What's In A Name? (answer)

Here is the "reveal" to the question in our last post. It's interesting that so many of you figured that the "mail order/mall brand" tie was Lands' End. I think that says something for their overall quality. More interesting still that the consensus was overwhelmingly that the brighter color must be the cheaper tie. As an odd side note, the Andover Shop tie bears one tag that reads "Made in Italy", yet also says "Made in England" on its brand tag. Curious.

What's In A Name? (guess)

Silk knit ties in solid colors are a useful component of a man's wardrobe, especially in Summertime. Good one's have some weight and heft to them, but also a lightness inherent in the weave. They strike a great balance between dress and casual, which is often just the ticket for looking nice on sweaty hot days when more sensible people just wear shorts, or at least eschew ties altogether. I have quite a few in my arsenal these days, and they have become warm weather favorites. Pictured above are two of mine in different shades of green. Both work well with a navy blazer and tan trousers. The darker one keeps things a bit more subdued, while the kelly green is the more GTH  ( that's "go to hell" for those who don't know). Both help keep other Summer items like bold striped shirts and madras jackets in check with an anchor of solid color.

They are the same width, and the construction is of perfectly equal quality. Look closely.

Both are made in Italy. Both were purchased at thrift stores for less than $5.00 each.

I've often spoken of the pros and cons of brand consciousness when thrift shopping, so forgive me if I seem like I'm beating a dead horse. While a knowledge of brand names and their respective design and quality is of course helpful in thrift shopping, it is no match for the ability to directly recognize quality in clothing, regardless of brand name or provenance. Simply put, good stuff is good stuff, no matter where it came form. Similarly, junk is junk. With that, I offer this little guessing game. No prizes, just for fun.

One of these ties is from a popular mail order/mall brand. The other is from a venerated American men's shop. Can you tell which is which? Based solely on these photos, what makes you think so? I'll reveal the answer in a few days.

p.s. even more new items in the Shop. With 92 of a possible 100 items now available, we're operating at high capacity. Vintage 1960s repp ties, suits from the Andover Shop, Paul Stuart,and others, and a couple of cheap novelties. Have a look.

Striped for Spring

The grey pinstripe suit is a stalwart of a business man's wardrobe, second in importance only to navy blue. I come across a fair amount of such suits in  my travels, usually in heavier fabrics for Fall and Winter. I even have such a suit myself. Finding a version in a lightweight worsted for Spring and Summer is a real treat.

I found the jacket alone, priced $6.99, a crumpled, wrinkled mess, on the rack in a thrift shop. As we always do when I find a jacket that is or was clearly the top half of a nice suit once, my little daughter and I took it to the trousers racks to play a "matching game". Sure enough, there were the trousers, an equally wrinkled mess, for $5.99.

3/2 undarted jacket with a two button cuff, a "sack" if you will, but with enough shape to look good. The fabric is very lightweight and breathable, The front is fully canvassed. A good friend and well known expert in these matters took one look at this suit and surmised by the high cut of the lapel notch, and lack of button hole in the left lapel, that this garment was likely made by Hertling in New York in the late 1960s.

Given the fact that I really don't need to wear a suit, ever, and this is such a business uniform, I find that the big unlined rolling collar of a vintage Brooks Brothers shirt ($5.49) and a silk knit tie knock the seriousness of this one just enough to make it comfortable for walking around town.Sacrilege to some, but so too in a way is wearing a suit to a job wear others wear jeans. It's all about middle ground.

Hailing originally from Serry's of Hanover New Hampshire, a store that catered to Dartmouth students for nearly 100 years before closing it's doors in 2004. Perfunctory internet research shows that Serry's was founded by an Italian tailor, and later sold to a pair of Italian brothers in the late 1950s. Proof positive that the WASP stronghold on the right to wear these things was not as tight and exclusive as the nerdy world of clothing dorks would have us sometimes believe.

It might not be easy, but if you find a nice lightweight striped suit, pick it up. It makes a refreshing alternative to all the khaki and tan worsted that is the order of the day this time of year. Get striped for Spring.

Secrets of Thrifting: Keep an Open Mind

It's been interesting to watch the explosion of menswear writing online over the past few years in the form of blogs, fora, and other sites. Along with that, its been gratifying for a guy like me to realize that he's "not the only one" who cares about this stuff. Apparently, far from it, in fact. More and more men, especially younger ones, seem to be taking an active interest in how they present themselves, and with it has come some small return to a gentility we've been lacking for too long. Bravo!

