A French Point of View

To my mind, it's no accident that the best dressed men I've known personally are French. After all, the French aristocracy represented the world's most sophisticated luxury goods market for several centuries. The best-dressed Frenchmen might buy their suits on Savile Row, but they stayed home for shoes, shirts and and accessories with a bit more flair than they could find in London. For most of the twentieth century, Paris was perhaps the world's best place to shop for clothing.

Unfortunately for French menswear, clothing became a global game and the initial success of Pierre Cardin and other French designers in U. S. ready to wear didn't last. After the Italians conquered that market, most of the French makers spent several decades consolidating at home with only a few names, including Charvet and Berluti, enjoying international recognition. That is starting to change.

If memory serves me right, a man could still find Cardin in U.S. department stores when a young Marc Guyot (that's Marc in the photo above) began designing his own made to measure suits as a teenager. Influenced by Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, Fred Astaire in suits by Frederic Scholte, and the late Duke of Windsor, his efforts struck a chord. Friends began asking him to do the same for them and, after a few years, Guyot left law school to enter the world of fashion. In 1995, with no other experience, he opened his first shop in Paris.


Twelve years later, Guyot's Boutique Cape Cod is filled with clothing and shoes of his own design. It's a look that adds a French point of view to the classics of the golden era of men's clothing. "I like my customers to build a base of good taste and then add some rare items or accessories for a final touch," says Guyot. That might mean a seven fold necktie in a classic dot pattern worn under a made to measure cashmere waistcoat with contrast edging and paired with Guyot-designed shoes.


These are not clothes for serious work. Think of them for a gallery opening, a wine tasting, or a walk in the park on a sunny morning. On those occasions, Guyot has few peers.

Book Review: The London Cut

London's Savile Row has been the home of some of the world’s best, or at least best known, tailors for more than 200 years. And for most of the first 199 of those years, anything that smacked of marketing was frowned upon. Times change, and an association of Savile Row firms has sponsored the first book to cover the Row in more than two decades.

The London Cut, edited by James Sherwood, borrows its title from the name given to Frederick Scholte's drape cut in the 1930's. It uses conversations with the tailors and an excellent selection of images past and present to paint a picture of today's Savile Row in a series of essays about individual firms.

Since more than a few of those firms have websites, some readers are likely to be familiar with the histories of established names such as Poole, H. Huntsman and Anderson & Sheppard. The book's value added is that it extends coverage to two dozen less known tailoring houses ranging from the well established Welsh & Jeffries to moderns like Spencer Hart and Ozwald Boateng, and gives space to half a dozen accessory firms and several of the cloth houses and mills as well.

That said, I was probably happiest with the 59 page section of photos, many in color, of famous clients.

The London Cut is currently available from Amazon UK and is scheduled be released in the United States on January 29, 2008.

Always Correct - G. J. Cleverley & Co.

The not-quite fifty year old firm of G.J. Cleverley & Co Ltd is "Savile Row's preferred bespoke shoemaker" according to the Savile Row Bespoke Association.



Founder George Cleverley joined Tuczek, a high society London shoemaker, after the first World War and remained there until 1958, managing the shop for much of that time. He began his own business shortly after leaving Tuckzek where he continued making some of the world's finest shoes until he died in 1991.The current partners, George Glasgow and John Carnera, worked with Cleverley for more than a decade and have maintained his high standard. I met with George Glasgow during his recent visit to San Francisco, part of the firm's month-long tour of the United States.

G. J. Cleverley makes 7-10 handmade pair of shoes each week as it has for many years. The shoes are made much as they were a century ago and to much the same acclaim. Just a few years ago, the U. S. magazine Robb Report rated the firm as the best shoemakers in the world for five years running.

I've been a Cleverley bespoke customer a couple of times over the years, and was interested to see the firm's samples, which had more of an emphasis on exotic leathers than I had noticed in the past. Glasgow said that the United States is Cleverley's most important market and the exotics are well received here. A Cleverley customer kindly allowed me to photograph the shoes he was wearing, a spectacular red-toned pair of Adelaide brogues made from the famous pre-1800 Russian Calf.

While I was looking at a pair of crocodile oxfords, another customer dropped off two pair of crocodile slip-ons for re-furbishing. Many of the shoes have the distinctive Cleverley shape, a chiseled toe that can be seen on well shod men in major cities around the world.


Cleverley's bespoke shoes are priced from about £1500 (the crocodile, sadly, are roughly double that amount). I'm dreaming of a pair of stitched toe oxfords, in black buckskin.

Thomas Mahon: A Basted Fitting

I had my first basted fitting with tailor Thomas Mahon of Cumbria England yesterday. Thomas and his assistant, Ms. Alice Early, were in San Francisco for two days between stops in Chicago and Atlanta.

From a technical standpoint, Thomas skips the basted stage and goes directly to a forward fitting, however I'm calling this one a basted fitting as it's his first try and the pieces require many more modifications than they would if we already had a perfected pattern.

