What’s A Nice Shoe Like You Doing In A Sale Like This

Trawling through the sales at department stores such as Selfridges and Harrods is no happy experience. Harrods is generally unbearable even out-of-season but smack bang in the middle of the January sales it is a tortuous whirligig that manages to make me feel physically ill. If you sell ‘all things for all people’ then you should certainly expect the latter when you offer the former for a greatly reduced price; expect them to push, expect them to shove, trample and snatch.

As much preparation time as they are afforded (virtually the entire calendar year) it is remarkable how consistently chaotic and zoo-like such establishments become in the weeks after Christmas. What is even more incredible is that the stock which, at any other time, is treated by staff with a reverence and protection causing customers to wonder whether they have stumbled into a museum by mistake, is suddenly no longer worthy of the ‘touché-pas’ pedestals; magnificently overpriced baubles, bags and beads, no longer behind glass, are left to the mercy of bargain-thirsty shoppers who rifle through stock piles and scarf bins like primates dismantling an automobile.

It was amongst this mess that I found some of the most splendid examples of footwear I have ever seen. It was an uncanny setting; dumped alongside some of the most vulgar (D&G flipflops) and absurd (Dior trainers) aberrations of shoemaking, they shone with a peculiar quality that set them apart from all other examples. They reminded me of the bespoke examples that sat in the window of Foster & Son or Cleverley with a patina to the leather reminiscent of antique furniture and a shape, classic yet contemporary, that distinguished them from the winkle-pickers and square toes that surrounded them.

The style of the shoes, though slightly fantastical (imagine Tim Burton conjuring a film about a cobbler) is beautiful to behold; the only thing that prevented me from purchasing a pair was the still-prohibitive sale price of £550 (reduced from £800). A pair of the green (yes, green) crocodile shoes, originally £5,000, were reduced to £3,500.

The Stefano and Mario Limited Edition Line is produced by the well known Italian shoe company, Stemar. It would be a disservice to say they are ‘manufactured.’ Manufacture is a cheap and greasy term that invokes a sense of scale and the Stefano and Mario collection, with only 100 pairs of each style produced each season, can hardly be considered an operation of ‘scale.’ According to Stemar it takes approximately 4 weeks to produce an “unfinished shoe” – “15 days during which the shoe must remain in the last, and at least a couple of days for finishing and polishing.”

And indeed, it is the finishing and polishing that distinguishes these shoes; “painted” Stemar say “like works of art.” Firstly, the skin is massaged with cream and a soft cloth. This is followed by days of patient polishing – a technique corroborated by a gentleman at Cleverley who informed me that the ‘old furniture’ look is about using different tones of polish and takes “a very, very long time” – and then the shoes are ironed by hand and naturally waxed to give them a deep shine. The result, as Stemar states, is a “superb pair of shoes” with deep coloured veins “…intense, artistic, just like an oil painting: hues of chestnut, brandy, walnut, hot orange, forest green and mocha.”

Besides being available at Harrods and Selfridges, they are also offered for sale in Milan, Florence and Rome, Paris, Montreux, Istanbul, New York, San Francisco, Enschede and Laren (Holland) and, interestingly, in Lagos, Nigeria, Tomsk in Russia and, perhaps appropriately, a store in Kiev called ‘Rich Boutique.’

Book Review: Sharp Suits

Written by veteran menswear journalist Eric Musgrave and featuring a brief but personal foreword from the beau of Savile Row, Richard James, Sharp Suits is a collection of eight separate essays on the suit; each housing a good number of well curated photos illustrating the different guises the man’s suit has taken over the years.

The essays (more like categories, really) include the double‐breasted and single-breasted suit as well as suits from various geographies (US, France, Italy) and a section on the suit in film. The reason I purchased this book, however, was for its image catalogue and I am pleased to report that I was pleasantly surprised by the variety, quality, and quantity of images within this book.

