Linen--End on End--In Tampa

Greetings from Tampa and my reprieve from the tentacles of a never ending east coast winter. I remain winter-time-pasty and it's a bit too early for linen back home but I had to bring it out for Tampa. And end-on-end shirting fabric is generally meant for warmer weather. But my fuzziness and impertinence beckons end-on-end year a damn 'round. In case you are uninformed about end-on-end cotton... "The interesting subtle texture is created by alternating colored threads, usually a dominant color interwoven with white. End on end was first invented by the French (fil-à-fil), a fabric in which white thread is interwoven with a colored thread to produce a subtle textured effect."

Jules Hertling et al over in Brooklyn contrived these Irish linen togs for me...years before the birth of my little gem LFG. Bulletproof is an understatement.

Well of course we tart up our end-on-endings...just like most of my shirts. Shut up.

And as always, I don't care how much of a dressed down hygiene holiday my clients take, this is as dressed down as I'm gonna go.

One of the things that I enjoy doing when I'm on the road is penning letters to LFG. She gets a kick out of it and I love telling her why I love her. Why don't you write someone a letter today?

Onward. From Tampa. In linen. Thinking about summer and the music that used to go along with such contrivances as suntans, gin-tonic and linen.

ADG, II

Ms Grace

Be a Man. Starch Your Shirts

Heavy starch that is…or why waste the money? All of the twaddle about starch destroying your shirts is…is…true. But do it anyway. The crisp fortification is worth the slow-growing attenuation of your cotton fibrations.

They don’t decay overnight and that’s my main defense for starching them up nicely. Plus the fact that you’ll actually look rather well put together…something that’s sure, in this day and age, to set you apart from the get-go. And have them folded if you travel.

And yes; part of my affinity for heavy starch probably goes back to college. OCBDs slathered in Argo and professionally pressed to assure that one felt like they were armoured when shrouded in crispy cotton. Then covered with things like Munsingwear v-neck sweaters. And the khakis are starched as heavily as the shirt...khakis for three dollars from a Fayetteville, N.C. army surplus joint. We'd ride up there and buy fifty pairs at a go and then head over to Hay Skreet. The Faye...home of Fort Bragg and at about this same time, billeting my cousin Tintin. Shut up. I’m tired this morning.

This shirt is twenty five years old. Starch will ultimately claim it…but when? W.G.A.S.

And this one’s a baby. Only twenty years old.

Twenty year old uberstarched shirt to accompany the twenty year old Flusser nail-head suit. And for my sturdy-girl readers…I know, I know…it isn’t fair. Not fair that men can have togs in their lineup that endure for so long. I’ve always said that there’s a predatory component to women’s fashion and retail. I feel your pain…your frustration. Now come sit in my lap and palpate mine.

Clean crisp shirt linen isn’t necessarily a contemporary thing. Contemporary? Who am I kidding? There’s nothing contemporary about my orientation to anything. But caricaturist Carlo Pellegrini, “Ape” of Vanity Fair fame, was obsessed with finery and luxury…an example of such affinity being his starched white shirts.

He was even known for using the cuff of his starched shirts, in an impromptu moment, as a sketch pad to capture the mug of someone in-the-moment when he saw an expression that he knew was robust fodder for caricature.  Of course he would use anything else within reach as well, including a restaurant check, like the one above.

Pellegrini was a pet of Society…a sort of endearingly pidgin-english speaking, Medici lineaged, Italian Truman Capote. And once he captured your visage in study for a subsequently full-flourished caricature, he’d shout mid-dinner party… "Now I gote you!” The note above, penned to the English actor and theatre manager Squire Bancroft, reflects Pellegrini’s playful misuse of language…a rather pidgin-esque go at wordplay methinks. Who else does that?

