The (not so) White Bucks...for Real

I've talked before about my theory that dirty white bucks are the ultimate Fall, not Summer, shoe. And I've gone on and on about how I wish my own pair would get dirty and worn so that they may find their way into the everyday rotation. But truth be told, I had yet to actually take the plunge. Tonight , Ole Ma Nature took matters into her own hands, as she is wont to do.





I wore the white bucks today, in something of an Indian Summer in New England. 70 degrees, and sweaty humid, with jeans to keep it casual. Just as I was about to leave my job at the local wine shop, she sees fit to open the skies. Fifteen minutes in the rain and mud did these shoes, in my humble opinion, a world of good. I love them this way...the more destroyed, the better. In the Summer with seersucker, white bucks are too dorky, even for me. But beat-to-sh*t and out of season with tweed in the Fall...unmistakeably bad-ass. Of course, this is only my humble opinion, though I hold firm that this will be quite the "look" in New York next fall...mark my words, friends.


I didn't mind the misty weather, though. You see, I had carried around this Harris Tweed jacket all afternoon. Then at night it got cold and damp. With the lapels flipped up, this jacket kept me warm and dry...but the musty smell of wet wool leaves a bit to be desired.

I'm tellin' you...tweed and white bucks are a combo to be reckoned with, boys.

The Trade

A few weeks ago, following a post about excessive use of Scottish Tartan, a conversation sprang up between me and frequent commenter the Young Fogey. You see, Fogey had recently purchased an entire suit in Black Watch plaid, but had mentioned having the pants destroyed and turned into a vest. I implored him not to wreck this piece of sartorial history, offering instead a trade. I, like most thrift obsessed people, have more than a few things that don't fit or I don't wear. So I sent the Fogey, who is smaller than me, two pairs of flannel slacks that don't have enough cloth to let out, and, ironically enough, a Black Watch vest, that sit a full inch above the waistline of most of my pants. The return package arrived today...if you thought my use of thick Tartan wool was excessive before, just wait until this number makes it out onto the streets:


Clearly a product of the 1970's, but it doesn't matter. Everything wasn't a polyester piece of junk back then. This suit may have taken the prize of Giuseppe's Craziest Item. I am giddy with excitement to wear it. It fits like a glove, thought the sleeves and pants are a little long, the simplest and most common alteration. The jacket is a darted two button, and though I'm generally a three button sack kind of guy, some times you gotta bend the rules a bit.

Complete with black braided leather buttons...and check out the pattern matching on the pocket flap! Impeccable.

Made in the U.S.A. by Pendleton. I've owned my share of Pendleton flannel shirts, and my Black Watch driving cap, and even the vest I traded for this gem, are from them, but I never even knew they made suits at one time. I've certainly never seen one until this afternoon. I am duly impressed with the level of quality and craftsmanship, but not surprised. Those shirts of theirs wear like iron, as long as you can keep the moths away from them.

Again, check out the pattern matching. Look at the alignment of the plaid at the pocket and on the waist band, it's perfect. The front pockets on the pants are top pockets, like on a western suit, an odd little detail that, along with the wide belt loops and lapels, puts this sucker in the 70's. But who's gonna argue weird little details when, after all, we are talking about a head-to-toe Black Watch suit.

In the jacket pocket, there was this little card explaining the heritage of the Tartan. Apparently this suit was part of a series. Can you imagine what the other suits in the line must have looked like?

All kidding aside, I think this suit is beautiful. I'm already planning to wear it on a chilly day with a heavy cream-colored cable knit sweater and a tweed driving cap, and I'm certain that I'll be forced to buy a charcoal grey wool turtle neck to go with it. Imagine it under a Chesterfield coat! Versatility might be the last thing you think of with a garment like this, but if ever a suit could function as two separate pieces, this is it. The jacket will look great with jeans or grey flannels, and those pants with a sweater and a navy blazer or Barbour jacket is also a damn good combo.

So, three cheers for the Young Fogey, for going along with my crazy proposal. Thank you so much, my imaginary blog world friend, and know that this piece of cloth has truly found a loving home.

Now what to do with my other Black Watch blazer, now so completely unnecessary?

Mother Nature Trumps Wordly Status Any Day

So, it's fall, and a whole bunch of stuff, both new and old, just made it into regular rotation.

