Twenty Great Clothing Books

Here is my list of the twenty great books on classic men's clothing and style of the past fifty years. Most of them are out of print but I've found copies and you can too. In no particular order:

• Scottish Estate Tweeds, E.P. Harrison. A history of tweed with photos of the great estate patterns.
• Esquire's Encyclopedia of 20th Century Men's Fashions, O. E. Schoeffler & William Gale. Esquire was once a style leader and the Encyclopedia covers what it thought about every category of men's clothing from the turn of the century through the 1970's. On the required reading list for every budding menswear designer and ferociously expensive.
• Men in Style, Woody Hochswender & Kim Johnson Gross. Learn how men dressed during the Golden Age from these Apparel Arts & Esquire illustrations.
• The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie, Thomas Fink & Yong Mao. Tired of your four-in hand? Here are all the options.
• The Englishman's Suit, Hardy Amies. How the western world came to dress like the English aristocracy, and how it still can. Expensive, if you can find a copy.
• Handmade Shoes for Men, Laszlo Vass. All about shoes made as they should be made.
• The Boutonniere: Style in One's Lapel, Umberto Angeloni. How to wear a flower in your lapel.
• The Elegant Man: How to Construct the Ideal Wardrobe, Ricardo Villarosa & Giuliano Angeli. Interesting overview with perhaps the best section on cloth that's been in print.
• Hatless Jack, Neil Steinberg. What you'll care to know about the hat.
• Eminently Suitable: The Elements of Style in Business Attire, G. Bruce Boyer. Well written and comprehensive look at the suit.
• Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion, Alan J. Flusser. Big and beautiful review of how to dress.
• Clothes and the Man: The Principles of Fine Men's Dress, Alan J. Flusser. The visuals aren't as good as the ones in Dressing the Man but the text is better.
• The Book of Ties, Francois Chaille. Just about all you need to know about neckwear.
• Gentleman: A Timeless Fashion, Berhard Roetzel. Well illustrated. Less on suits and more on a variety of accessories for the gentleman's lifestyle.

Lifestyle: Cocktail Recipes

I was recently pointed to a version of what should eventually become the 21st century's replacement for my well thumbed hard copy bartender's guide. M.esquire.com is Esquire magazine's new site for mobile devices, and it thoughtfully includes 18 of the more important cocktail recipes that frantic hosts can access from their Blackberrys and iPhones.

Today the site is not quite ready to replace the thousand plus recipes in Mittie Hellmich's Ultimate Bar Book. But it'll come in handy should a man hear "I've got fresh mint. Why don't you mix us a couple of Mojitos while I slip into something more comfortable?" at his date's apartment.

Piping Resurrected

Blazers, so named because the ones worn at regattas often "blazed" in color, were first seen in university colors. According to Esquire's Encyclopedia of 20th Century Men's Fashions, navy blazers piped in white were popular at the Henley regatta in 1924. I don't recall seeing piping outside of that context.

That is, until this past week when Brooks Brothers introduced its Black Fleece line designed by the notorious Thom Browne.

I'm encouraged by the Brethren's initiative with the new collection. The designs have precedence, unlike Browne's runway collection this season, and the items are well made. Purchased in the correct size and tailored appropriately, most of the pieces will look classic rather than extreme.

I wish BroBroClo, the name I was instructed to use on the many checks I wrote them over the decades, still had the taste within its organization to update the classics on its own. The prices would be better - but I suppose the company also needs the visibility and image enhancement (did I just write that about Thom Browne?) it gets from the association.

On balance, I give the effort a solid 'B.' I'm not sure whose colors were borrowed for the piped blazer in the collection, but I doubt if wearing some university rowing club's colors inappropriately is any more of a sin than wearing a Brooks Brothers version of the Brigade of Guards necktie on the streets of Manhattan.

A Visit with Sam Malouf

I recently spent an hour with Sam Malouf, the family member that manages Malouf's of California. Malouf's is one of only two Bay area representatives on Esquire's Retail Top 100 Menswear Specialty Stores list (the other is Wilkes Bashford).

Malouf's is an unusual specialty store in that half of its business is men's wear and half is for women, and rarer still in that it emphasizes made to order clothing. I was happy to learn that Sam and I share the belief that most men would be better fitted if they chose made to measure shirts and tailored clothing over ready to wear, and the rest would benefit from the greater choice available.

Sam happily articulated the reasons he offers half a dozen made to measure lines of shirts alone, including Geneva, Talbott and Charvet. The store's made to measure tailored clothing lines includes Brioni, Oxxford, Zegna and Samuelsohn. There are also half a dozen shoe lines, topped by the only inventory of Edward Green in California aside from Polo's private labelled offerings (I originally learned of Malouf's from EG's Hilary Freeman).

