Branded Male

Lido style

Guess who's been on vacation. I know this blog was supposed to be updated infrequently, but leaving it in limbo since May was overdoing it a bit. What can I tell you? Other pressures, other projects.

Meanwhile, summer has come and almost gone. I haven't spent much time on the beach, but I did manage to squeeze in a few hours on the Venice Lido - arguably the world's most glamorous sandbar - last week. The Venetians are pretty snappy dressers, so it was easy to spot the tourists, myself included.

But at least I don't throw caution entirely to the wind when I dress for the seaside. The "amusing" t-shirts, fluorescent bathing trunks, flapping shorts, plastic shades and dodgy footwear - what's with the Crocs? - can make the beachfront an ugly place.

Even the very best dressers seem to lose their sartorial compass when confronted with a body of water. Remember Sean Connery's Bond (above) donning a sky blue towelling romper suit at the beginning of Goldfinger? It had a little belt with a buckle that went "click". Ian Fleming's 007 has killed men for less.

Fortunately, there's no question of arriving in Venice in anything less than style. Ignoring the churning vaporettos, you take your wallet firmly in hand and head for one of the beautiful Riva water taxis - little symphonies of wood, laquer and leather. It would be a tragedy to recline on the creamy banquette of one of these beauties with your loved one while wearing Crocs, cargo shorts and a t-shirt reading "I'm with this idiot". They demand loafers, vintage jeans, a white linen shirt and a navy blue blazer. Add some Ray Bans and the Lido beckons.

Upstairs at Lanvin

I had never set foot in the Lanvin Hommes store in Paris until last week. But I was on my way  back from a meeting near Rue Saint Honoré and feeling curious, so I dropped in. I was the classic disinterested customer: "Just looking."

Until I met Monsieur Maurice.

He is a small, pear-shaped man in perhaps his early fifties, with frazzled silver hair and smart steel-rimmed spectacles. He looks somewhat ill at ease and flustered in his slim-cut Lanvin suit and narrow tie. He approached me cautiously and hovered on my perimeter, keen to help but anxious not to impose.

"Everything looks wonderful," I said, truthfully, admiring the nonchalantly crumpled raincoats and sleek yet casual jackets. The label's designer, Lucas Ossendrijver, is generally considered to be a menswear visionary.

That was when Monsieur Maurice pounced. Before I knew it, he had a slender dark blue suit jacket on my back. Apart from the typically overlong sleeves (as far as I am concerned, most off-the-peg jackets are cut for primates), it fit beautifully. I looked trim and elegant.

"I knew it was your shape," said Monsieur Maurice, his eyes shining slightly.

Then I uttered the fateful words: "Actually, I am getting married in May."

I don't remember the journey up to the third floor, the tailoring department of Lanvin. All I know is that I found myself on a black leather sofa, sipping espresso and looking through swatches of material. Together, we picked out a Prince of Wales check. I wanted a three piece suit: I was quite insistent on that. Monsieur Maurice looked delighted.

The following day - a Saturday morning - I returned to the third floor to be measured for my suit. Monsieur Maurice was waiting for me, along with another silver haired gentleman. The floor, which is quite large and spacious, was more bustling this time. A woman who sometimes models for Jean-Paul Gaultier was there, said one of the younger staff. And also a soccer player.

I told Monsieur Maurice I didn't recognize either of them. He smiled understandingly. And for the first time I detected a faint tension between the older men who work upstairs at Lanvin and the younger, more excitable types who work on the fashionable second and ground floors.

Monsieur Maurice's colleague measured me, talking knowledgeably about vents and padding (he debated the possibility of a double vent with Maurice, who pushed for single and eventually prevailed). He noted that my right shoulder was a tad lower than my left. Nobody is perfectly symmetrical, he reassured me - and the difference is so slight that only a tailor can detect it. Once he had approved my choice of a five button waistcoat, he was done. The suit would be ready in a few weeks, but for now I was free to go.

Except. Monsieur Maurice remembered that the boutique would shortly begin a special offer on made-to-measure shirts. Perhaps he could do something for me. He disappeared downstairs like a white rabbit down a hole.

When he returned, he smiled victoriously: I would get a free shirt with my suit. It was simply a case of measuring me again.

To give me an idea of the style he counselled, Monsieur Maurice let me try on a Lanvin shirt that was more or less my size.

Of course, the sleeves were too long.

Lanvin Hommes, 15 Faubourg Saint Honoré, 75001, Paris.
Photos courtesy Lanvin. See The Sartorialist for another interview with Lucas Ossendrijver.

Bring back the bowler

The other night I dreamed that I was searching for a missing bowler hat. I have never possessed such an item, so I don't know what the dream signified. All I know was that the hat was rather stylish - in charcoal grey - and that I looked good in it. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be the case in reality.

The humble bowler is currently so unfashionable that - like the polka dot bow tie - wearing one would be a radical statement. Which means that it's likely to come back into favour at any moment. The cast of the new film The Brothers Bloom might give the bowler rebirth a nudge. Although they don't all wear bowlers, they have the correct bowler-wearing attitude: dapper and slightly eccentric.

There's something humorous about a bowler, which is perhaps why it's quintessentially British. It was, of course, designed by Brits: London hatmakers Thomas & William Bowler, to be precise. It was designed to protect gamekeepers' heads against low-hanging branches. Before that they wore top hats, which kept getting knocked off. Onlookers would then burst out laughing, which offended the gruff gamekeepers' sensibilities.

Bowlers soon become the acceptable headgear of the middle classes: not as snooty as a top hat and not as casual as a flat cap. Smart yet indestructible, they were adopted by butlers and City gents. In America they were known as "derbies", after Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby and founder of the Epsom Derby horse race. (That may be the connection, because I was born in Epsom. How Freudian.)

The Surrealists - especially Magritte - were quick to alight on the paradoxical nature of the bowler, which is both anonymous and subversive. It has occupied a significant place in popular culture ever since. In the sixties, the actor Patrick MacNee wore bowlers to rakish effect as the super spy John Steed in the cult series The Avengers (left), which also had surreal undertones. 

More recently, Pierce Brosnan looked dashing in a bowler in the climactic sequence of The Thomas Crown Affair, one of the few remakes that doesn't insult the original. The Parisian fashion designer Sonia Rykiel often includes a bowler in her catwalk shows. And last season she (or rather her daughter, Nathalie, who is now the brand's designer) sent out a whole parade of bowlers.

In fact, now I think about it, bowlers look even better on girls. 

Pressing engagement

One day I decided I was tired of ironing shirts. I wanted my everyday life to be like a business trip, where you send your dirty shirts to be laundered, and they come back the next morning folded and wrapped in tissue paper. When you put them on again, they feel clean and crisp and have those professional creases that make them look like new.

And so, as an experiment, I took a pile of shirts to the local dry cleaners - or pressing as it's known in France. It is a cavernous, steamy place that smells, inevitably, of exotic chemicals. The decor consists mainly of steel scaffolding. This serves a practical purpose, as the horizontal bars are crammed with hanging clothes in plastic chrysalises. But there's so much of it. The scaffolding rises to the ceiling and stretches back into the murky depths, where more hanging garments lurk like bats. Hissing and spurting noises indicate that the heart of the operation lies back there.

This pressing is supposed to be one of the most reliable in Paris, and it charges about three euros a shirt. As I spend most of my life sitting at my computer in a T-shirt and jeans, I don't get through my formal shirts too quickly, so it's an affordable luxury. I've been addicted ever since I picked up those first few shirts. They were folded, stiffened with cardboard and swathed in individual plastic sheathes. This makes them ideal for packing. But even when I don't have a trip planned, I like to have a stack of professionally pressed shirts in my wardrobe. No longer will I curse and sweat as I rush to iron the creases out of a Thomas Pink, already late for a meeting. The iron age is officially over.

Tie story

Like many modern men, I've always had a love-hate relationship with ties. At school, we expressed our individuality through the way we wore our ties. Mine ranged from string thin to cartoonishly fat. The shirt collar was left open, the tie knot askew. I was proud of my button-down shirts, which were relatively rare. The downside is that I can't stand them now.

I thought about this the other day when I was invited to a "black tie" dinner in London, hosted by The Bookseller. As I didn't have time to rent a tux, I wore a black Agnès B suit with a black silk Dior tie. It looked slightly Reservoir Dogs, but with silver cuff links and polished J.M. Westons, it passed muster. In truth I was slightly disappointed that I didn't have the right rig to wear a bow tie, as I take a certain pride in knowing how to tie one. It's a vanishing skill, but a pre-tied bow tie is a nasty object, like a discarded toenail.

As for daytime ties, I wear them rarely. I like the unaffected look of a smart suit with an open shirt. But some occasions - interviews with captains of industry, presentations at conferences, certain restaurants - require neckwear. After years of experimentation, I've found three forms I like: plain silk, dotted, or knitted. They should not be too wide. But not too modishly thin, either, or you look like a juvenile rock star. Dior does an intermediate width, as does Agnès B.

On reflection, the knitted tie is the form I prefer. It's smart, yet nonchalant; perhaps even a tad intellectual. It does the job, but you don't look like a Wall Street banker contemplating ruin. The fact is, it hardly seems like a tie at all. For me, style always comes back to understatement.

Gentlemen explorers

While wandering in Marseille recently, I felt a sudden need for a new pair of shorts. My two-year-old khaki pair were worn and sun-faded, even a bit frayed, and either I'd lost a bit of weight or the waistband had sagged, because they kept sliding down my hips like part of a white rapper's ensemble. Marseille is a trendy town, in a laid-back sort of way, so what I needed was something insouciant and vaguely nautical.

After a series of misses, I pushed open the door of a Napapijri store. This was a brand I knew nothing about: and I was pleasantly surprised. Most outdoor apparel retailers equate utility with ugliness, but Napapijri seemed to be trying to do something different. Although some of its garments were conspicuously over-branded, I liked the flag logo - which in some odd way reminded me of my English homeland. The garments were well-cut in natural fabrics and had a certain rakish style that set them apart from other outerwear items I'd seen.

It came as no surprise, therefore, to discover that Napapijri is Italian. Its name, via a clever bit of marketing, is the Finnish word for Arctic Circle, but the brand was born in Aosta in the early 90s under the name Green Sport Monte Bianco. At the time it made technical backpacks, but it naturally expanded into all areas of travel apparel and accessories. My purchase was a pair of dark navy shorts: more tailored than my old khaki pair but with the handy cargo pockets every traveller needs.

In my own fanciful way, I categorized Napapijri as a brand for gentlemen explorers. This is a rare breed, which dates back to the original Polar explorers of the 19th century. They all had a stiff upper lip - and it wasn't just due to the cold. Take Captain Lawrence "Titus" Oates, who walked out into a deadly blizzard during Scott's 1912 South Pole exhibition because the team's rations were running low. "I am just going outside," he famously told them, pulling on his boots, "and I may be some time."

But the polar wastes aren't the only setting in which you'll find the gentleman explorer. Take Henry Morton Stanley (top), the journalist who was sent to Africa by the New York Herald in 1871 to find the missing explorer and missionary David Livingstone. You know the legend: Stanley stumbles into the explorer in the middle of the jungle, greeting him with: "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?"

A more contemporary gentleman explorer was Bruce Chatwin, (right) author of the magnificent Songlines, who died in 1989. Formerly an art expert at Sotheby's, Chatwin was ordered by an opthamologist to "gaze at long distances" in order to rest his strained eyes. So he set off to the deserts of Sudan to research a book on nomads. Handsome, brilliant and always impeccably dressed, Chatwin is an irresistibly cinematic figure. Those of us who carry Moleskine notebooks are paying homage to him.

So how can you get a bit of gentleman explorer style? In summer, you should no doubt combine your shorts with desert boots and a white linen shirt - add an unlined jacket in the evening, your Moleskine notebook nestling in one of its pockets. And in winter, simply wear a massive hooded, fur-lined parka over a tweed suit. If you can add a bow tie, all the better.

That's all from me for the moment. I am going outside, and I may be some time.

Dior and the Dandies

Last weekend I loaded up on magazines and made the four hour train journey from Paris to Granville, in Normandy. That's the location of the Musée Christian Dior, at the designer's family home. The place is less ostentatious than you might imagine, built in the stolid half-timbered Anglo-Norman style familiar on this part of the coast.

I was there for an exhibition called, to offer a rough translation, Dandyism: two centuries of dandies from Barbey d'Aurevilly to Christian Dior. Over two floors of portraits, accessories and clothing, it attempts to capture the essence of that elusive figure: the dandy.

The show kicks off with 19th century elegant Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (right), who never recovered from his encounter with the original dandy, Beau Brummell, in nearby Caen. By then, Brummell was on the run from his debtors and crippled by syphilis, but that didn't prevent d'Aurevilly from idolising him - and becoming his biographer.

The book - Du Dandysme et de George Brummell - sparked a dandy craze in France, with everyone from aristocratic layabout Robert de Montesquiou (left) to respected writers Balzac and Baudelaire fretting about the correct way to knot a cravat or brandish a cane. They also  had some eccentric grooming habits: I was amused by a pot of Veritable Grasse d'Ours (Genuine Bear Grease), said to encourage hair growth and prevent discolouration. There was even a corset for men on show.

So was the dandy a metrosexual avant l'heure? It depends on your interpretation. The meaning of the word has been corrupted over the years. For Brummell, a dandy did not cry out to be noticed, but dressed with quiet perfection. Which brings me to my main criticism of the exhibition: when it enters the modern era, former Dior Homme designer Hedi Slimane barely merits a mention. I know he left Dior under difficult circumstances, but the man who  reinvented the suit for the 21st century deserves more than a fleeting reference. Instead we're lumbered with an homage to John Galliano, who the last time I checked wore fancy dress rather than real clothing. And is in any case a designer of womenswear, and irrelevant here. He even manages to steal the thunder of the current Dior Homme designer, the underrated Kris Van Assche (pictured).

But this glaring omission does not spoil an otherwise enjoyable show, which enables us to gloat at Balzac's turquoise-studded cane, Oscar Wilde's dress shirt, and a smoking jacket once worn by David Bowie (although I'd have opted for Bryan Ferry as the ultimate 1970s dandy). There's also a cigarette case that belonged to Christian Dior himself. If a dandy knows one thing, it's how to accessorise.

The exhibition runs until September 21.

On elegance

I just wanted to share a quote snatched today from the pages of the book Rosebud by Pierre Assouline. I'll have more to say about the book later, but for now I'll leave you with this, which I've no doubt poorly translated from the French:

"Real elegance is impalpable and invisible: it becomes useless and vulgar if reduced to mere fashion...[For instance], the British will always lack the certain je-ne-sais-quoi possessed by the Italians. In fact, I know what it is: that famous sprezzatura so well evoked by Castiglione in his Livre du Courtisan. It is something like nonchalance, which confers a natural grace that dissipates any trace of effort or affectation."

Return of the Mack

If you are experiencing a rain-soaked spring, as I am, you'll be aware of the advantages of posessing a great raincoat. The trouble is, it's not as easy to procure one of these items as you might think. Oh yes, you can go your classic Burberry trenchcoat route: but personally the little belt gives me decision block. Tie it at the waist? Works for Bogart, but makes me look like an understuffed corn dolly. Leave it to dangle? Potential elevator door hilarity.

Until recently I possessed an affordable but reliable number from Springfield. Straight, black, falling just above the knee and ever so slightly glossy, it did me proud until it began to fray at the hem. I wanted to replace it with the version Steve McQueen wears in Bullitt (which, like so many other things in that film, is perfection). Technically it's more of a car coat, but it's short, fawn and waterproof, so who's arguing? I was also a fan of the pared-down mack that Michael Caine wore as sardonic spy Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (pictured).

But could I find a minimalist item such as this in my size in Paris stores? Reader, I could not.

That was until the Branded Female directed me to a new boutique called Kitsuné (left), which has just opened near Palais Royal. Painfully hip, Kitsuné ("fox" in Japanese) is also a record label and a graphic design studio. To give you an idea, one of the founders is the manager of the band Daft Punk. Cooler than that, one does not get. Oddly though, the clothing verges on the classic. The brand's spokesman even revealed to me that it sees itself as "a contemporary blend of Ralph Lauren and Charvet".

It was at Kitsuné that I found my perfect raincoat: straight, fitted and beige, with horn buttons. The label said "Made in England". When I inquired further, I discovered that it had been made by the original Mackintosh Rainwear. I imagined this to be a dusty old concern until I clicked on its website. It was quite a shock: Mackintosh had gone hip! Although I will certainly return to Kitsuné for its beautiful one-button blazers and other items, I know where I'll head next time I need a raincoat - back to the source.

Kitsuné: 52 rue de Richelieu, 75001, Paris

Dior Homme saved by a thread

I'd never thought of myself as a Dior kind of guy. While I admired Hedi Slimane's svelte suits, the skinny tie look quickly became the uniform of every aspiring rock band. Meanwhile, I'd been following the progress of Hedi's eventual successor, Kris Van Assche, who seemed to be doing something different with his hybrid of Sicilian gangster and gangsta rapper.

When Van Assche officially took over at Dior Homme, I ventured into the basement of the Rue Royale boutique here in Paris to see what was up. After being enthusiastically welcomed by the young salesman, I tried on a couple of jackets. And damn me if I didn't like them. A lot. I'm told that all the best pieces in the collection are drawn from the Slimane archive, but by the end of that half an hour I didn't care who'd designed what: I just wanted the Prince of Wales check jacket that was hugging my torso.

I returned to Dior Homme yesterday with the Branded Female, anxious to get my choice approved. But the welcome was somewhat more muted than on the previous occasion. In fact, it was non-existent. The one salesman was occupied by a trio of bling-bling tourists and didn't so much as cock an eyebrow in our direction. Neither did the blonde saleswoman fumbling about with something at the other end of the room.

Still, I tried on the jacket and was finally asked if I'd like to use the fitting room. Looking in the mirror, it was clear that the suit wasn't quite right: the sleeves were too long, the back didn't fall correctly and the trousers were too large at the waist. I mentioned this to the saleswoman, who told me that the in-house alterations expert was at lunch. I shrugged as if to say: "No problem, I'll take my two grand elsewhere then."

But as I was irritably changing out of the suit, a voice outside the fitting room told me that the tailor had returned. I emerged to see a diminutive dark-haired woman of a certain age, dressed in a white lab coat and holding an enormous pin-cushion. She took one look at the suit and said: "I see exactly what's wrong." Then she began pinning and tucking with such deft expertise that I immediately sensed I was in the hands of an alterations genius. By the time she'd finished pinning, the suit was transformed.

After gentle interrogation by the Branded Female, it emerged that Bianca had worked at various boutiques for more than 30 years, and at Dior for over a decade. Her reassuring presence turned around my impression of the store, which had plummeted to rock bottom thanks to the inattentive sales staff. In fact, her skills with the pin-cushion earned Dior an extra 1700 euros. I only hope that Bianca is passing on her expertise to the next generation. People like her make the real difference between luxury brands and chain stores. And when they're gone, no amount of marketing will fill the void.