Yesterday, I picked up my vintage Brooks Brothers University Club tweed jacket from my friend, the old Chinese tailor. It had been there for at least three weeks. It's funny, my Mon uses the same tailor, and always gets yelled at for leaving things there too long. I never do, because my kids are cute and Mrs. Chinese Tailor is a sucker for babies. But I digress... The jacket cost me $2.49...dry cleaning and shortening the sleeves cost me $30...As far as I can tell, $32.49 ain't a bad price for a nice, soft , Brooks Brothers sack with a 3/2 roll.
Also just making the rotation are the red cords I bought on sale from Land's End last year. I love these pants...the perfect Fall 'go-to-Hell' pair, loud, but just this side of too outrageous. But I'll be damned if these things aren't a tough nut to crack sometimes. I'd really like to wear them more regularly, so I'm looking for options. Plus, I was Hell-bent on busting out the new tweed, it being cold and rainy today. At a loss for what to do, I remembered an old post about the First Lady on Hollister Hovey hoping she would wear a red and brown outfit to the inauguration (that's right, fellas, it is not only o.k. but encouraged that we occasionally take out cues from the ladies)...then I got to thinking about the Burberry plaid, and how it consists of tan, black, white and red, and so my mind was made up. To further drive it home, I busted out the too-rarely-worn Burberry Macintoch ($9.99, new with tags). Usually, I abhor such shameless brand name flashery, especially at the luxury brand level, but in this case the Burberry plaid actually matched, and it was raining, after all.

Here's a fairly bad photo of the whole look. Forgive me, I've been trying out some new angles, just to keep it fresh. (I don't know why, but this shot makes me think of ADG.)

Here, the accent colors of black and white are carried subtly down to the floor with these $2 socks from the Gap.

All in all, I was happy with this get-up. But as I sat down to write this post, it hit me: This combo doesn't 'work' because of Burberry, or the First Lady, or any of that. It works because of Old Mother Nature...of course. I do live in New England, and it is late October. Mother Nature trumps worldly status any day:

I think I may have just had an epiphany involving red corduroy and brown tweed. Score one for the good guys!

A Confluence of Styles

I tend to get heaped in with the "trad" or "ivy" bloggers. There's nothing particularly wrong with that, I guess. But it is a situation that I refuse to feed and have tried to avoid. Notice, I avoid such terminology like the plague, It's not that I see anything wrong with "trad" or "ivy"...its not that I don't fully understand how I came to be categorized as such...it's just that I've always felt that pigeon-holing ran anathema to true style. I also believe that style is an ever evolving thing, a constantly changing confluence of all the good things one has seen and experienced in life. Get ready, and take your grain of salt now, I'm about to pontificate. Today's get-up provides me with a good spring-board for my arguments:
I usually like to keep it fairly classic, but hell, I'm still young, so out come the jeans. Besides, there's been a lot of dusty, dirty work on the job lately...so I wear work pants.

Not to be a sloppy chump, I pair said work pants with an oxford and bow tie. Bow ties are great when there's dirty work to be done, they stay out of your way.

And since I was on my feet for an excessive amount of time today, rubber soled shoes were definitely in order...like these three toned saddle shoes, a gift from Toad (where the hell are you, Toad?)

I tend to go through phases. I bet the head-shrinks have a drug fro that now. Let me give you a brief rundown of my sartorial phases:

- At age 7, I asked for a sport jacket for my birthday. Mom and Dad obliged with a navy blazer.

-I went to a Jesuit, all boys high school. Considering that, our dress code was amazingly lax: no blue jeans, and a collar on your shirt. Even sneakers were permitted. I wore a suit and tie everyday.

-I worked in a Boston men's haberdashery, ages 16-19.

-In my twenties, I discovered punk rock, a look more fraught with rules and specifics that any kind of "trad". Tight jeans, studded belts, big boots, leather jackets, funny dyed hair...you name it, I did it.

-Then came rock-a-billy, which is kind of like "trad" punk. Crisp jeans, shiny shoes, rigidly combed hair, and so on...

-and now this.

My point is not to "blow my own horn" as it were, but to admit that my current sense of things is the result of all these other things, and will continue to change in the future as I find and become obsessed with still more things, but (hopefully) will always be an expression of myself.

-Jesuit high school taught me comportment.

-Haberdashery taught me...well, just read the damn blog.

-Punk taught me the importance of the right jeans, and the beauty of something that is perfectly worn out and tattered. (Funny, WASP's and punks have their love of the old and worn in common)

-Rock-a-billy taught me to work with the natural wave in my hair, rather than fight it.

-Blogging taught me that there are no end of cool takes by cool folks on the kind of things I like.

-Who knows what the next thing is?

I try to avoid terms like "trad", "ivy", or "punk" because they are way too restrictive, and to me, style is not about restriction. Quite the opposite, it should be about freedom. Look around you, and absorb that which is "cool". Use this knowledge to your advantage. The minute you decide not to wear something, or do something, because it doesn't meet the rules of whatever "thing" you're into this year, it's time to step back and take a breath. Think of the bad-ass people you've known. It's always been about a combination of an eye for quality and the confidence to be a little weird.

Hasn't it?

