Bright Trousers

One of my favourite pleasures of the summer, something that lasts all too short a time, is basking in the bountiful beauty of colour. The magnificent flowers and trees, the lush cool blue-green waters, brightly coloured exotic fruits that quench your thirst on a warm blue day; the summer can be a blinding plenitude of tone. It’s rather sad then that on my more blithesome days, I have not always been able to mirror the glory of nature in the summertime. I have been comparatively moderate. Nature has blasted through the kaleidoscope and I have remained relatively lifeless. What am I driving at? Simply that colour is needed at this time of year; and a good deal of it.

It’s difficult to wear a great acreage of colour and remain conservatively dressed. A pink or bright green suit sounds very natty and extremely daring but I find the overall effect of such loud ensembles rather disconcerting. A man dressed thus will push the concept of individual style to the very precipice; where the long fall into the flames of absurdity may be viewed. It may be possible to temper the strength of the suit with a far more conservative choice of shoe, shirt and tie but even then, the kiwi coloured man smacks of something zany; a caricature of something from Roald Dahl.

I believe the quenching solution to a thirst for colour lies with the unity of contrasting jacket and trouser; of the staid and the gaudy, the bright and the dull. Some might favour a brightly coloured jacket with trousers, perhaps a lemon yellow with some light grey trousers. The ‘bright jacket/dull trouser’ combination certainly works, but is it manageable and indeed affordable? The other option, the ‘bright trouser/dull jacket’ combination is certainly more popular and works magnificently well. Beautiful berry red trousers with a cool navy blue blazer; a dark brown linen two-button with pink chinos, or even a black double breasted jacket with some tangerine jeans, brightening up your legs is a fantastic way to embrace and reflect the glorious colour of the summer.

The difference between the jacket/trouser combinations is a matter of personal taste and budget. There will be those who look on their legs unfavourably; who would not dream of glorifying them in colour. I have had reservations about the bright trouser in the past, but it is largely a psychological problem that it is possible to overcome. The trousers are very eye-catching, but therein lies the charm.

The same can be said of the bright jacket. Although more expensive than trousers, and available in fewer colours and from fewer retailers, the richly coloured jacket will shock those virginal to its effect when they first enter the dressing room; a bright orange jacket I tried on recently, despite being of a fruity and gorgeously deep colour, overpowered me rather too much for me to accept it as a garment for my wardrobe. I feared that I do not have the stature nor the frame to compete.

However, I can envisage the same jacket looking dazzling on many men; and worn with a pair of navy cotton trousers, the bright/dull combination, the meeting of the fantastical with the mundane, would complete the perfect image for the summer.

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]

The Curse of Smart Casual

A few weeks ago, a reader posed what turned out to be a somewhat complicated question; “what do I wear,” he asked, “to a wedding where the dress code is “smart casual”?

In most cases, a wedding is one of those events that are fairly easy to dress for. In the summer, a well tailored poplin or linen suit should fit the bill. Depending on regional preferences, perhaps seersucker or, as was the case for my wedding, white ducks and a blue blazer. For formal events, a morning suit or white dinner jacket is best for daytime and of course a dark colored dinner jacket is always correct for an evening wedding. (Try midnight blue instead of black for some real style)

Personally, I have a rule when inviting others to an event of mine; either I tell my guests in detail what they should wear or I don’t tell them at all. Why, for an occasion as important as a wedding, would the host offer such an ambiguous sartorial instruction as “smart casual” – especially when doing so throws a wrench into an understood social convention? Why do otherwise reasonable people do such frustrating things?

My own theory is that we all want to be creative and different at important moments in our lives. We want to stand out from the pack and be recalled as creative. That’s all well and good, but it only works when everyone is included in the plan.

Several years ago some friend of ours decided to throw a surprise wedding – they wanted to be unconventional, so instead of wedding invitations they sent out invitations to an open house. They had just moved to a lovely mountainside location, so it made sense to those receiving the invitation. The problem was that we live on the other side of the country and flying out for an afternoon open house would have been expensive and difficult, so we declined. This couple was so intent on keeping the true event a surprise that they never let us know what we were really missing – not even a hint. It took a while to get over that one.

My point is that unless everyone is on the same page, you are putting an undue burden on your guests to figure out what’s going on. Had we known the truth, we would have been on the next plane. To a lesser extent, cryptic phrases like “smart casual,” “summer festive” or worse, “beachy fun” leave the wedding guest in a bind. To one person, smart casual may mean tailored chinos and polo shirt while to another it might be an elegant suit with no tie but a nice pocket square. And what the heck is beachy fun – should I wear swim trunks?

In this case my reader knew the groom’s personality and that his likely attire would be a suit and tie. The groom’s only additional direction was that he and his fiancé wanted people to be “comfortable.” Though intended to be helpful, this additional nugget of information only served to make things more confusing.

My approach to this unfortunately vague scenario is to go classically simple. A nice sport coat, open collared shirt, pressed trousers and polished shoes will get you through almost any situation. Blue blazers in particular earn their keep and, because of their inherent versatility, can handle dressy and casual scenarios with aplomb.

All in all, when faced with situations such as these it’s best to sit back and take a deep breath. If you are not able to or comfortable with asking your hosts for some specific direction, take the middle route. Try not to over dress, but for goodness sake do not under dress.

