Silk And Wool

I've always been hesitant to wear silk pocket squares in the city, preferring the greater discretion of linen. But lately I've been experimenting with squares whose background color is similar to that of my jacket.

In the photo, which we had to shoot several times as yesterday's intense light kept washing out the colors, a navy square provides a bit of sheen against the matte of a navy suit. Not quite as discreet as white linen but not loud either.

Worn with a lavender shirt and a gray grenadine necktie.

Simonnot-Godard

Until a year or two ago, I never so much as glanced at cotton pocket squares, preferring linen. That changed when I was formally introduced to pochettes from the venerable French firm of Simonnot-Godard.


The next time you're browsing the pocket squares at Alan Flusser or Paul Stuart in New York, Lanvin in Paris or Turnbull & Asser anywhere, pay attention to the cotton offerings. It's likely that the better ones are Simonnot-Godard products that were made the old fashioned way, to very high standards. Beautiful stuff. Reasonably priced as these things go. And recommended.

The Best of ASW

You may not have known that you have been reading one of Shiny Media's top ten men's style blogs for 2007 but ASW says thank you to Shiny Media and to everyone who sent an entry to the best of ASW contest. The posts that you selected as the best of ASW's first year will be in a box at the right of the page sometime Monday.

Out of ten selections, it took five or more votes for the most popular posts to win, and reader John Genova had the most generally accepted good taste with six of his selections making the best of list. He and four other winning readers have a linen pocket square on the way by first class air mail:

• Michael Bains
• Pessi Honksalo
• Nicolaus Nemeth
• Sidharth Gautam Sharma

Ties were resolved in favor of the entry received first. I only wish I had enough squares to send one to everyone that entered.

Pocketing a Square

There are many ways to pocket a square. The stylist at Robert Talbott chose a deliberately sloppy version of the four points fold for the pocket square in the top photograph. Not that there's anything special about the four points. I like the rolled puff, and a lot of guys stick with the simple tv fold. The important thing is that there should be a square in every breast pocket and the fold is up to the wearer. Below, Ede & Ravenscroft illustrates the conventional way to display four points.


There's no excuse for not understanding the repertoire of available folds as there are illustrated how-tos for virtually every known style of pocketed square in several places on the Web, including the Sam Hober web site. What they don't explain, but I will, is that perfectly executed linen or cotton handkerchief folds require an iron to press the square until it lies flat. But don't iron silk, cashmere or wool squares, which should flop about a bit.

What's in your pocket?

Choosing the Day's Clothes

Hardy Amies, perhaps the first men's clothing designer and the man who had more influence on my dress than any other, wrote that a man should select his clothes with care so he can forget about them for the rest of the day.

Choosing the day's clothes starts with the suit rotation. Suits are not meant to be worn on consecutive days, and one way to ensure that is to rotate them in the closet. I hang recently worn clothing on the right of one closet bar, and take clothes that I'm going to wear from the left side. Moving them along the bar isn't much of a job - I have quite a few suits but there are no more than a dozen in my active city rotation at any particular time.

I start my selection by considering the formality of the day I expect to have. If it's got at least one serious event, I'll choose the first serious suit at the left hand side of the bar. Or, if it promises to be less formal, I'll pull a Friday suit that's less somber.

Next, I choose my shoes. I won't wear a pair that I've worn already that week, and I relate the formality of the shoe to the formality of the suit. That usually means oxfords with worsteds and bluchers or monks with flannels, linen and tweed.

The time-consuming part of the process is choosing a shirt, necktie and accessories. First comes the shirt. I usually choose light blue, yellow or light gray with a blue suit, or pink, cream or blue with a gray one. I don't have to worry too much about rotation as the laundry makes sure I can't wear any single shirt two weeks in a row.

The necktie comes next (I won't spend space on choosing a necktie since I covered that topic earlier this year). Then I choose a pocket square. That's usually white linen if I'm wearing a silk necktie. If I'm wearing a knit or a grenadine it's likely to be colored silk , in a secondary color that relates to my shirt or a color in my suit. Before going any further, I double-check the combination by putting the square in the jacket's breast pocket, holding the shirt and tie up to the jacket and making adjustments until I get a combination that I'm happy with. Sometimes that happens the first time, and once in a while it takes half a dozen tries.

