Sweaters For Layering

Layering is the best way to deal with the warm days and cool nights of spring, warm fall and even summer, and this week the ASW store features three new sweaters by Inis Meáin that are perfect for the season.

In the photo is a beautiful button front pub jacket woven in a gray washed linen Donegal pattern with blue flecks. It is complemented by washed linen crewnecks in light blue or beige, and a lightweight linen and cashmere crewneck that has to be felt to be believed (the first of those is now sitting in my closet), in either light blue or light olive.

Inis Meáin makes some of the best sweaters in the world. Layer one.

Brown And Blue

The Italians love the combination of brown and blue and their affection is easy to understand. The two colors are roughly opposite on a color wheel, which means they are complementary.

Try brown and blue in a necktie, where one color picks up your jacket and the other your shirt. Wear them together in an odd jacket (Harrison's Moonbeam book has a good looking mid-weight jacketing), or combine a dark tan or light brown sweater with a blue jacket like the combination in the photo. You can even wear brown shoes and a navy suit. :-)

Wear brown and blue.



A Mystery

I tend to eat lunch in a market in the small farming town where my studio is located, and the other day in the checkout queue there a woman turned and thanked me for wearing a jacket, since she "never see(s) one any more." She was correct - there is never a jacket to be seen amidst the denim and polyester - and though I would not expect to see city clothing in the country I do not understand where people put their stuff without the extra half dozen pockets that a jacket provides.

Five or six pockets seem to me to be the minimum necessary: one for keys, one for a money clip and a card case, one for reading glasses, one for the cell phone, one for a handkerchief and the sixth for a passport when necessary. And though I complicate my own pocket challenges by ordering my trousers without pockets in the rear, if I think to leave the house on a casual day wearing only a sweater and trousers I inevitably look at the phone and eyeglass case in my hand and reach for a shirt jacket or gilet with its additional storage.

Pocket saving opportunities have occured to me over the years, the more obvious being laser eye surgery to do away with the reading glasses but hardly limited to that. I also rejected the idea of keyless entry to my home as I would be carrying a car key anyway but even with both of those changes I would need a jacket's pockets. And I am reasonably confident that the majority of the men at my lunchtime market have neither laser corrected vision or a 21st century security system. Neither do they have briefcases, so how do they carry their stuff? It is a mystery to me.

In the photograph, my favorite set of mid-weight jacket pockets are worn with a light blue chambray shirt, Self Tipped Royal Twill Silk Foulard necktie and lightweight silk pocket square, the latter two by Drake's London. Below the waist, a pair of 15 ounce dark gray fresco trousers and Norwegian style slipon shoes.

Blue, Black, Purple And Orange

Influenced as I am by the sobriety of black tie I am often conflicted about how I dress for evening. Torn between the simple and the obvious, I usually err on the side of the simplistic and a recent night was no different. Nonetheless, in the midst of the blue wool, lightweight blue and white paisley silk square, white voile shirt, black shoes and blue and white Mogador bow tie there are a few hints of color. Out of sight, the braces are amethyst barathea, and occasionally in view are purple silk socks (Bresciani used the last of its purple yarn in knitting them for the ASW store).

If a man is to add color in the evening, the always acceptable decorative opportunity with black tie is one's jewelry and the same applies to suits after six. Though they are hardly in your face, orange coral links add interest to an ensemble that may need it.

Custom And Black Shoes

I am fully aware that essentially no-one in the world's financial centers agrees with my dislike for the daytime combination of black shoes and navy blue suits, but black and dark blue simply do not complement each other in my opinion. Rather, I prefer oxblood, my personal favorite, or dark brown, like style icon Beppe Modenese in the photo. If a man wears black shoes, his suit should be charcoal and his destination a very solemn one.

I am not the only one that prefers colors other than black with his blue. G. J. Cleverley reported that it did not sell a single pair of black shoes outside of New York in their U. S. visits last year, and none at all in Asia. Now I will grant you that we can find lapses of taste anywhere, but perhaps we should simply consider places other than financial centers (no matter how urban) to be in the country. And under the traditional rules of dress, in the country brown shoes reign supreme when the sun shines. That would take the Italian-influenced among us off the hook, as it were.

These thoughts occured to me the other day as I laid out my clothing for a day that would stretch into evening without a change of clothing. There were black shoes next to my navy trousers and I thought to exchange them for oxblood before leaving them be. For as much as I dislike black shoes during the day, I dislike anything but black after sunset even more. Sometimes custom may not give the best result, but other times it does.

High Marx For Style

He was so good as Captain Spaulding [in Animal Crackers] that I would have let him play the part indefinitely, if they had allowed me to smoke in the audience.”

- Groucho Marx

There is a dusty old tale of a young stilt-walker, a member of Pender’s “Giants” – a troupe that traveled the American vaudeville circuit during the 1920s – who was fortunate enough to meet his childhood idols, the Marx Brothers. While the older brothers vied for his attention, the stilt-walker focused intently on the youngest sibling, the dapper “straight man” of the group.

As Archibald Leach remembered it, he came away impressed by Zeppo Marx’ slicked-back hairstyle, improving upon the look – in his opinion – by mixing Brilliantine with Dixie Peach, a pomade used by black performers of the era. The concoction gave Leach’s hair a bluish-black sheen and an air of sophistication which hastened his transformation into Cary Grant, movie star and style icon. Years later, Grant would fondly recall Zeppo Marx as “the young handsome one, the ‘straight’ man, the fellow I copied” in the early phase of his stylistic development. At one point, Grant would even tinker with the idea of adding a bow tie to his sartorial arsenal, after seeing Zeppo sporting the accessory on-screen – a short-lived endeavor, thankfully.

