Showing posts with label outfit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outfit. Show all posts

Friday 15 April 2011

Let's Go Airside

   I am enjoying being back in London, which is a pleasing, if stark, contrast to my feelings about this much vaunted metropolis when I left. I think that amongst the varied vagaries of my life that impelled me to take a working sabbatical from the place was that I was then losing my ability to see what it has to offer. I might be over it now, for I am taking rare pleasure in its foibles again: it still holds the most charming of Georgian architecture, the most reticent of heterosexual dancefloor patrons and the most pellucid and brief of summer dresses

   I have subsequently lowered my resistance to a number of things since my return. I have performed at karaoke on two separate large nights out in the past week alone. I visited Graham Browne Tailors for alterations. I stumbled across a group of 'bladers outside the National Gallery, performing deftly along a line of twenty overturned plastic cups no more than 3 feet apart, and resisted the urge to yell "The hardest part of rollerblading is telling your parents that you're gay!" (an old joke; one not easily forgotten). I even mustered up the urge to observe a controversy response first hand by visiting the John Snow pub in Soho earlier this evening to see what would become of the homosexual group kiss-in that was being performed in support of the two amorous young fellows who were ejected from the premises on Wednesday. My tweets say it all; I really had no idea that gay men - on their primary London stomping grounds, no less - could make a mass gathering so boring that I had to turn to micro-blogging about it and then became careless over my own spelling

   Being back has also inspired me to experiment a little. Given how the previous paragraph ended, I am sure I know what you are thinking, but no; I am actually talking about t-shirts:


   Although I don't plan to make a habit of this, I have held this design in high esteem for a few years. As a student, I became enamoured of the annual Airside T-Shirt Club, due to a fondness for its rotating cast of media designers - Cozyndan, James Jarvis, Pete Fowler, Laurent Fetis - and its singular constant, Airside co-founder Fred Deakin, whose excellent downtempo band Lemon Jelly was interviewed by me in 2002. So I joined for the 2004 run; I'm pleased to say that it was a banner year and I still retain each piece, including the above design by Deakin himself. And in a funny full circle-manner - where this post is concerned - I was actually living in Ghana that year, too

   Airside's shop can be found here. Normal flamboyance will resume with the next outfit post

Thursday 24 March 2011

A Portrait of a New Suit

It's Houndstooth Time
Right before the spring arrives to make it obsolete, that is

Monday 21 March 2011

A Glimpse of a New Suit


   From the waist up, that is. Please excuse the rumpled hem caused by a restless foot

   More to follow,

   BON

Thursday 17 March 2011

Psyche Out - An Ensemble Dissection

Warning: this entry contains scenes of a carousing nature:

 


   Fun fact: not counting the Holliday & Brown Special Re-edition print on the shirt, the only vintage item is the silk paisley brocade tie; its red lining especially comes through under a camera flash. Of course, my semi-regular readers may know that I've quite the thing for vintage silk paisley brocade; exactly the sort of thing that deserves a comeback, if I do say so myself

   One may also note the lack of a pocket square/pochette. This is very much deliberate - the severity of a shirt in the overall ensemble can, and should, determine the necessity for extra adornments, particularly around the chest area. It is already commendable if one has complementary ties to hand, in this case, but it rather pushes the boat out a touch too recklessly to find a pochette when such a shirt already adds that eyecatching element. Dressing is always a balancing act

   Mind you, I could have done with a hat

Friday 4 March 2011

Boutonnièred



   It felt like time for an actual tiny slice of nature in my jacket buttonhole. And for good measure, a map of Delaware (of all places) in my breast pocket

Saturday 26 February 2011

Worn Out

   The recent loss of my various autumn/winter dress trousers and jackets from Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, Gucci (vintage) and Loewe (vintage) has impelled something of a re-evaluation. No, I have not become that fellow who burnt all of his worldly goods to rid the taste of liberal guilt he felt over living in a branded world from his mouth; neither am I about to lose my Barimanastic (copyright: Maxminimus) sense of presentation and start purchasing my looks wholesale from whatever is dictated by Topman, The Guardians's Petridis column or The Daily Mail's style section this week

   But I did dump around three recycling bags' worth of clothes at an undisclosed charity shop in an undisclosed borough of South London at an undisclosed point in time, rather recently

   Wardrobe purges require a ruthless, confident style of self-editing to make a dent in the overabundance of styles and clothes that comprise one's clothing collection. I, by contrast, threw a great many things in a plastic bag and swore off the chemical cocktails I'd been consuming at the time of purchase. It's a rehabilitative experience all round

   One of the dominant aspects of my wardrobe was a fondness for a particular vintage brand: Father's Hand-Me Downs. Certainly, the sentimental sway of his 1980s and 1990s suiting and accessories was assiduous, but there was a key to the pleasure they gave me: I was matching them with my own finds and when the pieces that form the real cornerstone of my ensembles are lost, much of the cohesion goes with it

