The Grumpy Owl

I thought about blogging about the Buy Design campaign and the photoshoot but I can’t remember much about the shoot and I don’t really understand the charity. It supplies poor people with new clothes? Some sort of sweaters for hobos initiative?

Frankly, I’m not sure I approve of that.

If paupers have new clothes, how am I supposed to tell who’s poorer than me? If they start giving Johnny Foodstamp nice new shoes, then everyone is just going to quit their jobs, run off and become poor.

Charity is an incentive for failure.

Anyway, this is a picture heavy post (all pictures are by Anna Lisa Sang) so I’m going to put it behind the jump.

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Tags: buy design, fashion, pink suit

pic nicked from here

Last fall or late last summer, I was asked to be in a 1930s themed photo-shoot for Buy Design.  (A charity that provides new clothing and basic need stuff to social service agencies.)

Because it took place on the Island and I hadn’t been to the Island in years, I went to the thing.  It also gave me an excuse to wear my bespoke pink suit.   Not like I need an excuse but sometimes it’s nice to say you have one.

The photshoot thing was okay.  It’s not really my cup of tea.  Cameras have always made me uncomfortable.  When someone takes a picture of me, I usually try to ignore what’s happening and go to my happy place.  I feel the same about parties.  I sometimes attend because I feel like I should but it’s not what I find fun.

Don’t know if I’ll go this party or not.  I can’t even remember if I’m invited.

As far the shoot went, there was a boat ride and lot of sitting around.  I spotted a couple of cardinals and followed them around for a little while.  Someone put some make-up on me and some gel in my hair.  There were cookies.  I’ll do a better post on all this when I get some more pics.

Anyway, the website is up and running.  (There’s pics of me there.)  And I think this ad campaign is gonna be all over the place in Toronto. Maybe it already is.  I have no idea what’s going on and I actually forgot all about it.  But if you’ve seen me on a subway or something, let me know.  I’d like to know what trains to avoid.

Tags: buy design, pink suit, windfall

The Superbowl was on Sunday.  So I went to see basketball with my fiancée.

The Toronto Raptors gave Sacramento a good thrashing.  Since my fiancée is from Sacramento, it’s hard to say how this will effect my sex life.  I suspect that I’ll either learn to stop gloating or to enjoy sleeping on the couch with the dog.

But that’s fine.  I like that dog.

Beside which, I needed a nap between events.  It’s not everyday that I have to wake up before noon.  I was only kept awake by my pink suit and silver shoes.  As an interesting aside, sports fans are completely unperturbed by either.  Actually, they quite like the shoes.

I heroically awoke in time to go watch the superbowl at a sportsbar.

Watching football kinda makes me realize what it’s like to be in Robocop.  Everything is some sort of Dorito’s Dove for Men Super Play Countdown Extravaganza Brought to YOU by BMO and you just wave your cards in the air for a chance at a prize.   If corporatism could maintain these levels of awesome year round, I might like it more.

Since I know nothing about football and learning from your mistakes is a bit too much like admitting you were wrong, I decided to root for a different team than my fiancée.  She supported the Colts while I supported The Saints.

Here, the Saints aren’t doing so well.

And here, they are.

As you can see from my wildly varying expressions, I’m a real wild man.

At any rate, the Saints won.  More importantly, I managed to convince Shalome that it’s not the team you root for but the game.  It was a good game: a hotly contested and square match.  What more could you ask for?  Probably, another picture of me.

So here ya go.  (I think The Who was playing.)

Winter is here, as always; Hesitant and stupid, as usual.  A cold day here, a not so cold day there and rain in January.  At least, I solved a long standing problem:  My overcoat.

I picked it up from my tailor today.  Then my camera decided to go insane.  In real life, the coat is actually in focus.  My life, however is not.  It’s been that sort of day.

My water heater has broken and my afternoon began with me squatting in a bathtub, giving myself a sponge bath in frigid water while shivering.  My teeth were actually chattering for some time after that, let’s say, invigorating experience.  And I just missed my barber thus missing an already overdue haircut.   But I did get into the All-Star Game in the RTTS mode of MLB 09 The Show and I managed to pick up my coat.

So some things are in focus.

The coat is made from cashmere with a lamb’s wool collar.  I can, if I so wish, have this collar replaced with a number of different wools, furs or whatever animal strikes me as the one I wish to wear about my neck.  So keep your cats indoors.  I’m on the prowl.

The pocket space is immense.  After leaving the tailor’s shop, I was able to vanish a copy of New Scientist into one.  I also had a special pocket put into the coat for whatever infernal beeping device I might need to manipulate or quickly plug into my head.

