The Berluti Shoelace Knot

Last October, I was wondering around the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai. An absurdly largely shopping centre that contains its own Italian street and indoor ski slope, it has the best shopping in the Middle East. (Or did. So many of these things are going up everyday in the UAE that it has probably been overtaken by now).

Alongside the usual fashion brands, it had an Etro, a Carolina Herrera and a Berluti. I was impressed. As I walked into the Berluti branch, preparing to umm and err over a particularly beautiful pair of loafers, before inevitably walking out empty-handed, I saw that the sales assistant had his head in his hands.

Three Americans, in loud shorts, were complaining, almost shouting, about the prices.

“How the hell can these be three times the price of the Gucci and Prada shoes?” they asked. The assistant tried to explain that Prada, and to an extent Gucci, are not shoe companies. That their shoes are made by other people. And that some of them are, well, a bit rubbish. All that’s branded is not gold.

They refused to believe this. Instead, they enquired when the sales started. Berluti doesn’t have sales, the assistant replied. This was the last straw, and they stomped out (even though the oldest American, who was wearing some fairly funky tortoiseshell glasses, was staring wistfully at a pair of Club wholecuts in chocolate (see picture)).

There followed a rather pained conversation between me and the assistant, where he complained that he gets this everyday. Most shoppers in the Middle East, it seems, whether local or tourist, are after brand more than anything else.

I soothed him with some ooing and aahing over the loafers. But before I started with the umming and the erring, he taught me the Berluti shoelace knot. I’m glad he did, as I now tie my shoelaces like this everyday, unless I’m in a real hurry.

It’s simple, but effective, and I shall explain to you how to do it.

Start the knot as you would do a normal bow, crossing the two laces tightly (you can even cross them twice if you wish, which keeps them in place more effectively – I was taught that by a sales assistant in John Lewis in Kingston, when I was 12).

Form the two ends into loops, again as you would a normal bow. Then hold one of the loops while you go around it – twice – with the other. This is exactly the same as a normal bow, except that you go over the same place twice.

It achieves the effect of a double bow (where you tie the two loops and then tie them again, rather than going over the same place twice) but is far easier to undo.

Now, I’m not sure whether Berluti can be credited with inventing this knot. I’m sure I’ve seen it too many places for that to be the case. But it does work well, so there’s no harm in allowing them to christen it. Besides, it gives me a reason to make a star out of that poor sales assistant.

[For pictorial assistance, first look at the picture, which uses the Berluti knot. Then try this link - http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/surgeonknot.htm - which I believe refers to the Berluti knot as the surgeon’s knot]

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New York Men Shine in the Sun

New York puts London in the shade. The hot weather (it’s been above 30 Celsius all this week) brings out the city’s hidden peacocks.

Walking down Fifth Avenue this morning, almost every block presented a summer delight. Several seersucker suits, a plethora of summer hats, sockless suits with loafers, white linen and white bucks.

You just don’t see that in London. Granted, the consistency of the weather here makes summer clothing a better investment – a sunny day is actually sunny all day, rather than being half cloud in the morning, patchy at midday and just overcast in the afternoon. But I would bet good money that these impeccable gentlemen own four or five summer suits, and their peers in the UK own none. Such a shame.

Some would say that the Americans are not dressed well, in one regard. No matter how well tailored the outfit, or daring the cloth, every one of those summer suits had pleated trousers and no jacket waist to speak of. So while they were striking, I would argue they weren’t very flattering.

The trousers also had cuffs (or turn-ups) which, while I know many people are a fan of, create a very cluttered picture in my eyes. Given that the gentlemen I saw were wearing trousers that were wide, decorated with pleats, worn with a belt, and few of them wear slim, the last thing they needed was another bit of texture to break up the line of the outfit. All the slimming, heightening effects of the suit were removed. (I know cuffs are also meant to help pleats stay straight, but doesn’t tape add just as much weight?)

So the cut was not to my taste. This is the difference between silhouette and fit – something I stressed in a previous posting. The fit was immaculate, but the way they had chosen it to fit (the silhouette, the proportions) were, in my eyes, questionable.

