Just last week, I received a couple of the deliveries from The Cloth Club. The Cloth Club, for those who may not know, is a subsection of The London Lounge, where the forum’s founder, Michael Alden, comes up with ideas for classic cloths and proposes them to the site’s members. People say what they’d be willing to buy, and whatever is “voted” to be the best is then sent to some of the world’s best mills to be woven on short runs. As a result, you can often get extraordinarily high-quality cloths that are not readily available on the market.

One of the cloths I received, for example, is this double-sided, grey/ brown, herringbone cashmere. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a herringbone cloth on the market with a suitably large-sized pattern. The advantage to having a larger scale pattern, of course, is that you can distinguish your jacket as an odd jacket, and more easily match it to shirts, which tend to not be so bold. I plan on getting the brown side of the fabric made up into a winter sport coat. 

Michael has some other really interesting fabrics planned for fall. Two I really like are the Glenurquhart checks you see at the end of this post. The first is inspired by something seen in the Duke of Windsor’s closet. It’s a large scale, brown and cream glen plaid with a striking, dark blue border. The border check is what technically makes it a Prince of Wales (which is a type of glen plaid). The other plaid - also a brown and cream - is inspired by a few pictures of Gianni Agnelli.

Part of me wonders if the ideal glen plaid might not be something like the Attolini jacket you see at the very end of this post - the one with a two-tone brown design and a faint green windowpane. The windowpane not only adds a bit more visual interest, but also seems to make the jacket more casual, which is a welcomed thing in my book.

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There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of lists at this point on how to build a basic wardrobe. Most are meant for people who are just starting out, so they include very basic things such as a blue blazer, a dozen dress shirts, two pairs of dress shoes, and a couple of grey trousers. Helpful if you’re still being introduced to this topic, but not terribly useful if you’ve been interested in clothes for a while. 

There are a few exceptions. Here are three, written by men who have a lot to say on the subject of classic men’s dress. Be forewarned: this is not a short post, and these are not short lists. These are also meant for men who are either interested in clothes or have significant means. I think they’re enjoyable to read, so long as you take them for what they are.

Michael Alden

The first comes from Michael Alden, who has posted a couple of these lists at The London Lounge. The first delineates his version of a minimalistic wardrobe.

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I recently picked up what I think might be the perfect summer hat: a sisal Lock & Co with a slightly shorter 6.5m brim, low fitting crown, and a dark navy band. Sisal is a type of fiber drawn from the agave plant, which is indigenous to North and Central America, but mostly grown today in Brazil, Mexico, and parts of East Africa. It’s a rather strong fiber, which is why it’s been traditionally used to make rope, twine, and sacks for agricultural purposes.

Lock & Co’s sisal hat is a few shades lighter than peanut butter and woven with a slightly looser weave. I find the combination gives the piece a more causal feel than your traditional cream-colored straw Panama. A welcomed thing when hats are so uncommon for men nowadays.

Pictured here are photos of Mark Cho in the same piece, which he wore at the last Pitti Uomo tradeshow. I admit these are the same photos that inspired my purchase. When the hat came to me last week, the brim was slightly turned up, but I found it could be easily reshaped by gently wetting the material and reforming it with my hands. And unlike my Panama, this fiber seems to have a bit more memory, so you can reshape it once and never need to worry about it again.

For those interested in one, I recommend contacting The Armoury. The model name is Napoli and the price is 2400 HKD (about $300 USD). Not a cheap purchase, to be sure, but if I could only have one summer hat, this would be it.

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It’s great to have nice friends. A few months ago, StyleForum member Unbelragazzo (who does the excellent blog Ivory Tower Style) posted a photo of himself wearing a cream linen suit, light blue shirt, Rubinacci Victory pocket square, and Rubinacci burgundy knit tie with a slightly broken-up, cream chevron pattern. I liked how the tie looked so much that I ask if he could proxy me one next time he was in Europe. He was in Naples last month, kindly picked me up one, and sent it to me last week. I get ties with a little help from my friends.

Rubinacci has this design in a dozen different variations. The tie seems narrow at 5cm, but it doesn’t feel too thin when it’s actually worn. Once you have a jacket on, the proportions between your shirt, jacket, and tie are actually quite pleasing (at least to my mind).

For equally interesting knits, but in a wider width, check out the stock at P. Johnson Tailors. They have a similar chevron pattern, one of the best executed two-tones I’ve seen, and a sort of woven-in zig-zag design. The prices are expensive, but not that far off from what you’d pay at Rubinacci. For something more affordable, however, Exquisite Trimmings

has some nice Sozzi ties for about $70 once you discount for VAT. 