That's not to say that Malouf's doesn't have a variety of sportswear. Any clothing specialist in the Bay area needs a great selection of casual clothing. Outside of a few pockets in the City of San Francisco, the local culture is tie-less - even the bankers wear neckties only when they are raising money. When they're meeting with people looking for investment, they wear odd jackets with open shirt collars. Sam told me he sells an odd jacket or blazer for every suit, and that sports shirts and trousers are his most popular work wear items.

But Malouf's also has the lines it needs to sell classic business clothing at several price points. There are three full-time tailors and a seamstress on site, and two men on the sales floor that are trained to measure customers. Even that is sometimes not enough when the store has an event that might be attended by half a dozen area CEOs who each expect individual attention. Right now.

Some things are the same in every city.

Buying Clothes

The estimable Esquire magazine surveyed nearly two million male readers in 2006 for their advertising media kit, and the results tell a sad tale about the state of men's clothing in the United States. Of this "affluent and successful" readership, just 10% had purchased a suit in the year prior to the survey. Roughly 30% purchased dress shoes and dress shirts, and a quarter bought dress trousers (37% bought a pair of jeans). Even if I wasn't trying to make my point sound modestly amusing, given that I believe that Esquire's readers are more clothing aware than the average man I am forced to conclude that the majority of American males must dress in some combination of sweat pants, tees, sneakers and similar garb. Of course, that's what I see on the street.

Whether a man's budget accommodates Savile Row or thrifting, dressing well requires a modest combination of taste and consistent expenditure. As I've written before, the key is to build a rotation that prevents wearer boredom and gives clothes time to recover after wearing, as well as for cleaning and other maintenance. I think a man should probably strive to acquire four to six changes of clothing each year (that's for wool jackets, trousers and coats - he'll need more if he wears cotton most of the time) and at least one pair of shoes. Until he's filled out his closet, the shoes and four of those changes of clothing are likely to be replacements for worn out items and a higher level of acquisition is probably required to expand the rotation.

I suggest that every man should sit himself down periodically to plan what he needs to buy in the coming year, and what he can afford to spend. His target price per garment is a simple function of his annual budget and he just needs to continue abusing his credit cards until his closet has what he decided it needed. When that initial rotation is filled out, the budget can be reduced or the number of items purchased can be reduced and the quality level increased.

If every man in America bought one pair of dress trousers, a shirt and a pair of shoes each year, production would have to triple and, once supply caught up with demand, we might begin to see a reversal in the tremendous increase in the cost of quality clothing that we've experienced as demand has declined over the years. Get shopping!

Walking Sticks

Walking sticks were first used for support and a bit of protection by men who couldn't afford swords. Later, they served the same function after swords were banned in cities. A century ago, no man of quality would leave his home without a cane.

The automobile began the cane's slide into obscurity, and, according to Esquire's Encyclopedia of 20th Century Men's Fashions, canes had essentially disappeared on city streets in the United States by 1970. But they are still useful in the country.

There are three levels of cane formality: the country stick, the city stick and the dress cane. The standard city length is 36" but they are, or were, routinely made in one inch increments ranging from 34" to 38". When standing with your arms at your sides, a properly sized cane comes up to your wrist just above the palm.

Dress canes tend to be of rosewood, maple or ebony, and are frequently adorned with silver or ivory handles. They are beautiful things, and I've collected a couple in the hope that they will be useful in my old age (perhaps I'm overly optimistic to think that I'll still be attending formal affairs when I need a stick to get around).

City sticks tend to be polished lengths of wood such as ash, bamboo, rattan and Malacca with crooked handles. There is a version with a built-in flask that could be useful on cold days when a quick nip would be appreciated, like any day this week in New York.

In the country, canes may have rustic decoration, like the curly rams horn topped stick carried by the Prince of Wales in the illustration, and are often made of root wood such as blackthorn (Swaine Adeney offers a horn topped stick for £300). The shooting stick variant with a folding seat comes in handy at spectator sports where seats are scarce, like PGA events and polo matches. UniqueCanes.com offers a couple styles as well as a versions with built-in flasks.

Carrying a stick in the country is an aid in rough terrain and a knobbed end can help beat off the odd rabid dog or, in California, mountain lion. In the city, they are a nuisance to carry as few establishments offer a place to put them once you've arrived. And the protection afforded by three feet of wood is minimal in an age when any serious threat on a city street is probably carrying a Glock.

Brown in Town

City suits have been predominately either dark blue or a dark shade of gray since Beau Brummel's time.

The old English saying "never wear brown in town" was a hard and fast rule in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In that conservative social milieu, gentlemen from the country travelling to London would change their brown shoes to black on entering the city and change back again on departure (In later years, the change occurred near the Chiswick roundabout). But apparently the rule didn't apply to suits in the United States. Esquire magazine was reporting on brown town suits in the United States from the 1930's onward.

