Today's shoe porn

The Bradley Boot, in tobacco kudu suede. (Apparently the kudu is a type of African antelope - hopefully its end was quick and painless.)

Via Harry's of London; the brand first spotted at 6pm.com.

you need a lot of pretty green to buy a Pretty Green ™

Liam Gallagher of Oasis/"friend of Paul Weller" fame has started his own line of clothing, among which is the Pretty Green Parka, pictured here.



Now, I've been complaining for years about how hard it is to find a decent, well fitted men's parka at trenchcoat length; I've seen plenty of them for women at stores like REI, and they only get nicer every year. However, when it comes to men's outerwear, people think that men are content looking like idiots in waist-length ski parkas. I have said that any designer who comes out with a trenchcoat length parka for men is going to make a killing.

Unfortunately, it seems Liam wants to do more than make a killing, he wants to commit price tag genocide. Do you want to pay $800-$1000 for a parka? The one thing you can say about going to the Army Surplus and getting a fishtail like you wore to the Jam concert in 1983 is that it's affordable, even if it does look rather juvenile for those of us older chaps trying to lean more "ace"-wards.

It exactly fits what I was visualizing though, so if Liam wants to (a) personally apologize for how expensive they are or (b) send me a prototype, a second, or even an off-the-rack piece, I'll take it. Whoever manages Pretty Green should comment or email and I'll give them my postal address. Thanks in advance.

[Thanks to Mod Culture UK for the picture.]

dream vs. reality

The dream:
The reality:

Your Daily Shoe Porn

From our friends at Zappos.com - here's the Kenneth Cole Whipstitch.

Tonic Shirts

[PHOTO: Courtesy of Moss Brothers of London, we have this very nice hidden button long sleeve dress-casual tonic shirt. Thank you, Moss. Now please send me five. My neck size is approximately 18.]


I've found a few of these via Geoffrey Beene, Donna Karan/DKNY, Liz Claiborne, Kenneth Cole, Structure, and a few other obscure and/or nondescript department store labels. Generally the two tones brought to bear are the standard (copper + slate blue = a sort of shimmery, almost metallic violet) - although one of them comes together as rose and tourquoise to offer a sort of dark magenta - at the moment I have, I don't know, two or three long sleeve dress shirts and one polo.

It used to be you had to scour thrift stores like a lunatic in order to score the occasional ill-fitting, threadbare tonic blazer with missing buttons etc. The advent of the tonic dress shirt is, at least to me, somewhat revelatory. The goddamned things go with any damn thing you please. They sort of are a diabolical secret weapon - you can have the most prosaic gray outfit and throw in one of these, WHA-AM! All of a sudden, you have style.

I'd like some tonic dress socks now, please......

details: the double button collar

i have a very nice 2-button collared dress shirt (black with gold diagonal pinstripe, in a stretch blended fabric) that is very unusual, which inspired me to go a-googling....apparently these are considered a (what else?) peculiarly italian conceit of clothing. and of course! who else but claudio seems to be on the ball. it's like the bloke reads my mind. if i win the big lottery he's going to dress me from now on, head to toe.



hawes and curtis have one similar to mine in cut - the lining is also interesting.

dickies black lined eisenhower jacket

My partner insisted I ditch the rather worn-looking black military-styled field jacket I wrote about earlier, and suggested I put on this instead. Almost perfect condition, yard sale price: $3.

Apparently, this is now "regulation" punk rock gear, so there is that.

better late than never!

Okay, we're already almost halfway into 2009 and the posts have been mighty sparse. Let's ramp things up then and get opinionating!

I was interested to see the announcement about the Fred Perry 100th Anniversary line, particularly the collaborative/co-branding angles which were all very cool: Raf Simons, Vespa, Paul Weller, Terry Hall and The Specials to name a few. Everyone knows that the classic Fred Perry tennis jersey is right up near the top of my "please give me free stuff for writing about it" wishlist next to the classic Baracuta jacket, Italy's own DNA Groove [link to men's shoes, but man oh man could I ever spend money on their other stuff!], Munsingwear's "Original Penguin", Ben Sherman, and the only jeans that matter - in other words, stuff I'd wear if I could afford it, and until then have to be content with thrift store castoffs. I've found all of the above in thrift stores EXCEPT anything by FP - for that I'd have to brave the waters of eBay, and I'm sorry, but I'm just not buying clothing over the internet if I can help it.

[And if you're sending me free stuff - i'll take L to XL please. Shoe size 10 1/2 American. Pants size, well, that's rather personal.....I'd have to get to know you better.]

FP Granddad Collar Dress, D3762

Good Lord, you can practically see her.........

Edie Sedgewick would be proud.