So the suit's pattern has been made and the cloth cut, but the major parts are sewn together temporarily so the tailor can adjust the fit to the customer's body This garment will be a quarter lined ten ounce Scabal mohair and wool double breasted with turnback cuffs, and there's a lot of work still to be done. The adjustments identified were typical of every first effort I've been a part of, including trousers that were too tight in several critical places, shoulders with a lot of extra cloth, not enough drape in the chest, and a bit of an issue with the coat bottom in front.

In the photo below, Thomas is smiling because, while the jacket won't have much lining, he's noting that what there is is to be paisley.



Since Thomas will not be back to San Francisco until Fall, I'm planning another fitting while I'm in England in July. That way the suit may be completed in time for our Indian Summer. I hope that's not too optimistic - in the final photo I've decided on a 10 ounce Lesser glen check in gray with a red windowpane that I'd like to get started before they sell out of the cloth.

A Basted Fitting

Peter Harvey of Fallan & Harvey was in San Francisco this week and I had an appointment for a basted fitting. Fallan & Harvey are tailors based on Sackville Street in London, near Savile Row (there is no web site).

I'd come to Peter last year on the recommendation of a friend after I decided to find a second tailor, one who would make me single breasted jackets with a traditional three button front. I commissioned a summer odd jacket of ten ounce fresco that will have a minimum of lining for our hot wine country summers.

The jacket, which at this stage is held together with cotton basting, felt as light and airy as I'd hoped it would be when I ordered it. I'll need to be careful putting it on as the unlined fresco grabs at the shirt sleeves a bit, but I elected to experiment with unlined sleeves in the hope that they will be cooler.

Since this jacket is from a new pattern, I expected it to require adjustments and it did. In the first two photos, Peter is noting that the lapels are a bit off at the top and the quarters are too straight at the bottom.The armholes are also too high and in the third photo Peter is marking the adjustment before he removes the sleeves.

Once we were comfortable with the work that is to be done before my forward fitting in London this coming July, Peter let me know that the gilt buttons I'd requested (there will be two gold buttons on each sleeve) are no longer available from Holland & Sherry. In the fourth photo he's showing me substitutes in the same pattern that he'd found from another source.

I've learned the hard way to limit myself to one jacket or suit at a time until a tailor's pattern is perfected but I'm hoping that the coat will need little more than sleeve buttons at the forward fitting so that it can be delivered no later than this Fall. That will be a year after I ordered it. I'm not traveling to Europe monthly any longer and delayed gratification is the new name of the game. It comes from living in a city without much in the way of local tailors, but that's been true all the time I've been living here.

Working Wardrobes

There are probably three stages of evolution for a professional wardrobe. I think of them as Starting Out, Mid-Career and I've Made It. and they apply to everyone that works in large organizations (there's a completely different track for men whose career depends on standing out, as exemplified by the photograph of English writer Nick Foulkes).

When someone is starting out, dressing for the position he wants instead of the position he has can be an important part of a career strategy. But it’s not simple dressing for success because it's disastrous to overdo it. Trying too hard is counterproductive -it does little good to be well dressed with a back full of arrows from alienated co-workers.

You'd think that dressing for the next level up would be unproductive but it works because surprisingly few people actually do it. Starting Out is when people need to start investing in a sound clothing foundation that will serve them for at least half of the rest of their lives (quality clothing lasts a surprisingly long time). Acquire tried and true basics that don't call attention to themselves so they can be worn repeatedly without anyone thinking "It must be Tuesday. Will's got that cream linen jacket on again." The strategy may sound boring but it's possible to be both well and appropriately dressed in many organizations while wearing nothing more than shirts, trousers and sweaters. It doesn't cost a fortune either.

Mid Career is just more of the same on a bigger playing field. In mid-career, people begin dealing with people from outside their organizations and their wardrobes need to accommodate meetings with people in different environments that may include bankers in London and factory managers in Shanghai as well as the folks they began their career with. This is the time when a man needs a wardrobe full of the equivalent of a gray pick and pick suit, blue end on end shirt, dark brown oxfords, a black grenadine necktie and a white linen handkerchief for his jacket's breast pocket.

Only when a man gets to I've Made It may he be free to really express himself with his dress where he earns a living. That may just mean he wears khakis and polos every day because it's what's appropriate when he's making artisanal goat cheese. It could mean he's the one guy in the company that comes in wearing a Savile Row suit and a bow tie. Whatever his style, it's unlikely that his tweeds are as brightly patterned as those of Mr. Foulkes.

The Black Sebiro

Sebiro, after Savile Row, is the Japanese word for suit. In that word is much of the economic future of classic men's clothing.

While marketing deficiences have caused a decline in the number of suits we see on the street in the United States, 125 million Japanese are the world's important opportunity for many quality English and Italian men's clothing makers. As arguably the first Asian country to develop a modern economy, Japan is also very influential. Its every move is watched carefully by its neighbors in Korea, Taiwan, and lately China. And, despite efforts to the contrary, Japanese men wear suits to do business.

In 2005, Environment Minister Yuriko Koike informed his countrymen that Japan could slow global warming by turning down their air conditioners and curbing power consumption. It needed only to ditch the suit in warm weather. Few seem to have followed him.

