Interesting Facts on Loafers!

Well, I found them interesting. Largely because no one had ever told me them before. You probably know them already. Here goes.

Loafers are for people who loaf. And you’ll never guess who people that loaf are. They’re Norwegian farmers off to see their cows. You see, the cattle loafing area is the place on a farm where the cows are taken to be milked. And Norwegian farmers used a certain, convenient slip-on shoe to get out to this loafing area. Hence it’s called a loafer.

The shoe was launched by the announcement of this discovery in a 1932 story in Esquire magazine. (Yes, Esquire used to be a superlative style magazine. Bible even. Then it was relaunched in the 1980s as an all-things-to-all-men magazine, also known as a no-things-to-all-men magazine. Oh well. Bring back Esquire/Apparel Arts, that’s what I say.)

That Norwegian shoe must have been different to the slip-ons we see today. Only the very rich or eccentric would go out to milk his cows in his Gucci loafers with classic riding bit. Think of the mud. But the idea was there – the design built of necessity, a simple shoe that could be popped on for a brief job outside, and removed with ease when you returned to the house.

Similar, in a way, to the reason so many more people wear loafers for flying these days. It’s much quicker to check you’re not a shoe bomber.

This brings us on to my second exciting fact. The loafer is often referred to in the US as a Weejun because it sounds like the last two syllables of Norwegian. Perhaps you knew that already, but I didn’t. Imagine how satisfying the mental connection was. So instant; so obvious.

It turns out that just two years after the Esquire story, in 1934, John R Bass, Maine shoemaker of repute, introduced a loafer with a bar bridge across it, and christened it the Weejun to sound like Norwegian. The bar bridge was supposedly shaped like Mr Bass’s wife’s lips. It was as if Mrs Alice Bass were kissing the feet of her husband as he left the house every day.

Last but certainly not least, when the Bass Weejun became popular on US campuses in the 1950s it was occasionally used by students to carry a penny or a dime, in the event of an emergency phone call. Hence the penny loafer. Any or all of these facts may be erroneous, mythical or just plain made up (would the penny fall out if you ran anywhere?). But they are satisfying – a stylistic, philological and cultural history rolled into one.

As mentioned in a previous debate on slip-on shoes (Reader’s question: The deck shoe) I prefer the more elegant, less chunky slip-on. This season, Paul Smith’s dark green or red “Marcello” loafers are worth a look. Let’s face it, you probably don’t have any red or green slip-ons already.

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Reader Question: Odd Waistcoats

Arctin Pengiun: Do you feel that a vest patterned to match slack or the rest of a suit is too much and that a vest should always contrast the rest of the outfit? Does this fit into your definition of ‘costume’? I am curious about your thoughts.

Tintin: I’m wearing [a waistcoat] now. Lilac with mother mother-of-pearl buttons. The DB vest is sooo British. I’m afraid I’ll be shot for wearing this vest much less a DB.

There appeared to be a slight miscommunication regarding my previous posting on double-breasted waistcoats. I have to confess that the illustration I provided was probably at fault: while I was discussing waistcoats that are part of a three-piece suit, and therefore match both the jacket and trousers, the illustration showed an odd (i.e. non-matching) buff waistcoat.

The illustration was too lovely not to include, but it obviously led some to the wrong conclusions.

All my recommendations in that previous post, and indeed all others relating to The Waistcoat Theory, refer to the third piece of a three-piece suit. This third element is, I maintain, elegant and intensely practical today. When most men in the office don’t wear a jacket, the waistcoat keeps their tie prim and their silhouette long.

Odd waistcoats are hard to wear well unless one is at a formal event. For formal daywear, buff (yellow) and a variety of other pale colours have long been worn to enliven an otherwise grey ensemble. The best days to see such an outfit in days gone by were a church occasion, such as Easter. Today, they are only really seen at weddings and horse racing. On these occasions they can look great, though personally I still prefer a pale-grey three piece. Subtle style wins every time.