The Fred Perry E-Store. Go buy something.

take the suedeheads bowling

after taking my daughter to her very first bowling alley, i was immediately taken by the snappy new bowling shoes they happened to offer for hire, which were in a color palette not far off from the rastafarian flag.

the old school type of bowling shoe you and i would likely find in a thrift shop are hard to find, new or new-ish, online. these come fairly close. whoops, i see one of those pesky little RAF target symbols.....something tells me there's a bit of the secret handshake going on here, nudge nudge.

what's good for the goose

already having come across the pearson from canada goose (look at it - you want one, don't you?), which i might be able to afford oh, when hell freezes over (or when i win the lottery, whichever comes first), i was pleased to also discover the constable parka. now, there's a bit of outerwear a little bit less, shall we say, pedestrian than the standard - which may be a fourth of the price, but sadly i must say looks about a fourth as nice. (i think that the draw is, it's more appropriate for wearing over a suit. a goose down parka isn't going to afford that much breathing room, unless i'm mistaken. of course i won't know until i try one - hint hint!!)

i also am rather fond of the herringbone shirt jacket. it reminds me of something one used to get from pendleton back in the day. those ones were red, i believe.

in any case, for the price of a couple of these of these i could very nearly pay my mortgage.......and at my current rate of pay it would take me nearly a month to make the money to buy either one.

so i am hoping somehow to weasel a comp in exchange for writing a favorable review. hear that designers/retailers? i will write reviews of your products in exchange for freebies!

hello? anyone out there listening?

Crown Corning Thermique Coffee Carafe - White

i just wanted to tell somebody about this coffee carafe. i can't find a web site for the company that made this product - they appear to have been broken up and re-acquired and changed names many times since this product was purchased in the mid-1990's - and i'm sure this particular design has been long discontinued.

but as you may know i am an insane high-end specialty or "gourmet" coffee fanatic, French press method all the way, preferably small batch roasted that week. i almost always throw coffee away if it's sat unconsumed for more than a few hours.

yesterday i brewed a press pot of Trader Joe's Dark Roast Sumatra - not a bad product for the price if you can't get something better and you're on a budget - and i immediately decanted it into my thermique. i had time to drink one cup before i had to be off on business about town, and forgot that i had coffee left over.

this morning, on a whim, i poured off a cup of that same coffee. it had remained hot enough to steam for 24 hours, and it still tasted palatable, if not quite just-brewed fresh. it was drinkable. and that, my friends, is what might be called a fookin' miracle.

if you find one of these on eBay or at a garage sale - buy it. it works.

kenneth cole silver tech

i already have some really, really nice ones with a chisel toe that i love more than is healthy; however, having seen these ones, i find my mouth watering.

the kenneth cole silver tech "deal breaker" suede chukka boot

[LINK UPDATED - suede version no longer available at KC web site]

related items:

• rocket dog graduate
• ted baker ashcroft
• joe abboud eton (yum! once again the brown ankle boot with brogueish stylings, a recurring theme around here)
• adbusters' black spot unswoosher (vegetarian!)
• the original - clarks desert boot
  
• 
  
• 
  

oooh baracuta

and wouldn't you know, i thought it was a song about a fish. silly me.

i wore this or something very nearly like it to a party at the house of a judge's daughter, and got frisked by the cops. of course i was also wearing a black trilby, wraparounds, and driving gloves.

hell, they probably should've shot me.

i'll take one of these, please, and one of these for my brother. [i'd want to steal it but it's more his color than it is mine.]

i tend to prefer the fabric cuffs and waistband to the elastic, with the adjustable straps; but you can't fuck with the fraser. it's like my first LSD trip in fabric form. like seeing god.

i succumb

and no, 'tis not to the beat surrender, god knows though i wish it were.

no - i have in fact succumbed to that of which i have steadily ranted lo these many months, ever since i first witnessed it on the streets of this city - a once in a blue moon, count on the fingers of one hand, exceedingly rare incidence of my giving in to a trendy gesture. one which has tormented me with its ubiquity while drawing me on with some sort of eldritch, unspeakable attraction. i would demand (silently and inwardly of course) that it be of another color than olive drab, and it was so; that it come pinstriped, paisley, checked, even seersucker, and i got 3 out of 4; but the only one i ever saw i actually thought i'd ever wear was about $500 bucks.

well - i finally found one.....that fit.....in a thrift store......for $20. apparently, it's a prototype of this but without the patches or fancy buttons or whatever, which is how i like it - the label says "express design studio" which, if you try to find on google, has little or no web presence. and if a brand on a label has no web presence, one might be led to believe it's a prototype. [i have some experience with prototypes - when i was a barista a designer who was a regular said "i have some design prototypes i need to get rid of, want some?" - deeming correctly that i would provide him free advertising; in other cases, i've had an uncanny knack for finding them in thrift stores, such as the time i found a ford motor company promotional racing jacket's prototype in a new york charity thrift shop. instead of ford motor company on the badge, it had the designer's name. it's probably worth more than what i paid for it, which was $8.]

