Lobb and Berluti. How Different Can You Get?

“Good afternoon, sir, can I help you?”

“I hope so. You see I’m trying to find a last that fits the shape of my feet and I have to say I haven’t had much luck so far.

“They’re quite wide across the ball of my feet, and also quite shallow – I have rather fallen arches. As a result I end up getting shoes that are a little too long to compensate for the width, and my heels move around in them because they are all too deep.”

My conversation with the assistant in Berluti and in John Lobb began in exactly the same way. But it couldn’t have finished more differently.

The man from Berluti pulled out a bright-green cushion, sat his knee upon it and took off my shoes with a flourish. He lined my feet up, side by side, and stroked the outside of them. Hmm, he said, scratching his chin.

A moment later he returned with a pair of black lace-ups (I had already mentioned that I was after the last rather than anything else, so colour and design were irrelevant). They were a little pointier than I would have picked, but looked lovely nonetheless. After another flourish with the shoe horn, and a rapid Berluti knot, he sat back to survey his work.

Unfortunately, when I stood up, they were too long. You could see the shoe breaking at the end of my toes.

Over at John Lobb, things had progressed in a slightly different way. The staff were rather manic, with one customer rushing in and asking for another pair of shoes before he left for the airport. When an assistant was finally free, he was very apologetic and sat me down, taking my measurements with an old beaten-up metre rule and listening closely to my description of previous problems.

The last he picked out, the 3000, fit only slightly better than the first offering at Berluti. A low-slung monk-strap shoe, it fit well around the width of my foot but had to be set on the tightest hope in the strap to keep my heel in place. Not really ideal, given that the shoe will expand over time with my foot.

The biggest difference between the two leading (perhaps even best) shoe retailers was what happened next. The Berluti assistant, frustrated with his first attempt, came back with a smaller shoe on a different last – this had the opposite problem, fitting well on the heel but pinching in my little toe on the width. And with that, he was done.

He swore the shoe would expand over time to take care of the width. I was sceptical. He shrugged his shoulders. What could he do? How could he deal with someone that disagreed with him?

My assistant in John Lobb tried the 4000 last. Then he tried the 3000 as a lace-up. Then he tried the shoe a size down. Then his colleague came over and (after a short discussion about the history of Peal & Co – those were the shoes I was wearing at the time) he began to offer his own suggestions.

What I needed was a narrower shoe that would hold the heel in place. Or a full leather insole. I tried the latter – better, but still not right. A tongue pad would work. They could take apart the tongue and slip a pad in for £15. But then you would have to buy the shoes. Perhaps it would be better for sir to try with a stick-on tongue pad first, on another pair of shoes? That way you’ll know if it helps. I believe the cobbler across the road stocks them.

There followed five more minutes of pleasant discussion on shoemaking and English brands, and why a pair of Lobbs with a hand-bevelled waist costs £200 more. When I left I did not have a certain solution to my problem. But it was a damned interesting and pleasant 20 minutes.

Over at Berluti, the assistant was putting on my own shoes for me with evident disgust. “Look, these shoes are far too big. They’ve given you at least three sizes too big. You can see them collapsing at the end.” I thought I had explained why I often had shoes that were too big, but he seemed to have forgotten. With the same flourish, my own shoes were tied and he wiped his hands, looking at me rather expectantly.

I left, feeling like the shoes I was wearing were the biggest, ugliest things I had seen. And I certainly didn’t want to replace them with Berluti.

In both cases, there was only one other customer in the shop; the assistants had time to give me if they wanted to. None of them had met me before. My query to both was the same. Yet the way their attitude to me could not have been more different.

I’d like to say I have a sweeping conclusion about the reasons for this disparity, but I don’t. There have been complaints from several quarters about Berluti since it was set on an expansion kick by its owners. But then Lobb is owned by Hermes – hardly a small, parochial company. I think, rather, that the experience reflects something about the attitude each presses upon its staff, and the impression it wishes to portray.

Sartoriani Goes for a Bigger Lie

God, it makes your blood boil. Splashed all over the front of City AM (the free business paper in London), Sartoriani is claiming to be selling “The finest bespoke shirts in the world!”

