Ties Facts From Peckham Rye

Following on from the last, rather popular post on Peckham Rye and Hunter’s founders David Walker and Martin Brighty, here are some more insights from the interview:

- When you turn a tie in your hand and it seems to change colour slightly, this is because the light is reflecting off the warp. The warp is one direction of the weaving (the other being weft) of the silk. The warp is subtler and sets the foundation for the tie’s tone. While I have written about warp before (in a piece on Vanner’s) I hadn’t cottoned on to this way of revealing it.

- Woven ties will often fray slightly along the front edge over time. If you run a small flame (from a lighter, say) quickly along that edge, it will burn off the stray threads and not damage the tie. The same can be done with loose threads in the main weave. (This technique is used with manmade fibres in other industries, but only where you want them to melt and so fuse together. Silk will not fuse, just burn off.)

- Hunter’s makes a lot of ties for military units. And so many have been amalgamated recently that new designs are coming though all the time. Usually the designers take the dominant colours of each unit and try to find the best combination of them. There’s only a limited number of colour combinations out there though, plus over time the tone of the colours can change – if units have used cheaper tie companies, often the colour over the years comes to look nothing like the original design. That’s one advantage of a history in the industry – at Holliday & Brown they had swatches going back to the 1920s and earlier. So they could check the original swatch.

- The old hand-worked, shuttle looms could weave greater detail than today’s mechanised ones, though obviously nowhere near the speed. “In that old book we had a swatch of the Bugatti Racing Club, which from memory was a royal-blue ground, with a very thin – like one pixel – stripe of black, four pixels of gold, four of red, back to gold, then the black again. You couldn’t achieve that detail today, those looms don’t exist,” says David.

- Back then England made the bulk of the world’s ties, which explains why Holliday & Brown was making for Bugatti. English salesmen spent their lives travelling the globe – Buster Brown of Holliday & Brown used to spend nine months on the road (six of those in the US), all by train and steamship of course.

- When making bespoke ties, a man’s neck size is as important as his height. A short man with a very thick neck may be more in need of a bespoke tie than one of above-average height. And when tall men do have bespoke made, they need to have a wider blade – usually four inches. Otherwise it will just look too skinny.

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Behind Closed Doors

I’ve always thought you can tell a lot about someone’s attitude to dress by what goes on behind closed doors. We can all put on a good display in public, but when no one’s looking that’s when we learn the truth.

As the poet John Keats said; “Whenever I find myself vaporish, I rouse myself, wash and put on a clean shirt, brush my hair and clothes, tie my shoestrings neatly, and in fact Adonisize as if I were going out – then all clean and comfortable I sit back down to write”.

No matter what I’m doing and where I am I always strive to make my best appearance; and like Keats feel better for doing so. For example, I’ve always thought the idea of sleeping naked abhorrent; even boxers and T leave me unenthused. Going to bed in a set of Derek Rose, whatever others may think, I’m content in the knowledge that should I expire in the course of the night I won’t be meeting my maker tackle out.

My other bugbear is having to pad around indoors in socks – and I can’t abide receiving guests as such. This is almost certainly a throwback to my childhood – ours was one of those dreaded shoes off households.

I consider it one of the great joys of running my own house that I can keep my footwear on indoors. Of course this isn’t always the most practical thing, or the most comfortable. For this reason, much to the amusement of all my friends, for the last ten years I’ve sported velvet slippers. Revived recently by Ralph Lauren, I personally won’t dream of wearing them outside of the house in some OTT preppy statement – saying that I have taken to wearing during flights. But for me they’re principally a home comfort.

Often referred to as the Albert (after Queen Victoria’s consort) they are not so much a slipper as house shoe, and are considered acceptable footwear for Black Tie.  Indeed for the English they are the predecessor to the loafer, or rather its acceptability.

Enjoying something of a revival, even the likes of Prada have added them to their collection. Personally, I would stick to Tricker’s (who make their own, with leather lining); Shipton & Heneage (for variety and quilted lining), Heraldic Needlepoint (Regimental Stripes) or Broadlands Slippers (exceptional pricing).

And should you feel that such things might appear effeminate, behind closed doors whose business is it but yours.

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Why The Fuss: The Trouble With High Fashion

It was a moment of dewy-eyed ecstasy; an elderly relative of mine, transfixed by a high definition broadcast of an expensively produced and visually breathtaking nature program. The brilliance of it seemed almost too much for a person who, in their youth, had first known television as a gigantic box with a tiny black and white screen. As they enthused about how wonderful the colours and the detail were, I considered the transformation of the format in his lifetime; from analogue to digital, from a tiny screen to a truly massive one, from CRT to LED and, crucially, from black and white to full colour.

I don’t know of a single person who longs for a black and white world. The presence of colour is one of the most fantastic accidents of life that I strive to appreciate far more than I actually do. I could see sitting next to my teary relation, who pointed and smiled with childlike joy, that the gift of vivid colour is truly marvellous. Colour is present in virtually every memory of beauty, both of celebration and regret; the bubblegum pink sunset from the terrace, the reddened tear stained cheek of a weeping child, the first blue-sky morning of Spring, a single blood red rose on a mossy gravestone.

You would think, given such treasures of inspiration, that the creatives in men’s high fashion would produce styles which reflect the gorgeousness and brilliance of colour on Mother Earth. You would assume that the vaunted corridors of the grand French houses were torrents of vivid colour; experimental clothiers excitedly dashing back and forth with garish greens, brilliant blues, rusty reds, yolky yellows, princely purples and ochre oranges, forming psychedelic arteries, feeding the colourful whimsy of fashion’s Willy Wonka. Your assumption would be presumptuous.

