In Tune With Nature

I once had the fortune of passing through a filming location, near Carlton House Terrace. The catering vans were lined up, the cameras and gigantic lights poised, and soil, representing a pre-tarmac era, covered the streets.

Props of an antiquated style were lying around, a few horses were standing near to an equestrian vehicle and dotted around the scene was a very decorative collection of actors and extras; they were standing or sitting, chatting with that particular anxiety of believing the conversation to be soon interrupted, smoking and dressed in splendour.

The women wore long, decorative Edwardian coats and enormous hats. At their sides, the men supported their arms with buckskin gloves and leaned on ebony canes; they wore a variety of top, bowler and Homburg hats, short and tailed coats, neckties cravats and bows.

The sheer variety of styles, contrasting to the women’s general uniformity, was a slight exaggeration of the period but nevertheless a good example of the revolution of Edwardian menswear that signalled the end of the gloomy frock-coated uniformity of the Victorian period and the adoption of a youthful, more stylised approach to fashion.

Aside from the variety, the other thing I noticed about the clothing – despite the fact that it was pure costume – was that the coats, trousers, hats and canes were perfectly in tune with the surroundings. Members of the crew, attired in twenty-first century gear – puffa jackets, jeans, trainers and baseball caps – looked inordinately scruffy next to the slim, tailored lines and subtle colours of the characters.

It was also remarkable that when some of them strolled under a tree, near a chestnut mare or past a carriage, how in tune with Nature itself the clothing was; I looked into the sweet, pink afternoon sky and imagined a colossal smile forming in the clouds.

The issue of the purpose and art of clothing struck me there and then. I had always believed in the harmonious approach; the reflection of Nature, the vanity of attempting to recreate its beauty, is nevertheless noble. I have always believed this to be true of architecture but now I began to notice that the responsibility of harmony, of bowing to Nature – with her colours, frills and curlicues – extended to other forms of art. There is little in life that makes us happier than Nature itself and man has sought to faithfully glorify nature, to pay tribute to the magnificent inspiration it conjures in humankind.

The unifying quality of that variety of clothing was that it all fit perfectly with the columns, windows, trees, gates and carriages that surrounded it. It is a quality that also unifies clothing from previous decades and even centuries: I could not imagine a Tudor, Stuart or Hanoverian subject looking as incongruous as the twenty-first century runners, skipping around the set in clothing without line, form or beauty.

This division emphasised to me not that clothing had ceased to be an important point of the faithful artistic representation of Nature, but that this representation was more important than ever before. The voice of the quiet appreciator of an endangered oak, a glorious terrace of buildings soon to be demolished or a silk topper discarded by its owner, is growing ever quieter in the din of ‘progress.’

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Links: Suede Care, Holiday, An Aesthete…

• Suede shoe care is always a worthy subject. (dresswithstyle.com)

• Holiday spirit embodied with a little help of Mr Ralph Lauren. (gefundenesfressen.se)

• You won’t read a jacket review like this in fashion magazine. (tuttofattoamano.blogspot.com)

• An aesthete’s 10 commandments for living well. (aestheteslament.blogspot.com)

• Style starts from within. (sleevehead.blogspot.com)

• Proper attire for a proper New Year party. (welldressed.blogg.se)

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Value For Money In Cashmere

It’s hard to pick apart the value for money in much of menswear. But one that is particularly difficult is cashmere. There are Uniqlo sweaters for £39.99 and Ralph Lauren ones for £395. What could possibly explain the difference?

A recent article in The Economist’s spin-off magazine Intelligent Life went some way to an explanation. Apologies for merely reporting their investigative journalism, but it’s good stuff and I know it is not distributed everywhere in the world.

Cashmere used to be universally expensive because its import into the European Union was limited. I don’t know the facts in the US, but a few years ago there seemed to be a flood of cheap cashmere here in Europe. This was because the import quotas were raised in 2005. Suddenly Scotland and Italy did not dominate the market.

At the same time, many Chinese factories had switched from just producing cashmere to producing cashmere garments. It was this ability to produce a finished product, together with the quotas, that enabled western stores to offer cashmere at such radically reduced prices.

So part of what you pay for is location. Scottish and Italian factories will tell you that with their cashmere comes more attention to detail, more quality control and more ethical production. I don’t know (and Intelligent Life didn’t mention) anything about the truth of these points. The Chinese factories certainly make it greater bulk – up to 400,000 pieces a day in one case. But their standards are also getting better every year.

There are definitely differences in quality between cashmeres, though.

Cashmere is the long-haired wool that goats grow as an extra coat in the winter. It falls off in the Spring unless the farmers comb it off. Once it is combed, the cashmere needs to be spun to separate any remaining short body hairs. Some producers don’t bother to do this.

There are also short and long cashmere hairs. The longer the hair, the more robust the product will be that is woven from it. You can spot short hairs (and the shorter body hair) by looking at the surface – the fluffier and fuzzier it is, the more hair ends are standing up. Shorter hairs will also pill more, though this can happen to all products (better cashmere should pill less after its first wash).

Be suspicious of sweaters that feel too soft immediately. Like many things of value, good cashmere will be feel better and softer over time (and with occasional washes). The product will last longer as well.

Finally, cheap products tend to be woven thinly. So the sweater up to the light – better ones will tend to be denser, because more wool has been used and because of the longer hairs.