Where do they get off? Their shirts are not bespoke and I can’t imagine what criteria they have for saying they are the best in the world.

For those who are not familiar with the background to this charade (see previous post), Sartoriani won a case earlier in the year allowing it to use the phrase “bespoke” in its advertising, despite the fact that its suits are made by a machine. That’s right. They are made by a machine, in a factory, on a block altered to a customer’s specifications. That probably sounds like the age-old definition of made-to-measure to you. And it is. Yet they claimed their suits were bespoke because they were “personalised to the customer”.

The association of Savile Row Bespoke, representing tailors on the Row, took Sartoriani to the UK Advertising Standards Authority. It lost. The ASA said it considered bespoke and made-to-measure to be synonymous. It was a loss to menswear everywhere. As I said at the time, “once one company can get away with it, everyone will advertise their made-to-measure service as bespoke, and a refined section of tailoring will lose a crucial communication skill.”

It’s happening now. Sartoriani apparently has bespoke shirts; there’s a picture of someone in “a bespoke suit”; apparently “it’s now easier than ever to make a bespoke suit.” Bespoke, bespoke, bespoke. It’s an assault on the language, eroding the meaning of words in the pursuit of profit.

Who actually thinks that a bespoke suit can be made, “cut and sewn in London”, for £495? And a shirt for £99?

Sartoriani seems to have decided to adopt the old adage “if you’re going to lie, lie big.” Because it has the cheek to lecture people in its advertisement on what bespoke means, maintaining that it is just something that has been altered to a customer’s specifications, “as opposed to off-the-peg or ready-to-wear”.

Not only that, but it proclaims in its headline that is has “the best bespoke shirts in the world,” as mentioned earlier. Does the ASA have anything to say about this? Has Sartoriani commissioned a piece of thorough, independent research that compared its shirts to Charvet and Turnbull & Asser, which concluded that Sartoriani was the finest? Ridiculous.

And the cherry on the cake: Sartoriani advertises itself as “Savile Row – London”. But look carefully. It has an office at 10 Savile Row, and shares some of the basement. Its shop is actually at 24 Old Bond Street, and now 1 Canada Square in Canary Wharf.

It makes your blood boil.

What Harmony Means

A pocket handkerchief should harmonise with a man’s shirt and general ensemble. But not many men understand what harmony means.

Let me put it like this. It is a similar conundrum to which colour of tie you should wear, but is also a little like the choice of sock colour and of shirt. It encompasses all of these choices, and is broader than all of them as a result. This is the wonder and the joy of selecting a pocket handkerchief. There is such a broad range available; yet it is still possible to get it wrong.

Once you pick the suit you are going to wear for the day, I presume you select a complementary shirt, suitable socks and a pleasing tie. The shirt is probably the most constrictive in terms of colour: there may be many patterns on offer, but the vast majority will be blue, white or pink. Your socks for the day present a greater range of possible colours: beyond the choice of matching with your trouser, maroon or green are staples with a grey suit, purple or red can work well with navy. Your tie is presumably last, and presents the greatest number of options; to an extent this makes it the hardest choice, though, as fewer things are actually wrong.

The handkerchief can be any of these colours. Each of them is harmonious. Say, for example, that we start with a grey suit, grey socks and pink, open-necked shirt. Both shirt colours that you turned down are options for the handkerchief: white and blue. Equally, the potential sock colours of grey, maroon and perhaps green can work. And then the ties you could have worn – navy, for example, or a pale grey.

Indeed, the handkerchief options are broader even than that. I have always felt that a red or purple tie with a pink shirt look a little forced, a little easy and commonplace. It looks as if the best you could think of was a vaguely similar colour – reddish tones with more or less blue or white. Gold ties on yellow shirts have always elicited a similar response. It feels like a cop-out.

These colours are, however, still harmonious. A purple handkerchief with a pink shirt works well, as does gold with a yellow shirt. Where a tie is sometimes forced to play a dark, background role, the handkerchief has no such restrictions. Imagine a dark grey or black tie in the ensemble described above, set off by a purple paisley handkerchief.

Harmony is broad, but you can still get it wrong. I find it hard to picture a yellow handkerchief working well with our example, for example, and orange would be horrible. But then, you would never have worn orange in any other part of that ensemble either.

