Resolute

    The problem with resolutions is they begin with a fuzzy recognition of a shortcoming rather than a stark admission of a failing.  I mustn’t eat so much, as if the overindulgence is an affliction of environment rather than an individual weakness.  The promise to exercise is my favorite, as it inevitably leads to giving oneself gifts: a gadget, a trainer, a wardrobe of the latest technical gear—these all seem to appear long before a single pushup or jumping jack.  The promise to exercise should begin, right there and then, with real exercise.

    But if we are going to reward ourselves for our failures, then I say do it properly.  I, for instance, have callously neglected my shirt wardrobe in pursuit of tweed and worsted, shoes and silk.  This is an egregious mistake; what should all the rest hang upon if not an honest shirt?  What good is a dark double breasted, as refined as it is louche, without a pressed white shirt?  And how cruel to deny tweed its choice of tattersalls, or a foulard a complementing dress stripe?  

    The problem is one of categorization.  Shirts are, historically and practically, underwear.  This is an honest and crucial role in the male wardrobe, protecting our greater investments in tailored clothing from the indelicate fact of sweat and dirt.  We launder these barriers, hopefully with common sense, and expect the cycle be repeated in perpetuity.  But shirts have also been elevated from their working station in recent years, becoming solo items of fashion.  I don’t deny the beauty of a good shirt, nor begrudge the impulse to make a handsome one the centerpiece, but we ignore a shirt’s original role at the peril of the group: a handful of expensive, coddled shirts will perish prematurely in grayed over and fraying ignominy.  

    Shirts, then, must be plentiful, not too wild in color or pattern, and of a cut and design that causes no hesitation when running a quarter of an hour behind.  There is vast choice, which is itself a pitfall.  Whether buying off-the-rack or having them made, a man must be resolute throughout the process, avoiding frivolity, continuously circling back to what works.  For me these are: a few french cuffed white and cream; bales of barrel-cuffed blues; dress stripes, bengal stripes, and awning stripes; subtle checks and frightening tattersalls.  

    But planning new shirts for the year is not just a chore.  Within the tension between choice and resolute vision is an opportunity to fine-tune personal style.  Perhaps last year’s chambrays proved less useful than anticipated, or maybe a row of solids, though sober and classic, made for rather dull wearing.  This is the time to reflect not just on shirts, but on the very underpinnings of one’s motivation to be well dressed.  There is no better metaphor for beginning anew then planning a fistful of fresh shirts.  New year, new shirts.

Seeing the Light

    My favorite style dictums—rules, if such a thing as style could be governed—are those that seemingly, and sometimes blatantly, contradict with other principles of dress.  I’m not referring to matters of opinion; one peacock is always going to disagree with another over sleeve length.  And the current fixation with artful dishevelment—or sprezzatura—is self-defeating because, like irony, the instant the notion is acknowledged its foundation goes poof.  Instead I refer to the hiccup in logic—the disconnect that some fusty tradition creates.  Take the opera pump, the very pinnacle of men’s footwear formality.  We may all agree on the pump’s courtly lineage, and there’s no disputing the slender and elegant line wearing a pair creates.  But we can also agree that even the best pumps are merely loafers with stapled-on silk bows and glued soles—likely the least expensive pair of shoes in the well-dressed man’s wardrobe.  

    And if that keeps some men up at night, imagine what the light-colored tie does?  The one rather dependable rule for neckwear is this: a tie should be much darker than the shirt.  This perhaps was, or should have been, the very first thing taught to every tie-wearing man.  Happily, adhering to the rule is easy as most earnest attempts at pairing tie and shirt seem to naturally abide.  But exceptions—magnificent ones, I might add—exist.  

