Country Is Where You Find It

Seems I always find myself writing something about what used to be known as country clothing right about now. After all, the weather has just turned crisp and being a clothes nerd, my attention immediately turns to corduroy, tweed and flannel.

I may be a city kid, but I do ocassionally find myself in places that look like this, especially on Monday holidays when the kids have the day off.

Parlee Farms in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, just shy of the New Hampshire border, may not be the most rustic farm in the world, but it's a great place to take your kids to pick apples, feed the goats and generally run around with millions of other city kids whose parents have taken them out for some fun in the fresh air of New England. And they have hot apple cider doughnuts and pumpkin muffins. No such thing as too many of those.

This being ostensibly a shallow clothing blog, let me profer that 8 wale cords, an oxford shirt, and down filled nylon vest are perfect attire for catching a three year old girl in flight at the hay maze. A vintage cap in Donegal tweed and honey brown pebble grain bluchers finsih the job. You didn't think I was going to suggest a tweed suit with plus fours, did you.? I'm not, despite what many may think, that crazy. I do like to look like a grown-up, but I don't want to be a stiff, though I am fully aware that as the only man there in shoes (not sneakers) with his shirt tucked in, I'm the modern definiton of just that. So be it.

Dressing for Fall is all about utilizing the colors of the season. Rust, gold and brown blend in seamlessly with a setting of dirt paths, turning trees, and a newly acquired giant pumpkin which now graces the entrance to our city dwelling.

I may never go on a duck hunt in the English countryside, but it's no matter. Country is where you find it.



Sucker Punch

Given the fact that it's been well over a year since the last time I featured a Sucker Punch on the blog, I'd say the time is well nigh for one. This means I've either managed to avoid overtly conspicuous consumption hat flies in the face of even my own better judgement, or I've learned not to bang a drum about my shortcomings so much. Most likely the latter is true. In any case, today we make up for lost time with a double dose, a Sucker K.O. if you will.

The L.L.Bean 100th anniversary coffee table vanity book arrived yesterday, because I bought it. I thought it might be fun, and it was late at night, and there were a few dollars to burn (specifically $19.12, get it? 1912?) in the PayPal account, and here it is. It is a fun book, but I won't get too far into it here. Lord knows the internet will be gushing with reviews any minute now, and I'm not going to get involved. I will only say that regret set in the minute I saw a page featuring Lisa Birnbach's thoughts on the matter. Any time the good Ms. Birnbach rears her head in connection to anything I might like I get the feeling like I should just chuck it all in and turn to stark white unfurnished rooms and black turtlenecks. But I digress...

Not surprisingly, Ms. Birnbach is featured in a chapter focusing on the now iconic Norwegian Sweater, and by extension L.L.Bean in the 1980s. Among the photos we find this chap. Two days later (today, that is)...

I find myself headed out to the grocery store in this get up. True, it's a grouping of items I've owned for a long time, but I can't imagine what made me think to combine them in just this way just now.

The sweater is actually from Boston Traders, also very 1980s, found in a thrift shop for a few dollars. The vest is Lands' End, $12.99 on sale in the Spring time some years ago, and the shirt is a tattered old Brooks Brothers, with holes worn in the elbows, what I call a "sweater shirt".

They even got me right down to the shoes. Dammit!