A Nation’s Standards - Part 2
‘So you see, Miss, we’re doing our best, afore she comes, to—’ At this moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the garden, called out `The Queen! The Queen!’ and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen.
First came ten soldiers carrying clubs; these were all shaped like the three gardeners, oblong and flat, with their hands and feet at the corners: next the ten courtiers; these were ornamented all over with diamonds, and walked two and two, as the soldiers did…
The English are a martial race and yet, they are neither a hostile nor a warlike people. True, their history revolves around preparation for war and honoring a disciplined military tradition but they have mostly used their force for either global balance of power or enforcing lucrative trade policies. In any case, they have been far more at home using diplomacy and pecuniary incentives to influence world order.
This may be why we enjoy the English gentleman as an image. He uses his intellect in parliament; language and the lilt of his voice are his finest weapons. He discusses, he negotiates but force is unthinkable except as a last resort. He is the ultimate executive and his power emanates not from the barrel of a gun but from controlled or restrained movements. Because this restraint is both unnatural and hard to teach, when accomplished, it is awe inspiring. The qualities and principles of restraint are echoed visibly by choice of necktie. Empires rise and crumble but the Englishman never deviates from jacket and tie; restraint, restraint, restraint. And this power through restraint, compressed into the small bit of silk that comprises the necktie acts like a standard of influence telling the world what “regiment” he belongs too and how he conducts himself and ultimately them.
In their own words the traditions and trends that the English tie industry sees in their country.
John Francomb, English designer
Ties are woven, rarely printed, never cartoon characters. Regimental stripes are very popular at the moment. Regimental stripes but not from actual regiments. As the club tie specialists in the UK, they have the archives of all the regiments and clubs so they can easily avoid offending any organization.
The neckties have a lightly pressed lining which leaves rounded edges rather than hard creased edges. This produces a fuller knot and dimple. It looks more luxurious this way and imparts a sense of prosperity to the observer. They sell about half a million ties a year mostly in England, so they’re doing something right.
Harvie and Hudson
Harvie and Hudson says that for neckties, dots should be no larger in diameter than a centimeter and often half that size. Navy and pink, white, yellow, red, or blue dots are most popular, and bright red with a white or blue dot. The fleur-de-lys or Prince of Wales feathers is an evergreen pattern that never really goes away. Woven ties usually come in navy with either red, blue, pink, white, yellow, sky blue, aqua or lilac designs on them. Sometimes they will form combinations, red and blue on navy, pink and blue on navy, yellow and blue on navy ad infinitum.
Printed ties in a heavy weight are acceptable with the younger set, while the older men almost always choose woven.
Drakes
The English either choose the most conservative ties imaginable or some of the craziest patterns possible. It often seems they are in a race to find ties that fit as many colors on a necktie as possible without clashing. There exists nothing in between these two extremes. This is quite possibly because the English wore such restrictive ties for so long that they lost their way taste-wise when they felt the need to branch out. Much of what Drakes does is try to find a sophisticated middle ground in tie patterning and coloring that will still embody a distinctive English flavor and tradition.
Henry Poole
Paisley ties are mostly for the country and unite the subdued elements of the country outfit of tweed jacket and tattersall shirt. Poole carries a selection of ties that it knows will appeal to its English (or anglophile) clientele. The background colors of the silks are mostly a medium navy and a dark red.
New and Lingwood
Wool ties, madder ties, knit ties are all popular. Ties are not mandatory, as they once were, and have been reinvented a bit for survival purposes. They’ve become more colorful and the challenge is to offer this without offending English tastes, and include textured plain ties and semi-plains (small dots and geometric designs).
Their ties with a different front and back blade color exemplify the sort of hidden difference the English find attractive. Small neat and small paisley designs go back deeply into the archives. The silk is in a particular type of finish. Vanners make excellent silk for neckties and they buy a lot of fabrics from them. A company called Adamley is used for printed tie fabrics, and Thomas Mason fabrics for shirts (they aren’t owned by the English but still demonstrate English tastes).
They make ties with a contrasting rear blade. That achieves two ends (ha-ha) first the tie is something that identifies the wearer of part of a set that shops at this exclusive store and second, the tie has that subtle nuance that can only be glimpsed at certain times which the English find titillating.
The mill of Vanners hold the secrets of the English art of silk weaving.
Turnbull and Asser
Turnbull make a large selection of ties which are a sort of highly refined City Lad approach. Truthfully, they are also well loved by barristers and bankers, mandarins and the heads of the larger corporations too. Turnbull employs the colors and patterns that the English hold dear in a riot of acceptably native color combinations. The ties themselves are a brand recognized by most men in England and carry their own unique cachet. Many of them that seem new and fresh are designs harkening back to the Swinging London of Carnaby Street.
There is a huge trend toward woven ties in England. Red is popular, but the national passion (which is rather cool) is all shades of blue from a royal down to a navy. A navy solid with a herringbone pattern is the one they would stock most to appeal to English sensibilities.
Vanners
One of the traditional ties in England is the regimental tie. The market for regimental ties endures globally, even if it has cooled a bit in Britain. Quirky color combinations are acceptable. The regimental tie industry is based on two simple striped patterns: the Guards stripe, evenly spaced inch wide stripes of color one and color two, and the club stripe, composed of a quarter inch stripe on a dark ground such as the “Old Etonian,” which has a navy blue ground with a sky stripe.
It should be mentioned that although certain stripes are called club stripes and are used by clubs, the actual club tie or heraldic ties are those with small repeating motifs ( a fox head or a rose for example) or escutcheons (School or association coats of arms) on them.
There are also grid patterns and geometrics. These are self explanatory.
Macclesfield tie patterns are small neat designs sometimes but not always in classic color combinations. And what is a Macclesfield tie pattern exactly? During the first half of the twentieth century, the two powerhouses of English necktie silk weaving were Sudbury in Suffolk, and Macclesfield – both industries being legacies of silk weaving from earlier centuries. During this period jacquard tie designs were either stripes (including regimentals), or small scale jacquards. These jacquards tended to be neat geometrics and very small floral effects – and although they were woven in both locations, Macclesfield became pre-eminent in their production. To this day, therefore, small neat jacquards are still referred to as ‘Macclesfields’, especially when woven in classic colourations.
Another typical scene at Vanners where silks undergo a series of treatments before they are woven into patterns.
Duchamp and Richard James are two houses that have created a new direction for a certain type of woven and very colorful tie that appeal very much to the English taste. It is difficult to put a busy tie on a busy shirt, but the English will do it. Vanners weave Duchamp’s and Richard James’ tie collections and appreciates each firm’s unique and exciting approach to color and pattern. This enthusiasm translates into a better all-around product because both sides (designer and weaver) participate in the color riot, making these ties uniquely English.
They also make the silks for the Turnbull and Asser and the Charles Hill silk ties, which posses a color value that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. The same could be said of the ties carried by Thomas Pink, whose Madison Avenue store is very large and showcases a lot of Vanners’ silk weaving handiwork.
The English enjoy color on their ties, even if the background is often dark. Men in England tend toward blue shirts and navy blue ties. Navy background with white or pink or red is a natural design starting point for the English market. Vanners has at least 20 shades of navy from a sub royal blue to a blue/black. Navy background neckties are in such demand in England that they could easily create another 20 shades. After navy, wine backgrounds are next on the popularity scale, followed by a buff color or a yellow/gold.
Beautiful colors are the result of painstaking attention to detail. Vanners’ collective knowledge produce the shades the English find desirable.
English men are not afraid to wear pink or orange as a background color or as a highlight. Actually, as Shakespeare’s Herald alluded to in Henry V, Englishmen are not afraid of anything at all. But more to the point, they certainly are not afraid of colors nor do they shy away from clashing tie and shirt. Clashing colors isn’t a concern because the English see it done so often by their men that it has become “classic.” On the upscale websites or in the better English male style catalogs, the designers take great care to match ties to shirts because the rule of thumb is that ties drive shirt sales. It serves to demonstrate an ideal to the English of how colors can work together, even if the combinations work better in theory than in practice. Which is why colors of a certain tonal range can be deliberately intermixed and the result will, at worst, be a sort of quirky personal style.
Because the English have such dull weather, they tend to sport brighter colors for accessories; they need to cheer each other up.
They don’t wear the wedding ties that Manhattanites wear on a regular basis. They do wear them for weddings in shades of grey and also lilac, blue and pink.
More than 50% of the ties sold in the world are bought by women on behalf of men, and so design aesthetics are created with what captures the female eye as well as that of the male.
The English put patterns on patterns all the time and they put patterns of tie on same scale patterns of shirt without any regard for the result. Aesthetic objectivity is not something to achieve for an Englishman who can get more points for doing it wrong and thus appearing not to care at all.
In America the number one background color is red, followed by black (which the English don’t like much, but this is changing). Americans match their ties to items other than their shirt or with regard to the entire ensemble of suit, shoes, pocket square etc., while the English only match their ties to their shirts.
Over the past 5 years their colors have come up in tone. There is greater demand for brighter, cleaner shades than before with firms like Duchamp and Thomas Pink driving an appetite for pure, primary tones of color.
The English prefer chunkier, heavier weights with interesting weaves and tie constructions . Texture is important, and stiffer, crisper silks are in ample evidence in the English market in distinction to the softer, gummier, drape-y ones so popular in other markets. Simply hold a skein of English woven silk and you can feel the crisper handle. Why is English silk different? English tie silks are said to have scroop1 , part of the silk weaving and refining process. When made into a necktie, scroop gives off it an almost audible “crunch” as you make a knot.
Pattern setting is both a technical and historical art form. As such, Vanners is certainly a British national treasure.
The English have a long standing tradition of producing jacquard silk weaves in a large number of variations. In fact, they have developed so many acceptable textured weaves that no man could ever wear them all in a lifetime without being a dedicated clothes horse. This art of jacquard silk weaving explains the English fondness for textures on neckties; even (or especially) on solids. Contrast this against the plain twill solids acceptable in other markets.
Skews (color ways for each tie pattern) are needed aplenty for ties in every collection. If a shirt collection features 50-100 different shirt designs, multiply that by 10 for the number of neckties needed to accompany them.
Skews or small rectangles of a tie design in different color ways are sewn together into quilts to give a potential customer an idea of how a range will appear.
Consumer demand for ties by tends to be voracious. And, creating still more demand, tie designs even for the relatively stable English typically last for only one season and then new patterns are introduced with new color ways. The good news is that Vanners can refer to their vast archival designs both to reintroduce them and to use them as a starting point to design new patterns and color combinations. As always, what’s old is new.
Vanners refers to archival books of tie patterns in order to come up with new designs several times a year.
Over 100,000 designs reside in Vanners archives, which are catagorized by decade, by pattern and by weave. These are the seeds for any Vanners project. The amount of work necessary to create a given tie collection can be vast, and many of the simple tie patterns that people take for granted required someone at Vanners to set, perfect and put into differing color palettes. Add to this the marketing schedules for father’s day and Valentine’s Day, the tie designers are working round the clock to meet demand.
350 thread count (per inch across the warp) ties exhibit the truly unique, rich quality that Vanners are known for. The warp is the thread on which the fabric is woven; the underlying basis of the design. Generally, the richer the warp, the richer the fabric.
And weave settings can make a club stripe in a “fleshier” texture, a satin stripe on a repp ground, a twill stripe on a basket weave ground. Weave settings can also account for more open weaves like grenadine or tighter, crisper weaves like the panama — the number of combinations is seemingly unlimited.
Cravats
Cravats make ties for stores like H. Herzfeld, J. Press, Dege and Skinner, Harvie and Hudson amongst many others. Very English, very knot and dimple friendly in construction. They have been in business for roughly 55 years. Their current proprietor, Mr. Norman, who traces his lineage back to the conquest, is about as English as one could hope for, in the best possible sense. Because he sees trends in selections both in Britain and abroad, I was fortunate enough to hear some of his thoughts on the English preference in neckties.
For casual the English gentleman might wear an ascot or cravat under his shirt. However, he would wear a classic tie with a suit. A classic tie is one that no one will find jarring the first time they see it. Small dogstooth or houndstooth checks, a polka dot or a plain tie with texture in the ground are examples. Grenadine ties are very popular in navy, royal, red, cream. Cream ties for a cotton suit in beige with a pale blue shirt and a cream grenadine tie. Not very City, but then Britain is a greater place than just London, and the 2006 summer has been brutal.
The English prefer blue followed by burgundy. The blue ties would be dark but not too dark. A fleur de lys tie, navy ground with red, blue, pink, lilac, aqua or gold fleurs is considered quite staid. The pin dot (very small and often closely clustered), the Churchill spot (about the size of a paper hole punch), and the one cent size which is not hugely popular but much more popular in Britain than anywhere else.
Neckties in 350 count silk, woven by Vanners to Cravats specifications. They are then made up by Cravats and appear in the very best English men’s shops, such as Harvie and Hudson.
The bowtie wearer in England will always be looking for something different. Bow ties tend to be more flamboyant and more eccentric and, once you dare to wear a bow in England and outside the Clubs — you would be hard pressed to find a bowtie wearer in London — absolutely anything goes. Much more common in England is the black tie for evening. Black ground ties are not popular in England but navy, burgundy and purple backgrounds are popular.
Pink, purple, gunmetal grey and even a blue-grey will serve as background colors but it is navy with highlight colors white, silver, pink, lilac, purple, red, yellow, sky and aqua that is king in England.
The pig motif represents the male chauvinist cult which Englishman enjoy being a part of.
Made up for Ede and Ravenscroft, a City of London based shop: a checker board motif a quarter inch across, which are even worn by the very straight and narrow London barristers, solicitors and judges in alternating silver and colored checks. Although the origin of the checkerboard motif is uncertain it is very English going back to patterns in Celtic textiles in pre-roman conquest days.
The English tie business is 90% woven and the rest is bought by foreign passport holders.
The English wear blue or blue pattern shirts and sterling cufflinks which explains their predilection for navy or blue ground ties.
They do a 50 and 36 oz printed tie, and of course they make a meal of the Vanners 350 thread count wovens which the English go mad for. They make up English ancient madder ties, wool challis ties (popular in the States because we think the English wear them, which they really don’t), Mogador, satins, repps, spots, paisleys, neats, printed to name a few. They get many of their silks designed and woven by Vanners, a firm that understands the English cultural approach to silk color, texture, pattern and weight. Designed by, for and made in England; it can’t get much more authentic than that.
Another 350 count tie woven by Vanners, made by Cravats and worn by London’s sartorial elite. The English like dense woven ties with texture and just the proper glint to the silk. The ties are between 145 and 147 cms in length and the width of the blade is between 9.5 and 9 cms.
… and for bowties
Anything goes for bowties, absolutely anything. You’re meant to be an eccentric if you wear a bowtie and thus the regular necktie guidelines do not apply. Barristers and medical consultants are often the most influenced by this look. Additionally, the most tedious and straight laced occupations generally have the loudest bowties which is why some of the nicest are produced by Duchamp, Turnbull and Asser and Paul Smith. I think it not unlikely that the English would use Charvet bowties an awful lot as well.
A short word on placing ties on shirts
Remember that the English like simplicity. This is a baseline but it is not where the entire population resides with regard to tie selection because the English also like color. At its most callow and yet culturally acceptable level, the English will place a blue tie upon a blue striped shirt and a purple tie upon a lilac striped shirt. That’s not too exciting but it is very English. At a step above this is a level of Englishman who will only place the blue tie on the lilac striped shirt and the purple tie on the blue striped shirt. This level of Englishman will never place like color tie on like color shirt and would tell you that the matched color level is indicative of a less sophisticated Englishman. However, they will still accept the practice as comfortably, if unfortunately English.
Although the English like contrast with the tie generally darker than the shirt, there are exceptions like the example above. There are no hard and fast rules about this and each combination must be examined on a case by case basis. This is the Harvie and Hudson look with a smart City twist.
