Search Results for: spring

One of my favorite things about Drake’s is their ability to design things that feel contemporary on the one hand, but also classic on the other. It’s easy, after all, to produce ties that are classic and boring. Also easy to make ones that are trendy and awful. Steering a line between those two worlds, however, that takes skill, which is why Drake’s is so impressive. For a company that ventures beyond your typical Macclesfield silk prints and basic rep stripes, their batting average is very high. 

Some of that is due to how closely Michael Hill and his team work with mills. “I’m hesitant to take all the credit,” he tells me. “We’ve been working with the same mills since the 1970s, which means every collection is a collaboration. I often sit down with them and pour over their archives to figure out what to design today.” Those new designs will draw from a color here, maybe a weave there, but then be updated in ways to make them feel current. “There are few better ways to design than by looking at what’s been successful for us and the mill in the past,” Michael says. 

That’s important for men who like to wear more casual suits or sport coats. A conservative striped tie will go with anything, but if you’re looking for something more interesting to go with a tailored jacket, Drake’s always has plenty of tasteful options. Some of my favorites from this season:

What the hell happened to spring? We’re a good two months into the season, with summer being exactly a month away, but it still feels like the last days of winter. I had a chance to break out a linen suit a few weeks ago, when the temperatures climbed into the mid-80s, but it’s been too cold to wear anything breathable since then. It’s almost like spring never came.

One option I’ve been relying on is a “faux tweed” sport coat I had made through Napoli Su Misura. The term “faux tweed” refers to how the fabric has the sort of district check you’d expect to see on a traditional tweed, but none of the prickly surface. Instead, it’s made from a smoother, worsted wool, making it something like a citified version of a country cloth. Indeed, some people don’t like faux tweeds because they feel like they’re neither fish nor fowl, but they’re also perfect for those days that feel the same. Spring can be an awkward time for tailored clothing, when you might want something to match the gloomy weather, but wearing a real tweed can feel wrong in May.

You can find faux tweeds in a number of books. Porter & Harding’s Glorious Twelfth and Hudderfield’s Worsted Alsport are two of the most popular. Voxsartoria, pictured below, is seen wearing something from the first, while StyleForum member Mafoofan, pictured above, is wearing something from the second. There’s also Harrison’s Moonbeam, which is made from a wool and angora blend. It has a plush, almost cashmere-like feel, and a bit more nap than the two aforementioned sources. No Man Walks Alone has a ready-to-wear Moonbeam sport coat available this season, which was made for them by Sartoria Formosa in Naples. 

We’re still solidly in winter, but Drake’s new spring/ summer arrivals remind us that warmer days are just around the corner. The popular English label continues to design some of the best men’s accessories I’ve seen anywhere. Michael Hill, the company’s Creative Director, tells me that they’ve relied a lot on interesting and subtle weaves this season. “We have a linen chambray from Solbiati,” he says. “It has a nice texture and a bit more color than plain weave linens. There will also be some semi-warp faced cloths, which have a nice, antique hand, as well as a lot of slubby silks." 

My favorites so far are the grenadines and pocket squares. Drake’s grenadines now come in two weaves – larger and smaller versions known as garza grossa and garza fina, respectively. They also have grenadines with striped, dotted, and jacquard patterns, for those who want something a little more distinctive (these look particularly good). For pocket squares, there are cotton bandana prints, as well as a number of interesting designs on silk habotai – an exceptionally lightweight, slightly sheer, plain weave silk that has a bit of sheen. I find it goes well with cotton and linen jacketings. 

Michael also tells me they have some sport coats, shirts, and chinos coming. "We’ve never thought about design in terms of a product alone,” he says. “It’s always been about a look as a whole, so in some ways, this is a natural extension for us. It’s taken a bit of work to learn how to construct these other things, but I feel we’ve done a good job." 

