The Lieutenant

At the first Top Shelf Flea Market back in May, I was more than a little surprised and overwhelmed by the turnout. It was a pleasant surprise, and it's always nice to meet so many readers.  I think I talked for a solid 4 1/2 hours that day. While it is gratifying to be so "slammed" as we say in the retail business, it did make for some logistical difficulties when it came to simple things like a trip to the restroom, or more importantly, the bar. This time, I've enlisted the help of a Lieutenant.

Here's a picture of James (neck down, Affordable Wardrobe style), in a pair of khakis, tattersall shirt, a tie with a pattern of migrating ducks, and some chambray used as a jacket on a crisp but sunny day. His attire of choice on a Friday afternoon.  A kindred spirit indeed. If you haven't been checking out James' own blog  10engines, you've been missing something. For shame, it's been at the top of the blogroll for a long time.

James brings his own rugged and creative sensibility to the table, a style he describes as "hi/lo". It's the sort of thing exemplified perfectly in things like his camouflage bow tie, see here. Together with James and my brother on shoe shine patrol, An Affordable Wardrobe's little corner of the world is shaping up to be quite the place to be next Sunday.

As an added bonus, James has gotten his hands on a box of these "junk bags" by the Textile Buff & Wheel Co., based in nearby Charlestown, Massachusetts. For a full description on why you need one of these, see here. Available practically nowhere at retail, we are proud to offer these bags to you. In James' words, they "hold more that you can carry". So grab one, and fill it with a pair or shoes, a tweed jacket, a half a dozen hard to find books, a lamp for the nightstand, a vintage cocktail set, a cool piece of jewelry for your girl, a cast iron baking dish, and maybe a couple of Heinekens you snuck out of the bar for the long walk home.

A Mild Case of Schizophrenia

What can you do when old Ma Nature gets all schizo, bringing you nice sunny days, freezing cold in the morning, then warm, then sort of chilly? Respond in kind:

Wide wale go-to-hell kelly green cords, paired with topsiders and bare ankles, as worn on Tuesday. (the pants are the same length,and not that short. It's just the way I bent over to snap the photo...don't get smart)

On Wednesday, a Barbour jacket over a tennis shirt. Until recently, I would have thought the warm weather shirt and the cool weather jacket wouldn't play well together. Then I got this email from a reader in England saying something about this being the uniform of Liverpool soccer fans. Not that I strive to dress like a Liverpool soccer fan, but why not? Imagine if you went to a Red Sox/ Yankees game and this was the common mode of dress...just sayin'...
A pinch (just a pinch) of schizophrenia is alright by me. Just keep it in check.

Nobody Sleeps in a Tuxedo (on casualness)

I like to dress well, and these days that involves being frequently overdressed by most peoples standards. It's very rare that any occasion in my daily life requires me to wear so much as a dress shirt, let alone a tie or a jacket. But I do it anyway, because I enjoy it and it makes me happy. This being a style blog geared at like minded folks who are also prone to overdressing, one might get the impression that I sleep in a tux. It's far from true. Much of my life is spent in casual clothing doing somewhat messy things with my two small children. Even then I find ways to be comfortable and stylish. Taking care of the wee ones demands a comfortable mode of dress that takes to getting dirty, but I refuse to spend my life in pajamas and sweat pants. Being comfortable and suitably dressed for such situations doesn't have to mean eternal slovenliness. Despite what many people would currently believe, there exists a myriad of "happy mediums" between formal wear and pajamas. To wit:

My boy is in pre-school now, which means I rise early, feed the kids, get us all dressed and rush out the door three days a week. Sometimes I don't even take a shower until I return home from dropping him off. Such is real life. No matter,on a sunny but brisk morning in early Fall, a clean blue jeans, bare ankles and boat shoes play well with a soft cotton sweater in pale yellow and simple white tennis shirt. Easy and comfortable, and yet still I felt "dressed". It really doesn't take much.

