Chocolate brown with canary yellow

It’s rather a shame that leather shoes are so often worn with suits. For nothing complements the patina of a well-polished leather more than strong colour.

Grey and blue wools are all very elegant, and there are mutually beneficial combinations – oxblood and navy, for example – but strong colours are unlikely to be found in suitings. The shoes are likely to bring out an aspect of the suit, rather than the other way around: an English tan that highlights the speckles of colour in Harris tweed.

Indeed, there may be a rule of thumb here: Strong colours shed light on their muted neighbours. So leather shoes (other than black) bring out aspects of a subdued suit; bright socks make the most of leather.

For socks are by far the easiest way to put strong colour next to leather. It is no coincidence that brands such as Domenico Vacca and Paul Stuart showcase their shoes with a rolled up sock inside. It makes the patina sing.

Let’s take an example. A really dark, chocolate-brown leather looks great with a bright yellow sock. Yet other bright colours – red is the first that springs to mind – do not. Thick, muddy brown is uplifted by canary yellow; red just looks crass.

It’s not until brown leather gets some highlights to it, and approaches tan, that red begins to work. Artistically, yellow has to work better because the pigment of the brown has more yellow in it than any of the other primary colours.

So when I wish to add a splash of colour below the waist, I pair bright-yellow socks with chocolate shoes. Probably two-hole derbies, or wholecuts, to expose a broad expanse of the leather to its acidic neighbour.

This article originally appeared on Gentlemans Corner

Reader question: Suit brands

Will, Minnesota: Simon, I wrote to you before on a style matter. As I’ve sought suits and separates lately, I’ve learned that while I thought I was a 40, I am truly around a 38 long – sometimes a 36. In-turn, I’ve learned that some designers will fit me better than others and in ways that I prefer. After having bought two suits, a Valentino and a Z Zegna, from Bloomingdale’s at more than 50% off, I write to you again.

I know that these names, as well as Hart Schaffner Marx, Armani, and many others are high-end brands. I know that Boss is a little bit lower and Ralph Lauren, except for his purple and black label, is lower still. Without giving me an exhaustive and exhausting list of names, please tell me the tiers of men’s suits and brands. Or if you’ve already done so, please direct me to the column link.

Dear Will, there is no obvious or easy way to rank the different designer brands. Much of the ranking you state here will be based on advertising, your tastes and on inevitably on price.

The key to comparing designer brands is to remember that you are paying for two things – design and construction. A $2000 designer suit is not twice as well made as a $1000 one. It may be made slightly better (say 10%, 20% more invested in materials and workmanship) but most of the extra price is for design.

Design is great. It brings beauty into the world. But most of the time when men buy a suit they don’t want to pay for design. They want better materials and quality. So just pick a design you like, irrespective of the price. You may have expensive tastes or cheap tastes. But work out what you can afford and pick the design you like best for that price.

This is entirely separate to quality of construction. I recommend a few things to look for below, but I would also recommend the relevant section of Alan Flusser’s Style and the Man, which goes into assessing cloth and construction in more detail.

- Check that the chest is fully canvassed. When you pinch the material around a jacket button, holding both sides of the cloth one in each hand, you should be able to feel a floating piece of material between them (this is horsehair or a horsehair blend, and gives construction to the chest).

- Check that the buttons are horn rather than plastic.

- Try holding the cloth and feeling its weight. It should be flexible to the touch, have a satisfying heft and spring back well when scrunched (as you can see, this ‘feel’ for cloth is something hard to describe).

- Check how large the armholes are. A smaller armhole is less efficient to make and more personal to the wearer. Cheaper brands make bigger ones to fit more people.

- Check that the trousers are at least half-lined. While some men prefer trousers unlined (particularly as it makes them easier to press) a lining is generally a sign of quality.

- Check the matching of patterns. Checks or stripes should match across pockets and across some part of the chest into the sleeve. As with many of these points, this really shows attention to detail rather than quality of construction – but that’s the best guide you have, you have to assume that attention will have been pursued elsewhere as well.

- Working buttonholes used to be a sign of quality, but so many cheap suits do it now that I would ignore this.

These are just a few things to check. Much of it is a question of taste as well. I hate a jacket that doesn’t roll naturally from the top button to the middle button of three. And it is harder to construct, so you could say it shows quality. But then some people do prefer harder-lapelled, ‘true’ three-button suits.

The other thing to remember when separating design and construction is that you are paying for a brand’s advertising, shops and runway shows. Armani spends more on this promotion than, say, Canali, which in turn probably spends more than Hart Schaffner Marx. Armani ads create desirability and cool, but you pay for it when you buy into that branding. Profit margins aren’t necessarily higher at designer brands, but costs are.

(Though often designer labels do use their position to charge higher margins. One former Berluti employee tells me that their profit margins can be higher than 75%, for example, charging almost 50% more than an English shoemaker I know with the same cost price.)

