Bond, James Bond

 

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God Bless Ye Merry Swaddled Gentlemen

Too many guys don’t understand how clothes should actually fit. Here’s an excellent video I found on the subject:

Alan Flusser’s featured in it. Don’t know who he is? Get to!

The 1960s (spit), Men's Style and History

I left this as a comment on a post which suggested you, as a man, allow your girl to dress you:

It's been since the 60s or thereabouts when the full swing of the Peacock Revolution was in its heyday that men stopped caring about what they wore. This led to the horrendous 70s and everything's been downhill from there.

60s men who grew up then rejected not only their 30s and 40s fathers' political ideologies, but also their conservative (read: traditional) fashion style. The basics of what a Western man looks good in, unlike women's, really doesn't change and hasn't ever since Beau Brummell decided to set his own pace.

The problem is that 80% of men and boys today didn't learn from their fathers about fashion, the classic kind worn by such men as the Duke of Windsor, Cary Grant, Larry Niven and any of the movie stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I don't blame them because their fathers never did either.

This has caused something of a problem for the modern man: unless one takes a markedly dogged position on the issue and LEARNS what makes a man look good and gets it (thus obviating the need for any woman to think him badly dressed), they let their women do the picking.
Men didn't use to be fashion accessories for women, they dressed themselves (as would be expected of any adult).

It's only been quite recently that women have taken yet another position not traditionally theirs and started outfitting their dummies, er men. To be sure, I don't blame the women either. Just as it is necessary to provide a locus of manhood as she does of womanhood, when men relinquish this locus, the ladettes only too readily--but unhappily--take over the vacuum.

No, I suggest every man simply learns about classic, timeless male fashion (one of the better books on the subject are any by Alan Flusser; Russell Smith's Men's Style; askandyaboutclothes.com; The Suit by Antongiovanni though it is rather a pill).

Imagine my horror to find I'd (once again) mistaken Larry Niven with David Niven. Larry's a SciFi writer of some not—weird, I don't read SciFi, but I can't get his freaking name out of my head. David is, of course, the ever so sharply dressed movie star.

Adverts

Or commercials are you provincials know them. As in: almost all US adverts suck rotten eggs. Luckily, the Brits are incredibly marvelous at producing imaginative and above all, ironic commercials.

So if there are any of you ‘Ad Men’ or women reading this (fat chance, I know), allow me to point you in the direction of the Top Gear ‘Best Car Ads’. Notice the almost effortless, simple, sometimes bizarre way these commercials transfer the need and want to buy via the TV.

Also: notice with what aplomb the accompanying descriptions simply introduce then with that light touch of Englishness, for lack of a better description, snarkily tosses it your way. Now go and do likewise.

Enough jibber jabber, go forth.

Tailors

Luca Turin On The Science Of Smell

The Right Fit

As a recovering fat boy, it's hard to find properly fitting jackets because nothing in the ready-to-wear sections of such outhouses as Men's Wearhouse and the department stores have anything approaching my unique combination of girth and height. So it's bespoke or lose weight, I guess.

Bespoke costs mucho dinero. H'm, lose weight it is.

Will is a guy who I've written about before. He posts at A Suitable Wardrobe and does a pretty good job of laying out his opinions about classic men's style. On March 14, he has the following list of recommendations for a properly fitting jacket:

Starting from the top, the jacket collar should hug the rear of the shirt collar at all times. [My emphasis]

The jacket shoulder should end at the edge of the shoulders, and the armholes should begin no more than an inch below the armpit. High armholes help a jacket to ride properly through a range of motion.

The position of the jacket's buttoning point should be at the natural waist or half an inch below it to keep it from bunching up when the wearer is seated.

The jacket should also be large enough to button without strain - but not too large. There should be no more than three inches of space between the button and the chest.
Jacket lapels should fall straight down the chest without buckling or pulling away from the chest in any other way and the jacket back should not have horizontal creases anywhere along its length. If a coat does buckle or crease it is usually too small, and that's not a correctible[sic] problem.

Finally, the sleeves should show half an inch of shirt cuff when the arms are hanging straight down.

I really like the first point, it's very important. Otherwise, the jacket would look like one's wearing one's dad's jacket and what's more, it looks goddamned sloppy.

And The Best Screenplay …

Linda Seger's book is the newest addition to my library.  It's very, very good.
It's subtitle is Learning From the Winners: Sideways · Shakespeare In Love · Crash and that is exactly what the book is about, a thorough analysis of these three movies’ screenplays (two of which I really like—Sideways and Shakespeare …; Crash I could do without even though technically, it's also well-written).
Seger's got a practiced eye and ferrets out all the nuances of all these scripts.  This can only help the tyro screenwriter get better.
Gardening
A few hours ago, for the first time in almost 20 years, I took up the hoe and shovel and went to work on the soil.  Back in Africa, I used to help some of my neighbors with their “farms” which aren't farms in the American sense, but large tracts of land out in the uncultivated forest lands around the cities and towns.  I don't believe they even owned the land, just wandered out there and started clearing brush.
We'd load up the trucks and, in a convoy, make the long drive out to the middle of nowhere—that's how it seemed to me anyway.  How they found this place time after time was beyond me.  We'd take food and plenty of water in Jerry Cans and trek a few miles into the jungle along barely recognizable trails, one person in front of the other in a snaking line through the bush.
After what seemed like forever (especially when you're 15 and it's fucking hot and you're carrying hoes and cutlasses and shovels and machetes and rakes …) we'd suddenly burst through the last, tearing vestiges of brush and into a clearing populated by neat, long rows of earth mounts.  Sticks jutted out of the ground next to each mound to act as plant guides.
“Those are for the yams,” my neighbor's dad said, as we put the loads down from off our heads.
I didn't care, I just wanted to get to the “fun” part: hacking away with those machetes.  Mainly, we were there to weed and also to plant other types of crops in some other parts of the “farm.”  As part of the bush clearing, we planned to burn and to a slash-and-burner like me, this was sweet.
I was in very good shape.  Now, not so much … and I got to find out just how bad today out in the backyard, hacking away at the weeds, my poor back muscles working overtime to keep my bended body from toppling over forward while holding my lard-heavy belly in place.
Truly, a fatter bastard would be hard to find.  Sigh.
Green Computing
Every time the man said “Green Space,” I felt like taking off my shoe like my dear mother used to do when I'd finally pushed her to the limit and, like her, throwing it at his head.  I could only wish that like her, I didn't miss—dear mama was as adept at throwing that shoe as the most fanatical stone-throwing Shiite.
The man was an Intel salesman extolling the virtues of the upcoming 45nm-sized Nehalem chips.  Fine, I can understand and even appreciate using less power but enough already.  I don't give a shit and shouting the praise of so-called Green Computing is not a selling-point for me.
Green Computing indeed!  Bah.
As if to make things even better, my new colleague asked if I knew how much the US “contributed” to emissions.  Yes, she actually said “contributed,” as if there was a global emissions savings account or something.  I told her I didn't give a shit … and to directly answer her question: possibly not enough.
“25%,” she said with a sneer, “and we're the only major country who didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol, forsooth!” (I added the forsooth part.)
Sigh.
And to think I actually signed on to hire her. :-)
Perfumania
Shopping at the Boise mall found me inexorably drawn to my new Mecca, Sephora, to find my latest “find”: Marc Jacobs for Men.

