Bringing up Baby: three style icons at the top of their game
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Paternity suits
The arrival of Bumwad Minor has imposed a drastic change on standards of dress in the Bumwad household. Under threat of regurgitation, the look for AW10-11 is 'machine washable'. Out goes the cashmere, silk and worsted, and in comes the lambswool, cotton and corduroy. The Bumwad paternity suit is a pair of baggy and well-worn cords, a fraying shirt and a merino tank-top.
Bringing up Baby: three style icons at the top of their game
Bringing up Baby: three style icons at the top of their game
Monday, 22 November 2010
Update: Austerity Britain: Turnbull & Asser's online custom shirt
Oh frabjous day! The 'custom' (made-to-measure) shirt I ordered from Turnbull & Asser's online shop has arrived. My Happy Shopper shirt is a fairly heavy pale blue Oxford cloth with cocktail cuffs and the semi-cutaway Regent collar, and none of the optional extras like monogramming, shirt pockets, white cuffs etc.
I wasn't expecting much, to be frank: although I said in the earlier post that there's not much difference between made-to-measure and bespoke if you're a relatively normal shape, I did experience a bit of a rush of buyer's remorse. What if I mis-measured myself and gave in centimetres what I meant to state in inches? I'd be £175 down the Swanee and I'd be left with an item resembling a shirt dress for a capering dwarf (or possibly Suzanne Tully, the small arms expert formerly of Grange Hill and EastEnders).
However, to put the 'Bottom line up front,' as our American cousins say, I'm pretty impressed.
My order was not a particularly demanding brief, but the finished article was exactly as requested, and arrived less than a fortnight after the order was placed - couriered to the door overnight by UPS, even though there was no charge for P&P. So gratification was not deferred for too long.
The order form required a multiplicity of measurements, but there's an idiot's guide which explains how to make them. To avoid attracting comment in the office, I measured myself and, for the trickier question of full sleeve length, I took an old and trusted bespoke shirt. That was a trifle risky, but it appears to have paid off. Although not a perfect fit, the result is certainly much better than could have been achieved from a 'stock special' order, and gives a much better shape than other 'semi-bespoke' options I've tried in the past, even ones involving being measured by a supposedly trained floor-walker.
The shirt is well-finished. There are no imperfections in the cloth - Oxfords can throw up odd little slubs when being man-handled, if for example they catch on a needle or other such point. There are no rogue threads on the seams or meanly-stitched buttons. I've laundered it once and given it a good vigorous ironing, and all is still intact. The cocktail cuffs are good and deep, and a better shape than those offered by the competition. The collar sits well, although I think I will stick to the standard Turnbull collar on future orders, as the Regent is a bit too severe for my liking, particularly as I don't favour the First Division Footballer knot.
I'll keep you posted on how it survives repeated laundering and encounters with my desktop, and other hazards, but this appears to be an excellent effort by the folks at the Gloucester factory.
Now, the only way you'll find the perfect shirt is by investing a lot of time and money, and accepting a degree of trial and error: there's just no way to replicate online the complex interactions between a customer and a cutter. The online custom shirt route has plenty of risks, not least of which is the question of self-measurement. Certainly it will help if you know your shirting cloths and what you'll be doing in the finished item and where - you can't handle the online swatches, of course, so you need to know your poplins from your voiles from your twills - and you really need to understand the structure of a well-fitting shirt - how much room you need around chest, arm-holes and waist for comfortable movement, what kind of length is practical etc.
But if you are fairly confident, have no outrageous demands and want to cut corners while retaining the imprimatur of an established shirt-maker, this is pretty good value for money.
I wasn't expecting much, to be frank: although I said in the earlier post that there's not much difference between made-to-measure and bespoke if you're a relatively normal shape, I did experience a bit of a rush of buyer's remorse. What if I mis-measured myself and gave in centimetres what I meant to state in inches? I'd be £175 down the Swanee and I'd be left with an item resembling a shirt dress for a capering dwarf (or possibly Suzanne Tully, the small arms expert formerly of Grange Hill and EastEnders).
However, to put the 'Bottom line up front,' as our American cousins say, I'm pretty impressed.
My order was not a particularly demanding brief, but the finished article was exactly as requested, and arrived less than a fortnight after the order was placed - couriered to the door overnight by UPS, even though there was no charge for P&P. So gratification was not deferred for too long.
The order form required a multiplicity of measurements, but there's an idiot's guide which explains how to make them. To avoid attracting comment in the office, I measured myself and, for the trickier question of full sleeve length, I took an old and trusted bespoke shirt. That was a trifle risky, but it appears to have paid off. Although not a perfect fit, the result is certainly much better than could have been achieved from a 'stock special' order, and gives a much better shape than other 'semi-bespoke' options I've tried in the past, even ones involving being measured by a supposedly trained floor-walker.
The shirt is well-finished. There are no imperfections in the cloth - Oxfords can throw up odd little slubs when being man-handled, if for example they catch on a needle or other such point. There are no rogue threads on the seams or meanly-stitched buttons. I've laundered it once and given it a good vigorous ironing, and all is still intact. The cocktail cuffs are good and deep, and a better shape than those offered by the competition. The collar sits well, although I think I will stick to the standard Turnbull collar on future orders, as the Regent is a bit too severe for my liking, particularly as I don't favour the First Division Footballer knot.
I'll keep you posted on how it survives repeated laundering and encounters with my desktop, and other hazards, but this appears to be an excellent effort by the folks at the Gloucester factory.
Now, the only way you'll find the perfect shirt is by investing a lot of time and money, and accepting a degree of trial and error: there's just no way to replicate online the complex interactions between a customer and a cutter. The online custom shirt route has plenty of risks, not least of which is the question of self-measurement. Certainly it will help if you know your shirting cloths and what you'll be doing in the finished item and where - you can't handle the online swatches, of course, so you need to know your poplins from your voiles from your twills - and you really need to understand the structure of a well-fitting shirt - how much room you need around chest, arm-holes and waist for comfortable movement, what kind of length is practical etc.
But if you are fairly confident, have no outrageous demands and want to cut corners while retaining the imprimatur of an established shirt-maker, this is pretty good value for money.
Monday, 15 November 2010
Short hiatus
Mrs B and I were on 9 November blessed with further issue, a second girl. Normal posting will resume in a few days.
Joy to the world
Joy to the world
Friday, 5 November 2010
Trouser journalism: the luxury goods handout
A classic example of 'lifestyle' churnalism from the Spectator this week, in the form of its occasional Luxury goods handout. Granted, it's slightly better quality than the pizza takeaway and airport taxi flyers that are stuffed daily into the letterboxes of most London houses; but of somewhat less use, consisting as it does chiefly of articles that are strongly redolent of the press release.
