Reader Questions

From Franklin
Recently some of your essays have shown spectator shoes. Can you recommend a source for an affordable version?

The problem with inexpensive specs is that they tend to be made entirely of leather rather than the originals' leather and suede or canvas. The all leather look leaves a bit to be desired and, in my opinion, you should save your money until you can afford a mid-range spectator from a company like Crockett & Jones.

From Simon
I am about to get my first made to order shirt (either a key largo blue stripe with Windsor collar or a blue herringbone with white Windsor collar and white cuffs). As I will only wear this shirt with a suit or when I wear a tie, the question is regarding cuffs with links or buttons. I feel that buttons on a nice well cut shirt could look cheap. But I dislike a French cuff or oversized cuffs. What would you advise?

If you respect tradition, contrast collar shirts should always have turnback cuffs. I prefer that the cuffs are also white but that's optional.

Button cuffs are fine for everyday wear otherwise. No-one will think your shirt looks cheap because they see a button on your sleeve.

If you do get buttons, I recommend two of them on the cuff parallel to your arm. They hold the cuff a bit straighter and the look, in my opinion, is a bit more finished.

Very English Shirts by Harvie and Hudson

Andrew Hudson of Harvie & Hudson was in San Francisco this week for his semi-annual visit. His ancestor George Frederick Hudson began the shirtmaker in partnership with Thomas George Harvie three generations ago. The firm is the only remaining Jermyn Street bespoke shirtmaker still owned solely by the founding families.


Harvie & Hudson tends to work principally with English shirting mills like Acorn. The made to measure shirts which are the heart of their business shirts are cut by hand and sewn by machine. And though they can make just about any style that a customer desires, most of their shirts are double cuffed and spread collared.


English makers focus on shirt and necktie colorways that complement the City's gray and blue suits, so their offerings tend towards pink and lilac. And then there's the collaboration with the silk weavers, a practice that's a specialty of Jermyn Street. Once they've chosen shirt patterns for the season, H&H commissions neckties that match their colors exactly, something that can only be done with woven ties. With a woven tie, threads of the precise color can be selected. Printed neckties, on the other hand, cannot be printed with color accuracy.

Conservative suits, black shoes and brightly colored shirts with matching neckties. That's English style the Harvie & Hudson way.

Inspired by Plaids

I am inspired by plaids today. After retiring some of the flashier items on my shirt shelves, I realized I'd gone too far. My city shirt wardrobe is currently weighted too heavily towards semi-solid shirts and simple stripes, an oversight that will be remedied with plaid shirts made from these Thomas Mason fabrics.

Now just a few men wear plaid shirts and perhaps others may think themselves not quite bold enough to make a plaid statement. But boldness is not really necessary. One trick that helps de-emphasize the complexity of a large check like the swatches in the photo is to combine them with a white collar and cuffs. Worn with a double breasted suit or single breasted with a waistcoat, there's only a peak of pattern setting off the necktie.

Yes indeed, fourth and fifth from the top will be just the ticket for the spring sunshine.

Labels and Logos

I tried on a pair of Mephisto walking shoes once. They were very comfortable and I took a closer look. That was as far as it got. There on the side of the shoe was a label with the maker's name. On the outside of the shoe, mind you. Just look on the heel on the right side of the photo.

So let's get one thing straight right off the bat. As far as I'm concerned, external labels of the sort found on certain brands of shoes and hats are not venial sins. They're mortal. Unforgiveable, you'll-never-lunch-at-the-Four-Seasons-again class sins. The venial sort is the alligator or polo player logo on polo shirt type, like the one on Ralph Lauren's shirt in the photo below.


Now, in tolerating these I'm probably being generous, as those little icons were the first step down the road to the man-as-walking-billboard wear we see around us today. And I need to be clear that I don't possess a single one of those logo'd shirts so I hold the moral high high ground in any debate. But I consider them a minor sin. After all, if I took them more seriously I'd never find anyone to play golf with.

Don't even get me started on those neckties with the maker's logo woven in.

The Walker's Shirts

In the film The Walker, costume designer Nic Ede has his lead, played by Woody Harrelson, escort the wives of some of Washington's powerful wearing double breasted suits with questionable shirt and tie combinations.

The drama is one of the few released in 2007 with a male actor in a role that might have displayed elegant dress. Unfortunately, Ede's white collar and cuff version of a ten year old monochromatic talk show look is no better than it was the first time around.


Now there's nothing out of line about dark red or lavendar shirts on a fellow playing the role of a male escort. But Harrelson's character would have demonstrated better clothes sense, in my opinion, with more spread to his collars, neckties that relegated the color of his shirt to a secondary element, and paisley pocket squares in unrelated colors.

