The waistcoat for evening dress was black during late 19th Century. Thereafter, a white version took over. It had long downward-sloping points. In the 1920s the Duke of Windsor and other Savile Row customers made a waistcoat with blunted points popular. Nowadays, most connoisseurs will consider the Windsor waistcoat to exhibit the proper style. On the photo [...]
“The rules of society require that to a certain extent we should adopt those forms of dress which are in common use, but our own judgement should be excercised in adapting these forms to our individual proportions, complexions, ages and stations in society.” [The West-End Gazette, July, 1870] Photo: The Journal of Style
Nowadays, a Danish shoe is an Ecco shoe, a typical brand shoe, that is, noisy and with little substance. Some decades ago we could tell a different story about goodyear welted shoes made in the center of Copenhagen. The most famous name was Hertz. A Danish jew, Abraham Hertz, founded the firm back in 1821 [...]
Hidden in the basement of Savile Row number 12, Tommy Nutter tailors Roy Chittleborough and Joe Morgan run one of the lesser known Savile Row firms. Apart from stocking some Gaziano & Gaziano shoe models, Chittleborough & Morgan do bespoke only. You can still detect Tommy Nutter hallmarks like a pronounced shoulder, and a narrow [...]
On Bermuda Bermuda shorts aren’t just for the holidays. Businessmen, although mostly of the older generation, wear them on a daily basis teamed with a navy blazer, shirt, tie, long socks and loafers. The English introduced them to Bermuda close to a hundred years ago. The army needed a tropical uniform for the hottest colonies [...]
I found some of the famous Esquire magazines from the 1930s at the library. Here is a short feature on informal summer wear: “Sun worshipers at doctor’s cave beach When the sun bakes down on Jamaica, the intelligent man defends himself like the one on the left. A long glass of planter’s punch, a sunshade [...]
Traditional men’s wear is closely connected to the old English upper class. It was the merchant class, of which several were landowners in the south of England, who created the universe of the suit after the French Revolution. The only people above them were the British King and the Crown Prince. All this was retold [...]
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