The best things in life are free...
... but so are some of the most pointless and irritating
As with most such productions, indeed with much of what passes for modern life, 'luxury' is here used merely as a synonym for 'expensive'. Seemingly little thought has gone into explaining why the products being hawked are to be considered 'luxuries,' nor much space given over to reflecting the impact upon the retail prices of the manufacturers' marketing budgets, necessitating as they surely do the donation to cob journalists of many such items or services for free.
After one has finished looking at it - you don't really read these things, after all - one is left asking 'Why?' The Spectator is a political newspaper with a well-curated arts and books section. If, for reasons of penury, this sort of consumerist advertorial nonsense must be done, it should at least be done well. Yet far from applying an identifiably Spectator sensibility to the task - say, Charles Moore on tweed cycling capes, Rod Liddle on gentlemen's 'grooming' - it appears to have been dictated by which 'purveyor of luxury goods' could proffer the most attractive freebie and as a result has no discernible editorial character at all. It could have been assembled as a work experience project at any number of journalism colleges, or it could be an upmarket version of the Inventions catalogue. It must be targeted at the same 'space' as the FT's 'How to spend it,' but it lacks the clarity or the production values. Although, mercifully, it contains no insufferaby smug and interminable articles on expensive watches by Nick Foulkes.
We are, however, treated to the views of some breathless ingenue on the craftsmanship or otherwise of Charvet's shirts. True to form, the article merely asserts that Charvet is 'the place' to buy shirts, drawing as it does so exclusively upon the unchallenged opinions of the owner. Its one attempt at argument is the appeal to the celebrity fallacy (the most ubiquitous version of the appeal to authority).
Incidentally, I once owned a Charvet tie. The only time I wore it I was caught in a light shower on Whitehall. The dye - it was a deep red - ran, staining my shirt. I have literally never heard of that happening to a tie. Astonishingly bad.
A light shower in Whitehall
By way of recompense, there is a refreshing acknowledgement of the pointlessness of the exercise in the one genuinely interesting article, on Laver's Law of Fashion, in which the author - Laver's grandson - acknowledges that most Spectator readers are in their clothing decisions more concerned with longevity than 'luxury'. And even then, in the accompanying diagram, the editors manage to fuck up the time-line and the caption, reversing the middle third of the stages.
We are then treated to a criticism of politicians' dress sense from a woman called Celia Walden, whose authority on anything to do with the exercise of judgement is surely undermined by the fact that she is married to Piers Pugh-Morgan.
Celia Walden: Authority and attractiveness
undermined by marriage to Piers Morgan
One other exception to the rule of general uselessness was Damian Thompson's entertainingly waspish review of James Sherwood's recent coffee-table book Savile Row: The master tailors of British bespoke. However, it seems likely that the review was written for the magazine itself - the book was published last month - and has been transferred to the supplement to act as a sort of intellectual ballast, to counter the witterings of the other 'contributing editors' (or 'writers' as they were once known). As Mr Thompson accurately explains, this is intended as a Christmas present for the discerning homosexual man in your life. I imagine the book covers a fair amount of ground that was in Mr Sherwood's earlier book The London cut: Savile Row bespoke tailoring, as there are only so many things you can say about a craft that moves as glacially as bespoke tailoring. Maybe he has had some new pictures taken, but I'd spend the £45 on a cotton pocket square from Hermes.
And Taki's piece on the manners of the nouveau riche, which was quite funny.
The best things in life are free...
... but so are some of the most pointless and irritating
As with most such productions, indeed with much of what passes for modern life, 'luxury' is here used merely as a synonym for 'expensive'. Seemingly little thought has gone into explaining why the products being hawked are to be considered 'luxuries,' nor much space given over to reflecting the impact upon the retail prices of the manufacturers' marketing budgets, necessitating as they surely do the donation to cob journalists of many such items or services for free.
After one has finished looking at it - you don't really read these things, after all - one is left asking 'Why?' The Spectator is a political newspaper with a well-curated arts and books section. If, for reasons of penury, this sort of consumerist advertorial nonsense must be done, it should at least be done well. Yet far from applying an identifiably Spectator sensibility to the task - say, Charles Moore on tweed cycling capes, Rod Liddle on gentlemen's 'grooming' - it appears to have been dictated by which 'purveyor of luxury goods' could proffer the most attractive freebie and as a result has no discernible editorial character at all. It could have been assembled as a work experience project at any number of journalism colleges, or it could be an upmarket version of the Inventions catalogue. It must be targeted at the same 'space' as the FT's 'How to spend it,' but it lacks the clarity or the production values. Although, mercifully, it contains no insufferaby smug and interminable articles on expensive watches by Nick Foulkes.
We are, however, treated to the views of some breathless ingenue on the craftsmanship or otherwise of Charvet's shirts. True to form, the article merely asserts that Charvet is 'the place' to buy shirts, drawing as it does so exclusively upon the unchallenged opinions of the owner. Its one attempt at argument is the appeal to the celebrity fallacy (the most ubiquitous version of the appeal to authority).
Incidentally, I once owned a Charvet tie. The only time I wore it I was caught in a light shower on Whitehall. The dye - it was a deep red - ran, staining my shirt. I have literally never heard of that happening to a tie. Astonishingly bad.
A light shower in Whitehall
By way of recompense, there is a refreshing acknowledgement of the pointlessness of the exercise in the one genuinely interesting article, on Laver's Law of Fashion, in which the author - Laver's grandson - acknowledges that most Spectator readers are in their clothing decisions more concerned with longevity than 'luxury'. And even then, in the accompanying diagram, the editors manage to fuck up the time-line and the caption, reversing the middle third of the stages.
We are then treated to a criticism of politicians' dress sense from a woman called Celia Walden, whose authority on anything to do with the exercise of judgement is surely undermined by the fact that she is married to Piers Pugh-Morgan.
Celia Walden: Authority and attractiveness
undermined by marriage to Piers Morgan
One other exception to the rule of general uselessness was Damian Thompson's entertainingly waspish review of James Sherwood's recent coffee-table book Savile Row: The master tailors of British bespoke. However, it seems likely that the review was written for the magazine itself - the book was published last month - and has been transferred to the supplement to act as a sort of intellectual ballast, to counter the witterings of the other 'contributing editors' (or 'writers' as they were once known). As Mr Thompson accurately explains, this is intended as a Christmas present for the discerning homosexual man in your life. I imagine the book covers a fair amount of ground that was in Mr Sherwood's earlier book The London cut: Savile Row bespoke tailoring, as there are only so many things you can say about a craft that moves as glacially as bespoke tailoring. Maybe he has had some new pictures taken, but I'd spend the £45 on a cotton pocket square from Hermes.
And Taki's piece on the manners of the nouveau riche, which was quite funny.
Shirt-makers: Some thoughts
[Note: This post is based upon the 'shirts' section - now extracted - from the post originally called 'Symmetry'. The post had become too long and unwieldy.]
Bargepole (Michael Bywater) once remarked to the effect that the test of a good shirt-maker is that one should be able to walk into the shop after three large martinis and emerge bearing items that when worn will not make you look like a regional BBC TV presenter. While Ian Masters remains in many respects a model citizen, he offers no suitable guidance for those in need of sartorial advice - except, perhaps, 'go thou and do otherwise' aka 'the Alibhai Brown fallacy.'
Pockets
Much piss and wind is expended in some style blogs about the far-from-crucial issue of whether to have a pocket on a shirt. I have no fixed views on this matter, although I am aware it excites some people to paroxysms. Such shirts are probably not suitable for business attire, but then, in my view, neither are khaki 'slacks' or cardigans, yet those items excite no similar apoplexy.
To be sure, pockets break the symmetry of a business shirt - but that scarcely matters if one keeps one's coat on. And the outbreast pocket of the suit coat is equally asymetric, and the ticket pocket, come to that. The traditional objection - 'What would you keep in it?' - is perhaps more plausible, but that functional criticism applies to so many vestigial details of modern clothing, from the buttons on the back of a morning coat (although not mine, which are of course functional) to the trouser turn-up and the cuff button, so that cannot itself account fully for the violence of the belief.
No, the no-pocket 'rule' is a form of snobbery, thoughtless in the worst possible way, that has its origins in the preservation of distinction between the manual labourer or tradesman and the professional classes. Yet pockets are perfectly acceptable on casual or working shirts - garments in which one might garden or paint watercolours, and where one might need to keep one's cigarette lighter to hand; and if one were to choose to wear a button-down collar, a pocket is de rigeur. Bear that in mind, and, if you fear being mistaken for a carpenter or wish by your appearance to communicate your professional status or aspiration, then act accordingly. I will neither condemn nor applaud your choice.
Incidentally the officers messes of many army regiments consider the pocket issue for some reason to be a major faux pas. The prohibition on pockets is applied with such zeal by many subalterns, particularly in cavalry regiments, that anyone wearing a shirt with a pocket is liable to be man-handled, the pocket forcibly removed. Often the victims of this boorishness are members of the mess attached from the support arms.
The Emelet was wearing a shirt with a pocket!
This seems to me to represent the sort of dogmatism that is born of ignorance, and quite wrong-headed. It would of course be unnecessary were the old practice of dressing for dinner observed, but very few regiments still do this. Now, one ought not to present oneself for dinner clad for the compost heap, but if the regiments in question are content to dine in business attire, it is absurd to isolate a detail of shirting and construct it as a shibboleth.
Apart from the illustrating the occasional brutalities of the pack, this demonstrates the universal human need for boundaries, and the crisis of authority that results when they are absent. When traditions are relaxed, eroded or wilfully abandoned - in this case, the requirement that all officers dress for dinner in black tie - man will flounder and resort to creating for himself his own rules ex nihilo, which, divorced from their proper historical and social context, are arbitrary and, under malign influence mutate rapidly into violence.
And, strangely, many young officers see nothing inherently wrong in wearing velvet coats to dinner when guests in other regiment's messes, and would goggle at you in mute, tongue-flapping incomprehension if you pointed out their error.
Bespoke
If you can afford it - it is certainly an expensive luxury - bespoke shirts from a proper English shirtmaker are really the only option.
Evelyn Waugh: a Turnbull & Asser man
Most places require a minimum order - three is typical but some places ask for five - and starting prices are around £175 for a generalist men's outfitter like New & Lingwood, and considerably more for a proper shirtmaker like Turnbull and Asser or Mrs Willis.
A recent but notable arrival is Sean O'Flynn, on Sackville Street, formerly a head cutter at New & Lingwood and apprenticed at Huntsman. I haven't ordered from him, and don't be put off by the big fat tie knot he's wearing on his website: I have heard uniformly excellent things about his work. Incidentally, most tailors will have a pet shirt-maker, if they don't themselves offer (and probably sub-contract) the services, so you should probably seek their advice.
Another more below-the-radar guy is Frank Foster. Appointment only and no retail space to speak of, and consequently slightly cheaper, with starting prices around £150, and a five shirt minimum order.
If you need persuading to part with such sums, you could justify it as a 'sustainable' option, supporting as it does native English craftsmen, and providing a bop on the nose to upstart foreigners like Duchamp and Charvet. And you can easily spend more than £200 in somewhere like the menswear basement of Harvey Nichols on a vastly inferior Indonesian-produced item, every bit as shoddy as a garment selling in Gap for a tenth of the price.
Shirts and suits
On most occasions, button-cuffed shirts work best with single-breasted coats (the rule of odds and evens again). These can be of a single or two-button fastening cuff, the three-button barrel cuff associated with Turnbull & Asser, and the cocktail (or Portofino) cuff, associated commonly with Sean Connery’s James Bond, and almost certainly a Turnbull innovation. The latter is my favourite.Fit
The cocktail cuff in action
Look East? Look like a twot, more like.
In the US there is an entire folklore about shirts - I expect it started as a marketing gimmick by Brooks Brothers - covering business wear, casual wear, button-down collars, polo shirts, pockets etc. If you can find it, it is an interesting insight into the way people are told what to think; but, as with most sets of rules, they are for guidance only.
Here are a few principles:
- Stick to classic cloths, patterns and styles
- Stick to simple muted patterns: plainer shirts are more versatile and have greater longevity than 'fashionable' versions
- Avoid gimmicks like contrasting button-holes or fancy collar and cuff linings. That sort of thing is classic 'Look-at-me Piglet' behaviour
- Don't wear a shirt darker than the cloth of the suit you are wearing...