Another type of Englishman revels in the clash of colors. This is the approach that he just selected whatever tie was at hand and threw it on the shirt, irrespective of its complimentary values. Buying whatever shirts and ties you like separately enhances this look which it can be said no other jacket and tie wearing set do with as much aplomb. The English love to plan it all to look like they got it wrong and still have it look “English”. These men will place their regimental or club tie on a shirt regardless of the colors or pair a blue and pink checkered tie on a blue shirt with a red highlight — close but no cigar, and yet one of the crowd.
There is yet another level that may introduce colors that neither compliment or match but contrast and also have accent or background colors that may be a bit renegade or naughty such as green, brown or orange. If this is planned with enough cleverness, the discordance is a sign of even more sophistication through the pose of “I don’t care”. This is the aristocratic stance that the English still find to be a sign of importance. However while they may be seen to be violating color or pattern taboos, they are choosing them with some care and through the eyes of a greater England. Only the English can make the right (but wrong) tie choices and still be viewed as English by their peers. An American doing so would be spotted at once.
Whatever type of Englishman you observe he will have matched or not matched his tie only to his shirt without regard to anything else in his outfit such as jacket, pants, socks or pocket square.
Ties for the English serve an interesting duality. On the one hand, they are mere napkins which protect the shirt. Well-to-do Englishmen will buy ties in polyester because they are washable! Something an American of the same background would find hard to fathom. On the other hand, there are messages sent by the choice of tie. Different sorts of Englishmen choose different colors and patterns and within each clique there further exists a hierarchy of who everyone is according to the choice of their tie. There is thus their group and our group, but then there are also judgments made about everyone within a given group. The serious man picks the darker, smaller pattern, the womanizer may choose louder ones, and the thug may pick a different sort of tie again, but all bought from the same shop.
I recall old movies set in the colonial era where it was a disgrace for the British regiment to lose their ensign or even let the flag touch the ground, embodying as it did regiment, queen and country. Similarly, the necktie announces who the wearer is and the position he holds in the regiment that is England which as a consequence sets a nation’s standards.
1 the crisp rustle of silk or a similar fabric.
A Nation’s Standards-Part 1
`Would you tell me,’ said Alice, a little timidly, `why you are painting those roses?’
Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, `Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a RED rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know.
And England has always had a love affair with roses. They had the Wars of the Roses1 with white and red roses used as heraldic badges to distinguish political factions. Roses figured prominently on the long banners used during the period and became the symbol of the Tudor dynasty that prevailed at the end of this conflict. And like the deepest fear of the cards Alice meets in the flower garden, a lot of the nobility were beheaded for choosing the wrong colored rose2.
During the Wars of the Roses, heraldry and livery3 reached their zenith with the English grandees spending unimaginable fortunes to outfit their retinues in the colors and symbols which echoed their crests. The point is that the English believe in symbols and their whole culture has carefully cataloged their rules and meanings. When men stopped wearing identifying badges directly on their outer garments or carrying shields, it was natural that the necktie would devolve into a form of personal crest.
Without getting into the evolution of the necktie, suffice to say they were almost universally solid bits of silk with a functional use to protect the shirt and hold the collar in place. I suppose after a while, someone, somewhere4 became bored with the universality of solids and the small pattern was born. It probably should have stopped there but the fact is once that cat was let out of the bag, it was impossible to stop the proliferation of patterns that eventually produced the harlequin prints of the 1920s and 30s5.
The necktie itself only achieved its current four-in-hand shape around the same time that patterns began to appear. In the twentieth century, English heraldry entered a new more bureaucratic age and personal crests gave way to those of military units, schools and political organizations. Even if they secretly desired them, men did not need special and unique ties because it mattered more to be recognized as a member of a powerful group or to express exalted indifference to the same. The age of the peer stamping his own badge on everything was at a temporary end and now it was all about the regiment, the school, the profession or geometric nothingness6.
But irrespective of the purpose of the necktie, whether to complete the outfit of jacket and shirt, a signaler to an observer or even to reign in a man’s behavior, it has to be made of some material and silk with a wool lining has been the most enduring choice for English men. They prefer a heavy, solid woven silk which yields a chunky sensation when handled. This is appropriate really because the English engage in what I call Chunk dressing. What does that mean? Good question and since it is based on my observations and interpretations I suppose I had better tell you.
Chunk dressing is an approach. Items are simple in both color and color combinations, patterns can be quite bold and contrast is apparent. Additionally, items of the same scale of pattern and groups of color are lumped together irrespective of “clashing.” It works well under certain guidelines because the colors are all of a sort. City colors go with city colors and country ones with country ones.
These spotted ties all illustrate both the simple primary color rule and the chunky, rich silks the English prefer for their neckties.
The fact that colors tend to be simple and primary means that there will be a certain harmony to the cacophony of pattern and color…if you see what I mean. Bear in mind that chunk dressing allows a certain weight and quality to become the standard. Interesting factors such as the mildness of the English climate allow for a uniformity of texture and depth throughout the outfit, throughout the year. It would be hard to imagine a Manhattan-ite going to work in 100 degree August weather with a heavy woven tie around his neck.
Another example of simple, primary color combinations.
This uniformity of tie thickness (both silk and lining), tying its thicker knot translates into other uniformities in the English outfit such as a single reigning shirt collar style or at least a relatively minute degree of variance within the world of the spread collar.
It would be hard to wear a straight or forward shirt collar with the chunky ties most Englishmen own. Although straight collars are actually quite common in England and though predictably crowded by the fuller tie knots, it does not look THAT wrong.
The English do not like having to deal with what tie goes with what shirt collar. And the basic outfit uniformity expands like a mushroom cloud until the basics of cut, color and quality are all similar enough that distinguishing elements lie in how you wear something, not within what exciting choice you’ve made. That’s why we as Americans see only a color or a pattern while the English see a specific knot for a tie, the bend in a collar, the way a shirt cuff has been pressed. Sherlock Holmes’ solving mysteries through use of deductive reasoning via observation is more than a good story; it’s the way the English mind works.
Frequently you will see that neckties and shirts are very straightforward. The colors and patterns used rarely have a Byzantine intricacy that can be found in other cultures’ patterns. Colors are simple and pure rather like the basic set of Crayola crayons. Suits are dark, shirts are light and ties are dark (but rarely as dark as the suit, oh la la!). To be sure the whole English ensemble works well if kept within its confines and explains the limitless variations on the same theme. It’s important to understand the ties that bind the English. While it might seem that anything goes, this is not the case and even neckties worn for a flight of fancy are actually chosen for subliminal cultural reasons. It would seem that with regard to necktie selection, the English are much more repressed than some other jacket and tie wearing cultures.
The English consider the Shirt to be the important thing, even if it’s quite bold and the tie is the equivalent of a napkin. In the States, we consider the shirt akin to the palette where we showcase the all-important necktie. However little an American may know about clothes, he will wax nostalgic about his choice of neckwear. In England, shirts are trusted friends and certain colors and patterns that we would consider dizzying serve as British classics.
But why are there so very many English shirt classics and why are a large proportion of them so bold and open to minute reinterpretation along the same theme? The City of London is a single square mile of financial services territory which supports some 400,000 commuters every overcast day. Many of them will qualify as the City lads who favor brash shirts, something no doubt to admire on themselves and each other while they spend most of their day on the phone or watching the ticker. The point is, you can often look at your own shirt, but once it is around your neck, it is harder to visually enjoy your tie. The deeper point is that with so many shirt and tie wearing Englishmen concentrated in a small arena, one needs an awful lot of classic shirts to be in step with tradition and still look a bit different from your neighbor.
We are speaking of trends here. There will be things that appeal to everyone and those that are not worn but are unobjectionable to anyone. However, at the ends of this scale there will be those who will wear only the most restrained of things and those who will dress flamboyantly or with more panache. There are shirt and tie items the general office worker would never touch but will still either admire or sneer at as fundamentally an English choice as opposed to that of an outsider.
But what of the ties? If the controlling word for a film and its cult following which resonates still through the decades can be summarized as “Plastics”, then too can the defining word for the choice of English neckties monolithically define itself as “Geometrics”.
And there are three genres of ties, the very staid old Tory tie which is the bulk of the Drakes7 style prints and wovens, the Turnbull and Asser-esque tradition which has been taken up by TM Lewin, Harvie and Hudson and dozens of other merchants and makers, which features large two- or three-color geometrics, with the spot tie being the most popular, almost always on a dark blue or red or scarlet background with a contrasting spot. Finally there are the very bold ties of a Duchamp, which combine dandyism with abstract art.
Color and Tone
Americans- at least those among whom I spend most of my time- tend to be as conservative in their clothes as Londoners. There are, it is true, certain subtle distinctions between the two. A friend of mine from the eastern seaboard, a tall upstanding gentleman whom I have always regarded as more British than the British both in his apparel and in his accent, was in a London club one day, waiting for a member who had invited him to lunch. As he stood at the bar he overheard three young men speculating as to whether he was an American or an Englishman. He could not resist approaching them with the question, “Which do you really think I am?”
Two of them replied that they thought he was British. But the third dubbed him an American. Asked how he had come to this conclusion, he said, “Because of your tie.”8
“You have ruined my life!” my friend exclaimed. He had thought this tie of his to be of the discreetest and most British design. Now, whenever he goes to London, he finds himself looking curiously at every man’s tie before he looks at his face, trying in bewilderment [to figure out] just how he went wrong.
However formally they may be dressed, Americans do tend to wear brighter ties than the British do. They also wear, rather more often, their own version of the Old School and club ties.
… excerpt from Windsor Revisited by HRH The Duke of Windsor.
The one starting rule is that for work, the English, at least when in England, like dark ties. Medium blues and bright reds are acceptable, but generally dark ties are preferred. This is interesting if only because one would think a tie is a way to introduce some glint and relief to the dark suit and dry shirt. However, that is an Americanism. The English introduce light and color through their shirts.
And speaking of color, one must choose dark blue ties that are not too dark, lest they match your navy suit too closely. To be clear, “dark” does not mean an absence of brightness or vibrancy, although it often does. The English have no reservations about rich, deep color in their tie, and colors are often both purer and contain various shades of the same color to give warmth to the visual effect. For example, consider 4 different shades of blue, all pure in their own right, woven into a tie to keep the overall effect a true blue from a distance, but closer inspection reveals the gradients of the same color.
In England, contrast is king, ties should be darker than shirts and their background color should never match that of the suit.
But if the English like dark ties, why then do they often wear pale ones? It might be closer to the cultural truth to say that they are expected to wear dark ties rather than that they like dark ties. As such, the Englishman, by wearing a lighter, brighter tie, is in a perpetual state of naughtiness; a form of sartorial derring-do. Not only does it help brighten up the frequently overcast weather, but also serves as a way to bend the rules without breaking them and so fulfills an English penchant for sartorial deviance.
As mentioned, the English will wear bright ties as long as the color is true and pure and not washed out. Occasionally a bright pink or orange will light up an otherwise sullen worsted navy suit, but the color resolution must be strong. Black ties and black background ties cannot be given away. Although, having said this, black ties are beginning to make headway with younger dressers. For the moment, if you had to buy ties for a shop catering to English customers, you would do well to avoid black.
Think of the large number of exceptions in this way. If you are American and I were to state that most American men wear a white or light blue solid shirt for work, your mind might instantly attach to the large number of examples on a given day where this is not true, ignoring the even larger pool of men who are indeed wearing white or blue solid shirts. The exceptions do not disprove the rule.
Bright ties are not a problem for the English. Notice that these ties, even when they appear busy, are all very simple.
In the USA, bright or light ties are common but there is a dislike of dark ties as overly mature and serious. Thus, an American who sees a Brit wearing a light tie registers it as normal and does not detect the flamboyant bravado the Brit believes he is displaying to the world. The message is lost on us, and lost more deeply because so many Brits wanting to be dashing wear the brighter tie. But in the overall context of English culture, it would be viewed as a renegade look.
Unless it is in a regimental or club pattern, black is out. Dark grey, dark red, dark blue (but of course not the darkest blues because that would make it all too easy to sum up), dark purple (although not too dark lest you give the impression of “assuming the purple”), dark green (not a forest green but a rich dark emerald) with the operating term being dark. Why not lighter ties? It seems there is a real anxiety over being mistaken for an ice cream salesman. The vast majority of lighter ties the English make are sold overseas.
In fact the number one seller in England is blue of one shade or another from medium to the lighter shades of navy, followed by dark red. So forget about all those shades of yellow, pink, bathtub green, lilac, sky blue, cream etc. you see with English labels on them. Those are all made for export.
Patterns and textures
Woven ties are preferred in England. In the USA, prints are also somewhat popular. Our brutal summers give rise to the demand for something lighter and more carefree wound around the perspiring necks of our miserable office denizens. A printed tie is more in keeping with the spirit of the heat wave. This is one reason we like lighter colors for ties that the English will gladly export but wouldn’t acquiesce to wear even at gun point.
Although the English will wear printed ties, they prefer ones in heavier weights or with thicker linings than are normal in the USA. They also like a very bright red background in prints. I have seen the English wearing all sorts of ties, and they are far from infallible in their tastes. They wear ties of every color, weight, weave, pattern; they even wear ties that match the color of their shirt, which cuts against the grain of their usual principles of contrast between shirt and suit, and shirt and tie. Of course, this discussion is pertinent to trends and traditions, not what each and every Englishman wears.
When the English do wear printed ties, they prefer heavier weight silks with texture.
Solids you should think would be the off-the-rack choice for a mindset that reaches for heavily patterned shirts, but that would be far too easy. The English do wear solids but generally consider them uninteresting.9 Solids themselves need to have some texture like an ottoman or panama weave or even grenadines. For solids, the English require an interesting look, which is why the satin finish (and the Mogador) is making headway. Satin finish ties, when nice enough quality densely woven from expensively dyed silk and, ironically, somewhat matte finished, combine surface interest with intensity of color. The sort of solid tie American men like, the basic flat looking solid, is avoided in England.
Popular are the Sheppard’s check or hound’s-tooth ties in a variety of scales from tiny to the size of a nickel, either in the self color (making an interestingly textured solid) or in a contrasting color, silver and navy, purple and black (or is it navy?) etc…
The English see details. It is likely that Beau Brummel’s focus on details as the mark of quality in otherwise plain clothes was nearly as compressing as the force required to turn coal into a diamond, then you start to understand how small variations on the same theme impress the English.
Here is an English “curveball” to consider. To my eyes, if something looks handsome, it is acceptable. Generally it will also be admired as handsome by my fellow Americans and accepted as such. To the English, something that looks handsome can still be culturally awful, and it might be admired but you will be an outcast. For instance and although you can learn to mimic the English approach to shirt and tie, when it comes to socks and pocket squares you tread on perilously thin ice. Not only in the choice of material and color(s) used but in the way it is plopped in the pocket or slid up the calf. I daresay an entire book could be written on the subject of when it is acceptable to wear a pocket square and the images you conjure in the English observer’s mind. Some apparently dreary choices can sound you out as a bounder and some flashes of color can mark you as a solid citizen without so much as a warning or a reason. If someone were attempting to study the English to produce spies to mix amongst them, I would wish them the very best of luck and hope their grip on sanity was concrete.
Stripes or club ties are a national source of angst. To wear one you are not entitled to is a sin looked down upon by even those who do not wear neckties at all. The chances of making a mistake are great enough for most English men to forsake wearing a regimental tie altogether. However, it is undeniable that a striped tie is a beautiful accompaniment to a shirt and a suit; a sartorial fact that English men would admit to. How then do we reconcile the social barrier with compelling sartorial art? Enter TM Lewin, keepers of the English club tie for nigh on forever. They know and archive every club tie in existence that rates in England and therefore they can produce regimental tie patterns that infringe on no one’s right to be an old boy. An interesting “blue ocean”10approach to creating a new, untrammeled and in-demand market. That’s Capitalism on the hoof.