   So, out have gone formerly loved garments crafted by the likes of Turnbull & Asser, Hawes & Curtis, Hermes, Jaeger, Haines & Bonner, Savoy Tailors Guild and myriad others, even including a very well made but very well dated suit by the venerable Italian tailoring house, Angelo Roma. So, who are my replacement names? I am pleased to say that a mental list was drawn up in mental crayon over the past year; this was subtly threaded through various Mode Parade entries as I wrote about those whose wares I desired to wear. So, in step the likes of Mr. Fish, Holliday & Brown, Tom Ford-era Gucci/Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, Hedi Slimane-era YSL RG, Prada and Etro to mingle with my remaining perennials from Junya Watanabe, Miu Miu, Hilditch & Key, Maison Martin Margiela, Aquascutum, H&M, Turnbull, Dries Van Noten, Paul Smith and Liberty. If my intended return to full-time London life succeeds, there may even be tailoring - perhaps Pokit, possibly Cad and the Dandy; maybe the budget might even stretch to Edward Sexton, Chittleborough & Morgan or one of the Lamb's Conduit Street houses

   Oh, and the fondness for 1950s - 1970s vintage is not going away. There's nothing like seeing a pair of lapels stretched right across my chest like a hang-glider; the pleasure increases when it's double breasted
  
   To reward all of you that have willingly read (or hastily scrolled down) this far, here is a photograph of me playing with some lizards:


   More as it develops

Friday 19 November 2010

Wan Chai/At the Races


   I schlepped to the Hong Kong Expo at Wan Chai on a Wednesday, which was perhaps too deeply commercial to be of any worth to tourists. The guest speakers, there to expound on matters of Asian investment and infrastructure, would probably have been interesting for those concerned with the scale of such things

   That night, I joined the weekly pilgrimage to the racetrack at Happy Valley. I'm not much of a gambling man in this sense (primarily because I bring others greater fortune than I do myself), but food, beverages and camaraderie are in abundance, and horse riding is better viewed live. The photographs do not clearly connote the scale of the track, but I think they still capture some of its expansiveness

   Besides, it is certainly a setting in which wearing Junya Watanabe Man S/S07 can be considered fitting

Friday 12 November 2010

Local Sampling


   In this outfit, I'm wearing a custom-made jacket and shirt combination that originates from here in Hong Kong. The jacket is a vintage late 1970s number; the shirt is far more recent and actually a light shade of orange linen. A number of the other pieces were probably manufactured here, also

   Something of a "When in Rome" ensemble, then

Saturday 6 November 2010

Birds/New Friend


   I recently paid a visit to the State-Of-The-Arts Gallery in Central, Hong Kong, where I met this fellow. He was encouraging visitors to unleash their inner animal, rather like the Power Penguin meditation sequence of my favourite film, Fight Club

   Like this man and Fight Club's unnamed Narrator, I suspect that my own animal is avian themed - apposite and appropriate - although a peacock might be a tad obvious. Our sartorial fandom does make us - dare I say - birds of a feather

Thursday 9 September 2010

Smoking Shirt (Dance Dance Dance)

   Tintin said:


   So, I wonder what he would make of this:


   A flashback to more immobile times follows:

Tuesday 31 August 2010

Blue/Green Again

   It's the return of that  allegedly irredeemable colour combination; a suitably optimistic presentation for the latest wedding I attended recently. And I barely believe in marriage, so my high spirits surprised even me

   ADG, a member of my personal Band of Blog Brothers, has written an exceedingly kind and trenchant tribute to your author, with one commenter noting an accessories trifecta of mine; namely, my rose pin, pochette and pen. This time, on the grounds of ensemble dissonance, my writing instrument remained at home

   Even I have my Coco Chanel Moments

Monday 30 August 2010

Akwapim Hills


   Aburi, one of Ghana's cuter townships, is favoured as a weekend retreat from the pulse-pounding bustle of Accra and its ever-fractal traffic. It nestles amongst the Akwapim Hills, which provide the benefits of a reasonably high and pleasant altitude, as well as a more moderate temperature. One easily feels at home in tailored linen, mohair, ramie or cotton, reclining on the porch of one of the various colonial or neo-Ghanaian residential forms that dot the area


   The area seems to offer more than one different viewpoint: ex-pats from various walks visit often to meet, discuss, broker and recline. The cleaner air may be more conducive to bonhomie and reason - perhaps it is provable by science

   I just go for the air. And the abandonment


Friday 27 August 2010

Go Faster


As it was unwritten in Ecclesiastes 1:9, "There is nothing new under the Ghanaian sun"

