Search Results for: summer

It’s been great seeing Drake’s develop into a fuller menswear line. Fifteen years ago, most people would have never even heard of the company, even though they’ve been around since the 1970s. For much of their history, Drake’s served as a private label manufacturer located in London’s East End, where they produced classic neckwear for a variety of top-end brands. As the wholesale market has gotten squeezed, however, Drake’s has had to reposition itself – going from a private label manufacturer to a consumer-orientated brand. First came the ties, pocket squares, and scarves bearing the company’s name. Then, in more recent times, they’ve added shirts, sport coats, outerwear, knitwear, jeans, and small leather goods. 

All of this has allowed them to put together seasonal lookbooks – models fitted head-to-toe in things you can find at the Drake’s store. The outfits are somewhat stylized, to be sure, but they’re great for inspiration. 

The new one for spring just dropped on Drake’s site. I particularly like the cream-colored sport coat they put together with navy trousers – a refreshingly modern take on the dark jacket with grey trousers most of us wear. They also have a navy wool seersucker suit, which I think will age better than its cousins in cotton. Cotton suiting can be great in the summertime, but given how it fades, it doesn’t always age well in darker colors. 

It would be too much to say that the suit is dead, but here in San Francisco, you’d struggle to find occasions to wear one. More and more people nowadays are dressing down for the office, even in industries where client-facing interactions have historically required more professional wear. My prediction is, in another generation or so, dark suits will only live on through weddings and funerals – the last places for traditional clothing in any society. 

My solution so far has been to rely on sport coats, or at least informal suits made from casual materials (e.g. cotton, linen, and corduroy – which, if I were to be honest, are mostly worn as suit separates). Even if a dark suit today is a rare sight, few people bat an eye at more casual forms of tailoring. You can wear a sport coat to a nice bar or restaurant, or depending on where you work, even the office. 

The problem is that none of those options really look as good as a traditional two-piece, so this year I’m hoping to get what I call an “in-between” suit – something smarter than a sport coat, but more casual than traditional business dress. Bold, patterned flannel is nice for this sort of thing, but I’m hoping to start off with wool gabardine. 

End-of-season sales can be a great time to nab something nice, but there are so many good stores nowadays that it can feel overwhelming to sort through everyone’s inventory. Since there are dozens of winter sales going on right now, I thought I’d round up some of my favorites. Most notable are megastores such as Mr. Porter and End, both of which start their promotions today, but there are also tons of great deals at smaller boutiques. 

Mr. Porter: Mr. Porter is always the highlight of every sale season. Discounts tend to start around 30% to 50% off, and then go deeper over the next few weeks. The problem is that things tend to move fast, and very little is left after a few days. On the upside, the selection is amazing. 

To get through the inventory quickly, make use of the site’s navigation filters, where you can hone-in on things by brand and size. If you need suggestions, I think Nigel Cabourn, Engineered Garments, and Chimala are particularly good for workwear; Eidos and Margaret Howell for contemporary casualwear (those Howell duffle coats and fishtail parkas look amazing); and William Lockie for cashmere knits. 

There are a lot of things I love about living in the Bay Area – the food and bar scene, the relatively diverse community, and the summer/ fall festivals. The only thing I hate is the real estate. Housing is expensive, gentrification is rampant, and for the kind of buildings I like to live in, home insulation isn’t that great. Unless you’re in a new building or can afford some multi-million dollar house, old buildings, especially Craftsman ones, are kind of drafty. 

I used to waste a lot a money in the winter on heating bills, but a couple of years ago, found that I could cut that back with some good cashmere sweaters. Cashmere knits may be the only things that can be rightly called investment pieces. They’re expensive, but depending on where you live, you’ll make up the cost in what you’ll save on heating. 

In some early-20th century trade journals, you’ll find rumors that the finest cashmere used to come from Russia, but for at least the last hundred years, China and Central Asia have been the main sources. From the mountains up Tibet and away across the back of the Himalayas to Bokhara, cashmere travels much like the way it did before Marco Polo explored the Great Silk Roads. It comes down from the mountains in countless little loads on the backs of yaks and horses – sometimes buoyed down interminable waterways on rafts and boats – before reaching a major hub, where it’s put on modern transport and swiftly whisked away to Europe. If you’re wondering why cashmere should have to travel so far across Asia, just remember the stories of the still unconquered Everest. Across the vast barrier of the Himalayas, there are few routes. 