But this is obviously a personal choice. I have to admit that what they did, they did well. In fact, I think many Americans get a bad press in the UK. Too many of them wear chinos that are too wide. Almost a third of them seem to be wearing the same outfit, which pairs these chinos with a shirt (or polo) and deck shoes. [I had the surreal experience yesterday of being in a list with four Goldman Sachs employees, who were all wearing blue button-down shirts, brown belts, chinos and brown deck shoes. It was freaky.] Finally, some Americans wear their chinos with trainers, which is just ugly.

Yet there are none of the classic English howlers – no suit jackets with t-shirts, no shiny tracksuits, no voluminous untucked dress shirts. The rules seem to have stronger roots in New York. Yes, the outfits can be boring (if a third were wearing the deck shoes outfit, about a quarter were wearing blue blazers) but the belts generally matched the shoes, the shirts were generally tucked in, and no one had a matching tie and pocket handkerchief.

So here’s to New York men, for their peacocks and their consistency. Without them English style wouldn’t have got far.

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A Gem in New York: Leffot

For such a large (and stylish) city, New York is curiously devoid of good men’s shoe shops. Most of the well-known European brands have outlets here - Berluti, JM Weston, Church’s - but there is little variation outside of that. Unlike London, there is no proliferation of great, local shops (Cleverley, Foster & Son). Even Paris, historically the second string to London for menswear, has some wonderful shoemakers such as Aubercy that do not sell anywhere else.

In New York, variation is limited to the high-end department stores. Their lines vary, stopping and starting with little warning (example: Lidfort at Barney’s). And they’re all up town.

For all these reasons, Leffot (pronounced le-fot) is a breath of fresh air. Located on Christopher Street in the west Village, it has only been running for a month. But the stock is impressive. It carries Aubercy (previously only available in Paris), Gaziano & Girling (only Hawaii in the US), Corthay (only Bergdorf Goodman in NY), Artioli (Baldini and Saks in NY), Edward Green (only relabeled at Ralph Lauren) and the more widely available Church’s and JM Weston.

With five to seven styles in each, the range is not vast. Such is the limited volume of some of these lines that as soon as one line sells out, it takes five months to order more in. One Gaziano & Girling order was delayed because the man who did the hand-stitching on one type of shoe was ill, putting back the delivery time by two weeks. But the range is well chosen - I dare anyone to contend there isn’t something for them, from the chunky, storm welted, double-soled Church’s to the ultra-slim and pointy Artiolis.

Being downtown enables Leffot to carry a more eclectic range of shoes styles and colours. Apparently JM Weston’s best-selling colour uptown is black, despite the tans, reds and even greens on offer. Downtown, black sits in dowdy last place. In fact, Steven Taffel, the personable and welcoming owner of Leffot, tells of one man and his wife who wandered in looking for inspiration. Despite being a conservative, office-bound gentleman, he ended up buying the more extreme pointed Artiolis, as “he already had black oxfords and wore them all week. He wanted something different, something exciting.”

It’s certainly hard not to be excited by the Corthay two-tone shoes in tan calf and brown suede, or the tapered, beveled waist of the Gaziano & Girling shoes. A favourite of The Sartorialist as well, it’s hard not to see this store succeeding. But just to be on the safe side, let’s troop down there and support a start-up company.

P.S. If it’s still there when you go, have a look at the copy of Japanese magazine Last that’s on display. It has step-by-step instructions on how to re-heel your shoes, demonstrates the value of polishing a shoe with champagne, and still has room for better photo shoots than you’ll find in any UK or US magazine. They need to launch an international (read English) version. Now.

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Windows on a Designer’s Mind

Window dressing performs a very different function in men’s and women’s clothing stores. In a women’s shop, its primary purpose is to showcase items that the store contains. It seeks to shows that its pieces are attractive and possibly unique.

This is not the purpose of a display in a men’s store. While there may be one or two items that attract you for their originality, the pieces will generally be too similar to those on offer in other stores to stand out entirely. Rather, it is there to display the creative intelligence of the men who designed the clothes and the brand.

The clothes are being bought for their cloth and their cut; for the subtle things that make one blue blazer infinitely preferable to another. The fact that the clothes inside excel in these areas is best displayed through the colour and texture combinations in the window. It is this that should take you inside.

