Links: Mint Trousers, Half Boots and the Origin of the Lounge Suit

• For exclusive designer lines it’s always worth checking out Oki-Ni. I’d go for the Maison Margiela line myself.

• The Dutch effectively made us wear the lounge suit; it all goes back to the 1660s. You mean you didn’t know that? It’s all because Charles II was so poor.

• Some interesting news  on the ever-funky Benjamin Bixby line from Andre 3000.

• Don’t forget the Gaziano & Girling sale ends at the end of August. Get in now.

• The genius of mint-coloured trousers. To with the G&G shoes. It never occurred to me before, but now I want some.

• Did you know that Beau Brummel favoured black half-boots? There was no Italian influence then, you see. Wear a Chelsea boot for the modern equivalent.

• And last but certainly not least, remember Andy’s guide to colours and their terms. Everything you ever wanted to know about tints and hues.

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Canali PR Effort: The Olympics in “Style”

In its August 11, 2008, press release, Canali announced that it has partnered with NBC Sports to outfit the on-camera personalities for coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Canali / NBC partnership was the initiative by the Olympic Primetime host Bob Costas. As part of the sponsorship, NBC personalities each received several complete outfits including custom made suits, sportswear, and accessories, and will wear Canali for the entirety of the three weeks of Olympics coverage. “We are proud and excited to have been selected by NBC Sports and the Olympic Games,” said Elisabetta Canali, Global Director of Communications. “We worked closely with NBC and each Olympic broadcast anchor to find the right fabrics and styles that would make them feel comfortable and pleasing to the eye.”

Watching the U.S. Olympic coverage, I cannot help but think how uninspiring the NBC sportscasters look. Bob Costas’ outfits, in particular, are incredibly dull. Black suit, blue shirt, red tie or black suit, white shirt, and black tie with white stripes. How boring. The jacket fit also leaves much to be desired as evidenced by a piece of loose fabric on the back when Mr. Costas is sitting. On the other end of the spectrum is the gymnastics commentator Bela Karolyi who, flamboyantly yet catastrophically, tries to match gingham shirts, odd colored blazers and solid ties. This leads me to the following question: did Canali provide these men with any guidance on fit, color and pattern matching before allowing them to put the clothes on? Arguably, even Cesare Attolini provided outfit would look like a mess without proper fit and guidance.

Another minor flaw, although this is more of my personal quirk and probably why I don’t own any Canali suits, is because I am a huge fan of a soft Neapolitan shoulder. Canali jackets, on the other hand, are too structured for my liking, and the shoulders, in particular, look too boxy. But I digress.

While I find Canali to be a good maker of mid-upper level Italian clothing, I think the label is trying to become another Armani by its latest attempts to gain popularity in the mainstream media (in 2007, the label provided George Clooney’s suits in Michael Clayton). Could this trend potentially lose Canali some appeal with the more discerning buyer? Whatever Canali decides to do, however, I hope it does not follow the Armani formula by charging ludicrous premiums on mediocre articles of clothing. And if it does, so be it; there is always Corneliani, which is as good, if not better.

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Links: Jeff Buckley, Seersucker and Shoe Debate

• Americans like seersucker, but how many wear it around their neck? Find out how good it can look on Will at A Suitable Wardrobe.

• There’s a rather more modern equivalent from Rag & Bone over at men.style.com as well, displaying a similar wool and silk mix. The asymmetry of the pattern works well.

• Although a lot of the Sartorialist shots at the moment are old ones that originally appeared on men.style.com, some of them are fantastic examples of how to dress casually yet stylishly. Scott shows that the summer in Milan is all about jackets and shorts.

• Scott featured a video recently of US tailor Martin Greenfield, but over on Sleevehead there are two other similar profiles alongside this one, including a video of John Vanderbrook at Adrian Jules.

• Like everything Jeff Buckley did, there seems to be a slightly modest genius in his dress. Analysis at Style Salvage.

• Andre Benjamin recommends a Benjamin Bixby Oxford button-down shirt on men.style.com. And as he says it you can see him dressing it up or down.

• And finally, the online world of menswear debate is doing what it does best over at London Lounge – having a barney over the value of shoes. Edward Green vs Church’s vs Gaziano & Girling…

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More Browsing in Tailors

I made a promise to myself after I had my last suit made in Hong Kong that I would never buy another suit off the peg. It fit so much better, was so perfect, that every suit or jacket since has felt awkward.