Fit For A King

This portrait of Juan Carlos I of Spain shows how a dress shirt should peek out from under a jacket. There's half an inch of linen above the jacket collar at the rear, and half an inch at the ends of the sleeves (the photo was shot upwards, so the viewer sees a bit of cufflink that would be out of sight from a normal perspective).

Like his relative the Prince of Wales, Juan Carlos is usually seen in well cut double breasteds. The DB has a bit of the flavor of a military uniform, and evokes more of an aristocratic heritage than a single breasted coat.

Fit for a king.

The Shirt as Background

Complementing last week's essay on the shirt as the centerpiece of the day's clothes, here's an example of the shirt used as as a neutral background.

Tan glen check worsted with an orange overcheck, cream shirt and blue ancient madder necktie with light blue, green and orange paisleys. The pocket square is navy silk and, for someone will surely ask, the shoes are chestnut semi-brogues.

The Shirt As Centerpiece

One of the characteristics of the English style of dressing is that the shirt is usually the centerpiece of the day's clothes. The suit is conservative, the necktie is plain, or symbolic of some organization to which the wearer has an attachment, and the shirt takes the lead. This inclination towards flamboyant shirts has meant that London's Jermyn Street supports many more shirtmakers than are to be found in any other city of my acquaintance.

Gray flannel suit, pink gingham shirt and maroon grenadine necktie.

What Makes a Sports Shirt?

What makes a shirt a sports shirt, which is to say something other than a dress shirt? Two things: fabric and pockets.

A sports shirt is usually intended to be worn as a top garment without a jacket, or, less often, under a sweater. That means it needs to take on some of the functions of a jacket. And, in my book, that means a sports shirt starts with two pleated pockets that button.

A sports shirt can have short sleeves or long sleeves with barrel cuffs. It may have shirt tails and a buttondown collar. Or, it may have square tails and a camp collar, which is a collar without the reinforcing band that keeps the collar standing. But when he's wearing a sports shirt a man needs pockets (it's the opposite of a dress shirt which in my opinion shouldn't have them).

The other characteristic of a sports shirt is that it typically has bolder fabric than a dress shirt. That might be bright solids in linen or silk; or Tattersalls, Scottish tartans, cotton madras or other checks and plaids. Heavier weights can also come into play, such as denim, viyella (like the pictured shirts from Ben Silver), moleskin and twill.

Whatever the fabric, remember that one pocket is not enough. There must be one on each side for balance across the chest. And buttons to keep them closed, so your sunglasses don't fall out every time you lean over.

"Wanna Know if a Guy is Well Dressed?"

The late columnist George Frazier posed that question years ago and the answer, he said, was "Look down." But in business and the professions, a man's shoes are just the starting point. When one successful man is sized up by another, it's because there's been a positive first impression that warrants a further look. Their eyes start at the face, go down to the feet and sweep back to the face. And everything they see should pass muster.

I'm generalizing today about the professional who travels a lot to meet other professionals in his work. The kind of guy who buys four to six suits a year and would be uncomfortable or worse if someone said he looked like a dandy. The man whose clothing is intended to convey a sense of accomplishment without attracting attention to itself, because the last thing business clothing should do is get in the way of a transaction with another person.

If a well dressed professional is wearing a suit, it will usually be a two button notch lapel model that, if it's not bespoke, has been made to measure by a maker like Zegna or Oxxford; conservative in cut and color, fitted, and made of obviously high quality materials. His cream, blue and blue striped shirts are also made to measure because that's the only way he can be sure to show a half inch of linen at his collar and cuffs. He's usually wearing a pair of polished oxfords, and his necktie is quiet - in fact, his boldest gesture is probably a quarter inch of white linen in his breast pocket.

The guy in the illustration above fit the bill when men were flying in propellor-driven planes, and would be every bit as good today if he left the hat at home.

White Shirts and Sun Tans

They are fine in the evening but I'm not usually one for white dress shirts for day wear. That's partly because I agree with Hardy Amies, who wrote that they are a bit naff compared to blue or cream, and partly because they seem to wash all the color from my face. But there's one exception, and that's when I have a sun tan.

A tan seems to bring out the best in a white shirt, which is a good thing as white seems to coordinate especially well with the lighter colored suits of summer. Not to mention my favorite summer necktie (pictured), a blue so light that it loses its impact on anything but a white background. Time to order white linen from my shirtmaker.

Linen Shirts with Poplin Ties

I've come to love linen shirts in warm weather. Their texture gives them great visual interest and they breathe. What more can a man ask of his shirt?