Born Herbert Manfred Marx, it is unclear how the youngest Marx Brother came to be known as Zeppo. One story was that the name came from the zeppelin airships that were popular at the time of his birth. Another said it was from a vaudeville chimp named Zippo that did chin-ups and other exercises that Herbert was fond of. Initially excluded from the family troupe because of his age, Zeppo eventually earned a place by default when brother Gummo left to join the army at the tail end of World War I. Thrust headlong into the chaotic stage routines spawned in the maniacal minds of his debauched brethren, Zeppo adjusted quickly – it was said that he became so adept at imitating his brothers that he was able to substitute whenever Groucho, Chico, or Harpo were unavailable to perform.

Elegantly clad in a blue blazer, polka dot tie, cream trousers and a pair of spectator shoes, Zeppo was often cast adrift in a sea of his brothers’ insanity. Considered superfluous by some or, even more harshly, irrelevant to the success of the act, critics failed to recognize that Zeppo’s romantic leads were subtle jabs at the wooden, corpse-like characters so pervasive in 1920s Hollywood cinema. While Groucho, Chico, and Harpo were gouging out the eyes of the tired, formulaic Hollywood plots and lazy character development of the era, Zeppo was impishly mocking those same worn-out clichés, albeit with perhaps a bit less venom than his siblings.

As Chico, Groucho, and Harpo cut a swath of mayhem and chaos through Hollywood, both on-stage and off – as one perhaps apocryphal legend has it, Chico was warned repeatedly to be on his best behavior at one event, only to calmly approach Tallulah Bankhead later in the evening with the rather terse observation, “You know, I really want to fuck you” – Zeppo moved in a more conservative direction. After appearing in six classic films with his brothers, including The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup, he retired in 1933. He became an agent and with brother Gummo founded a talent agency in Hollywood that discovered Lana Turner, among others. Good with his hands – Zeppo kept the Marx family’s vaudeville touring car running for years – he owned a company which built machine parts for the war effort during World War II.

While critics have contended for years that Zeppo was undeserving of the accolades heaped upon his brothers - a position unfortunately abetted by Groucho’s frequent wisecracks, such as when, upon the studio’s request that the remaining brothers reduce their salary after Herbert’s retirement, Groucho was said to have exclaimed, “We’re twice as funny without Zeppo!” – a recent wave of critical reassessments have cast Herbert Manfred Marx in a more sympathetic light, perhaps ensuring that the youngest Marx Brother gets the last laugh, after all.

-Words by Daniele Delerme Flores

Use It

Men’s clothing forums, and, I suppose it has come to that, clothing blogs, regularly entertain questions from neophytes asking for recommendations for their first “real” pair of shoes or suit, as if until that moment they had covered their shame only with more shame. At the same time, such forums also encourage the collectors, regulars who court fevered praise with serially posted pictures of their newest, unused acquisitions – peer-approved brands of shoes with virgin soles, handfuls of ties from the latest obscure maker du jour, armfuls of carefully folded custom shirts. Taken together, the critical reader could have the impression that items of desire, clothing items worth discussing, are either coveted or fetishized but never in any case utilized: coveted and idealized prior to acquisition, fetishized once acquired and displayed in new condition for the delectation of other anonymous men. (Of course, said critical reader is a made up construct, since on the Internet perspective, let alone critical perspective, is as meaningless or undefinable as in the more out-there theories of cosmology.)

Underpinning these insecurities is a theme of seeking approval, the currency of Internet communication. In classic clothing, items of a certain supposed quality and/or exclusivity elicit that approval. People who are just entering that world may be seeking such approval, or may have misunderstood a clique’s consensus (known on the Internet as groupthink) as a recommendation for something of actual quality and value. Currently the vogue is for items that supposedly convey enduring style, as if style is conveyed through one’s possessions and such style could be timeless. It isn’t owning certain items (whether Wal-Mart Harris Tweed hangers or bespoke clothing from a forum-shortlisted Neapolitan tailor) that confers style on you in any lasting manner. If you want to accede to the mythical land of permanent fashion (or at least, borrowing a page from our Wikipedia cosmology reading, approach that event horizon), acquire things that are well-thought out, useful to your life, comfortable and look good. And then use and enjoy them.

Items like the well-worn shawl-collared cardigan hanging here, made by Caerlee Mills five years ago. During the fall and winter, I basically live in it, wearing it almost every day for some period of time. After coming home and removing my jacket, with shirt and flannel trousers during the week, or with jeans and a casual shirt for a weekend day, or (as I’ve been doing this winter) with a t-shirt and Calida sweats lying back on the couch working through all the seasons of Buffy on Netflix. (As it happens, I’m wearing it right now prior to medicating the dog.)

It’s thick and warm, hitting its stride a few years in like a good cashmere sweater should. The ribbed knit is known as a fisher rib, here in four-ply cashmere, although in today’s inflated terms some would call it eight-ply. In knitwear, ply simply means thickness and there is no set standard for an individual thickness. A single-ply cashmere used to make up into a light knit, a two-ply (involving two strands of yarn twisted around each other) into a substantial one, but nowadays both the math and the yarn from certain sources can get suspiciously fuzzy. In any event, this is dense and heavy, comfortable and reassuring and welcomingly soft. Worth being lived in. And while living in it, adapt it and evolve with it as your life evolves. That’s the only way to make your clothing have lasting style.

Quality shouldn’t intimidate you. Buy what you love and take advantage of it. Use it appropriately and don’t store it away in a closet because you’re afraid to scuff the soles or otherwise render your idealized purchase – those first “real” shoes or that first “real” suit – actually real and perishable. If you really do subscribe to the belief that better quality is better value for clothing, it’s the only way to get that value. Don’t keep it in the closet for the real occasion that never arrives. That said, take reasonable care of it and use it fit for purpose. You wouldn't go rock climbing in a business suit, so don’t go for a hike in a pair of English dress oxfords and don’t slog in the rain in leather-soled bespoke shoes, at least not without Swims.

