contrasting two ply cashmere rollneck in cream, gray or navy blue for temperature control and a scarf becomes unnecesary. Brown pigskin gloves are optional depending on the temperature but a silk pocket square should be considered mandatory.

Autumnal Bandanas

With the onset of Autumn, we encounter days too casual for a necktie and too warm for a scarf. It is just for that reason that I had Drake's London cut three lightweight wool and silk bandanas that have been screen printed by hand in England with a fine paisley print. Roll them up, tie with a sailor's knot and wear them inside or outside of a shirt collar, shirt jacket or sweater.

Perfectly comfortable and exclusive to the A Suitable Wardrobe Haberdashery. $135.

Hanging Out

I suppose it is only more evidence that I am a clothing geek, but I am quite content to hang out at a tailor's shop. Years ago, it was common for idle dandies to while away their afternoons drinking port and talking flannel at Rubinacci or Poole before moving on to the theater or the gaming tables. We have less time for that today, but our small world is not paid much attention to by media of any sort and the premises of a well connected tailor remain the best way to hear the gossip and learn about what is new.

For example, had I not wandered around Davies for a bit I would never have learned that one of the great old names in tweed, Hunter's of Brora, is weaving once more, seven years after closing. I saw books of keeper's tweed, as well as more wearable 16 ounce/480 gram cloth in patterns that have not been available for a couple of decades. I am uncertain whether Hunters can remain alive with offerings at that weight when so much of the market has moved to 14 ounces (420 grams) but those swatches got me thinking of tweed again. And I never would have known about them any other way.

That said, it is a shame that few of the tailors I know have much of a facility for customer interaction. The customers are the enthusiasts after all - it is they who will talk each other into an extra jacket or one more pair of slipons. Hanging out takes little more than two wing chairs and a bottle of refreshments, and it should be encouraged.

Photo by Chloë Lederman

The Lighter Colored Necktie

Many of us were taught, or at least I was, that the shirt should be lighter in color than the jacket and the necktie darker than the shirt, This flies in the face of all those white warped British club ties for summer but (little about menswear is completely consistant) the British have it right. In the photo, John Fitzgerald Kennedy pairs his charcoal worsted with a light blue shirt and a green on cream foulard.

A Quick Pop Into Drakes

For some unknown reason, moments after I land at London Heathrow I begin saying "pop," as in "Let's pop in for some coffee." It is hardly the most attractive turn of phrase and strikes me as totally affected but I do not seem able to control myself. So it should come as no surprise that I popped into Drakes on Clifford Street the other day, where Michael Hill was kind enough to show me around.

The Clifford Street store adds odd jackets, rainwear, made to measure shirts and a few other categories of clothing to the neckties, scarves and pocket squares that are Drakes core products. And, despite the presence of the other lines, it comes as no surprise that neckties represent half of the store's business. They include the usual wovens of course, but this season the lead is played by wool challis, complemented by wool and silk pochettes in the same seasonal patterns. Throw in a madder silk scarf or six and you have the quintessential fall product display in the photo.

Madder and challis of course are the best possible complements to the season's jackets. A challis tie looks great next to a madder square, while a madder scarf or necktie is a very nice foil to a wool and silk blend in a tweedy breast pocket. And there are choices aplenty this year.

Sadly, upon leaving Drakes I popped into Starbucks for a coffee. There is one every couple of doors along Picadilly these days and it was not until I was seated that it dawned on me that this space had for many years been occupied by one of my favorite book sellers. Just what the world needed: one less book store and one more Starbucks.

Photo by Chloe Lederman

Addio

A friend told me of a bespoke tailor on the island of Capri, rather obscurely located in Ana Capri, the mountaintop town at the end of the island's road. I did not look for him very diligently however, and he is apparently fated to never appear on one of these virtual pages. On the other hand, my idle wanderings did turn up another form of Capri bespoke, several same day made to order sandalmakers ($150-$250 a pair).

Those sandalmakers are a throwback really, to a time not terribly long ago when all clothing was made locally for the individual. The customer received exactly what he wanted, or rather, what the maker thought he should have. I can relate that experience to the overpriced black dinner jacket in the Dolce & Gabbana shop window on the island's main shopping walkway. A designer at D&G decided that a clueless stranger should have a satin lapelled, pocket flapped and two cloth covered buttoned construct cut too small, to be worn with a no longer fashionable black satin four in hand necktie. Some things have not changed.

Another thang that has hardly changed is the perfection of Capri. Its quiet beauty makes it one of those rare places where time spent doing absolutely nothing is rewarding. But addio for now.

Berluti Ate My Bootmaker

Despite my adolescent yearnings, as I slide towards my own spacetime appointment in Missolonghi, I realize that I have nothing in common with Lord Byron. I can say, however, that one day I awoke to find not myself, but my shoes, famous. Internet famous, at least, that particular degree of shameful notoriety restricted to a subculture and unknown to well-adjusted people (fortunately, with the advent of the Internet, the latter number fewer and fewer among us.) The work of modern poetry in question was a pair of bespoke buff leather slip-ons whose high instep featured the decorative interlock pattern that gives the style its name: butterfly loafers. My e-friend the Russian picador and style blogger banis had unbeknownst to me reposted the image, a photo taken six years ago when the pair was new. Somewhat surprised, I watched as the republished photos made their way across various blogs to something called pinterest and eventually someone’s Facebook page. They were my first order from Anthony Delos, the French bespoke shoemaker who, we now learn, will be joining LVMH’s burgeoning men’s fashion juggernaut Berluti.