Striped ties often have texture as do solids. The English do not generally like smooth ties unless the silk has an interesting finish.
End of Part 1
All ties by Harvie and Hudson.
1 The Wars of the Roses were a series of civil wars fought in medieval England from 1455 to 1487 between the House of Lancaster and the House of York. The name Wars of the Roses is based on the badges used by the two sides, the red rose for the Lancastrians and the white rose for the Yorkists.
2 Although identification of a given noble house was often easy which political faction they backed was more difficult to determine. Because the Wars of the Roses had few soldiers in any sort of uniform beyond liveries, confusion over which side one was on was a recurring problem. It was not uncommon for friendly soldiers to fight each other accidentally or for captured Yorkist soldiers to claim they were fighting for the Lancastrians.
3 Although I will assume that everyone understands that heraldry is the art and science of noble identification, livery should be explained. It is the manner in which nobles decorate and signify ownership of their property; including human servants.
4 It might have been James Lipton who liked a small repeating white dot pattern on a dark background.
5 Created and produced by Charvet they were inspired by Ringling Bros. travelling circus and soon became a favorite afterhours choice of the smart set. They combine abstract design with beautiful colors and quality silk and linings. Due to difficulties with the process, printed ties were not common during this period and Charvet’s bold patterns were seen both as an exclusive symbol of consumption and as one of leisure triumphing over labor or commerce, not to mention they brightened up a lot of mundane outfits.
6 During the war of the roses, banners and standards had been painted silk. They were always considered secondary to the decoration on the soldier or knight himself. That was a problem; in fact the main problem discovered was that the nobles had far too much power which the Tudors sought to dissolve. With the rise of professional regiments raised for the King, power was transferred to the throne and embodied by the regiment’s colors. The idea of a silk flag personifying the regiment or the country blossomed. The turn back facings of the colorful jackets were reflected in the regimental colors. The logical conclusion for an army which abandoned colorful jackets for khaki was to place the facing colors as a badge on the sleeve head of the jacket or as a flash on the side of the helmet. Neckties also reflecting the colors of both the jacket turn backs and the regimental flag were used to distinguish their otherwise standardized uniforms.
7 Drake’s are an English tie maker, and although the English generally do not like prints, they will wear them if they are heavy and rich enough and very conservative. Of course, many of the British wear printed ties outside of the City for Town or casual events but they prefer the woven ties for business.
8 Never mind that James Clavell wrote in King Rat that the English could always tell the American prisoners of war by their waxy skin!
9 Actually, Kate Fox in her “Watching the English” (p.291)mentions that the the single solid color tie is considered no higher than middle-middle [class].
10 Blue Ocean vs. Red Ocean approaches to business opportunities appeared in Harvard Business Review. Essentially the “Red Ocean” approach involves fighting with competitors over existing market share while the “Blue Ocean” approach entails creating new markets without competition.
Comment [1]
Sportswear and its Merits
As we’ve seen in The Boutique as a Sartorial Temple there had been a serious move towards a more casual street smart look since the fifties. A transposition of attire as it were.The very word sports jacket indicating a thing or two as well although it was still a long way to go to the tracktop being established as a classic.
Three-button sports style1.
There is however a huge gap between what was once considered as a sporty (weekend) outfit and todays uniform of studied nonchalance. The difference is basically an attitude thing though. Whereas people before the second World War (and for some time afterwards still for that matter) wanted to look smart and tidy in sports jacket, button-down shirt and slacks, scruffiness seems to be the norm nowadays. People most definitely don’t want to come across as neat anyway. Back in the day a man wouldn’t take off his jacket too easily which should be looked upon away from convention. Even within the comfort of his own home the sake of smartness would still call for a nice sweater or cardigan to be worn over the (open necked) shirt. If one understands this intrinsic need, well, that would be a start I’d say. Perhaps in this day and age the knitwear would be a bit more adventurous so the sporty element will be a bit more prominently on show. There might even be a tiny label to spot on first or second glance (gasp).
It’s all a matter of nuance and a shifting emphasis really. A contemporary take on a classic influence, a style update which can be lifted from fashion, but that’s optional.
The same goes for the footwear. Think nice, clean trainers instead of the classic loafer for instance : Puma Clyde or States, Adidas Samba or Forest Hills, New Balance Trackster, Nike Bruin or Cortez or Diadora Elite are all great classic alternatives. Please be aware of the fact that not all re-issues are all that great though.
Puma Clyde – Olive and green. Classic Puma basketball shoe straight from the archives2.
To elaborate on this, just stop and think of the fact that the classic sports jacket will look pretty formal to the average modern eye. The wearing of a simple knitted polo shirt under a (suit) jacket will ask a lot more of the imagination to reach the same liberating effect, if you will, too. In this respect one could e.g. think of a Rapha cycling top and in doing so implementing a functional, hard wearing garment to an otherwise semi-formal outfit. The loosened tie worn cuphandle style might still carry some validity when applied imaginatively (like under an interesting v-neck and blazer combo perhaps), but you’ll get my drift by now.
Further still I’m convinced it’s next to impossible to make those of classic sartorial persuasion see the beauty of the tracktop, let alone them donning one, but as an example I’d like to point out the smart effect the following ensemble will have, once you’ve got an eye for it :
Classic (that word again) box-fresh (like) trainers, a pair of the best modern jeans there is to be found (indigo, possibly dry/raw and no distressing or other distracting, silly details), matching belt, quality T-shirt and cotton or wool mix tracktop in perfect colour coordination with those trainers. Solid colour socks too of course ; Burlington or Falke rather than toweling ones and you’ve arrived. Oh, and all this topped off with a short, neat haircut needless to say. As in a best of both worlds sort of way ; counterbalancing the overall casual presentation that is.
Fila Match Day Jacket3.
The idea of taking countrywear to the city is not a new one, indeed far from it, but it’s a core idea nevertheless when it comes to ‘Smart Casual’. Casual smart reminds me too much of a business suit worn ‘sans tie’ by the way, so the correct term would be as stated thank you very much. I do like the sound of ‘Casual Chic’ as well. It would become a bit pretentious however when used on a regular basis. Also, it’s not at all in accordance with the working class roots of the matter (tongue placed firmly in cheek). Taking schmutter out of its context and applying it to less obvious, new surroundings remains an endless source of inspiration for those into what we’ve previously dubbed as ‘Hard Dandy’.
Perhaps the biggest challenge within this approach is to make a combination of formal-, sports- and country gear work. e.g. Trainers, cords and formal shirt topped off with some heavier ‘outdoor’ knitwear (I would like to mention CP Company and Stone Island here).
Such an outfit is guaranteed to be appreciated. What makes it all most interesting, to my mind anyway, is that it is a reversed form of rebellion. Subtle, smart and sensible at the same time. The perfect look in short because it never really dates.
Another good look may consist of a sports shirt meant to be worn untucked, so that the bottom of the shirt can be seen from under a colour-wise complementing v-neck. Again, if this combination is worn in perfect harmony with some nice casual footwear, with maybe some fitted cotton trousers worn in subtle support, it may result in a very youthful look that will actually work regardless of age. And what’s more : there are so many modern classic jackets to be found in both bold or sober colours, whatever the occasion may ask for, that have a street smart appeal. Cotton/windcheater, like the Baracuta G9, waxed cotton (Barbour and Belstaff spring to mind), corduroy, denim, leather, wool, you name it. Just try on a few of those handsome numbers in front of a full length mirror at your favourite clothes shop, simply enjoy the fact that you won’t be able to buy them all and let the mirror decide for you.
Barbour International Jacket Sandstone4
Suede chukka boots with matching belt, quality jeans, plain merino roll- or turtleneck and tweed jacket with a paisley hanky is another look I rather like in a more classic framework. Think Steve McQueen in “Bullitt”. The jacket may require a contemporary touch mind, perhaps an Italian, semi fitted one or then again maybe the use of a mixed fabric would be nice.
The possibilities there are to discover through experimentation never stop to amaze me. Sartorial exploration will keep me busy until the end of my days and I suspect a few of you reading these lines will keep me company in spirit. Fellow travellers and all that.
Alex Roest
Footnotes
1 New York Public Library Digital Images
Recommended reading :
Trainers by Neal Heard
Casuals by Phil Thornton
They’ve Done Us On The Wardrobe Front pt II: Phil Thornton Casuals by Alex Roest
Comment [1]
Designs of the City
It was the White Rabbit, trotting slowly back again, and looking anxiously about as it went, as if it had lost something; and she heard it muttering to itself `The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my dear paws! Oh my fur and whiskers! She’ll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets! Where CAN I have dropped them, I wonder?’ Alice guessed in a moment that it was looking for the fan and the pair of white kid gloves, and she very good-naturedly began hunting about for them…
Even in his fearful panic, our white rabbit understands that he needs to present himself properly. This might explain an English disdain for the complex. Otherwise, one would always be late, even for one’s own execution. The English believe that roles are important and that the proper clothes announce that one authentically fits into a given role. This is why as a people they produce so many talented wardrobe and costume designers. I recently had occasion to speak with one very accomplished wardrobe designer.
Doug Hawkes – Costume Designer:
He and his wife (and partner) have worked on many wardrobe projects for shows like Brideshead Revisited, Jeeves and Wooster and House of Cards.
For a recent production, they used silk striped and polka dot linings for Peter O’Toole’s very otherwise conservative suits and smoking jackets. The linings are a bit like those Paul Smith is using at this time. Fancy vests and waistcoats for day wear are not risqué like they used to be and have entered the imagination of the conservative club land set. Younger men too are wearing fancy linings and waistcoats.
Mr. O’Toole is quite particular about his clothes and always wants a special wardrobe for his characters (which he likes to keep). He is especially interested in evening and formal clothes.
For example, Mr. O’Toole had them make a silk smoking jacket for him modeled off of an original from the 1950s, itself an interpretation of a Victorian style smoking jacket. The net result was to make the actor a jacket with more structure and more authentic styling like the original Victorian garment the 1950s garment was supposedly imitating!
I aksed some random questions about what looks produce what reactions in viewing audiences, some of his shows and what sorts of things the English like.
Natural shouldered suits or at least a more natural shoulder is more refined and gentlemanly while large shoulders are more aggressive and unfortunate.
One detail that had always seemed wrong to me was the loose arrangement of Hugh Laurie’s collar pins in the BBC/Granada production of Jeeves and Wooster. Mr. Hawkes knew exactly what I was alluding to. Apparently, the pin collars on Bertie in the Jeeves and Wooster series were too loose not because the wardrobe dept didn’t know better but because the fashion was for actors to refuse to wear detachable shirt collars too close around their neck because they felt uncomfortable to modern throats.
Also discussed from Jeeves and Wooster were those beautiful, knit country sweater vests both pullover and cardigan styles which were woven by little old ladies who understood the traditional weaving techniques and patterns. Modern knitting schools aren’t teaching this anymore. Plaid wool ties, and in particular in green are Mr. Hawke’s signature. Those plaid wool ties used in the country by male characters in Jeeves and Wooster were reproductions based on originals collected from a variety of sources.
Borsalino hats are the finest and carry a look which is plus Anglais que les Anglais. They serve well for historical productions and respond well to custom needs such as changes in crowns or brims to adjust for contemporary purposes.
Hats are just a bit retro, no? Well, that’s just it, Mr. Hawkes loves the styles of the 1920s through the 1950s with a lashing of Edwardian style.
He thinks of the English suit as the true 3 button, side vented jacket, three piece suit, fully lined with interesting pockets, pockets for watches, hacking pockets.
About the English, they miss a lot of eccentric humor and touch in clothes and décor on film for wardrobes or sets generally. Foreigners pick up the labyrinthe of elaborate clues on people or objects and love them. It’s not that the English are blind or dim it’s that they just consider it so normal it goes unnoticed. The English also tend to be more verbal than visual. It takes an outsider to admire the visual qualities of English style.
Brown suits are not popular with the English. Green is another color the English have problems with in the City. A true green stripe in a suit might evoke a wriggled up nose. However, it’s always a matter of degree with the English and if the green stripe were executed on the fabric with enough subtlety, it might become acceptable.
However, the English always consider tasteful a faint lilac or pink stripe that is pale and putty like. Also, a dark purple stripe on navy is quite rich looking. Sometimes the tone of the pink stripe appears almost orange-yellow to the eye at first glance.
After I warmed him up with some of my random questions, we decided to produce a show together, my script and characters, his wardrobe to highlight their attributes. A contemporary TV show centered on a City brokerage firm.
General costume guidelines:
For the middle managers, slightly dated three button high fastening suit with fine and subdued stripes with conventional, solid colored shirts and dark, small pattern ties or spotted ties (with the spots from 1-2 cm in diameter).
Single button heavy pin or chalk stripe suits with colorful linings and contrasting waistcoats (In a purple or pink silk maybe with a semi-crepe texture) or bold colorful shirts for the younger guys coming up. Heavy geometric prints or madder prints for ties.
For the bounder or phony, the necktie is the most use signal that he’s deceiving people by choosing the wrong necktie.
It is clear that the English do not disassociate the idea of color from the term conservative. In America, conservative is often seen as safe and drab and pattern-less. In England a rich woven purple tie with many different colored small lozenges can still be conservative.
Chelsea or derby boots (Chukkas) are a bit of the smart dresser because they allow you to wear a shorter pants leg and more of a cavalry finish.
Gieves and Hawkes would offer an example of a good conservative and upper class cut.
The different show scenes:
The first character, a powerful man at a merchant bank who maybe manages its brokerage arm his just getting off a phone call, he looks distressed. He would get a quarter inch striped shirt with a hard, spread turn down collar and a striped tie or maybe an interesting solid. Shirt stripe color choices would be: pink and white or blue and white or red and white (that damask, dusty plum like red) stripes from Harvie and Hudson.
A soft dark flannel suit with dusky chalk stripes and chunky Harvie and Hudson ties. Black Alan MacAfee or Church’s shoes. He would wear a belt with his suit, side tabs are considered more of a sports trouser. While on the phone, he would expose plain metal cufflinks in either and oval or oblong. He would have freer hair. He gets off the phone, sighs a deep sigh, pushes himself up out of his chair and heads out of his office to consult with his co-manager.
His opposite from the same background but a much nastier person apparently has had a similar conversation because he is uncharacteristically meeting the nice manager in the hallway (ordinarily, he would let the nicer manager come to him). First, to illuminate that he is more calculating and controlling, make up and hair would play a role. Shirt collars might be more angular, lapels would be more angular. Maybe a stick pin in his lapel or tie of a gold horseshoe or Fox, not strictly correct but outward, physical expression of his aggression. A sharp crease pressed in the trouser keeps the angle going up through the shirt and around the neck line and cuffs. Crisp and aloof. Oh, and slick hair.
Both of these senior guys would be wearing single breasted three button jackets with side vents in 15 oz cloths. No pocket squares.
These two senior managers complete their conversation half united in worry and half annoyed at each other. When the nice manager goes back to his office he makes a call and the first of several VPs summoned appears at his door minutes later. A guy who’s upper middle class and attended a good public school but he’s relatively uncontroversial otherwise. Navy plain two button suit and either blue striped Bengal shirt with a forward spread collar or a plain blue or white solid and a tie with a small repeat pattern on it. Black shoes, no pocket square (makes a statement in England and it’s considered eccentric).
The second VP is upper class, privileged and snotty and much more of a showoff. A stronger stripe to the navy suit, three button fastening with the higher closure. A spread collared shirt in either a white or a lavender solid. A satin finished solid tie or an interesting pattern to the solid. The satin tie yields a more interesting knot for either an Albert or half Windsor style tie knot which makes the image more suave. Silk knots for the shirt.