    The wedding tie is a specific thing, rather than a concept, as most current stylists would have it.  Consequently, an image search turns up very few true examples.  Instead what fills my monitor are anything but: madras, regimentals, knits.  Strictly speaking, a wedding tie is a densely woven silk in a black and white pattern that resolves to silver or gray from a few yards away.  The traditionally small patterns are shepherd’s check, houndstooth and glen plaid, all running on the bias.  I prefer less stringent examples where navy is substituted for black and the pattern is larger.  As a side effect though, a tie like this displays quite a bit of white silk, and the result is a rather light tie.  So what shirt?  Strangely, and for reasons that contradict the aforementioned logic of ties being darker than shirts, my preferred pairing for this type of festive tie is a blue broadcloth shirt—something that reads slightly darker than the tie.  The effect is irrefutably formal, elegant and, I suspect because of the abundance of white, happy.

    The other way of flouting convention is with a buff or palest-yellow tie.  These are largely connoisseur’s items; the majority of printed silk features motifs in lighter color combinations laid over darker grounds, likely for reasons of versatility and ease of pairing.  But the reverse—a lighter ground with a more saturated motif—can be very handsome.  Enter the dress stripe shirt—the fail-safe pairing for most foulards.  On the surface, the problem seems to be that a pale buff foulard will be too light for anything other than a white shirt, let alone a saturated striped shirt.  But the pairing works, somehow amplifying the dark stripes and setting the buff silk aglow.  

    These are happy discoveries, but come with a caution: the light tie can go quickly and dramatically wrong.  The wedding tie with lots of white in the pattern should really be reserved for festive occasions where at least some of the celebration is during the day.  And pale foulards are happy and casual, but almost never look right in the evening.  Perhaps that is the uniting principle: most occasions call for a tie that’s darker than the shirt, but a small collection of pale ties should occasionally see the light. 

The Ape Apes

    I’m reluctant to say anything regarding vintage clothes, let alone reveal an opinion on the stuff.  As divisive topics go, positions within the genre are seemingly chiseled in granite, and experts are as plentiful as the orphaned suit coats that populate most of the vintage shops I’ve visited.   I’m not even certain what constitutes vintage, a designation that, when said aloud, sounds awfully near a more familiar, less obtuse term: old.  And yet I have unwittingly contributed to the concept, having given away (and in a few instances, sold) good quality clothing and shoes for which I no longer had a need—items that in forty years or so might haunt the racks of scattered second-hand shops.  Actually, I’m in deeper than that: I own a few vintage pieces myself.  What’s more, I cherish them.  

    My father is the primary source, and it never fails to tickle him seeing these garments reanimated.  I suppose the first layer of entertainment comes from seeing something familiar worn in an unfamiliar way.  In my twenties I used to wear a stodgy old houndstooth odd jacket of his with battered denim and driving loafers—a fate no one could have predicted when he bought it from Harrods in the sixties.  But I think a deeper current of pleasure exists for the original wearer: the bittersweet realization that garments that might not seem particularly old have gained an ironic appeal for the current wearer.

    The question of irony is a constant in the matter of vintage clothing.  I must admit a particular distaste for calculated irony in clothing, a category that for me spans from clever slogans on t-shirts straight through to bespoke button boots.  I prefer ernest attempts at personal style.  The problem, of course, is any line between the genuine and the affected is invisible, or purposely obscured, or verboten from being identified.  Put another way, irony vanishes the instant it is acknowledged.  I have a vintage Pringle sweater of my father’s with a single, exploded argyle rendered in pastels.  In university, to emphasize its unlikely presence, I wore it beneath a black motocross jacket.  The effect was singular, striking—but unrepeatable in its contrivance.  Fifteen years on, I feel comfortable wearing it again—this time over mid-gray flannels, and not even on Easter.

    And what would wearable postmodernism look like?  A high-concept couture gown that rejects its own label and categorization as a dress?  Androgynous Lycra separates which simultaneously display and conceal?  My vintage entry into postmodernism is the result of a more literal self-reference: the dustiest of ancient madder prints—buff and red paisleys on a gold and navy ground—but rendered in cheap cotton twill and cut and sewn into a humble button-collar work shirt.  The ideas at play have been deeply mined from the masculine cannon, but the result is surprisingly soft, feminine even.  I wear it for lounging at home, and more than once has its reflected image startled.

    My own contribution to the constant gyre of vintage clothing will materialize in waves.  It’s too difficult to discern a pattern in gestational period—how long some garment must hang in stasis before regaining its appeal for someone new.  Will it be only a few years before my graphic-print t-shirts— embarrassingly tight, occasionally threadbare—lure my daughters with the same irreverent slogans and self-conscious images that once seemed important to me?  Or will it take forty years before a curious nephew unearths my favorite trilby?  Are my tailored garments really just costumes for some unknown grandchild?  Among these unanswerables is a certainty: old clothes have value.

Presto (Patience)

My shirt bucket materializes beneath a magic oak tree when summoned.  

    Remedies for stains often have a whiff of magic.  Treat red wine with white, as if the latter is the cosmic opposite of the former and, when introduced, both will vanish in a poof of cancelled ions.  And do we all realize that the prevailing theory for why club soda is superior to plain water is that the former’s fizz levitates the stain from cloth?  As for commercially available products, I would be hesitant to squirt anything with sensational claims on my clothes, no matter how charismatic (or Australian) the spokesperson.  

    The rather boring truth is oil and water-based marks in washable cloth—what we commonly refer to as stains—can be removed or lessoned with soap, hot water, rinsing and patience.  That last bit—patience—is crucial.  Soaking a soiled garment is often the difference between salvation and the Salvation Army.

    First, a word on prevention.  I suspect qualms about tucking a dinner napkin into a shirt collar can be traced to a common fear of the lace jabot.  This strikes me as a legitimate concern, as demonstrated by George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.  But if splash-prone foods are forced upon me, I prefer jabot to uh-oh.  The other, and more sensible option, is to avoid dishes with a higher probability of splatter.  Soup is deadly; Alaskan crab legs worse.  Strand pasta is dangerous too; of course most Italian men I know are not afraid of temporarily looking like Lazenby.  

    Despite precautions, stains happen—sometimes just as magically as those cooky remedies mentioned above—and when they do, a good soak is the wisest option.  The vessel is important.  I prefer a standard round bucket as its narrow opening prevents garments from merely floating on the surface, and a large one will keep five or six shirts comfortably submerged.  This bucket should be dedicated to its role, something best achieved with masking tape, a permanent marker and a sternly worded message.  A lid is useful, but not necessary.  

    A good solution is hot and soapy.  Some swear by white vinegar as its mild acid seems to loosen stains and deodorize, but I find natural white soap works much better and without the unpleasant Greek salad top notes.  Using a micro-plane grater, grate several tablespoons of soap into the bucket; fill two-thirds full with very hot water, stirring to dissolve soap; plunge garments; leave the house if you cannot resist the urge to prod and stir and fuss.  Several hours later (or the next morning) lift the bucket into a deep sink and run cold water into it until the garments are thoroughly rinsed.  Drain, squeezing extra water out, and launder as usual on a gentle cycle.  Hang-dry and press.  

    Admittedly, soapy water and buckets are less exciting than hocus-pocus potions and alakazam additives.  If you feel the above procedure lacks pizzaz, consider painting your bucket black and adding a brim: your shirts will emerge like pristine bunnies from a top hat.  Personally, I am satisfied with the slow magic of soap, water and time.

Learn Your Stripes

From left to right, pin, dress and hair stripes.

    The other day during a final fitting for two warm weather but very different suits, I commented how well an evenly striped shirt seems to navigate a broad spectrum of colors, cloths and patterns.  Chris Despos, breaking from his careful evaluation of sleeve length, agreed that a shirt wardrobe packed with that type of stripe is very versatile.  But what is that type?  What width?  What colors?  What weave?  Stripes seem a familiar enough concept, but the moment a preference needs to be established an unwelcome portal is opened to the infinite and confounding reality of striped shirting. 

    Language, particularly when figurative, is part of the problem.  To help parse the vastness of the genre memorable names have been assigned to some of the more familiar stripes.  Some of these terms have documented histories; a butcher's stripe mimics the bold stripes found on the traditional aprons of London’s butchers, which, in turn, is said to have been inspired by the butcher’s guild coat of arms.  But many are rather fuzzy: a university stripe seems to be nothing more than a candy stripe, and what precisely constitutes a bengal stripe?  I now and again run across a useful guide, but the problem, of course, is that no real standardization exists.  And why should it?  Let a thousand flowers bloom etc., no?

Dress stripes with a small-patterned foulard: fool-proof.

    I do have a very strong preference for one particular stripe.  The one I was wearing during the fitting the other day is often known as a “dress stripe,” which, if it must be put into words, is a narrow (1/16’’), evenly alternating white and colored (shades of blue, typically) stripe in a plain weave.  Read that again.  It’s no surprise the term dress stripe is preferred, even if some vagueness is invited with its use.  

    If varying scale is really the golden rule behind combining patterns, the above dress stripe, or some slight variation, derives its greater versatility from its unique scale.  It is small enough to read as a solid (or semi-solid) from even a few feet away, but any closer and it is a bonafide pattern.  Crucially though, the same scale is rarely found in jackets, suits or ties and so remains small enough not to conflict with a larger scale pattern.  In other words, jackets and ties tend to feature patterns either larger or much smaller in scale, framing the dress stripe without conflict.  With six dress stripe shirts and as many foulard ties, one could dress confidently in the dark for days on end.  Perhaps that’s the origin of the name?

    Finally, be prepared that insisting on a particular width, repetition, weave, shade and number of colors will make you seem unreasonably particular.  So be it; getting what is most versatile, is, for me, the only way to justify the higher cost of having shirts made.  And while understanding why certain patterns are more versatile is helpful, I have learned the following general principles that should help to quickly determine preferences within the infinite variety of striped shirting.  

Dress stripes demonstrating versatility, working equally as well with a repp double stripe tie.  

 Don’t trust colorful names: one man’s bengal is another man’s butcher’s (and that's without considering awning and barber’s stripes).

 The more white or the paler the stripe color, the subtler the shirt.

 Conversely, the bigger and/or bolder the stripe the more casual the effect. 

 Evenly spaced stripes are less jarring than unevenly spaced stripes. 

 Stripes in colors other than blue produce very memorable shirts.  This is not always desirable.

 Multi-stripe shirts with stripes in different widths and colors are for experts; proceed with caution.

 The most useful shirting is probably a mid-blue and white dress stripe.

Iron Will

Two hands are better than one, especially when finessing the collar.   

    It’s no coincidence that some thoughts on pressing shirts should be published on a Sunday.  Like shining shoes, or tending to one’s vegetable garden, these labors of love are best tackled by regular appointment.  Speed-pressing a favorite white broadcloth as the grace period for a reservation dwindles will only result in lackluster results and spoiled appetites.  Besides, grace periods are for second aperitifs.

    At the risk of sounding like a middle school phys-ed teacher, properly pressing a shirt requires the correct mental attitude.  Is pressing a chore?  Probably.  But reluctance in the approach will no doubt manifest in a creased placket or neglected collar.  As in cleaning shirts, I again urge creating the correct atmosphere: entertainment, beverages and a surmountable quota.  Moreover, think of pressing as a step toward personal style; flawless collars, tubular cuffs and a yoke with some volume just look better than the flat-pressed pancakes most men unwittingly endure.

    The final and perhaps most important aspect to pressing is equipment.  Three items are mandatory: a sturdy, wide-bodied ironing board with a clean cover; a quality misting bottle; an iron.  The first two are readily available at your usual home-goods stores, although look online if the boards offered are rickety.  Irons deserve an essay of their own, but I will skip straight to the conclusion: buy The Classic Iron from B&D. I’m loathe to recommend anything by name, but this is an exception I can stomach.  I have experimented with them all, from expensive German models to Japanese prototypes; nothing even comes close in a performance/value ratio.

   I considered creating a detailed instruction manual, but abandoned the idea in favor of a more helpful list of vital aspects of technique.  This assumes, of course, a rough understanding of the physics of ironing.  If you really are a novice, though, you hold the thing by the end which isn't hot.  

Work from the largest surface areas to the smallest.  The order in which a shirt is pressed might look like this: back panel, left side seam, left front panel, right side seam, right from panel, yoke, collar, left sleeve, left cuff, right sleeve, right cuff.  Avoid arranging and rearranging the shirt; pressing is about momentum.

Use the misting bottle regularly, but not to the point of saturation.  Shirts are easily ironed when damp, but if wet the iron tends to bite and crease the cloth.  Pay particular attention to dampening the seams.

Pressing is a two handed activity.  One hand holds the iron, the other should be used to put tension on the shirt.  This is especially important as you try and stretch shrunken seams back to size or crease your sleeves.  

Pressing should give dimension to flat cloth.  Use the end of the board to press shape into the shoulders.  Use your free hand to stabilize the shirt as you press volume into the shirt’s yoke.  Running the tip of the iron back and forth inside a cuff creates curve that hugs the wrist.  Cuffs should never be pressed flat.  

Unfused collars need special attention as it is easy to crease the excess cloth.  The best method is to tamp the collar down with the full surface area of the iron rather than running the iron along its length.  This will distribute the  cloth allowance without creasing.  

Give the front panels a touchup after the shirt is on its hangar—it will have rumpled a bit during the process.  This will ensure a clean front when the shirt is needed in a hurry.   

    Few sights inspire pride like a row of freshly laundered and pressed shirts.  No, that’s not quite right.  Considering the alternative, few sights inspire relief.

Pressed and ready for service.

Shirts: The Ecstasy

An ambitious half dozen for the advanced shirt launderer.

    If part one argued that ignorance and received wisdom were to blame for the routine abuse of shirts, this installation must begin with the following disclaimer: If you can find in your area a cleaner that will carefully launder and hand-press your shirts for a reasonable price, congratulations, you need not read further.  

    For everyone else, shirts are a personal burden.  The good news is tending to them is far less a nuisance than you might expect.  Particularly when a few steps are followed to ensure the atmosphere is correct.  To begin, limit your allotment to four shirts (more and you’ll feel like Oliver Twist).  Whether a football game or a live recording of Art Blakey, entertainment is required.  Lastly, beer is the best beverage for tending to your shirts as it quenches thirst without the threat of permanent stains.  

    One more note before the nuts and bolts.  We seem to have collectively forgotten that shirts are underwear—a garment worn next to the skin in protection of far costlier outer wear.   A suit is expensive, and so a comparatively inexpensive, launder-able barrier is worn.  That these intermediaries can be fashioned from long-staple cotton or burlap-like oxford isn’t terribly important.  What counts is the shirt’s placement on the totem pole—which is to say, a few notches up from your briefs, but several below your favorite suit.  I can’t say why precisely, but once you start thinking of shirts as underwear, dealing with them becomes an agreeable affair.  

 1)  Sort shirts according to color.  The most important separation is whites from any other shirt with even a trace of color.  Group blues together and the any other colors.  

 2)  Remove accessories.  You do not want to spend your time peering into the drum of a washing machine in search of a missing shirt stud.  This includes collar stays (another thing commercial operations neglect to do).  

 3)  Stack shirts unbuttoned and face up.  Align them by their collars and give a few good shakes, permitting arms to dangle freely.  Lay flat next to the sink.

 4)  Run hot water in open sink.  Using a natural bristle spotting brush and a bar of natural soap, gently work a barber’s lather into the collar band, armpits and cuffs of each shirt.  Do not scrub. Wrap each soaped shirt onto itself and put to the side.  

 5) Fill the sink with warm water.  Soak the soaped shirts for an hour, agitating as necessary.  Drain.  

 6)  Launder shirts on the gentlest, coldest setting (usually marked hand wash, cold) using a very gentle, detergent-free laundry soap like Forever New.

 7)  Hang on quality hangers until dry.  Doing so outside will leave your shirts particularly fresh.  

You now have gently cleaned, wrinkled shirts.  Pressing, about which could be written a book, will be covered in the coming days.

Pig bristles and natural white soap are best for gently working the ring out of your collar.  

Shirts: The Agony

A ghastly scene at the heart of a commercial laundry.  The levers to the lower left operate an inflatable air press.  

    People do strange things to their shirts.  I know an infrequent wearer who, when the need arrises, quickly washes one by hand then presses it while damp.  If nothing else, the effect is consistent: limp.  Another friend has his shirts heavily starched.  He resembles a sandwich-board-man with a chaffed neck.  A third dry-cleans his shirts in the false belief that doing so will help preserve his expensive collection.   At six times the cost of laundering, his collection becomes more expensive weekly.  

    Does the standard dress shirt suffer these abuses at a greater rate than other garments?  I think so.  Why, I’m not entirely certain, although I suspect some dangerous mixture of ignorance and received wisdom about garment care is to blame. 

    In order to make a worthwhile profit laundering shirts, a cleaner must process individual units very cheaply.  This means the minimum handling necessary to achieve passable results.  A typical passage looks something like this: shirts are tagged, roughly sorted according to color, and laundered in a very hot, very caustic solution with dozens of others.  They are then dried to damp and pressed using a number of devices that put efficiency before care.  The shirts are regrouped (assuming they have retained their tags) put on wire hangars, lashed together with a twist-tie, bagged in polyurethane and squeezed onto a rack.  The goal is to process as many shirts an hour as possible; fifty is competitive volume.  

    Now I don’t begrudge cleaners the right to make money laundering shirts.  The problem clearly starts with the consumer who is unwilling to pay a reasonable sum for the service.  The industry has therefore organized around value and speed rather than quality and care.  Of course, this same consumer will be upset when shirts are returned with smashed buttons or blown-out elbows.  Blame will fall on the cleaner who will be made to reimburse or suffer the wrath of some breathless online review.  Consider this though: all garments eventually fail.  If cotton shirts are commercially laundered with some frequency this will occur at an alarming rate.  The real question is who is responsible for this unhappy cycle—the consumer who requires same-day laundered and pressed shirts for peanuts, or the industry who efficiently meets that demand, damaging a fraction of a percent of the total that pass through?  

    But what other options exist?  Perhaps, out of frustration with commercial laundering, you have entrusted your shirts to a wife, or girlfriend or, heaven forbid, a family member.  This is almost as unwise as handing them over to a stranger for communal boiling.  While this arrangement might begin well, at some stage it will end poorly, either when bleach ruins a favorite tattersall, or when you say the wrong thing about how your marcella evening shirts are being pressed.  And then what?  Divorce?  An amendment to the will?  

A so-called spotting table, for the removal of stubborn stains.  Many shirts suffered a terrible fate here.  

     Other fishy practices.  Dry cleaning, which is to say using petrochemicals to clean, will leave cotton gray, lifeless and curiously damp—not the desired result for so expensive a procedure.  As for starch, it rarely dissolves properly when re-laundered, building up and stressing the cotton fiber.  Worse, it prevents shirts from breathing, which defeats the premise of keeping things crisp.  And then there are magical bottled potions which may or may not remove stains; they will certainly be heavily perfumed and expensive.

     I’m afraid this leaves one clear solution (short of hiring a valet): the shirt-wearer must learn to tend to his/her own shirts.  The second installment in this series proposes a universal procedure for doing just that.