But it does take a lot of the fun out of browsing. If you don’t buy jackets or suits in shops, or shirts for that matter, and you’ve already bought too many shoes this year, there isn’t much else to look at. Ties, socks and handkerchiefs – that’s about it.

As a result I still find myself wandering into Ralph Lauren and browsing the suit rails. I still stroll down the road to Etro and look through their new season’s jackets. I tell myself it’s for inspiration, to pick up ideas for materials, cuts or quirky details that I can ask my tailor to replicate. But in my heart I know I’ll find something that’s too lovely to turn down. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

With this predicament in mind I have a recommendation for tailors everywhere – kit out your shops with more examples of potential suits. Display the greatest range of cuts, materials and quirky details. Make coming into your tailoring studio as pleasant and inspiring as the best of the retailers. Make it more like a shop.

This would obviously entail a cost – most of those items on display are unlikely to be sold. But every off-the-peg retailer faces similar costs each season when it gets rid of old stock, or sells it at extreme discounts. The costs of occasionally rotating display stock at a tailor would be nowhere near as high.

This strategy would have many advantages, but the biggest would be that more people would come and simply spend time in the shop, looking for inspiration or considering a purchase. It is simply an extension of the mannequins that tailors use in their windows, just like any shop, in order to tempt customers in.

High-street retailers know the value of browsers – it is a painless way to create brand awareness and desire in potential customers. Tailors generally generate business through reputation or word-of-mouth. But how about if you don’t know that many people who use a tailor? How do you get a recommendation then? And how do you know they’ll be right for you?

Wandering into a tailors can be intimidating. They need to break down that fear barrier and encourage people to visit. Much of Savile Row is now better at that than it used to be, encouraging communication and even advertising. But there are still few people who wander in off the street.

Give me somewhere I can browse. You won’t be sorry.

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The Split Yoke

There is almost no good journalism about men’s style these days. Outside of this and a few other websites, no-one produces objective, informed and above all critical writing about clothes, brands and products.

I flicked through a magazine called Man About Town last week (a recent launch in the high-end fashion sector, only on its second issue) and found 20 pages about the business of fashion. Should be interesting, except that it comprised several double-page spreads on brands including Dunhill and Church’s, merely describing their luscious interiors, history of craftsmanship and key pieces.

Not one critical or substantive word about what differentiated this business, about how it communicates its value for money, or about different times and designers have changed what it does. Nothing on what its detractors say about it; or on how much water those detractions hold.

Each piece read like an advert. Which perhaps isn’t surprising, given that those companies advertise in the magazine. But this is what journalism is built on – the integrity that allows you to write fairly and objectively, if critically, about those that fund the magazine itself.

Another example this week piled ignorance onto paucity of journalism. The column Brummell in UK newspaper Financial News recommended a bespoke shirt service called Brass Bones, where you can get shirts made to your size by filling in a form online. Nothing wrong with that; it’s a good idea.

But there’s no journalism here. They haven’t tried the service or cast anything like a critical eye over it. There are several online shirt services that have been around for months, even years, yet they don’t get a mention – let alone a comparison. This service is presented as a one-off.

Such is the presentation of the piece, just like the examples in Man About Town, that it could be mistaken for an advert.

But the worst thing is ignorance about the product they are describing. Aside from a rather casual use of the word ‘bespoke’ (see previous post on Sartoriani), the boys at Brummell insightfully point out that the shirts have desirable details such as mother-of-pearl buttons, gussets and split yokes.

Mother-of-pearl is standard. If they didn’t have that you should send them back. The value of gussets is debateable. But split yokes are the worst. They are an anachronism.

Split yokes used to be a sign of quality because it showed that your tailor regularly adjusted his shirts, altering the length of each side of the yoke to fit the individual customer. This is unlikely to be the case today.

In fact, you could argue that having a yoke that is one piece demonstrates quality, as a bespoke shirt by definition doesn’t need to be split and adjusted. Either way, listing it as a feature hardly demonstrates incisive criticism.

I’d bet a decent sum of money the writers of that piece just copied the list from a Brass Bones press release, with little thought for what it meant. Oh well.

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