Black shoes, black belts for both and lighter weight suits, smoother, finer worsteds in 12 oz cloths which means our middle managers are wearing 13-14 oz suit cloths.
The third VP is a bit of a slob but still from a well to do background. We would put him in an Ecru shirt and an even lighter weight suit to ensure more creases in it for dishevelment purposes. Necktie in a four in hand knot with no dimple as if he had just pulled it through without bothering; he probably leaves his ties tied and just slips them on over his head every morning. Shaggy hair maybe an undone double breasted suit with belted trousers too tight for him and sliding below his belly.
The fourth VP fancies himself a dandy but buys the wrong sort of car and clothes. Shirt collar would be too high for his short neck, he would wear a tie with a nice dimple but the knot would be too large. Suit would have either a stripe or self stripe and would be slightly shiny maybe with some mohair in it. His shoes would be black, good quality but unfortunately duckbilled.
After everyone arrives, they discuss the looming crisis they decide that the VPs must call a meeting of the brokers. The four VPs leave the middle managers and head into a conference room. Upon entering they are met with a couple dozen chattering city lads which the camera picks up from left to right in various stages of undress with jackets on the backs o their chairs, loosened ties and rolled up shirt sleeves. They would be wearing plain color shirts in blue, white and a few blue stripes. Neckties would be very loud prints or wovens. The VPs address the city lads and fill them in on some of the goings on. Faces become worried looking.
The next scene, one of the bank’s directors and his entourage is entering the bank lobby to address the crisis with the two senior managers. He is wearing an overcoat; a slightly lighter weight and longer than normal length covert coat which he takes off and hands to a bank employee along with his briefcase. This reveals his charcoal three piece suit with a fine white chalk stripe with a single vent and a ticket pocket on the jacket. A dark tie with a small but bright pattern on a purple or wine striped shirt. Still no pocket square! Onyx on gold or on silver cufflinks. His barrister would wear a very dark charcoal suit and a pink and blue striped shirt with a navy tie with red fleur de lys on it.
Outside on the street, the head of a large media company is getting out of his car. Apparently a large story is breaking. He is wearing an overcoat in petrol blue (or chestnut brown) wool1. A very well cut double breasted suit in a definite self herringbone stripe in either navy or charcoal. The shirt would be a soft, pale blue self herringbone shirt with a grenadine tie in a red or a darkest chestnut brown. He flashes a pair of gold twist barbell cufflinks and a gold Jaeger-LeCoultre duo watch. Wearing black glace leather wing tip brogues, he storms into the bank as well.
A third man is entering the bank too. He is the scion of one of the bank’s founders and the largest shareholder. He has come up through the business. Handsome and athletic he strolls in rather confidently under the portrait of his father in the banks entry hall. His overcoat slung over his arm, single breasted three buttons, and two piece charcoal suit with a thin silver pinstripe, a lilac end on end shirt with an Eton tie sporting a four in hand knot2 and polo helmet cufflinks. Again he would have no pocket square but he would have a reversible silk and cashmere scarf (ala Alex Begg) with a modern looking geometric print on it. His shoes would be in a saddle shoe style but all one type of calf leather and in solid black.
There is a meeting and voices are raised.
In spite of the severity of the concern, there is an agreement to adjourn to get ready for a previously scheduled dinner that evening for the same characters. Set at a nice hotel restaurant. The senior people arrive directly but the city lads roll in after having stopped at a local watering hole in their work clothes. Even after hours, appearing in a pub, even a city pub, in dress clothes would be looked at quite strangely.
Most at the dinner would be wearing dark solid suits, white shirts, some of them with a self stripe and ties would vary from regimentals for ex-military men to quite bright and fancy ones for the brokers. An occasional double breasted suit and odd vest would appear.
The two senior managers would be wearing three piece lounge suits, one wearing a blue pinstripe suit, the other a slightly bolder striped shirt. One would wear a striped tie, the other a small pattern polka dot tie on the other.
The bank director and the scion would be as they were before but the media mogul travels with his own wardrobe and changed into a single breasted suit with some mohair in a violet navy, a pale green shirt in a pistachio shade with a Richard James tie in a traditional pattern with a lot of bright, absurd colors in it. He would wear the same belt he wore earlier in a black lizard.
Although he missed the earlier meeetings, the CEO of the bank makes his entrance with his wife on his arm. He would wear his charcoal herringbone with a faint grey stripe in a two button jacket slightly open with his scarlet braces showing from time to time underneath over his shirt with two shades of blue butcher stripe on a white background with a straight collar and a very boring navy tie with an almost unnoticeable pattern on it. He has just given his double breasted trench coat and his charcoal trillby to the hatcheck. As he extends his hand to shake those of the attendees, we can see his cufflinks; silver engraved with the silhouette of a nude woman.
1 Variants. He would put him in either a petrol blue coat with a brown suit or a brown coat with a blue or charcoal suit. The brown would be a red tobacco brown, maybe even with a purple stripe.
2 As if the tie said everything and the knot meant nothing.
Drake's
…and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,’ it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,’ so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.
`What a curious feeling!’ said Alice; `I must be shutting up like a telescope.’
Fear of change is with us always because change is the great foe of tradition. But there will always be that unknown bottle to try and someone, like our Alice, will always be courageous enough to do so. And, far from destroying tradition, will forever alter themselves and the world around them for the better.
Drake’s ties have braved Alice’s bottle and evolved.
The average English person might not be interested in their ties because though English, Drake’s are not typical of English tastes. Typically, English ties are either very conservative or very flashy while the more sophisticated looks of Milan and Paris are absent. Drake’s international mission is to offer English taste the way the Italians, French and Americans imagine it and offer a style that all men of taste will recognize.
Drake’s outlook is an updated version of the international look of the 1930s when men, irrespective of their origins, could admire universal good taste in a necktie or shirt on each other. It all sounds like a very exciting style but how do they accomplish it?
Drake’s asserts that the art of dressing well is incorporating something special into the outfit that the observer would not think of but would find appealing. The London City practice of matching the tie and cufflinks to the shirt is a universal starting point and beloved by the great bulk of English city workers but the most sophisticated and self assured English dressers advance past this stage. To make it clearer, the coloring by numbers approach may be England but it is the England of the tie wearing masses. The most discriminating England is one of individuals wearing smart combinations of both color and pattern.1
Caption: This is NOT a Drake’s shirt and tie combination. The Jermyn Street look of red and white striped or checked shirt and a red and white tie aren’t for him. When it comes to accessories, the English generally think that whatever is the brightest and most shocking is the best. Also English is the belief that there should be nothing fabulous about the tie sitting on the shirt, it just sits on the shirt because it picks up the same colors. Simple and safe. Branching out sartorially for most Englishmen is akin to throwing darts at a board.
For example, a brown tie with a grey flannel suit makes a man more dapper but it cuts against the grain of the standard English approach. However, a brown tie gives an outfit more sophistication and warmth when paired with a grey suit and white shirt; in summer add a tan panama hat for a real coup de maitre.
These ties are from the Drake’s Spring Summer ‘08 Collection
Drake’s offer brown woven ties in patterns that relate back to the Duke of Windsor’s times and often based on archival swatches from the period. In the past they would have been rendered in Navy (a light navy) and white or black and white (In England’s 1930s, black and grey hadn’t yet solidified a fascist association.)
For woven ties, Drake’s uses English macclesfield, end- on-end silk. Traditionally, in end on end silk, the warp is equal parts black and white with colour added in the weft usually with white crossing the white and colour crossing the black. The result is a fresh crisp pattern with clarity of design.
Perhaps the best examples of English style reside outside of the culture altogether because Mr. Drake admires the English look the way the French wear it. The French lend the English look an air of chic in a way the English rarely could; which means that although it’s all English clothing at the same time it isn’t assembled in an English manner. Is it any wonder that he admires Hermes?
Another country which aspires to English style but not the Way the English would combine it is Italy. The Italians wear the English clothes very well but they wear them precisely as items of fashion, not cultural signals. They will have none of the rumpled look the English wear so well. But then, neither will the French, Swiss or Germans and this is the divide between the familiar ease of England and the heel clicking Continent. Drake’s believe that Italy’s artistic eye enhances the English style and he draws on their dressing deportment for inspiration. And, although the Drake’s aesthetic is not Italian, they do seek to create the England that appeals to Italy’s daydreams.
Photographs from Drake’s Spring Summer 08 collection – Vintage Madders created in shades of cream, brown and blue.
Drake’s make a lot of prints in proportion to woven ties (about 50-50) which is not very English. The English tend to congregate around heavy woven ties although if they do wear a print, it will be a heavy weight silk one. The Italians like heavy prints and in terms of color backgrounds they prefer navy or blue (60%), then wines and greens and browns (20%), then everything else (20%). Italian shirts tend towards blue stripes and solids. They like charcoal and grey suits, they love brown shoes. The English wouldn’t touch a brown tie for city wear but the city lads will choose a pink tie for a change of pace.
When Drake’s design a collection they take every culture’s taste into consideration; Japan’s, France’s , America’s and Italy’s. They approach it not only from the stand point of the elegant man but also from the current of fashion. They try to envisage what sort of person would wear each tie collection and for what purpose or event. Colors, patterns and their combinations as well as what sort of shirts and jackets they will be worn with are all carefully considered to ensure the end result is not simply…ties.
Photographs from Drake’s Spring Summer collection – 50oz handprinted Foulard silk._These pastel colors are hand printed in England. They are all lined with 36 oz white silk to give them a clean, fresh look. For summer; pale blue, lilac beige, light apple green and pink and red.
Photographs of Drake’s tie archive designs circa 2004 – bondage art including intertwined whips, fetish shoes and girl with gag. All Collections have themes and although most of the ties made are geometrical, some of them can be quite whimsical such as Indian Gods, World War Two aircraft nose art, clowns and, as shown above, 1950s bondage art from period magazines.
The trendiest shops get the narrow 7cm width ties while other shops get 8 or 9cm width ties. Although for the narrow ties, Drakes ensures that the knot they make is still somewhat substantial.
Does Mr. Drake believe there a difference between a well dressed man and a dandy? There is a difference between someone who dresses in a very elegant but correct way, who does everything better than everyone else and who must have the best of every article of clothes but nothing outlandish. A dandy wears more extreme items like a skin tight jacket with a particular color shirt to pick up a particular hair color.
Drake’s do all the ties for Mimmo Spano’s shop at Saks 5th Avenue which are the best quality woven end- on-end silks with some color; the typical 1930s high luxury. It’s a chairman of the board look, very strong and definite.
The biggest single giveaway as to whether a man knows how to dress well is that relationship between suit, shirt and tie. That V formed by the closing of the suit button. A man can wear the finest handmade suit but if the shirt and tie aren’t right, it’s a sure sign that the wearer doesn’t know how to dress with panache. And the tie, like a pair of shoes, is an especially strong indicator of the taste and style of the wearer. It’s another real give away
Drake’s are the largest handmade tie manufacturer in the UK; their biggest markets are Italy, Japan and the USA. In the USA, their tie collections can be found at both Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys. The ties made for Italy have that old world English look which the Italians make a cult of and the English do not wear anymore. It’s a classic look which showcases an endless array of snowflake like patterns and the Italians cannot get enough of it. They are mostly printed on 36oz silks.
Photographs from Drake’s Spring Summer 08 Collection.
Is there a shift again for American tastes? Drake’s make a lot of ties for stores in the USA which are good for New York but wouldn’t sell in Europe. There are rules in Europe but American men are much more flexible about their choice of ties.
A machine made tie is flat and lifeless. A handmade tie2 is folding around the lining and stitched by hand for that “rounded” look which lends it liveliness and suggests quality and elegance. Of course it takes around 40 minutes of labor to complete a tie made by hand while machines can turn them out by the second.
And what is that “rounded” look? The high grade tie silk is pressed only lightly so that they make a fuller, springier knot. Does handmade make for a better tie? Everything that you do better helps the item out, and in this case hand making of the ties allows for a more luxurious item.
Drake’s has its look which can be summed up as English style with Italian artistic flair. In Italy, Drake’s are the British rock stars of tie makers. They also have a large following in Japan because it seems the Japanese love the Italian interpretation of English style! Rock on.
Drake’s own crest which his wife drew up. Cashmere goat holds up one side of the shield and inside it resides a little drake, a lamb signifying wool, a moth signifying silk, and because their Italian customers used to refer to the company as the cat and the fox, they put the fox on top of the shield and the cat holding up the other side of it.
Our hero partakes of one of his creations rather like a wine aficionado sampling in the comfort of his own cellar.
Drakes have their own web site at www.drakes-london.com
Drakes online shop is at shoponline.drakes-london.com
Footnotes
1 Although the observation is appreciated, it might also display an Englishman’s fatigue concerning the routine cultural style. The “paint by numbers” style may be rather simplistic but is not necessarily less sophisticated with regards to the message it sends to the observer which is straightforward, trustworthy; one of the tribe. It would seem like we are dealing with two competitive choices here which are more like the difference between soap & water clean and well-blended cologne.
2 Handmade or not, every man damages a tie at some point, and what is he to do about it? Truthfully, you cannot successfully clean and press a tie commercially. The tie has to be unstitched, cleaned and sewn back together with a brand new lining.
Comment [4]
London Life: WestEnd Style (Part Two).
Welcome back.
In much the same way that the human body cannot independently gauge temperature, only react to changes in temperature, the style of a WestEnder is most noticeable when he mixes with his fellow non-WestEnd Londoners. On Piccadilly he blends into the architecture of the arcades, but on Brick Lane he stands out as a great example of how diverse city life can be. For only when a fish is out of water do you ever really realise the true nature of what it must be for a fish to be a fish…
What follows is short trip through the working day of a WestEnder, the places he may go and the people he might meet. For diversity I’ll take him to the fringes of his home territory and introduce some of the other London tribes he may very well come into contact with during the course of a day in the city.
Why not?
And to entertain you further I’ll give them all funny names too. Starting with…
The Chancery Lane Chancers
Let’s start the day with lunch!
Today our WestEnder is required to go to the very limits of the WestEnd world for lunch – Beyond even Covent Garden to the home of his company’s solicitors in Chancery Lane, that buffer zone between the WestEnd and the City of London where all the legal boys hang out.
Working in a creative WestEnd industry our WestEnder would probably deal with a company like Denton Wilde Sapte and have done so since they were Denton Hall back in the good old days, but because I’ve decided to call the denizens of Chancery Lane “Chancers” I must immediately make it clear that I am not talking about Denton Wilde Sapte who I in fact hold in the highest esteem. Instead let’s pretend that our WestEnder deals with a far lesser company (Insert name here) … And so to lunch, probably at The Gaucho Grill on Chancery Lane
Well, where else do men go to eat good red meat near Chancery Lane?
Well, there’s Simpsons
and Rules …
But our WestEnder isn’t dealing with Denton Wilde Sapte so we’re heading off to The Gaucho instead.
Like all business lunches around the world nobody is actually going to talk business until the coffee is on the table (and even then it’s a bit of a drag, isn’t it?) so we can all relax for a while & see what everybody is wearing if we are so inclined…
Our WestEnder will be in his working clothes: The soft grey suit, the burnished brown leather shoes, all the stuff from part one of this odyssey. Our Chancery Lane boy, however, will look just a little bit different.
Just check him out:-
Pinstripes!
And in a ‘harder’ fabric than a WestEnder would chose too: a tightly woven worsted. The kind that can go a bit shiny if the dry cleaners mess up whilst pressing it. Grey or navy blue 3 button with side vents in the usual ordinary English cut. Chalk stripes would be more Denton Wide Sapte (And that’s the last time I’ll mention them I promise). Maybe he got his suit at “Stanley Ley“http://www.stanley-ley.co.uk/ down at the bottom of the Lane.
