The London Lounge

As a bit of a sidebar to this discussion there is some fantastic inspiration for a couple of short topcoats in the illustrations from a French tailleur earlier in this thread. If I was a menswear designer there's a host of material you could draw from to produce "different" but contemporary garments...

On balance I'd have to agree with their selection of the POW. He does look consistently good whether he's wandering around the garden at Highgrove or in full DB mode. Of course he's got a staff geared to keeping him looking good but there has to be some personal impulse as I could name other members...

Cotton/Wool gaberdine produces a great look. A lightweight twill that looks wonderful and keeps it's appearance all day long. It looks great in stone, olive or dark tan. Very lightweight wools are also hard to beat. They look great and keep their shape better than anything. As to linen or cotton, OK...

Yes, I quite like wearing checked trousers with solid odd coats, mostly in quiet greys but some a little louder. But they're all in that familiar, modern glen-plaid check... if I ever had access to some of these antique checked designs, I might give them a try... Some of the early incarnations of D...

This is a great thread. I stuck with the striped pants with my morning suit although actually over the years I've seen plenty of guys in the houndstooth alternative. I've got a couple of pair of odd trousers in fairly loud checks with 2" cuffs. Interestingly I sometimes wear them with a coarse wool,...

Most of the comments on the public appearance of Flusser in this thread have a point. But the way his public persona was immediately associated with the quality of his writings is in my opinion a non sequitur . How true. If you follow Flusser's published precepts you're not going to go far wrong. H...

marcelo wrote:Twenty one years back...



What does "a wonderful arrogance" mean?

Sprezzatura? And whose that with him....Joe Lieberman's twin brother?

Joseph Chamberlain was the father of, amongst others, Neville and Austen. Joseph was one of the few politicians ever to split both the Liberal and the Tory parties (over tariff reform). He held a series of high offices, beginning his career as a fantastically successful screw manufacturer and popul...

In the catalogue of older politicians I'm surprised no one mentioned "Brummagem" Joe Chamberlain the dominant figure in British politics between the decline of Gladstone and rise of Lloyd George. He looked very modern in around 1900 when most politicians wore beards and moustaches. Another fashion p...

Though books like “Dressing the Man” can offer some ideas, the real challenge is to train the eye. It would be a good idea to take a mental photo of the shirt and tie matches your friend made and store them into an elegance reference bank. Over time you will begin to recognize more and more of same,...

"Alan is a great dresser. He used to be more formal in that he would never allow himself to photographed in anything but a coat and tie. Lately he has been fairly casual and a little bit shaggy." As my comments above indicate, I'm entirely with you even if you call it "shaggy" and I call it "disheve...

"As usual, good teachers are not necessarily good performers." Some of course are both, one thinks of Luciano Barbera who often breaks rules but always looks great. Poor old Flusser is really getting aflogging here. His big problem really is weight. He's put on a huge amount over the past 15 years. ...

The picture, of course, is awful. He looks just as dishevelled as I described above when I saw him about a year ago in a rather countrified get up. And yet the effect at the time was quite stylish.Just because he doesn't follow his own precepts hardly invalidates the precepts.If that was the case wh...

"I suspect that the aspirational "dress for success" school of sartorial instruction has, ironically, done more to dampen popular enthusiasm for tailored clothing than to expand or refine it, robbing it of the "cool" it possessed before the term was coined. As all the great dressers have known, trad...

I'm sure most of Obama's clothes are off the peg, but the guy is incredibly graceful whether he's wearing the standard American politician's uniform of dark suit, white shirt and pale blue or red tie; or sweats and baseball cap. Just watch him walking down a corridor and his posture and the spring i...