Die, Workwear!

I’ve recently become very interested in the work of Elia Caliendo, the head cutter at his family’s firm Sartoria Caliendo. I asked him a few months ago if he ever visits California, or even the United States in general, and he said “no, unfortunately only London and Hamburg.” Which is a shame, because I was really impressed with the jacket he made for Simon Crompton and wanted to see if I could get something similar for myself.

Elijah comes from a family of tailors. His father was born in Casalnuovo, a small town just outside of Naples that’s well known for being the birthplace of many tailors and craftsmen. Isaia’s head tailor, Gianluca, once told me a tale about how the first tailor was born here. A romantic claim, to be sure, but a nice one. In any case, the senior Caliendo trained here for six years before opening a workshop in Naples sometime in the 1960s. It was there that Elijah would spend his after-school hours and summers. Like many sons of tailors, he picked up the trade through his father and now carries on the family business.

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I was going to write this morning about a new tailor I’m interested in, but it’s so cold in my house that it’s hard to think about anything besides how to stay warm. I should probably turn on my heater before going to bed, but the problem is that I always sleep with the windows open. It feels great at night. Just not so great in the morning.

So, I’m thinking about dressing gowns, that somewhat antiquated garment that men used to wear at home when they had to interact with people, but hadn’t yet gotten fully dressed. Personally, I think they’d be great to wear in the morning for when I’m eating breakfast, catching up on my reading, and typing out posts before I run to campus. Basically what I wish I could wear right now. Nobody would really see me in it, but put with a pair of striped light-blue pajamas and Derek Rose navy slippers,* I think I would be quite happy. And warm. Yes, very warm.

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Brooks Brothers’ “five day sale” starts today, where each day will have a different category of items on sale for twenty-four hours only. Today is sweaters; tomorrow is outerwear and accessories; Wednesday is women’s clothing; Thursday is men’s tailored clothing; and Friday is shirts and ties. Excitingly, the discount will be 40% off for the first three days, before dropping to 30% for the last two. 

For today’s sale, I bought one of their Shetland sweaters in Oatmeal Heather and plan to wear it with my waxed cotton Barbour, light blue OCBD, a pair of dark brown corduroys, and some shell cordovan boots, as you see below. I also picked up this suede jacket earlier this season, and promise you it looks better in real life than it does online. It’s conservative and simple in styling, but the subtle stand-up collar adds a little panache, I think. 

Unfortunately, this sale won’t include shoes, but it might be a good time to stock up on basics, such their oxford-cloth button down shirts and merino v-neck sweaters. They also have some interesting flannel trousers this season, but it’s been too long that I’ve tried them on for me to recommend a particular model. I know their Milano is their appeal to younger customers who like slim clothing, but I vaguely remember them not being high enough waisted for me. Maybe I’ll stop in and check out their flat fronted Fitzgeralds. 

(Pictured below: light blue OCBD by Sid Mashburn; waxed cotton jacket by Barbour; Shetland sweater by Brooks Brothers; wide-waled brown corduroy trousers by Ralph Lauren; shell cordovan boots by Brooks Brothers) 

Most men’s style icons were very handsome. Not to take away from how well they dressed, but it’s difficult to look bad when you have the face of James Dean or Alain Delon. Less celebrated are those who weren’t such Adonises – those who perhaps weren’t so lucky in the genetic lottery, but made up for it with a greater sense of style.

One such man was Jacques Brel, a Belgian who rejected a safe, secure future at his father’s cardboard manufacturing company to begin a career in singing, only to then later reject that at the height of his fame so he could devote his life to theater and cinema. He was a drinker, smoker, and a Socialist romantic who sung sad songs about people unfulfilled in life and love. His music was stark and intensely emotional, even violent at times, and is perhaps best represented through his two most popular songs - “Amsterdam” and “Don’t Leave Me” - which I’ve embedded below. Take ten minutes to play them if you’re unfamiliar. His lyrics are quite powerful.

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Ascot Chang delivered eight new shirts to me last week, one of which included a new collar style that I’ve been wanting for a couple of years. It’s a classic, semi-spread collar, but with slightly bigger collar leafs. It sounds simple, but of the four or five other custom shirtmakers I’ve used, none of them could get it quite right. Some were too stiff, some too big, others just oddly shaped. With Ascot Chang, I simply sent them the photo you see above, where StyleForum member Parker is seen wearing the style at the forum’s tenth-anniversary party, and asked them to make me something similar. I’m rather happy to say the copy is exact. (Sorry, Parker, you just got DTO’d).

As expected, the style wears excellently with a tie. The bigger leafs, with their soft interlinings, express a lot of life when the shirt is all the way buttoned, and the size of the collar gives a nice counterbalance to the face and necktie. It feels a bit less ideal, however, when worn open collared. There the collar points just seem unwieldy. So, for now, I think I’ll order three different collar styles from Ascot Chang. The first is a regular sized semi-spread collar, which you can see in the first photo below. Those feel comfortable with or without a tie, and make up the majority of my shirts. Then there’s the button-down collar for casual shirtings – oxfords, ginghams, madras, and the like. And finally a few more shirts in this new style, which I think I’ll only wear with a necktie.