Inditex, the Spanish group that owns Massimo Dutti, Zara, Pull & Bear and others, understands this all to well. No matter what the quality of Zara clothes may be, the central planners at Inditex HQ make sure that you are lured inside by the combinations, even if they are a pretty stark variation on black suits, white shirts and skinny ties.

Massimo Dutti is even better. Consciously aiming for an older audience, its Mediterranean colours and linen combinations in the summer are almost inspiring. I’ve often felt forced to record some particular detail (green silk with a tan linen suit, a purple handkerchief with a blue blazer) that I would otherwise forget and never remember to use myself.

Ralph Lauren is of course a past master at this, and staff often refer to the detailed descriptions they are given of how to dress mannequins, both inside and outside the store. (It’s all about the pop colout!) By contrast, Armani windows are often startlingly bland. They persist in using almost two-dimensional mannequins, which the suits hang off rather than drape. Anyone who has been forced to put a suit jacket on a wire hanger will be able to imagine the unflattering effect.

Armani mannequins also seem to be uniformly grey, no matter what the season. And as with many other bad window dressers, they consider it needless to keep ties done up, let alone taut.

But let’s concentrate on the good dressers. Hackett is often very good, and this season features ingenious combinations of Safari-themed outfits – a buff, linen, double-breasted waistcoat with a grey suit, for example. In New York, Bergdorf Goodman rarely puts a foot wrong, and it’s worth the trip uptown just to browse the windows. Doriani is also very good – as the double-breasted blazer opposite demonstrates.

In fact, this picture is a perfect example. All the items are plain, basic, classic. But the combination is exciting. It’s not that unusual; you may have seen something similar before, or feel you should have done. But the beautiful sculpture of it ushers you inside, convinced that everything the store sells will be of the best cloth and cut. It is creative intelligence on display.

P.S. Plaudits also for Domenico Vacca in New York, which seems to accentuate the beauty of already lovely shoes by tucking a different coloured sock or tie inside each. How the accent of lime-green sock brings out a chestnut oxford I don’t know, but it works.

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Balancing the Dandified and the Formal

Much of what a man considers appropriate or pleasant to wear is dependent on his circumstances and taste. But there are still rules or guidelines that can govern what he should wear. The key is to formulate a rule that includes the individual’s taste and circumstances into the equation – as a variable that is different for each man, if you will.

The best such rule is: A man should be as formal as the occasion requires, and as dandified as it allows.

This is a simple rule but more useful than one might think. It urges you to first consider what formality your day requires, and therefore ensures you never look out of place or overdressed. And then it suggests you consider what dandification (read flamboyance, peculiarities, sartorial quirks) it can bear, ensuring you are never bored by your outfit nor miss an opportunity to experiment.

It also, perhaps obviously, varies for any man in any context. If you feel that your age, seniority in the workplace or reputation affect how much dandification your day allows, this will become part of the equation.

Dandification itself is best considered to revere tradition, yet contain a persistent air of risk. To quote Nicholas Antongiavanni: “While often unusual, the dandified always follows the classic rules of dress, or else is based on a judicious breaking of those rules. It is never costume – not spats and ascots, but waistcoats and handkerchiefs. Yet there is always some risk in wearing what is dandified, unless you have so much reputation that a certain eccentricity, even extravagance, is taken to be your due.”

So how much risk does the occasion allow? That is another way to read the second half of this rule.

Another observation on dandification worth making is that, unlike formality, it is not reinforced by the presence of similar items. While there is some balance to be achieved in having, say, a slightly unusual belt in order to draw attention from rather unique shoes, most of the time striking garments achieve their greatest effect in subdued surroundings.

As hinted at in a previous posting on this site, Jeeves and Bertie Wooster are a good model for this formal/dandified balance. While much of what Bertie favours is over the top, you wouldn’t want to look like Jeeves all the time if you could help it. Despite Jeeves obviously being constrained by the proper uniform of a valet (a gentleman’s gentleman, as Jeeves would say), it seems unlikely that he breaks out in yellow checks and bright knitted ties when off duty.

“Therefore, a man cannot follow the predilections of Jeeves, lest he end up looking like an undertaker, nor can he in all things imitate Wooster without coming off like a riverboat gambler” (Antongiavanni). The same rule, in different words.

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