The thick shawl-collared cardigan appears to be having a moment right now, but that’s not to say that it’s ever really unfashionable, especially as something to wear around at home since most of us, myself included, have no place in our lives for those incredible silk velvet Charvet smoking jackets, even when entertaining at home (although the exquisite braiding and tasseling of their fringed belts made me regret not engaging in Chris-Walken-as-The-Continental levels of dress-up, glass of fine cham-panyeh optional). If you do want to see an example of knitwear that really does go out of fashion, check out the Cowichan (any old episodes of Starsky & Hutch should turn one up). That’s also somewhat fashionable now. Caveat lector.

‑Words and photo by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

Put Paisley In Your Pocket

Silk pocket squares should rarely be solid, and the best are both multi-colored and patterned in a directionless way to complement a variety of jackets and/or neckties. Directionless of course usually means paisleys and the like, such as the two dozen examples in New Arrivals on the ASW store. Heavy silk, printed in Como, Italy with edges hand sewn in Naples and well priced as these things go. Put one in your pocket.

Do Not Fear

One of the hoary adages about dressing is the advice that checks and stripes are not suitable companions, and yet that need not be the case. The issue is scale you see. When both check and stripe are suitably large the effect is harmonious and the eye is not stopped by any sort of pattern clash. Indeed, in the case of the ensemble in the illustration from 1934, the complexity adds interest.

Do not fear checks and stripes.

The Short Life Of Some Neckties

The life of a necktie has but two conclusions. Most are thrown away when their width no longer pleases the eye due to changing fashion, for, unlike other clothing, I am not aware of a charity on the face of the earth that knows how to put out of style neckties to any worthwhile use. And, there being no effective way to remove stains, the rest come to a premature end during a meal.

That said, I am coming to believe that certain ties are more likely to die prematurely than others. I usually go years without destroying a tie but in 2013 I have already ruined two light blue garza fina grenadines in consecutive months. And I would put that down to coincidence had the same thing not occurred to two of my irreplaceable-in-the-short-term solid wine twills. Worse, the latter catastrophes occured in each case on the first wearing. It may be that I am simply becoming sloppier as I age, but I guarantee that I will not be tempting fate with a replacement of either design again.

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a way to judge the propensity of a particular necktie to attract spills and so we are left with preventative measures. The best way to protect a tie from stains is of course to remove it before the meal, but neither that nor throwing the thing over the shoulder strike me as very well mannered. I am instead resolved to take my future meals wearing double breasted jackets exclusively, and to keep them buttoned while I eat. As the photograph makes clear, that leaves little of the tie exposed to harm, and furthermore what is in sight is somewhat shielded by the chin.

In the photograph, a red dots on white necktie that has stayed clean so far.

The Hang Of A Pocket

Napolisumisura is visiting San Francisco next month, and after I made my appointment I thought to get out the jacket they made for me last fall. Blasé as I was about the thought of beginning to work with another tailor last year, the construction of this jacket convinced me to give them a place in my rotation, replacing not one but two of the four firms I had been using. And, though it is not obvious, the reason is in the photograph.

I have written before that bespoke does not really mean the customer gets whatever he requests. He actually gets whatever his tailor is used to doing (remind me to one day relate the story of how, when asked for a smaller pocket inside my jacket that would hold my iPhone without letting it fall over, one of them simply sewed a bit of thread to divide the standard pocket at the top which made each side too small to insert the phone but left the pocket untouched otherwise so that any iPhone worth its salt will promptly fall on its side if actually placed within). This "used to doing" thing was once the bane of my existence with at least three Savile Row tailors who, asked to make a quarter lined coat for summer, would routinely deliver something half lined (not to overdo the parentheses, but global warming means there are signs that Britain is actually having summers these days and the residents will presumably begin demanding summer clothing - it will be a shame if they have to get it from the Italians).

At any rate, when I asked Napolisumiura to make a linen jacket I requested just a bit of Ermazine (a viscose somewhat lighter than Bemberg) in the sleeves and shoulders and self lining for the rest of the coat. That meant that the jacket's material would need to be turned over in front if I wanted interior pockets (something has to hold the pocket after all) but the idea is that linen breathes much better than viscose and the result is cooler wearing than a quarter lined coat. And, this being the way they do things in Naples, I actually got what I asked for.

They do not have Scottish winters in southern Italy and I will bet that there would be something funky about Napolisumisura's heavy tweeds (they have already refused to make trousers with an English back on the grounds that they do not know how), but for summer clothes I apparently no longer have any complaints.

Becoming Hair Free

I have a problem these days, or rather two of them, and no idea what to do about it (or them). My problem is named Cognac and Cosmo, my wife's two identical tan and white Manx cats. Lovely things, with good dispositions, and hair. Quite a bit of hair really, and it is really quite out of hand.

In fairness, I will be the first to admit that coping with cat hair in a conventional house is merely an occasional inconvenience that keeps the clothing brushmakers in business. Our cats however cannot, according to my better half, deal with the traumas of life without constant human companionship and so they travel with us every week from the country to the city and back. And, instead of a house, we have in the city a small apartment that does not seem to be large enough for the four of us, or rather the two of them, for every bit of carpet seems to hold a few cat hairs that attach themselves to any clothing that comes in contact with it. Or simply comes into the general area.

