I’ve been really into oversized scarves lately. Your standard scarf is something like 12″ by 62″, usually made from lambswool because it’s cheaper than cashmere but still has a bit of loft (that loft helps you retain heat). Begg has some nice ones mixed with angora fibers, which give them a slightly softer hand and hairier appearance. For a budget buy, Sierra Trading Post has some Abraham Moon lambswool options that are nearly free. 

If you’re up for a splurge, however, an oversized scarf can be a wonderful thing. They feel cozier when wrapped around the neck, and if you can get them in the right dimensions, they drape beautifully. Something a little wider – closer to 25″ or 30″ instead of 12″ – means the scarf will fold more when worn, giving the neck and chest areas a bit more visual interest. If the scarf is long enough, you can also wrap them around the neck a few times, or try one of the more complicated knots described by Simon Crompton below. 

The only problem with oversized scarves is that they can be a bit bulky. That’s part of the charm, really, but the issue can be minimized in two ways. For one, you can aim for scarves made with looser weaves and from finer fibers (such as cashmere). In the right material, you can get all that beautiful drape without feeling like you’re wrapping a blanket around your neck. Second, keep these scarves to heavier outerwear. Bulky scarves look less conspicuous with heavy coats than they do under sport jackets. For wear with tailored sport coats alone, I stick to smaller designs. 

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There aren’t a lot of things I’d call “essential” in men’s clothing. You need a “sincere suit,” maybe also a shoehorn. And if you wear denim, you’ll likely need a repair shop. Even the best jeans blow out at some point, which means – whether you’re reluctant to throw out a favorite pair or trying to get those beautiful sky-blue fades – you need someone who’s good at patching and mending. 

There are lots of options these days for denim repair. In addition to your local tailoring shop, you can try Denim Surgeon, Self Edge, Schaeffer’s Garment Hotel, Indigo Proof, Standard & Strange, Context, and Darn & Dusted. There are probably a dozen more that I’m missing, but my go-to source for the last couple of years is Denim Therapy in NYC. 

Denim Therapy was started ten years ago by Francine Rabinovich, a former ad executive who was inspired by an old pair of jeans she couldn’t throw away. She decided there must be hundreds of people like her, so she started a speciality shop just for denim repair. Today, the company employs three seamstresses, who together push out about a thousand repairs a month. The strangest request they’ve received? Emily Mcintosh, who serves as the company’s Operations Manager, tells me they sometimes get stuff from people who have been involved in motorcycle accidents. “You’ll get these jeans where the EMT had to cut the person out of them, and we’ll have to figure out how to sew them up so they look normal again.” Not an easy job, depending on where the cuts were made. 

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Even for guys who have been reading about bespoke tailoring for years, the world of bespoke footwear remains opaque. There’s not a lot of published information on the subject, and what’s available is often written in Japanese. Next month, however, there will be a new English text that promises to be interesting. Master Shoemakers is a new book by Gary Tok (known to some as gazman70k on StyleForum). For the last couple of years, he’s been traveling around the world, meeting and and talking with shoemakers – partly as a client looking for nice shoes, but also as a writer documenting a dying craft. 

Master Shoemakers features eleven shoemakers and shoemaking firms from France, Germany, Italy and the UK. They included storied names such as GJ Cleverley, John Lobb Bootmaker, and Foster & Son, as well as niche artisans such as Anthony Delos, Hidetaka Fukaya, Benjamin Klemann, Roberto Ugolini, and Stefano Bemer (before his passing). As far as I know, this is the only book of its kind. I recently sat down with Gary to talk about his project. 

What spurred you to write this book?

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I hate having zippers on my pants, but I love them on my shoes. My go-to causal footwear these days are side zips – an ankle height, usually plain toe style that features a zipper running up each of the medial sides. Without any of the straps, buckles, or elasticated gussets you’d find on jodhpurs or Chelseas, they have a sleeker and cleaner look. I like them for their slightly rockstar vibe, even if my life resembles any thing but. 

The great thing about side zips is that, although they’re a little more interesting than traditional styles, they’re surprisingly versatile. The key is to pay attention to certain details. The cleaner, more minimalist versions have concealed zippers and thinner soles (although some have Cuban heels, I like mine to sit closer to the ground). You can find these from brands such as Robert Geller, Tom Ford, Story Et Fall, and Maison Margiela. Mine, pictured above and below in grey and black, are from Margiela. Note, to get that lower profile, the soles typically have to be glued on, rather than stitched. I don’t mind so much, but it does mean they can’t be resoled as many times. 

These sorts of side zips pair well with contemporary brands such as Robert Geller, Stephen Schneider, and Lemaire. I like them with more casual pieces – a zippered cafe racer from Margiela, for example, or hooded coat from Stephan Schneider – but for a night out on the town, you can try them with a topcoat and some slim trousers. It’s a slightly dressier look, but one that feels laid back. 

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Of all the clothing styles we derive from warfare, you wouldn’t think the soft knit cardigan would be one of them. But when James Thomas Brudenell, a British army officer and the 7th Earl of Cardigan, wanted a sweater he could slip on and off without disarranging his hair, a new classic was born. Button-front sweaters have their roots in the Crimean War, in which Brudenell fought, but today they’re associated with cozy firesides, pipe smoking, and grandfatherly attire. 

That’s not to say they have to be stodgy. Steve McQueen gave shawl collar styles a macho appeal when he used them as part of his off-duty uniform. Hip Parisian youths on the Rive Gauche wore them in the ‘50s and ‘60s while discussing jazz, philosophy, and New Wave films. And Kurt Cobain inspired millions of grunge fans in the ‘90s to raid their local thrift stores for vintage pieces. 