This one is almost unexpected, with its fig note (like my other new favorite, Diptyque's Philosykos) but mein Gott! I got a sample because I want to see what it develops into with time.  Stay tuned.
A little Perfume Anecdote.

Walking Billboards

Will over at A Suitable Wardrobe discusses a pet peeve of his and, as it turns out, mine as well: the proliferation of logoed wear:

I tried on a pair of Mephisto walking shoes once. They were very comfortable and I took a closer look. That was as far as it got. There on the side of the shoe was a label with the maker's name. On the outside of the shoe, mind you.

Ferchrissakes, I've already bought the fucking shirt, now I gotta advertise it with your logo all over my chest?  Like Will says, it's venial and wrong.  Mortally wrong.

The Windsor

I came across Tim Ferris' blog entry for August 15 titled How to Tie the Perfect Tie… Every Time by accident. Ferris recounts a story of being taught how to tie a tie by someone he nicknames the “Egyptian magician.” He (Ferris) called it “The Egyptian magician knot” in honor of this tutor. It turned out to be the Windsor knot.

He then offers for our benefit (and the ladies' as well—naturally—who will in turn teach it to to any man occupying the following roles: “boyfriends, father, son, or stranger” who should then “love” the ladies “forever,” as a result, according to Ferris) the following video.

How nice, Tim.

However, the Windsor knot is knot (sorry) “little-known.” The fact that it's not better-known is a sad reflection of our times: in which boys grow up never needing to tie a tie and thus not knowing how to do so. Even, surprisingly, ones such as Ferris who attended private schools where such knowledge was de rigeur not too long ago and where the need to invent names for as famous a knot as the Windsor (Egyptian magician knot indeed!) was unknown.

In addition, people, including all those ladies he writes of seeking love from their men and boys, have to understand that the Windsor is not necessarily appropriate for every occasion, every face, every shirt and every collar type—it does indeed go particularly well with a spread collar, certainly not recommended for men with fat faces and short necks as I have, alas. In fact, an argument may be made that the Four-in-hand may actually be a better fit as an “all-rounder” knot than the Windsor which tends to sit flatly on the shirt's surface, like a dead fish.

To wit this picture from Ferris:

This is blah, boring. There's no interest here, it's wide, flat, and limp, not the most flattering of adjectives any modern gentleman would want to be associated with.

Ironically, the Windsor knot was named for the Duke of Windsor, the erstwhile King Edward VIII, but he never wore it. According to Wikipedia, His Grace simply preferred a “wide knot” and claimed he did not invent the knot. Instead, his extra-thick and extra-wide ties resulted in an extra-large knot when tied with the basic Four-in-hand knot. If the man solely responsible for classic men's dress, as some have claimed—a claim with which I completely agree—defers to the four-in-hand, who amongst us fashion underlings would dare cast the first stone in the opposite direction?

No sir, not me. For an alternative, how about this:

It's from another Tim, this one composing an Ode to the Tie Dimple:

And now we come to the subject of tie knots and the tie dimple. Perhaps it's just what my dad taught me, but I've always worn the traditional four-in-hand knot. To me the Windsor is too bulky and stodgy. The four-in-hand knot is "just right" for me.

Furthermore, unless the composition of the tie prohibits its formation, I always form a dimple when I knot my ties. In my opinion, no tie knot is complete; no businesswear is "finished" unless a knot is dimpled.

He includes links to Tieguide.com and Neckties.com.

Thomas Pink wrote a great book some time back, The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie and has a veritable encyclopedia of tie knots available online. So people, please, there are many ways to tie a tie. The Windsor, while a good tie knot, is definitely not the perfect knot. It all depends on the man, the shirt, and the collar.

Turin Likes Naughty

Doctor Turin's latest review is of the niche perfumery house of Slut, er, I mean Etat Libre D'Orange. Like me (ahem!), he didn't think much of their naming conventions with names like Putain des Palace (something about prostitutes) and Don't Get Me Wrong Baby, I Don't Swallow—I kid you not!—understandably, one tends to discount such "Dada stuff," as the doctor puts it.

He recounts that after actually smelling their products, he likes them! For two reasons:

1) talented perfumers, especially young ones, have for some time been working for niche brands because it’s more fun; 2) just as important, good artistic directors, tired of working on Britney Spears’ ninth fragrance, are starting their own firms.

Which one of the horses in their stable does he like? This one:

Right.

Antoine Lie's Magnificent Secretions is “revolutionary,” gushes (no pun intended) the good doctor because Lie “used a nitrile as a main note in a fine fragrance.” He further explains that Lie's put a loud note of “harbor bilge in an elegant floral and made it fly.”

I can't wait to try this one. Can you?

The Perfumed Court

I am not affiliated with The Perfumed Court, I just really hope they succeed.

As some of may know, Ebay forbade the sale of decanted perfume some time back. Why is this a problem? Well for me, I don't have the bucks lying around to spend on full bottles of perfumes I've never smelled before, hoping I like them.

I mean, I live in Idaho. It's not like I can visit a fine establishment like Nordstrom's or Barneys New York to smell potential buys before plunking down hard-earned cash. So buying decants off Ebay was a great way to test perfumes and  I found some current favorites that way.

Undeterred by Ebay's cowardly CYA policy, these four ladies got together and formed The Perfumed Court. They have an extensive collection of perfumes available at good prices (Divine's L'Homme Sage in an 8ml glass spray bottle is $21.75!).

Good luck, Ladies!

The Suit

Michael Anton, writing under an alias (Nicholas Antongiovanni), wrote what I judge to be a rather excellent book, the same title as this post's.

In this article (reproduced below—original here), he writes to talk about why custom tailoring is far superior to the dreck marketed at such places as Men's Wearhouse (ugh, what an ugly homonym and their stuff's pure shit).

This is a site for tailors yet I am not a tailor.  If you are reading this, I suspect that you are not either.  You are a customer, as am I, or a potential customer, as I once was.

If the latter, then this little essay is for you.  Why custom?  If you are here, you are interested.  You intuitively know that a suit made specifically for you must be somehow superior.  And you are correct.  But perhaps you do not know how.  This I can explain, under three broad categories: fit, silhouette, and construction.