The first photo is a small cream check with an Irish poplin necktie. I enjoy Irish poplin's sheen against the relative dryness of the shirt.


The second photo is a light blue checked linen paired with a tan and blue Irish poplin. Of the shirts I've packed for this trip, more than half are linen. And more than half of the accompanying neckties are Irish poplins. When you find something that works for you, work it hard.

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.

The Cut of Your Shirt

Only a bit of a shirt shows at your wrists and below your neck, which is why the collar is the most important part of a shirt. Consider poor Stanley Tucci here, unbecomingly costumed for his role in The Devil Wears Prada. The fit of his collar is classic, with what appears to be just enough room to insert a couple of fingers between shirt and neck and about a half inch of shirt above the back of his jacket. But the proportion is off - the points of his collar are too long for his head.

Proportion isn't difficult to achieve with a couple of simple rules of thumb. Men with round faces should wear longer collars and men with long faces, wider collars like the spread. A long neck requires a collar with a higher band and vice versa. The average man's straight point collar should be about 3" long, plus or minus a quarter. Larger men can add another quarter inch and smaller ones subtract it.

But for the collar, only a couple other elements are important for shirts that will live under jackets all the time. For one, the shirt tails should be long enough so that they stay tucked in. That requires about six inches of fabric below the trouser waist. And for another, the shirt cuffs should fall to the base of the thumb (if a man's jackets are cut to end at this wrist bone, this dimension will produce the requisite half inch of visible shirt cuff between jacket and hand).

The thumb actually gives the lazy shirt maker a way an easy way to achieve fit as he can (and usually does) simply make the sleeves a bit long knowing that the width of the hand will make the fit appear fine. This is so easy to achieve that when a man appears in a jacket that shows no shirt cuff, as did the Princes of England at the recent Combined Cavalry Old Comrades Parade, it merely points out the unforgiveable sloppiness of their tailor.

Tab Shirt Collars

It's not seen often in the UK for some reason but I've read that the late Duke of Windsor had a hand in the invention of the tab shirt collar. Whatever its origin, the tab has been worn by style conscious men for at least sixty years (author Tom Wolfe owns the high collared version in the photograph, which is courtesy of Kabbaz-Kelly). The advantage of the design is that the tab, closed with a stud, button or snap depending on your own and your shirtmaker's preferences, elevates the necktie knot to a proper angle without the flash of a collar pin.

Mr. Wolf prefers to wear his collars stiff, but I believe the tab has a particularly graceful shape when it's worn without stays, especially when the collar points are rounded. It's a tie-wearing collar of course, and a four in hand tie collar at that. The construction is meant to be covered by a necktie and mine couldn't be closed around a larger knot even if I was inclined to tie one.

Tab collars are appropriate for both city and country wear, and they seem proper with either button or French cuffs. If you're a tie-wearing man that hasn't had the pleasure, treat yourself.

Quotation: Floral Shirts Worn on Holiday

"Floral shirts should be worn with caution: it's all too easy to take on the appearance of a playboy who's gone to seed or; worse still, a big girl's blouse. The trick to wearing a flowery shirt is to make it look sporty by wearing it unironed and dressed down, with a T-shirt worn underneath, and the sleeves rolled up. I wore mine several times while I was away and on a visit to a winery in the middle of nowhere, the Aussie behind the counter asked me if I was a Pom*: perhaps he had noticed the socks with flip-flops? No, 'it's the Liberty print, mate.'"

-Mr Classic, Jeremy Hackett

*According to Wikipedia, a term describing 'a British person' that may be used as a slur, but is more often mildly affectionate.

Pique for Play

The polo shirt was the first sports shirt, created early in the twentieth century for men who played, you guessed it, polo. Originally a short sleeved white knitted wool pullover with a turned-down collar, the polo was the pattern for the tennis shirt of the late 1920's. Men kept finding new uses for it and today the polo is as ubiquitous for casual wear as the dress shirt is for more formal occasions.

We arguably have the polo to blame for the current glut of clothing items with cute little logos. 1953 saw the introduction of the short-sleeved Lacoste shirt, a cotton knit with a long tail and an alligator on the breast. It was a high quality shirt and quickly became popular.

I've never been fond of long sleeved polos but I like the short sleeve versions in both linen and cotton. In my opinion, properly made polos should have a tail, so they stay tucked in while the body is moving, and both logos and breast pockets should be avoided (Bullock & Jones, which offers some otherwise attractive versions, seems unable to execute a polo without a breast pocket). Solid colors are best, particularly classics such as white, navy, chocolate brown and wine. And contrast collars can add a stylish touch.