And this is the dominant problem with the odd waistcoat. Tintin’s lilac waistcoat sounds lovely, but I find myself hard pressed to think when I would wear it. Certainly never for work, and it seems an odd item to wear casually – a dressier piece of clothing for a less dressy situation. Much of this is personal taste, though, and the wider varieties of casual wear are beyond the scope of this blog.

To answer Mr Penguin’s question, no, I believe the waistcoat should nearly always match the rest of the suit you are wearing.

If you are to wear an odd waistcoat with a suit the two rules to bear in mind are: keep your jacket on whenever you can; and keep the waistcoat dark and plain.

Think of the odd waistcoat in the same way as a sweater. A V-necked sweater underneath a suit can look very stylish. A forest green with a mid-grey suit, for instance, or a dark purple with navy (one of my favourite ever Sartorialist shots featured a purple jumper under a navy blazer. Scott commented that it was looks like that that inspire him in menswear. I couldn’t agree more.)

However, that sweater looks good when it is dark and plain, and when it is peeping out from under the jacket. Without the jacket, the outfit is just a sweater and slacks – the style has gone. Suddenly the sweater is the outfit, rather than being an accent.

So for odd waistcoats, think plain complements. For example, I have a dark-grey three-piece suit. The waistcoat looks good under a lighter grey check suit. I also have a tan herringbone waistcoat that I think works well with a dark brown suit.

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How to Buy Luxury: Notebooks

Those familiar with my How to Buy Luxury series will remember that I have a few straightforward guidelines for buying luxury effectively. (Here luxury will be defined as whatever is just beyond the top end of your budget – go on, be a little irresponsible!) Those guidelines are: buy quality, buy classic and buy everyday.

Taking them in reverse order, whenever a man is considering spending a lot of money on an item he should consider how often he will use the item, how likely he is to go off it and how much it will repay the investment over time.

It’s worth buying a really expensive pair of brown leather shoes if you will wear them both casually and formally, if they are a simple, classic design unlikely to be affected by the vagaries of fashion, and if looking after them will make them last years and years.

For a man, this is most satisfying because it makes you feel you’ve got value for money. Not for you the seasonal fripperies of the new hot handbag. You invest; you spend your money wisely.

My most recent acquisition in this category was a good leather notebook. Now, in order to fulfil the luxury tests, this had to be a notebook that could be refilled. Otherwise it was unlikely to last more than a few months. It also had to be a notebook that I would use at work and at home, to ensure I would get maximum use out of it. So it had to be a little conservative, suitable for business.

Not many places do luxury stationary, and most do not offer refillable notebooks. The real top end is ludicrously expensive – Smythson, for example, has some really gorgeous writing folders in chocolate crocodile skin (sounds tasty, doesn’t it?). But they start at £280. That’s a little too irresponsible.

Eventually I found the solution: the Hermes Ulysse notebook. Hermes was not one of my first ports of call. I assumed most would be in the Smythson price range, and indeed the agenda covers start at £195 and go up above £400. But Ulysse notebooks are cheaper because they are simpler – just one length of leather that the refills snap onto. Full price is £125. In the summer sale, £85.

That’s still a lot for a notebook. But it is something I will use everyday at work, every weekend at home and for notes when I am travelling. Indeed, the advantage of the snap-in refills is that you can easily swap around different pads of paper for different uses. It will be blank when I’m travelling, for sketching as well as writing, and lined for notes at work.

Great quality, classic (dark brown, not the green illustrated) and everyday. The pleasure it will give being taken out in meeting after meeting will quickly make it value for money. Just like the fountain pen, just like the briefcase it sits in. That’s how to buy luxury.

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On Double-Breasted Waistcoats

It’s always nice when fashion coincides with personal taste. Makes you feel like the whole world is coming around to your way of thinking. Waistcoats are current example.

Patterned waistcoats are an abomination, unless you’re going to the races. And even then you’d be better off in smart three-piece tails. (Perhaps in pale grey, to set oneself apart.)