Bancroft, in his memoir Empty Chairs, captured the essence of a dying Pellegrini and the importance of his starched shirts…."I saw the "Pelican" as Pellegrini was called by his friends...in his last illness in his rooms in Mortimer Street. Shortly before the peaceful end he said pathetically to his faithful servant: "Wil-li-am, put me on clean shirt...I die clean." "

And I need starch when I’m teaching and conducting competitive strategy simulations. My clients test the hell out of my credibility and rightfully so, during every moment I’m in front of them. I don’t know what it is about the discipline of strategy that makes people so damned edgy. Perhaps it’s all the MBA and consultant esoterica that’s tarted up the discipline and has made people uncomfortable with it. All I know is that when I’m shepherding their journey for eight hours a day…usually two or three days in a row, I am as “on” as possible and I then crash spectacularly for a few days.

Onward. Crashed. In my own bed. Till Sunday.

ADG, II           Starched.

Oh…and p.s. …It’s St. Patrick’s Day right? You know, the day to wear green and avoid the rookie drinkers. If you can’t wear green today then eat green. Maybe some green peas, as suggested by little caricaturist LFG in her drawing that adorns my kitchen.

Gatsby’s Shirts

Well of course…

…they were Turnbull and Asser.

While I’m convinced that Paris’ luftacious bon vivant…Santos Dumont…had to bespeak his from Charvet

Onward. With a Five Year Journal.

ADG II

F. Scott Fitzgerald: Lead Soldiers and Shirts

Eleanor Lanahan, from her book, Scottie: The Daughter of…The Life of Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith …

“It wasn't till 1959, when I was eleven, that I even vaguely realized that I was the granddaughter of somebody famous. A photographer from Life magazine spent the morning photographing my brothers, my sister and me playing with memorabilia in the attic: Zelda’s ostrich feather fans, Scott’s lead soldier collection…I was not curious about my grandparents. Being related to F. Scott Fitzgerald held about as much excitement for me as being related to an old master print or a marble bust in a museum.”

 I re-read The Great Gatsby last week and enjoyed it more than ever. And I never tire of reading proverbial shirts scene. It never seems to become hackneyed...

“Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher — shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, and monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.” “

So here’s to Scott Fitzgerald. And to little lead soldiers. And of course, shirts.

Onward.

ADG II

Pinned Collars: An Elegant Solution to an Irrelevant Problem

I love the fact that something as benign as a collar pin, coupled with my typical inflammatory embellishments and pseudo-fictional back stories can incite such responses. So I’ve re-crafted my previous post to accommodate opposing points of view.  Come on…I live seven miles from Capitol Hill…I can flip-flop on issues with the best of them. Here’s my redo…

Well crafted collars are lovely without any type of anchoring adjunct. 

A well cut shirt with a proper collar need not be encumbered with any hardware to augment, or in some opinions detract, from its posture. 

Add a well tied, precisely dimpled tie and you’ve got a sartorially winning combination. However, for those who are interested in heightening the visual interest of a well tied-properly dimpled tie and the relationship with the collar it visits, you might consider a collar pin. Pin-through collars manifest a tighter, more precise anchoring. Slide on collar bars are just as swell. 

But remember a collar and tie unrestrained is sublime.

Onward. To LFG's elementary school new academic year orientation...sans the still in Florida LFG.

ADG. Still Woofing.

The Pinned vs. Clipped Collar: A Protracted Discourse

Clip on collar pins are like clip on ties and clip on suspenders. Under no circumstances shall anyone over the age of nine utilize these sartorial aberrations. Either impale your collar or leave it sans girding. Skewer it or let it be. Impale the cloth or anchor that collar through its pre-sewn eyelets. Take a cue from aplomb master Astaire.

Why? Because the difference between a pinned-through collar and one anchored by some type of slide-on ditty is like being seated in the Cub Room at the Stork Club versus Sherman Billingsley ordering you and your party to Stork Siberia. Clip-on slide-on and your collar will be relegated to the cheap seats. Let me say it another way. Anything other than pinned-through shouts sartorial rookie. Poseur is too strong and frankly, an unfair characterization but plebe certainly isn’t. Here’s Papa pinned nicely in the Cub Room

Here's Astaire again...and he's pinned this point collar to perfection. I’ll touch on collar types and the damage pins  inflict so sit tight. Astaire also tarted up his shirtsleeve nicely with an inconsequential monogram. The point collar just takes to the pin better than any other collar style.