Fit
Fit is the single most important consideration for any garment.  Clothing that does not fit, no matter how beautiful its color and pattern, how expensive its cloth, or how expertly made it may be, is useless.  Who would willingly wear something that does not fit?  To do so is to choose to look foolish.  Take two men: dress one in a $4,000 handmade Super 180s Italian suit that does not fit, and another in a $200 machine-made plain worsted that does.  The man in the cheap suit will look better – much better.  Well-dressed men have long known that money isn’t everything; fit is everything.

Fit is especially important with tailored clothing, which is designed to artfully conceal your defects and shortcomings and emphasize your assets.  Moreover, unlike (say) a sweater or a polo shirt, tailored garments don’t stretch.  They either lay correctly on the body or they don’t.  And they need to fit correctly at a number of places.  To wit:

The neck: the collar of a jacket should sit flush against the collar of your shirt and hug your neck.  There should not be so much as a millimeter of space between shirt collar and jacket collar.  Just beneath the collar, the jacket’s back should lie smoothly.  Ripples here are all too common, and a sign of improper fit.

Proper shoulder fit is harder to describe because stylistic considerations come into play (about which more below), but one may say, generally, that a jacket’s shoulders ought to be exactly as wide as your actual shoulders, or perhaps a fraction of an inch wider.  Your shoulders may crook forward or arch back; the jacket has to account for that.  A well-fitting armhole should be as small as you can tolerate.  This takes some getting used to, but it is more comfortable in the long run, as it allows you to move your arms freely without lifting the jacket or disrupting the way it lays on your body.

Chest fit varies (again, see below), but all well-fitting jackets have some fullness – or excess cloth – over the shoulder blades in back.  A perfectly smooth back may look nice, but lose that fullness over the blades and you won’t be able to move your arms without feeling the coat pull tight across your back, rather like a straight jacket.  The rest of the back, however, should be smooth as a frozen pond, yet curved to conform to the shape of your back, rather like a gentle “S” when viewed from the side.

If the jackets is vented – whether center or side – these should hang straight and perpendicular to the ground.  If any vents gape open, the coat does not fit.  Its length should be determined by three factors: your height; the relative lengths of your torso and legs; and the cut of the coat.  It is hard to give specific rules in the absence of a specific man.  But one may say generally that a jacket that does not cover your seat is too short, and one that appears longer than halfway from the collar to the ground is too long.

Most men wear their jacket sleeves too long.  Proper sleeves end at the wrist, to show about ½” of shirt cuff when you are standing.  Some prefer a little more, some a little less, but ½” is the baseline.

Trousers seem easy to fit, but in fact are the hardest of all.  They seem easy because 99% of ready-to-wear trousers are cut incorrectly, to ride down at the hips.  But this is a bad look for all save the very young and very slim.  Nonetheless, they are cut this way because the ready-to-wear industry knows that trousers cut to worn at the waist will slip to the hips if they are not cut perfectly.  And since they cannot be cut perfectly ready-to-wear, it is best to just cut them to the hips in the first place.  But proper trousers are cut to be worn at the waist.  These present a more pleasing silhouette, lengthening the leg line, covering the gut, and emphasizing the chest and upper body.  Good custom tailors know how to cut waist-rise trousers that don’t slip.

Rise, incidentally, the measurement from the crotch to the top of the waistband.  You want this to be as short as it can be and remain comfortable.  The principle is the same as with armholes: a short rise allows greater freedom of movement and disrupts the lay of the trousers less.

As to length, you have some leeway depending on your preference.  Most American men prefer a generous “break” or excess length over the shoe.  ½” is the upper limit; longer and your pants will look sloppy.  The British tend to make trousers with just a whisper of break.  Some Europeans prefer no break at all, and even like to show sock.

Beyond this, most well-fitting suits (with an important exception; see below) lie cleanly and smoothly on the body.  With the exception of the fullness over the shoulder blades, there should not be a ripple anywhere.  Rippling and puckering and pulling are signs that a suit does not fit.

And beyond this, well-fitting suits take into account any number of irregularities you may have.  If your posture is stooped, your jacket is likely to bunch up at the neck and feel tight in the back; if erect, to pull open in front.  In addition, very few men are perfectly symmetrical in every respect.  For instance, if one shoulder is lower than the other, then the jacket will hang lower on that side when unbuttoned.  When buttoned, the bottom edges will even out, but the lapel on the lower side will bow outward in an unsightly way.

These are but a few of the infinite irregularities which afflict the majority of men.  If you suffer from none of them, and if your size is one of the even numbers commonly stocked it the stores, and if some manufacturer makes a suit that you know from experience fits you well (for not all sizes of the same number but from different makers fit the same way), then you may be one of the lucky ones who can be adequately fit by ready-to-wear clothing.

Adequately, but not perfectly, because ready-to-wear clothing is measured in much larger increments—typically 1-2” along most seams—that custom suits, which are measured in increments of ¼” or less.  But the more important reason is the pattern.  A pattern is like a suit’s blueprints.  On well-made suits, the pattern is a paper template that is laid down on top of a length of cloth and traced with chalk.  The cloth is then cut by hand along those chalk lines into several pieces that are stitched together to form your suit.  It is easy to see, therefore, that the shape of these pieces – and thus the shape of the pattern – will greatly effect the shape and fit of your suit.  On a custom suit, that pattern will be drawn for you alone, according to your individual measurements.  Ready-to-wear suits are made from stock patterns made to fit the “average” man, whoever he may be.  Moreover, on mass-produced suits, the pattern may be a computer image only.  And the suits are rarely cut one at a time; more commonly, several pieces of cloth are stacked on top of one another – sometimes for dozens of suits at once – and the cloth is cut by a laser.  The potential for error and inconsistency rises accordingly.

Finally, there is the issue of fittings.  Ready-to-wear suits are finished before you buy them.  The store’s in-house tailor can alter the suit a little to make it fit better, but there are limits to what alterations can accomplish.  You can forget about accommodating any of the really tricky irregularities discussed above.  Sleeve length, jacket waist, trouser length and waist – that’s about it.  “Fittings” are essentially alterations that are done as the suit is being made – before it is finished.  You try on the unfinished suit; the tailor checks how it fits on your body and makes necessary corrections.  Quite a lot more changes are possible mid-construction than are possible after the garment is done.  This is important, because cloth is unpredictable.  Even if your pattern is perfect, and you’ve had a dozen great-fitting suits made by the same tailor, different cloths tailor and wear differently.  Fittings are necessary to check how a given cloth is coming along as the suit is made.  The number of fittings, and the stages of the construction at which they will take place, will vary from tailor to tailor.  But one thing is certain: with custom tailoring you will get some fittings; with ready-to-wear, you will get none.