One of the completely unexpected things about cat hair is its animal magnetism. Regular readers may recall that I wash my own socks each Sunday morning as the apparent difficulties of cold water washing on the delicate cycle are too overwhelming for the housekeeper. And though they may only come in contact with the carpet for a few seconds while I am putting on my shoes, every pair of socks comes out of the wash with a few strands of long white hair still attached. You can only imagine what this same magnetism does to my trousers, even though I never sit anywhere in the apartment while dressed and am careful to put them on while standing on a presumeably more hair free tile floor. And my jackets! How does cat hair attach itself to jackets that never come within several feet of the floor?

Once on of course, hair must be removed. I had always assumed that the answer to the odd hair or dust mote on one's clothing is a good brushing, but I can state definitively that past a certain hair density all a brush does is move the stuff around. Those sticky rollers work, but they leave a residue on the garments themselves and I won't let them near me. And so I find myself spending an inordinate mount of time picking hairs off of myself at all hours. It's really an intolerable situation.

This entire hair thing has been going on for a year now and though I am continually promised more frequent vacuuming, conditions are not improved. I have an idea that I am investigating though. A separate apartment in the same building might be just the thing. The living room would make an extravagant dressing area and converting the bedroom might finally give me enough closet space. But first I have to sniff out the attitude of the condominium board towards my walking through the halls in my dressing gown twice each day. They may be OK with it though. After all, I would be hair free.

The Equinox Approaches

According to Wikipedia, "an equinox occurs twice a year (around 20 March and 22 September), when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator." This is a good thing for this week is the Vernal Equinox that represents the official end of winter and start of spring.

Spring brings with it a new set of clothing challenges and opportunities, among them how to cope with days that can be both warm and chill. I like a spring sweater knitted from lighter weight yarn for that purpose on casual days. Cotton is commonly used for its lower cost but tends to stretch and much of it lasts only a couple of seasons. Linen works well for temperature control but has a slightly rustic finish. The prince of fabrics, cashmere, on the other hand feels great next to the skin but has tended to be either too warm or too delicate.

Traditionally, lighter weight cashmere has been knitted in single or double ply (ply being the size of the needle used for the knitting where more plys generally means heavier yarn and a warmer sweater). Double ply knitwear is the traditional slightly-too-warm-for-heated-rooms version that we know so well and single ply is unfortunately a bit too delicate for something that should ideally last a lifetime. There is however a newer double ply made with what are two single ply strands of yarn twisted together and then knitted with a double ply needle so it combines greater strength with a lighter weight that is better suited for spring.

In the photo, a double ply spring weight Inis Meáin sweater in 50% linen and 50% cashmere. Worn over a short sleeved polo on a 60 degree (15C) day, it is comfortable over a range of moderate temperatures.

The Silk Route

The only silk shirts of which I was aware as a young man were the gaudy printed ones produced by the Italian designer brands, but over the last year I have found reasons to dig a little deeper. The first was a mention of a silk-shirt wearing character (Sir Nicholas Pratt) in Edward St Aubyn’s novel Never Mind. It was news to me that men from Britain’s upper classes had been wearing silk shirts in the Sixties. Then I read that the heroic British mountaineer George Mallory climbed Everest in silk shirts. And finally I laid my hands on a series of articles about dandies, which were published by Country Life magazine twenty years ago. In one of these there’s a contemporaneous style profile of the 11^th Duke of Devonshire, which includes a shot of at least twenty monogrammed cream-coloured silk shirts made for him by Turnbull & Asser. Yet two decades later silk shirts (aside from the aforementioned printed ones) seem almost extinct.

Where did it all go wrong for silk shirts? The problem, according to Andrew Penrose, a sales assistant at Turnbull & Asser, is that, “Central heating has rendered them obsolete because silk is warmer to wear than cotton." His company only offers rather ungentlemanly satin silks on a bespoke basis. Meanwhile Frank Foster, shirt maker to some of the best dressed men of all time, still makes some silk shirts, but blames their decline in the quality of the fabric, and the complications of laundering it, for silk’s unpopularity. Asked for tips on how to launder silk shirts he memorably said, “Don’t give them to your wife, give them to a proper laundry. No wives are any good at laundering, especially rich people’s wives. I tell my clients to marry peasants.” He also talked of the difficulties involved in making silk shirts, which may well be equally important, if less readily discussed.

Robert Whittaker, the shirt maker at Savile Row tailors Dege & Skinner told me, “We do indeed make them. I’ve just made two evening shirts from cream spun silk.” However, he admitted that silk is now mainly used for evening shirts, “The problem is that you can’t get stripes or designs that are suitable for a man’s shirt, because cream spun silk can’t be dyed any other colour.” The truth of this last remark was born out by a trip to see Stephen Lachter, another West End shirt maker. He showed me a swatch of spun silk shirtings offered by Bennett Silks, of which only the cream was convincing. Lachter fondly remember the old days: “I had customers who’d order a dozen cream silk shirts a year, they’d wear nothing else.”

To complete a review of the London shirt makers it’s worth pointing out that Emma Willis offers both plain spun silk and four different colours of striped oxford silk (which come from Switzerland), Budd offers a few solid colours. Sean O’Flynn also offers cream spun silk, and he made the shirt in the photographs. Men keen to inject some ducal style into their wardrobe should move quickly, before the silk shirt disappears entirely.

Words by Mansel Fletcher and photography by Chloë Lederman

Add Some Color

Color is a harbinger of spring, and the cherry blossoms among other signs are either out or coming soon in much of the Northern Hemisphere. That means it is about time to refresh the colors in your wardrobe, and our newly arrived Bresciani socks and Simonnot-Godard handkerchiefs will be just the thing.