Australian pilot Sir Norman Brearly was known to pin it down before taking to the skies. I’d love to live in a world where half this level of sartorial precision was the norm.

Frank’s sartorial acumen was unimpeachable. However, I’ll use his pinned collar example to make a point about club or rounded collars. Once you pin them, the already modest collar essentially disappears. The resultant look is, at least to me, a bit underpowered. It’s “off” in some way and ends up looking like the antithesis of the anchored aplomb of the Astaire point collar. Sinatra also appears to be wearing a collar with sewn-in holes for said collar impalement. I’ll take that issue up in a moment as well.

Here’s George Frazier pinned to perfection. Surely he would cut you down to size if he discovered you sporting a clip on anything. I suspect for Frazier it was either a Brooks Brothers oh-so-properly rolled button down or it was a point collar pinned to perfection. And God help you if you wore a carnation and a pocket square.

Let’s bring Wolfe and Merkin into the fray. Obviously the issue of collar girding was one of significant import for both of these dandies. In Wolfe’s dedication of The Right Stuff to Merkin, he mentions not only the collar pin issue but a Frazier corollary of some sort.

Ok, so let’s talk hardware. While some may spend significant bucks on collar pins I never will. I buy the gold and silver plated ones at Paul Stuart because I’m prone to lose them. And who the hell’s gonna know the provenance and alloy content of your collar pin? Those that I allow to get that close to me are already so rapt in Maxminimus Fuzzy Aplomb that they could give two hoots and a damn regarding the hardware that they are about to relieve me of. Shut up. I mean it. Shut up. The pin at the top is exclusively for shirts that have preset-sewn-in holes. I no longer own any of those shirts so if anyone does, send me an email and I’ll drop this one in the mail to you. You need to buy pins like the second one.

I don’t like the pre-drilled collar holes because their placement demands that you tie your tie a certain size to accommodate the un-editable space created by the pinned collar. Some ties result in smaller knots based on weight and type of material. And if the entire rig isn’t cinched with air-tight z-e-r-o space showing around and below the knot...the result is loose and sloppy-exactly the antithesis of what the pinning-girding effort should yield. The picture above that I nicked from a website illustrates my point. Everything looks nice. The suit, the shirt, the tie…nice choices. But the screw-on collar bar leaves way too much space around the rig.

Now let’s take up the issue of sequelae…collar trauma. Folks, it’s the price of doing business. Yes, the pin-through ritual will take a toll on your shirts. But either accept this and concede it or don’t wear pinned collars. Nothing more to say here. Take comfort in the fact that when laundered, the pin holes generally heal and that only after years and years of use will the collar look too buck-shot and thus require retirement. Here are examples from my closet. Keep in mind that all three of these shirts are at least fifteen years old—the Brethren end-on-end was made in the USA so that tells you something about its age.

End on end probably takes more of an irreparable hit than other fabrics. Keep in mind though, that even after years of wearing this shirt and the resulting scars, I still wear it and once it's pinned again, all of the battle scars seem to fade into the overall assemblage.

A slightly less traumatized Paul Stuart example.

And I stopped pinning this Flusser shirt from fifteen years ago so the damage is minimal. I don't like how small and incorrect these club collars seem post-pinning.

So here’s the ADG interpretation of collar pinning done right. Airtight and snug. Also realize that this is a hybrid collar. It offers the circularity of a club collar but with rounded collar points that remain pronounced amidst its pinned-collar harness.

Of course it wouldn’t be an ADG post without at least one fuzzy iPhone picture. So here you have the balance of the rig that shrouded the impale-ee.

Fuzzy completeness manifests via the Toad of Toad Hall Man of No Consequence Monogram. Opposite the 5^th button. Shut the……

So if you can’t run with the pinned-through dogs, I suggest you keep your clip-on ass on the porch.

Onward. Pinned. Woof-woof.

ADG