Journalist Kay Itoi writes that her Tokyo commuter train is still full of dark suits. ""Nobody I know is switching to Cool Biz," shrugs my friend Izumi, a 44-year-old businessman at a software firm. Even Hideaki Tagata, 31, who came up with the catchy "Cool Biz" in a nationwide naming competition, won't doff his tie. "I'll think about it when everybody else does," the sales chief at a Tokyo building-maintenance firm tells me.""

Of course, the suit-wearing tradition did not arrive in Japan without modification. Those dark business suits tend to be black three button models with a high button stance like the one pictured to the left. It's worn with all three buttons buttoned. Fortunately, Japanese dandies have moved well beyond the black sebiro.

I regret that I can't read Japanese to get the full flavor of classic men's clothing there. The country appears to support more bespoke shoemakers than the U.S. and U.K. combined. Magazines like Mens Ex, Men's Club and Leon have more pages of high-end clothing coverage than we see anywhere in the English-speaking world. But even without the language, there are ways to enjoy what men in Japan are wearing.

Buried in Style Forum's Comprehensive List of Links to High-End Shoes thread is a thoroughly enjoyable set of links to Japanese shoe and clothing photography. The text is usually in Japanese but the photos are universal.

In particular, Jun Kuwana's Cobbler's Site has a better collection of photos of bespoke shoes by London's George Cleverley than are on that company's own site. It's got tailored clothing photos as well. I eventually commissioned a jacket from England's Fallan & Harvey after first viewing photos posted there.

Of course, it wasn't black.

Double Breasted Suits

San Francisco's Four Seasons hotel restaurant is one of a handful of places in the City where men in suits still outnumber their counterparts in more casual garb. As I looked around the dining room the other day, I saw several very nice efforts, including a gentleman in a blue worsted three piece with vest lapels that fairly shouted Savile Row. And then I realized that I was the only man in a double breasted suit.

I'm not certain why we don't see more DBs in the United States. It may be that they are thought of as more formal than a two button single breasted. That might be true but they are less formal than a single breasted worn with a vest and I see those on the street as well as in the Four Seasons dining room. Other men may think that they are a pain because they must be unbuttoned to sit and buttoned again when standing, but that's a myth. A DB that fits can be worn buttoned while seated. Just look at any movie from the 1930's - those guys weren't unbuttoning and buttoning their jackets all the time.

Unlike single breasteds that descended from riding coats, double breasted suits evolved from military uniforms. That's probably why HRH Prince Charles wears them all the time (the suit pictured to the left was made by Thomas Mahon, who cut some of the Prince's suits when he worked at Anderson & Sheppard). About half of my wardrobe is double breasted. I like them in the winter particularly, as the cloth across my chest keeps me warm without a vest. I have the winter versions cut with six buttons, with the bottom two working, and my lighter-weight DBs have but four.

Double breasteds make up a good proportion of the suits I see on the street in London, but the Italians don't seem to wear them much more than the Americans do. The weather is warmer in Italy of course, so suits aren't obliged to perform as much temperature control duty. But mostly, I ascribe the scarcity of double breasted to the economics of ready to wear. Sticking with single breasteds means lower production costs and fewer overheads.

That may work for the manufacturers but it makes life a little less interesting for the customers.

Reader Questions

I get questions by email and by PMs on message boards in addition to the ones posted here. Whatever the source, some of them ask questions that are of general interest. Here are two.

From Williamson

I was very pleased to see your thread on overcoats. When I was much younger, someone whose opinions I still respect told me that the outer coat is in a sense part of the suit, not an extra solely for wear in cold or wet weather. Someone wrote in The Style Forum that he is seeking an overcoat not so much for warmth as for "feeling finished" when he leaves the house. If this strikes a chord with you, I'd be interested to have your opinion.

As I mentioned, many stylish men in Naples agree with you. The climate there is mild, with temperatures typically ranging from lows of 40 to highs of 85 degrees Farenheit (4 to 30 degrees Centigrade) during the year. Neopolitan tailors do a healthy business in topcoats made from 13 ounce cloth. That's just barely enough weight to drape and give a man a coat that finishes his look when it's as much as 55 degrees F. Living as I do in Northern California, I approve.

From David

As a suggestion for a future blog entry, you might talk about why you use two different tailors. Are you looking for a variety of styles? Do you prefer to go to one tailor over another for certain items? Does it cut against building a relationship if you spread out your orders between different houses?

Many men use more than one tailor. This year is the first time in my life that I'm trying two new ones at the same time, but I normally work with two or three. One of them makes country clothes for me, one specializes in "soft" tailoring, my preferred style, and I use another to make what the other two can't or won't.

For example, one of my Savile Row tailors prefers not to work with cloth lighter than ten ounces, and seems to have have little experience making minimally lined jackets for hot weather. They also make a straight cut jacket that looks great without a vest, but shows too many vest buttons. I'm trying Peter Harvey for a coat that will show just one button above the coat closing.

I don't think it hurts the relationship to use more than one tailor. Once your pattern is perfected, it's there to be used as long as you maintain your weight. And in the larger houses, you may remain loyal but your cutters now come and go faster than they once did. Each cutter has his own idiosyncracies within the broader outlines of the house style, so you can lose some consistency while remaining loyal to one house.