Spring's first signs include colorful over the calf Bresciani socks in lemon, lilac, light blue and olive cotton that are sure to liven up any ankles. They are complemented by Montmartre and Symphony cotton handkerchiefs in four and five colorways respectively. A generous 16 ½” (42 cm) on a side, their hand rolled edges will always be visible in your jacket pocket.

Add some color for Spring.

Photo: Simonnot-Godard

The Viennese Balls

Relentlessly prowling the internet for information on formal and semi-formal dress, Peter Marshall of the Black Tie Guide, by far the most informative and accurate web site on those topics, calls our attention to an online booklet called Dress Codes. Dress Codes is a guide to dress for the Viennese ball season, the principal remaining home of formal evening dress for men in the Western world (although it is mandatory at only two of the 26 balls mentioned specifically).

Recalling as they do another time, in 2010 UNESCO named several of the Viennese balls as part of the world's intangible cultural heritage, and, recognizing the lack of information on proper formal and semi-formal dress, the organizers published Dress Codes to help keep international guests from arriving in a business suit (or a cocktail dress as the guide is aimed at both men and women). This is particularly useful for white tie, where aside from Black Tie Guide there is little information available on the proprieties. It is interesting reading, however I did notice that it neglects to mention the lead times involved for acquiring well made formal clothes. As Simon Cundey of Henry Poole told me a while ago, the tailcoat is one of the most complex garments known to tailoring and requires at least two and preferably three fittings instead of the usual one that bespoke customers are accustomed to.

Gentlemen thinking of attending the Viennese season take note.

It Can Feel Cool To Be Warm

Not many of us live in unheated castles any longer (not that many of us ever did), and that is generally a sign that civilization has progressed somewhat. Still, it is a shame to be denied the opportunity to wear certain things. Consider, for example, the velvet smoking jacket.

Velvet of course is the material of choice for rooms full of cigar fumes as it does not pick up the smell of smoke (which is why those velvet smoking fezes of Turkish origin were worn a century ago). And I will be the first to admit that I have a smoking jacket that is a lightweight velvet thing meant to be worn as a black tie substitute, unadorned but for black satin lapels and perfectly comfortable for dancing in the heated and completely smoke free ballroom at my club. But wearing a modern structured jacket is simply not the same as drinking one's coffee in a velvet robe with quilted lapels, piped pockets, and a tasseled belt, in a room with open windows to keep the temperature below sixty degrees (15 C).

In those circumstances it can feel cool to be warm in the cold, if you know what I mean.

Photo: Daniel Hanson

The Seasons Change And So Do I

We had our first 75 degree day (24 C) of the season in Northern California, and I have begun moving my heaviest clothing to storage. It gets replaced with ten ounce/300 gram stuff until it is all bagged up, and then my 12 to 14 ounce things (360 to 420 grams) will also be put away and the real summer clothing brought out (our climate being what it is, the ten ounce part of the wardrobe remains active until the end of warm fall as our July and August are chilly - anyone who has spent a summer here knows what I mean).

It is important to remember to have your clothes cleaned and mended before you bag them to put them away. Moths live on dirt that is removed by dry cleaning, so if you have clothes cleaned once a season this should be the time. Mending too is important because you won't remember that such and such a zipper is broken until you try to close your fly in six months when you are already late.

Optimist that I am, my version of this process is usually premature and generally brings on a cold spell. I nonetheless wore a ten ounce mohair and wool suit through the afternoon and on to dinner the other day, combining it with a light blue chambray shirt, an unlined Neapolitan necktie and a paisley silk square newly from the same source.

Remarkably, the forecast continues to call for mild temperatures.

Hair, Nose, Tan and Solaro

A friend sent a photo of the late Gianni Agnelli the other day asking "Why don't we look this good in our Solaro?" I replied that it's "the hair, the Roman nose, and the tan."

In the photo, a blue super oxford shirt, navy grenadine necktie and Solaro jacket. Maybe it would have looked better with a shirt that had a slight violet tone to the blue. It would definitely have looked better with the aforementioned hair, nose and tan.

Keep Things In Proportion

Alan Flusser wrote in 1985 that proportions dictate that a man's (single breasted - DBs take wider) jacket lapels should be slightly narrower than the width of his chest from collar to shoulder line, or about 3 1/2" (9 cm), and that his necktie whould be slightly narrower than his lapel (3 1/4" or 8 cm). The proportions of broader men require somewhat larger dimensions.

Over the years of course neckties in particular have varied in width from 2" to 5" (5 cm to 13 cm), as witnessed by then best dressed A. J. Drexel Biddle's narrow necktie and somewhat overly large lapels of fifty years ago in the photograph. And the strangeness of this look to our eyes only goes to demonstrate the point.

Keep things in proportion.

Louis Jourdan in The Return of Swamp Thing

 For a long time you have gone to bed very, very late. In the depths of a night as dark, opaque and disorienting as the high-octane Belgian beers that share your fridge only with cheese, Chateldon and strawberries, surrounded by so many bespoke shirts your cleaning lady complains she only has time to iron, you sink into the surf of an empty series of channels, searching for an escape before inevitably drifting into bittersweet dreams.

Muck and dreck. Rubber suits. Supporting actors who can only be described as the even poorer man’s Ivan Raimi and Dweezil Zappa, if such a thing were possible. The Return of Swamp Thing. And Louis Jourdan as Swampy’s archenemy, Anton Arcane, played not as the misshapen ghoul of the comics but as the stock smoothie villain, all sleek dinner jackets, silk pajamas and dressing gowns. You know he had long experience in that, from his relatively recent turn as Kamal Khan in Octopussy back to roles as the archetypal cad Rodolphe Boulanger (whose boots were always too well polished) in Madame Bovary and the treacherous aristocrat de Villefort in The Count of Monte Cristo opposite the fey king of the miniseries, Richard Chamberlain (ironically, this version of the Dumas story was essentially a shot-by-shot remake of a French version with Jourdan in the title role), and earlier opposite the delicious Leslie Caron in Gigi.

