Fortune Magazine & 1954's Clothing Market

Men owned a lot of clothes back then... but women owned more. Not Surprising. What is surprising is what men owned. Details this weekend.

Natural Selection Hard at Work

Frankly, I can't help thinking that deer would be me.  For my deer friend and happy hunter, the Main Line Sportsman.

Selfies

There was an interesting piece in the NY Times Sunday about Selfies. Back in college, the NYT could do no wrong. In my 30s, I began to have trouble...mostly with restaurant reviews. Today, I'm pretty sure most reporters have come from a nine month stint on the Today Show. Anyway, I think the Time's piece on Selfies missed a lot.

And while this yearbook photo from my senior year in college isn't a Selfie, it's largely about Selfies. Sure, it's vain and when I look at it, I see the lips that vanished in my 40s. I also see a shit eating grin together with a confidence that knew, for a fact, that it wouldn't be long before I was working on the Today Show.

I also see the suede jacket I bought at the Ft Bragg PX in 1980. I would ask a Georgetown bartender for a large plastic garbage bag, cut out a hole for my head and wear it while running to my car in a late night rain storm. It worked.

The Campbell tartan Gant shirt with too long sleeves (my sleeves were always too long) and a navy blue knit tie probably came from a haberdasher on St. George Street. Either the crazy lady who missed her lips with her lipstick or the tailor in the Marine Reserves I shot the shit with while we both smoked and drank coffee -- He sewed and I told lies about the 82nd.

What you can't see, but I do remember, are the jeans and topsiders off camera. All in all, it was a pretty hip rig. I'm very proud of it. Who knows what folks will remember 20 years later from their Selfies. I like to think, if for nothing else, it'll conjure up a memory of bits and pieces forgotten...even themselves.

The Art of a Tie: Passagio Cravatte

I've always wanted the best.  Problem is, there's so damned little of it.  Gianni Cerrutti and I started a conversation back in early August.

My name is Gianni, Italian, and I am the founder of Passaggio Cravatte. This  I will write because I have a very important dream. And you can make it come true.

His English isn't the best and my Italian doesn't exist but like buying cheese in Paris -- some pointing to this or that, a key word  like Epoisses, and you're good to go.  I was offered a tie and asked to pick a few from a library of vintage silk, cotton and cashmere.  From a handful of my choices, Gianni would pick one but it would be a surprise until it showed on my door step.

We are unique in Europe and not only to have only true vintage fabrics. In fact, our fabrics have all aged between 40 and 60 years of life on his shoulders. They are still hand-printed and they are all limited edition. This is because after 2 ties the fabric ends.Beyond that evoke British regimental archives of 1930.

I can't imagine a better life than being a custom tie maker in Italy.  Hands down, it soars above George Costanza's choice of architect. Roaming around Lake Commo for bits and pieces here and there. A softly lit workroom with sunlight peering in through 200 year old glass windows over looking a cobble stone street. The quiet cutting of silk and the silence of seven folds and noiseless sewing...As the little boy admiring a library book of Gaugain's Tahiti says in "Goodbye Columbus, "Ain't that the fucking life."

We are the only ones making the old 7 folds in a single piece of silk. This is when all ties to the world are the union of 3 pieces of fabric. This is the Rolls of all ties to the world. Our 7 folds old is not to be confused with the modern one. In fact, ours is the original model that was born in the early 1900s. We do it like then. All without any internal and hemmed by hand. In addition we are always the only ones making the ties - always very exclusive - in just 2 pieces of fabric.

I wish I sold  good feelings but I sell insurance.  No sadness without joy - No joy without sadness.  Selling insurance is lot like selling tires  --  It's more a solution to a problem and people want to pay as little as they have to.  It's hard to show off your insurance company -- Unless you have Chubb -- But I digress...

Our tailors are in Naples and only work for us still in their homes. As more than a century ago. Us we finish, and we stretch the check because they must not have defects. The ironing is very important for us, in fact I do it directly. Even the label are strict with ourselves. Then, having many foreign customers we are also able to provide tailor-made vintage ties without disturbing the customer from their office or from home.