Silhouette
Have you ever heard tailors or salesmen or aficionados use terms like “English look” or “Italian cut” or “natural shoulder” or “flared skirt” and the like and wondered, exactly, what it all means?  They are talking about silhouette, about the general outline of a garment, and also the particular qualities that constitute it.  “Silhouette” and “cut” are often used interchangeably, because a garment’s silhouette is achieved primarily through cutting.  The shape of those dozen or so pieces of wool that are sewn together to make a suit determine, in large part, the shape of the finished suit.

Silhouette is often confused with fit, but this is an error.  All garments must fit the same way in certain respects no matter their silhouette.  Besides, as Bruce Boyer – a man who knows tailoring very, very well – once wrote, “the concept of fit is somewhat nonsensical.”  No sensible man wants his clothes to conform exactly to the shape of his body, which may or may not be altogether impressive.  The virtue of tailored clothing is that it improves a man’s actual shape.  This is the purpose of silhouette.

In general, garments may sit close to the body, projecting a slender shape; or they may hang loosely, effecting a wider look.  They may elongate your form or shorten it.  They may effect severe angles or soft, gentle curves.  And they may be structured and built up, which gives a military impression, or else very soft, which makes them appear nonchalant and comfortable.  Structure and softness are determined largely by the type of materials used: a structured jacket will have more padding in the shoulders, and stiffer canvas in the chest.

Those are the basics.  There are well-nigh infinite factors – small and large –that combine to make an actual silhouette.  It would take too long discuss them all, but some specificity is nonetheless in order.  We may divide the coat into five basic parts: shoulders, gorge, chest, waist, and skirt.

Shoulders may be built up or “natural.”  I put natural in quotes because a truly natural, unpadded shoulder – like a cardigan sweater – is rare.  Most “natural shoulder” suits have some padding, but very thin, very soft, and very little.  Furthermore, shoulders may be more or less sloped from the collar to the armhole, or else built up and almost square.  Sometimes they are even concave; that is, they curve gently downward from the collar, and then rise again at the sleevehead.  (Some tailors call this a “pitched” or “pagoda” shoulder.)  Further still, shoulders may be “roped”: that is, the sleevehead may be raised up a tad from the shoulder line.  Another refinement is to make sleevehead a more “oval” shape, rather than conventionally round.  Then there is width: true natural shoulders tend to end exactly with a man’s true shoulder-line.  Shoulders may also be “extended” past the deltoid muscle by a half and inch or so.

The “gorge” is where the lapels meet the collar of the coat.  This may be high (collarbone or so) or lower, in the upper ribs.  The width of the lapels is also a factor to consider, though there is no direct relationship: a coat with a high gorge may have wide or narrow lapels, and vice versa.

The chest of a coat may be full (swelled) or lean (shallow); and draped or clean.  On a jacket with a lean chest, the outer edges of the jacket are pretty close to your actual torso.  A swelled chest means there is extra cloth that stands apart from your chest, making it look wider.  Swell is generally convex: billowing out in a gentle curve from the waist (or bottom of the ribs) and then back in under the armhole.  “Swell” is not to be confused with “drape”, which is excess cloth in the chest that “breaks” or ripples visibly across the hollow area below your collarbone.  A draped coat can have no swell at all but fit very close to your torso at the sides; similarly, a swelled coat may have no drape at all but a chest that lies completely flat and clean.

Three things to think about with respect to the waist of a coat: ) Is there one; 2) If so, where is it?; and 3) How dramatic is it?  Few completely undarted, waistless jackets are made any more, but they exist.  Most coats have a waist of some degree.  Tailors can alter the look of a coat by simply raising or lowering the latitude at which the jacket’s waist is narrowest.  Then there is the question of degree.  Most suits today have reasonably subtle waist suppression, but a few have a really pinched waist.  Also, the suppression may come a sharp point like this: › ‹, or else taper over a longish span, like this: ) (.

The placement of the waist also determines the placement of the buttons.  This is known as the “button stance.”  The middle button (or top button on a 2-button coat) – that is, the button that you actually fasten – should be positioned on the exact latitude of the coat’s waist.  Fashion houses do not always follow this rule, but classic RTW manufacturers and custom tailors virtually all do.

The skirt is the part of the jacket that hangs below the waist.  (In other words, relax guys.  We’re still taking about men’s clothes.)  It may be full or sit reasonably close to the hips.  Some even “cup”; that is, turn ever-so-slightly inward at the bottom.  Also, the coat front edges that fall below the waist button may hang straight, or be flared away from the button (called “open quarters”).  (This is true, however, only of single-breasted jackets.  Only one edge of a double breasted skirt front is ever visible, and it should hang relatively straight.)

Now, getting back to this business of nationality.  It is true that some silhouettes are closely identified with certain countries.  But before I describe the few truly identifiably silhouettes, I must warn you that not all the tailors in a given country cut suits the same way.  There is, for instance, no single “Italian cut.”  There are, at a minimum, several distinctly Italian cuts.  The same is true of English cuts.  For there are a zillion ways that one coat can be different from another, so that truly the number of silhouettes that are possible are infinite.

That said, these are the half-dozen or so enduring classics:

The Sack: Soft, natural shoulder; straight hanging coat with practically no waist; a rumpled chest, center vent, and a full skirt with no flair.  Typically 3-button with narrow lapels.  This is the quintessential “American” silhouette, having been made by Brooks Brothers since the earliest days of the 20th Century.

The “Updated American”: I put this in quotes because the phrase is Alan Flusser’s.  This silhouette has a somewhat bland shoulder that is a bit more padded than the sack but not stuffed.  Its chest less rumpled than the Sack, but not quite clean.  It has a real waist and a straight skirt.  Typically made two-button, with a center vent.  This silhouette was popularized by President Kennedy and has arguable been the most common American cut ever since.

The English Military:very elongating overall; structured shoulder on the natural line, typically with some rope; lots of structure in the chest, which is very clean but with considerable swell; high gorge and waist; lots of waist suppression and a flared skirt.  This cut is derived from British Army uniforms.  If there is a “quintessential English cut,” this is it.  The most common silhouette made on Savile Row.

The English Equestrian, or Hacking: very similar to the above, except that the Hacking is more angular and slightly softer, whereas the Military is more rounded overall.  The Hacking also has a more dramatically flared skirt.

The Drape: This was invented by the Dutch-born Savile Row tailor Frederick Scholte, who perfected in the late 1920s, and died in the 1950s.  The shoulder is natural, with no or minimal padding, and a gentle downward slope.  Often the shoulder is extended by half an inch or so to let it fall over the deltoid for a rounded look.  Very high armhole, and very full upper sleeve.  Generous drape in the chest and over the shoulder blades; very soft chest.  The skirt is usually quite closely fitted.  This is still the specialty of a handful of English, Italian, and American tailors.  This silhouette really shines double-breasted.