Waistcoats, equally, need to fit well. If your trousers are worn on the hips, as most are today, the waistcoat must be long-fitting. No shirt material should ever be exposed between waistcoat and trousers. For that reason and because of the unsightly bulge, belts should also be avoided.

Lastly, waistcoats should if possible be made to measure. They are the hardest piece of clothing for a tailor to make and ready-to-wear will rarely fit well. To illustrate: I recently had a suit made by my tailor in Hong Kong, the first I have had from him without a fitting out there first. I was pleased with the result, but he refused to make a waistcoat in this way, remotely, without being able to see it on me and adjust it accordingly. Good for him and his principles. He’ll have to wait until I am out there in November to make the third piece in the three piece.

That waistcoat will be double-breasted. And this is the central point of this posting. Double-breasted waistcoats are not just for weddings, white tie or the whimsical. They are a regular alternative in the three-piece suit, and to my eye always look cleaner and smarter. The long row of buttons up the front of a single-breasted waistcoat can look rather bulky, and lead to a rather high, 1960s-style fastening.

The double-breasted waistcoat, by contrast, has a low, sweeping line that creates a clean V behind the jacket front. There is no cluttering of buttons.

Even though the height of a waistcoat should be no more than an inch (probably a single button) above the top button of the jacket, the prevalence of three-button jackets means that in reality two or three will be exposed – as usually only the jacket’s central, waist button will be fastened.

One or two-button jackets will permit waistcoats with deeper Vs and therefore fewer buttons, but the ratio between jacket and waistcoat buttons is likely to be even more disproportionate (one to three, say, rather than three to five).

Colour and material, of course, are paramount. A double-breasted waistcoat is unusual and should be done in plain (usual) tones and wools. I’d recommend dark grey worsted, navy being a little dressier.

Given the recommendations of The Waistcoat Theory, there is a good chance this waistcoat will end up being worn without its jacket, which is all the more reason why it should be able to shine on its own. And we wouldn’t want to be too fashionable, would we?

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Report from Moscow

Moscow is the most capitalist city in the world. Ironic, but true. The only thing that reminds one of communist times is the metro system, all monumental marble and statues of Chekhov. The rest of the city is a grubby struggle for money, from chic bars to rising crime.

The first thing that strikes the potential shopper in Moscow (as I was last week, there on a three-day business trip) is the Russia premium. Most designer brands in Moscow, St Petersburg and elsewhere add somewhere between 20% and 40% on top of their prices for the Russian market. An Etro suit that costs £600 in London, for example, was priced in Moscow at the equivalent of £780.

It used to be said that a similar premium operated in Tokyo, but that was before a decade of stagflation took some of the oomph out of the retail market. Luxury is still big business in Japan (as evidence by Dunhill’s new flagship store that is part shop, part bar), but it is luxury that everyone aspires to, no matter what their income, and luxury that has adapted itself to a very changed retail market.

Russia is more like Dubai. Although there is nothing like the same premium in the UAE, the shoppers on offer are similarly bifurcated: the only people that go into Moscow’s shopping malls are the ones with lots of money. They don’t use the metro and they don’t carry their own bags. So luxury brands can charge them a premium. They are not cost-conscious shoppers.

There are advantages to be a luxury target. Yes, you pay more, but the shops are bigger and better. The main Etro store, for example, had the only full home furnishings section I have ever seen. You don’t get paisley tea cups and leather-bound photo albums in Milan or Florence. Brands will always prioritise towards people who pay little attention to the price tag.

So despite a few pleasant hours exploring the shops (and a heart-stopping moment when I saw a pair of Artioli shoes for 1000 roubles, only to find out the price was actually in euros) I didn’t end up buying anything. Probably a first for a business trip.

The less said about what most Russians actually wear the better. So to be brief: the ordinary working man strolls out in a 1980s BHS catalogue; the rich oligarch prefers the flashiest white suits he can find. And the less his girlfriend is wearing, the better. Oh dear.

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