Tuesday 3 August 2010

Black Tie & Décolletage

   My reinvigorated formalwear rig recently received a public airing at a "Bow Ties and Cleavage Party" that indulged me in more ways than one. My J. Hoare/E. Tautz 1960s textured dinner jacket was perhaps the most iridescent piece on display that was not set in sculpted metal. Whether it also adorned a low cut front at any point is not for me to say

   (Fun fact: the term "décolletage" is often mistaken for "décotege" by anxious conservative Ghanaian mothers who secretly wish for their daughters to convert to Islam)

   It's necessary here that I caution against donning such garments away from club or home-based black tie evenings and formally minded social parties. This casual aspect of black tie should not be misinterpreted as being adaptable to any casual setting, nor should it be seen at business award ceremonies. And please try not to dress it down, no matter what fantasies Lapo Elkann and the word "sprezzatura" fill your mind with

   In my opinion, this sort of neutral toned flamboyance deserves nothing less than the full bore treatment, from my lapel pin to my dainty, opera pump-clad feet:


   Of course, I like sculpted metal also, but in the tradition of my clothing choices, I made it the preserve of  my shirt cuffs and my face:


   Not long afterwards, I was commissioned by an uncle over lunch to teach him the ways of the self-tying bow for an upcoming event. I hope that he was the best dressed man at the Kenny G concert and concomitant gala dinner he was to attend

   And like me, I'm certain he was grateful that only the excessive air conditioning of Ghanaian venues allowed for our appreciative show of Western eveningwear in a hot climate

Photographs by Barrak El-Mahmoud of Capture Your Memory Bank, Ghana

Wednesday 7 July 2010

Outfit - More of The Same

   Another vintage-based ensemble, another Ghanaian wedding, and so it goes:


   With a bonus tribute to The O'Jays (because we would need two more to comprise a Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes homage):

Monday 28 June 2010

I Frame The Outfit Eclectic

   The more outré the eyeframes, the more basal and sober the composition of the outfit. At least that's the working theory

Wednesday 23 June 2010

I'll Be Dressing Down

   Like Beard before it, this is a hirsute example of my daily ensemble style in Accra:


   Existing in an environment such as this, with only around 4 months of climate variation over a year, places quite the personal scrutiny on my summerwear

   This is the assessment and I'll be unprolix for once:

   I'm lacking for a dependable cycle of dress and casual trousers for the duration. Were there any reliable and gifted trouser cutters in the city, this would be rather minor an issue. I can, at least, count on finding alterations tailors for my shirts, since I've dropped some weight and don't believe in the aesthetic benefits of draping a tent around my upper body

   The subdued approach as seen above, however, I'm more than comfortable with

   Soon, Paraders, I aim to show off more of my print shirts; the most stylish garment category for the sweaty days of hot living

   In the meantime, all are free to suggest wardrobe remedies. I'm sure the PR agents that alert me via e-mail to their clients' collections must have a few ideas on summer elegance

Tuesday 8 June 2010

Last Stop: This Town

A further illustration of my recent keyboard ramble

Monday 31 May 2010

The Yellow Tie "No"


    Neckwear of such hues has been a longtime plaything of mine and yet the odd comments on its ensemble incompatibility and its limited use amongst the iGentry and iDandies would make me the iconoclast that others consider me as

   Since the colour of my skin obviates the dreaded washout effect, the only Don't working against me is which garment shades to avoid, which takes care of itself through pure pragmatism

   Whilst I wouldn't recommend, say, a navy suit of any stripe on the grounds that the inevitable white shirt would create a strange mix of shiny and washing, my odd pinstriped waistcoat is fair use because it doesn't envelop my arms, thus leaving space on the colour wheel for my grey-brown topcoat. Not pictured is the pair of olive trousers I wore, which, in tandem with the other muted colours and the obscuring effect of the waistcoat, creates a restrained palette that flatters the tie. As long as one is aesthetically skilled, the navy top with a different coloured lower half is rather sensible, as my good friend Winston Chesterfield thoughtfully exemplifies

   For the blues adherents, I’d suggest settling in the ranges of medium, ocean or grey-blue and nothing stronger or deeper than the most moderate of that French hue

   I rather think the yellow tie has more of a habitat in the land of the lighter coloured suit - your khakis and tans and off-whites are very much its friends - but it appears as comfortable in the darker kingdom of the grey. Then you have the browns - I can see one bringing a showman's dash to a chocolate coloured double-breasted or a lighter shaded tweed. Rust jackets seem almost mandatory

   The plain yellow silk or knit should be the preserve of the experts who can deploy it with a yellow shirt and the necessary impunity. For those not so inclined, stronger hues and tasteful prints are the idyllic entry point to toy with this not unappealing aspect of the palette kingdom

   Perhaps it's time to say "yes"

Thursday 20 May 2010

Beard

My beard and I in Nature:

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