Christian at Ivy Style once called me a clotheshorse. If you know Christian at all, you know that’s not a compliment. He’s one of the few bloggers I know (if not the only one) who has a healthy relationship with clothes. He likes them, but doesn’t obsess over them. In any case, what prompted it was me asking him last spring what he thought of some brand’s sweaters. He said “You’re one serious clotheshorse if you’re already thinking about fall!”

And it’s true, I tend to think about clothing purchases way in advance. Lately, for example, I’ve been thinking about green tweed sport coats. The London Lounge is selling a new barleycorn and herringbone mix through their cloth club. It’s a beautiful design with a blue and chestnut brown windowpane, but I’m not yet sure of what’s out there, so I’ve been unable to commit. Flipping through A Style is Born and Scottish Estate Tweeds gave me some ideas, however. As did going through some photos I’ve downloaded throughout the years. All are included below. 

My intuition is that lighter, more olive-ish shades of green are easier to wear than anything too true. Lest one wants to look like they’ve recently won the Masters Tournament anyway. But the photo of Gianluca Migliarotti (director of O'Mast and I Colori Di Antonio) proves otherwise. I think it may be more about the cut than the color. With a well-cut, soft shouldered jacket, a green sport coat seems like it could go excellently with a pair of a khaki chinos, grey flannels, and tan cavalry twills. Something to also wear with a light blue or country tattersall shirt, and perhaps some brown suede wingtips. 

So far, my two favorites include the photo of the Kylnadrochit estate tweed at the very end of this post, and the one seen on Michael Alden in his video on how to wear a pocket square. Those pitch perfect shades of olive, with the subtle and tasteful checks, look like they’d make for a great autumnal sport coat. Especially for a guy who thinks about such things in spring. 

I can’t help but to keep coming back to Barbour every season. This past fall/ winter, I picked up two pieces from their collaboration line with Norton & Sons, both of which have come into regular rotation. There’s this black Shetland sweater, which is wonderfully thick and hardy, and has a tightly knit ribbed hem to help it stay up on the torso. The sweater’s unusual texture adds some important surface interest when it’s layered underneath a simpler jacket. I also bought this waxed cotton field coat, which has two button-tabs at the back to give the coat some shaping, hidden storm cuffs to help keep the wind out, and two big pockets for stowage. I’ve been wearing it with beat up jeans and boots whenever the weather feels cold or wet.

As I’ve mentioned before, the problem with many of these pieces is that they’re hard to appreciate just through photographs. They lack the kind of unusual detailing that makes things popular on blogs or help catch a customer’s eye as he’s scrolling through an online store’s inventory. Instead, they focus more on simple designs and unique materials. The shell on my new field coat, for example, feels more interesting than the coated cottons I’ve handled from Apolis or Filson. Scuffs show-up more easily in the wax, which gives the coat some character, and the velvet collar, I suspect, will wear down beautifully over time.

This season’s latest Barbour x Norton & Sons collection feels much the same – simple and handsome, although not always styled as well as it could be in marketing materials. There’s a long navy raincoat, for example, that’s often photographed with the front buttoned-up, which I think unfairly hides the “lapel” that softly rolls out when the jacket is worn open (above is the one photo I can find that shows this). There’s also a cotton/ linen Guernsey sweater with a subtle dropped shoulder that’s easy to miss. My interest in Guernsey sweaters (a type of fisherman’s knit) was piqued last year when I saw these photos of David Somerset and British fishermen. I might give this one a try this spring. 

Barbour has also introduced a new subline – called Spey – as part of their Heritage collection. Spey offers fly-fishing inspired jackets, colorful shirts, and lightweight Fair Isle sweaters. I admit, like Barbour’s Dept. B, some of these feel like cheap derivatives of Tokihito Yoshida’s work, although there’s an interesting fly-fishing take on the classic Bedale. In any case, I’ve included a great fly-fishing movie at the very end of this post, should you want to watch something beautiful and get romanced into liking Spey more than you should.