Before I go any further, here for the magpie eye of the casual reader is a link to the original post by banis. And here also is a photo of the shoes today, more than six years on, including a small amount of patination by Delos early on in their lifespan using darker polish on the seams and stitching. He realized them with a poetry and sensuality I knew by then my writing would not have.

A potted history of both Delos and Berluti is in order, since one was a small, humble but plucky bespoke shoemaker and cobbler and the other is Patrick Arnault’s attempt at creating, in the words of recent press, “the most haute couture menswear brand in the world.”

Based in Saumur, historically a center for riding and bootmaking, Delos apprenticed with the Compagnons du Devoir, an association of French craftsmen in various disciplines, from tailoring and bootmaking to cabinetry and chocolatemaking. The Compagnons require a young artisan to literally become a journeyman and complete a tour of training stages with various masters all over France. Having trained with shoemakers and orthopedists in Aix-en-Provence and Lyons as well as Cologne in Germany, Delos then spent four years as a bespoke shoemaker at John Lobb in Paris. As suitably informed readers of this blog no doubt know, Lobb Paris’ bespoke operations are rather better regarded than those of its former parent establishment in St James’s, London. Certainly, Lobb Paris’ bespoke creations seem to retain all the best elements of its British ancestor (classic proportions with enduring strength and quality) while introducing a hint of French sleekness and attention to detail… but then, that’s a bit of a trope of expensive menswear writing, isn’t it?

While still quite young, Delos left Lobb to open his own bespoke shop in Paris in 2004, and that is where, in 2006, I discovered him while wandering around Montmartre. He made me five pairs of shoes and boots, each one carefully discussed and thought over, rendered in trial shoes made out of spare lengths of leather in order to make sure the fit and pattern were right, over numerous visits and follow up visits where I got to know him and his several apprentices well. Delos did some of the work from his home in Saumur, visiting his shop in Paris to see clients and carry out fittings. In addition to making me wonderful shoes, some of which may have tested his natural classicism, he also carried out repairs for me, including completely refurbishing my old pair of Maxwells (described in an older post), referred me to fellow Compagnons whom I could trust to repair my briefcase without having to send it back to London, and generally treated me with the honesty, courtesy and competence we’d like to expect from bespoke craftsmen but frankly, rarely receive. Delos’ shop was more than a custom shop, it was a full service cobbler’s carrying out repairs of all kinds of shoes for people in the neighborhood – about as egalitarian as a bespoke maker could get. And in that tradition of honorable craftsmanship he also was approachable and attentive when an order needed correcting, not because of anything he did wrong, but because I hadn’t realized how a try-on pair should fit. What sets one artisan apart from another is how he or she makes things right when the customer gives him or her the chance to, because inevitably, no matter how talented, prestigious or expensive the maker, problems do arise in one form or another. However, if you have a productive relationship with your shoemaker or tailor, you can also expect fit to improve over the course of orders, since he’ll have the opportunity to make additional corrections to your last or pattern – and because you’ll have gotten to understand each other better.

The above implies that a first order will necessarily be imperfect, but with Delos I’d say mine was actually pretty amazing. I had been looking for someone to make me a pair of butterfly slipons. They’re a relatively uncommon design; those that the English shoemakers offered ready-to-wear were too low-vamped and didn’t come high enough up, while French shoemakers referred to the design as a “fermeture Satan” because it is devilishly hard to pull off. I took a chance on my happenstance discovery of Delos, and ordered the pair from Delos based on his time at Lobb and a reassuring half hour’s discussion with him about him and shoemaking where he seemed sincere, down-to-earth and knowledgeable. In fact I had talked to a few other shoemakers in Paris about the possibility of making this pair, including Berluti, where I learned that their bespoke price at the time was not as insultingly high as I thought it would have been, and was informed that their bespoke shoemaker was away but would call. He never did.

Berluti was founded in 1899 by an Italian immigrant to Paris. Several generations of the family ran the firm over the course of the 20th century. By midcentury it had acquired sufficient reputation to draw not only French celebrities and luminaries (from Yves Montand to Jacques Lacan), but Kennedys and Shrivers, and, famously, Andy Warhol, whose custom has become one of the legends today’s Berluti is still metaphorically dining out on. By the 1980s, Alan Flusser was able to write that Berluti also offered a sizeable ready-to-wear collection in addition to its bespoke, although he qualified that the designs were generally somewhat heavy and substantial (how things have changed). Still, the house certainly had a degree of flamboyance even back then, attracting the likes of Manuel Noriega while American news programs were still calling him a “Panamanian strongman,” and infamously, in the 1970s, making the most expensive shoes ever made. The pearl-studded court shoes are still, to my knowledge, in the Guinness Book of World Records (a Google image search may turn them up) and were made by Berluti for the coronation of the late Jean-Bedel Bokassa as Emperor of the Central African Republic (since you’re wondering, the shoes cost $80,000 in 1970s dollars). In addition to his eccentric pretensions, Bokassa was a scoundrel of pervasive rottenness whose ties to Valéry Giscard d’Estaing helped bring down that conservative French president’s government. When Bokassa’s turn came to be on the run, a more clever scoundrel, the infamous Bernard Tapie, bought Bokassa’s French properties for pennies on the dollar. Perhaps Bokassa should have realized the hubris of using the former Bourbon crown jewelers, Arthus-Bertrand, to make his crown. No word on what happened to the shoes.