Gianna's tie arrives and it's this powerful combination of green, blue, and an orange red that matches a freshly painted guest bedroom.  The tie is a self tipped feather. So much so, that when I make the first loop, I almost expect it to fly away.  Instead of fat heavy silk stuffed with a lining -- this is a silk air mail envelope. Everywhere are hands: Rolled edges, tipping, the keeper...all of it a kind of imperfect perfection.  

Gianni sends another tie along as a surprise.  A simple four fold rep but in cashmere that has softened with time.  I've had a few cashmere ties but nothing this...It's so utterly soft that I decide I must line a closet in cedar just to protect it from the moths.

I'm probably going overboard but I almost always do when I find something that I know is in rare supply. These ties are little pieces of art and as art goes -- They're fairly reasonable at 80 to 120 Euros. Ever since my first non clip-on tie that was issued in the Army, I must have purchased well over 500.  I mean that.  And it's embarrassing to admit, but it has been 36 years.  Frankly, unless you're really clothes mad, you might be a little let down by Gianni's ties.

They are of an aesthetic that you must really appreciate.  You could buy a bunch of J. Crew ties for just one of Gianni's seven folds but everyday I listen to opera I don't understand,  I look at paintings I know nothing about, I drink wine and have no idea what it is -- But I'm  moved by it all and that makes me want to know more. When you get there...you'll know it.

Hello Dear,

Now I can tip the balance.

I think your tie is ready Mondays.

To what address shall I send?

Let me know and thank you for everything,

I can not wait to send it.

Gianni

Gianni Cerutti
Passagio Cravatte 

H. Herzfeld Tie Envelopes

I had never seen a tie envelope before H. Herzfeld.  The brand on the slick cardboard never matched the tie I bought.  Still, Herzfeld made an effort -- Even for the lowly tie -- The most affordable purchase in the store next to socks.  Why I kept these envelopes... I'll never know.  My sub-conscious must've reckoned...I'd  never see one again.

Watch Man's Auction

$40,000 - $60,000 Estimate

$10,000 - $15,000 Estimate

$20,000 - $30,000 Estimate

$6,000 - $8,000 Estimate

$2,500 - $3,500 Estimate

Doyle in NYC has a jewelry auction coming up tomorrow. From a Palm Beach collector, it strikes me as very South Florida looking.  I remember working in the Castillo de San Marcos fee both.  As park rangers, no one liked working in the fee booth but it was required duty for a least an hour a day.

Entry fee was .50 cents - A true bargain in the National Park Service but one day I heard this guy complain, " Geez, I pay my taxes and the government's hitting me up for fifty cents?"  He stood in  sock-less alligator Gucci loafers with the red and green canvas under the bit.  Bleach blonde hair and over sized Porsche sunglasses on his head with a Corum signal flag watch on his wrist.

He and his wife get to the fee booth window where he throws a dollar at me.  I push it back to him, "That's alright, sir.  No charge."  He cocks his head, "No charge."  "That's right, sir.  I heard you complaining and so I figure you're having some tough times.  Not to worry -- I'll pick it up."  What unfolded is another story but I do believe it was documented in the Ranger Log.

Michael Bastian said in an interview that it was important nowadays to wear a nice watch since everyone dressed so poorly or how else could you judge a man. That seemed pretty shallow to me -- Until I remembered that day in the fee booth. 

MY FW: Runway Music

It is a well known fact, mostly among my oldest and dearest friends,  that I'm a klutz. My mother has warned me that I burned through nine lives many years ago. Sgt. Murphy told me I could fuck up an anvil with a rotten banana. I also have the attention span of a wire fox terrier on a triple espresso. And I love to dance. Usually by myself. Listening to a you tube video on a iPhone while dancing and walking down stairs is probably not a good idea... for anybody -- much less a klutz with a short attention span who is over 50 years old.

I'll spare you the details -- Anyway, while the drugs are outstanding, I'm unable to sit for more than 20 minutes but am looking forward to working with my physical therapist Eileen -- who told me I could always remember her name thanks to that song in the '80s. Posts for the next couple weeks will be short bursts with a patina of prescribed pain medication.

