The Italian Background

The generalisation that the English experiment with their shirts and the Italians with their jackets broadly holds, particularly in business wear. While the English tradition of checked and plaid wools is a fine one, it was always largely restricted to the country (or at least the weekend) and has died out slowly as fewer English men wore suits casually.

The Italians are more willing to experiment with suit cloth at every occasion. This necessitates a shirt and tie combination that makes no attempt to compete with that cloth – the Italian Background.

The Italian Background is simple: a plain blue or black tie on a plain blue shirt. (Occasionally the shirt will be white, but this can look a little funereal.)

The combination works well because a blue shirt suits most people more than white, and it fades more into the background; because a dark tie fades more into the background than a pale tie; and because the dark blue tie is the most similar in tone and harmonious combination with a blue shirt – without being too similar and evoking tone on tone.

But this is analysing the obvious. It works as the plainest and yet most sophisticated of supports to an otherwise daring suit pattern – or indeed odd jacket. It equally supports an adventurous pocket-handkerchief, gloves, hat or jacket. When trying to balance an outfit, the Italian would much rather tone down a tie than go without one.

Four examples are displayed here, all courtesy of The Sartorialist. The first is possibly the most extreme. The high contrast, double-breasted jacket stands out, but is supported effectively by an Italian Background and dark trousers. It even makes it possible to add a pointed handkerchief without appearing over the top.

The second example marries an Italian Background with a hat and bright coat, while number three includes a faintly ridiculous coat that needs all the help it can get. Notice the uniformity of dress in this second combination as well – with odd double-breasted jacket and spread collar. While this may be because they are both associated with the same clothing outlet, it shows the versatility of the Background.

Example number four brings out a particular aspect of the Background – its fruitful combination with beige or tan (yellow, essentially). It is no coincidence that every one of these pictures involves a jacket in some shade of tan. And the gentleman on the left in this example shows that the Background is the best choice for what could otherwise be a very hard suit to find combinations for.

If in doubt, go for the Italian Background. (Oh, and buy yourself a nice, plain blue tie.)

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Another Fashion Magazine

In my quest to find a men’s style magazine that caters to me (and, I think, some readers of this blog) I occasionally try one of the high-end fashion magazines to see what it has to offer.

This month, I tried Another Man.

It certainly differentiates itself from the lad’s mags of this area, such as GQ, Arena, Esquire, by its intellectual aspirations. The main body of photo shoots is interspersed with extracts from several historical manifestos – the surrealists (“psychic automation in its pure state”) to Dadaists (“say yes, say no”), futurists (“rebel against the tyranny of words”) to Dogme 95 (“I am no longer an artist”). But there seems to be no attempt to link these manifestos, interesting as they are, to the shoots. Each is not a theme; it is instead, one is tempted to say, a pretension.

The commissioned writing has a similar bent. While some of this is superb – in particular Jon Savage on the Zazous and Philip K Dick on how to write science fiction – it is a handful of pages and the journalist copy is rather unoriginal and unconnected. You can’t help feeling the Nick Cave interview would be better written by someone at Mojo. And the short description of a band averaging 16 years in age that disparages anyone that can play an instrument is bizarre.

But Another Man inevitably falls down more on its fashion coverage more than anything else. While it doesn’t necessarily describe itself as a fashion magazine, it does dedicate well over half the magazine the fashion shoots and advertising – so it is here you would expect it to deliver.

Instead, there are spreads showing men with plastic rings, a glass sculpture and a Christmas decoration on their heads. Most have one piece of actual clothing on, though this may be a wool blazer worn as a skirt (not sure this is what Kenzo intended) or an oversized jumper (a rather kind description for a potato sack that goes over the head and reaches to the knees, with an alarming cartoon face painted on the front and a red grille to look through).

This is not to say that there is nothing worthwhile in here. One shoot takes students and artists in King’s Cross and Shoreditch and has some wonderful combinations of bohemian yet understated clothes. But it is 16 pages out of 320. And where’s the fashion/style editorial? A one page interview with Paul Smith. Two sparse spreads about how artists want to be in fashion and vice versa.

I presume there are many people out there for whom Another Man is the perfect magazine. But it is certainly not serious about fashion, let alone style.

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Two Tips on Ties

Here are a couple of tried and tested tips for tying ties. Apologies for the excessive alliteration.

I’m a fan of a nice, large dimple in a tie. Two reasons: I think it adds a certain lustre to the silk to be pulled in thus, and the added tension helps keep the tie in place, taut and a little pushed out.

I’m sure most are familiar with how, basically, to achieve a dimple (if not, please inform me in the comments section and I’ll do my best to describe it). However, I always found difficulty in achieving a consistent dimple in the middle of the tie. It would always verge over the one side and eventually, as a result, disappear. I also found that a decent dimple in the early stages of tying would seem to disappear in a similar way by the time it was tightened up to the collar.

So, two tips. First, lay out your tie on a flat, hard surface and estimate the two or three inches that pass through the knot during tying (perhaps hold it up to your body to discover this). Then, fold the tie along these two or three inches in half, with the front of the tie on the inside. Press gently along the fold with your fingers, or leave a heavy object on it briefly.