… Even though he’s forever looking in the window of Ede and Ravenscroft
… And a white shirt!
Plain point tennis collar, sober small repeating pattern tie (Dark blue, dark burgundy or dark green background, never red), gold cuff links, but new so they still shine a little bit too much.
… With black shoes!
Oxfords, even if his degree is from somewhere very different…
But don’t knock him – he’s a hard worker looking to get ahead so he’s playing it safe. And you can tell he’s ambitious by the way he’s brushed his hair back to give himself that wonderful legal profile that you see in all those great Daumier prints. He’s a chancer on the way up, so good luck to him. By this time next year he’ll be with another firm yet again and probably in Ede and Ravenscroft Chalk stripes if all goes according to plan. Life is one long game of Snakes and Ladders down on Chancery Lane.
But he is a little dull though… Worthy, but dull…
… And all too soon it’s 3pm and time for our WestEnder to head back to the office.
But not for long.
5.30pm is standard knocking off time after the 9.30am start (Sadly that’s all changing now even in the WestEnd… Soon the day will come when the working day starts to take up all day. Let’s hope that none of us ever live to see that happen…)
The end of the working day means the start of the drinking day (Drinking at lunch time doesn’t count – Being sociable is a part of your job, surely?), and so it’s time for our WestEnder to meet the members of another London tribe –
The Men in Black –
You can run, you can hide, but if you work in the WestEnd in an office with at least a handful of women then sooner or later you’ll end up at Strawberry Moons. It’s like a little bit of Essex in the WestEnd (To put that into context I once heard New Jersey referred to as the Essex of America. Does that make sense?).
Be a man and deal with it.
Strawberry Moons is hidden just off Regent Street but women can still find it. I think they have some kind of radar for cocktails and pink decor. WestEnders come here to be sociable with the girls in the office and, if single, to hopefully meet that Holy Grail of a good night out: The Blond in Black Underwear. Strawberry Moons girls are great fun, but maybe not marriage material for a WestEnder… But then again you never know…
Drinking and people watching is probably the best way to survive the ultra-female-friendly vibe of Strawberry Moons and in the process you’ll see The Men in Black. Check them out because that’s just what they’ll be doing – checking out everyone and everything in the place. I think maybe they’re looking for love…
The Men in Black have blonds in black underwear on the brain too, but they’re probably a little more serious about the quest than our WestEnder. He’s maybe after a little fun, they’re often here to find Miss Right although they’d never admit it.
The Men in Black are pretty much just standard issue British businessmen. They’re the same in Manchester, Reading, Newcastle, or Nottingham. They keep the country ticking over.
And they wear:
Department store three button black suits!
Often from Debenhams. They take RTW literally and actually wear Ready To Wear clothing without having it altered it to fit them, bless them. I love it when the cuffs of their jackets slide down their hands as they reach for their drinks and then they shake them back over their wrists as they raise the glass to their lips with a quick sideways look to check that you haven’t noticed.
To be honest they’re all really nice guys, it’s just that they’re also just a tiny little bit… clueless?
The Men in Black do read the men’s fashion mags though and so their shirts, ties and cufflinks are always whatever is currently a la mode, albeit within their slightly limited budgets.
Charles Tyrwhitt is big with them. But Pink is their ultimate goal.
Well, who else is there? (Shhhhhhh – don’t tell them!)
And they are also the kings of the big, black, square-toed, slightly orthopedic looking shoe.
And some even go so far as to wear black raincoats too…
They’re actually really rather smart dressers. Well, not smart in that sense, but they’re clever dressers. The suit stays the same pretty much but they bring in all sorts of different colours, textures and accent details in their choice of shirt and tie. The fit of their clothing may not be quite up to snuff, but they do take a certain pride in how they look and what they wear. And, as I say, they keep the country ticking over. Their country needs them.
But enough of them – Time for our WestEnder to eat again and to meet some more different people – Variety is the spice of life! Why else do we choose to live in cities?
The Honourable Members
And so our WestEnder is back on Regent Street again and into a black cab heading for Grumbles in Pimlico where he has a date with his WestEnder girlfriend. Will tonight be the night? (Isn’t every night the night when you’re a WestEnder?)
Grumbles is softly lit and wood panelled like a cigar box with jokey pictures on the walls to laugh at if the conversation with your date hits a sticky patch – A wise choice. And being Pimlico it is in another of London’s “buffer zones”, for in Pimlico you can easily rub shoulders (and knees if your tables are too close together) with various “B list” Members of Parliament who have flats nearby. “A list” MPs tend to have flats in Westminster itself just up the road, but I think I like the “B list” boys more – Junior Members of Parliament and those from the Deep Provinces (a little like the “Deep South” in America, but usually from the Midlands in England). They haven’t yet picked up the professional arrogance of the “A list” crowd. They’re still eager to please.
In the past you could tell a Conservative Member of Parliament from a Labour MP in much the same way that you could tell a sailor from a policeman. They wore different uniforms. Double breasted suits were for Conservatives who also used to brush their hair back rather like a Chancery Lane Lawyer. Labour MPs on the other hand always used to wear single breasted suits and let their hair fall forward. Their hair was never quite as glossy as the Conservative’s either…
But now those days are gone with both parties brushing back their hair and wearing single breasted suits for work. They’ve sort of sartorially met in the middle somehow. Only when you see them wearing their off-duty clothes these days can you still tell them apart at a glance. And tonight at Grumbles at either end of the restaurant you can spy a couple of Honourable Members catching a little late supper before they return to their one bedroom flats just around the corner to drink themselves to sleep once again, all on their own once more…
And they wear:
Clothes that tell you all about their individual political party’s aspirations and marketing positions!
Just check them out –
Labour: Old “man-of-the-people” blue jeans that look as though they hurt. It’s not the cut or the brand that’s the problem with them, it’s just that MPs live in suits so much that their casual clothes are usually rather old and they’ve grown out of them all somewhat, due to all the endless sitting down in meetings that they have to do. They all develop these flaccid Westminster physiques and ash grey faces after a few years in the job. Only if they become successful do they suddenly bloom overnight with healthy complexions and gym memberships. Sadly our “B listers” here are still on the way up. They’re still having to work way too hard…
And with their jeans will be their old trainers worn with their dark (navy, charcoal or black) work socks. Up top they’ll wear some God-awful shirt from God-knows-where. Might also be denim even. And it could do with ironing too. Poor chaps, they’re far from their wives and families back home in their constituencies and so their clothes can often get in a bit of a muddle. What they need is a woman’s touch. But when you’re an ambitious MP how can you get one in the big city without there being a national scandal? And so they soldier on alone.
Conservative: Old “I-own-half-of-Shropshire” cords with bits of food stuck to them. Un-ironed tattersall shirts or old stripey business shirts with collars so worn that you can actually see inside them and note their construction. Lambswool V-necks with holes in the cuff where they’ve rubbed on their wristwatches everyday for the past 15 years. Old shoes once worn for work probably, but now just being worn out. They want you to think they don’t give a damn how they look, they’re far too focused on running the country for such trivia. In reality nobody actually looks like they do by accident. It’s all carefully put together to look careless. I suspect that those of them without dogs even go so far as to buy Labrador or Golden Retriever hair on some kind of black market from pet shops to rub on to their trousers just to get the look down to a “T”. They look great, whatever their politics may be. Younger ones may wear Rugby shirts and canvas jeans that fit.
And so some aspects of the old separate political uniforms do still survive after all…
It’s getting late now so we’ll draw a veil over our WestEnders for a few hours. Our WestEnder’s girlfriend has a top floor flat in nearby St.George’s Square up 4 flights of stairs (with each flight narrower and more dimly lit than the last) and so from Grumbles our couple will move on to her place for a spell I think. These things happen. Who are we to judge?
3am is traditionally when the whole of London gets the munchies. Some raid the fridge. Some try to go to sleep and ignore them. Some do what all the best people do and head East – It’s bagel time again!
The EastEnders –
The Brick Lane Beigel Bake is the place where the whole of London meets and ends up having to queue no matter what hour of the day or day of the week it is for bagels. And it is here in that queue that East meets West and North meets South and you realise that the world is full of different people and that they all live in London. A certain kind of WestEnder may have a certain kind of style, but when you pick him up and drop him down into the East End he becomes just another face in the crowd because out East everybody is different. A typical EastEnder is always an atypical EastEnder and the queue at the Beigel Bake proves it. All races, colours, religions and persuasions mix together there as a wonderful reminder that people are just people and trying to pigeonhole them and classify them in any meaningful way is just a waste of time and I think I like that.
And so that seems to me like a good note on which to end this attempt to pigeonhole and classify the various styles of people living and working in and around the WestEnd of London. “WestEnders”, “Chancery Lane Chancers”, “Men in Black”, “Honourable Members” and “EastEnders” are all both real and unreal at the same time. They may share certain very superficial characteristics, but that’s probably all that they really do share in the final analysis.
It’s only what’s on the inside that counts anyway.
My Birthday Suit: Ordering a bespoke suit from Tokyo's prestigious Ginza Tailor - Part 2
On the morning of March 24th, I received a call from Ms. Miura informing me that I could drop by for the first fitting at my convenience. Even in its bare-bones state, this suit had a distinct presence and fit amazingly well for something that was only in rough form. First, I tried on the trousers. They looked quite flattering, and required a minimum of work to decide on the optimum break. Otherwise they were fine. The two inward-facing pleats were so subtle I had to feel for them; for a moment I thought they were flat-front. A few aspects of the jacket alarmed me at first, but Mr. Hirata obviously saw exactly what I saw and more, and with a few nips and tucks it took on a shape that I could see would look outstanding in the finished jacket.
Photo: The kanji monogram on my new navy suit, showing the lining detail and an example of the navy lacquered buttons (Photo: Twin Six).
When the fitting was finished, we consulted further on the kanji monogram, of which I had three variations of the character 阿— “A”, the first initial of my surname — to choose from, and chose the simplest cursive form. This character was historically used to transliterate Sanskrit scriptures, and is most commonly recognized as the first character in the name of Amida Buddha. Years ago, a Japanese girlfriend of mine chose kanji to represent the syllables of my name. Fortunately, she had impeccable taste, and this kanji was the obvious choice for the first syllable of my last name.
The monogram chosen, I got a second chance to choose the buttons, and after considerable deliberation, changed from the dark navy lacquered buttons to a dark grey water buffalo horn with a lighter, almost pearlescent grey rim. After confirming a few of the other details, we chatted for about fifteen or twenty minutes. I asked if they had many other foreign clients, and was surprised to learn that there are several who work for foreign companies with a presence in Japan, the majority of whom apparently speak Japanese well enough to negotiate the vagaries of ordering a bespoke suit.
The fabric for this first suit was a Dunhill 120 (not super) that’s 260g/m, which puts it in the 8-10 oz. range (perhaps closer to 10). I was told they could put the Dunhill label inside along with the Samurai label, but I declined.
For the Samurai line, you get one fitting with the suit in something approximating its finished form with the sleeves attached; not the basted stage but still highly adjustable. For the fully handmade suits, you get several fittings, including at least one basted fitting. Since this is my introduction to the world of bespoke and I’m experiencing it entirely in Japanese, I wanted to start with their entry-level bespoke line. I’m building a relationship with Ginza Tailor that will continue for many years to come, and when my pattern is perfected I’ll be moving up to the fully handmade suits.
Photo: First fitting for my second Ginza Tailor suit in navy kid mohair blend.
Saturday, April 14th, I returned to Ginza Tailor, where I tried on my completed suit and shirt. The shirt fit beautifully and was extremely comfortable. The suit, however, had a bit of a bulge and fold in the right-hand chest area, and whether it bothered me or not (which it did), Mr. Hirata, my cutter, was not going to let the suit leave the premises in that state. He apologized repeatedly and asked me if I needed the suit for any occasion in the near future. I assured him I would not. He explained that the bulge was because my right shoulder is lower than my left and that he would have it fixed by next Saturday. When I put my Ralph Lauren MTM suit back on, we noticed the same sort of bulge, though somewhat less pronounced.
Two weeks later, I returned to try on the altered suit again. This time I did not wear a suit, as I had on all my previous visits. Instead, I wore khakis and a threadbare old oxford shirt handed down to me by my grandfather. There was a method to my madness in doing so, namely that I planned to order two new oxford button-downs.
Trying on the suit jacket, Mr. Hirata and I still felt the chest was a bit too full. I also felt that the sleeves were a tad longer than I prefer, as they showed no cuff at all with my arms hanging at my sides. This might have been a tricky adjustment at this point, since the sleeves have working buttonholes, but only a very slight adjustment was necessary to reveal about a quarter inch of shirt cuff. Nor were both arms symmetrical, each requiring slightly different amounts of adjustment, and though I was quite aware of the asymmetry, Mr. Hirata was careful to explain to me that one arm needed slightly more adjustment than the other.
Here is where the value proposition of bespoke became immediately apparent to me. An explanation of why will require a brief digression. I began my suit-wearing career with three thrift-shop suits altered by no other than that paragon of tailoring, the dry cleaner. It was what I could afford at the time, and for the once or twice a year I had occasion to wear a suit, turned out to be perfectly serviceable. This state of affairs changed rapidly, however, when I began wearing a suit every day. The coarse wools began to feel like sandpaper, particularly in the summer heat – and Tokyo is more brutal in summer than New York. As my corporate life progressed, necessity became the mother of greater sartorial sophistication, and I invested some of my savings in three Ralph Lauren MTM suits. My first day wearing one of these new suits to the office, my boss called me aside to announce that the company had decided to promote me with a commensurate raise. Clearly, it was my competency and not the suit that had earned this, but the confidence I felt in wearing a smarter suit and the comfort of a better worsted drove home the importance of attention to dressing well.
Fast forward two years, add a batch of three more RL suits, half-lined for summer wear, and dispense with trying on the suit because you’ve been satisfied with the first three. Throw in the wildcard of having these suits tailored in Japan, and the result is three suits with the sleeves very slightly too short. Reach for your morning paper and your French cuff gets hooked on the outside of your jacket sleeve. Perhaps everyone else considers you impeccably dressed, but one person invariably notices your discomfiture, and that person is you. At length, this drives you to ask your cutter to take the five minutes necessary to adjust the sleeves of your first bespoke suit to something resembling perfection.
The sleeves adjusted and two funnel-shaped chalk marks added near the armpits indicating the next round of alterations to the jacket, we turned our attention to ordering new shirts. To cut an already too-long story mercifully short, I ended up ordering two French cuff shirts, plain white and pink with contrast collar & cuffs, and two oxford button-downs, one in blue and one in pink.
Meanwhile, on May 19th, I went for the fourth fitting and was satisfied that at this stage Mr. Hirata and I have achieved something close to the perfect fit for less than the cost of a Brooks Brothers Golden Fleece MTM suit scarcely a block away.
Photo: My first Ginza Tailor suit showing silk brocade lining detail and water buffalo horn buttons (Photo: Twin Six).
The jacket is much more structured than I’m used to, and a suit of armor would be an apt metaphor right down to the slightly lustrous gunmetal silver sheen of the grey fabric. The fit is fantastic, though the feel of the fabric against my the skin of my legs while I’m sitting at my desk is rather more prickly than I’d prefer. While I’m standing or walking, however, it is perfectly comfortable, and this along with the lapel roll and the sleeves that show at minimum a quarter inch and at maximum about three quarters of an inch of shirt cuff are confidence boosters.
On June 23rd, I returned and ordered my second Samurai suit in a plain, muted navy. This was ready for the first fitting on July 14th. The fabric I chose is a kid mohair blend in a relatively light weight. A friend kindly made time in his schedule to photograph the fitting and then shoot some photos of me in my first Ginza Tailor suit. (To my eternal shame, I forgot my pocket square, and having no excuse given my already respectable collection, as penance I went to Barneys New York afterward and bought four. Better to close the barn door after the horse escapes than never to close it.)