- ... and don't wear a shirt darker than the tie with which you will wear it
- Stick to good-quality English shirtmakers, and, once you understand the grammar of the well-made shirt, you can make more educated assessments of alternative manufacturers if you want to go off-piste
The 'Jermyn Street' shirt
The traditional shirt will be made from natural fibres - two-fold cotton poplin being the standard and will have:
- a multi-piece collar (usually described as 'two-piece' to distinguish from the 'rollover' collar, but in fact the collars of good shirts will consist of about fifteen separate pieces of cloth)
- Removable collar bones
- A split, two-piece yoke (the panel across the shoulders)
- A turned placket (the bit at the front through which the buttons protrude)
- Mother of pearl buttons
- Two shoulder pleats
- Generous tails (for tucking in, and providing additional cloth of similar age and wear when turning collars and/or cuffs)
- The 'butterfly gusset,' which is more complicated to make and stronger than the alternatives
All patterns will be matched at the seams.
Other smaller details:
- Typically there is an additional lateral line of stitching on the inside of the collar, to maintain the shape
- The parallel rows of stitching on the placket will be set much further in from the edge, running much closer to the button-holes
- The collar stitching will be inset by about 1/4"
A warning
Unlike wine, cheese or meat pies, there is no discernible mystical effect of terroir on the manufacture of shirts. The same is true of bespoke tailoring, of course, but far-sighted tailors have founded the Savile Row Bespoke Association to protect the Savile Row and bespoke terms from the depredations of modern menswear retailers who offer perverted and sub-standard forms of 'bespoke' tailoring that really does violence to the concept. All Savile Row Bespoke members must sign up to the terms of the charter, and one of them is that they must make their stuff 'on the row'.
Sadly, in spite of the odd outburst of enthusiasm, there is no trades guild that protects the Jermyn Street name or brand. No such rule about location could practically be applied - there is not enough space to carve out workrooms, and commercial rents in St James's would prohibit the necessary expansion for all but the richest firms. As a result, the term 'Jermyn Street' and 'shirtmaker' is open to some serious abuse. To be sure, while the best shirtmakers retain factories in Britain - notably in Kent, Gloucestershire or Aldergrove in Northern Ireland - and all their bespoke work will be done by hand, it is not done 'on the street'. Moreover, many retailers calling themselves 'Jermyn Street shirtmakers' do not make their stuff in the EU, let alone the UK. In fact, if 'Jermyn Street shirtmaker' has no fixed definition, the term 'made in England' is an equally elastic concept, and could easily refer to a shirt made almost entirely in Indonesia, with only the buttons added in England.
Now, there is nothing wrong with cutting manufacturing costs and passing them on to the customer (or consumer). But it is one thing to seek economies, and another to insult the intelligence of prospective clients. As a rule, for all the waffle about 'highest standards' and 'traditional craftmanship,' unless the shirtmaker specifically states that their work is done in the UK, it almost certainly won't be. So these 'traditional English shirtmakers' are exhibiting at best a tangential relationship with the truth, and should more accurately be described simply as 'shirt shops in England'.
It is now acceptable for retailers to sell 'bespoke' shirts that really strain at the boundaries of the meaning of the term. These will, in a low light, with the sun behind them, to the untutored eye appear to resemble a traditional Jermyn Street shirt. However, these will almost invariably be made in a piss-soaked sweatshop, by a semi-trained worker, finished to low standards and will be prone to disintegrate after even the lightest ironing.
Cost versus value
It is still generally true that you get what you pay for - up to a point: I contend there is a sort of 'zone of value,' and, for basic ready-made shirts you almost certainly have to spend not less that £60 to get a good-quality, English-made example. Anything less (and I'm looking at you, Mr Lewin, Mr Fuckwhitt) will certainly involve compromises, of cloth, craftsmanship, source, finish or longevity. However, if you spend more than £120 on ready-made shirts you are unlikely to get a shirt that is twice as good. If you are getting four shirts for £100, ask yourself what the catch is. (Of course, you might not see it as a 'catch'. But then if you care so little for your accoutrements you are hardly likely to have read this far. Now are you?)
Beyond £100, the relationship between outlay and quality goes haywire; and if you buy from a non-specialist but well-known 'fashion designer' you might pay much more for a vastly inferior item.
This cost-benefit analysis will with time be influenced by matters of personal preference. Hilditch and Key are a proper shirt-maker who make excellent quality shirts in England and they can be bought for £85. However, the fit and the style are not to my taste; so, if I were to buy ready-made shirts, I would rather have three shirts from Turnbull than four from Hilditch.
Most shirtmakers' ready-made stock caters for the ampler figure of the sedentary worker or the never-knowingly-under-victualled habitues of clubland: the body of the ready-made shirt will billow somewhat if, like me, you are of a fairly slim build. If you cannot bear the sight of the folds of cloth gathering at your waistband, your first recourse need not, however, be to engage a bespoke consultation. Several of the better shirtmakers do 'slim fit' shirts, of which Hilditch and Key and Emma Willis are the standouts; and Turnbull and Asser's standard shirts have a slightly more tailored finish than many; and most shirtmakers still offer a 'stock special' option, whereby a narrower, though still standard, body can be achieved.Whatever some French chemisiers might assert, Jermyn Street remains ground zero for bespoke and traditional ready-to-wear shirts. There are other places to buy good-quality shirts, to be sure, but this is the place to start.
Bargepole (Michael Bywater) once remarked to the effect that the test of a good shirt-maker is that one should be able to walk into the shop after three large martinis and emerge bearing items that when worn will not make you look like a regional BBC TV presenter. While Ian Masters remains in many respects a model citizen, he offers no suitable guidance for those in need of sartorial advice - except, perhaps, 'go thou and do otherwise' aka 'the Alibhai Brown fallacy.'
Pockets
Much piss and wind is expended in some style blogs about the far-from-crucial issue of whether to have a pocket on a shirt. I have no fixed views on this matter, although I am aware it excites some people to paroxysms. Such shirts are probably not suitable for business attire, but then, in my view, neither are khaki 'slacks' or cardigans, yet those items excite no similar apoplexy.
To be sure, pockets break the symmetry of a business shirt - but that scarcely matters if one keeps one's coat on. And the outbreast pocket of the suit coat is equally asymetric, and the ticket pocket, come to that. The traditional objection - 'What would you keep in it?' - is perhaps more plausible, but that functional criticism applies to so many vestigial details of modern clothing, from the buttons on the back of a morning coat (although not mine, which are of course functional) to the trouser turn-up and the cuff button, so that cannot itself account fully for the violence of the belief.
No, the no-pocket 'rule' is a form of snobbery, thoughtless in the worst possible way, that has its origins in the preservation of distinction between the manual labourer or tradesman and the professional classes. Yet pockets are perfectly acceptable on casual or working shirts - garments in which one might garden or paint watercolours, and where one might need to keep one's cigarette lighter to hand; and if one were to choose to wear a button-down collar, a pocket is de rigeur. Bear that in mind, and, if you fear being mistaken for a carpenter or wish by your appearance to communicate your professional status or aspiration, then act accordingly. I will neither condemn nor applaud your choice.
Incidentally the officers messes of many army regiments consider the pocket issue for some reason to be a major faux pas. The prohibition on pockets is applied with such zeal by many subalterns, particularly in cavalry regiments, that anyone wearing a shirt with a pocket is liable to be man-handled, the pocket forcibly removed. Often the victims of this boorishness are members of the mess attached from the support arms.
The Emelet was wearing a shirt with a pocket!
This seems to me to represent the sort of dogmatism that is born of ignorance, and quite wrong-headed. It would of course be unnecessary were the old practice of dressing for dinner observed, but very few regiments still do this. Now, one ought not to present oneself for dinner clad for the compost heap, but if the regiments in question are content to dine in business attire, it is absurd to isolate a detail of shirting and construct it as a shibboleth.
Apart from the illustrating the occasional brutalities of the pack, this demonstrates the universal human need for boundaries, and the crisis of authority that results when they are absent. When traditions are relaxed, eroded or wilfully abandoned - in this case, the requirement that all officers dress for dinner in black tie - man will flounder and resort to creating for himself his own rules ex nihilo, which, divorced from their proper historical and social context, are arbitrary and, under malign influence mutate rapidly into violence.
And, strangely, many young officers see nothing inherently wrong in wearing velvet coats to dinner when guests in other regiment's messes, and would goggle at you in mute, tongue-flapping incomprehension if you pointed out their error.
Bespoke
If you can afford it - it is certainly an expensive luxury - bespoke shirts from a proper English shirtmaker are really the only option.
Evelyn Waugh: a Turnbull & Asser man
Most places require a minimum order - three is typical but some places ask for five - and starting prices are around £175 for a generalist men's outfitter like New & Lingwood, and considerably more for a proper shirtmaker like Turnbull and Asser or Mrs Willis.
A recent but notable arrival is Sean O'Flynn, on Sackville Street, formerly a head cutter at New & Lingwood and apprenticed at Huntsman. I haven't ordered from him, and don't be put off by the big fat tie knot he's wearing on his website: I have heard uniformly excellent things about his work. Incidentally, most tailors will have a pet shirt-maker, if they don't themselves offer (and probably sub-contract) the services, so you should probably seek their advice.
Another more below-the-radar guy is Frank Foster. Appointment only and no retail space to speak of, and consequently slightly cheaper, with starting prices around £150, and a five shirt minimum order.
If you need persuading to part with such sums, you could justify it as a 'sustainable' option, supporting as it does native English craftsmen, and providing a bop on the nose to upstart foreigners like Duchamp and Charvet. And you can easily spend more than £200 in somewhere like the menswear basement of Harvey Nichols on a vastly inferior Indonesian-produced item, every bit as shoddy as a garment selling in Gap for a tenth of the price.
Shirts and suits
On most occasions, button-cuffed shirts work best with single-breasted coats (the rule of odds and evens again). These can be of a single or two-button fastening cuff, the three-button barrel cuff associated with Turnbull & Asser, and the cocktail (or Portofino) cuff, associated commonly with Sean Connery’s James Bond, and almost certainly a Turnbull innovation. The latter is my favourite.Fit
The cocktail cuff in action
Similarly, double-breasted coats justify double (or ‘French’) cuffed shirts. Double breasted coats look absurd with single cuffed shirts, and even the cocktail cuff looks a bit odd.
As an aside, a character in Philip Hensher’s witty nineties novel Kitchen venom observes that double cuffs with a single-breasted suit make you look like a pimp. I tend to agree. You might, however, get away with double cuffs if you wear a three-piece suit, particularly if the waistcoat has adornments such as lapels:
Single-breasted, double cuffs: Seymour Goldfarb Jr; heir to the Goldfarb Girdles fortune.
The cocktail cuff is a compromise that is both smart and simple - no cufflinks required - and looks good with two- or three-piece single-breasted suits.
Single cuff, single-breasted. Dashed smart.
'Casual'
The need for coherence and proportion - see 'Symmetry' - applies in all modes of dress, from the high formal to the low domestic comfort-wear.
A particular bugbear of mine is the wearing of double-cuffed shirts with casual trousers – especially jeans. It is a violation of logic. The degree of effort required to fasten cuffs with a silver (or, in some regrettable cases, gold, crested or even jewelled) chain-linked cuff-link jars violently with the casual aesthetic of the jeans. The wearer wants to be thought of as casual - "Hey! I wear jeans! I'm hip. I'm 'with-it'." - but betrays a stunning lack of attention to detail. Frankly it's the sort of rig suitable only for a money-grubbing prime minister vacationing at a Bee Gee's holiday home, and need not concern serious-minded types such as ourselves.
(In fact, a good guide to informal dressing is to search for 'tony blair holiday' on Google Images and do the exact opposite of whatever turns up.)
A similar absurdity is the laboured informality of wearing a suit without a tie - or even without socks. The tieless look is much favoured by the Eton Grocer (H/T James Delingpole) and his alleged Conservative Party, populated exclusively by former PR hucksters and their bespectacled inky swot peers from think-tanks. Presumably they think it sets them apart from their 'stuffy,' 'buttoned-up' oppressed/repressed and oppressive/repressive predecessors, when in fact it makes them look like a gang of IT consultants on an overnight course at an executive conference facility near Newcastle who've just been ejected from a lapdancing club for trying to grope the hapless students being paid to simulate pleasure at the prospects of being leered at by drunken worker drones.
Socklessness is boil-in-the-bag eccentricity which, as well as being tiresomely attention-seeking, is inconsiderate to those for whom the sight of an exposed and hairy male ankle is at best disagreeable. At least there is the possibility that those who indulge this ludicrous affectation might get blisters for their efforts. Often one finds that people practicing this also wear cufflinks. So let me get this straight: you exert yourself to put on cuff-links, but you think socks are oppressively formal. Ri-ight... That is an act of such self-skewering absurdity that they should be ignored if not actively man-handled.
In my experience, practitioners were probably the sort who, at school, wanted everyone to think they were too cool to have made any effort, but actually expended more time and energy trying to look relaxed than if they'd just put their socks on in the first place. We all know the type.
Single-breasted, double cuffs: Seymour Goldfarb Jr; heir to the Goldfarb Girdles fortune.
The cocktail cuff is a compromise that is both smart and simple - no cufflinks required - and looks good with two- or three-piece single-breasted suits.
Single cuff, single-breasted. Dashed smart.
'Casual'
The need for coherence and proportion - see 'Symmetry' - applies in all modes of dress, from the high formal to the low domestic comfort-wear.
A particular bugbear of mine is the wearing of double-cuffed shirts with casual trousers – especially jeans. It is a violation of logic. The degree of effort required to fasten cuffs with a silver (or, in some regrettable cases, gold, crested or even jewelled) chain-linked cuff-link jars violently with the casual aesthetic of the jeans. The wearer wants to be thought of as casual - "Hey! I wear jeans! I'm hip. I'm 'with-it'." - but betrays a stunning lack of attention to detail. Frankly it's the sort of rig suitable only for a money-grubbing prime minister vacationing at a Bee Gee's holiday home, and need not concern serious-minded types such as ourselves.
(In fact, a good guide to informal dressing is to search for 'tony blair holiday' on Google Images and do the exact opposite of whatever turns up.)
A similar absurdity is the laboured informality of wearing a suit without a tie - or even without socks. The tieless look is much favoured by the Eton Grocer (H/T James Delingpole) and his alleged Conservative Party, populated exclusively by former PR hucksters and their bespectacled inky swot peers from think-tanks. Presumably they think it sets them apart from their 'stuffy,' 'buttoned-up' oppressed/repressed and oppressive/repressive predecessors, when in fact it makes them look like a gang of IT consultants on an overnight course at an executive conference facility near Newcastle who've just been ejected from a lapdancing club for trying to grope the hapless students being paid to simulate pleasure at the prospects of being leered at by drunken worker drones.
Socklessness is boil-in-the-bag eccentricity which, as well as being tiresomely attention-seeking, is inconsiderate to those for whom the sight of an exposed and hairy male ankle is at best disagreeable. At least there is the possibility that those who indulge this ludicrous affectation might get blisters for their efforts. Often one finds that people practicing this also wear cufflinks. So let me get this straight: you exert yourself to put on cuff-links, but you think socks are oppressively formal. Ri-ight... That is an act of such self-skewering absurdity that they should be ignored if not actively man-handled.
In my experience, practitioners were probably the sort who, at school, wanted everyone to think they were too cool to have made any effort, but actually expended more time and energy trying to look relaxed than if they'd just put their socks on in the first place. We all know the type.
Look East? Look like a twot, more like.
In the US there is an entire folklore about shirts - I expect it started as a marketing gimmick by Brooks Brothers - covering business wear, casual wear, button-down collars, polo shirts, pockets etc. If you can find it, it is an interesting insight into the way people are told what to think; but, as with most sets of rules, they are for guidance only.
Here are a few principles:
- Stick to classic cloths, patterns and styles
- Stick to simple muted patterns: plainer shirts are more versatile and have greater longevity than 'fashionable' versions
- Avoid gimmicks like contrasting button-holes or fancy collar and cuff linings. That sort of thing is classic 'Look-at-me Piglet' behaviour
- Don't wear a shirt darker than the cloth of the suit you are wearing...
- ... and don't wear a shirt darker than the tie with which you will wear it
- Stick to good-quality English shirtmakers, and, once you understand the grammar of the well-made shirt, you can make more educated assessments of alternative manufacturers if you want to go off-piste
The 'Jermyn Street' shirt
The traditional shirt will be made from natural fibres - two-fold cotton poplin being the standard and will have:
- a multi-piece collar (usually described as 'two-piece' to distinguish from the 'rollover' collar, but in fact the collars of good shirts will consist of about fifteen separate pieces of cloth)
- Removable collar bones
- A split, two-piece yoke (the panel across the shoulders)
- A turned placket (the bit at the front through which the buttons protrude)
- Mother of pearl buttons
- Two shoulder pleats
- Generous tails (for tucking in, and providing additional cloth of similar age and wear when turning collars and/or cuffs)
- The 'butterfly gusset,' which is more complicated to make and stronger than the alternatives
All patterns will be matched at the seams.
Other smaller details:
- Typically there is an additional lateral line of stitching on the inside of the collar, to maintain the shape
- The parallel rows of stitching on the placket will be set much further in from the edge, running much closer to the button-holes
- The collar stitching will be inset by about 1/4"
A warning
Unlike wine, cheese or meat pies, there is no discernible mystical effect of terroir on the manufacture of shirts. The same is true of bespoke tailoring, of course, but far-sighted tailors have founded the Savile Row Bespoke Association to protect the Savile Row and bespoke terms from the depredations of modern menswear retailers who offer perverted and sub-standard forms of 'bespoke' tailoring that really does violence to the concept. All Savile Row Bespoke members must sign up to the terms of the charter, and one of them is that they must make their stuff 'on the row'.
Sadly, in spite of the odd outburst of enthusiasm, there is no trades guild that protects the Jermyn Street name or brand. No such rule about location could practically be applied - there is not enough space to carve out workrooms, and commercial rents in St James's would prohibit the necessary expansion for all but the richest firms. As a result, the term 'Jermyn Street' and 'shirtmaker' is open to some serious abuse. To be sure, while the best shirtmakers retain factories in Britain - notably in Kent, Gloucestershire or Aldergrove in Northern Ireland - and all their bespoke work will be done by hand, it is not done 'on the street'. Moreover, many retailers calling themselves 'Jermyn Street shirtmakers' do not make their stuff in the EU, let alone the UK. In fact, if 'Jermyn Street shirtmaker' has no fixed definition, the term 'made in England' is an equally elastic concept, and could easily refer to a shirt made almost entirely in Indonesia, with only the buttons added in England.
Now, there is nothing wrong with cutting manufacturing costs and passing them on to the customer (or consumer). But it is one thing to seek economies, and another to insult the intelligence of prospective clients. As a rule, for all the waffle about 'highest standards' and 'traditional craftmanship,' unless the shirtmaker specifically states that their work is done in the UK, it almost certainly won't be. So these 'traditional English shirtmakers' are exhibiting at best a tangential relationship with the truth, and should more accurately be described simply as 'shirt shops in England'.
It is now acceptable for retailers to sell 'bespoke' shirts that really strain at the boundaries of the meaning of the term. These will, in a low light, with the sun behind them, to the untutored eye appear to resemble a traditional Jermyn Street shirt. However, these will almost invariably be made in a piss-soaked sweatshop, by a semi-trained worker, finished to low standards and will be prone to disintegrate after even the lightest ironing.