House and Home: The Ship

A few weeks ago, Mrs. G discovered this gigantic old engraved print in (you guessed it) an undisclosed thrift location. Good thing she spotted it when she did, what with the old nautical stuff being something of the rage of late. $9.99 and a pain-in-the-*ss walk home, and this lovely bit of history was ours:


It took me about a week and a half to get this big thing up on the wall. When we bought it, the glass was filthy, on both sides, the frame was coming apart at all four corners, and the wire on the back was a mess of rust. A careful dis-assembly, cleaning, and re-assembly was undertaken, and the results are as you see them. After doing a bit of research, I've pretty well determined this vessel to be the S.S. Werra, pictured here:

S.S. Werra was a passenger ship operated by the Norddeutscher Lloyd Steamship Company (later Hapag-Lloyd...ever heard of them?). She sailed from 1882 until 1901, for a long time making the run from Genoa to New York. Plus 5 points for bringing my people across from the old country.

Of course, I can't be altogether certain of this. The only info on the print is the name of the Norddeutscher Lloyd company below the picture. I'm guessing this was some kind of advertisement, maybe meant to hang in the 19th century equivalent of a travel agents office. After searching through photos of all NDL's ships, the Werra is the only one that looks like a close match. Two smoke stacks, four masts...most of the others have either one or four stacks, or the wrong number of masts. Pretty close anyway, right?

It's not too clear in the photo, but in the lower right hand corner it reads "Engraved by John A. Lowell & Co. Boston U.S.A. Copyright 1889". That date is also consistent with the Werra. I actually think this thing might be that old. The print is highly detailed, and printed on what appears to be, in my far less than expert opinion, a very thick paper with a high content of cotton fiber. John A. Lowell & Co. was known primarily as a printer of Victorian post cards, but they did do some larger works such as this.

The frames really old, and has clearly seen better days. It appears to have suffered some water damage in a basement. Sure we could have it replaced, but I don't think we ever will. Besides the exorbitant cost involved in such a thing, the Mrs. and I just plain like it this way. Beat up but clean. I believe it's what the kids call "shabby chic". Now let's be clear about something. I understand and even appreciate what the term "shabby chic" means, but I deplore saying it. Makes me feel icky. Such a "look" (if that's even what it is) is perfectly acceptable when it applies to things like a 120 year old framed engraving that's been around the block a few times, but it doesn't fly when applied to cheap furniture at Target that had it's white paint scuffed at the corners in a Chinese sweat shop and actually has the words "Shabby Chic" on the tags. See why it makes me feel icky? I'm almost sorry I said it. Let's call this picture "distressed"...wait, that's just as bad. How about "old". Yeah, that's more like it.

As with clothing, "strong look" items like this tend to work best when paired against other items which are different, but simple, lending to a diverse and eclectic, yet cohesive whole:

Here we see the venereable S.S. Werra as she stans today, on a wall painted a dusty pale orange (our favorite color), above a 1970's vintage Steelcase conference room chair, and an angular modern bookshelf, reconfigured from an Ikea wall shelf I found in the trash on moving weekend in September, stacked with architecture books. A pretty cool interior vignette, if I do say so myself (just did). The little green chair is "the naughty chair". Parents of young kids will know what that means.

And speaking of the boy, let's talk logos for a second. Today I wore a pink university stripe Polo oxford. The boy wore a blue university stripe Polo oxford. He was so excited that we had the same shirt, mine pink and his blue, with the same "horsey" on it. So what if it's a corporate logo? The boy was excited to be dressed like his Dad, and I got all proud. Nothing bad about that, is there?

Influenza

I believe I may have spent the last few days stricken with a case of it. Coughing, sneezing, aching, and a head that weighs about 200 pounds and burns like hell-fire. A fella sure could a long days rest, but two certain small children I know felt otherwise.

No matter, nothing a little hot whiskey with lemon and honey before bedtime can't take care of.

Hot Toddy:

Irish whiskey (dark rum works pretty good too)

2 lemon wedges

honey

hot water

Mix all ingredients with a spoon, drink, crawl into bed, fall dead asleep. Such a remedy may seem quaint and old fashioned, but at the end of a torturous flu-ridden day spent chasing children and jacking up on zinc and vitamin C, it does have it's merits.

I was going to head straight to bed, but I needed something to do while I drank the toddy. Back to superficial drivel when I'm on my game again.

Knowing When to Say "No"

It's not always an easy thing to turn down a spectacular item at a spectacular price. But if shopping at thrift stores has taught me anything, it is the value of discernment. Even when buying cheap, if not especially, a man should insist on a high level of quality and a style that suits him. That said, I was recently forced to pass on one of these:

Patchwork tweed sport coat, The Andover Shop.

The one I found was legitimate, actually the jacket in the picture, actually from Andover Shop, for $7.49. At the Andover Shop they cost $1275 (yikes!). The thing fit me like a glove, but, alas, close inspection revealed it to be more than a little moth eaten. Some things just weren't meant to be , I guess. It's probably for the best, because as much as I like to push the envelope of traditional menswear, if ever there was a tough garment to pull off successfully, this is it.

But damned if it wouldn't have been something with some grey flannels and a cream colored wool turtle neck...

p.s. A.D.G. is back! Score one for the good guys! Good thing I didn't take down his link.