There are also figures for the length and width of hairs. Good cashmere is around 35-40mm in length, 15 microns in width; top producers compete over each micron. It is also slightly harder, and so more expensive, to create strong colours – cream, brown and grey are far easier than plum, orange or pink. The whiter raw cashmere is, the more expensive it is but the easier to dye. But this is just for the really high-end. The biggest price difference is due to purity, location and weaving.

So what’s the best value for money? Unsurprisingly, small brands that produce great product yet don’t pay for marketing, stores or advertising. The article mentioned Pure Collection as a good example (www.purecollectioncashmere.com).

Thanks for the journalism, Intelligent Life.

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Luxury Is Always In Flux

Luxury is not defined by price, quality or comfort. Luxury is simply what you don’t have. Or, more precisely, what you aspire to. Generally, it is that which others have or you once had.

So, obviously, what is considered luxurious is always changing. After the Second World War, material was rationed. So it was luxurious to have a waistcoat or cuffs on your trousers. The aspirations in quality of cloth would seem very low to us today. But then, manmade cloths were aspirational in the 1970s. Today the opposite is true: everything must be natural.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to Guy Hills, of Dashing Tweeds fame, at his flat in north London. Guy is an avid collector, and showed me a pair of old hunting britches he had bought in a charity shop in Hay-on-Wye. The quality of their construction was astounding: rugged, stiff cloth, taped at the edges and handsewn, with buttons that stood out on thick stalks. I swear those stalks were half the width of the buttons themselves – they weren’t ever coming off.

Compare that to the volume of cheap, poorly made clothing that young girls buy today from Primark, New Look and the rest. It is a mistake to think that the past 50 years has necessarily seen a progression in clothing.

The luxury we have chosen there is choice. We demanded more choice and the ability to amass clothing. More clothing than we could need. Capitalism is an efficient, amoral machine and it provided that luxury.

In recent years, luxury has come to mean something else. It means branding and exclusivity. So it is luxurious to have pieces that are rare, and it doesn’t matter if that rarity is a result of price. Luxury today is synonymous with that industry; it is indeed, often referred to as the luxury industry.

So first we demanded choice, freedom. It was a freedom for more people to wear more things more often. Then we demanded the opposite: scarcity; individual items and brands that we could aspire to. Capitalism obliged, producing something rarer and more expensive no matter what your budget. Desire and craving for all!

It is too early to tell, but we might be seeing luxury change again. It might tentatively be shifting to craft, quality and longevity.

Ignore the recession and those magazine features about ‘investment pieces’. If this trend is worth anything it will outlive the recession. If it is worth anything, it will take 10 years to peak – at which point there will be a worldwide competition to make the finest leather handbag with the finest hand-stitching. And the ultimate luxury will be to own that bag, and keep it.

You can’t pick a trend while you’re in it. But here’s hoping.

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Sharp Facts

Every time I read a book on men’s style, I underline facts I don’t know. Over the past few years, the number of underlinings in my books (and magazines) has got mercifully less. Fewer defaced volumes on the shelf.

But with Eric Musgrave’s Sharp Suits, the number of facts multiplied. I gave up 50-pages in, so criminal did it seem to write all over the book. The problem is, this is a history of menswear rather than a guide. And a history not only contains more facts, those facts come with quotes, anecdotes and supporting evidence.

I’d heard most of the stories about Edward VII, for example, but I didn’t know this quote from German Chancellor, Prince von Bulow: “In the country in which unquestionably the gentlemen dressed best, he was the best-dressed gentlemen.”

Equally, I knew Edward’s innovations included the dinner jacket, wearing tweeds at the races and leaving open the button of a waistcoat. But I didn’t know he was also responsible for the black Homburg hat, shorter tails on evening wear and turn-ups on trousers (to protect the bottoms from muddy ground).

I shall endeavour to scatter some facts from Sharp Suits throughout future posts. But for the moment here’s a few to be getting on with:

• A 1960 inventory of the Duke of Windsor’s wardrobe listed 15 evening suits, 55 lounge suits and three formal suits (all with two pairs of trousers).

• By 1849 Brooks Brothers had 1,500 people making its clothes, and could put a claim to being the first company to offer ready-made clothing.

• After the Second World War there were approximately 100,000 tailors working in Italy, dressing around 85% of the adult population. And yet it was the Italians that became the leading manufacturers of ready-made suits in the modern era.

• Hickey Freeman’s greatest innovation was to bring the various parts of suit production into a single factory. Up until then different tailors worked on different parts of a suit in different locations, often at home.

• The innovation of Hart Schaffner & Marx (which bought Hickey) was to offer proportioned suits with basic body types – tall, short, stout and thin.

• “Pierre Cardin was arguably the most influential menswear designer of the twentieth century…he changed attitudes to dress in men who had relatively little interest in their appearance” Colin McDowell. Cardin ruined this reputation with astonishingly promiscuous licensing.

• The hottest trend of 1962 was the suit silhouette worn by a group of public school boys that gathered around Le Drugstoe, a café on the Champs Elysées in Paris. They went to Marina, an old tailor on Rue Vernier in the seventeenth arondissement, who was the first to cut flat-fronted, wide-bottomed trousers with small cuffs known as marinettes.

I’m done. More reading to do now.

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