Greensleeves, part II

After a long and relatively fruitless search, I'm glad to say I've finally found the perfect green blazer. Readers may remember a few weeks ago I stumbled on an old Brooks Brothers number.Today, it's back from the careful hands of Mr. Lee, altered and freshly dry cleaned.

The longer I write this blog, the more I wish I had a better camera. So often, minor aspects of color and texture play such an important role in the beauty of the old tings I find, and I wish I do could do them better justice. But I digress...

As I mentioned in my previous post on the relative merits of the green blazer as an alternative to the classic navy, the shade of green is of the utmost importance. My past attempt at making one out of half a suit left me cold because the shade of green was all wrong. That jacket had a heavy brown cast that rendered it drab and frumpy. This one has a blue cast, a subdued color, yet infinitely more vibrant and workable. It combines well with most things that might normally go with navy. The power of a good dry cleaning can not be understated. When I found this jacket, it was downright crunchy with dirt. A week later, it's two shades brighter and so much softer. The fabric is doeskin, something between flannel and boiled wool, wonderfully soft to the touch and warm without being bulky. Whatever happened to doeskin?

Given the fabrics blue cast, I relied on navy as the main secondary color, pairing it with a white oxford with navy pencil stripes, a navy bow tie with green bar stripes, a navy and white gingham square and a cap in Black Watch tartan. I have a lot of ties with a navy ground that I hardly ever wear. With a navy blazer, the look is too pat. Sometimes, they come out with a grey tweed. The only other thing they tend to go with is a grey suit. Now, I would love to wear suits more often. But given that I am constantly overdressed, a suit just takes things too far, even for me. This green blazer let's the navy ties come out to play more often. Cavalry twill slacks in classic tan would have been just the thing, but it ain't that cold yet. Instead, mid weight charcoals did the trick.

For the final touch, brown wingtip brogues and some $2.50 argyle socks from Target, one more pattern for good measure. I often hear guys say they don't get pattern matching, or can't pull it off. I say start simple, and keep your major elements solid. In this case, I'm grey on the bottom and dark green on top. Everything else has a pattern, yet the overall effect is unobtrusive because they are all in one very limited color palette (navy, white, green) and balanced by large areas of related solid colors. That, plus the tiniest bit of peacockish self confidence is really all it takes.

Thrift shopping takes vision. This jacket was nasty filthy and a little too small. The buttons were these cool scrimshaw jobbies, but all wrong for the garment. In short, though it may be vintage Brooks Brothers "346", it was far from perfect. Yet, it didn't take much to restore it to something wonderful. Dry cleaning, letting out the sides a bit, and a new set of buttons made a drastic difference. These are all simple and cheap fixes. Shopping cheap and being stylish have at least this in common: sometimes you have to see something not for what it is right now, but for what it could be with only a few well chosen tweaks. Off the rack clothing, whether thrifted or new, is frequently best viewed only as raw material. Learning to mold it to yourself, to make it yours, makes all the difference.