With shirt, tie and square locked in, I go on to select socks that are compatible with my trousers but pick up the color of something I'm wearing above the waist. Finally, I'll choose braces and cufflinks that relate without matching in one way or another, and I'm done. Elapsed time, ten to twenty minutes to combine three (sometimes four) patterns, including socks, and at least that many colors.

Sources: Four In Hand

I discovered Jonathan Fischer's Four In Hand site when I was searching for one of Begg's paisley cashmere scarves for my wife. Alex Begg Scottish cashmere scarves are among the very finest I've ever seen but the patterned versions are hard to find. FIH had several.

That led me into a series of emails with Jonathan, the entrepreneur behind the site. I like his assortment of linen pocket squares with hand rolled edges ($24), the selection of Marinella neckties ($155) and the variety of short (56") neckties that accompany the more common regular (59") and long (63") lengths.

My first order was processed the same day and sent by DHL, Four In Hand's preferred shipper, with a tracker.

The company will accept neckties back within 14 days of receipt for a full refund of the merchandise price. Suits and outerwear can be returned within ten days for a full refund of the price paid for merchandise, and up to 14 days for a store credit. Unless otherwise arranged shipping costs are not credited.

Pocket Squares Are Important

I couldn't resist. I had to have the new Seaward & Stearn pocket squares (pictured) from Kabbaz-Kelly & Sons.

Frankly, I overlooked them when I saw them in person, laid out on a table in Manhattan. But folded in a breast pocket they are transformed, adding a discreet touch to a worsted jacket that falls into the sweet spot between flamboyant and plain. That's a quality that's hard to find but worth while. Pocket squares are important.

I believe that a well-dressed man needs roughly as many pocket squares as he has neckties (the corollary to this rule is that the majority of men would be better dressed if they had half as many neckties and twice as many squares). It's not acceptable to be insecure about when it's OK to wear one. It's always OK. If a man is wearing a jacket with an open breast pocket, the pocket should have a square in it.

The way I think about it, there are two types of guidelines about pocket squares. One is how to fold them and the other is how to choose one. Folding is simpler - there are two basic techniques (there are a dozen others but only two are required). If you're wearing a silk square, shove it into your pocket until an inch and a quarter of silk is showing, point any waving ends towards your left side, and forget about it. Or, if you're wearing linen, adjust a square fold until the pocket displays a line of white a quarter to a half inch high.

Choosing a square is more complex. An inventory is required, consisting of white Irish linen squares (I get mine on sale from Schweitzer Linens for $15 apiece instead of the usual $25), and a selection of silks. Both types should have hand stitched edges.

Wear the linen squares with worsteds and even flannels if the occasion is formal enough. Otherwise, wear the silks (for extra credit, have some matte silk and cashmere squares to combine with silk neckties and reserve the shinier silks for your matte neckties). The square usually repeats a color in the shirt, the necktie, or even the socks, but some of the best combinations don't repeat any color at all, like the tweed suited guy in the drawing.

Necktie wardrobes that follow the guidelines I posted last week are going to be complemented by pocket squares in a similar, but never matching, palette of colors. Maintain wardrobe balance by acquiring a new square with each new necktie, and weed them both at the same time as well.

Those S&S squares are promised for next week. I'm looking forward to them.

Sources: luxury-scarves.com

Based in Zurich, Switzerland, Luxury GMBH hosts a unique web site specializing in authentic Hermes scarves.

Hermes began making silk scarves in 1937, when the company was 100 years old. It has since printed more than 1,000 designs. Worn folded in the breast pocket of a jacket, the 16" pochette version of the Hermes scarf makes a statement that some men swear by and others swear at.

The key to the Luxury site is its selection. Where the Hermes company site may have six pochettes from which to choose, Luxury has twenty. They range from current designs to the occasional gem from fifty years ago, at prices starting somewhat below Hermes list for a current item and increasing to considerably more for an older model in pristine condition.

The site does not accept credit cards directly but does accept PayPal payments, money orders and wire transfers. Shipping is by registered priority air mail and the cost is included in the price of the item. All sales are final unless an item is not as described.