Images occupy about 60‐65% of the book’s pages and are printed on high‐quality paper in high resolution with fantastic colour reproduction. A good variety of styles and periods are represented with examples ranging from Edward VII’s lounge suit in 1864 to Daniel Craig’s Tom Ford suit in Quantum of Solace 144 years on. Apparently, many of the images were sourced from the archives of the Woolmark company whose image database can be accessed without cost or registration here: http://www.vads.ac.uk/collections/LCFWOOL.html.

Whilst the majority of the photos are good some are truly remarkable. The greyscale photo of lanky Spanish nobleman, Don Jaime de Mesia Figueroa, in an elegant eightbuttoned double‐breasted suit in the late 60s as well as a portrait of an immaculately attired – and young! – Valentino Garavani are good examples thereof. Many of the photos will be new to the reader which is another boon whilst the captions are succinct and unfailingly helpful in drawing the reader’s eye to certain points of interest.

However, despite the generally pleasing choice of photos, there are some omissions and bones of contention. Despite having an entire section dedicated to Italian suits, the accompanying image catalogue felt decidedly lightweight and didn’t do justice to the region’s renowned contributions to menswear: I was astounded not to find a single photo of Gianni Agnelli – the quintessence of the stylish Italian – for example. It is quite understandable that space is limited and not all tastes may be sated but to forgo someone whose style is, even now, so widely appreciated to include gimmicky images of gauchely attired popstars or sportstars – P Diddy and Christiano Ronaldo being cases in point – seems an unhappy decision and one that jars with the otherwise elegant choice of photos.

The text accompanying the images is well‐written and a nice aside. It does good job of sketching a general history of the topic, starting from basics without seeming boring, contrived or patronizing. The style is journalistic rather than academic and one detects a slight overreliance on certain sources e.g. Hardy Amies but, in general, the text reads very well and Musgrave does a good job of engaging the reader by punctuating description with personal anecdotes such as the commissioning of his first ever ‘bespoke’ suit at Burtons; a pleasant digression which helps convey the personal touch in a book that was clearly a labour of love.

Overall this is an excellent book, written by an author who is unquestionably passionate and knowledgeable about the topic. The text is decent and the image catalogue superb. Well presented in hardback form this book represents superb value at under Ł12 including delivery from Amazon and would be an excellent addition to anyone’s bookshelves.

Buying Buttons For Bespoke

Buttons are a subtle way to add personality to a suit, odd jacket or even overcoat. But it pays to keep them subtle.

It’s easy enough to sew on a suit button, though I recommend experimenting with something inexpensive first. Just make sure you secure the thread firmly – I normally sew twice in one direction on the same spot, then once at a right angle – and leave some slack so you can create a decent stalk. And tip the button to one side to pierce the cloth underneath without going all the way through. (The only time you really need to go right through is with the jigger button on a double-breasted, or with very heavy materials.)

The first time I sewed on my own buttons was with a navy overcoat from Hackett a couple of years ago. While I liked the cut and the herringbone cloth from Loro Piana, it needed something to give it character. So I replaced the navy buttons with cream horn ones – plenty of texture, lots of punch for the coat.

Now I am having more things made bespoke, I am selecting buttons rather than replacing them. With my past two suits and overcoat from Graham Browne, I have gone with plain navy or brown horn from the stock selection. With the latest commission (the ‘fishy’ suit) I decided to source my own.

For this I went to the excellent Duttons for Buttons in York, where I had also bought the cream ones for my Hackett overcoat. I am up there every couple of months visiting my in-laws so it is pretty convenient, and the selection is impressive.

The suit is a smart, single-button navy with jetted pockets and high-waisted trousers. The buttons therefore had to be smart as well without being showy. And as I needed two precise sizes for the waist button and the cuffs (30 and 24 line, or 15 and 19 millimetres in diameter) the choice came down to about eight or nine sets.

After a good hour of indecision, I went with black iridescent buttons that looked rather like dark mother-of-pearl. That was a mistake. Over Christmas I tried the buttons against several navy suits and decided they were too shiny, too silvery and too like blazer buttons in natural light.