In fact, the houses of Dior Homme, Yves Saint Laurent and the like are so far from this bounty of colour and happiness that it makes one wonder whether their points of inspiration are not the leaden skies of London, so monotonously monochromatic are their ‘collections.’ The ‘boys’ in Dior’s recent spring/summer collection did not seem the kind of happy-go-lucky chaps who spend a weekend at their aunts in Kent, ask some friendly girls out for a punt, get sozzled on vintage champagne and then sing till the early hours in the flower beds with a view of the stars – in other words, the kind of privileged audience some fashion designers would hope to appeal to. In actual fact, they appeared more like underfed, underpaid goons from some science-fiction Orwellian netherworld where it is never sunny, where smiles are outlawed and where colour-vision has been brutally removed from every citizen’s retina.

I find it absolutely exasperating that men’s high fashion, instead of being the leading, shining example to us all of positive, beautiful and colourful expression, churns out such depressing dreck. In an age where men are permitted to ‘peacock out’, when we have long since shrugged off the infuriating sombre blackness of Victorian propriety, the ‘talent’ that reigns in some of the greatest and most influential halls of fashion fame seems intent on pushing out the same garb, entirely irrespective of season; a collection wholly composed of boring black, weary white and grisly grey.

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Notes On The Advantages Of Variety

My recent article on my expansive, though scarcely expensive, shoe collection revealed that, in the balance between quantity and quality, I lean more towards the former. Deborah Carre from Carre Ducker made a good point that if I had less greed for variety, I could have purchased maybe one, two or three pairs of some outstanding handmade bespoke shoes of superior quality that would last many more years than the ready-to-wear, predominantly ‘high street’ collection that I possessed.

Whilst this is true, it is indubitably based on how long a shoe lasts for the average person. The average person, as far as I can see, does not have twenty odd pairs of shoes to rotate through, thus maintaining the ‘fitness’ of the shoes through less-than-average use. Average use, from the cursory research I conducted, is wearing a shoe every other day. My black punch cap New & Lingwood Oxfords, purchased in 2003, have lasted seven years and are far from finished; they have only been resoled once and, due to shoe rotation, look a great deal better than many others of the same vintage. Whilst the collection looks gluttonous, it is as much a lesson in longevity as in variety – and if you can have both, for a reasonable price, then what is the issue?

The same goes for suits. A large suit collection, of say 20-30 suits, sounds like gross extravagance but if you wear one everyday, proper circulation should ensure greater wear. No matter how well made a suit is, how thick a fabric, if you plonk yourself down in it, type in it, drink in it and dine in it every damn day, it will soon wear out. There is no doubt that a well-made, tailored suit will last longer than a mass-produced suit, but should you be throwing your entire collection of high street suits on eBay to purchase a single bespoke? Absolutely not. Not only is owning a single suit rather dull, no matter how beautifully it is crafted, it will not outlast you if you subject it to 365 days of wear a year. Holes will appear, fabric will fray; suits, like shoes, need a break if they are expected to last.

This is why I advocate the sustained increase, rather than decrease, in the variety of a gentleman’s suit wardrobe. By all means aspire to greater suits but consider living within your means above lofty expectations of quality. I recently spoke to a gentleman who purchased one Henry Poole suit in his early days as a stockbroker in the 1960s. His elders and betters, similarly attired by equivalent Savile Row tailors, were rather unimpressed, believing that they alone were entitled to march through their Bank offices in bespoke English suits. The lesson came when, his salary frozen, he was unable to purchase any other suit; his savings were gone and his profligacy a point of regret. “I couldn’t afford the suit” he said “and I ended up buying more, of course, at great expense.”

He informed me that it was only a doting father, himself a Savile Row account holder, who backed future purchases. Others, in straitened circumstances, might not be so lucky.

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Two Aspects Of Figuration

I discovered an interesting aspect of figuration today, while being measured for a new suit. (Figuration being the process where a tailor adapts a suit to your particular bodily quirks – the steps beyond just making sure the shoulders are the right width.)

The tailor pointed out that I have a slight stoop forward, slightly prominent shoulder blades, a hollowed lower back (partly due to being slim) and a large seat. If you can imagine that effect down the line of my back, it produces a S-shape – exaggerated curves caused by the shoulder blades and bum, with a hollow in between.

Most other suits I have follow the line of my back, meaning that the rear of the skirt kicks out a little over my bum. To correct this and mitigate the S-shape, a little more fullness will be added in the small of my back with this suit. But a little will be taken out of the front too, so that the waist size remains the same. Effectively, the lower half of the jacket will be swung backwards a touch.

On my previous suit I had also noticed that the collar stood away slightly from the back of my neck. A fairly obvious fault. But it was also pointed out this time that, when I looked at the suit from the front, this standing away was most prominent on the right of my neck.

This, it seems, was because I leant ever-so-slightly to the right, as well as a little forward. That was noticeable both at the neck but also below my right arm, where the cloth collapses a little between the waist and scye. Rebalancing the suit a little, so it is slightly lower on that right side, should correct this.

Both of these are aspects of fit that I have never noticed before, but of course now will not be able to ignore. Like the day after I had my first bespoke shirt fitted, and realised all my shirts had a slightly short left arm.

These are the pleasures of bespoke, such as they are. Every time you improve one facet of fit, you discover another that is wrong.

I admire tailors and shirtmakers for being able to spot these little things. But I do wish they’d stagger pointing them out to me.

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