Here's a burst of what I was listening to when I took the spill. It's impossible to find a CD from the Doris Days, a little Swedish trio from the '90s, but when I listen to Jumbo Jet on You Tube, I know it would make for incredible runway music. Bouncy & catchy as all get out and amazingly obscure... I'm betting only two people in Williamsburg ever heard of 'em. But you can...so unbuckle your double monks, make yourself a Rye Manhattan and just try not to dance by yourself on the stairs.

MY FW: Fashion Media

"The people who did M magazine… had just a very high level of taste and a broad knowledge and understanding of the world… they never talked down, they never simplified for their readers, they really educated them on a very high level…I can't help but think that the magazines of today simply pander to the lowest common denominator of their readers. I just can't get it through my head that doing a dozen-paged fashion layout of distressed jeans and t-shirts… constitutes a high-level of taste." G. Bruce Boyer

"Advertising dollars play a big part in this industry. And therein lies the rub. Say there's a designer spending $75 million on advertising, and it's not the greatest collection; the [media] are going to turn around and say it's great because of the advertising dollars... If you don't have the advertising, you don't have a magazine, and magazines go in and out of business, left, right and center." Photographer Richard Spiegel

 "It used to be that you'd go the theater, you'd write a review.  Now people are being politically correct in fashion -- they go to the shows and sit there and get a sore bottom. They sort of swim around, and their criticisms are rather soft.  I think they're being politically correct because things have changed and everything is advertising driven." John Fairchild

MY FW: Striiiipes

There's a spectacular restaurant in Paris within eye shot of the Eiffel Tower and while it's not much to look at, the food and wine are amazing. Only seven tables -- Only one seating a night. Vin Sur Vin or, "Twenty over Twenty," a French expression for, 'best of the best' is one of my favorite restaurants. But this isn't about a favorite  restaurant -- This is about a favorite web site, Striiiipes,  in which the owner, Arthur Lhermitte designs some of the most amazingly creative play things to wear.

My favorite, and sadly gone for now, but who knows, is this lobster shirt. Perfect for explaining my favorite expression from Spain, 'Que Langosta' for a woman's rear end (Where's the sweetest lobster meat? In the tail). It wasn't cheap but I'd rather wear it more than anything else nowadays. With a little shouting maybe Arthur will bring it back.

If you really like the lobster shirt -- There's always the lobster belt.

Not being a pocket square guy but unable to stop buying them -- Arthur's Air Mail pocket square connected me to my childhood and growing up with a military father and lots & lots of air mail envelopes. Mostly from Asia -- The paper was thin like a whisper and bordered in red, white and blue. I don't remember being excited by anything today as much as I was by seeing an air mail envelope with the old man's scratch on it.

Back in Paris, I remember having dinner at Vin Sur Vin and seeing an older couple in their 60s...he, with a huge head of grey hair over a DB navy blazer, rep tie and grey trousers -- She, silvered as well in a red knit St John the color of Georgia brick -- Neither, what you'd call in shape but happily exhibiting bread, butter and wine in their profiles...They are what I aspire to.

A pony tailed Englishman in a t shirt and his anemic blonde wife sat next to the older couple and when my hero ordered a second bottle of champagne, Pony Tail said laughingly, "You sure do drink a lot -- What are you celebrating?" I would've said, "My first blow job," but my hero did something I'll never forget. He turned and looked at Pony Tail... Held the look for at least five full seconds...and, without uttering a word, turned back to his companion. Pony Tail looked like a confused 12 year old. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen...

And so are these cashmere gun gloves. Jesus, when will someone hire me to write catalog copy...Probably not the most PC thing to don on the Upper East Side but, like my hero at Vin Sur Vin said, without saying a word, "Screw em." There are only five pair, and there's just one size but Mon Dieu, are they ballsy. There's not much to buy but there's a lot to love about Striiiipes. As the monster-huge retailers beat you over the head with the obvious -- It's always the small guy who whispers.

Arthur Lhermitte, You gotta love this guy.

"As for the Striiiipes website, I created and launched it in September 2012.
The idea is to showcase new products (fashion design, product design...) that trigger imagination.
We try to select a wide variety of products from different designers.

