The Wonders Of Bicester Village

I am a sucker for a good deal. Indeed, if one were being unkind it could be said that sometimes being a bargain gets in the way of my actually wanting something. Anywhere north of 80% off and I start to feel giddy.

For a long time I’ve been a fan of the Designer Outlet just outside York. That’s where my in-laws live and it’s a nice excursion when I’m up there for a few days. But recently I discovered Bicester Village; York has rather paled by comparison.

I went to Oxford University yet I think I only went to Bicester once (the outlet is a just a few minutes outside Oxford, around an hour from London). It was a bit of a disappointment - small, damp and not particularly large discounts. How that has changed in the intervening 10 years.

Most outlets offer few options for men. Perhaps a Hugo Boss and a Hackett; Paul Smith if you’re lucky. Most men spend their time wandering around the luxury labels - Gucci, Armani, Prada - looking at the relatively small selection catering to them rather than their other halves.

Bicester has a great Dunhill outlet. Plus Ferragamo, Zegna and Pal Zileri. And Aquascutum, Brooks Brothers and Church’s, Burberry, Tod’s and Gieves & Hawkes (a sad endictment of Gieves that). It’s got everyone. Even Ralph Lauren, a regular in this kind of shopping outlet, has an oversized store here with extreme discounts. There was a Purple Label cable-knit sweater that still haunts me - £695 reduced to £89.

But my favourite discovery was Loro Piana. A extremely luxurious Italian cashmere label, I didn’t realise they had a discount outlet anywhere - indeed, I’m not sure that management is keen for people to know about this one. I picked up a true investment piece: a three-button leather jacket lined with cashmere, soft yet hardy, already imbued with the feeling of 100 winter walks. It was 80% off. I staggered to the till, a little light-headed.

I think the scale of the discounts at the moment is unusual and driven by the economy. According to a regular visitor, increasing numbers of shoppers has meant that the standard discount is not as large as it used to be. The Village is also dominated by Asia women chasing branded handbags and boutique designers, but it’s big enough for everyone to get around - just don’t go the Saturday before Christmas.

The train from London Marylebone to Bicester North takes 50 minutes and costs £23 return. Then there’s a mini-bus shuttle that costs a further £4.40 return and takes about five minutes.

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Inspiration Above Propriety

At the press launch of Sharp Suits by Eric Musgrave a few week ago (pictures and report here) there was quite a variety of menswear on display.

Eric himself was wearing a splendid windowpane-check grey suit and gold tie; host Richard James wore a characteristic strong blue suit, white shirt and knitted black tie; and yours truly went for a navy double-breasted with a tie in a rather fetching shade of rust. But there was also Ben Cobb, editor of Man About Town, in a white leather jacket, vest and (of course) moustache, as well as a gentleman in a rubber jacket and all sorts of people wearing drainpipe trousers.

There are few events today at which one could say there is an expectation as to what should be worn. Fewer still where a real sense of propriety dominates. Various concerts, races and royal events are about it. But a book launch on Savile Row brings some expectations – not to dress to a code, perhaps, but to make a certain effort. This, clearly, everyone had done. And while not necessarily endorsing the rubber jacket, I think the event was better for this emphasis on personal style rather than social correctness.

For a pleasant few minutes I was chatting to Michael Whitby-Grubb of Penrose. He was wearing a checked three-piece suit in yellow and tan. His tie was a rather luminescent silver from Penrose itself (apparently the extra shine is due to not letting the silkweavers bleach the silk before they colour it). And he had on chunky brown brogues.

He looked pretty damn good. And it occurred to me that were this a hundred years earlier, an event of this sort would have seen all men in black tie. Perhaps some variation in jacket style, waistcoat or accessories, but essentially all men wearing the same thing. There is a certain ritualistic beauty in that; definitely an elegance that modern society lacks. But it leaves little room for inspiration and personal style.

It seems to me that when we bemoan a lack of smart dress, often we are lamenting men’s laziness and a lack of interest in how they look. That is far more depressing than taste you disagree with.

I wish there were more black-tie events, I do. I wish I had to own a morning suit, and wear that frequently. But I’m glad that Michael can wear what is effectively a country suit to an event of that type, and pay attention to it, dress it up and accessorise it as a result. It inspires me.

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How A Three Rolls To Two

Fans of traditional clothing are fairly united in their dislike of ‘true’ three-button suits – where the jacket is designed to button all the way up and leaves an awkward angle in the cloth if it is not. This fastening design is a hangover from the sleek Italian style of the late fifties and early sixties, where the long silhouette was accentuated by a high fastening and three or four buttons. It inspired the Continental look in the US in the late fifties and the British Mods in the early sixties.

The more elegant alternative for a three-button jacket is to have a lapel that easily rolls over when only the centre button is fastened – so-called ‘three rolls to two’. That way the lapel line is longer and sleeker, but you retain the option of buttoning all the way up if it gets cold, windy or both.

I was chatting to my tailors at Graham Browne the other day and it seems there are two ways to achieve this roll. The first, more English way is to put a loose, sparse row of stitches down the back of the lapel that leads to the centre button. This creates some permanent structure to the roll and ensures that, while it remains soft, it always looks the same. The position of the canvas in the chest also helps contribute to this effect.