Later that same day, the weather warmed a bit, and I decided to take the wee ones for a last blast at the beach. No swimming or bare chested sun bathing, just some old fashioned fun digging in the sand and collecting clam shells to paint on later. The sweater, being by now too warm, is replaced with a soft old plaid shirt, worn jacket style over the tennis shirt. It's amazing how much something as simple as a collar on your shirt can elevate even the most casual of outfits.

Who says big puffy athletic shoes and flip flops are the final word in easy going, comfortable footwear? A tattered old pair of topsiders does me just fine, and I feel like a grown up wearing them. Crocs will never be my thing, ever, but I gotta hand it to the guy who came up with these rubber things. A better warm weather shoe for children has never existed before this.

I'll admit that sometimes the best shoes are no shoes. One of my favorite things about living in Boston is our close proximity to the sea, and the ability to get barefoot in the sand. It's incomparable. Notice how nicely those Wranglers are aging. They remain dark while they develop the perfect fade. All you have to do to achieve this look is wash your jeans when they get dirty. I bet I have them for a long time.

Not a bad match rolled with a pair of handmade New England hippie shoes either. The perfect ensemble for apple picking.

We can all lament the loss of whatever it is we lament the loss of in our modern world. We can all do what we will to hang on to the best bits of our own romanticized version of the past. Nothing wrong with any of that. But life must lived in the present. You don't have to run around in sweatpants from Target, but you can't wear a tux to bed either. The real trick lies in striking a balance.

Sorry if I got a bit maudlin there. Next time, I'll do what I can to keep it shallow.

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.

Coming Soon...

With the second semi-annual Top Shelf Flea Market less than three weeks away, it occurs to me that a pinch of the old shameless self promotion is in order.

Behold the pile, the "back room", "downstairs", my basement, just brimming with treasures any well appointed gent would be happy to possess. Tweed, khaki, moleskin, woolens and down, you name it. I've got you covered this Winter. ( tangent: sometimes people ask me what band I was in back in the old days. One of them is shown clearly in this photo. Can you guess?)

Brass buttoned blazers, vintage Harris tweed checks, and a little bit of real camel hair. Many sizes available, but each piece one of a kind (in a manner of speaking).

Plenty of outerwear to keep a fella warm, ranging from military rain coats to British Chesterfields. In addition to the wonderful hand made original bow ties of The Cordial Churchman, Miss Ellie has told m she'll be sending some scarves made of reclaimed tweed, flannel and corduroy. Excellent.

If you happen to be a size 38 short, and are planning a ski vacation in Flaine (check it out, it's a ski resort town in the Haute Savoie region of France designed entirely by Marcel Breuer. In a Utopia such as this, one can only hope that each room is equipped with a proper hi-fi and a few Gerry Mulligan and Sonny Rollins records) in 1968, you simply must have this sweater. No question. I really wanted it to fit me, but alas, it never will. Please one of you give it the loving home it deserves.

So come on down, grab a beer or a V.O. highball, let my brother shine your shoes, and spend and hour or two meeting some cool vendors and being separated from your money. With a line up like this, I promise you won't regret it.

department of corrections: the bar opens at noon.

Off Season, Trading Up: Secrets of Thrift Shopping and How To Learn from a Sucker Punch

A long winded title, indeed. But today, we have a lot to discuss. I'm about to get long-winded, and it's likely that I might repeat things I've said in the past here, but what else is new? Read on...

I suppose you might call this a "style blog". Sure, the very term makes me feel a little gross, but that's what this is, right? Usually, such things deal in the moment, in what's new NOW. But I've told you before that being an inveterate cheapskate requires one to disregard any idea of seasonal shopping and be open to that which finds you. Its often the key to successful navigation and acquisition of another man's junk. This means you sometimes buy a straw hat in January or some cavalry twill in August. It's a mild from of schizophrenia, I guess.

Let's turn the clock back a bit. I know I've told this story before, but right now it bears repeating. Years ago, I was consumed with lust for some patch madras pants, real good ones. I had yet to find them at a thrift shop and I doubted I ever would. Mrs. G. suggested I might actually go out and buy a new pair. A lifetime spent as an inveterate cheapskate makes it hard for me to pay full whack for anything, but eventually I acquiesced.