One answer to this, of course, is to get discounts – as you have done. Anything over 50% and you’ve removed most of the profit. Kilgour’s recent clearout sale got me rather a fever given that some suits were priced at £250, down from over £1000.

To conclude, don’t assume that brands have any set pecking order. Judge the design on its own merits and your own taste, not the label or the price tag. Then analyse the quality using my pointers and other research. And finally, get a discount.

Harrods discounts

For those out there looking for the last, final round of sales, Harrods started its extra discounts at lunchtime today. It finishes on Sunday. 

This is the time to go at get 75% off. Happy hunting.

The launch of Gentleman's Corner

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I would soon be announcing an exciting new project. Well, it went live on Friday: Gentleman's Corner.

The site is dedicated to craft in menswear, with much of that looking at shoes but also including suits, knitwear, trainers and indeed anything that dresses a man. The philosophy is Ask Another Question - in other words, dig a little bit deeper than the normal PR found in men's magazines.

While I will be the editor-in-chief, we also have a range of different contributors from vastly different backgrounds - shoe designer to fashion journalist, sneaker freak to clothing novice. Please have a look, any feedback is appreciated.

Below is my first feature for the site.



The craft of tweed: Harris and Norton

Patrick Grant loves tweed. That’s evident from the length and depth with which the owner of Norton & Sons will talk about tweed. Indeed he was recently asked to speak about tweed, by the Harris Tweed Authority. He is making a documentary about tweed, with the BBC. Hell, his grandfather was a yarn designer.

But he loves one particular tweed in particular: Harris tweed. And more specifically than that, the Harris tweed made by Donald John Mackay in a small hut, on the edge of the beach in Luskentyre.

“If you look at it under a magnifying glass it’s amazing. Most yarns are very simple, they usually contain one or two colours. But a Harris tweed yarn will routinely contain seven or eight different coloured wools, which are blended together and then spun,” says Grant. “So at a distance it might look like a blue, a pale blue. But when you get up close you will see little bits of green and turquoise and navy, perhaps a touch of yellow. There’s an amazing richness of colour.”

That’s one reason Harris tweed is so easy and creative to wear with other clothes. All the different colours in the tweed can be picked up in your shirts and your ties and your handkerchiefs.

Mackay doesn’t make his own yarns, they are supplied by the main mill on the island. But it is the art of spinning them and creating individual patterns that impresses Grant.

“It’s hard to be prescriptive about what makes a Harris tweed beautiful. Some people just get it right. There is a science and an art to it. Weavers spend years and years learning the science, but then they have to create art out of their own imagination. Donald John Mackay just has a good eye.

“It’s hard to analyse. You could apply all your colour theory to it, a colour wheel etc, but often that doesn’t work. One combination will just resonate, while another that worked in your mind will look drab. In that way it’s much like combining colours in all areas of men’s dress. You need to learn from experimentation and experience.”

Mackay has other champions as well. In 2004 his company landed a contract from Nike to update a trainer called The Terminator – a basketball shoe from the eighties. Nike wanted to use a swampy green tweed to relaunch the shoe and Mackay ended up supplying over 10,000 yards of the fabric.

That led to something of a renaissance for tweed, with it being championed by Ralph Lauren, Madonna and Sarah Jessica Parker over the next few months. Then in February this year Mackay was asked by Clarks to supply the tweed for two ranges of boot it was launching, with an initial order of 1000 yards.

The two boots – a ladies high, seventies boot and a desert boot – were commissioned as part of Clarks’s celebration of 60 years of the desert boot, and will be available from August.

But for tailoring, the cloth is only found in two places. From that hut on the beach and at Norton & Sons. The 2000 tweeds that Nortons has available range from very lightweight cloths that aren’t really tweeds at all, referred to as worsted tweeds, to insanely heavy, 32-ounce tweeds that seem bulletproof. But the Harris tweed is by far the most popular.

“Of those 2000 cloths in all those weights, the Harris bunch is probably about 20. A tiny, tiny fraction. But the number we sell is 10 times that proportion,” says Grant. “We have tweeds from some fantastic mills: from Scotland, from Huddersfield, from a mill in the Cotswolds and Donegal tweeds that are now made over here. But Harris outsells them all.

“People connect to Harris tweed. They understand the history and the provenance of the cloth. There is something about the Isle of Harris, Lewis and that northern chain of Hebridean islands, that creates in people’s minds something quite special and romantic. The materials and the colours are redolent of the sea, and the grass, the rugged life, the farming.”

Not every client knows this when they walk into Norton & Sons. But they are inquisitive people and interested in what they are buying. And Grant admits he has some pictures of Mackay’s shed on the edge of the beach.

But it’s the people that make Grant want to go to the trouble to buy it himself, rather than just sourcing it from the bunch – from Harrisons of Edinburgh or a similar supplier. This is backed up by the sourcing of other products sold by Nortons, such as knitwear from William Lockie & Co and jewellery from Clive Burr: both small, independent British manufacturers. Or indeed the products under the relaunched E Tautz.