The Neapolitan: This is the Italian version of the Drape.  The differences are: it never has any padding; the shoulder is not extended; and the larger upper sleeve is “pleated” into the armhole, resulting in a slightly irregular, shirred look along the seam.  Also has dramatically open quarters when single-breasted.

The Continental: Square, stiff shoulder and stiff, clean chest.  Very lean throughout.  The waist may be pinched on larger sizes, but often these garments are so lean that not much of a waist is possible.  Waist suppression also tends to be more gradual, effecting a “columnar” look.  Close skirt.  This silhouette was born in Rome, spread to Milan, and later crossed the Alps into France.  It is arguably the father of all designer suits.  Custom tailors still do it much, much better, however.

Now you know the basics, and the most important specifics.  Some of the effects are purely stylistic and therefore solely a matter of preference.  Others tend to flatter certain physiques and clash with others.  What follows is a brief discussion of what I personally think works best with which body types.

Shoulders: jackets look best when the shoulders and the hips are approximately the same width.  Shoulders that are slightly wider than the hips are not bad; especially if that mirrors the physique of the wearer.  Broad shouldered men therefore do not need any extension.  But shoulders narrower than the hips look bad indeed – like they belong to a 99 pound weakling.  Thus men with extremely slight shoulders need some extension to balance their hips.  Men whose forearms are bigger than their deltoids also need an extended shoulder, otherwise the upper sleeve will “collapse” into their upper arm under the sleevehead.  And wider shoulders also help balance overly large heads.  Muscular men do not need or benefit from thick, square shoulderpads, which come off as “gilding the lily.”  Shorter men benefit from a pad that raises the overall line of the coat, giving them an illusion of a little extra height.  Some padding also helps men with extremely sloping shoulders look a bit more robust.

Gorge height raises the overall look of a coat; thus a higher gorge benefits the short.  The same can be said of the latitude of the waist, though this really is best set in relation to the actual waist of the wearer.  Lapel width is best calibrated to the width of the man.  A decent rule of thumb is that the lapels of a coat ought to extend about halfway across the chest, give or take a little for stylistic purposes.

I believe that all men benefit from a waist of some degree.  Waist suppression emphasizes the chest, imparting a robust impression, and lengthens the leg line, adding a bit to the illusion of height.  The “Sack suits” popular in the 1950s and 60s don’t flatter a great many men, though some stubbornly adhere to them.  For the most part, the degree of waist suppression is a matter of taste.  I do think, however, that as a general matter only the very short benefit from a dramatically pinched waist.  The very thin and the very stout, on the other hand, benefit from moderate waist suppression, but for different reasons: the stout because no waist will make him look like an egg and too much will make his jacket pull across the middle, making him look like a stuffed sausage.  Pinched waists make thin guys look they are wearing women’s clothes.

“Drape” is controversial.  Some consider it unsightly; others consider it the height of style.  Whatever one’s opinion, there is no doubt that it adds some comfort, but also detracts from the precisely tailored look of a clean, smooth chest.  It works best on the tall and lean, and arguably helps bulk them up a bit.  The stout are better off with smooth-lying garments; they don’t need any extra bulk.  Ditto the muscular.

The last two things that need to be said about silhouette are these: First, for a truly distinctive silhouette to look great on an individual body, all the compromises with fit have to be designed into the pattern from the beginning.  Supposing you could find a silhouette you love ready-to-wear, unless it fits you perfectly, it will have to be altered.  When it is, the silhouette will change – maybe a little, maybe a lot, but some.  Which is to say, the only way to ensure that you will get the silhouette you want and the fit you need is to go to a custom tailor.  Second, the most distinctive and flattering silhouettes are made only by custom tailors and are impossible to get off-the-rack.  Such suits can fit reasonably well and look reasonably good, but they will always look (and be) more “cookie cutter” than a custom suit.  And because the silhouette is designed into the pattern of a custom suit, and all of the necessary compromises with fit are made early rather than late, the end result is really unique: a silhouette that fits and flatters you and only you.  Your custom suit will look like no other, and will truly live up to the billing “custom.”

Construction
This is a little tricky, because every tailor makes his clothes a little differently.  But the finest garments – and therefore nearly all custom garments – are made wholly or largely by hand.  On any good jacket, the collar, the shoulders, and the armholes must be stitched by hand.  Otherwise, the jacket will be stiff and lifeless, which makes it uncomfortable, because it will not move with its wearer, and unsightly, because it will look like cardboard.

Also, all jackets – from the softest Drapes to the stiffest Militaries – are strengthened and given shape by pieces of canvas in the lapels and chest.  In the best jackets these are sewn by hand with hundreds of minute stitches, in good jackets this stitching is done by machines, and in all others they are not sewn but glued or “fused.”  Although fusing technology has improved greatly since its beginnings, fused jackets are still always stiffer and less breathable, and they become more so with wear.  At worst, the glue can dry out, causing the canvas to peel away and the cloth to bubble.  Custom jackets are never, ever fused.

Handwork is not in itself the final measure of quality, but it is an indicator of quality.  And while it is true that several top-end manufacturers make ready-to-wear suits with loads of hand-stitching, some of it of the very highest quality, it is also true that they charge as much and often more as a great custom tailor.  And all that cash does not buy you your own pattern, several fittings, and a distinctive – and possibly unique – silhouette.  Think about that the next time you’re perusing the rack at Saks or Neiman’s or Barney’s or Bergdorf.

There you have it: the answer to the question “Why custom?”  The only question remaining – and this is one that only you can answer – is, Why have you waited so long to try it?

A Closer Shave

Now that I am slowly attaining the status of “shave master,” something which really only means I am throwing away my Fusion and Mach 3 monstrosities for a double-edged safety razor and a straight razor, I'm always on the lookout for any information about shaving the “traditional way.”

In many Third World countries, and definitely in Nigeria where I grew up, people can't afford the newest high technology shaving apparatus so it's not really the traditional way, it's the only way to shave with double-edge razors. I never saw a straight or cutthroat razor before the US, except in the odd horror flick. I'm going to get one of those bad boys and attain shaving Nirvana (I am told), until then however, I'll make do with the Merkur Heavy Duty razor I bought online yesterday.

That's it to the left.

A really great place for information is the Badger & Blade forum. You'll find a whole lot more information there and links to some really cool YouTube videos by a user named Mantic59.

A National Geographic video covers the history of shaving; now this is something:

Yes sir, it's out with the new and in with the old. I think that's what being a conservative is all about! ;-)

Turin: Fantastic Man, Part Three

The final installment of the Fantastic Man article about Luca Turin. Enjoy:

The age-old division between the art and science cultures is vaporized in the person of LUCA TURIN. He recounts how his mother was amazed to discover his talent for writing when he began to publish perfume criticism in 1992. She couldn’t believe you had right brain skills as well as left? “Yes, in fact I think those were her exact words.” Yet it is for the joy of the scientific endeavour that TURIN reserves his most fervent evangelism. “You know, science is a really difficult profession. There's nothing like it. A lot of people feel sorry for nerds. But,” (he lowers his voice to a whisper) “they're having the best time. Imagine figuring out something really important in science. Not only is it a work of the imagination, it's also true. A novel can't be true. A painting can't be true. It can be great. In science, things can be both great and true. That's a drug, you know. If you ever taste that stuff once, you're finished.”