In any case, in the early 1990s LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault purchased the firm, reportedly in order to make sure his bespoke shoemaker stayed in business. With the LVMH purchase appears to have come a drive to raise the profile of the brand, spearheaded by the irrepressible last of the line, Olga Berluti. Olga has a previous history as a costume designer. Perhaps her best known work was on Farinelli il Castrato, and that film’s opulence, ornateness and slight perversity find clear parallels in the ethos she has crafted for today’s Berluti, via oracular pronouncements about the importance of leather tanned by moonlight and polished with champagne, about tramps with the feet of princes who painstakingly save their franc notes for a pair of Berlutis, about selecting specially damaged leather from the hides of “rebellious cows” to make shoes for Andy Warhol. And yet, for all of that moonshine, her Berluti has been incredibly influential among high-end shoes, largely responsible for the resurgence of the wholecut oxford (a shoe made from a single piece of leather), for the vogue for drop-dead gorgeous antique patinas on new shoes (which were offered gratis in any color imaginable on new Berlutis), and for undeniably creative designs involving scarifying or tattooing leather – in other words, not just inventing new shoe patterns but manipulating the surface of leather itself. Some of those creative designs, of course, have been misfires, including something called the Indio, a monstrosity looking like something Victor Frankenstein would make as a final project for a shoemaking course at The Learning Annex. His creator dreamed him up (literally) while snowed in with Byron in Switzerland.

Delos ‘absorption is not the first convenient acquisition by Berluti after all, Berluti moved into its current Paris flagship location at 28, rue Marbeuf after London bootmaker Henry Maxwell vacated its Paris shop there around the outbreak of World War II. Like the outposts of many other British bespoke makers in the French capital, Maxwells Paris closed at the beginning of World War II, never to reopen again. And as written earlier in this blog, Berluti has recently purchased the Left Bank shop Arnys for its location and some sort of co-branded bespoke scheme.

All these recent acquisitions are in keeping with LVMH’s stated goals for Berluti, and accompany a focused push into expensive ready-to-wear.With Delos, Berluti gains the halo of a prestige acquisition, a talented and relatively well-known artisan who recently was voted “Meilleur Ouvrier de France,” a sort of best-in-class honor for the craftsman creating the finest set of bespoke shoes in a competition. It also will effectively remove a potential competitor turning out bespoke work of the finest quality at somewhat lower prices than Berluti. Lastly, it will gain Delos’ knowhow and skill making bespoke shoes and creating samples for new designs – although my understanding is that there already are bespoke shoemakers at Berluti, including Delos’ former colleague at John Lobb Paris, Patrice Rock. Because good bespoke is typically not scalable or very lucrative, my suspicion is that Berluti will gain much more financially from using Delos’ name in their press to draw customers to the Berluti ready-to-wear or factory made-to-order - one of their ready-to-wear lines is produced without sizes stamped on it anywhere in order to look more bespoke, they told me at the shop. The sort of… person… who would find that selling point attractive is the sort of person Berluti would be looking to draw here.

I tried to send Delos an email of congratulation, but his website now directs to Berluti’s site. I have a bit of regret to lose the bespoke shoemaker who made me four pairs of wonderful shoes and a pair of boots that are the most spectacular thing I ever put on my feet, who dealt with me honestly and honorably, who made things right when they needed to be put right. Perhaps I feel a bit possessive of Delos as, to my knowledge, my initial visits with and postings about him years ago happened to be some of his earliest coverage on the internet and, supposedly, drew the interest of a number of French and American bespoke shoe enthusiasts who became satisfied customers. I have always pointed out that while my occasional posts may have caused a few people to open his door, his talent and diligence made them satisfied and repeat customers.

So I don’t believe this acquisition will lead to cheaper Berluti bespoke pricing or greater accessibility of Delos shoes via international bespoke visits. Berluti’s focus now is providing wealthy customers across the world with ready-to-wear with bespoke inspiration, however diluted (visible and recognizable logos obligé). But as Delos once pointed out to me, bespoke artisans need the large luxury brands too: in addition to helping them out with their bespoke, these artisans make the samples and one-offs these brands use in designing their ready-to-wear lines.

What do I believe? Not in much, nowadays, except a few simple and reliable things: a good night’s sleep, a good cup of coffee, and Tony Iommi’s opening riff to “Paranoid.” But at least one can walk in beauty, without being a choirboy.

Words and photo by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans