Niche Interest

Gasp!  Belts and braces commingling.  

   The professional organizer, like the etiquette expert, lives off the poor habits of other people.  They seem to range from the genuinely helpful to the loony: I was recently made aware of Marie Kondo, a Japanese decluttering expert who communes with her socks.  She is highly in demand, which is perhaps a reflection of the level of desperation the public suffers beneath when confronted by great heaps of personal possessions.  I don’t speak to my socks, but I endorse any organizing that begins with consolidating one's wardrobe.  But that’s where the agreement ends, I’m afraid; the professionals I’ve met would have major problems with some of my more cherished habits.

    When I recently had an armoire made, I envisioned  specialized hanging options for ties, belts and braces, all in complimenting solid brass.  The problem with these purpose-built solutions, though, is that if the collections grows, or seasons or preferences change, the hanging options remain static.  I eventually settled upon the simplest configuration: four identical twenty-peg brass plates.  These provide ample spots for ties, and multiple ways of hanging or wedging belts and braces.  This universal multi-storage solution works well for me, but I understand that a professional organizer might be disappointed to learn that sometimes belts make it into the braces section and that I have, on occasion, appropriated a peg or two from the tie section to accommodate a scarf.  

Hands off my trees.

    Making organization mobile presents further challenges.  When space is limited, the professional organizer begins recommending a number of crafty methods for cramming more into less.  The most common of these, which, on account of being universally known, has lost its thin glaze of cleverness: stuffing socks and underpants into shoes is just not that revelatory.  I also seriously question just how much space is really saved; underwear laid flat doesn't consume much space, and I’ve never known a few pairs of lightweight hose to bust a zipper.  Also—and this really seals it for me—I travel with shoe trees, a notion that would unhinge most organizers I’ve met.  Do they add weight?  Yes, but they also keep my shoes from warping while traveling, something that becomes critical when rotating no more than two pairs—which is my personal limit for any trip under ten days.

One fully occupied plate of pegs.  

    My final violation of the professional organizer’s code is somewhat philosophical.  Whereas the common principle would be to build storage around the size (or expected size) of a given wardrobe, I build my wardrobe to the size of my available storage.  I realize this sounds like little more than a clever chiasmus, but I’m serious about enforcing limitations.  I have precisely thirty-six pegs for ties, after which point I will initiate a one-in one-out policy.  I’m guessing I can fit a dozen suits or odd jackets in the upper section of my armoire before lapels become flattened, and I have no more than twelve spaces for shoes.  This, more than any other principle of organization, requires discipline.

    The humorous subplot to this supposed discipline is that while many people might think twelve pairs of shoes and three dozen neckties plenty, these volumes are rather scant for the clothes enthusiast.  But I imagine even those who can count ties on one hand have, in some other category, plenty of fat to cut.  In my experience, t-shirt hoarders and athletic gear junkies have nothing to be smug about; when I say twelve shoes, I’m including those for exercise.

Frightening Insight

    Edgar Allan Poe, in relation to the way his fellow Americans furnished their homes, offered this broad criticism:

This vintage Apparel Arts diagram attempts to chart color and texture for each component of male dress, and, in doing so, makes a complicated matter even less clear.  

“By a transition readily understood, and which might have been as readily foreseen, we have been brought to merge in simple show our notions of taste itself.”

    His is a direct snipe at the inevitable materialism that grows alongside a moneyed place—the grotesqueness of unchecked purchase-power.  Poe identifies the English alone in distinguishing beauty from mere magnificence, an ability that originates with the aristocracy (for whom nobility is a higher goal than wealth).  Off course, Poe never likely anticipated the ease with which materialism as an end in of itself might diffuse; even without the internet, a costly bauble is far easier to acquire than the sound taste to avoid its conspicuous display.  And, really, what corners of this shrinking world remain immune?

    Who knew Poe felt so passionately about interior decoration?   His Philosophy of Furniture, which first appeared in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in 1840, goes on to describe an ideal room in crimson, gold and pale gray.  It is softly lit and sparingly filled.  One might describe it as modest, although that loaded term suggests a whiff of constraint rather than restraint.  No--whether the owner of Poe’s room is able to sumptuously fill it or not is irrelevant; instead he pursues composition and harmony.  These terms resonate with me, but perhaps because I am not an interior decorator, I prefer to consider Poe’s philosophy scaled down to clothing.

    Composition seems to me a process of adding based upon context.  Formality, season and activity establish context, with lesser roles played by company, forecast and location.  Once in the neighborhood—say, a warm-weather wedding in a city—garments must be added together.  A lightweight navy suit, a white shirt, a silver tie, black shoes.  But consider the choices within each.  Is the suit patterned?  Is the shirt poplin, pinpoint or twill?  Does the tie have figures or texture, the shoes laces or not?  This to say nothing of handkerchieves, socks and cufflinks, a few of the common points at which poor decisions can quickly detract from the whole.   The secondary sub-choices within categories seem small, but when viewed together, matter greatly to composition.

    Harmony, then, emerges as a process of subtracting.  In the casual analogue to the above example, imagine a cool-weather event in the suburbs that suggested to our same model corduroy trousers, a checked shirt, a knit vest, and a lightweight tweed jacket.  He is tieless, and perhaps because of this, selects a handsome silk handkerchief for his jackets breast pocket.  The forecast suggests drizzle so he takes a felt trilby along, and if it's inclement enough for a hat, why not a scarf and unlined gloves?  All of these items, including his socks, are in autumnal hues, and yet, as he looks at himself before leaving, he sees the composition is awry.  Harmony is still possible, but only after an offending hatband or handkerchief is dismissed, or some more invasive action is required, like the swapping of a busy shirt or jacket for something quieter.  Rather than being thoroughly conceived of from the start, harmony is arrived at by removing noise.

    The common factor between composition and harmony is in managing the variables.  Simpler compositions and easier harmonies are achieved with fewer variables, but the trade-off is sophistication.  The best dressers always have more happening than is immediately obvious—a solid that fractures to a self-pattern up close, a texture that emerges when within whispering range.  Beware though; it is in the allure of hidden features that the greatest pitfall also lurks: novelty.  Bright linings, mismatched buttons, contrasting thread—these and more might seem near relatives to the techniques of the advanced dresser, but where the former’s are subtle these are conspicuous.  Worse, they are the unnecessary variables that complicate dressing—they are Poe’s elements of “show.”

Fifty shades, weights, textures, and, ultimately, effects of gray.  

Armoire Bureaucracy

    Designing a piece of furniture is not unlike having an odd jacket or suit made.  The urge to leap into the exciting details of buttons and exuberant linings of the latter mirrors the fawning over solid brass hinges, campaign hardware and knobs that are the finishing touches of the former.  Impatience is ill-rewarded in both instances.  Form, proportion and basic design must first be firmly established and only then should the lily be subtly gilded.  

    Oh how satisfying those finishing touches can be though!  It was a happy realization that my modular armoire almost required a linear, undecorated design as I have long admired campaign style furniture.  These officer’s trunks and cases, desks and bureaus are simply constructed of sturdy hardwoods, the only embellishments coming from brass reinforcing hardware.  As it happened, my bedside tables were already in the campaign style, so a towering armoire was sure to compliment.  And it does, but at considerable personal effort in sourcing convincing solid brass hinges, corner braces and pulls.  

    Interior hardware was another trial entirely.  Finding a sturdy brass tube with matching flanges as a clothes bar was not an easy task.  Plenty of brass-plated versions exist, but fear of flakes raining down on the shoulders and lapels of my clothes like glittering dandruff had me commissioning a solid brass tube from a distant Canadian foundry.  I hacksawed it to precise length, and installed a steel tube snugly within so as to prevent even the faintest sagging under the significant weight of coat hangers and clothes. 

    The problem with storage generally is things like suits and shirts, sweaters and shoes receive the prime real estate, while belts, braces (suspenders) and ties are left to divide the less desirable nooks and crannies.  Neglected accessories are a sad sight, so rather than hastily tacking a tie rack somewhere I am still mulling my options.  I have found some tasteful solid brass strips, each with twenty pegs.  I’m stumped where to install them though; on the inside of the doors will mean constant fear of clamping a foulard when closing the armoire, but hung on an inside wall will bite into the linear storage space.  I will need all 101.4 inches.  

    I joked with a friend helping me move the thing the other day that, should I have to scramble, I could load the two modular pieces of the armoire, fully loaded with clothes, into the back of a truck and be gone within the hour.  I suppose a similar scenario is what motivated the design of campaign style furniture in the first place.    It’s a romantic, though in my case irrelevant, thought.  The true mobility of this design is less concrete; it’s the investment in storage that is untethered to a single place—quite unlike the fortune people are happy to pour into closet space.

The Shrewdest Shrub

Boxwood bun in need of a trim.  

    I wonder if the display of boxwood is some sort of code for quality within.  When in an unfamiliar place, one can bet the lunch money that the cafe with the boxwood planters will do the best oeuf poché, and would a lousy hotel really maintain a healthy boxwood border in its courtyard?  Of course lesser establishments have caught on to this unspoken signal, and the display of convincing faux shrubberies has confused the matter somewhat.  I’m surely not the only one to have pinched a suspect leaf on occasion to determine the true character of a proprietor.  

    If thickly matted ivy connotes permanence, boxwood, lush and neatly kept, signifies order, elegance and propriety.  We plant ivy when we wish to relinquish control; the cultivation of boxwood is a statement of intent—living evidence to our audience that we wish to carve some rich order into our immediate environment.  Not that boxwood is particularly expensive or high maintenance.  One could just as well plant a few and permit them to grow leggy and wild.  But this seems unlikely--boxwood almost wills its owner into action.

    Happily, pruning is a deeply rewarding activity.  And the tools are exciting.  A proper boxwood border is going to need real hand shears with 18 inch blades, preferably serrated, and sturdy, offset handles.  It takes a certain fearlessness to lay into a handsome row of boxwood, but as long as the cuts are kept to the exterior foliage, and not the interior stem structure, that gusto will be rewarded with the emergence of a rough form.  While intricate spirals and severe geometrics seem appealing, enthusiasm for their upkeep will wane, and what could be sadder than a novelty shrubbery grown shaggy with neglect?  I recommend the soft rectangle; it has the linear character for which boxwoods are famous with a roundness that forgives those Saturdays when pruning falls several rungs below shining shoes or ironing shirts.  

    Once a rough form is established, fine-tuning is best accomplished with a pair of topiary snips.  These should be spring-activated and sharp for cutting through wayward and woody offshoots, and operable with one hand as you'll need the other to brush the snipped pieces to the ground.  Mine look as if they were willed to me by some green-thumbed great grand-father; I’m not ashamed to admit that’s why I bought them from a fancy design store.  I have both small snips and curved hand-shears—both make fast work of refining the boxwood’s rough shape, and with fewer snips than one might expect a polished line will appear.  

Old-timey shears and snips.  

    Pruning is a strange cycle though.  Removing foliage encourages new growth, and those fresh shoots might not mature enough before the first frost.  So I prune in Spring, soon after the first new buds develop.  This, I must admit, requires a strong constitution; lopping off this innocent and tender growth seems criminal.  Persevere though: the only way to encourage density and uniformity is to prune.  Of course over-pruning can be problematic too, creating too dense a shell while starving the interior of air and light.

 Fearlessness, form, patience, perseverance, harmony—boxwood disperses some aerated cocktail of these qualities in its immediate environment.  While handy in determining the better place for brunch, those who cultivate it at home soon learn boxwood’s real value: encouraging these same qualities in its owner.

Armoire So Far

    An expanding family, a move, a renovation—the storage arrangement of one’s clothes is at the mercy of these and other changes.  I have watched as my wearables have been shunted from a master closet to a spare bedroom closet (following marriage), to an office closet (following our firstborn) to a relative state of homelessness (following our second child).  Perhaps I set the wrong precedent by forfeiting any closet space from the start; I displayed generosity and a willingness to compromise where I should have been mean and stubborn with what limited space there was.  My clothes have suffered the strain of this forced exile, with the dusty shoulders and flattened lapels to show.  

    Never overly fond of closets to start, some time back I decided on another, better solution: an armoire.  A five minute spin around the internet revealed two problems.  One: though modest, no armoire exists that would effectively contain my collection of suits, odd jackets, trousers and shirts while still allowing for future growth.  And two, that the largest specimens would not negotiate the dropped ceiling and sharp turns of the hallway leading to the master bedroom.  A built-in seemed the only option until, while discussing designs with a carpenter, I hit upon the idea of an "armoire" constructed in two modular sections that could be stacked to appear as one.  It was a eureka moment, affording ample space (100 linear inches) for hanging clothes while maintaining relative mobility in the event of a future move.  Considering the rough treatment of my belongings since bachelorhood, it was important to me that these two trunk-like sections could be stacked, placed adjacent, back-to-back, or across the room from one another without losing their charm.  Should I be banished to some shed one day, my trunks will happily follow.

    And all went well, from drawing up rough plans to selecting the very beautiful sapele wood from which the armoire would be constructed.  I launched my carpenter into the project with a breezy attitude: just a couple of stackable boxes, no?  I don’t have to explain to more knowledgeable readers just how naive I must have sounded.  No sooner did the carpenter arrive to begin work did the questions start appearing out of clouds of sawdust: did I want the grain to run vertically or horizontally?  Should the doors hang inside or outside the case?  Do I want standard, concealed or action hinges?  What to do about a base?

    Several weeks later (interrupted by a poorly timed holiday) we are nearing completion and I am happy that my displaced clothes seem to have a lovely home within grasp.  Below are some photos of the progress.  Once installed I will post some more thoughts on stylistic choices, the advantages of custom furniture, the problems with storage generally, and other organizational desiderata, along with another gallery of well-lit vanity shots.

Ivy the Terrible

This innocent tendril will one day strangle my neighbor's ficus.

    I’m really more of a boxwood person, but I must admit a certain nostalgic delight when I see old-growth ivy.  And by ivy I am speaking of English Ivy, of the Hedera family.  This is important; most of what we see in this country, though commonly referred to as Boston Ivy, is in reality closely related to the grape vine—a different type of creeper altogether.  In fact, and I’m sure to put some backs up when I say this, Wrigley Field’s luxuriously green outfield wall isn’t, if we want to be precise, “ivy-covered.”  It’s covered in a pleasant mixture of Boston and Japanese Bittersweet.  And I can’t speak for each institution comprising the Ivy League, but I imagine much of the building foliage is of the Boston rather than the English variety.  One might just assume the “creeping-grape-vine league” didn’t quite have the same cache.  

    Nostalgia aside, Boston Ivy (of University and outfield fame) is the far handsomer species, with its broad, waxy leaves that ripen to majestic hues as the season turns.  Boston Ivy uses gentle suckers to quickly establish itself, and can be trained and cut back with ease.  It is decorative and almost geometric when allowed to flourish, and can be a pleasure to propagate.

Evergreen: Hedera can weather even harsh winters.  

    By contrast, the English stuff (Hedera) is far woodier, with smaller, tougher leaves, usually outlined in cream, and punctuated by the occasional cluster of mildly toxic berries.  It chooses to climb in the cruelest way a creeper can; Hedera forces its tendrils into the crevices of structures, or trees, or fences, or whatever meekly shares its space, swelling each to gain its purchase.  Once established, it coils itself tightly with little regard for its host.  Mighty, 200-year old oaks succumb to Hedera by way of a five-year strangulation.  Given time, Hedera will peel the roof from a house.  It is the ivy that will cover the planet after we are gone.

    Hedera is also the ivy of my childhood, when I spent summers tramping through Wepre Wood, in Flintshire, Wales.  This is a medieval wood, with cold, running brooks, and deep, unfound creases.   There is a 13th century castle, and a modest waterfall said to be haunted by a murdered nun.  And everywhere ivy: roots with the girth of tree trunks, impenetrable thickets obscuring the geography, and groping new growth, blindly searching every rock face.  In one favorite spot the ivy ran in a tangled mass up a sheer dirt bank, enticing my cousins and me to use its sinuous offshoots to pull ourselves to the top.  There it would thin out, desultory, blanketing a clearing, and for a moment, appear harmless.  But I knew better; it was both lord and tenant of those old woods, and had been for a thousand years.  When those summers would end, and it would suddenly be time to return to the States, I would desperately consider hiding a cutting in my backpack.  I imagined it would sprout, and soon spread, lending its wildness to the tame and immature woods behind our house.  

    And this is the point really about English ivy.  It possesses an implied longevity that we all recognize, and some of us admire.  The oldest, gnarliest specimens suggest time has passed not in years, but over generations.  When it has overrun a structure, thickly matting the architecture, it can be thoroughly transformative.  No longer do we see a building that has been erected and then covered.  Instead we encounter something that has risen from the earth, pulling the ground cover with it, and through unknown mantle forces, has established itself in a field.  

    Growing it though is another matter entirely.  If it takes hold it will most certainly kill something, and if denied that pleasure, it will find a fence to dismember or a perfectly good shed to warp.  Of course, if these things don’t bother you, then there is really no substitute for suggesting permanence.  I bought a few pots of it several summers back with just this idea in mind—an ugly, barren wall needed cover.  It died within nine months.  And with that passing I had learned two more lessons of this ancient species.  One, hedera needs something to crush or strangle.  Give it a trellis at the very least.  Secondly, do not buy hedera.  Instead, find the oldest hedera-covered building in your area, and when no one is looking, relieve it of a cutting.  Hedera is an unruly thing, and somehow it seems to appreciate when its benefactor is also willing to run a little wild.

Quick, while no one is looking...

Lost in (Closet) Space

And to think: this built-in once held some very questionable pajamas in Barney's haberdashery department.    

    Of the tropes employed by those house-hunting shows that clog cable in the evening, the most tiresome must surely be the one in which the wife complains to the husband about a lack of closet space in some prospective home and the husband, who inevitably likes the house because of the finished basement, turns to the camera, eyes rolling, and mumbles something about too many shoes anyway...  There are several things wrong with this.  To begin, as long as they are worn, there is no such thing as too many shoes.  Also, finished basements are always drafty and acoustically poor no matter how many neon beer signs are installed.  A cobwebbed wine cellar would be much better.  

    The biggest problem though is that these dim souls never think to suggest the solution to the problem: furniture.  Perhaps they are unaware that an entire sub-genre exists dedicated to the storage of clothing.  They might mollify their wives with a wink and a promise to find a grand old armoire.  Or a flame-mahogany chest of drawers.  A silk-lined lingerie tower?  A brass-inlaid steamer trunk?  I could go on, but I think the point is sufficiently made: closets aren’t the only players in storage.   

    Of course this is heresy for most people.  In fact, closets are so important to real-estate agents, they’ve added the word “space” to the end.  Grammatically, this is unnecessary; existentially, the closet (a small room with some shelves) has been elevated to the status of deal-breaker/maker.  Good for closets, perhaps, but bad for style generally.  

    Surely the root of the issue is that we have too much.  This is a problem hardly limited to clothes; unwearable things have a nasty habit of loitering in closets.  But if we focus for a moment on the wearable stuff, I think we generally find plenty of fat too.  I will avoid any prescriptions of how many of what one should have if one is a traveling salesman versus a downtown lawyer.  Most are aware of their needs.  I am, however, a firm proponent of the practical wardrobe.  Not monastic austerity--just honest editing.  The real demons of practical wardrobes are those garments we regard with potential, or, worse, sentimentality.  Garments that possess a vague sense of importance and little else.  And it is closets--no, closet space-- that encourages the gathering of all this unwelcome debris.   

    But what does this all have to do with style?  The answer is twofold.  One, dressing isn’t always an easy task.  Perhaps one is in a hurry, or attending some social function where clothes must be more carefully selected than usual.  It has always seemed to me that too great a variety is perilous in these scenarios.  When the variables are reduced and well organized, dressing under duress is considerably easier.    The second answer is perhaps more romantic: a beautiful armoire neatly hung with well-fitting suits can be a magnificent thing.  The same may be said of a sturdy bow-front chest containing carefully folded shirts and sweaters.  Or a brass rack with well polished shoes, each more gem-like than the last.  

    My contribution is more modest.  Some years ago when the Barney’s around the corner was moving, they decided to sell the shop’s fixtures and furniture. Using a crow bar and a hand-saw, I liberated a display unit from the haberdashery department.  After considerable wedging, sanding and painting I have a very satisfying place to hang suits.  The drawers hold socks, and the cupboard luggage.  The surface beneath the suits has indentations where I stack handkerchiefs and gloves and there’s a spot for brushes and shoehorns.  The best feature though is its size--large enough for my needs, but too small for anything extraneous.  Closet space can go boil an egg.  

Deep space: 10,000 light years from anything remotely elegant.