For those addicted to TURIN'S brilliant depiction of perfumes however, next year offers an opportunity to binge: he is currently writing a guide to 1500 fragrances, due to be published next spring. “Well, with some of them I'll only write three words. With something like MITSOUKO you can either gas on about it or just say ‘Go buy it. Put the book down and RUN’.”
As he is ever obliging with a recommendation, I ask TURIN if he'd mind making suggestions for the following occasions when the correct scent is required?
How about, dumping a lover?
“HOUBIGAN'T's DUC DE VERVINS so she'll be glad to see me go.”
Vacuuming the house on a Sunday afternoon?
“That funny sun-dried tomato smell of HOOVER exhaust is just too good to mix with anything.”
When giving up smoking?
“TABAC by MAURER AND WIRTZ”
A transatlantic flight?
“BEEF or, perhaps, CHICKEN by DEMETER.”

What about some neglected classics that readers of FANTASTIC MAN might want to re-discover?
TURIN starts poking around on the three-tiered shelves crammed with approximately six hundred glass bottles, “Well JESUS CHRIST. What about JULES by DIOR,” says TURIN gleefully, reaching to the back of a middle shelf. “It's so sexy.”
We both spray our arms. It smells really shitty.
“Yep. It's got a ton of civet and a sweaty note.” He holds his forearm across his face.I can't believe they get away with that now.
“They are getting away with it!” TURIN yells. “God bless them! Listen. The first five minutes may be bad, but then you can't live without it.”
What about something a bit melancholic?
“NEW YORK by PATRICIA DE NICOLAI is another sad and lovely one. It's sexy in a melancholy way. In a ‘Let's see if by making love you can make me smile’ kind of way.”

Although it seems likely that on most days he'd usually have half-a-dozen fragrances spritzed about his person, TURIN declares that he currently favours CALDEY ISLAND LAVENDER. “I like its abstraction. It's quiet and nondescript.” On the whole he doesn't like what he terms “cutesy-pie” modern male fragrances (making exception for ‘lovely carroty’ DIOR HOMME).
So what does today's very masculine guy wear?
“I think,” pronounces TURIN, straightening himself to full height in the centre of the room, “that the really masculine man, if he's really not worried, if he has really no problems - no need for chest-wigs or penis-extensions - then he sprays a pffft of JOY BY JEAN PATOU. Or go for any old GUERLAIN. Pre-WWI is the criterion. That's what you do. Not that I'm a super-masculine guy, but the occasions when, just for fun, I've put on GlORGlO, nobody's ever said. ‘This is a woman's fragrance.’ It just smells great.”
If the distinction between masculine and feminine fragrances completely arbitrary?
“The main difference is that the feminine fragrances are intended to be loud. You should aim for an aura about an inch deep. So as a guy you shouldn't over-egg it. But, you know,” - and it's the biophysicist who concludes, exultant at the self-evident fact - “everything in culture is arbitrary.”

I'm entranced, as usual, by any pronouncements by Dr. T. All except the one for New York by de Nicolai. I'm happy I swapped that one out of my fragrance wardrobe.

The one overriding characteristic of Turin's that I really like is his Modern Renaissance Man quality; he knows enough about many different things and many different subjects that he can speak with erudition. I can't wait for his book.

Turin: Fantastic Man, Part Two

The second part of three, continued from last Thursday.

TURIN is not a perfume snob. He doesn't prefer the rare and recherché. "Some people like hard-to-find. I don't. Seems it's like beer to me. I love the fact it's an industrial product." Although he dismisses male fragrance as "99 per cent crap--sad little hairy-chested GTI-type crap." he finds kind words for BLUE STRATOS, BRUT and LYNX. Even OLD SPICE. “Everybody loves to laugh about them but they're actually really, really good. They're totally unpretentious, solidly constructed perfumery compositions and the reason why they sold like hot cakes is that they work. BRUT is a classic fougere: soapy and clean. Would you rather wear this or bloody M7? I'd go for BRUT. It's good shit."
For six months in 2005, TURIN wrote a blog. Then it began to annoy him. "I quit on it because, although I loved writing it was eating my life. It was like bringing home a SAINT BERNARD puppy. Eventually it grows into a six-foot-high dog that drives you crazy. I found I was spending four hours a day checking what people said. And I have a Web addiction anyway."

What are you doing on it?

"Following a random train of thought. I don't think that is unproductive. I think my time spent on the web is some of the best time of my life."
A dark Monday afternoon a few days later, we meet again, this time at TURIN'S office, which is in fact a one-bedroom flat, exactly across the street from his home. "I have the shortest commute in Christendom," he says, and he'll admit he rarely goes out. Once you've paddled through the creeping tide of unopened mail on the floor, there's the matter of finding a chair. Ah, here's one, underneath a bath towel and a small electronic keyboard. The man himself is installed in one corner of what used to be a living room and now contains a long desk, covered in papers and bottles, and two sets of shelves. One holds lots of scientific textbooks. The other is crammed with half-used fragrance bottles. What the eyes perceive in TURIN'S den is nothing in comparison to what slides up the nostrils and, somehow, via the olfactory receptor cells (more on which later), flings itself headlong into the cortex. It smells great in here, LUCA. "Oh, really?" he says, stretching out his six-foot-two inch frame on a swivel chair parked in front of a giant desktop MAC. "I hadn't noticed."

TURIN is dressed in the same degage manner as before: pale blue pique polo, navy quilted PATAGONIA gilet, dark jeans, and sports sandals worn with socks. A controversial choice of footwear, if entirely suited to the stereotypical image of a research fellow at the Physics department of University College London (which is one of his titles), "There's nothing in principle uglier, I agree," he sighs. "I plead diminished responsibility. I have no particular commitment to style. Besides, these are not sandals, exactly. If they were the brown leather kind, worn with green socks, it would be more depressing.”

Possessed with a talent for interpreting perfume, you want to ask why TURIN himself has never turned his hand to fragrance creation. Never been tempted, is the response, but there's a quiver of ambivalence in his voice. "Well, in an abstract way I would love to do that. But I think people do well with what they are thinking about when they're not thinking about anything else. And I'm not thinking about perfume. I'm thinking about physics. Science."
In fact TURIN only spends one or two days a month professionally employed as a perfume critic. The remainder of the time he is LUCA TURIN, PhD., a biophysicist who designs odor molecules - the kind destined for use in smelly products from household cleaners to perfumes - for FLEXITRAL, of Chantilly, Virginia, USA. He clicks open a program on his MAC and the nuts-and-bolts formulation of a molecule appears on the screen. He clicks again and the knobby blue form, a synthetic musk, gently vibrates. "We're a virtual company. We don't need an office with begonias and a flag outside."