Spectrum-Spanning Combinations

At a certain point, dressing with a fondness and knowledge of traditional men’s clothing can become staid. I have referred to this previously as the point at which style becomes costume. The instant you start wearing a bowtie with your tweed jacket and flannels. The moment when you add a tie pin to your three-piece, double-breasted suit. At this point you are merely aping the dress of a certain period, and dressing up for pantomime.

The traditional must be balanced with the quirky, the modern and, most importantly, the personal. Wear beaten-up converse under your flannels. Add a lurid handkerchief to your suit’s breast pocket. The true enthusiast of style is constantly striving to update these traditions and add a twist. This does not mean having a buttonhole stitched in a contrast colour, or going for a bright jacket lining, a la Paul Smith. It has to be your own. It has to be personal.

Here are a couple of recent inspirations of my own. They both balance ties, either necktie or bowtie, with more casual pieces of clothing. As the tie is towards the formal extreme of a formality spectrum, it should be balanced with something from towards the other end of the spectrum, the informal.

Two provisos. One, this assumes that the look you want is somewhere in between: a weekend or casual Friday look with a formal edge to it. Two, these suggestions are obviously not that personal, given that I am suggesting them to you. But they’re perhaps a good place to start.

My first combination comprises Oxford button-down shirt, bowtie, jeans and hooded sweatshirt. I have no opinion on the shoes – perhaps brogues or trainers, depending on your mood. In fact, the shoes are probably the tipping point of formality: formal with an informal twist, or the other way around. The bowtie at one end of the spectrum is balanced by the hoodie at the other end. The Oxford-weave shirt, similarly, makes an effective background to the bowtie.

The second combination is another version of the same idea. Necktie with Windsor-collar shirt, jeans and rugby shirt. In this instance, the necktie is balanced by the rugby shirt. The tie should be a casual fabric if possible – cotton, linen, wool. Something matte. The rugby shirt is something of a British institution but is also fairly widely available in the US. An equivalent is the long-sleeved version of the polo shirt.

Preppy combinations, perhaps. But pulling them off well, personally, is your job.

The Undone Tie

A loose tie knot is much derided by style aficionados and those of a traditional bent to menswear. But it can work well. As with all these style quirks, it depends on using traditions of menswear as a weapon, understanding them and then subverting them.

The dark suit, white shirt and dark tie is often used as an archetypal ‘cool’ outfit worn by movie stars and rock stars. While it becomes very formulaic if everyone wears it, and plain dull if it is the only thing to appear on a red carpet, it is striking. The stark lack of colour and high-contrast silhouette suggest aggression, while a loose black tie gives the impression of laid-back nonchalance. Danger and indifference – two time-worn elements of cool.

However, a loose tie only works when it is contained. The image included in this post, of two men posing for a shot on The Sartorialist, shows how a loose tie knot can work well. It is a world apart from the portly gentleman with jacket unbuttoned, letting a wide, loose tie flap around on his gut. That undermines every flattering and stylish aspect of a tie.

To wear a loose tie well, you should bear in mind width, colour and boundaries. The tie should be narrow if possible, as shown on this gentleman in the Sartorialist photo. A loose tie knot risks dragging the whole silhouette of a man southwards, as the wide bottom loses the harmonious balance it holds with the taut knot at the neck. Suddenly both ends of the tie are pointing downwards. A narrow tie avoids this problem by removing the breadth of the tie at its bottom end. You have a vertical line rather than a downward-pointing arrow.

The tie should also be dark if possible, or plain at the least. This is because the tie is there to draw attraction to its louche silhouette, not to its pattern or colour. The outfit is about line and contrast, not tonal harmonisation.

But the most important aspect of wearing a loose tie well is boundaries. A loose tie looks bad when it flops, flaps and ruins silhouette. If the jacket (or waistcoat) is buttoned, that tie is contained and will not flap or flop. Equally, a collar that suggests it is containing the tie works well. You will notice that in the picture the gentleman both has his jacket buttoned and wears a button-down collar. That combination makes the tie an effective part of the whole rather than a distraction.

It kind of looks cool as well.