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It’s been the dog days of summer for much of the US, but here in San Francisco, the weather has been remarkably mild. I’m actually a bit disappointed by it since I’ve been wanting an excuse to wear this linen safari jacket I got from Ascot Chang last year. It started off as the first piece in my shirt jacket project, but after changing the design from a shirt collar (self-explanatory) to a Ghillie collar (what you see above), I realized I no longer had a shirt jacket on my hands, but rather a safari one.

Safari jackets became part of sporting wear during the late 19th-century, when Westerners went to Africa for safari tours and big game hunting. Since then, they’ve cycled in and out of fashion. The height of their glamour was probably around the mid-20th century, when they became associated with Ernest Hemingway, Clark Gable, and James Bond. Then, in 1968, they became a bit more chic after they appeared in one of Yves Saint Lauren’s runway shows as part of his "Saharienne" collection. The jacket died off for a little while after that, only to then be revived ten years later as a staple piece in the original incarnation of Banana Republic (back when they were a high-end, tropically-themed outfitter, rather than just a run-of-the-mill mall brand).

The one I have from is made from a slightly heavier weight, mid-blue linen by Solbiati. There are two symmetrically placed chest pockets (button flapped) and two larger patch pockets at the hips (bellowed). The back has a half belt, single vent, and an inverted box pleat to allow for greater movement in the arms. The sleeves have shirt cuffs, the buttons are dark brown horn, and the corners of the pocket flaps are fitted with small snaps, so that they can be secured down when necessary (I was afraid that the linen would curl over time). 

I really like how it turned out, and was impressed by Ascot Chang’s price. They only charged me what three or four of their basic shirts would have cost, which is much less than the other two tailors I approached, who quoted me the same as a bespoke sport coat. With the Ascot Chang price came one fitting. 

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I’ve been finding all sorts of really good films lately. The latest (and possibly greatest) is this one on English silk. Like last week’s video on Peal, this gives a rare look at one of England’s most important craft firms – David Evans & Co. David Evans was the last of the old London silk printers before they closed in 2002. During their 155-year history, they printed luxury silks on the banks of the River Cray for clients such as Holland & Holland and Drake’s.

The film takes us through David Evan’s factory, but it’s not really about David Evans per se. It’s actually about the last days of English hand block printing, which David Evans specialized in until the 1980s. Hand block printing is an incredibly slow, labor-intensive process that combines the skills of an artist, tool maker, and carpenter. In some ways, it’s the simplest and earliest method of all, and because of that, has more or less disappeared on a large-scale commercial basis (at least in England). Today, most of the silks you’ll handle have been either silk-screened or ink-jet printed. Those are obviously more efficient, but they arguably lack the humanistic, artistic edge of hand block printing.

The process starts with a block maker, who transfers a design to a block of wood. A separate block is needed for each distinct color, so if you have a paisley design with five colors, then five blocks will need to be made.

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Here’s a fun little piece of Brooks Brothers history: a small pamphlet on how to dress for certain times of the day, titled Clothes and the Hour. My source at Brooks Brothers tells me they published this in 1912, but a quick Google Books search will pull up various advertisements for the pamphlet dating back as early as 1906. So who knows.

Anyway, apparently at that time, Brooks Brothers recommended that men wear bedroom slippers and dressing gowns at 8am in town (with dressing gowns costing up to $1,400(!) in today’s dollars). They also recommended negligee shirts in the morning made from lightweight silks, linens, cottons, or wools. A negligee was one of the four types of shirts men used to wear in this period - the others being the dress shirt, the work shirt, and the outing shirt. Dress shirts had bosoms, which could be plain, plaited, or tucked. As you’ll see in the “afternoon section” of this pamphlet, Brooks recommended dress shirts made entirely of white linen or ones that just had linen bosoms. These were typically starched in the laundry so that they’d set well. The other three types - the negligee, the outing, and the work shirt - were usually made without bosoms, and differed by what kind of materials were used. Either way, all shirts were made with a front-plait closing (what we might think of as “popovers” today), or a coat front (the style most of us wear, with the front of the shirt cut fully open so we can slip it on like a coat). 

For afternoon wear in the city, men were recommended something still very familiar to us: a sack suit, dress shirt, gloves, cravat, and some kind of coat. Recommended coats included Chesterfields, Mackintoshes, Ulsters, and even vicunas. What would a vicuna coat cost in the early 20th century? $950 to $1,050 in today’s dollars for ready-to-wear, or $1,300 to $1,500 for made-to-measure. That’s pretty amazing when you consider that a custom vicuna coat today would run you anywhere between $50,000 to $100,000 (a price so shocking that someone recently published a book about it, which A Suitable Wardrobe recently reviewed).

So if you were ever hoping for a vicuna coat, you might have missed your chance by a hundred years.

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I found a great little half-hour video on Peal & Company on YouTube recently. For those who appreciate the history of British shoemaking, this is a rare opportunity to see a glimpse of a world long gone.

