Good reading from Bernhard Roetzel on the summer suit:
Many gentlemen will hesitate to don a linen suit unless they stay in Capri or Sorrento. It is rather a matter of colour than of material whether a linen suit will look out of place on the summerly streets of New York, London, Brussels oder Zurich. A blue linen suit would be suitable in all of these towns, just like a garment in darker colours like tan or tobacco. Only the white linen suit might look a bit out of place, especially for office wear. In New York one will find another classic summer suit that is almost invisible elsewhere. The American answer to the Italian linen suit is the the single-breasted seersucker suit. It is named after the cloth that it is made of. To create the typical wrinkled effect the base threads are stretched while the weft threads are looser.
There is a lack of selection in lighter summer fabrics for American RTW suits, and I wish we had something else besides seersucker. Luckily, European companies are much more adventurous – some selections from Kiton:
Wearing some old and classic sportswear – tennis sweaters, sneakers, gurkha shorts, and even a Fred Perry polo. Background reading:
A 1999 Sports Illustrated article about the magazine’s 20 “favorite athletes” of the 20th century said about Gonzales (their number 15 pick): “If earth was on the line in a tennis match, the man you want serving to save humankind would be Ricardo Alonso Gonzalez.”
Then we came to Pimm’s, where good feeds are to be obtained, lobsters and real turtle soup . Did you ever have a Pimm’s No. 1 on a hot day? If not, you don’t know the most glorious drink in London—never mind what it costs, it’s worth it.
You absorb it through a couple of straws, and it runs through cool and refreshing, while the ice clinks musically against the side of the silver tankard, and the green stuff floats about on top, and you see things more clearly through the glass bottom as you regretfully near the end. The only trouble is that once you take the first sip you don’t wish to stop till it’s all gone, and then you want another; but you must not have many “another”; you can find out why for yourself.
- W.A.J. Loveday, London in War Time
Cocktail presentations sometimes change over time but it seems that a Pimm’s Cup still looks about the same as it would a century ago. Side note: after a bit of reading I noticed that references to Pimm’s No. 1 did not start entering American cocktail literature until the 1940’s and 50’s – I wonder if it was strictly a local specialty that was brought back after WW2, or perhaps the popularity increase across the pond was the result of a good marketing campaign by whoever owned the brand during the time?
I usually stick to muted colors, but I thought I’d give these a try this season (they can’t be any more jarring than the argyles I wear). Interestingly, the bright blue pairs are a 70/30 cotton/nylon mix and I wonder if they’ll end up lasting longer than Corgi’s 100% cotton versions.
Curiosity led me to pick up a new shaving brush from Blackbird a few weeks ago and I’ve been using it daily since. Previously I had been using an old basic Art of Shaving brush which got the job done, but I wondered if those fancier brushes did anything better.
In my case, my new super badger brush did not help give a better lather than my old brush (I use plain soap for shaving, so perhaps it might be more useful with a traditional creme) but it certainly is much softer against my skin and put a feeling of luxury back into my morning routine. Aside from that, the only other discernible difference between the two is that the Edwin Jagger brush has not yet lost any hairs unlike my Art of Shaving brush, which seemed to always shed a few on a regular basis.
Regarding brush manufacturing, Edwin Jagger put together a short video showing the steps of how they’re made and it’s worth a watch:
Mick and Bianca chose to wear his designs on their wedding day; he was on Elton John’s speed-dial, and was the go-to man for women who wanted to wear men’s tailoring.
Now the work of Tommy Nutter, the first tailor to successfully combine Savile Row traditions with the cutting edge fashion of Swinging London, is being celebrated with a display at the Fashion and Textile Museum.
“His approach to tailoring was subversive,” said Timothy Everest, the renowned tailor who trained under Nutter in the late 80s and is joint curator for the show in Bermondsey Street, south-east London. “He was articulating bespoke tailoring to a new, younger, audience.”
His work was groundbreaking at the time and influenced the flamboyant rock and roll style that we associate with the 60’s and 70’s. Londonist has some great pictures of the exhibit as well.
Google Books now has an amazing collection of early National Geographic volumes spanning the first several decades of the Society’s history (NGS was founded in 1888). The important part: all of them are free and can be downloaded in either pdf or epub formats.
Many more volumes here. I’m partial to Volume 22, because it has a short section on dinosaurs.
Throughout its history, the Society has also published additional books, maps, and other resources to help advance the educational aspect of its mission and many of those early materials are available online as well with some quick searching: this collection of pictures and a directory of national and maritime flags (as of 1917) are two examples.
