The Gun Room: Holland & Holland

On the 19th floor of 10 East 40th Street is the Holland & Holland gun room. Gun rooms in NYC are as rare as places you can smoke. I'm always surprised how friends react to my love of guns. I don't know how many big city Republicans have told me the one thing we agree on is gun control -- only to drop their mouths when I tell them we don't.



Last night some gun lovers gathered at Holland & Holland for Burgundy (white and red), wild boar sausage and some real estate investment advice which, being the only poor Democrat in the room, I never really understood. "Save, schmave, I want that 20 gauge."


Everything about this room is tradition, and while I'm not into taxidermy it certainly suits Holland & Holland.



I was never much of a hunter until I was served a brace of smoked pheasant for lunch during a bird hunt in northern Illinois. I converted immediately.



I don't hunt that much and I promised myself after the army I would never go camping again. My idea of enjoying the four seasons is checking into one.


But the lore and history of guns speaks to the love of a well aimed shot. The smell of sulfur. The ejection of a shell and the sound of brass. The sweet banana smell of Hoppe's cleaning solvent...


and all that goes with it.


It's hard not to be impressed by the luxury of Holland & Holland. I have no idea what that cartridge box retails for. I don't want to know.


But the really interesting stuff isn't for sale. A small museum curated by H&H holds amazing treasures of history.


This is an 8 bore "Wild Fowling Hammer Gun' or what we would called in the army, "a B.F.G."



If you do work in fashion design and are still reading this...check out the imprint of the barrel above and below. This was done during manufacture and I think the same pattern would make for a pair of smashing batik trousers.
My favorite of the night was one of 10 replicas of the English Brown Bess. This musket was standard issue to the British soldier during the American Revolution or, what H&H might call, "The American War for Independence."


Lock,

stock

and barrel.

Operation Crazy Horse - 16 May - 5 June 1966

CIDG Camp - Vinh Thanh, May 1966


Back of photo - Pencil notes (all cap) added later.

Here's what I remember. Shortly after being promoted to sergeant I spent a week home on leave. After dinner my father and I smoked cigars and for the first time he told me about Operation Crazy Horse. He started the conversation with, "Never use men like they were office supplies."

Sam Castan 12 May 1935 - 21 May 1966

45 years ago Look Magazine senior editor and journalist Sam Castan was killed trying to break out of an ambush that, save two men, wiped out an entire platoon on Hereford Mountain in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Castan's body was looted of cameras and film only to be recovered from Viet Cong killed in a fight later the same day. These photographs were taken moments before Casten and the men in these pictures were killed.

I grew up staring at the images and wondering about Sam Castan. In many ways I felt like I knew him but it was a romantic image I created. Belted safari jacket. Nikons hanging from his neck. A cigarette dangling from his lips. War photography speaks to me in a terrifying but alluring way.

The photographs were published in S.L.A. Marshall's 1967, 'Battles in the Monsoon.' Castan stayed at my father's Special Forces camp the night before the ambush and remembers the journalist winning at a card game with soldiers of the 1st Air Cavalry and his A Team.

Fran Castan, a poet from Brooklyn and Sams's widow remembers Sam in her poem, 'Operation Crazy Horse.'

A grand Kowloon hotel. A hedge

of red hibiscus. A tiled pool.
A masseuse who pressed fragrant
oil of almond into my body
in the full heat of the sun.
Elsewhere, northeast of Saigon,
a man beheld you, and fired.

At the undertaker's you were
all made up and your hair
was parted wrong, so I smoothed it
the way you would have liked.
Someone shouted Stop, as if we were
caught making love on the couch
in my father's house. God knows

what they feared. Unfamiliar
streaks in your hair must have paled
at the moment of terror
and grown longer in the time since,
eerie as strands of ticker tape
still printing. Such dark hair
shocked white. How afraid you were.
All I could do was hold you.

NY Tailors: Leonard Logsdail

Len's kitchen


Cool Italian wool


Matching...in a good way



Patterns

Gekko's Pattern


More patterns


and even more patterns

Kenny G?


View of the courts









































$850 for ready made






$6,500 for bespoke

Jacket canvas






Len Logsdail has a solid reputation as being approachable and about as down to earth as you can get without digging a well. He reckons his nature has a lot to do with his success. When you're gonna drop $6,500 on a bespoke suit it helps to like the guy you're giving all that money to. It's hard not to like Len.

Len's studio is on 53rd Street just east of Paley Park and above Hamburger Heaven. Like Len, the front of the house is comfortable, relaxed and happily void of any pretentious bullshit. Even the celebrity client photo is of a no bullshit celebrity, Frank Langella. There was beautiful Spring light streaming in through open southern windows the day I visited and I couldn't help but think what a great restaurant Len's space would make.

Len takes me to the back of the house (plenty of room for a kitchen) and shows me a sport jacket he's working on in an Italian plaid. Not to my liking but you can't help but admire how feather light the fabric is. Len explains his house style is not so much Henry Poole-like as much as Poole is Lenord Logsdail - like. This is said as a matter of fact. There's nothing wrong with being down to earth and confident.

There's an old-world ostentation that you frequently see on Savile Row and in most Polo stores. Len isn't afraid to say it's a haughtiness that's born more out of resentment than station or rank. I'm a long time believer in the origins of arrogance being born of stupidity. The more you know, the less you have to pretend you know. You know?

Len isn't faking it. He has a great sense of humor and it shows most enjoyably in his linings. Whether a suit, sport coat or a pair of tweed boxers...Len's linings surprise, amuse and generate ideas and inspiration I've never thought of before. Really crazy ideas.

If you don't have $6,500 to drop on a suit or $5,000 on a sport coat or $1,600 on a pair of trousers, you may want to consider an affordable ready made line Len has recently come out with. You can see it on line here.