 

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If you live in North America and love Saint Crispin’s as much as I do, there’s some good news this month. The company just started their “Saint Crispin’s of the Americas” operation, headed by former Armoury employee Zachary Jobe. This means three things. 

First, there will be many more trunk shows. Phillip used to visit the US twice a year, hitting only the largest cities. With Zachary’s help, they’ll now be touring the US on a quarterly basis, visiting everywhere from Miami to Washington DC to Atlanta to Denver to San Diego to Los Angeles (in addition to the usual rounds through NYC, Honolulu, San Francisco, etc). You can see their full tour schedule here. 

This is useful since, more than any other shoe company, it can be important to try Saint Crispin’s on in-person before buying. They make their shoes with a lot of shape – cutting things a bit closer to the foot – and use harder stiffeners. That means there’s less room for error when it comes to fit, and the break-in period can be more punishing if you get things wrong. More trunk shows means more opportunities for men to try on their shoes in-person and get professional advice. 

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Back in the early ‘90s, GQ hired British writer Peter Mayle for a series of articles. Mayle had just become known for his NYT best seller, A Year in Provence, which was about his time in France. His new GQ series was to be about life’s more extravagant pleasures – the grandest hotels, freshest truffles, softest Mongolian cashmere, etc. The articles were later republished as a book, Acquired Taste. The book is more fluff than substance, but Mayle is such a great writer and so filled with gusto that it’s hard not to get swept away. 

The first chapter of Acquired Taste is about bespoke shoes – specifically those made in the West End of London (you can listen to part of the chapter on YouTube). Mayle gets into the ridiculousness of it all in the second paragraph:

To some men – even those who revel in bespoke suits with cuff buttonholes that really undo, or made-to-measure shirts with single-needle stitching and the snug caress of a hand-turned collar – even to some of these sartorial gourmets, the thought of walking around on feet cocooned in money somehow smacks of excess, more shameful than a passion for cashmere socks, and something they wouldn’t care to admit to their accountants. Their misgivings are usually supported by the same argument: what could possibly justify the difference in price between shoes made by hand and shoes made by machine? Unlike the miracles of disguise that a tailor has perform in order to camouflage bodily imperfections, the shoemaker’s task is simple. Feet are feet. 

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Sometimes I worry the internet is not only changing the way we buy clothes, but also the kind of clothes we buy. So many things don’t translate well into .jpeg – subtle details such as texture and finishing are lost; silhouettes are flattened out into two-dimensional measurements. Some of my favorite clothes are things I stumbled upon by chance, but would have never given a second look online. 

This ts(s) jacket is a good example. I’ve only had it for a month, but it’s been a go-to favorite almost every day when I’m not wearing a sport coat or leather jacket. I really only picked it up after seeing Greg from No Man Walks Alone last year in it when he was in San Francisco for a trunk show. The jacket isn’t impressive online, but once you see it worn with other things – in Greg’s case, a pair of slim, faded jeans and Margiela German Army Trainers – the appeal becomes obvious. 

The modern uniform for tailored clothing typically involves a sport coat with jeans. Sometimes that works; a lot of times it doesn’t. The problem with wearing tailored clothing with denim is that the jacket usually has to be a lot more casual than people think – something like your shorter, slimmer interpretations of classics, rather than actual classics themselves. Unless you have the cool of Andy Warhol, the combo can otherwise come off like a sartorial mullet. 

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Some people lose their careers because of alcohol; others find new ones. Ian Segal, a former poetry editor at The New Yorker, was drinking late one night with friends in Tokyo. They talked about how cool it would be to start a new clothing label that combined all the things they loved – workwear and various cultural scenes. The next day, after sobering up a bit, Ian received a phone call from his buddy, who said they needed to meet for production samples. “I was like, ‘oh, this is actually happening.’”

For a brand that was born out of a drunk, late-night discussion, Nine Lives is quite coherent. It’s reimagined workwear, but in a way that’s never been done before – taking mid-century American work clothes and cutting them with a sort of dark, Japanese mod and punk edge. “We wanted to approach this as though heritage- and contemporary-wear are in the same boat,” says Ian. “As in, what if sashiko were invented today?”

The brand is a combination of a few people’s efforts. There’s Ian, the former New Yorker editor, and then Kotaro Sato, a Japanese clothing designer who used to work as a tattoo artist on LA’s Sunset strip. The third person in this trio is Masa Takayanagi, one of Yohji Yamamoto’s pattern makers, who gives Nine Lives its unique silhouettes. 

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For anyone trying to build a menswear company, Christian Kimber should be a case study. He’s a young, 28 year-old designer, born and bred in the south of England, but now living as a transplant in Australia. Over the last three years, he’s built a small, globally distributed label – carried at boutiques such as Gentry, as well as major department stores such as Bloomingdales – and recently opened his own brick-and-mortar store in Melbourne (at a time when everyone says B&Ms are dead). 

Christian is proof positive that you can do a lot if you’re driven to create. He doesn’t have any formal training – no fashion degree or design internship. As he puts it, everything has been sort of like “running a food truck in order to build up to a restaurant.” Three years ago, he was working odd jobs here in there in London’s fashion industry, doing sales work for My Wardrobe and Selfridges, then a bit of marketing for E. Tautz. It was from being in and around Savile Row that he picked up his love for tailoring. 

“At some point, I wanted a pair of olive suede tassel loafers,” he said. “I couldn’t find what I wanted, so I decided to make my own.” Christian designed the prototype, put together a run at a factory, and quickly sold through his inventory online. Most people with that success would charge forward, but Christian took a step back to think more about what he wanted to do with his newfound brand. “I took about a year-and-a-half off to really think about what sort of company would reflect me.” 

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