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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Buying Buttons For Bespoke

Buttons are a subtle way to add personality to a suit, odd jacket or even overcoat. But it pays to keep them subtle.

It’s easy enough to sew on a suit button, though I recommend experimenting with something inexpensive first. Just make sure you secure the thread firmly – I normally sew twice in one direction on the same spot, then once at a right angle – and leave some slack so you can create a decent stalk. And tip the button to one side to pierce the cloth underneath without going all the way through. (The only time you really need to go right through is with the jigger button on a double-breasted, or with very heavy materials.)

The first time I sewed on my own buttons was with a navy overcoat from Hackett a couple of years ago. While I liked the cut and the herringbone cloth from Loro Piana, it needed something to give it character. So I replaced the navy buttons with cream horn ones – plenty of texture, lots of punch for the coat.

Now I am having more things made bespoke, I am selecting buttons rather than replacing them. With my past two suits and overcoat from Graham Browne, I have gone with plain navy or brown horn from the stock selection. With the latest commission (the ‘fishy’ suit) I decided to source my own.

For this I went to the excellent Duttons for Buttons in York, where I had also bought the cream ones for my Hackett overcoat. I am up there every couple of months visiting my in-laws so it is pretty convenient, and the selection is impressive.

The suit is a smart, single-button navy with jetted pockets and high-waisted trousers. The buttons therefore had to be smart as well without being showy. And as I needed two precise sizes for the waist button and the cuffs (30 and 24 line, or 15 and 19 millimetres in diameter) the choice came down to about eight or nine sets.

After a good hour of indecision, I went with black iridescent buttons that looked rather like dark mother-of-pearl. That was a mistake. Over Christmas I tried the buttons against several navy suits and decided they were too shiny, too silvery and too like blazer buttons in natural light.

So on December 28th, when Duttons opened again after Christmas, I went back and spent another 30 minutes examining dark, matte buttons, eventually picking some made from Mussel shells (pictured above). They are deeper and less shiny than my first choice, but actually have more surface interest and subtle variation between them.

So my (probably rather obvious) lessons from this experience are:

- Go for natural materials, shell or horn, where you can. Manmade textures are rarely as attractive and they’ll last better.

- Take the cloth or jacket with you. I thought I could picture the buttons easily against it in my head. I couldn’t.

- Be subtle, particularly on a suit. Or, as an alternative guideline, be as subtle as the item and its pattern. Overcoats and sports jackets, checks and tweeds can take more adventurous buttons.

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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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Sebastian & Jules Cufflinks

I spend most of my working day sitting at a desk, typing. The comfort of shirts and size of armholes are therefore important. But I also need silent cufflinks.

Most of the time I wear French (or double) cuffs on my shirts, so they need to be fastened with something. That used to be variations on bar or chain cufflinks, always metal and usually quite loose. They clinked against the desktop. Even with a jacket on, they would often peek beyond the sleeve and clink.

So I switched to silk knots. Easy, cheap and available in an array of colours, they allowed me to experiment with colour combinations and clashes. Add cufflinks to tie, handkerchief, socks and shirt and the permutations are dizzying. Most importantly, they didn’t clink.

I do own three pairs of metal cufflinks. One, in silver, was given to me by friends on my 21st birthday. A second in mother-of-pearl was an engagement present. And the third pair, from Etro, has an unusually short bar and so does not clink.

But I occasionally get bored of silk knots and occasional metal links, usually worn on special occasions.

So I was glad to receive a birthday present this year from my friend Katherine: an unusual pair of homemade cufflinks. Essentially two buttons joined with silk thread, they look like oversize shirt buttons when worn on the cuff; but they’re more decorative than knots and if anything offer even more colour combinations. And of course, they don’t clink.

The company is called Sebastian & Jules and can be found at sebastianandjules.co.uk. Katherine makes the cufflinks (and rather nifty iPhone cases from tweeds and worsted suitings) in her spare time. It’s a cottage industry; except that she lives in a flat in East Dulwich.

I have the paint-fleck effect shell ones on page two of the site, the ones joined by hot fuschia silk. They look particularly effective on a white shirt under a navy suit. I also hanker after the pine and tortoiseshell.

I have a growing fascination with buttons (expect a piece soon on using mussel-shell buttons for my fishy suit), so these links are very much on-trend. I also think £15 is pretty reasonable for unique items that were entirely and painstakingly made by hand.

Nice to support a (for me, very) local producer.

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The Little Book Of Ties

What is meant by the hand of a tie? What was a Macaroni? What are Macclesfield and Madder? From when does paisley date? What are the 5 ways to check the quality of a tie? What weights of silk should be used in tie making? What differentiates handmade ties from machine made?

I love knowing things. To paraphrase Shakespeare, I am a notorious snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. And the topics above are just a few of the things covered in ‘The Little Book of Ties’.

To be blunt, this book is not a page turner or ripping bedtime yarn. However, it’s useful and easy going enough that you don’t have to be Rain Man to work your way through it, or appreciate it.

It’s a solid little technical manual, which tells you all you need to know, with concise but thorough chapters and useful subject headings.  Packed with only the necessary it starts with the history of neckwear and explains the various incarnations along the road to the modern day. It explains patterns, motifs and their social and historical significance. You also get technical details from the construction of a quality tie to the various processes for weaving or printing patterns, as well as suitable materials for the differing seasons.  There are style tips, a few tie knots, and it considers the all important question of, how many ties should a man own?

Of course it’s far from the definitive work on the subject, and there are weightier tomes out there. But at just over 100 pages it isn’t taxing and most topics are dealt with in a few economical paragraphs. Additionally, for such an unprepossessing little tome, there are plenty of beautiful photographs in excellent detail.

In all, an extremely useful little book, and one worth having in your back pocket.

‘The Little Book of Ties’, by Francois Chaille, Flammarion 2001, Paperback £6.95 (Foyle’s)

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