I love this photo of Glenn O’Brien strolling down some NYC street in a dressing gown and leather huaraches. Designers have been trying to turn pajamas into glamorous streetwear for the last two or three years, and while I agree with Robin Givhan that you should resist, wearing something like this in the morning while walking your dog just sounds fun. 

I bought my first dressing gown last year. It was a bespoke commission from Ascot Chang, with the gown itself made from a length of mid-weight, grey windowpane Fox flannel. It’s great for chilly winter mornings, but a little too heavy for spring and summer. So I’ve since picked up two more – one made from an indigo-dyed Khadi (a kind of handspun, handwoven Indian cotton fabric) and another in a dotted navy silk. 

One of the nice things about working with a shirtmaker is that you can often get things made bespoke for not much more than what you’d pay for high-end ready-to-wear. That not only includes dress shirts, but also things with similar constructions – shirt jackets, pajamas, and dressing gowns. The only exception might be silk gowns, which are apparently better off-the-rack. 

Despite that old line attributed to Mark Twain – “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco” – it actually doesn’t get that cold here. In the dead of winter, temperatures can drop into the low 40s, but that’s basically springtime in Moscow, when street performers come out to Stary Arbat to busk for tourists. 

Still, that doesn’t make me want dress coats any less. And by dress coats I mean the kind of topcoats and overcoats that have mostly disappeared from modern wardrobes. With fewer men wearing suits and sport coats nowadays, fewer still need the kind of outerwear that traditionally accompanied them. So, today, we have hundreds of casual outerwear styles, but only a handful of options for something dressier than a parka. 

My own wardrobe has two dress coats, and despite the weather being less-than-frigid, I find them surprisingly useful. They’re too warm for the afternoon, but great for keeping out that biting chill in the morning and night – which are basically the only times I’m outside of work.

I don’t know if anyone actually does Black Friday anymore. It seems like all the sales drop a few days before. Last night, five new sales popped up in my inbox – the best of which is probably Mr. Porter, although Brooks Brothers, Ralph Lauren, and LL Bean are also great if you’re looking for something more traditional (more info below). Some notable things I found last night while going through the sites:

Mr. Porter: The obvious favorite for most people. In the last few years, Mr. Porter has become one of the largest online shops for high-end men’s clothing. The problem is getting through that inventory – especially during sale season when things move quickly. My usual strategy is to comb through their designer list; then browse through the broader categories (e.g. shirts, outerwear, shoes, etc) and filter by size. The first lets me hone in on things I like, while the second allows for more serendipitous finds. 

Interestingly, Mr. Porter has discounted a lot of stuff this season that’s normally excluded from promotions, including shoes from John Lobb, J.M. Weston, Edward Green, George Cleverley, and Viberg. I was really tempted by some of those Edward Greens last night. Other lines I like:

Like I’m sure anyone reading this site, I’m very particular when it comes to my clothes. I like my tailored jackets to have an extended shoulder line, side vents, and a three-roll-two closure. I prefer my trousers to have slanted pockets. And if the fabric is loosely woven, I think jackets are better with flapped pockets instead of patch (otherwise, with something like a Shetland tweed, the pockets can sag a little more with time). 

There are some things, however, that I’ve never been able to settle on. Like how I feel about the curve on a lapel – which is sometimes known as the belly. 

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. 

I like clothes in the summer that make you feel like you’re at home. Loosely-cut linen shirts that feel like pajamas, softly-tailored sport coats that disappear from your mind, and unlined loafers that wear like bedroom slippers. With the right clothes, every cafe and office can vaguely feel like you’re still bumming around your living room. 

I recently picked up a new pair of unlined pennies – Edward Green’s Harrow, which I’ve been pining over for years. On the surface, they’re just an unlined loafer with a pie-crust apron, much like you’d find on the company’s Dovers. The design, however, is actually by Wildsmith, a famed bespoke shoemaking firm that lasted for seven generations before shutting down. The company used to travel with some of London’s best tailoring companies, offering what they called their “three s’s”: shoes, shirts, and suits. 

The style was originally a bespoke country-house shoe made for King George VI, younger brother to the Duke of Windsor, Edward VIII. As the story goes, they were made slightly big so that he could wear them indoors with shooting hose. At some point, Wildsmith shut down the bespoke side of their operation and sold ready-made shoes produced by Edward Green (and, at times, Crockett & Jones). That’s how the Wildsmith loafer became the Edward Green Harrow.