As for me, I was studying in a business school in France, and had the opportunity to work and study in other countries (Netherlands, USA, China...). A few years ago I decided to learn about fashion design, at the Studio Berçot in Paris.

Working in the fashion industry since then, I created Striiiipes.com along with other projects.
It started as a hobby but rapidly grew into a success. I am now working on new products (accessories, apparel...), and looking for new designer who would showcase some of their products on Striiiipes.com

As for the next steps, we'll try to have more retailers throughout the world (we had a special collaboration with Selfridges in London, and in other concept stores in Europe).

As for my favorite restaurant, when I was living in Shanghai I used to have dinner at some really small restaurants on the side walk of the streets. Really small, not really clean but very good traditional Chinese food. I am now in Paris, when I have some time, I like to go to Angélina tearoom rue de Rivoli, and have a Mont-Blanc for an hour or two.

I hope I answered your questions, let me know if you need anything else."
Best,

Arthur Lhermitte

My Fashion Week: Old Bull Lee Shorts

John- First off: Nice web site. I grew up in Princeton, so in some way or another, I recognize just about everything on your page. But my motives are a little more shallow than a compliment (submission). Old Bull Lee - men's shorts (Fabric from France & Italy - made in America) it goes w/o saying - anything you need - not a problem. Best - Lee

Lee- I don't like much but I'm impressed.
John

James Fox [Ten Engines] said we write w/ a similar "no nonsense" voice. I had seen your site before, but after he recommended you (he didn't mention a second. Little like a communist dating service), I dug in and did some reading. You seem to have shunned social media as a promotional tool - I respect that (and I would be right there with you because I would rather be judged on what I put out there, rather than verbal hypnotism that bends people's minds into the most self serving shape, but as a brand that scares me because stubborn dinosaurs die alone). But it also made you elusive and harder to pin down. Here is what I saw; You tell it candidly, it is well thought out and most importantly, you've earned a lot of trust. That makes you larger than I had initially thought. Lee

Lee - No. 07 really connects with me. You took a pattern I'm familiar with, an 18th C Toile seen on drapes and upholstery fabric, and yet yours looks masculine.  I've always liked toiles, but thought they were too feminine for men to wear. You pulled  it off with a distressed look and so the "femme" effect is completely absent. 01 and 03 remind me of Provencal patterns like Souliado. Historic, tasteful-- Not something for the average Russian.  I'll put together a few questions for you if you don't mind. Simple stuff...just to get an idea if you're a decent guy or a closet case. John

John - Here are some words. It is rough and can be a bit epic at times, but can't start at the finish line... Lee

I was an architect for 15 years. It's a tough business, but the thing I liked about it was the honesty. There is no hiding, you are putting yourself out there for judgment. That takes solid courage & I respect that.  In 2009, when it didn't matter how good you were at anything, you were likely out of a job. I decided it was time to lay it on the line & get rid of the "what if's". Take a position,  make something tangible & throw my opinion up against societies yardstick.

In the beginning, I could have made you a house faster than a pair of shorts. I believe that to make something cheap and often is probably the path of least resistance, but I am about to stand for something and that's not what I wanted it to be. A lot of people would prefer you to believe that they are dragging the world around on a chain, this was not that. I sold my house for start up capital. I flew back and forth to Europe, knocking on doors that weren't getting opened & was sneaking off to sewing classes.

There was a lot of me that had no idea what I was doing. I determined my way through it & generally was not looking the least bit cool. But now, most of that is behind me & when I meet with one of my sewing contractors, I know exactly what they are talking about. I know that the back pocket is the hardest part to make because I've done it.  I've earned the right to have those conversations. To get to the promised land you've got to walk through the desert. Laying it all on the line, committing to a path that is only survival with principle. A journey that is so full of struggle and transformation that things aren't the same anymore. That's where the emotion of an object comes from: the poetry, the lasting meaning, the thing that gives it it's soul.

Now we've got the shorts part figured out. We've got a solid product. We source or create the best art for our fabrics and construction-wise, we don't cut any corners. Our solids are damn near permanent.