Cost versus value
It is still generally true that you get what you pay for - up to a point: I contend there is a sort of 'zone of value,' and, for basic ready-made shirts you almost certainly have to spend not less that £60 to get a good-quality, English-made example. Anything less (and I'm looking at you, Mr Lewin, Mr Fuckwhitt) will certainly involve compromises, of cloth, craftsmanship, source, finish or longevity. However, if you spend more than £120 on ready-made shirts you are unlikely to get a shirt that is twice as good. If you are getting four shirts for £100, ask yourself what the catch is. (Of course, you might not see it as a 'catch'. But then if you care so little for your accoutrements you are hardly likely to have read this far. Now are you?)
Beyond £100, the relationship between outlay and quality goes haywire; and if you buy from a non-specialist but well-known 'fashion designer' you might pay much more for a vastly inferior item.
This cost-benefit analysis will with time be influenced by matters of personal preference. Hilditch and Key are a proper shirt-maker who make excellent quality shirts in England and they can be bought for £85. However, the fit and the style are not to my taste; so, if I were to buy ready-made shirts, I would rather have three shirts from Turnbull than four from Hilditch.
Most shirtmakers' ready-made stock caters for the ampler figure of the sedentary worker or the never-knowingly-under-victualled habitues of clubland: the body of the ready-made shirt will billow somewhat if, like me, you are of a fairly slim build. If you cannot bear the sight of the folds of cloth gathering at your waistband, your first recourse need not, however, be to engage a bespoke consultation. Several of the better shirtmakers do 'slim fit' shirts, of which Hilditch and Key and Emma Willis are the standouts; and Turnbull and Asser's standard shirts have a slightly more tailored finish than many; and most shirtmakers still offer a 'stock special' option, whereby a narrower, though still standard, body can be achieved.Whatever some French chemisiers might assert, Jermyn Street remains ground zero for bespoke and traditional ready-to-wear shirts. There are other places to buy good-quality shirts, to be sure, but this is the place to start.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Update
I have made some minor amendments (for clarity) and additions to the 'Symmetry' post - easily the least-read and by common consensus the least entertaining. The changes do not make it much funnier, but there is a few more pictures.
UPDATE to the Update: I have split the 'Symmetry' post, filing the section on shirts as a separate post.
UPDATE to the Update: I have split the 'Symmetry' post, filing the section on shirts as a separate post.
'Austerity Britain': Turnbull & Asser's online custom shirt
Following my whine yesterday about the exorbitant prices of shirts, I find that Turnbull & Asser now have a 'custom shirt' service on their website:
http://store.turnbullandasser.co.uk/Custom_Shirt
They give cocktail cuffs (which they call the '2 button turnback') as an option, unlike Mrs W's similar online sub-bespoke service. It necessitates some self-measurement - sleeve length, seat, wrist circumferences),- but gives explicit instructions in how to do so. The number of measurements ought - ought - to give a more correct fit than the basic stock special option.
Hello? Mr Asser? I'd like some more shirts.
I have tried both full bespoke and the somewhat cheaper 'stock special' options at Emma Willis. As a person of pretty standard build, I'm not entirely convinced that bespoke is worth the difference in price, and Mrs W's 'semi-bespoke' option is pretty much indistinguishable from the bespoke product.
Bespoke is the right job if one is some kind of Brobdingnagian monster, a stump-legged capering dwarf, or some hideous mis-shapen offence against God - or have the sort of exacting requirements associated with the newly-enriched ('I want ten of them ones. In platinum. But plated in silver. With a mink trim. And a quail's egg pocket, covered in caviar.'). But, for the price-sensitive family man of moderate proportions, 'custom made' is probably the perfect option.
I said I wanted Sea Island! You given me Swiss cotton again, you half-wit!
Both 'custom' and 'semi-bespoke' (and 'baby bespoke', a term that the menswear shop New & Lingwood adopted a couple of years ago) are pissy euphemisms that owe much to the manipulative and deceitful shysters in the style press who insist on saying 'vintage' instead of 'used' and 'dark chocolate' instead of 'plain chocolate', and no doubt refer to their time-share flats in the Algarve as 'luxury apartments' in 'seasonal ownership'. 'Semi-bespoke' makes as much sense as being 'half-pregnant'. And I believe that, in the US, 'custom' is effectively synonymous with bespoke, which further muddies an already deliberately opaque issue.
Anyway, in the interests of research, I intend to order a shirt and let you both know how it turns out.
http://store.turnbullandasser.co.uk/Custom_Shirt
They give cocktail cuffs (which they call the '2 button turnback') as an option, unlike Mrs W's similar online sub-bespoke service. It necessitates some self-measurement - sleeve length, seat, wrist circumferences),- but gives explicit instructions in how to do so. The number of measurements ought - ought - to give a more correct fit than the basic stock special option.
Hello? Mr Asser? I'd like some more shirts.
I have tried both full bespoke and the somewhat cheaper 'stock special' options at Emma Willis. As a person of pretty standard build, I'm not entirely convinced that bespoke is worth the difference in price, and Mrs W's 'semi-bespoke' option is pretty much indistinguishable from the bespoke product.
Bespoke is the right job if one is some kind of Brobdingnagian monster, a stump-legged capering dwarf, or some hideous mis-shapen offence against God - or have the sort of exacting requirements associated with the newly-enriched ('I want ten of them ones. In platinum. But plated in silver. With a mink trim. And a quail's egg pocket, covered in caviar.'). But, for the price-sensitive family man of moderate proportions, 'custom made' is probably the perfect option.
I said I wanted Sea Island! You given me Swiss cotton again, you half-wit!
Both 'custom' and 'semi-bespoke' (and 'baby bespoke', a term that the menswear shop New & Lingwood adopted a couple of years ago) are pissy euphemisms that owe much to the manipulative and deceitful shysters in the style press who insist on saying 'vintage' instead of 'used' and 'dark chocolate' instead of 'plain chocolate', and no doubt refer to their time-share flats in the Algarve as 'luxury apartments' in 'seasonal ownership'. 'Semi-bespoke' makes as much sense as being 'half-pregnant'. And I believe that, in the US, 'custom' is effectively synonymous with bespoke, which further muddies an already deliberately opaque issue.
Anyway, in the interests of research, I intend to order a shirt and let you both know how it turns out.
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Inflation: The shirt on my back
I'm not normally attentive to consumer inflation and can never remember what a loaf of bread costs from one week to the next, let alone in comparison with a year ago. However, of late I have been forced to confront some painful economic realities. Like most commodities, a healthy bubble was forming in cotton prices, which hit an all-time high in 2008, then promptly fell off a cliff like everything else when people started asking 'But who's going to pay for all this shit?' Good news for the sartorially minded, you might think.