When you pick the tie back up again, there will be a visible fold down the blade. That will fade after a short while, but the lining of tie retains the fold. Because it is often a thinner silk or a canvas, it is more easily distorted. So when you next pull the tie taut, it will naturally return to that halfway fold, creating a perfectly placed dimple. The effect is also reinforced over time – the more a tie is tied with that dimple, the more easily it will return to it.

Second tip: always secure the knot and its dimple completely before pulling on the thinner blade to bring it up to the collar. Otherwise the dimple is likely to be loosened on the way up.

When you have pulled the wider blade under, over and down through the knot, let it hang for a second to pinch it ready to create the dimple. Then tighten the knot by pulling both the wider blade and the knot downwards – it is slightly counter intuitive to pull the knot down, as it will eventually go up again, but pulling it down thus will tighten it far better for the journey up to the collar.

One more tip, even though it does bring the total to three and spoil the alliteration: if your knot is a little too thin for your liking, try looping the wider blade over once more (in a four-in-hand knot this is) than usual. It makes less difference than you’d think, but just enough to satisfy.

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An Englishman in New York: Cardboard Jeans

It’s not much fun wearing cardboard trousers. But it’s worth the pain.

This time last year I bought a pair of jeans from Jean Shop on West Broadway, New York. A friend had recommended the place to me, but to be honest I was largely taken in by the technical terms and stylish furnishing – piles of raw denim draped over rails around the shop, interspersed by various efforts in coloured leather: jackets, wallets etc.

As casual clothes are not my specialist subject, all the talk of Japanese denim, rinsing, raw wearing and dying oils went a little over my head. But the assistant claimed he wore one pair of these jeans every day of the year. That he had bought the pair he was wearing two years ago and never bought another. I think that might even have been the reason he decided to get a job there.

Most of the jeans sold are raw denim. This means that when you first wear them they will feel like cardboard – stiff, awkward and, well, crunchy. After a few days of wearing them in they will soften. After a few weeks they will feel comfortable and seem to fit really well. A year later they will be like a second skin.

The advantage of raw denim is that, unlike pretreated or prewashed jeans, the cotton adapts itself to your own particular shape and activities. It molds to you. This appeals to me as a fan of made-to-measure clothes generally – except that here the trousers adapt to you rather than being made for you.

An investment in a great pair of jeans also appeals to my thriftiness – one pair of classic, straight dark jeans can be worn with almost anything and won’t wear out for years. Jean Shop jeans aren’t that cheap – between $250 and $290. But then they’re not the most expensive either.

I’m wearing my pair today and have done half the time I’ve been in New York. Unlike some of my recommendations (I have yet to buy a suit from Suit Supply, as one reader pointed out. Though I am eager to hear anyone else’s experience) this one is fully tested. I went back to Jean Shop yesterday and it was just as cool – plus this time I knew a little more about the product, having done my own research. I bought exactly the same pair as mine (albeit an inch smaller on the waist) for my brother. I’m sure he’ll love them as much as me.

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An Englishman in New York

Why does anyone in New York buy ties fully priced? I’ve been here a good seven or eight times in my working life, but the discounts at Century 21 and to a lesser extent Filene’s Basement never cease to amaze me.

The ties are carefully arranged into price categories, from around $30 to $60. It compares to full prices of around $70 to $180. At one end Van Heusen and a few names I haven’t heard of; at the other Ferragamo, Louis Vuitton and Ralph Lauren Purple Label. All are reduced by somewhere between 60% and 80%.

It must harm your impression of a brand that its most luxurious items are being sold at a very heavy discount, all year round. Why would you then go to the Ralph Lauren block of stores uptown and not balk at paying near to 100 pounds for a tie?

This discounting does happen in the UK. But it is largely in out-of-town shopping centres like the York or Bicester designer outlets. Somehow it’s almost acceptable if the discount stores aren’t in the same city. Plus, they are all still separated by brand, surrounded by their usual furnishings, shop furniture and advertising.

This could serve to undermine the brand even further – as it is exactly the same kind of shop you would buy fully priced items from. But instead it seems to make the experience more special, unique. The racks and racks (sometimes piles) of closely stuffed clothes in Century 21, on the other hand, just seem to cheapen the whole experience, to lower Purple Label and Vuitton down to the level of the cheapest high-street store.

This level of discounting often happens with women’s clothing out of season – in the increasing number of designer vintage shops, for example, and online. But women care far more about how up to date their clothes are. Fashion and its fickle seasons mean one would never buy a trendy piece from two years ago – it would look like it was two years old, and you haven’t bought anything since.

Even men’s clothes could be seen as going in and out of season. Polo shirts and cardigans, bright colours and drainpipe jeans, all will probably find their way into discount stores after a while, unwanted and so pushed off by labels more interested in the new season, only concerned with cutting their losses on the old stock.

But men’s ties? Apart from a slight variation in width, how on earth do these go out of fashion? Besides, you can get super wide Purple Label ties and super narrow Black Label ties on the same rack – everything is covered. The same discounts apply to handkerchiefs, socks, underwear, cufflinks.

So I’m sure I’ll be buying a few. Less because I want them. More because it seems too good to be true – there’s nothing like this in London and I have a slight suspicion someone might realise what’s going on at any minute and close the place down.

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