So far, ignorance has been our biggest asset (because we didn't default to how things were supposed to be, but it also was the cause of some very expensive mistakes). Now we are focused on building it into a business and that is much harder. That's where driving the 50,000 miles was the easy part and sitting at your desk and making the "good" decisions is the hard part. It's where the romantic - fly by the seat of your pants, bumps into the reality of some very smart, well financed companies. That leads to the 16 hour days, the singleness of purpose. I'm not advocating it because you can kiss anything resembling a 3 dimensional life goodbye & it might all end in madness.

The world has changed a lot recently, it's speeding up and sometimes it's sliding by even faster than it can figure itself out. In our hearts people are truthful, but on the fridges, where commerce exists, there is a lot of hype and misdirection: the volume has gotten turned up to the point that: disingenuous has gotten homogenized & honesty has been pulled away from it's own meaning (center) and become either redefined or unrecognizable. I'm not even sure we expect integrity anymore or at the very least we start out suspicious. As the world gets more crowded & confusing, subtlety will render you invisible. Marketers know this and  that is why drama is often substituted for quality. Sometimes there isn't even a real object at the center of it all. It's just something temporary that has been hyped into legitimacy - over scale it, make it loud, make it purple. Bottom line noise & misdirection have become very efficient selling tools.

I will push the envelope creatively as far as I can. We have been called "fashion forward", which might be a code for dangerous. But that presupposes there is a timeline & that it is being looked at from the outside-in. We don't play that game. The only thing that matters is good. If we have 10 new designs that are good enough to put out, we do that. If there are only 2, then we only do 2. And if you show up to buy out product by all means we'll sell it to  you, but there isn't going to be subterfuge. We want happy people. That's why we make a great product. Because as someone once said. The best thing about telling the truth is that you don't have to remember anything. I'm not a very good salesman. So, if we make a great product, I don't have to remember to look anyone in the eye.

L.W.J. (04/08/13)

Rehoboth Beach, 9.3.201, My favorite, Design No. 3 or what I call, Bain de Shorts

Lee Johnson, founder of Old Bull Lee, is about one of the nicest guys you could converse with email wise.  And that makes this post a particularly embarrassing one. Our e-conversation started last April and its taken me this long to write about his company.  It also took me until Labor Day weekend to take a holiday.

It's on holidays when a man stumbles into a haberdasher in a Summer resort town -- A little buzzed after lunch -- And finds a shirt, or, in this case, a pair of shorts, and with that little buzz going, throws caution to the wind and buys a pair of shorts that his girlfriend would love to own.   Something he'd never consider in the sober and somber Fall of leaf peeping in the mountains.

So this week, My Fashion Week, will cover the unsung.  Those passionate types who are under fashion's radar mostly 'cause they pour every dime into what they make and have nothing left over for the vampires in PR.  I hope you'll join me in toasting  them with a glass of what remains of Summer.

A Hot Sundress

You don't see the sundress much...Like it's simple partner, the shirt dress, it has a way of perking up a hot & humid sidewalk in Manhattan. I certainly get perked up when I see one. Understated and cheap. But elegant ...especially with pearls and a hat.

They met at the Old Spanish Fort on a Friday afternoon in August. Her hot pink Papagallos matched her strap belt and her sundress looked like a Bonwit Teller shopping bag. He sweated in the thermal inversion of the fort's swampy court yard but she was cool... white... and crisp.

It went without either saying where they were headed after lunch.  To a hotel room - with air conditioning.  But for now... they just drank in what they were going to do to each other.  

Anyone?

A great old magazine. Anyone know the title?

I love my readers...except you Rafael.  George?

Elmore Leonard 11 Oct 1925 - 20 Aug 2013

"I wrote a scene about a detective who quits to become a photographer. He borrows a wheel chair from a friend who stole it at the airport and sits outside a terminal taking pictures of people arriving in Miami. Guy comes over and says, "Nice camera. Mind if I check it out?" Fella hands him the camera and the guy walks off with it. The fella gets outta the wheel chair, knocks the guy down and beats his head against the curb.