Grant is also heavily involved in the tweed industry – making the series for the BBC, as mentioned earlier, and speaking at an event for the Harris Tweed Authority that took place “in the aftermath of some rather unpleasant upheavals in the industry”. He is referring to the buying up of Kenneth Mackenzie and Parkend, two tweed manufacturers, by entrepreneur Brian Haggas in 2006. Haggas closed down the latter and reduced production at the former to four designs, refusing to sell to anyone else and producing exclusively for his own production. Since then Mackenzie’s has been mothballed also.

Says Grant: “I was there as the man from Savile Row, the man who loves the cloth and is there to tell people that they have fans and supporters all around the world. That they are not alone.”

Your pocket handkerchief is a collar

One question I often get asked is how to pick out the colour of your pocket handkerchief.

Well, I’ve written before (here) about harmonising in colours rather than matching – essentially picking out a second colour other than your tie’s that you think goes well with the shirt and jacket. Or, as someone put it to me recently, “so it’s like thinking of two ties that go with the outfit, and just using the colour of one of them for the handkerchief?” Yes, that’s a good way to put it. Of course, if you’re not wearing a tie, then the colour of your handkerchief should be thought of in the same way as the tie would have been (longer explanation here).

But. All this is to presume that you want a coloured, patterned or otherwise fancy pocket handkerchief. You may not. Indeed, your default setting should not be colour and pattern, but plain white linen. That’s in the pocket to start with. It is a conscious decision to add colour afterwards.

Bright, crisp white is the smartest colour a man can wear. This is why, back in the age when collars were starched and attached with studs, they were white. The body of the shirt may be striped or brightly coloured but the collar and cuffs were white. Because it is bright, because it is clean and because it provides the greatest contrast with the fabric of the jacket.

A strip of white around the neck and two around the wrists. It brings dignity and formality to any outfit, and today’s equivalent is the linen pocket handkerchief.

In the same way that today’s blue or pink shirts – that do not have detachable white collars – are a little more casual than those of old, the next option down your ladder of handkerchief choices should be something similar to the colour of the shirt.

Not exactly the same, necessarily, but similar. If the shirt is pale blue, go with a similar blue with a white polka dot. Or a darker, navy blue. Perhaps even a blue pattern with some white or yellow thrown in. The point is, the handkerchief will harmonise with the shirt if it’s dominant colour is the same.

White is the default; the second choice is to pick a colour similar to the shirt. Last is to pick something brightly coloured that plays a similar role to the tie (as described earlier on). Many men get this order entirely the wrong way around. They think that the handkerchief must play a similarly decorative role to the tie, as it is often silk and very much on display. That is your last choice – the sporty one, the more showy one, the rakish one.

Reader question: A suit for my wedding

Michael, Atlanta: I’m a long time reader and have greatly enjoyed your posts, and have even more enjoyed applying their message.

I’m about a year away from my wedding and am looking to have a suit made for it. I am looking at either a black with a white chalkstripe, or a medium grey with a white chalkstripe. A standard three piece, with three-button jacket, slanted unflapped pockets with a ticket pocket on the right, and an eight-button double-breasted peak lapel waistcoat. This will be accompanied by an unadorned white spread-collar shirt and plum tie and pocket square.

That, I’m aware, is quite a lot of look (stripes, peaks, buttons, and pockets) even though we are looking to incorporate throwbacks of vintage styling. I’m uncertain about the pairing of the waistcoat and the jacket – is having both peak-collared something that will look ridiculous? And the combination of single and double-breasted seems to make sense in my head, but is it commonly borne out?

Lastly, would black and white spectators work, or pull the whole thing apart and make it look even more like costume?

Dear Michael, you are right in your description of this a lot of look. To be honest, I think it is too much. But it can also be saved fairly easily I think.

Let’s start with the colour of the suit. Go for the medium grey, not the black. A black suit with chalk stripe can too easily make you look like a wide-boy trader or a gangster, and besides, black as a colour suits almost nobody. The mid-grey should be more flattering, seem more formal at the wedding and provide better use later on.

The pockets need to be quietened down a little as well. Unflapped pockets may look a little odd with a suit that isn’t that formal elsewhere, and a ticket pocket produces the opposite effect. Equally slanted pockets. It feels like you are trying to throw too many quirks into one area. I would pick just one: two unflapped, straight pockets, for example, or three with flaps.

On the waistcoat and jacket, don’t worry about the double and single breasted, but do worry about the lapels (the collar is the top section, around your neck by the way). Having both peaked will look too much – like you are trying to wear two outfits instead of one.

Instead I would go for a collarless waistcoat – I have a suit and waistcoat in exactly that configuration and the sweep of the waistcoat underneath the jacket adds subtle verve without being over the top. If you must have a collar on the waistcoat, make it a shawl collar – a very traditional look on a double-breasted.

And the advantage of paring back in all these areas is that it is the only way you’ll be able to get away with wearing spectators as well.