Photo: Because the lights in the fitting room did not show the true color of the suit, we stepped out into the showroom to get some photos by natural light.
One notable incident during the fitting was that while adjusting the sleeve length, Mr. Hirata remarked that the right sleeve of my shirt needed to be shortened by 7 millimeters. I had intended to mention that the sleeve’s being too long was something that bothered me, but he noticed first without any prompting from me. He adjusted the length of the jacket sleeve based on the adjustment that needed to be made for the shirt, and agreed that I should bring in all the shirts they had made for me previously to be adjusted accordingly. Sometimes, what works in the fitting room must subsequently be adjusted for slight discrepancies in fit that only become apparent in the course of wearing the suit on a day-to-day basis.
Following the fitting, my friend had some questions for Mr. Hirata and Ms. Miura.
“How long have you been working as a cutter?”
Mr. Hirata: “I’ve been working as a cutter for about thirty years. Before that, I worked for ten years as a tailor, so altogether forty years.”
“Do you specialize in one particular style of suit?”
Mr. Hirata: “I like close-fitting suits, so I prefer the English style. Of course, if a customer requests an Italian silhouette, it’s not as if I can’t accommodate his wishes. But I feel the English silhouette has a certain smartness and refinement, and that’s what I strive to emulate.”
“Does Ginza Tailor have many famous clients?”
Ms. Miura: “Many years ago, the late President Sukarno of Indonesia had us make his suits. Past Prime Ministers of Japan have ordered their suits from us, and Prime Minister Abe, Japan’s current Prime Minister, is also one of our clients. Those are just a few examples.”
“Well, thank you for letting us take pictures today and for letting us ask a few questions.”
Ms. Miura: “Not at all. It’s been a pleasure. Your suit will be finished on August 11th, and we’ll contact you then.”
“Thank you, I’m looking forward to it.”
With this, my friend and I proceeded to a nearby wine bar, where he snapped a few more pictures before meeting up with a lady friend. I then went to Barney’s and purchased four two-color silk pocket squares (at a surprisingly reasonable price). As I was walking down Ginza avenue on my way home with a burnt rose and maroon pocket square tucked in my breast pocket with a studied artlessness, a rather attractive and elegant Japanese lady fixed her eyes on me, and we both turned to look at each other as we passed, smiling coyly. It is one of those rare moments that occur every so often; a tacit affirmation that the combination of my own choices and the skill of my tailor has culminated in an ideal expression of my dandy impulses.
My style icon stands in as my body-double.
Photos: T. Shores
Comment [4]
Tribal Markings in Men's Style
`They were learning to draw,’ the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; `and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—’
Why with an M?’ said Alice.
`Why not?’ said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: `—that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness— you know you say things are “much of a muchness”—did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?’
`Really, now you ask me,’ said Alice, very much confused, `I don’t think—’
`Then you shouldn’t talk,’ said the Hatter.
This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
`At any rate I’ll never go THERE again!’ said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!’
Really Alice? Was the tea party stupid or did you just not fit in? Like your confidant the cat suggested, you are just as mad for being here as anyone else, the question is whether your form of madness simply differs from theirs. After all, the tea party made sense to the others and they had been at it for an awfully long time.
Every time I wear things that I think mark me out as English and ask an informed Englishman what they think they invariably give me a prolonged umm and bobbling of the head. It is not unlike a faulty mechanical cat unable to complete its meow. It doesn’t matter if I wear things authentically down to the purple socks; I have never had an Englishman I asked for input from admit I am dressed English.
This tells me several possible things. First, that the English are not necessarily familiar with their culture’s tastes and further, each one has a slightly different interpretation of what English tastes are. In any event, no one English person knows every acceptable item of English clothing, just as no one person knows every word in the English language. Second, I may not wear items properly in combination even if all the individual choices are correct. More interesting may be that I might not seem English to them as a person and they might therefore resent that I am wearing English items – items which properly belong on them and not on foreign passport holders. Additionally, they may consider attaining Englishness something valuable requiring effort and thus, they are slow to admit success.
The English do not like to admit someone is wearing something English.
Part of it is the class divide which makes them anxious to make a definitive statement about an item. In short, they are not always sure themselves if something is English, they only know they couldn’t or wouldn’t wear it. Other articles of clothing they know are English but belong to a class they are not a part of and they become either leery or disdainful about the item. There is thus one Outer England but also many Inner Englands.
Outer England can agree on certain universal items, even if those items are well seated Inner England items. An example of a well seated Inner England item would be regimental ties. Although few are entitled to wear them everyone agrees that to wear one even accidentally is a breach of cultural faith and they are generally shunned unless the design is one which no one could mistake for an English regiment.
Outer England universally agrees that the navy with red spot tie, the navy chalk stiped suit and the blue Bengal striped shirt are all acceptable within every social circle. I suppose this is one definition of “classic” to define a term.
True Inner England items are those clothes that you buy at your exclusive shops. Only your set wears or recognizes them, even if the differences are subtle, which they often are. Inner England items are meant to keep insiders exclusive and outsider’s (whether they are English or not) guessing. The English do not celebrate strength in numbers, they believe in exclusive, elite circles.
Another reason the English are hesitant to admit a non-Englishman is wearing English items is cultural chauvinism. The English do not like to admit other people can ape what they consider their birthright. At most you are a tourist picking up a bauble; a savage wearing a hat plucked from the head of a British soldier who no longer needs it. Therefore the English are exclusive, rather than inclusive. America and other cultures are eager for you to assimilate; they are flattered that you want to be like them. The English consider your desire to fit in suspect. Exclusivity and the cult of the ton as envisaged by Brummell is alive and well
At the most, you will get a compliment from the English that they like something you are wearing. This does not always mean that it is objectively pleasing; it means that it is acceptable to the English, for to be like the English is to be proper.
The ultimate compliment from the English is when they ask you where you got something and then get it themselves. At this intersect you can see that what is English is exactly in line with what they will wear. In New York City, I have to explain why I reject something new, maybe it’s a foreign cuisine, maybe it’s a tie color but because the assumption here is inclusive and we define ourselves by diversity, I have to account for why something does not suit me. In England it is the opposite, you have to rationalize why you are choosing something because the assumption is that everything starts out suspect.
Recently, while on a train, a man walked by in a double breasted, milled finished, charcoal beaded pinstripe suit. He turned around to take a seat and motioned to me while saying something. Because I was wearing earphones, I missed what he had said and I removed them to ascertain his need. He repeated in a mild English accent “I wanted to tell you that I love your shirt” (Pink with a white butcher stripe in 3/8ths of an inch interval). I thanked him and he sat down to read the Financial Times. I could not help but notice how content he looked and that maybe my shirt had reminded him of the chaps back home.
If the English really like something, they will tell you. And liking is acceptance and acceptance means it’s English. So here I was after several months in English mufti, finally part of the tribe, at least on a general level.
Ian Kelly author of the most excellent Beau Brummell the Ultimate Dandy.
What intrigued Mr. Kelly about Brummell was taking a look both at the genesis myths and where some of the rules for male attire have come from. The suit is one of the greatest exports of Anglo-Saxon culture. The Brummellian period set down and cemented some of the suit’s rules and they have endured. Understanding why this is so is empowering for the modern male dresser. One of the greatest success stories of the suit is the fact that it can withstand a lot of modifications and still maintain its basic character which is that of traditional or high style.
The urban peacock or maverick keeps on coming back into fashion in England in a way it doesn’t in America. Americans dress more relaxed in a stylish uniformity which is perhaps more sexually fluid but there doesn’t exist this desire to be slightly outré or a bit wicked around the edges which English men seem to prefer.
At a recent memorial service for a Financial Times journalist from an older generation, a certain old world formality was in evidence which could have placed the scene in the 1950s; pin stripes and black furled umbrellas, chesterfield overcoats with velvet collars. The City of London has that City vs. Country aesthetic which is more distinct and at odds from the American casual, sporty look.
The City look is still double cuffed shirt, dark tailored suit, chunky knotted woven ties, light belt buckles, black shoes, and the colors are still traditionally Savile Row.
Mr. Kelly gets suits from Martin Greenfield in New York City whom he met through his production of Brummell. He also loves the tailored looks of Gieves and Hawkes, Kilgour and Ozwald Boateng; taking him from very traditional to modern traditional to designer. Because of his background as an historical writer, actor and costume designer, he is a great admirer of costume history, costumes and the different roles clothes can play in a person’s life.
Just like another Englishman who loved America, Kelly chose a suit cloth from Martin Greenfield’s operation in Brooklyn called the “Cary Grant” a dense midnight blue cross weave.
Is there a separation between a very well dressed Englishman and an English dandy? MODERN TIMES – a nightclub and society…affiliated with the Last Tuesday Society1 is inhabited by dandies and they wear a lot of retro details in their clothes. They are perhaps viewed with some suspicion outside of the art world.
At the moment the public school (by which he means private school) trend is the denial of the old world upper class traditions in favor of street gear. There are fascinating class nuances to all of this but even the places that used to teach you all the rules, like Savile Row tailors, themselves don’t always know where to start anymore. They used to be able to talk you through the number of buttons on your sleeves or at what angle of slant a side pocket could be acceptably placed on a jacket.
These minute insignia of what is to belong or not belong would have been very familiar to the dandy coterie around Brummell but are at present very much a subject for individual debate and more and more, they are all colors on the palette for people to choose from. However, even when people are choosing colors from the palette, they still want some idea of the heritage or orthodoxy if that is either what they aspire to or what they want to allude to.
Even with dress down, it is still a question of taking a suit and deconstructing it. A deconstructed, relaxed suit itself has no meaning except when contrasted against the more original, formal version. Therefore the traditional forms and ideas are going to continue and the suit in its traditional guise will also continue to represent a rite of passage. Further, the old ways of creating tailored clothes are coming back again; people want to know the provenance of the materials and the labor involved in making a suit. But English style is still quite fractured with a lot of individualistic interpretation.
But if all these tailoring details are so important why weren’t they ever written down? Because they are tribal, it had to be an oral tradition which you learned when sent by your father to a tailor because that tailor would know. There was never meant to be a guidebook that anyone could go out and buy and have the idea. This oral tradition is absolutely intrinsic to these sorts of tribal markings; that these details were only known to insiders and could never be copied perfectly by (and indeed their conspicuous absence would help identify) outsiders. In fact, if the details could be copied, they would lose caste and be discarded.
At first blush this may sound repulsive to a democratic American but it allows an elevated idea to exist within a plastic forma nota. It becomes less about an individual detail and more about the feeling… the zeitgeist… the knowing. Thus, even when you begin to try to write about this oral tradition, it suddenly becomes incredibly hard to communicate and set down. Obviously, some things can be set down like the number of buttons on a sleeve but the essence of tribalism is more about the nuances of cut; the sewing and the shaping of the suit. It defies literary form because it is all about tastes and luxury.
It is useless for tailors in other places to even try and copy the traditions of a Savile Row tailoring firm because they will always be caught falling short of copying someone else’s heritage. Further, it rattles the idea whether there is an absolute right or wrong with tailoring details, such as the sacred “four sleeve buttons on a jacket rule”. A hand cut teardrop lapel buttonhole may not only bind together the NYC elite but also garner respect from a similar quality English group who would wriggle their noses up at another NYC tailor who tried to copy details of one of their Savile Row tailoring firms. It seems elite circles respect the unique, artful and obvious totems of other original, elite circles and has disdain for “wannabes”.
It is also a warning for the dilettante who thinks he knows better than his tailor. If one interferes too much with a tailor’s house style beyond buttoning stance (single breasted vs. double breasted; two button vs. three button) and tampers with important matters such as the height of the collar or gorge, the style of the lapels, the shape of the pants or shoulder, you are defacing the tribal totems. This defacement results in a bastardized version of a tailor’s suit which no one of merit will honor and will leave the meddling client looking like a clown. Hardly the type of investment a true man of substance wants to make.
But is it more important to the English to have an item they recognize as part of the tribe or do they respond to foreign items that are nevertheless beautifully done? It doesn’t necessarily involve foreigners; it is a one up-man ship that occurs more between their fellow English. However, the English appreciate something well done even if it marks that person as an outsider. If extremely well done, the English are not above adopting it as part of the gentleman’s kit.
According to the old gentlemanly ideal (which still exists in England although it isn’t called that anymore) there still exists the sub-ideal of effortless superiority and never looking like you are trying. It is better to wear a shirt with a collar that is frayed from an excellent handmade Jermyn Street shop. This displays an aristocratic or patrician disdain for new money. And if indeed the cut of the suit is really what it is all about, this goes a long way to explaining why there are a limited number of acceptable suit cloth color and pattern choices for London’s city.
And if Brummell were alive today, how would he react and would he fit in? The basic crux is still in place but the splintering into so many different camps of style would both amuse and confuse him no end. His stance was anti fashion, to pick one style and stick with it. He did like to shock but in his day the shock was in the consistency and restraint.
Where would Brummell get his suits today? At Myers and Mortimers who were where he went in his time (It was just Myers back then). Of course, he still owes Myers money but he would doubtless like to head over there. He may also owe Gieves and Hawkes money but their archives were destroyed in the Blitz. He would also respect the craft of Bernard Weatherhill and the media sass of Ozwald Boateng.
What kind of man was Brummell? He crafted a social carapace for himself. He was very good company and a man who loved to keep people entertained but also a man who liked to keep people at a distance. Not an unusual City type. He had a dazzling self confidence and irrespective of whether it was genuine or a pose, it was effective.
Although he did care passionately both about being the arbiter of elegance and with the details of clothes, he would be amused by his fame now and his importance as the father of the suit. Brummell enjoyed being frivolous about important things and caring passionately about frivolous things. He thus demonstrated that wild inversion of importance which, as a pose, the dandy seems to like to strike in order to portray the ridiculousness of life. Therefore, Brummell was both enjoying and laughing at himself (and everyone else) at the same time.
What impresses Mr. Kelly most about a man’s dress? Clean hands and cuffs which was a Brummellian aesthetic and somewhat shocking back then at a time when handling horses was common for the British Aristocracy.
So why 200 years later if it was made acceptable by Brummell, do we call men who care about their appearances metrosexuals if they care for themselves? Men who discuss fashion or personal vanity/grooming fashion are open to teasing by their peers. It is part of the discord within the discourse.
Brummell’s indelible boot stamp was that men should choose from amongst articles of clothing that carried the acceptable tribal markings for their exclusive circle both as a signaler and source of satisfaction to other members and as unobtainable badges to be envied by those who were denied entry to the ton.
And speaking of boots, where would Brummell get his shoes made today? He wouldn’t care about where exactly as long as his could still polish the bottoms with the froth of champagne.
1 Both are dandies and retro chic clubs – the former a dance club (nightclub, used to be at the Great Eastern Hotel about once every couple of months, but very popular – old style dancehall music as well as more modern music, but the dress code was very strict: men in suits etc, nearly always vintage) the latter, Last Tuesday, is a sort of louche literary society, that does parties and events at Literary Festivals including, though, seances, wine tastings, installation art events…and usually a lot of drink! When Tom Ford says he loves London for the dressing up and gettting drunk, I think he means these guys!!
Comment [3]
London Life: WestEnd Style (Part One).
Every big city is different and yet every big city is oddly the same…
They have a Kaleidoscope-like quality of seeming to contain everything within a series of ever changing patterns…
Ahem
No, really –
Walk from block to block in NYC or saunter from arrondissment to arrondissment in Paris and like some sort of urban Columbus you’ll discover new world after new world. Not only that but you’ll notice that each new world you discover is populated by people who are all dressed in a subtlety different way from the crowd around the corner you have just left behind.
You can’t help but see these things.
If you’ve got your eyes open, that is.
If you’re the kind of person who notices these things.