Who dressed these old actors taking their second- or third-billed roles in bad movies and miniseries or their guest star appearances in TV shows, appearing like they do out of time if not out of place in their finery, their undeniably elegant manners, their Continental charm? There’s a loneliness to it, an isolation that resonates with you this dark night. And you realize that you’re watching, amid the clichés and dreadful acting and self-aware embarrassing cheese, one of the last reminders of old Hollywood, of the old-school LA tailors like Eddie Schmidt and Jack Taylor who dressed the swells back when Slim Aarons was photographing them, of the old French tailors like Cristiani, who counted Jourdan among their customers, and even, through his Gigi costar Maurice Chevalier, a link back to a very real past of the 1920s Paris élégants who frequented the shirtmakers of rue de Rivoli, avenue de Castiglione and place Vendôme. Here in this low-budget, low-rent schlock, hanging on for the paycheck and dangling by a last thread of credibility, hanging on like you for the clothes, for ways to make life seem real.

The central, ironic conflict of Swamp Thing and his archenemy Arcane pits a man who has flamed out, lost his humanity in the most painful circumstances possible, seeking to regain some sort of self, against a man who would eagerly and literally give up his humanity in the pursuit of gain and power. Two different types of monsters, one haunted by what he has lost, one obsessed by everything he stands to gain, both mired in the tropes of bad filmmaking. Moral: on’t let yourself be ruled by your possessions or the pursuit of them, lest you one day awake to regret what you have given up. Have you lost your self, become, in Alan Moore’s words, “a ghost dressed in weeds,” aware of your own emptiness? Or even worse, have you willingly sacrificed your humanity for an empty thrill of growing forests of suits, sheaves of shirts, hoards of handmade shoes, become the sort of monster on the inside who welcomes the void and the darkness? It is so easy, more than ever now, to see and pursue beautiful things, and easier than ever to let that pursuit consume you.

You can find meaning even in a terrible film.

Other reasons to watch: This is schlock with very little to redeem it. Heather Locklear is at her least unbearable as Arcane’s ward Abby, while fans of Superman II will appreciate Sarah Douglas’ turn here (she played Ursa in that film to authentic style icon Terence Stamp’s General Zod). Dick Durock maintains as much quiet dignity as Swamp Thing as a man in a heavy green rubber suit can muster, soldiering on with stoicism into the TV series this movie spawned. While certain of The Return of Swamp Thing’s plot points and themes owe a debt to Alan Moore’s magisterial run on the comic series Saga of the Swamp Thing, the film uses them so clumsily such a debt might be better forgiven. Still, The Return of Swamp Thing’s title sequence, a montage of covers from the Swamp Thing comic book series set to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Born on the Bayou,” is to me the best three or so minutes of any comic book movie ever (suck it, Nolan).

Man or monster? In your acquisitive fervor remind yourself that the suits and trappings of your own pretensions don’t merit mortgaging your soul to Mammon.

‑ Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

That Trip To Naples May Not Be Necessary

The ASW store is adding about a hundred new pocket square designs to its offerings this season and the first group, a dozen Neapolitan themed silk squares by Rubinacci are now in stock. These represent every Rubinacci design, and we have them in all the available colorways.

The best silk pocket squares have complex patterns with many colors so they can be displayed to different effect depending on their fold. Rubinacci’s silk squares are some of the best in the world in this regard, being beautifully printed in a variety of Neapolitan themes.

That trip to Naples may not be necessary.

The Duke's Summer Shoes

There is a photo from 2011 showing Nick Foulkes and George Hamilton, two generally well dressed men, wearing cream suits and black shoes for a summer evening event in Antibes. As I believe most readers will agree, the trouble is that, while approprate for evening, black shoes simply do not complement cream suits very well. This was a problem crying for a solution.

There are several photographs of the late Duke of Windsor in southern Europe before the war wearing what Hilary Freeman of Edward Green told me were black calf and white buckskin spectator versions of the EG Buckingham. A handsome shoe, the Duke wore them regularly for a long time (two pair are visible in photos of his closet in the Bois de Boulogne home published after his death). The challenge of course is that EG, like other ready to wear shoemakers, is unable to procure buckskin any longer and the low nap of reversed goat or conventional suede is considerably less interesting. Enter G. J. Cleverley.

One of the dangerous things (the other is the single malt) about any meeting with Cleverley's two Glasgow's, senior and junior, is that anyything shoe-related is too easy. "Do you still have any white buckskin?" "Yes, we do." "Can you make a black calf and white buck pair of spectator slipons like your Forte model witout a cutout on the band?" "Of course." And some months later the thing is done.

The Duke's summer shoes will debut once the weather lends itself to cream summer suits.

The Decline Of The Dress Set

Other than a dislike for Seth MacFarlane, the principal thing I took away from the 85th Academy Awards this year was the decline of the dress set. Two links and four studs of one precious or semi-precious form or another was the standard for black tie for decades, but you would never have known that at this year's ceremony where buttoning evening shirts appeared to be ubiquitous. And that is too bad because, really, when else does a man have an opportunity to wear jewelry without looking as if he is auditioning for the lead role in a reprise of Saturday Night Fever?

Now I will admit that a passion for jewelry may not be every man's cuppa, but then if everyman hung out here it would be obvious that he does not own dinner clothes. On the other hand, a dinner jacket was the holiday gift request of the precocious 17 year old Harvard undergrad grandson of a friend which tells me that standards are still upheld in a few places in this country (lacking teenage males of my own, I was happy for the opportunity to contribute the sterling and onyx set I wore at that age).