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Mr. Porter just launched their seasonal sale, with discounts of up to 50% being given on select items. Excitingly, included in the sale is a range of Drake’s accessories. Prices are still a bit steep, but there are some nice pocket squares reasonably priced at about $65, and a very versatile $98 navy raw silk tie that can be easily worn with linen or cotton suits. 

There’s also a wide selection of Car Shoes, which I admit to having a soft spot for. I think last summer, I wore driving mocs with linen trousers and a sport coat four or five days out of every week. They’re incredibly comfortable, but they do wear down quickly. Used every other day or so, I’d say they last about two seasons. Alternatively, you can pick up some Arfangos from Yoox, but I have no first hand experience with their quality. 

Other notables in Mr. Porter’s selection include Lock & Co flat caps, some basic Bresciani over-the-calf socks, and a traveling Swaine Adeney Brigg umbrella. There are also some Shetland sweaters by Beams+, though I think O’Connell’s might be a better buy.

(Hat tip to Edwin for notifying me of the sale)

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When I get the chance to use a nice umbrella, I’m sometimes reminded of Jacque Demy’s 1964 masterpiece film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It’s about a young couple in love – one a 17-year-old girl who works in her mother’s umbrella shop, and the other a 20-year-old mechanic. The girl gets pregnant, the guy gets drafted into the Algerian war, and after too long of a separation, the girl ends up marrying another man. The guy then returns from the war, but is depressed and lonely. If that wasn’t enough to turn off most readers, know that it’s also a French musical. As sappy as the film sounds, it’s actually quite good, and like another French classic, The Red Balloon, it features some really masterful cinematography. The opening scene, for example, shows these really cheerful, colorful umbrellas going in and out of the picture on a dreary, rainy day. It’s probably because of that scene that I’ve long favored colors such as navy and dark green for umbrellas, rather than solid black.

My latest acquisition is from Pasotti, a family-owned and -operated company based out of a small Italian countryside town. The company was started sixty-years ago by the current owner’s grandmother. She came from a poor family and needed a job, so she took up making umbrellas an hour away from her home. A year later, she started her own company, Pasotti, and today, it operates as the “biggest” Italian maker of handcrafted umbrellas. I say that in quotes because the workshop only employs fifteen workers. Not exactly a factory, but larger than, say, the two-man shop Talarico runs out of Naples, and the operation Francesco Maglia runs out of Milan.

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The online menswear marketplace is probably the best it’s ever been, but in some ways, it also feels a bit homogenous. Some stores focus on tailored clothing (usually of the Italian variety), some on designer and streetwear, and some on the vaguely heritage stuff that was popularized during the Americana/ workwear trend.

So it’s refreshing to find Bench & Loom – a relatively new online shop run by husband and wife duo Jared and Brooke Zaugg. Before starting an online shop, their last venture was The Legend of the Motorcycle, the first world-class Concours d’Elegance of its kind. A Concours d’Elegance (French for “competition of elegance”) is a four-century old tradition that started with the French aristocracy, who apparently liked to parade their horse-drawn carriages in the parks of Paris during the summer weekends. Over time, as carriages lost their horses, the events shifted to automobiles, and the gatherings became competitions among automobile owners on the appearance and historical accuracy of their vehicles. Before Jared and Brooke founded their company, however, such competitions didn’t exist for motorcycles, so they created one on par with the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the most prestigious car show in the world. For their efforts, all the major Concours d’Elegance shows now include motorcycles in their line-ups.

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Filmmaker Gianluca Migliarotti, who many of us know from O’Mast, has a new project out on Vitale Barberis Canonico, Italy’s largest producer of high-quality fabrics. The full film is fifteen-minutes long, but so far only a three-minute trailer has been posted. I’ve asked Gianluca when the full version will be made available, and will update this post when I find out. Until then, enjoy the trailer. 

After much searching, I finally found my ideal Loden coat. Surprisingly, it was through Aspesi, a brand I previously only thought of as a supplier of down coats and M65 jackets.

First, a bit about Loden. There’s the fabric, and then there’s the coat. The fabric - usually dark hunter green, but sometimes in other colors as well - is first loosely woven together from the coarse wool of mountain sheep before being put through a lengthy wet finishing process. This shrinks it by a third so that it becomes something like dense felt. It’s then brushed and sheared, a process that’s repeated up to twenty times until it achieves the desired surface nap. The result is a marvelous cloth that’s dense enough to keep out the rain, snow, and wind, while still maintaining a beautiful, almost hairy, look. 

Then, we have the Loden coat, which of course is made from Loden cloth. The coat is meant to be worn like a duffle – unfitted through the body and reaching just below the knees. Its back is made with a deep center vent that swings out from the shoulder blades; and its front has a fly opening so that the buttons are not exposed to the underbrush. It’s typically worn by Austrian shepherds, farmers, and hunters in the mountainous area of Tyrol, from where it originates.

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