In the scientific research community he is best known for a contentious theory of smell he proposed in 1996, the result of a decade's research. While the exact way in which we smell - precisely how the olfactory receptors in the nose detect smelly molecules - is not perfectly understood, the prevailing theory is that our receptors distinguish each molecule according to its shape. The shape theory of smell, however, is unproved. Eleven years ago TURIN argued that the nose interprets smell molecules not by their shape but by their vibrations. The BBC recorded a documentary about his theory, and in 2002 it was detailed in a 500-page book called THE EMPEROR OF SCENT, by the writer CHANDLER BURR. Last year TURIN himself re-iterated it in a popular-science book, THF SECRET OF SCENT. However TURIN never managed to prove his hypothesis to the scientific establishment, although he says he is now designing odorant molecules for FLEXITRAL using exactly that theory. His audacity has sometimes had him labeled a 'rogue" scientist. But TURIN doesn't like to concede that he's been rebellious during his scientific career.
"I have followed my own path, simply because I believe that it's every scientist's duty to do so. I would never describe myself as a maverick. In the end, any self-respecting scientist wants recognition. One does not want to be on the outside."

Although he's technically Italian, TURIN has spent most of his life in France. He says he smells in French. He grew up in Paris, an only child. He could read at the age of four. A short period at school in Geneva is not remembered fondly. He was "not particularly" interested in smells as a kid but was fascinated by science, and on his return to Paris at the age of 11...spent all available moments in the Palais de la Decouverte.
By 1982 TURIN had completed his PhD in Physiology at University College London and was employed by the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, where he was to remain for a decade. 1982 was also the year he discovered fragrance. The first was SHISEIDO's NOMBRE NOIR. Now discontinued, he keeps a precious flacon of the scent in his collection. "This is the first fragrance that I smelled and thought: this is as beautiful as anything I have ever seen or heard. I mean, I had liked smells, I liked perfumes. But it was NOMBRE NOIR that broke through the ceiling and made me realize that there are some things you can say in fragrance that no other art can convey." He sprays a bit on our bare forearms.
And what does it say to you?

"Well, it's almost a person that I can see. You can fall in love with someone who's not there. It's such a personality," - and now TURIN'S voice turns a little tender, and he looks amazed, as if he's smelled the rosy scent for the first time - "although there's no person there. It's as though there's a hole in the air, shaped like this invisible person - that you are perfectly ready to dedicate the rest of your days to. There's a presence there, a kind of hologram, that goes far beyond something just smelling good."

Last part coming up soon.

Turin: Fantastic Man, Part One

Since I have no idea how to get Fantastic Man magazine, and this is something I'm intensely interested in and would like to save for posterity; and since a kind soul at Basenotes has seen fit to transcribe the entire article in three parts, I'm going to beg whomever's indulgence and post it here.

When said kind soul posts the other two, I'll copy them here as well. Without further ado:

The esteemed biophysicist and perfume critic Mr. LUCA TURIN was already somewhat of an outlaw in his field for his outrageously complicated theory of the human sense of smell. Then last year he published his popular-science exploration THE SECRET OF SCENT, a hilarious and enchanting trip through the world of odorous molecules. Mr. TURIN has successfully turned his deep-seated fascination for perfumes into an enviable profession. And along the way he has built up an international following of fans for his perfume critiques in the NEUE ZURCHER ZEITUNG, the Swiss quality daily founded on January 12,1780…

“Perfectly normal” is how LUCA TURIN describes his sense of smell. He sniffs at the little patch of CHANEL’S 31 RUE CAMBON that he has just sprayed on the back of his hand. We are reclining, a bit awkwardly, on a red sofa in the living room of his comfortable town in Camden, North London. It's Saturday morning and there's a scattering of kids’ toys on the floor.

“You know in REAR WINDOW when GRACE KELLY barges in - he's sitting by the window with his leg in plaster- and when she walks in, everyone in the audience, male and female, feels a pang of pain because so much beauty hurts. Well … ” (sniff) “to me, this thing hurts. Oh God.”

TURIN tends to call fragrances things’ perhaps to downplay how much he loves them. “There is an assumption that real men aren't interested in smell and perfume. Well I consider that to be an opportunity.” Italian by passport, born to Italian-Argentinean parents in 1953, raised in France and for the past 15 years resident in Britain. TURIN describes himself as ‘Early European.’ He speaks English with an East Coast American accent that suits his characteristic enthusiasm just as well as his sardonic asides. It's been said that he resembles GIANNI VERSACE. The fashion designer didn't have TURIN'S height, but perhaps they have a similar squared profile and friendly brown eyes. When Turin is really enjoying a smell, you notice that his eyes become round and unblinking with pleasure.

“To me it smells like DIORESSENCE, which was a landmark,” TURIN continues rapidly, “although strictly speaking it wasn't a landmark - but in any event, it has the chypre base from CUIR DE RUSSIE but also something of YVES SAINT LAURENT’S CHAMPAGNE … .” He waves a pointed finger in the air.
As unlikely as it might seem to anybody who has read any of his gripping DUFT-NOTE columns in the NEUE ZURCHER ZEITUNG, TURIN insists that until a motorbike courier delivered this new CHANEL scent the previous week, he'd all but sickened of them.

“I always think I hate perfume and then the next day a fragrance arrives that makes me change my mind. That's what happened with this insanely great thing.”

While the fragrance industry manipulates a widely held perception that scents are mysterious and somehow unknowable, TURIN is an arbiter nonpareil. To him, perfume is not an accessory to seduction but an art form, comparable to a painting or a symphony. On snatching a little of a scent's vapours with his nose, after just a few seconds TURIN can sketch out its genealogy, then render palpable its unseen loveliness, or horror, with metaphors that leave one in a synaesthetic daze. It is this facility that makes his opinions more interesting than those of a mere connoisseur. For instance, at one point, we are discussing the commonly held belief that fragrances behave variably on different skins. “I've always said that's bollocks and sales patter. But recently,” and suddenly he's as grave as if he were speaking from behind a lectern - “I've come to the realization that top notes, what you get in the first two minutes, are affected by skin type.”