But no. Encouraged no doubt by the US government's ZIRP, the endless capacity for Turbo Tim and Black Hawk Ben to sweep it under their inner carpets and keep hitting 'print' like pellet-happy lab-rats, and the desperation among investors to find some kind of asset in which there is more than 0% return, cotton prices exceeded the '08 tops earlier this year and have since just kept going.
This has had a tangible and regrettable impact on the Wonderful World of Bumwad. In about 2004, Turnbull & Asser charged about £80 a pop for their off-the-shelf poplin shirts and £120 for Sea Island. This was at a time when Thomas Pink was around £65, for a distinctly inferior product, made in God-knows-what part of the Warsaw Pact.
Now, following yet another surreptitious price hike, Turnbull are asking £135 for the same shirt and £190 for Sea Island quality - and that is despite what appear to be slight alterations in manufacture (the collar band no longer has a central, lateral line of stitching) that could have been occasioned by costs.
Ditto for the lovely Mrs Willis, who has just raised her prices across the board. Not many years ago, her stock English cotton shirts were about £80; Swiss voile were about £95. When, having moved up in the world a notch or two, I ordered my first batch of bespoke shirts from her in 2007, they were £200 each. Now, her ready to wear shirts are £140; stock specials are around £190-290, and bespoke is £240 plus - and an eye-watering £350 for Sea Island.
Alexandra at the shop tells me it is not related to the recent poor cotton harvest in the US, the Asian subcontinent and Egypt. The resulting price hikes might indeed affect the margins of the lower orders of shirt-makers, but Mrs W's factory uses mostly Swiss and Italian cottons; and apparently much of the shortfall was made up by a bumper crop in Brazil. So the most recent increase was because they hadn't reviewed prices with suppliers for a couple of years, and the retail prices were becoming unsupportable. I can only speculate, but perhaps the continuing weakness of the pound sterling against the Euro plays a further part; and commercial rents in central London have of late been going up. Or perhaps Mervyn King - a man in a seemingly perpetual state of surprise about inflation - does her books.
Now I'm no opponent of austerity, and will happily surrender the absurd benefits granted under the Blair-Brown tyranny that were nothing more than painfully transparent attempts to bribe me with my own money. I'm ready to play my part, and admittedly this is scarcely a hard-luck story guaranteed to stimulate the already hyperactive lachrymal glands of the BBC News home affairs team. (Although, in his role as champion of the squeezed middle, I suppose the Rt Hon Edward Miliband might use my case to make a point at PMQs.) If I'm going to the soup kitchen, I want to look like I don't need to be there. Mrs W can relax for a little while longer: I have no intention of buying my clothes from outlet stores like Thomas Pink, Lewin or Charles Fuckwit. 'We're all in this together,' I suppose - but that should not apply to our shirts.
But I do wonder if Mrs W realises that a significant component of my loyalty to her derives from her fragrant demeanour and the prospect of a sympathetic smile on my occasional visits.
You get further with a kind word, a gun and some well-polished riding boots
than you do with just a kind word
I have no wish to drive her to penury, her children to the workhouse; but frankly, if she doesn't start putting in more time at the shop, I might have to move next door to Turnbull - where many of their floorwalkers appear rather more liberal with their attentions.
But no. Encouraged no doubt by the US government's ZIRP, the endless capacity for Turbo Tim and Black Hawk Ben to sweep it under their inner carpets and keep hitting 'print' like pellet-happy lab-rats, and the desperation among investors to find some kind of asset in which there is more than 0% return, cotton prices exceeded the '08 tops earlier this year and have since just kept going.
This has had a tangible and regrettable impact on the Wonderful World of Bumwad. In about 2004, Turnbull & Asser charged about £80 a pop for their off-the-shelf poplin shirts and £120 for Sea Island. This was at a time when Thomas Pink was around £65, for a distinctly inferior product, made in God-knows-what part of the Warsaw Pact.
Now, following yet another surreptitious price hike, Turnbull are asking £135 for the same shirt and £190 for Sea Island quality - and that is despite what appear to be slight alterations in manufacture (the collar band no longer has a central, lateral line of stitching) that could have been occasioned by costs.
Ditto for the lovely Mrs Willis, who has just raised her prices across the board. Not many years ago, her stock English cotton shirts were about £80; Swiss voile were about £95. When, having moved up in the world a notch or two, I ordered my first batch of bespoke shirts from her in 2007, they were £200 each. Now, her ready to wear shirts are £140; stock specials are around £190-290, and bespoke is £240 plus - and an eye-watering £350 for Sea Island.
Alexandra at the shop tells me it is not related to the recent poor cotton harvest in the US, the Asian subcontinent and Egypt. The resulting price hikes might indeed affect the margins of the lower orders of shirt-makers, but Mrs W's factory uses mostly Swiss and Italian cottons; and apparently much of the shortfall was made up by a bumper crop in Brazil. So the most recent increase was because they hadn't reviewed prices with suppliers for a couple of years, and the retail prices were becoming unsupportable. I can only speculate, but perhaps the continuing weakness of the pound sterling against the Euro plays a further part; and commercial rents in central London have of late been going up. Or perhaps Mervyn King - a man in a seemingly perpetual state of surprise about inflation - does her books.
Now I'm no opponent of austerity, and will happily surrender the absurd benefits granted under the Blair-Brown tyranny that were nothing more than painfully transparent attempts to bribe me with my own money. I'm ready to play my part, and admittedly this is scarcely a hard-luck story guaranteed to stimulate the already hyperactive lachrymal glands of the BBC News home affairs team. (Although, in his role as champion of the squeezed middle, I suppose the Rt Hon Edward Miliband might use my case to make a point at PMQs.) If I'm going to the soup kitchen, I want to look like I don't need to be there. Mrs W can relax for a little while longer: I have no intention of buying my clothes from outlet stores like Thomas Pink, Lewin or Charles Fuckwit. 'We're all in this together,' I suppose - but that should not apply to our shirts.
But I do wonder if Mrs W realises that a significant component of my loyalty to her derives from her fragrant demeanour and the prospect of a sympathetic smile on my occasional visits.
You get further with a kind word, a gun and some well-polished riding boots
than you do with just a kind word
I have no wish to drive her to penury, her children to the workhouse; but frankly, if she doesn't start putting in more time at the shop, I might have to move next door to Turnbull - where many of their floorwalkers appear rather more liberal with their attentions.
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