I thought it was okay, but the scene stews with me for a couple weeks and I changed it. Guy takes the camera, walks a few steps, turns back to the fella in the wheel chair and says, 'Can you walk?' Fella in the wheel chair nods. Guy walks back and gently puts the camera back on the fella's lap."  Elmore Leonard

 From, "A Hot & Humid Night with Elmore Leonard" on The Trad, 25 January 2013

Bel-Canto

Bel-Canto


Use of a light tone in the higher registers

Agile technique capable of dispatching ornate embellishments

Ability to execute fast & accurate divisions

A pleasing, well-focused timbre

A clean attack

Graceful phrasing rooted in a complete mastery of control

Air King

Elizabeth Taylor's former residence for a showroom  

Peter Kaplan instructing Antonio Ciongoli on the finer points of manhood 

Coated slub cotton/linen raincoat - $875 

Railroad stitching borrowed from the covert coat.  Inset polo coat pockets and tied waist from an M65  field jacket conjure up a meeting somewhere in East Germany -  sometime in 1957.

Cotton/linen/silk shawl dinner jacket $995

A journalist rolls up the sleeves of his shawl collar dinner jacket and heads over to the Special Forces Playboy Club in Nha Trang to interview an A Team captain.  OD green jungle fatigue pants and black NVA canvas boots with  boonie hat complete the 1967 ensemble.

Pigment dyed Marigold slub canvas chino - $175

It's 1969, and he stands outside the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria selling the LA Free Times on the corner.  Bright yellow pants, a Fu Manchu moustache and a Liberty shirt grab the attention of middle aged middle class carrying home Flokati rugs and Marimekko prints.

Napoli Blue/marigold wool guncheck jacket - $1095

1993 - Gubbio in Umbria.  Outside a bakery waiting to be picked up by a college pal who stole a farm house for $15,000 in the early eighties well before anyone knew anything other than Tuscany.  The smell of bread baking has him wondering if he should give up Lazard Freres and start the Peter Kump baking school.

French faced, navy raw silk chalkstripe suit - $1295
 

Blue/white slub cotton/linen dress shirt $175, orange linen knit tie - $155 

Early morning middle finger in texture to London's wool chalk stripes.  Mind the gap at Bank Street tube stop, French Press coffee and granola in the Captain's Room and two flights up the escalator to the 210 Non-Marine syndicate.  He's the only one on his team who reads the Independent because he isn't really a financial guy.  It's only rate times value.

Napoli blue belted double breasted hopsack house jacket $895 

She only bought it for him because she didn't want him to wear anything underneath it.

Linen one piece collar woven polo $350  Most expensive shirt in the collection due to quality of linen 

He had money. He just didn't want to look like he had money.

Pigment dyed orange slub canvas chino - $175

After the Gators beat the Bulldogs in Jacksonville, they all drove down to St Augustine and hooked up with a bunch of girls from the private college in a tavern on St George Street.  That night he had sex on the beach for the first time with a tall blonde in Lily P from New Jersey.  The water was too cold. She didn't think all that  much of him the next morning.

Summer Blackwatch Double breasted dinner jacket with slub linen/silk lapel facing - $1050, pink end on end formal shirt with pique bib - $225

He escaped Berlin in '38 for London but not before returning his WWI Iron Cross to the Fuhrer and telling him where to put it.  He made a living playing cards.  In the best private clubs.  Drinking the best champagne.  Bridge was his game.  He'd sit the next war out -- In this double breasted shawl lapel dinner jacket in an almost black Blackwatch.  If he got tired, there was always the Benzedrine inhaler in his left pocket.



Antonio Ciongoli is never loud.  If most menswear designers are GMTs and Submariners -- Antonio is the understated and elegant Air King.  And while the Air King is an entry level watch for Rolex -- So, Antonio's new line, Eidos Napoli,  is for Isaia.  Few things in life are elegant and entry points.  When discovered, they're well worth celebrating.  Eidos is able to cut out the middle man by making use of Isaia's manufacturing facilities so a fully canvased suit can be had for $1,200 and most sport jackets at $895.

It's hard not to see history in this line while admiring  how tastefully it's applied.  I think that comes with an honest appreciation and not just tweaking something historic to make it your own.  There's been more than enough of that.  And if you make a living playing cards...then the  Blackwatch dinner jacket was made for you.