I went to Brooks Brothers and J. Press, and even the Andover shop. The offerings at Press and Brooks were, frankly, too frumpy, rendered in a pastel palette. Even in matters of patch madras, you gotta have some standards. Andover Shop had something more up my alley, but even with full spousal permission they were too expensive to justify. Enter this pair from the dreaded Ralphie.  $110, at the Polo flagship in Boston, but I really wanted them and so I bought them. The real trick here was the bright, primary color palette. Exactly what I had in mind. An un-Godly amount of scratch for some Indonesian sweatshop pants, but damned if I haven't enjoyed them these past five Summers. But these pants were at heart a Sucker Punch, and the circle came full yesterday.

This pair found me. I suppose I should be insulted, or something, but Halloween time is often the best time to hit thrift shop gold, if you happen to be foolish enough to dress at all like I do. There are more plaid pants and jackets around in October than all the rest of the year. These were found in the "costume" section. My old Polo pair are cut very narrow in the leg. I loved this when I bought them, but the life of the Father of Two has made that cut,shall we say, a pinch less than flattering. This recent pair, as go-to-hell as they may be, are cut more like a classic pair of khakis.

Better still, the new pair comes by way of L.L.Bean, new old stock, in real bleeding madras, for $14.99. Thrift shopping often brings the concept of relativity into extreme sharp focus. The store charged me that price because for them, it's a premium. If it weren't for Halloween, they'd be lucky to get $3.00 for them.  Ralphie took me for a lot more, another  kind of premium. I ask you, where was the money better spent? Don't answer, we all know.

In any case, what are the chances of finding a new old stock, better version of your favorite patch madras pants in exactly the same patch pattern, only in actual old madras the second time around? We all know that Ralphie builds his empire on stealing and copying, and I'll thank you to leave that tired old discussion out of this. But seriously, with something this pushy, what are the chances? These pants are exactly the same patch madras pattern.Thrift shopping is at least cheap, and at best it can provide the astute veteran with a closet, and home, filled with fine things. But trading up on an exact version of something you already had? Digging up a new old stock version of something that Ralph stole?

Trading up in thrfit shopping is almost, almost, un-heard-of, but it does happen...soemtimes.

Embrace the Chill

Finally, some weather a man can dress for! And not a moment too soon. My closet is brimming with things that have been on hold these many months. A few of them, old and new, made their debut today:

Tartan blazer, British made,  from the English Sports Shop of Bermuda, generous gift; USA made Brooks Brothers oxford, $4.99; necktie by Rivetz of Boston, received in trade at the Top Shelf Flea last Spring; Black Watch hat,made in USA, by Pendleton, purchased at a close out sale; pale pink silk square, one of the last things I bought at Filene's Basement before it was turned into an urban blight producing hole in the ground. Nailed down with vintage charcoal worsted slacks (can't remember what they cost, but I'm sure they were cheap) and Florsheim Royal Imperial wingtip brogues.

When I worked at Simon's Copley Square, we used to get ties from Rivetz of Boston with our own label on them. If you can still find them, these ties were perfect: 3 inches wide, in hand block printed foulards or repp stripes, all English silk. This one belonged to "The Coop", probably some time in the mid to late 80s, when they still had an outpost in "Boston Proper", as we say around here. Follow the link, it's an old company with an interesting history. In the late 60s, some guy named Ralph was the regional New York rep for Rivetz. Apparently, he went on to become hugely successful, or something.

I picked up this belt with a fox and horn buckle back in June, but the hunting theme just doesn't ply well in Summer, so it got shelved. In conjunction with two kinds of wool tartan, it's just the thing.

Trafalgar, made in USA. Not bad for $1.00, is it?

We had a beautiful sunny day that topped out at about 62 degrees, followed by a clear, crisp night in the low 50s. All day long, people complained about the onset of cool weather. Because in Boston, complaining about the weather is a revered pass-time. But not me, I love it. Any peacock will tell you, it's a lot easier to over-dress when you're not sweating bullets.

Bring it on, Mother Nature. I'm ready...