The alternative, more American option is to put no structure in the lapels. Without an edge to the canvas or a separate row of stitches, the lapel is happy to roll wherever it wants. It will roll to the centre button if that is the one that is fastened. Or it will roll, though not quite as naturally, to the top or bottom button.

The way to tell the difference is to hang up both jackets and leave them unfastened. The latter construction will roll open very easily, and perhaps even roll over all the way down if there is little canvas in the chest. The former will always roll to the same place – where the stitches were sewn.

Most English tailors prefer more structure to their jackets – with famous and notable exceptions. They feel a jacket without it is more likely to lose its shape over time.

My mid-blue chalkstripe suit I have just commissioned from Graham Browne will be three-rolls-to-two the English way. Controversially, the waistcoat will also roll to its second button. Russell at Graham Browne hates this. But I think it adds a nice, casual tone to the waistcoat – more like a cardigan. And you’ve got to have some individuality, right?

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A Short Talk With Andrea Perrone

I’ve been a fan of Brioni co-CEO Andrea Perrone’s personal style ever since issue 2 of The Rake. Perrone was the cover star, part of a feature on Brioni and wearing a checked sportscoat with a dark cardigan, white shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Ever since I’ve loved wearing a dark cardigan under an odd jacket. Something about the shadow it creates, the quiet sophistication that echoes the waistcoat of a three-piece suit.

The photo shoot was in black and white so I didn’t know the colour of the cardigan. But mine is a deep, bottle green. Dark enough so that the colour isn’t really apparent from a distance; different without being showy.

I met Perrone last week at the launch of Brioni’s first fragrance in the London store. (He was wearing a suit in a tight Prince-of-Wales check, grey with a red line through it.) The fragrance is inspired by one first produced in the 1950s, called Good Luck. Although there is no record of the scent itself, the discovery of an old bottle was apparently inspiration enough.

Perrone agreed with me that perfumes are hard things to write about. No matter how much you list the various ingredients, the top notes and the base notes, it’s hard for the reader to really get an impression of what it smells like.

And his view is that it is very much a question of personal taste, of associations and memory. I’ve always liked musky scents, probably because my father wears them. Most light and classic male scents I associate with the cheap Calvin Klein and Hugo Boss fragrances that my friends used to wear when I was a teenager. Somehow, they all seemed to smell the same.

As to craft and quality, you can talk about the proportion of ground elements in a scent, and how much they are diluted by ethanol. But that is pretty much given away by the name of the substance – eau de cologne, eau de toilette, eau de parfum. Each has a range of concentrations, with some overlap.

For Perrone, the only thing worth going into in detail is the ingredients – in this case bergamot from Calabria and lemon from Sicily amongst others, which are all naturally sourced and produced. And everyone was given an oversized book to explain what the elements were and where they came from.

But most important of all, there was a sampler of the scent. So that people could try it for several days afterwards, and decide if they liked it. That’s pretty much all there is to perfume.

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The Tailors That Will Survive

“I’ve had five shirts made by XX on Savile Row, and I’m not currently in possession of any of them. They are all being altered or the sleeves lengthened, some have been there weeks and some months. Every time I phone up the reaction is ‘oh yes, I really must get onto that’. It’s quite frustrating.”

This is a friend relating his experiences of bespoke shirtmakers. Another one, this time off Savile Row, has never phoned him. Not once have they picked up the phone to update him on the progress of an order, or even to tell him something is ready. “Last week I finally called them, and they said ‘oh yes, it’s been here for weeks, why don’t you come in and get it?’ The idea of efficiency is alien to them. Customer service means being polite – and they are, they’re both very nice gentlemen. But it would be nice to have my shirts.”

This was often the way with traditional craftsmen. But as the world has moved on, giving customers greater service and reliability, they have stayed stock still.

Tailoring, suits and bespoke have never been more fashionable. This season the men’s shows saw models coming down the runway in double-breasted suits, ties and pocket handkerchiefs. How long is it since that happened? Suddenly everyone is talking about waistcoats, or bow ties. We are at the apex of the trend.

Matters sartorial have been quietly growing in popularity for four or five years (something that has probably contributed to the success of this blog – it can’t be the quality of the writing). But from the apex the only way is down. Once the high street has caught on, and your friends are buying more suits, the trend is dying. In three years it will all be tracksuits and sportswear.

Some tailors have grabbed this opportunity with both hands. They have invested in their businesses, introduced modern management and become spokesmen for the industry. I would place Anderson & Sheppard and Norton & Sons in this category.

Others have reacted to the increase in business by taking longer to make things. They’ve always had two tailors; they still have two tailors. If orders double, they just take a year to make rather than six months. They haven’t hired any more staff. Perhaps more importantly, they haven’t hired any younger staff.

My friend is not alone in his frustration. I have heard similar stories about shirtmakers and some tailors – all of them old, all of them traditional. Those are the businesses that won’t be around when young men are wearing tracksuits again.

The tailors that will survive are the ones investing now.

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