Now there are men, and I know some of them, that wear brown chalk striped double breasteds. That would be pushing the envelope for me. As a country color brought to town, I like brown better when it is realized in country fabrics with city detailing. A brown cheviot two button with a double breasted vest, peak lapels and besom pockets is on my wish list. Nothing wrong with brown flannel, like our friend Wooster is wearing in the photo, either.

There definitely is a place for brown in town. Just remember, no white at night.

How to Shop for Men's Clothing

Legend has it that men dislike shopping for clothes but I don't agree with that. I think men are happy to do their own shopping once they learn how to do it efficiently so they can get on with life. They don't want to spend their Saturday afternoons shopping, and I don't blame them.

In my opinion, there's no reason for a man's clothes shopping to require much more than two hours a year unless he wants it to. As with most things, the key is get a proper foundation in place. Once that's done, buying a season's garb is principally a matter of picking up the phone or writing a couple of emails. Of course, there are worse things than a morning walking around the 7ème Arrondissement in Paris and browsing at Arnys.

Shopping is simplest when you don't have to think about where to shop. For example, for most of the first half of my life, I, like many American men, did essentially all my shopping at Brooks Brothers. The problem with that approach is that there are very few places that can serve as a single source any longer (including Brooks Brothers and the mens' sections of department stores with one or two possible exceptions in Manhattan). There may be a life-long U.S. partner among the stores in Esquire's list of the best men’s specialty stores if one is close by. But most men will have to use several providers.

Men's clothing providers tend to specialize in shoes, tailored clothing, shirts or haberdashery (some shirtmakers are also great haberdashers but more often the two are a separate category). Though specialists usually dabble in other categories, they tend to do a great job in only their primary area. That means each man may need a source for shoes, one for suits, a third for shirts and perhaps a fourth for everything else.

The benefit from having established providers comes when it's time to shop. Men who want to spend only the minimum necessary time need do little more than see their tailor (that's Rubinacci's location in London to the left) twice a year to confirm the fit of that season's clothes and select swatches for delivery in six months. Shoes and shirts can be ordered with emails specifying the styles and colors. A periodic visit to an online haberdashery source like Ben Silver or Kabbaz-Kelly will take care of any remaining needs.

Spring and Fall
Just as seasonal clothes arrive in the stores before the season begins, bespoke clothing must be made in advance of each season. For example, I order my clothing for cool weather each Spring and in the Fall I order warm weather gear. When the clothes are ready the season then is just around the corner.

Ready to wear items follow a similar pattern and you may even be able to shop last season's sales while you're taking care of the coming season's necessities.

Finding Sources
The hard part is finding a set of relationships that satisfy. New bespoke and made to measure sources require a lot of trust, and it takes months before a man knows if his faith is going to be rewarded (as I've written elsewhere, the only time to have new clothes made is when you don't yet need them). Reputation helps, but personal recommendations are even more important when, as I've learned on more than one occasion, a great reputation sometimes lags behind a more ordinary reality.

Spend a year establishing relationships with a set of providers and there'll be no more reason to dislike shopping.

The New Yorker

I doubt if The New Yorker has ever considered itself a consumer finance magazine but the 1998 publication of a piece titled My Father's Closet in that magazine arguably saved me more money than anything else I've read over the years.

The author was John Seabrook, whose father was anointed one of America's best dressed in Esquire's first list, published around 1960. He wrote that his father's city clothes were made in New York and London, but his country clothes were made in Hong Kong.

At the time of publication I had been a Turnbull & Asser bespoke shirt customer for some years and had no complaints about the shirts. I did develop a serious complaint about the valuation of the U.S. dollar which was on its way to a 50% decline in value against the English pound. Then a light went on in my head.

This light eventually led me to the hotel suite of Joe Hemrajani, a principal of Hong Kong tailors MyTailor.com. http://www.mytailor.com/

Joe proceeded to copy the measurements of one of my bespoke shirts and promised to copy the construction in return for an extra charge that seemed more than reasonable to me. He didn't have T&A's selection of Sea Island cotton cloth in varied stripes and checks but his Thomas Mason fabrics more than covered the basics I was looking for.

My first order was for a variety of semi-solid fabrics including a light gray twill, tan nailhead and a navy on blue glen check. No pocket, of course. And each with my initials monogrammed in maroon inside the collar where the label is located on a ready to wear shirt.

Two months later my sample shirt arrived. As did, some weeks later, the balance of my first order. For 35% of what I'd have spent on Jermyn Street.

Dozens of shirts later, I religiously renew my subscription to The New Yorker. You never know when it might save you some serious money.