So on December 28th, when Duttons opened again after Christmas, I went back and spent another 30 minutes examining dark, matte buttons, eventually picking some made from Mussel shells (pictured above). They are deeper and less shiny than my first choice, but actually have more surface interest and subtle variation between them.

So my (probably rather obvious) lessons from this experience are:

- Go for natural materials, shell or horn, where you can. Manmade textures are rarely as attractive and they’ll last better.

- Take the cloth or jacket with you. I thought I could picture the buttons easily against it in my head. I couldn’t.

- Be subtle, particularly on a suit. Or, as an alternative guideline, be as subtle as the item and its pattern. Overcoats and sports jackets, checks and tweeds can take more adventurous buttons.

Sebastian & Jules Cufflinks

I spend most of my working day sitting at a desk, typing. The comfort of shirts and size of armholes are therefore important. But I also need silent cufflinks.

Most of the time I wear French (or double) cuffs on my shirts, so they need to be fastened with something. That used to be variations on bar or chain cufflinks, always metal and usually quite loose. They clinked against the desktop. Even with a jacket on, they would often peek beyond the sleeve and clink.

So I switched to silk knots. Easy, cheap and available in an array of colours, they allowed me to experiment with colour combinations and clashes. Add cufflinks to tie, handkerchief, socks and shirt and the permutations are dizzying. Most importantly, they didn’t clink.

I do own three pairs of metal cufflinks. One, in silver, was given to me by friends on my 21st birthday. A second in mother-of-pearl was an engagement present. And the third pair, from Etro, has an unusually short bar and so does not clink.

But I occasionally get bored of silk knots and occasional metal links, usually worn on special occasions.

So I was glad to receive a birthday present this year from my friend Katherine: an unusual pair of homemade cufflinks. Essentially two buttons joined with silk thread, they look like oversize shirt buttons when worn on the cuff; but they’re more decorative than knots and if anything offer even more colour combinations. And of course, they don’t clink.

The company is called Sebastian & Jules and can be found at sebastianandjules.co.uk. Katherine makes the cufflinks (and rather nifty iPhone cases from tweeds and worsted suitings) in her spare time. It’s a cottage industry; except that she lives in a flat in East Dulwich.

I have the paint-fleck effect shell ones on page two of the site, the ones joined by hot fuschia silk. They look particularly effective on a white shirt under a navy suit. I also hanker after the pine and tortoiseshell.

I have a growing fascination with buttons (expect a piece soon on using mussel-shell buttons for my fishy suit), so these links are very much on-trend. I also think £15 is pretty reasonable for unique items that were entirely and painstakingly made by hand.

Nice to support a (for me, very) local producer.

The Little Book Of Ties

What is meant by the hand of a tie? What was a Macaroni? What are Macclesfield and Madder? From when does paisley date? What are the 5 ways to check the quality of a tie? What weights of silk should be used in tie making? What differentiates handmade ties from machine made?

I love knowing things. To paraphrase Shakespeare, I am a notorious snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. And the topics above are just a few of the things covered in ‘The Little Book of Ties’.

To be blunt, this book is not a page turner or ripping bedtime yarn. However, it’s useful and easy going enough that you don’t have to be Rain Man to work your way through it, or appreciate it.

It’s a solid little technical manual, which tells you all you need to know, with concise but thorough chapters and useful subject headings.  Packed with only the necessary it starts with the history of neckwear and explains the various incarnations along the road to the modern day. It explains patterns, motifs and their social and historical significance. You also get technical details from the construction of a quality tie to the various processes for weaving or printing patterns, as well as suitable materials for the differing seasons.  There are style tips, a few tie knots, and it considers the all important question of, how many ties should a man own?

Of course it’s far from the definitive work on the subject, and there are weightier tomes out there. But at just over 100 pages it isn’t taxing and most topics are dealt with in a few economical paragraphs. Additionally, for such an unprepossessing little tome, there are plenty of beautiful photographs in excellent detail.

In all, an extremely useful little book, and one worth having in your back pocket.

‘The Little Book of Ties’, by Francois Chaille, Flammarion 2001, Paperback £6.95 (Foyle’s)