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.



Keep It Simple (Rainy Day Edition)

Despite my love for (and arguable overuse) of the slightly more outrageous trappings at the outer bounds of what may be considered classic menswear, I do in fact find solace in the clean look of simple classics at times.  Opposites, by there very existence, make each other better. What's Summer without Winter? And what good are things like Kelly green cords if you don't tone it down sometimes? Besides, matching four patterns and trying to wield bright hues with apparent aplomb gets to be an exhausting gig. It's nice sometimes to reach for the tried and true:

And what could be more tried and true than a Brooks Brothers Golden Fleece navy blazer ( $6.99), vintage 1980s Brooks Brothers white oxford with the oh-so-coveted unlined collar ($5.49) and burgundy repp stripe tie by Bert Pulitzer for Lord & Taylor ($1.99), finished cleanly with a white cotton square?

Below, charcoal worsted trousers, vintage 1960s, with Allen Edmonds "Mac Neil" brogues in shell cordovan. I know, they could use a bit of a buff, but it had been drizzling all day and they were a bit dirty. As much as my dandy tendencies were leaning toward yellow socks, I managed to suppress them (for once) and opt for simple navy with white dots.

All of it topped off with a mid-calf length tan trench coat, complete with button-in wool lining and leather fittings ($14.99), a Donegal tweed cap ($1.99) and a black umbrella with a wooden shaft (left behind at a shop I worked in years ago). Nothing like a healthy dose of the classics to ground you now and then.

Dungarees: An Update

In taking a look back to prepare for this post, I realize that it's been roughly a year since I did a dungarees update, and roughly two years since the purchase of said denim. Perhaps this should become a January tradition.

Back when I bought the jeans featured here, I had written a rant or two against the then (and still) prevalent hipster practice of buying gourmet denim, wearing it every day, with everything, and never washing it. The internet is rife with blogs and websites dedicated solely to nerdly discussions of how not to clean your pants, but I'm not having it. I like clean pants. So here's a brief rundown of what happens to them after two years of regular occasional wear, and regular washing:

photo: not mine, heisted from the internet.

In digging back two years into this blog, I'm actually embarrassed at the photos I saw fit to print here. This photo shows much more clearly what my Wrangler 13MWZ Original Cowboy Cut jeans looked like when I bought them. Rigid as wood, very dark in that distinctive grey tinted navy we call indigo. Straight legs, rivets and all, I wore them "raw" for a few weeks. There are few things as uncomfortable as new raw jeans, but there is a special (perceived) self satisfaction that comes with putting up with uncomfortably hard to wear pants. I've gotten over that since, but I still have the jeans.

One year in, they looked like this.I'll admit, at this point they had reached a kind of too bright blueberry hue, but I stuck with them. For one, they were beginning to be soft and comfortable in a way that only well worn jeans that belong to only you can. For another, I knew they'd eventually reach that excellent shade of light blue that can only be achieved with wearing and washing your own jeans. That, and I'm cheap, and new jeans are the last thing I care to worry about.

Today, two years and likely one hundred washed later, they're only getting better. The color is nearing what I consider to be the perfect fade. There's cool looking wear patterns on the knees. They're stiff when they're freshly cleaned, but given a minute or two, they conform to my shape and become perfectly comfortable in that way that only your own old jeans can. Unlike they're unwashed counterparts, they feel fresh and clean, instead of grimy and shiny with filth.  Honestly, I've heard it so many times and read it so many times and even believed it a long time ago myself, but I just don't see the appeal in not washing your pants. Authenticity be damned, as I remember it, this what jeans always looked like when I was a kid, and any 19th century coal miner would have been glad at the chance to have some clean pants. Not washing your jeans in the interest of well curated heritage Americana is so much hipster revisionist thinking.

I will admit that I take care to wash them separately, turned inside out, in cold water, and I never dry them. But I do wash them, once a week or so as needed.

The older I get, I find that my take on how to wear jeans has changed over the years and begun to settle into a new norm.I read recently that part of being well dressed means being dressed for the occasion. I spend the earlier part of most days dropping off/picking up kids at school, grocery shopping, and hunting in filthy thrift shops, so I actually wear dungarees frequently. Gone are the days of pairing them with punk t-shirts and Adidas sneakers. Gone too are the days of wearing them with jacket and tie, though occasionally they do wind up combined with a tweed sports coat. These days a soft old oxford and a crew neck sweater do the trick. Bean boots, Bean mocs, penny loafers, pebble grain oxfords, and every now and then brown suede split toes are all good, adult choices for footwear. I even manage to take it up notch from time to time, go for the Continental look:

It's possible that a silk ascot will always be a pretentious and silly thing on an American, but worn just peeking out of a cotton crew neck, and worn with jeans, it may just be almost acceptable...almost.

A Donegal tweed cap ($1.99, thrift store), cashmere scarf in Black Watch tartan ($3.99, thrift store), brown leather wool lined gloves ($2.00, thrift store) and Barbour "Liddesdale" quilted jacket ($7.99, thrift store), and classic vintage Ray-Ban Wayfarers (generous gift) are all perfectly casual enough to wear with jeans, but finished and grown-up enough to make you feel like, you know, a grown up, or something.

I predict that washed and faded look will be coming back soon, along with pleated pants and properly fitted jackets. Not that I care much for fashion, but they've been feeding us tight/short/skinny/don't-wash-your-jeans for too long now. Time for an about face so they can force people to abandon everything and buy a bunch of new stuff.

Worn, old, comfortable, clean jeans are a real classic, and classics never die.