Without straying too far into the stratospheric realm of rubies, emeralds and diamonds, the regular run of good quality dress sets has in common the three materials in the photograph: polished onyx, mother of pearl, and gold to hold the other stuff together. Not inexpensive, but hardly in the same class as a Swiss wristwatch that is not even appropriate with black tie.

The relative scarcity of studs does not appear to be only a Southern California phenomenon, as a similar propensity for buttons was on display at last season's Costume Institute Gala and similar occasions in Manhattan. And since today's celebrities are hardly shrinking violets when it comes to wearing gems to the most mundane events I can only speculate that Tiffany's and its ilk do not offer loaner dress sets to every man headed for the Red Carpet, and George Clooney is one of the few who wears black tie often enough to amortize the cost over frequent wearings. But then, Clooney also wore buttons at the Awards so perhaps the dress set will preceed the dinner jacket into oblivion.

Too bad generally, but a buying opportunity for any man who pays attention to estate sales.

Show A Little Wear

The weather has returned to cool and overcast in America's heartland, but André Churchwell combines warmth with a hint of spring for his office hours. That takes the form of a cheerful Fair Isle style sweater, a Harris tweed suit, suede shoes and orange socks that reflect a similar hue above his waist.

In keeping with the nonchalant look of the best English sportswear, Mr. Churchwell's denim colored shirt is beginning to fray. He obviously remembers that clothing should never look as if it was recently acquired (Astaire was known to throw his suits against a wall until they lost some of their stiffness). Away from the office, you too should show a little wear.

Dressing For The Judge

Dressing for a court of law is the same across much of the Northern Hemisphere: dark suit, white linen and a silver necktie.

And if you wish to look like an heir to a high profile fortune, you need only take extra care with your pocket square.

Varied Textures

Textures should vary, which is why a conventional silk necktie is better paired with a linen pocket square than an equally smooth silk. There are exceptions however. Conventional silk also contrasts well with silk Shantung, silk grenadine and silk knits, none of which have the same sheen.

In the photo, for example, Rubinacci's Arcimboldo nero pocket square is displayed with the black border hidden and the blazer-compatible colors visible. A man would probably not wear gold buttons and a silk square to his office but they make a great change of pace for a dinner engagement.

Book Review: In Good Hands

It wasn't until I stepped out into a dank winter rain and opened my whangee-handled, silver-collared umbrella, hearing the satisfying creak as the rosette slid up the rosewood shaft and raindrops thrummed impotently against its impervious tentlike canopy, that I realized what was wrong with Katherine Prior’s In Good Hands, the recently published vanity history of the leathergoods house and umbrella makers Swaine Adeney Brigg. In Good Hands contains doubtlessly meticulously researched histories of the original whipmakers Swaine & Adeney and the various makers it took over, along with photographs of some of the old merchandise (lots of whips, for those interested in the English vice), somewhat desultory descriptions of the recent history of the firm, and a few words of gentle hope for future prospects. What it lacks, and what is above all necessary in any of the godawful recent books fetishizing various men’s clothing and accessories labels, is enthusiasm and romance. Because in an age of cheap (if mediocre) everything, there is no rational justification for the hideously expensive heritage brand. We must have our dreams, debased and distorted from the real original though they may be.

It is ironic, in the end, that Swaine Adeney Brigg’s most coveted, dreamed-of items now are its umbrellas and its briefcases: one, the scepter of empire until quite recently redolent of British class associations, the other, in the words of professional purple prosodist Tom Wolfe, the “leather lunch pail,” a shackle of wage slavery, the metaphorical golden handcuffs made real in the form of nearly unaffordable heavy, thick bridle leather and sharply hewn brass accents. And Swaine Adeney Brigg was all about class, the equestrian class, from its beginnings as whip makers down to its use of no-nonsense tough bridle leather in its cases and small leather goods, even to its catalogs which only a few years ago featured ruddy-faced Hooray Henrys and the women who love them rather than the androgynes and ephebes wispily haunting the marketing of some of its St James’s neighbors.

Prior does a good job describing the company’s beginnings as whipmakers in Piccadilly whose clientele expanded to include British and foreign rulers, with the assistance of period illustrations of the firm’s wares and pictures of some of the most ornate work, some done for the international expositions which drove craftsmen to extremes of complication. The decline of coaching as the nineteenth century ended drove the firm to expand into supplying other items, including hunting accessories (through, among other things, its acquisition of the hornmakers James Köhler) and walking sticks and umbrellas with ornate handles. Some of the mechanisms pictured, such as a carved cockatoo head with opening crest and beak, are impressive if difficult to imagine using. It wasn’t until the middle of World War II that Swaine & Adeney made its most famous alliance, with the umbrellamakers Thomas Brigg. Regrettably, the postwar history of Swaine Adeney Brigg, which Prior describes as a time when the company strove to adapt to changing design mores and tastes in color, receives only a few pages of coverage. A brief mention of surges in popularity due to the use of a Swaine Adeney Brigg briefcase in From Russia With Love and a Brigg umbrella in The Avengers, and then we’re into the muddle that beset the company from the 1980s onwards. In brief, Robert Adeney, the last of the original family associated with Swaine Adeney Brigg, decided to expand the shop from its original, ancient location at 185 Piccadilly, which it had occupied for a sweetheart rent of 2,000 pounds annually, and to open a satellite location in San Francisco. Despite what must have been heroic efforts by Will, the San Francisco shop closed within several years. Adeney sold his stake in 1990, and a series of different owners attempted to make something of Swaine Adeney Brigg. Drastically increased rent due to the expansion forced the store to move, first to 10 Old Bond Street, and shortly thereafter to 54 St James’s, until, recently, that location closed too, with a German Ralph Laurenalike taking over the location to sell British-inspired fashions to the British. During this apparent dormancy In Good Hands appeared, describing Swaine Adeney Brigg’s new leadership under Norfolk businessman Roger Gawn, who has “a passion for preserving and nurturing traditional craft skills.”

