The London Lounge

I was reading a text on WW I, when I came across the passage below. For the first time it occurred to me that sometimes it may be wise to prefer RTW in lieu of bespoke:

"As German snipers soon realized, [British] officers could be picked out - and picked off - by their uniform. In contrast to the mass-produced Army-issue tunics worn by privates, officers' tunic jackets were individually tailored (at their own expense) and worn over a shirt and tie. Their jodhpur-trousers were tucked into high leather riding boots which their batmen kept as highly polished as their 'Sam Browne' service belts."

Haha! This reminds me of a joke:

A man was dying. All his family were close to his bed. He calls out for his wife, who takes his hand saying:
"I am here, my dear, I am with you!".
The man gathers his strength as if to say something important, turns towards her and whispers: "Do you remember when we were young and we survived that terrible car crash... You barely had a scratch, but I was all broken bones. All those long weeks in hospital, you were always there with me..."
"Yes", the wife says, tears in the corners of her eyes, "it's true, but that is what any good wife should do".
"My darling, do you remember when I fell off the house trying to repair the roof and broke my spine? You were there with me, and then through all my misery and pain..."
"Oh, don't worry about this now, it was fate, I could not leave you".
"Indeed... And even now, that I am dying of cancer, in my last hour you are here with me..."
She tries to smile to give him courage, holding his hand even tighter: "Yes, my darling, I will always be there for you".
The man pauses for a second, making a visible effort to utter a last sentence before expiring: "You kow, dear, I wanted to say this for a long time... I think you are bad luck!".

Perhaps it's not a matter when one shouldn't wear bespoke - it is "for better or for worse, in sickness and in health... until..."

A timely post Marcelo, as we approach the anniversary of the armisitce, and no joking matter.

During some recent research, I discovered that one of Frederick Petrus Scholte's sons, Owen, was a WWI RFC flying Ace (and RFC Captain); awarded the Military Cross, for 'Conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty on many occasions..' Six of his eight Victories in a Bristol Fighter; see here: http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/scholte.php
Rather ironically, he died in a motor car accident in the July before the Armistice. It is, actually, astounding how many were lost as a result of accidents and disease, apart from the battle dangers that they faced every day - here is another one - http://www.cavalierpaperbacks.co.uk/Tea ... %20War.htm

with highly decorated war service, Beville Quiller-Couch died of 'flu, after the armistice - all the more poignant for the fact that he had just proposed to May, the daughter of his father's old friend, Charles Cannan. Q records that he, himself, got home to Fowey from Cambridge just as the telegraph boy reached his gate with the telegramme.
NJS

I wonder how many LL will be sporting a poppy flower in their bouttoniere these days.

I'm wearing a poppy right now.

Fortunately these days it's almost impossible to get snipers who can tell what constitutes proper fit.

Proper fitting played a major role both on WW I and WW II. Here is vivid allusion to Gieves & Hawkes' contribution to the war effort.

marcelo wrote:I was reading a text on WW I, when I came across the passage below. For the first time it occurred to me that sometimes it may be wise to prefer RTW in lieu of bespoke:

"As German snipers soon realized, [British] officers could be picked out - and picked off - by their uniform. In contrast to the mass-produced Army-issue tunics worn by privates, officers' tunic jackets were individually tailored (at their own expense) and worn over a shirt and tie. Their jodhpur-trousers were tucked into high leather riding boots which their batmen kept as highly polished as their 'Sam Browne' service belts."

There's some black humour for you!

Another factor might have been the colour of their boots: British officers were allowed to wear their own brown boots instead of the issued black. I recall reading somewhere that this rule is still in effect in the British Army.

pvpatty wrote:

marcelo wrote:I was reading a text on WW I, when I came across the passage below. For the first time it occurred to me that sometimes it may be wise to prefer RTW in lieu of bespoke:

"As German snipers soon realized, [British] officers could be picked out - and picked off - by their uniform. In contrast to the mass-produced Army-issue tunics worn by privates, officers' tunic jackets were individually tailored (at their own expense) and worn over a shirt and tie. Their jodhpur-trousers were tucked into high leather riding boots which their batmen kept as highly polished as their 'Sam Browne' service belts."

There's some black humour for you!

Another factor might have been the colour of their boots: British officers were allowed to wear their own brown boots instead of the issued black. I recall reading somewhere that this rule is still in effect in the British Army.

I thought brown boots were a prerogative of parachuters – but this rule certainly does not hold for every army. Now, it may have been perceived as such, but the original post in this thread was not intended as a piece of black humor. On the opposite, it was an expression of admiration for the men who will not forgo elegance or gentlemanliness even under the constraints of war.

I hope any of the remarks above cannot seriously be taken as an act of impiety towards the British army, but I believe anyone endowed with a bare minimum of sense of humour will notice the ridicule in the Gieves & Hawkes illustration - in all good humour. The English have a healthy sense of self irony and I appreciate it. The joke with the Englishman who let go of his knife in front of a shark attack at sea because in the last moment he remembered fish is not to be cut with a knife was an English joke
There is a thin border between ridicule and sublime.

Yes--at the risk of stating the obvious, the humor is not just in the contrast of the cool and correctly dressed representative of the tailoring house with the mud-and-blood mayhem all around him, but in the fact that the action depicted is an amphibious landing on a hostile beach-head (no doubt intended to invoke D-Day, given the pillboxes) and yet the tailor's rep has already comfortably established himself in advance of the landing of the expeditionary force. A comment on English tailoring's global reach . . . .

The self-possessed tailor at the front may well have been more fortunate than his colleagues who stayed behind in London. - Gives was severely bombard in September 1940.



But Gieves' contribution to the war effort went on - if not in further cartoons, in the cinema. Most of you will remember the film "The Men Who Never Was". The corpse of Major Martin, deliberately thrown into the sea in order to fall in the enemy’s hand, had to look like the corpse of a typical English gentleman. - His jacket contained a shirt and collar bill from Gieves. The fact the bill was paid plays a relevant role in the plot.

The problem, however, is that some people really do not like good tailors. The shop was hit again by a bomb in 1975, this time by I.R.A. Was that reason to loose one's sense of humor? Certainly not!

marcelo wrote:Now, it may have been perceived as such, but the original post in this thread was not intended as a piece of black humor. On the opposite, it was an expression of admiration for the men who will not forgo elegance or gentlemanliness even under the constraints of war.

Bien sur, marcelo, but I can't help but find this to be a little comic.

As some of you will probably be aware, Gieves and Hawkes maintains a separate website for its military tailoring: http://www.gievesandhawkesmilitary.com/

In digging around for a reference on the brown boot story that I posted earlier, I came across the official list of regimental blazer suppliers for The Rifles (aka Green Jackets). Goldings and Dege & Skinner are listed, among others, as bespoke suppliers. Here is the link: http://www.army.mod.uk/documents/genera ... ct2009.pdf

I also find it fascinating that Gieves was the target of an IRA attack. Terrorists strike at symbolic targets; that they should have attacked a tailoring house is a testament to just how important the sartorial arts are (or at least were) to British society.

pvpatty wrote: I also find it fascinating that Gieves was the target of an IRA attack. Terrorists strike at symbolic targets; that they should have attacked a tailoring house is a testament to just how important the sartorial arts are (or at least were) to British society.

I wouldn't call it fascinating, but it is noteworthy that a further target by I.R.A., on 25 June 1990, was the Carlton Club. Some of the garments which escaped the first attack may not have survived the second.