Aside from the beautiful lining and effective windproofing, there’s a variety of pockets on the inside, all large and specialized to my needs.  There’s even a chain to hang the coat from. A nice chain.

Not that you can see any of that but here you go:

When trying the coat on during the fitting process, I was immediately struck by the softness and lightness of the material.  I’ve never owned cashmere before and not being one of those people who go around touching people, I don’t think I’ve ever even touched cashmere before. It feels wonderful.  That’s a mixed blessing.  Though I may want to cuddle up with my coat, I’m not looking forward to removing the groping hands of strangers on the street.

Should we ever meet, museum rules apply:  Look, do not touch.

Insofar as the lightness, it seemed impossible that the coat would be warm enough to withstand winter.  It is not, after all, some space-age material procured at the local sporting goods outlet.  It’s  a type of goat hair.  But, after buttoning it up, my ideas of what’s possible underwent a drastic change.  The coat is very warm.

My teeth stopped chattering and what was left of my chill was gone.

The coat, which fits better than my gloves, has two modes of wear.  One is slightly more formal, with shirt and tie exposed.  This is for warmer days.

[Had I the eye of a stylist, I might have thought to adjust my coat's lapel so that it was in its proper place.  Thankfully,  I have no such eye and I try to avoid thinking.]

The other mode of wear has the lamb’s wool collar turned up and front closed up. I’ll let you figure out what days that’s for.

I’m as bad of a model as I am a photographer.  (At least I make no pretence to being either.)  But you can see that, below, I have paired the coat with my opera scarf.

There’s something suggestive of the priesthood in that and the austerity pleases me.  Worn with my Red Army ushanka, I should be a thoroughly mixed message.  Some sort of cashmere, catholic communist.  Hmm, come to think of it, that sounds about right.

As always, I’m pleased with the work of Don and his staff at Trend Custom Tailors and, as always, they went above and beyond the call of duty.  I wish my photos did their work justice but I’d have to be one hell of a photographer with a much better camera.

As it is, the fuzzy pics are actually growing on me.  Perhaps I’ll be like bigfoot.  Because of the bad photographic evidence, you won’t believe in my existence until you actually see me.  And then you’ll think:  He needs a haircut.

I detest fashion.  At best, it’s an idiot’s guide to looking like other people.  At worst, you end up looking like an idiot.  Have a look at this fellow:

Featured in the Globe and Mail Style section under the title “Sherlock Holmes Style: The Mystery of the Modern Dandy” he’s wearing an ill fitting suit and  woman’s boots.  He manages to make plaid look bad: A function previously reserved for Steve Urkel.

When I think of Sherlock Holmes style, I think of injecting a lot of cocaine on the couch while getting into other people’s business.  You know, Sherlock Holmes style.  I don’t think of Robert Downy Jr. and turtlenecks.

And when I read an article like that (because it was sitting around in the paper at work — I don’t usually read these Toronto rags) I can only congratulate myself on my style timing.  It’s fucking supernatural.

Just when every fool in this city will be donning bad versions of this aesthetic, I have abandoned it in favour of a work uniform; thus re-contextualizing my bespoke collection and overcoming the quasi-historical frame, cobbled together from pop culture, that people have so eagerly attempted to pigeon-hole me within, so that they may better reduce me to the level of their ignorance.

Though it will doubtless take some time for people to appreciate what I’m up to and about, my bespoke collection is now a better reflection of  complete and efficient simplicity.    Just as its always been.  It has nothing to do with the old-fashioned, be it Mad Men or Sherlock Holmes, or the popular conceptions of dandyism.  Just as it never has.  It’s just me and my philosophy.

No doubt, in four years, when the Globe does a piece on “The Workers Uniform: The Toiling Commie Fascist,” featuring people wearing blue uniforms from H&M accessorized with a turtleneck and baseball cap, I’ll once again have to endure the imaginary expertise and insulting approval of the style-raping fashion classes.

But, for now, I feel as if I have dodged yet another bullet.  As far as their fashion future goes, I’m quite sure I’ll be as ahead of them then as I am now.  It’s easy.  After all, they have no ideas except the ones Hollywood gives them.

That’s to say, they just have no ideas.

pic nicked from here

When a ship is at sea for a long time, a bizarre species of crustacean, known as barnacles, affix themselves to the hull.  Although one barnacle does no damage, too many impair the ship’s speed and manoeuvrability.  When that happens, the ship must return to port to be cleaned, stripped and fixed.

As creatures set afloat in a sea of commerce, we too gather many little barnacles.  Passively acquired, protected by a rock hard shell of psychological attachment and glued to our lives by a mixture of laziness, passivity and fear, these creatures slow us down, stop us from moving and must be removed.