it has a lot of the correct detailing of the classic M65 but is made from this really soft cotton, and separate polyester sleeve linings. it's that subtle, natural overdyed black that takes on reflective overtones from the colors around it, so it's good for mixing and matching.

and i got it for $20.

right now it's going over a ben sherman gray and white short-sleeve and some Levis 514 stretchies in dark indigo. the shoes are of course my KCR silver techs which i have been very attached to lately, particularly since i seem to be unable to destroy them as i normally do.

so - the look is hardly textbook or regulation, but there are enough subtle gestures to make it acceptible. more than acceptible, it's nice. and now the torment at last can end.

back to worrying about my hair i suppose..... i have nothing to complain about, at least i still HAVE hair at my age.

shades

so, my plan was, once i got my new contact lenses, to amass for myself a library of, oh i don't know, maybe a half dozen pairs of cheap dollar store sunglasses [of course we all know there isn't much at the dollar store that's actually a dollar these days] - the kind you used to be able to get at the gas station or drug store. i had found in the past - i guess now i realize the too long past - you could find a pair of nice retro polarized shades for under ten bucks, maybe even five.

oh how wrong i was.

here i saw cheap chinese mass-produced shades - many of them with such a thin polarized layer on the lens that it had already scratched in shipment - for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, TWENTY BUCKS. thus it was at walgreen's; thus it was at bartell's; thus it was even at the most sad, run-down gas stations i could find - those that still carried them anymore. some have ceased to, due to relentless shoplifting by crackheads and meth maniacs.

what to do?

having some spare time to myself this weekend, i ambled down the southern end of the street, the "don't leave valuables in your car" area. next to a carniceria and a produce market and a bubble tea place, there was a "sportswear" shop - in other words, a shop that sells dickeys, plaid shirts, puma sneakers, black ball caps, and....sunglasses. and - not the kind of sunglasses you pay fifteen dollars for in a drug store. the kind of sunglasses that cost half as much, that make people cross the street.

you get the picture.

i almost got the ones that said "Loco" in gothic script on the temples.

almost.

new things, old things

i just received an email announcing that the new fred perry line for autumn 2008 is up and running. [warning: flash-based web site; use in peril of terminal annoyance].

my first hit is that this is much more satisfying in the traditional sense than the spring or summer lines were - i found those to be fey at best, with ill-advised color choices and strange outlines, looking like nothing so much as a peter max outtake.

i particularly crave the current version of the knit polo, which seems to be a nod to the classic munsingwear penguin [but clearly with better fabric and, thereby, a better shape] but there is a lot of good to be found. [all completely out of my price range of course, but i am allowed to drool with my face pressed against the candy store window.]

in other news, i had an interesting conversation with a couple who had divergent scooter experiences. she had gone to college in san diego, and had purchased a classic lambretta from one of the scenesters there [over which we shared one of those conspiratorial conversational moments]; he went on to sing the praises of his honda. what can you do? he said he wanted something that could rev up hills quickly, and that he needed to go faster than 50 MPH.

she and i enjoyed a fond discussion of sandpapering spark plugs, unclogging fuel lines, constantly having the cowl off on the roadside etc.

i figure you can go for convenience and you can go for style, but not always both.

caffeine

education in the retail specialty coffee industry notwithstanding, i have only just been reminded that tea does, in fact, contain more caffeine than coffee.

revival

it's walking quite a fine line working within a stylistic framework, bringing one's own elan to it, remaining faithful to the spirit, not watering it down, remembering the context, not being a wax dummy, or a catalog model, or a trendy poseur, or otherwise a pretender, yet neither being pretentious or elitist, being inclusive yet not too inclusive, discriminating without being discriminatory, etc. etc. etc. etc. "my mind it ain't so open/that anything could crawl right through ..." - howard devoto of magazine.

there's people coming at it from every angle - this or that or this - and then, there's you. and for somebody, you're never authentic enough, or you're trying too hard - certainly criticisms that could just as easily come out of your mouth on a bad day - but when it gets right down to it, there is very simply a difference between good taste and bad taste, and a knowing sense of humor and a lack thereof, and knowing the streets from which the real style originates versus being a weekender. who's to say that the museum pieces don't have it down better than you do, or the ignorant little kids running around appropriating the scraps and thinking that's enough to capture a spirit dense with semiotics, with history, with context?

plus you haven't got any money for a tailor (the cheapest one in the united states is usually about $1,000, which is a month's pay after taxes and before mortgage - and a good one converts to nearly $4,000 at today's exchange rates), nor for a ride (which you might be able to afford on credit, but which you can't drive because of the...ah...problem...), and you don't smoke or drink anymore nor do you go to the clubs where the young things go...and you've forgotten the dances, and you are old.

and there's that thing. that you are old.

old.