Trouser Length

One of the most vivid memories of my early sartorial confrontations with my father is of his exasperation at the position of my trousers. I was in some ways an awkward teenager, both physically and emotionally, and I was for a period rather influenced by my own age-consciousness. I believed that my youth was best at odds with the traditional way of things; I wore trousers, quite absurd to me now, of more than questionable length and style. When I dig them out on nostalgic sojourns back to the family home, shaking my head and tut-tutting at the ‘way things used to be’, I still cannot quite believe how poor some of my clothing choices had been. And the ghosts of this mistaken attitude towards my wardrobe are everywhere. For there seems to be no commoner mistake, for a suited gentleman, than that of the ill-fitting trouser.

I take the long walk home from Chancery Lane, passing accountants, lawyers, civil servants and the odd banker and it never fails to flummox me how poorly cut many of their trousers are. For on a good number of them, though they shuffle along in acceptable jackets of the correct size and style, my eye is horrified to see, as it moves down the body, the folds, nay waves, of trouser flopping onto the shoe.

‘Look’, the hypothetical reader would begin in response to my bewilderment, ‘these are off the rack suits and these guys probably don’t like wearing them, and they don’t care; it’s that simple.’ Although this is a valid point, I would wager at least 2 in 5 of the ‘overabundant trouser brigade’ would be interested in changing their look were they given visual examples of a better cut of trouser. It might be a want of caring, or it might be a lack of experience; some people are simply more fussy when it comes to shapes, lines and silhouettes. Rather like a man who wanders into an art gallery, not really knowing what he likes, but stating the simple philosophy that he’ll ‘Know what he likes when he sees it.’

My own revulsion is a reaction to the sight of the disruption of the straightness of a leg by the way the trouser concertinas into the shoe. However, there are those who would themselves be rather put out by a leg that was cut too short, that sat too low at the back heel or that made their feet seem awkwardly larger. It all depends on taste, and the world is practically an enormous gallery for men wishing to find ‘what they like.’

The Perfect End

This cut of trouser is my personal favourite. My father favours slightly more length in his trouser but I prefer there to be as little fold at the bottom as possible; the trouser sits just over the laces, leaving nearly the entire shoe exposed. Tailors would disagree and disapprove such a length; they would prefer the trouser to fall down at the back of the shoe to sit just above the heel itself.

The Thom Brown

Mr Thom Brown is often referred to as the ‘saviour’ of men’s fashion, but few men seem to agree with his cut of trouser. It is drastically short, often comic in effect, and though it is indeed very youthful and rather quirky, it’d take a brave banker or an audacious accountant to swank into work on a Monday morning.

The Tailor’s Favourite

Some contemporary tailors would disagree, but the traditional ‘tailors favourite’ cut of trouser (though many will predictably claim to ‘tailor’ to the individual client) is the trouser that, as previously mentioned, sits just above heel and covers the laces. For older gentlemen, this is the most common; Prince Charles’ trousers are perfectly cut in this manner.

The Question of Buttoning

Beautiful sunny mornings, warm and long lasting evenings, mild nights and the gentlest of gentle breezes; what does it amount to? It amounts to, dear readers, a real problem as far as clothing is concerned. High pressure and days drenched in sunshine can be problematic for those accustomed to the formality of a suit. It is particularly problematic for gentlemen who have a predilection for wearing double breasted suits.

I happened to be wandering down Chancery Lane on a particularly close afternoon when I felt obligated to stand aside to allow several suited chaps to pass in the awkwardness of the scaffolding, erected for renovation work on one of the twentieth century buildings along that artery of legal London. All of them were wearing double-breasted jackets and all of them had them unbuttoned. They paced with purpose but there was something slightly childish about their silhouette; unbuttoned they looked weary and slipshod.

On a different afternoon I was walking along the same street having taken a pleasant shortcut through the magnificent Lincoln’s Inn when I crossed the path of an elderly man in a beautiful blue cotton suit; single breasted and single buttoned, his jacket was open, allowing whatever fragments of breeze were conjured, on what was a mercilessly hot afternoon, to cool his torso. In contrast to the trio I had encountered before, he looked utterly urbane; the sophistication was evidenced by his turned up sleeves and the excellent shape of the jacket. He was certainly unbuttoned, but still composed.

And is that it? A simple resale of the much flogged notion that double-breasted suits be buttoned up? Well, not quite. You see I do stand by the notion as correct; double-breasted suits do look better buttoned up. But then so in fact do single breasted suits. Chasing down a man in a single breasted suit that looks better ‘unbuttoned’ is a challenge; ask a chap in a two or three button to fasten one of them and his figure is instantly altered, and usually for the better.

Most readers will probably be interested, and experienced, in purchasing ‘off the rack’ suits. And most of these suits purchased will meet the requirement of ‘sufficient formality.’ However I think it is a failure of design that most suits cut for the everyday man look unsatisfactory unless the material is drawn into the waist by the securing of a button. I always feel that ‘unbuttoned glory’ is possible and achievable with a suit – consider the magnificent frock coat and morning coat designs of the recent past – and would always advocate a little adjustment to make the unbuttoned man a good deal more elegant.

Unbuttoning is to be expected; there’ll be the long days at the office, the warm afternoons dragging laptops and luggage to the airport and the relaxation occasions in the local wine bar after the clock has chimed 6. It is important to attempt to retain as much of the ‘pinch’ created by buttoning that maintains the correct positioning of the jacket so it is vital to assess suits as a buttoned and unbuttoned possibility. If there is insufficient ‘pinch’ then the jacket has a tendency to ‘fall away’; too much and the jacket is likely to constrict movement.

After musings on the state of my own wardrobe, I came to the radical conclusion that as I am in possession of a few jackets with insufficient structure to wear unbuttoned, I shall only wear them as buttoned. Structure-free jackets can be charming and rather youthful, but as I have dictated to myself, they do not have the strength to stand on their own without that mighty ally of the jacket; the humble button.