Oh, the top notes. I always want to get them over and done with.
“I agree. On the other hand, there are different kinds of top notes. There are the fragrances where they've spent all their money on the top notes,”
Can you give an example?
“Almost every modern fragrance. They have 85 dollars for the formula and they spend 83-and-a-half on the first five minutes. So the beginning is like a fairground ride. And then it just dies. Then, there is the second kind, the classical top notes, which are like an opera curtain embroidered with a bucolic scene, and you can hear the set being moved about backstage. That's CHAMADE by GUERLAIN or any of the 1960s French classics. Then the curtain goes up and there's a beautifully lit interior with a window on a meadow. And that's top notes literally as a curtain in front of the structure of a fragrance.”
Most people find it difficult to describe smells, I say.
“Well, I’m delighted to hear that” he says, flatly, “I hope it stays that way.” He often uses musical metaphors. Do you have any musical talents? “None whatsoever, but I'm a terrific listener,” says TURIN, who prefers a soundtrack of anything ‘lyrical or elegiac’ while he works, reserving special praise for the contemporary composer HOWARD SKEMPTON. “But as WALTER PATER said, all art aspires to the condition of music, and I agree, enthusiastically.”

His ability to portray the scent-smelling experience - its emotion, logarithmic nature and sophistication-with figurative expressions can make the technical descriptions of fragrance (woody ambers and so forth) nonsensical by comparison.

“Well, it's like somebody saying, ‘this symphony contains cellos’,” says TURIN, “Don't they all? That's a technical description of a perfume. ‘Contains cellos and violins.’ Terrific. But what's the fucking tune?”

TURIN tells a story about visiting the nose FRANCOISE CARON at the offices of QUEST, one of the six largest fragrance houses that supply fashion labels and celebrity brands with their perfumes. She asks him to smell a new fragrance she is working on for ESCADA and he says that it reminds him of a silk that changes colour as it's tilted in the light. CARON gives TURIN a weird look and, from a drawer, produces the brief given to her, which reads: a silk in two tones.
“I have this way of connecting perfume to other things, and it makes it easier for people to understand. But it's not what you're saying; it's that you're saying it at all. I think a lot of people must have had strong feelings about perfume but hadn’t articulated them. So when they see somebody articulating them, it legitimizes them. It's a permission. I'm just opening a door.”

Part Two next.

Boobs

Yes sir, I'm a breast man. I make no apologies for the fact I love boobs. And not just for their obvious titillating (no pun intended) properties.

As a baby, I distinctly recall their nutritional qualities—honestly, I did. In fact, there was only a short time during which I wasn't interested in bosoms: ages two until seven, a period of time I like to call the Blessed Time of Knocker Ignorance.

I have intensely studied them, fondled a good many, sometimes in pairs and sometimes singly and sometimes, I have to confess, sneakily; watched more than my share of them in motion, a (if not the) most pleasant aspect of being the proud possessor of eyes.

So it pains me not a little when, like yesterday, I espy a great many owners of these wondrous jiggly implements not taking adequate care of them. Ladies, to quote TLC's What Not To Wear: Lock and Load.

You can't quite imagine the carnage that bad soutien-gorge inflicts, especially in re the better endowed. I can't pretend to understand the downside of owning larger tatas, only the pleasure of watching them at work, but from what I have been made to understand, they can become quite the burden. That, however, is no excuse for allowing the “low hanging fruit” swinging look, nor is it an excuse for the other extreme: the “bullet-proof vest” in which one of the blessed pair points northwest and the other northeast.

Get properly fitted ladies, and do it now, before it's too late.

For those others not so encumbered, count yourself lucky but that doesn't mean there are no pitfalls. While there is lesser need for locking and loading, the effect of not having sufficient support can lead to problems. The Hippy Chick, no bra look is très terrible and a particularly pernicious throwback to the dreadful ’60s. Please, do not let sleeping dogs (puppies?) lie. Once again, lock and load.

At the very least, you'll make at least one breast man (me) happy as he walks the streets of America.

Then, there are those who attempt the Madonna look. All I have to say is, there's a reason it's called underwear, sluts, underwear. Even as a boob man, I don't want to see straps, peeking lace, insufficient cover and other fashion crimes. And as much as it may excite my reptilian brain, certainly no see-throughs, please. Holster those weapons and like their real-life counterparts, the effect is heightened ten-fold when they're produced under the correct circumstances.

Good luck, I'll be watching.

Wait, that sounds creepy. ;-)

The Art Of Shaving

My lovely wife R. came back from Denver bearing gifts: a bottle of Gucci Pour Homme II (which I talked about here) and a "Starter Kit" from The Art of Shaving.

As a boy, I couldn't wait to start shaving.  My friends and I would go on endlessly, comparing how many inconsequential strands of hair were appearing on the tops our lips and our chins.  There were some boys, of course, who were the envy of the entire class because they'd already started shaving.  Little did we know these "boys" were hardly that.  Due to the educational system (and other) foibles in Nigeria, some of these guys were already in their early twenties when the rest of us were in their mid-to-late teens.

When I did start having to shave regularly, it was a chore and most times, in college, I decided to skip it.  The problem was my genetic predisposition to in-grown hairs that caused many painful problems.  In fact, sometimes, they got so bad, I'd hunker down and scratch exactly like a flea-bitten dog.

The problem, known by its Latin name, pseudofolliculitis barbae (folliculitis for short), is sometimes so bad in men of the African persuasion that black servicemen in World War II got special dispensation from the Army to forgo shaving.

Mine's nowhere as bad as the picture, but from time to time, it does get bad.  Certain shaving manuals suggest shaving with the grain then, after a second application of shaving cream, lightly shaving against the grain.  For black men and those prone to folliculitis, this is bad advice, as I was to learn.  Shave only with the grain.  Know the unique patterns of hair growth on your face and shave accordingly.

And use Tend Skin.

Anyway, back to The Art of Shaving.  This is the epitome of shaving, gents.  Seriously.  With "all-natural" ingredients and their 4 Elements of the Perfect Shave, they've changed the experience for the better and cut down on the occurrence of razor bumps.  That in itself is worth the price alone.

I'll speak more about what I've learned about shaving in a forthcoming post, but watch this in the meantime (and again, for you black men and others prone to folliculitis, ignore the "shave again" advice):

Turin Exultant

Doctor Turin is working on a new perfume guide book that comes out next year.  To say I'm looking forward to reading this book is the understatement of 2007.  His legendary 1994 book, Le Guide, put him on the perfume map, as it were.  This one will probably send it into orbit.

In his latest NZZ Folio magazine article, he writes about the sheer ecstasy of reviewing perfumes for the upcoming book, receiving box after box of perfumes and having his collection double to about 1400 bottles—and it's early days yet!

By the way, he likes Amouage Gold (“fabulous”; “once the most expensive fragrance in the world”) and calls Chanel's No. 5 Eau de Parfum an “eighties lapse of judgment.”  Keep in mind that the No. 5 Parfum is the original 1921 original, and the Eau de Toilette version is “soft and peachy, a fifties mom in a fur coat coming to tuck you in bed before going to the theatre.”