Peal & Co., as many readers may know, wasn’t always just a name stamped inside of Brooks Brothers’ shoes. They were once the largest bespoke shoemaking operation in the world. Having been founded in 1791 by Samuel Peal - an English cordwainer who first made a name for himself by patenting a new way of weatherproofing boots - they eventually built a list of clientele that stretched throughout North and South America, Europe, and East Asia. Sales reps would travel abroad to meet with men, measure and trace their feet, and then take their orders. These notes were then posted to Peal’s factory back in Acton Vale, London, and the finished shoes were delivered six weeks later. This “traveling bespoke” system was so successful that by the time of the company’s closing, two-thirds of Peal’s production went for export. 

The client list was impressive. There was the regular run of Hollywood stars (Fred Astaire, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks, Henry Fonda, Steve McQueen, etc); industrialists such as Henry Ford; intellectuals such as Hugh Trevor-Roper; politicians such as the John F. Kennedy; and almost every diplomat, aristocrat, and king from that period. It’s hard to imagine this many people ordering bespoke shoes from just one firm today.

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My shirtmaker Ascot Chang was at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel this week, and they confirmed for me something I’ve been suspecting for a long time. After a year of unhealthy eating and not enough exercise, my shirts seem to have shrunk about an inch in the waist. So my pattern will be adjusted for future orders, which makes me think: as exciting as it can be to try out new tailors when you’re abroad, if you plan to have the majority of your clothes custom made, it’s good to have someone you can dependably see on a regular basis. People’s bodies change, and although adjustments can sometimes be made over the internet with a little guesswork here and there, nothing beats having your tailor see you in person. 

Anyway, while I was there, I decided to flip through some flannel shirtings. Pictured here are some brushed cottons and Viyella wool/ cotton blends. Viyella is an English fabric that was first woven in 1893, making it the first branded fabric in the world. I actually thought they had moved on to becoming a clothing and home furnishings company, and no longer made their famous blended shirtings, but it seems Ascot Chang had two books full. Maybe these are old stock? I forgot to ask.

I’m thinking about picking up one of the green/ cream/ gold plaids to wear with brown corduroys and moleskins in the fall, and though the cream tattersall - with grey, burgundy, green, and navy stripes - doesn’t look appealing at first, I think it can work quite well underneath a tweed or corduroy sport coat. Two flannel shirtings to start with, and then maybe a navy thin-waled corduroy shirt with two button-flapped chest pockets if I’m feeling brave. 

Ascot Chang will be doing another tour sometime around November. You can see which cities they visit here. And since this year is their 60th anniversary, they’re doing a promotion where you can get one free shirt with any six you order. Expect prices for basic fabrics to start around $175. 

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I’m working on an OCBD roundup for Put This On, so that readers who may not have yet settled on a favorite maker can get an idea of some of the options available to them. I originally wasn’t going to post anything about it here, since I don’t see a need to overlap on content, but what Mercer & Sons sent me is so good that I feel the need to say why I’m heartbroken.

Mercer & Sons is based in Maine, and has been producing American-made OCBDs since 1982. Their site feels charmingly anachronistic – something like an old mail-order catalog – and their shirts are no less old-fashioned. I mean that in a good sense. For one, their collars are unlined. Not unfused, mind you, which is what most other producers make. Unlike an unfused collar, which has a floating interlining, an unlined collar has nothing at all inside. This makes the collar very soft and frankly a bit mussy looking. It’s for the kind of guy who understands the casual spirit of an OCBD, if not the historical accuracy (as Brooks used to make their OCBD collars unlined). Their collar points are also an unapologetically full eight centimeters long (again, just like Brooks used to do). The effect of having these longer, unlined collar points is that you get a more relaxed, full, button-down roll. It’s the kind of charming look you see in old photos, but is disappointingly absent in many modern day skimpy collars. The collar being the heart and soul of an OCBD, I haven’t come across a more handsome option.

Mercer’s oxford cloth is also exceptional, though perhaps not something for the neophyte. It’s scratchy, rough, and heavy – a bit reminiscent of a tweed jacket or a new pair of selvedge denim jeans. Not as uncomfortable against the skin, of course, but clearly tough and meant to be broken in. The warp and weft yarns also have more contrast, which gives the fabric a lot more surface interest. After handling this Mercer, I’m too embarrassed to wear my oxford shirtings from Acorn anymore. To be sure, they’re not much different from what you’d find on most OCBDs today, but that just means almost everything now seems incredibly lacking.

The only thing holding me back from ordering a bunch of these is the fit. Mercer’s shirts fit very, very full. My size 15 shirt, for example, has a chest measurement of 49.5”. The company offers the option of sizing down the body two sizes, so you can put a size 15 collar on a 14 body. However, that still puts you at a 45.5” chest, which is a full 4.5” bigger than my custom shirts from Ascot Chang.

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