There is, of course, a down side to this. There is an underlying tendency among many of these online resources to encourage personal pigeon holing. The "preppy" guys only do preppy, and are ready at a moments notice to decry anything that falls outside of their own iron clad code of rules. So too the European tailoring guys, the British Savile Row guys, and so forth. Heaven help the fellow who dares to appreciate more than one school of thought, or worse, actually attempt to combine them within his own wardrobe. It borders on fetishism. This kind of close-mindedness will only spell defeat for anyone attempting to build a suitable wardrobe built on thrift shop finds and ingenuity. Keeping an Open Mind may in fact be rule #1 of successful thrifting.

For today's example, I offer this jacket.  100% silk tweed by Polo, made in USA, $5.49. I suspect given its US provenance that this coat dates from the 1990s some time. Generally speaking, I prefer a natural shoulder, undarted, three button jacket. This coat has a more built up shoulder, hanging a bit off my natural shoulder in a soft drape kind of way. It's two button and darted, with a lower button gorge and a high cut notch in the lapel. It's also a hair tight, but that's what happens when 80 plus temperatures hit you two months before you've gotten into your "Summer body". Hell, I only got the bikes out three days ago.

Its even got four button cuffs, a veritable sacrilege to the "Ivy" crowd. It's not "preppy", it's not "Ivy", it's barely "Trad", and because it's Polo, a million other nitpickers will find ways to hate it. Those are the things it ain't.

What it is is a well made jacket rendered in beautiful silk tweed in my size for less than ten bucks. A perfect coat for an unseasonably warm day in March. It looks well paired with a white shirt with short pointed spread collar (not a rolling button down) and an Italian knit tie.

Adding insult to injury are the forward pleats and side tabs on these Italian made Ralph Lauren pants.

My point is this: I may generally prefer a style based on the basic tenets of American traditional tailoring, but I won't toss an item away out of hand if it happens to lie just outside of those guidelines. Nice clothes are nice clothes, and fortunately for men, the minute details that differentiate one style from another are just that: minute. Truth be told, the only people likely to notice these little things are fellow clothing dorks. The rest of the world just sees a guy who looks nice in nice clothes. Additionally, real style is found in easy blending of various elements, not in rigid adherence to secret codes. In that regard, being at the chaotic mercy of the thrift store can actually help a man sharpen his skills in a way that makes his eye keen and his choices solid.

All this only works if you keep an open mind.

United Nations

I write about men's clothes, and being from Boston, my own experience and personal style lies heavily in the classic American East Coast camp. While "Made in USA" have of late become nearly holy writ on a clothing label, I'm not one to marry myself to such a narrow field of vision. Last time I checked, the Europeans knew their way around the finer things too.

The general look of today's ensemble is in many ways rooted in the British countryside. Tweed jacket, broad glen checks, informal tie( the other perfect knit tie; silk with white dots) and a yellow vest, all brought down from the equestrian tradition. A tab collar on the shirt would have been great here, but a short pointed spread works pretty good, too.

The jacket hails from the quintessential American brand, Brooks Brothers. A recent piece, made of fine, soft wool, $7.49. Continental/Neapolitan details, such as soft shoulders, high gorge two button front and four button cuffs define this coat...

...as well they might, given its Italian provenance. Truthfully, I prefer my Brooks Brothers old, undarted and American, but a piece like this for practically nothing is too good to pass up.

The Brothers strike again with the tie, and once again we have the Italians to thank for it.

The yellow/buff vest is a very English convention when rendered in soft doeskin. This one, a vintage number likely from the early 1960s, is knitted of fine wool, maybe merino, and has a killer vintage pocket detail and tiny side vents.

Once again, the Italians are to blame. Full fashioned...good thing, I just hate it when my clothes are only partial fashioned.

Below, a favorite pair of vintage charcoal worsted slacks, well fitted yet narrow enough to remain in keeping with the overall continental vibe here, with chocolate brown suede USA made Allen Edmonds shoes, and silly skull and bones socks...just to drive you crazy.

A real Bavarian Alpine hat, adorned with a vintage hat pin from the Andover Shop, is the whipped  cream on top.

And since my birthday is this weekend, my parents, as usual and despite my yearly protest, gave me a card full of money with the instructions that it not be spent on anything responsible. In the past I've used this money to pay a bill, or something. This year, I decided instead to do it right. A lunch of sushi and a Sapporo is in keeping with the days theme of internationalism...

...as was the bag of drink that came hone with me tonight. Chateau Tariquet 15 year old Bas Armagnac, from France, was a gift from the job ( working in a wine shop has its advantages). Bunnahabhain 12 year old single Islay malt Scotch and Kopke Colheita 1997 Port rounded out my own use of the birthday cash. Consider my house "Winterized" as it were. A man's got to keep warm, you know.

shop news: the Shop has more items than ever, including most recently some choice coats and other outerwear. You've got to keep warm too, you know.