My favorite source for polos used to be a U. S. mail order company named Tuttle, which had its own, now apparently discontinued, line of double mercerized cotton shirts in two weaves and what must have been thirty colors. Some of them are still available on the company's online clearance page where they are good values at $54.50, and there are still a variety of other versions at prices ranging from $45 to $125, including the original, resurrected and rehabilitated Lacoste. Unfortunately it still comes with a little alligator on the breast.

Shirts in Context

I can think of three ways to wear shirts: with trousers but without a jacket (like the fellow in the navy sports shirt in the illustration), with an odd jacket or sweater, and with a suit. Most of the appropriate shirt details depend on the context in which they'll be worn but one applies to all and that's the length.

Short shirt tails were a pet peeve of mine once. Dress shirts should be long enough so that they don't come out of the trousers when a man's arms are raised above his head. If a shirt has to be re-tucked in during the day it's because the maker tried to save a nickel on fabric and made the tails too short. For a cure, order shirts that are a couple inches longer than standard, with a seventh button on the front.

Aside from specialty shirts for formal wear, suits call for the most shirting formality . I like to pair my suits with shirt that have French cuffs, a placket button on the sleeve and more formal collars. In my own wardrobe that means cutaway, spread, and tab collars. Straight point and Eton collars are also fine, preferably worn pinned. And suits are the only proper companions for contrast collars and cuffs.

The differences between shirts for odd jackets and shirts for suits are minor. I prefer button cuffed shirts for wear with odd jackets. Precious metal cuff links look a bit too bright and glittery with tweed but a two button cuff (the second button keeps the cuff aligned) with a placket button seems about right. I prefer Eton, tab, spread and button down collars on these shirts and point collars are also appropriate. No cutaways, and no contrast collars.

When it comes to shirts for casual wear, which is any time they are worn without a jacket, just about anything goes. Casual shirt details warrant an essay all their own. Today, I will say only that for all the marketing emphasis by some shirtmakers on thick mother of pearl buttons and hand stitching, the only time those features come into play is when a shirt is worn without a jacket. Hand sewing is critical to the construction of a tailored clothing but on a shirt it adds nothing to fit and what it might add to aesthetics is usually covered by a jacket (or, in the case of those extra thick buttons, by a necktie). My advice is to buy machine sewn MTM or bespoke shirts to wear with jackets and use the money saved for tailored clothing upgrades.

Shirt Monograms

There are some eccentric approaches to shirt monogramming going around. Jeremy Hackett shows English models with their prep school nicknames monogrammed in red on their left shirtsleeve above the elbow (his is a trend that may stoke the ego of guys named Big but it's unlikely to be adopted by at least one contemporary of mine who had the unfortunate nick of Chowder).

One Italian style leader goes a bit further. Lapo Elkann wears the Italian flag monogrammed on his sleeve cuff. I don't endorse that sort of boldness though. It's one thing to wear the occasional gag item and quite another to look as though you need to reminded of your national origin.

Men can make arguments that monograms are suitably discreet when placed on the lower left side of the chest, below where the pocket is not supposed to be located. Those making that argument wouldn't be completely out of line, as the rib cage is indeed where many men wear their initials. But I like to remember that monograms were first sewn so a man could get his shirts back from the laundry, and that's still the least egotistical use for them today. I like mine sewn inside the collar where the maker's label would otherwise be. In red, of course. That way they are as discreet as a paisley lining in a suit jacket.

Pinned Shirt Collars

In his day, columnist Herb Caen was arguably one of San Francisco's best dressed men (I say arguably only because of his penchant for unfortunate neckties) and a good customer of Savile Row's Henry Poole. As I leafed through a collection of his work last week I was struck by how often he was photographed wearing pinned collars. Good for him.

Like a tab collar, the virtue of a pin is that it raises the necktie knot. Though some deem it a little fussy or a little flash, it's better than a tab because when you remove the pin and necktie, you're left with an ordinary shirt collar. At least you are if you haven't indulged in one of those shirts that's got little holes sewn so you don't have to put the pin through the cloth. I consider that unnecessary as the weave will close up again during laundering, whereas pre-sewn eyelets mean a shirt is unwearable if you don't feel like pinning it that day.

Collars for pins come in two styles. There's the straight collar, usually about 3" long, and the rounded corner club (Brooks Brothers calls it the golf). I like to pin my club collars if I'm wearing them in the city, and I leave them unpinned in the country. That means I probably pin an individual shirt perhaps twice a year, so any damage caused by the pin is hardly a factor in the shirt's longevity.

If you're looking to acquire a pin, the safety pin style should be about 2" long or a little longer. Broderick has them in 14 carat gold for $180, and in gold plate or sterling for less than $30.