And London is a city just like that too –
Broadly split up into ‘The EastEnd’, ‘The City’, and ‘The WestEnd’, London has the usual splintered personality of any big city of a certain age. A bit dysfunctional and yet somehow it works.
The EastEnd is low-key residential and ex-Industrial now. A little run-down, but constantly being redeveloped by estate agents. Its time may very well come again.
The City is the financial and business centre of London – The place where they broke stocks and all that kind of thing. It’s actually the smallest part of town, ‘The Square Mile’.
The WestEnd is the place which has always held my attention: Shops, theatres, restaurants, bars, clubs, smart little flats & very smart not-so-little town houses. The pleasure gardens of central London.
The best way to explore London’s West-End is on foot …
Just like EastEnders and City Boys, WestEnders are different. They have their own style.
For fun they’re worth looking at just to show how different the inhabitants of any city can be as you move from area to area.
The first thing to say about WestEnders is that although they may work and even live in the middle of London they are not and have never been ‘City Gents’. They don’t wear bowler hats and stripey trousers (Then again ‘City Gents’ don’t dress like that anymore either…).
In a way the uniform of a WestEnder is the lack of a uniform. The look is more ‘Man About Town’ than ‘Businessman’. More Chalkstripes than Pinstripes. Even for those who are as career focused as any of their brothers in The City. In fact to be honest with you one of the nicest perks of being a WestEnder is that of being able to be a little more relaxed and “ Gentlemanly” about they way in which you conduct business. Well… That’s the impression they like to give anyway, with their softly tailored grey flannel suits and brown shoes in town. Business is still business, but life in the WestEnd is much less fraught than the atmosphere of anxious male competitiveness which you find in the City. In the WestEnd you don’t tend to ‘sink or swim’. Instead, if you’re lucky, you can just float along quite nicely and enjoy life a little more.
It’s worth mentioning what a caricature of a WestEnder of a certain type might wear and how he would present himself to the world just to give you more of a feeling for what these sort of people are like.
Starting from the top he’d be something a little like this:
Hair, although still conventionally cut and well groomed, is worn slightly longer in the WestEnd than in The City. Probably this is due to the relaxed nature of the WestEnder and the fact that he goes longer between haircuts. He doesn’t feel the need to constantly be ‘Parade Ground’ smart like his more anxious City brother.
Geo. F. Trumper (Est. 1875) remains the premier traditional London barber, although Trueffit & Hill (Est. 1805) is the older of the two big names in London. In fact Truefitt and Hill are the oldest barbers in the world, but somehow they lack the charm of Trumpers.
Our WestEnder would have his hair cut at Trumpers on Curzon Street or Jermyn Street (Sadly the branch in Simpsons’ basement closed along with the rest of Simpsons). Or, if not a Trumpers man, he would visit the wonderful original Art Deco barbers in the basement of Austin Reed on Regent Street.
Our WestEnder may well even shop in Austin Reed, selecting from their more traditional items, but if he did and he didn’t use their bespoke service then he would always take his suits to a good alterations tailor like Mr. Khan who works out of the basement next to Huntsman’s on Savile Row just around the corner.
The temptation in writing about suits in the WestEnd of London is to pretend that all WestEnders are clients of Savile Row tailors when in fact very few are. A large amount of disposable income and the desire to dispose of it on a suit are the only hallmarks of a Savile Row client. A typical WestEnder would either wear good quality Ready to Wear suits with good quality tailored alterations or a good London-Cut Made to Measure or even Bespoke suit, but probably not one from Savile Row. He might instead go to some nice little place like Redwood and Feller.
Much better value for money!
A WestEnd suit would be quite a sober affair on the whole, not as flashy as the big money City boys would wear, the WestEnd not being an ‘If you’ve got it flaunt it’ sort of place. Subtle Chalkstripes are nice (but never the glaring white on black type) along with different solid shades of Grey or Blue. Pinstripes are a bit too ‘businesslike’ for a WestEnder. Nailhead fabrics are sometimes seen but they have a little too much of a hard finish to them for WestEnd tastes, and Grey Nailhead can often look a little bit too much like a suit of armour…
Something softer like Flannel is preferred or just a plain worsted.
Two button or three button single breasted suits are most common, but double breasted suits are often seen too without any great importance being attached to the difference in style. Jacket linings are a secret fetish!
Trousers are worn with a plain belt, single forward pleats and turn-ups or not depending on taste. No fancy belt buckles are ever seen, but then again handkerchiefs worn in the breast pocket are rare in London too. Less is more.
Pickett
In fact that ‘less is more’ attitude extends to a lot of WestEnder accessories: Belts, watches, briefcases and notecases are purposefully plain, not status symbols. Old, creased, well-worn and much-loved dark brown leather items are the most common, usually gifts from WestEnder wives or girlfriends bought from a good shop. It’s odd how the plainer some things are the more expensive they can be…
Socks too are equally sober: The point is not to make a point of them. Different shades of grey dominate. Even Burgundy or dark Green would be considered quite creative for these oh-so tasteful Londoners!
Another good gift for a WestEnder would be one of those small, domed, frosted glass bottles of Aftershave or Cologne from Trumpers. The kind with the crown screw top which comes in a discreet dark blue, green or burgundy drum. The lighter fragrances in their range would be preferred such as Astor or ‘Curzon’, nothing to heavy or over-powering, but still with the same complexity of make-up and warm masculine notes of their stronger items.
Green ‘Fern’ fragrances are popular too – Penhaligon’s makes the best, Trumper’s not quite having the same subtle complexity. Every WestEnder’s linen cupboard has English Fern soap kept in-between the towels and sheets to keep them fresh!
Grooming is relaxed but still relatively fastidious for a WestEnder. Clean shaven and tidy, but not freakishly so like some crop haired City Boys. Cavalry Officer’s haircuts are very WestEnd: A slightly longer than normal short-back-and-sides, side parted and brushed back off the forehead but with the hair brushed into ‘wings’ at the sides. This always looks very good as a man matures and his hair greys at the temples.
Shoes are probably the area where a WestEnder mainly differs from his City brother.
The WestEnder wears what he likes, Brown leather and Suede included, in Monkstrap or Loafer styles as well as all the usual suspects (Oxfords, Brogues, etc) in well polished black leather – Although wearing black shoes in a commonplace style in the WestEnd will leave you open to people making jokes about you wearing ‘Policemen’s Shoes’. The feeling is that if you want to wear ‘uniform’ shiny black shoes you should join the Army or go and work in the City. People can say the cruelest things. It’s most unfair.
Shirts and ties are a matter of personal taste, but again the stripes, checks and solids are much more subdued than the brasher more vigorous colour combinations you see in The City. The typical shirt would be Ready to Wear from any of the big Jermyn Street names and bought in the Sales along with a couple of quiet ties more often than not. A Hermes tie would be a much appreciated Christmas present. The small repeating pattern tie is the WestEnder tie of choice.
A slightly spread collar item is the usual shirt. French cuffs if you want them, but if not, not.
Plain white shirts are rarely seen. Again it’s that ‘uniform’ thing I suspect. People would just rather wear something a little more interesting I think, seeing that there is nobody there to stop them.
Cuff-links, if worn, would be small and discreet. Never any larger than your thumb-nail. Enamelled items are favourites and again they would usually be a present from some shop like James Hardy’s on Brompton Road. One of those little shops that you have to know about otherwise you end up spending far too much money in Longmire on Bury Street, St. James.
A nice WestEnder wedding present from your wife would be a pair of very ordinary silver oval cuff-links engraved with both your sets of initials front and back. With four initials each at £5 per letter this is always a very good way of making an ordinarily very inexpensive item cost much, much more than it ought to.
Fortnum and Mason’s antique department often has a small selection of old antique buttons made up into cuff-links at very reasonable prices. Unique one-off items with a lot of charm. Very WestEnd.
The most WestEnd overcoat would be a Buff Covert Coat without a velvet collar, I think. Raincoats are plain, fawn, fly-fronted and ubiquitous. Navy overcoats are equally common but not really very WestEnd, they belong more with black shoes in the City. Tweed coats are a rarer sight but wonderful when you spot them. And, as always in London, a good sensible proper black umbrella is indispensable. Go to James Smith on the fringe of Bloomsbury. Mention my name (or not).
Lock & Co. – Wear a hat if you want to, but make it Brown in Town purely because you’re a WestEnder and a rule breaker!
A big reason I think for the ‘rule breaking’ or more relaxed dress code and working atmosphere that goes with it in the WestEnd compared to The City is the presence of women at all levels in most businesses in that part of London. Women are increasingly making headway in The City but the place still remains a temple to testosterone on the whole. Women who succeed in The City often seem do so by joining the very ‘Male’ culture there. They have to do what they do to get ahead, but they can become a little bit… ‘ Blokey’ in the process. In the WestEnd there is a feminine, softening influence on business culture somehow and it is this I think that makes it a more creative and interesting place to work. Money is still made and deadlines met, but never in a sweat-soaked, locker-room way. This is why many WestEnd and City people just simply do not ‘get’ each other. The City sees the WestEnd as effete and the WestEnd sees the City as some sort of Rugby scrum for money. And the truth of course lies somewhere in between those two sets of prejudices.
… Well, anyway that’s the end of Part One and our WestEnder is dressed and ready to be seen around town.
In Part Two we’ll follow him around for a bit and see where he goes and what he gets up to.
Because the whole point of being a WestEnder is that you are in the WestEnd and everything is on your doorstep…
Comment [3]
The English Zulu Cow
…`How are you getting on?’ said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth enough for it to speak with…
I don’t think they play at all fairly,’ Alice began, in rather a complaining tone,’ and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can’t hear oneself speak—and they don’t seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them—and you’ve no idea how confusing it is all …
`How do you like the Queen?’ said the Cat in a low voice…
The Cheshire cat wears a shirt of sorts, his pelt, his fur is patterned. It cloaks him and makes him what he is, a Cheshire cat. Presumably if he were solid or piebald or some other pattern he would no longer be the mystical Cheshire cat and he could neither suddenly appear nor fade away into smiling, comfortable safety. The shirt protects him and defines him as it does for the English.
The Cheshire cat, being a shirt wearing cat, is very smooth and cool especially with the ladies. He is around women all the time, talks about women all the time and makes Alice instantly comfortable even though one would ordinarily believe his supernatural appearance and disappearance coupled with his quasi-sinister behavior would cause anxiety. Compare this to the non-threatening White Rabbit, whom one would consider a solid societal pillar, yet he has problems interacting with or even recognizing those around him and constantly transfers his anxiety to others. He cannot even recognize the women in his life except for the Queen, and that is only because he is afraid of her. The Rabbit, it should be noted, although he does wear clothes, does not wear a shirt of any sort, unless his pelt is also a metaphor, and that is a basic white, which scores few points on the English shirt scale.
The Norman Knights who invaded England set the manners and fashions for the Island. This included the mail shirt, made from interlocking iron rings sewn against a leather and felt background. At the time, the mail shirt was the ne plus ultra of Christian warrior fashion and although hot and heavy, it was a powerful status symbol.
Even after the mail shirt faded from use, the associations of “shirt” with “nobleman” in England were solidified and the shirt grew in importance. But just how important did it become?
The shirt is the English national dream; it is the landscape one sees out of a bedroom window on an easy spring morning, it is comfort, it is manhood. The shirt is central. I understand the Zulu consider cattle so vital to their culture that their language has over 300 words for different types of cow and hundreds more pertaining to its postures, habits and accessories. Their bovine beauty and the terminology associated with these Zulu cows are well written about in a fabulously illustrated book called The Abundant Herds: A Celebration of the Nguni Cattle of the Zulu People by Marguerite Poland and David Hammond-Tooke. For millennia the Nguni cattle and the Zulu people have been so closely intertwined that cattle have become an intrinsic part of the Zulu aesthetic. The same could be said of an English gentleman and his shirt. If English office workers were to inspire a parallel book by outside observers it would doubtless be about shirts. Let us now substitute the shirt as England’s Zulu cow.
The English, like the Zulu, have many names for the different parts of a shirt. Designations such as French cuff, double cuff, turn back cuff, folded cuff, and link cuff are demonstrative of the shirt as a point of interest. And as with the Nguni people, from whom the Zulu descend, and who measure wealth in cattle, wealth for the English is measured in shirts.
It is interesting that numbers of suits, ties, and shoes are unimportant but the shirt is self defining. It is held to be the key to the outfit. Owning different shirts changes ones mood or persona and to own many shirts is a sign of affluence and bonhomie. Additionally, suits and ties are worn as part of a uniform and discarded when no longer of use, while the shirt is revered more as it ages and is seen to imbue the wearer with status and poise. It would suggest that the shirt provides a connection between the wearer and the world around him and one which both eases him into the society around him and protects him like Norman armor.
The English shirt is fine but it is also robust and hardy, which further mirrors the Nguni cattle breed, known for its fertility and resistance to disease. And like the English shirt, the Zulu cow was and is bred to best display the often multi-colored pelts considered the most beautiful among all cattle. Similarly, English refinement of blue dyes has spanned generations to achieve the exact combination of hue and brightness as well as importance and frivolity. This is because, like the Zulu cow pelt used by Shaka’s warriors to adorn their shields and headbands, the English shirt adorns the wearer’s torso and frames his face.
In the aforementioned book on Nguni cattle, a chapter called The Poetry of Naming discusses color and pattern terminology, its origins and how it metaphorically evokes images of animals or natural scenes. Cows with specific colors and patterns on their hides are given unique Zulu names, for example:
The eggs of the lark – a creamy coat spotted with red brown speckles. These terms merely scratch the surface of a system of classification and cattle imagery which proliferates in Zulu oral history and poetry.
Bengal tiger tie: Although the English generally don’t like animals on their city ties, this isn’t necessarily the hidebound rule outsiders might need to make it. If the tie is ironic enough it might tickle the funny bone of an Old Boy.
Consider the experimentation and refinements that led to all the shades and patterns of shirts the English hold in esteem. Compare these cattle images with ones of butcher stripes and Bengal stripes; gingham checks and jumbo checks; a dozen other stripes and checks and a hundred shades of blue all developed merely to dye cotton for a City worker’s shirt. Every pattern and color or color combination has a specific name the English will recognize; their shirts have been bred to perfection.
The same shirt color and pattern lexicon does not exist for American men. Even though they often know more color shades, they have a harder time communicating a shirt’s appearance to one another. Just try explaining a butcher stripe to an American and you will see what I mean.
The more I explore the English shirt, the more I find that it has more complexities than I hitherto believed. But there are parameters, there are guidelines, there are associations. I can see why an outsider would get it horribly wrong and why they would see classic English shirt choices as quirky.
In America, either we have rules or we think anything goes. But England is more comfortable with itself; it understands it’s time honored traditions. America has not knit itself enough to see the richly woven tapestry that even the most unremarkable Englishman sees in Britain.
By contrast, American culture is not settled. But because the clothes we wear were originally developed by the English, and they designed them in such a way as to be taken quite seriously while wearing them, we should, if we wish to understand and then alter them for our needs, heed the reasons they developed along the lines they did. It is fortunate for us that the genre has not yet been diluted, and it is curious to reflect that the English shirt entails a ritual that arguably traces its roots to the Anglo-Saxon huscarls and the Norman Knights who coveted their mail shirts.
Like Alice’s response to the Cheshire cat, I find the English do not play fairly with their choice of shirts. One shirt that seems to be the most popular thing in the shop in a royal purple cannot be given away in a shade of grey. A shirt that is popular in its checked version is completely ignored in its striped version. One pink striped shirt they go crazy over with an ultra thin navy border to the stripe will, when outlined in maroon instead of navy, suddenly become untouchable
Other shirts skip around in the taste arena. Take the bright red butcher stripe. You can find this shirt on either the AA personality type city trader or on an aristocratic club-land denizen. Few others will wear this shirt. Why is it that two such disparate types, one rough and tumble with the reflexes of a famished tiger, the other as smug and idle as the Cheshire cat himself? The reason is the same but from different viewpoints. The shirt is aggressive and requires confidence to pull off. The city trader is essentially a warrior, while the club habitué frankly enjoys not caring what anyone thinks of him.