So In Good Hands bears out my earlier thesis about the timing of the publication of luxury brand vanity histories. Gawn, its new owner, uses the book to announce his intention to dedicate himself to revitalizing Swaine Adeney Brigg. One glimmer of hope is the mention that the company has just taken over part of the old Aquascutum raincoat factory liquidated when that maker went out of business, and plans to use it to manufacture weatherproof clothing. In Good Hands? I damn well hope so. But Swaine Adeney Brigg is only now in temporary digs in the Piccadilly Arcade, with a flagship announced to open summer 2013 on South Audley Street, which is in the heart of Mayfair but not a heavily touristed retail street like those it has vacated.

The above barely takes us halfway through the book. The rest is almost as thanklessly dull to read as it must have been to compile and write: separate chapters on the various entities Swaine Adeney Brigg absorbed, including the somewhat inferior whipmakers Zair, the abovementioned Köhler, Brigg the umbrellamakers, the hatters Herbert Johnson and the trunkmakers Papworth. This structure impedes any attempt at a broader narrative encompassing all of these entities beyond their summary treatment in the first chapter.

I regret that despite separate chapters devoted to their discussion, there is little memorable content about Herbert Johnson, Brigg, or Papworth in In Good Hands. It’s regrettable since they have given rise to so much of the modern mythos of Swaine Adeney Brigg, from Steed’s whangee-handled Brigg sword umbrella (which I still would thrill to find; the non-Brigg copies I’ve seen are forgettable) and Herbert Johnson bowler to the crazy trilby (or is it fedora?) Jack Nicholson sported with a Tommy Nutter suit to crown his transformation into the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, to Tom Baker’s floppy, furry Doctor Who hat, to the legendary solid gold bowler a Nigerian prince ordered. Not to forget, of course, Indy’s bullwhip (from Swaine Adeney), the umbrella missing murderer Lord Lucan left with Brigg for repair a week before he disappeared (which accompanied Swaine Adeney Brigg through several moves), or Lucien de Rubempré made good/A Suitable Wardrobe pinup Alexis de Rédé fleeing Europe in 1939 with only his Brigg to his name. Not all of this, of course, can be conveyed with words, but what you can’t put into words, you could put into pictures, and there’s unfortunately few interesting photos of Herbert Johnson’s, Brigg’s, or even Swaine Adeney’s postwar creations or associations.

This book’s failure to connect with the reader lies both in its lack of evocation and its inability to convey what makes Swaine Adeney Brigg relevant or interesting now. At the end of In Good Hands are a few words, without pictures, on several recent leathergoods commissions, preceding a single-page collage of small pictures of Swaine Adeney Brigg leathergoods that look so suspiciously familiar I wonder if they were simply pasted in from the company website. Yet from my own experience I know that Swaine Adeney Brigg’s goods can perform today, and find the missed opportunity to communicate relevance to the reader deeply disappointing. Beyond the glorious comfort of a carefully hand-stitched Swaine Adeney briefcase handle or the bulletproof (I know I’ve been throwing that word around a lot in recent pieces, perhaps in defense against, not of, Second Amendment rights) heft of their leather, Swaine Adeney Brigg leathergoods can adapt today – certain briefcases are made with special newspaper pockets designed to allow them to fit onto Pullman suitcase handles or are padded for laptops, and indeed the firm can customize orders, as they did with my umbrella. And while the Internet snipes at Brigg umbrellas or anything that it can tar with its Neapolitan neophilia, despite their occasional wonkiness they’re made like tanks. Unlike tanks, they’re surprisingly light and sturdy, and in my experience (others may differ) none have ever turned inside out in a strong wind, once in high winds even requiring me to remember rusty windsurfing techniques to make it down the block.

Despite my briefcase’s durable usefulness, I confess its purchase was inspired, like, I imagine, those of many Swaine Adeney owners, by remembering reading about Q branch “ripping out the careful handiwork of Swaine & Adeney” in Bond’s briefcase in the novel – and film – of From Russia With Love to replace them with the weapons of the modern covert executive. That inspiration may be as flat and colorless as the sets Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg pranced on in the 1965 season of The Avengers, but we still did, do, dream of, like him, drawing a Wilkinson sword out of our Brigg to offer her a flower. And that romance, no doubt, fuelled the fantasy of the non-British men like me who bought Brigg umbrellas and kept the dream and Swaine Adeney Brigg alive.

I do hope Swaine Adeney Brigg is now in good hands. It would be a rude awakening if it went the way of many other old shops and makers discussed here.

-Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

The Perfect Summer Necktie

Silk Shantung is a richly colored fabric woven from spun wild silk. Its natural slubs give it a texture that makes for neckties that contrast perfectly with lighter weight suits. And this week, A Suitable Wardrobe introduces twenty of them, completely hand made by Rubinacci in the classic unlined Neapolitan style.

Once they are gone there will be no more until next spring so you may want to act quickly.

I Am Struck

It will undoubtedly not be to everyone's taste but I am struck by Le Noued Papillon's 'Guy' bow tie. A diamond point in lilac Mogador silk satin with orange piping, it seems to me like it would be a fun change of pace with a blazer in the evening.

The Guy is of course one of those things that should not be worn often, as once someone has seen the thing it will be stuck in their memory and should they see it a second time they are likely to think that the wearer lives in it. Nonetheless, that first wearing at, say, a jazz concert should be amusing in a very good way.