The English consider the Butcher stripe, the Bengal stripe and the gingham check of varying gauges to be as invisible to the eye as plain blue and white are considered elsewhere. It should be mentioned that the English basically love stripes. Some checks have achieved the status of stripes in terms of cultural iconography, but generally speaking, checked shirts are a transient fashion. In a few years, apart from the classics, English people observing you wearing a checked shirt will simply think you neglected to buy any new shirts.
Pink and blue on white is popular enough to cut across classes, occupations and generations. On the right is a classic “City lad” combination for a bright eyed trader and on the left are the accessories his more mature manager might wear. Note the placement of a red tie on a shirt with pink in it. American men would avoid this because they are influenced by the color dictates of the fashion industry whereas the English are either oblivious to them or delight in a clash of colors to underline that no thought went into the combination.
As James Darwen, an English journalist, wrote in his book Le Chic Anglais, to satisfy eager French appetites on the subject, the building blocks of the English shirt wardrobe are essentially white, blue and pink (with “pink” meaning anything from a baby to a bubblegum to a salmon and including also what Americans would consider lilac and lavender). We might add to that tri-color palette bright red and purple, which provide an occasional bit of shock, and yellow, which can provide an accent (but not too much, lest people tease you about a yellow stripe of cowardice). Different colors are acceptable for after hours or in the country, but this is the subject of a future essay. As a matter of fact the colors for actual country shirts often change to those very colors unacceptable in the City.
For after hours, just about anything goes, and the drive to be different can produce some bizarre choices. The most conservatively dressed city worker can wear some strident shirt choices for a soiree. Paisley shirts, shirts with day-glo stripes — yellow next to brown, orange and lime green on a black background — you name it, the English will wear it to a private party or one of the local watering holes.
The English treat their shirts with the same reverence many Americans reserve only for their suits. Perhaps this is why suit materials tend to be beefier; the English believe they should take a pounding like a postal uniform while a shirt should be pampered.
It seems that the English taste in pattern type and scale and spacing congregate around a few choices, and once those are satisfied all the variations of color combinations get explored. This is why a certain width of stripe will be repeated in several shades of blue on white, pink on white, lilac on white, white on blue, pink or lilac, blue on pink, pink on blue, yellow on blue. There will usually be a checked version of the striped pattern as well, done up in all the same color variations
Justin Sumrie- New & Lingwood
The Jermyn Street shirt maker, seemingly around since the Norman Conquest, focuses primarily on the English classics. OK, they aren’t really quite that ancient, but it will be remembered that the Norman Knights considered shirts of mail to denote the status of gentleman and to display wealth and power. And though, while the English centuries passed, the shirt changed from rings of iron to woven linen, silk and ultimately cotton, it remained the central indicator that separated gentle from serf. New & Lingwood caters to quality.
New & Lingwood are a favorite shop for the Eton set (many of whom are descendents of those very same mail shirt-wearing knights) who continue to wear their goods after graduation whether they become mandarins, barristers or loquacious City lads.
According to Mr. Sumrie they (both the shop and the English generally) prefer a full cut, which, in Jermyn street terms, is the standard approach of moderate room tracing the lines of the body, neither fitted shirts that go on like a water balloon nor sacks without shape.
The English also like particular construction details in their shirts. The same collar shape has been retained for the past 15 years. The English get comfortable in their style and if they wore something in their first job, they want to find the same thing. It would actually cause an uproar if there was too much of a change(or any at all). A certain collar with a certain spread, length of points and height, of which no one can recall the origins, has been settled on as the national collar of choice.
In fabric groups, Poplins: The English like white, a wedge (on the darkish side. One is featured on New & Lingwood’s website) blue, a sky blue and an “English” pink, which are by nature classic. End on end fabrics, woven to apprear mixed with white thread in both the vertical and horizontal, particularly in pinks and blues are popular. Also popular are very fine stripes and Bengal stripes (about 1cm in width on a white background) in blues, pinks, bright reds, burgundies (wine, not oxblood). Green and grey and black are out and purple begins to encroach on the fashionable. The butcher stripe is a bit passé.
White and blue and pink solids will never go out of style. The blue most chosen is generally on the “sky” side of the shade.
Oxford cloth is popular for casual but not with suits. The English love this material for cords and a tweed jacket. It is one of the few shirts they will pair with a button cuff. Royal Oxford is just not that popular. The English like smoothness for dress shirts and texture for casual, whereas the grey zones in the middle aren’t all that popular.
Twill weave is popular in a 100s 2 ply in white, blue and pink solids with the occasional Bengal stripe or gingham check seen, mainly in blue and white combinations for this twill quality. Small scale herringbone designs are very well liked; mostly in pink, white or blue.
Pink and blue, light blue and dark blue stripes on white. The entire ethos of this “classic” style is about eschewing ostentation and not being noticed, or at least not being obvious. So though you may not want to blend in, you certainly want to be understated and have people discover your style as opposed to slapping them across the face with it.
Yellow in solids or as a background color is not popular, to say the least. Green and orange are difficult shades. Grey and black patterns and solids are generally out, although the occasional black stripe will get picked up for dramatic effect with a black suit.
Eccentric but English? The focus would be on non-visible parts of the garment. For example consider a somber charcoal suit with a cerise pink lining instead of the standard grey, or better yet, printed tie silk used to line the underside of the jacket’s pocket flaps. Contrast one (just one) of the buttonholes on the sleeve; something which doesn’t take over the garment but makes it slightly different.
That’s for suits. For shirts, take a striped or checked body (or even a solid) and put a much lighter version of the same cloth for the collars and cuffs. This would be something an English dandy might do but probably a bit extreme for standard city wear.
It is still more popular to put the checked version of a striped material on the lower outside part of a double cuff. When the cuff is folded over, the inside of the double cuff shows a hint of the slightly differing material, which creates the sort of subtle eccentricity more mainstream Englishmen can wear. One could even line the inside of the shirt collar with the checked material as well. Other details are the bottom buttonhole of the shirt (unseen when tucked into trousers) might be horizontal vs. vertical or in red vs. white, or the side gussets (again unseen when the shirt is tucked in) done in pink or turquoise. Apparently just knowing that something is different, even if no one else does, provides satisfaction enough in Albion.
Roger Talbot- Hilditch and Key
Englishman love blue stripes on a white shirt, and the Bengal stripe in particular, which actually derived from their time in India. Apparently the pattern, modeled after a tiger’s stripes, was native to India and used for all manner of cotton clothes. In fact, cotton itself as a material for shirts came from India and the Middle East, replacing European linen for men’s shirts.
In any case, the blue stripe on a white background (even the white stripe on a blue background) is a favorite that the English never tire of. The sheer number of variations on this theme is staggering. Only the slightest variation in a blue Bengal stripe, undetectable to an innocent bystander, is enough to satisfy a Londoner that he has something unique.
There was a time (circa 1900) when men of means got nothing but custom shirts. Ready made shirts evolved because whenever a shirt was made for a customer, the shop often made at least one other that the customer hadn’t ordered because it was cost effective. When another customer enquired about shirts, the shop staff would look through their accumulated stock of shirts for other clients to see if one approximated his size and shape. If one did, it was tried on him. Repeating this custom over and over gave the English shop keeper an idea of the variations in a man’s body, which led to standardized shirt patterns.
Apparently this was once the same for ties. Ties were all made for customers. There is no way you can make just one tie from a length of silk, you have to make two (assuming thrift), and so two would be made up and the second placed in a drawer.
Shirts were made with separate stiff collars, which made laundering easier. After a while, everyone realized that shirt bodies could stand regular washing and so attached collars made sense.
White is the top seller with blue a close second. Most bold shirts are window dressing “hooks” which get people interested in going into the shop.
Americans wear very bland shirts. You’ve got your whites and blues. Bold stripes like those worn in Europe have not entirely caught on here yet. Although during periods of affluence, brighter and bolder shirts sell better everywhere. Americans like brown/beige patterns or stripes for office wear . These are colors that the English agonize over making in business quality poplin cottons.
Multi stripes are an English passion, particularly a blue background with blue and red stripes on it. The weather is so dreary in London that the shirts are a way for men to brighten up their day. Checks were rarely worn for business, but the designers have shown how checks with suits for work are acceptable, demonstrating that even the English are not immune to the designer’s marketing efforts.
French cuffs, called double cuffs in England, actually did originate in France. Gentlemen there were very well turned out and wore long frilly cuffs under their jackets but turned them back in order not to stain them during sword duels. The protective convenience became a style in itself. In England, men like French cuffs because they can show off their cufflinks, which are an important masculine accoutrement.
Hilditch and Key Classic collar
The English like a cutaway collar or a modified spread collar. Button downs are slow to catch on because the English have trouble copying that American roll, which is necessary to make the shirt look casual. Pin collars were also an American import and were a fad in England decades ago, but the English don’t like them so much anymore. If a movie comes out that features them, there will be a surge in demand for a while, but everyone eventually goes right back to the spread collar.
Hilditch and Key Cutaway Collar
The Duke of Windsor wore his own specific design of cutaway. The Italians have since lent their name to the collar the Duke invented. Not only is it an English collar, but it was also designed and made for the Duke by Hilditch’s Paris shop. It is still available from Hilditch under the designation “cutaway” collar.
The English like a wide variety of fabrics for shirts, though for business they prefer the smooth poplins. Voile is not that popular because England is not a hot country. Voile is mainly used for dress (black tie) shirts.
Hilditch and Key shoulder pattern matching
Collar stays made out of brass or sterling are nice, but they are expensive and, if left in the shirt, sometimes do not come back from the laundry. They were called bones because at one time they were made of whale bone. Now that the whale is protected and the metal ones will get you into trouble at airport security, plastic are the ones to use. They can be cut and reshaped to suit a particular collar, but if left in a shirt collar they will be destroyed by a commercial laundry.
White collars and cuffs are more common with the English than the Americans. The English keep their jackets on more, which, in turn, keeps their French cuffs more hidden and cleaner. There is also that attachment to their cufflinks. The Americans prefer a self cuff because they automatically remove their jackets and consider the white cuffs a bit too flashy.
Rowland Lowe-Mackenzie- Turnbull & Asser
Turnbull and Asser have a very English ethos, slightly different but still part of the national sartorial tapestry. Everyone who’s anyone and who’s English has at some point shopped here. Lawrence Olivier, Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, Peter O’Toole, Ronald Reagan.
When you first walk into the shop you are overwhelmed with color, and the idea is to celebrate both the proper and the individual. It was founded in 1885 and moved to Jermyn Street in 1905.
And Turnbull has always had this love affair with color. The Edwardians and Victorians were wearing a more colorful selection of shirts than is probably believed today. Black and white photos do not do them justice, but Turnbull’s archive catalogs this celebration of the English style.
Striped collars and cuffs with same color ways fabric but checked bodies are very English, but only worn by their most assured and individualistic dressers. To sum up, the fabric of the collar, cuffs and front placket would all be striped and then the identical fabric in a check would be used for the body.
The Englishman is very much married to his shirt. Shirts have a status in the Englishman’s closet that other accessories don’t possess in his mind. There is currently a revival in England for custom made shirts and English men are indulging themselves.
Turnbull and Asser shirt: A fun retro style dinner shirt. This shirt is a knowing salute by T&A to swinging London of the 60’s and 70’s era.
Turnbull makes all their own ties by hand in London. They are designed and constructed to fit in with the Turnbull vision, which is a Very Jermyn Street, City of London vision.
Some of the shirt patterns and colors that Turnbull offers are so incredibly mad that only the English will wear them to compensate for their absence of noon day sun.
Yellow and green are not popular. Red on white in different scales, red on blue; both in checks and stripes are quite popular for the English Turnbull client. The English just like red.
One client wanted collar and cuffs that were detachable and interchangeable for all of his Turnbull shirts. Turnbull devised a system of buttons and loops that would secure the collar and cuffs to the shirt body and sleeve ends — something like 24 buttons on the collar alone! It was rumored that the ladies sewing the shirts were impressed but not amused.
Back-to-front shirts have no placket or opening in the front and literally button up the back. Hidden, secret, mad and all very English.
Turnbull keeps thousands of fabrics on hand because they know their customers all want something slightly different. The shirt they would stock most of if they knew they had to sell their entire stock in a day to Englishman would be a mid blue hairline or mille raie stripe, which would look like a solid from a slight distance. The English enjoy a shirt that looks like a solid at a distance.
Spread collars are the favorite. Partly because the English like heavier weight silks and thicker knot styles in ties. Pinned shirt collars are very American, very Brooks Brothers. And although pinned collars are considered smart by the English, they are far too idle to bother with something requiring so much effort.
The English love double cuffs. To adorn these, Turnbull sells a house style cufflink that is a mother of pearl button mounted on a sterling background.
Mr. Lowe-Mackenzie recently saw tiny little 18k gold Chinese style horses with tiny diamond eyes on a chain link. A little bit fey but absolutely elegant amongst the well dressed set.
He is wearing Asprey cufflinks with little frogs on lily pads. The focus is tongue-in- cheek, or in the case of a pig’s head cufflink, apple-in-mouth. That sort of whimsy is de rigueur in England.
Braces in bright or pastel colors are a Turnbull, and an English, classic; another bit of subversive fun for the City dresser. Most men wear belts with their suits now.
The full bespoke shirts take about 3- 4 weeks to complete the first shirt and then another 6 weeks to deliver the balance of the order. They have two teams of ladies, one of whom does all the ready-to-wear and another who focuses on the custom orders. The same workmanship is expected throughout.
Summing up and going forward
At this point, it should be clearer why the English have a Jermyn street tradition that deals in shirts. Because the English form attachments to their shirts, they put more effort into their selection than any other item in the wardrobe. Shirts are cared for and worn with pride as a symbol of wealth, status and power in a manner similar to that a Zulu farmer might display his prize cow.
Because of a continued dedication to excellence, the English have perfected their shirts in much the same way the Zulu perfected their cows and for similar reasons. Namely that the shirt, like the Zulu cow, is designed to best offset the colors most attractive to and most flattering for the natives.
But what does the future hold for the English shirt? Will its language endure? Will its patterns and colors remain true? If there is an irony at work here it would be that while the Italians produce all sorts of cottons for export to the USA, they hanker after the English selections of Acorn fabrics (English owned and designed) and Thomas Mason (Made in Italy but, for the moment, still directed by English tastes). Americans love both the Italian and the English, while the Italians love the English. I do not believe we need to choose one over the other, but at least separate in our minds which is which and avoid wearing Italian shirts thinking they are English or vice versa.
And as with anything scarce and beautiful like the Nguni cow, there is a chance that English tastes will disappear from a lack of tasteful breeders. Things are generally beautiful because they are scarce, delicate or perishable, but there is always room for change. Even Edmund Burke would agree that there must be some, even if it is slow and only references the past. However, although new colors and patterns in shirt cloths that appeal to the English might appear, people who do not understand English tastes may try to emulate them without fully understanding the rationale behind their choices and fail to get it quite right. This could cause the so-called lethal mutation that would transform elegant simplicity into something appalling.
But as long as there is an England and the English celebrate their tastes, and as long as admiring outsiders herald the same, the Cheshire Cat’s grin will hang forever in mid-air, the Zulu cow will always be the most beautiful, and the élan of the English knight will continue in the modern-day gentleman warrior, in his shirt if nowhere else.
With thanks to:
Justin Sumrie of New & Lingwood
Roger Talbot of Hilditch and Key
Rowland Lowe-Mackenzie of Turnbull & Asser