At times, we humans too must return to port.

pic nicked from here

Because of my mode of dress, my closet is perhaps more susceptible to barnacles than most.  Each suit, after all, requires a certain amount of supporting clothing.  Shirts, ties, various accessories and accoutrements.  When purchasing these, it’s quite common to find something else to buy.   And most of that is never actually used though it remains because one day, maybe, I’ll need it.

One day, maybe.

Well, one day maybe never comes.

I have tried, every spring, to strip off the barnacles but to leave the hull intact. And this has met with varying degrees of success.  Yet, not matter how through I am, every winter I find myself overwhelmed by clothes I never wear.  They clog up my closet, lay strewn over my floor, impair my speed and manoeuvrability while causing needless complication when getting dressed.  It’s a minor but constant psychic strain.

An utterly unnecessary one.

Other than my bespoke suits, I always wear the same few suits to work.  To introduce variance to these work clothes, I have tried adding.  More shirts, a variety of sweaters, different ties, even more shirts.  It has not worked.  The drag on my life is increased.  I cannot acquire my way out of this mess.  After all, I acquired my way into it.

Drastic measures are called for.

And drastic measures have been taken.

Today and yesterday I gathered every single item of clothing I own, other than underwear, socks, ties and bespoke, and bagged it.  It’s all in the garbage.

I have replaced all of that with three pairs of navy blue work pants and three pairs of navy blue work shirts from BIG B WORKWEAR.  I work three shifts a week.

These are now my work clothes.

When I’m not working, I own enough bespoke to be exclusively clad in that.

The entire middle of my closet has been removed.  No matter my sentimental attachment to any item, it has gone.  No matter how much money I once spent on it, it is now garbage.  No matter how much I once liked it, I murdered the fucker.

Purges are a ruthless business.

Sentimentality is deadly.

And I have been here before.  Every so often I find my progress impeded by old ideas, old items and old things.  I return to port and tear the ship up.  Rebuild it and start again.  There has been many Ryans over the years.  Punk, drunk and the one that you have gotten to know here.  The fellow who exclusively wears suits.

But that was never meant as the complete final version.

If you thought that, you haven’t really been listening to a word.

I’ve always been a quality over quantity sort of person.  But constricted as I am by limited finances and desirous of fine suits, I have had to acquire a great deal of not so fine suits.  Over time, as planned, my one-time front line of suits has become my bottom end work clothes.  I simply did not have the money to have both suits and work clothes.   I needed to do a sort of double duty.  Buy a suit, replace it with a better one and turn that old one over to the job.    Any money spent exclusively on work attire took away from this replacing of the top end.  It slowed me.

pic nicked from here

Over time, that bottom end decayed through wear and tear.  As they say in the maritime business, it became biofouled.  Quite literally, in some cases, frayed around the collar.  They needed to be replaced; not as suits but as work clothes.

I could have bought other suits but that would have required a great deal of effort and money spent in an impractical pursuit.  A lot of time searching through second-hand shops. And just to have work clothes.  It is much better to simply buy work clothes that match my aesthetic of efficiency tempered with biology.

Once upon a time, when interviewed about my sense of style I said: “Function is beautiful and beauty is functional.” These are words I stand by.

I never wanted to be that fellow who wears suits.  Never wanted to be your dandy or your fop.  What I wanted was some beautiful suits and to find a sort of timelessness within them. That I had to constantly wear suits, was not a matter of taste but one of finances.  It was a part of a progress to a life more beholden to quality than to quantity.  Having a lot of suits is no article of pride.

I bought bespoke suits because they would lead to a greater efficiency in my closet.  This was my ten year plan and they have served this purpose admirably.  I can now honestly say that my collection of suits are about the best that my money can buy.  My wardrobe can still be increased [it will be: much more slowly] but it can only be improved on with a series of details invisible to even to myself.

To do that, I would have to be a millionaire.  I’m not a millionaire.  I’m not any sort of aire.

Lacking the money for a direct approach to the problem of making my bespoke suits better, I have used a trick that I learned in writing.

It sometimes appears that there’s a problem with a chapter when there is no problem with that chapter.  The problem is in a different place.  In another chapter.  And that’s what needs to be changed.

I can make my bespoke look better by not constantly wearing suits.  Rather than being an improvement on something that, to the uneducated eye, probably all looks the same anyway, it will be a stark contrast with BIG B WORKWEAR.

But not too stark of a contrast.  At opposite ends of the spectrum, we often find more similarities than differences.  To me, this workwear is simply another example of a suit.  Though lacking the bio-sartorial functions of a suit and tie, it is recommended by being stripped down to even greater simplicity.

To make a very old and oft wrong prediction, jumpsuits are the way of the future.

The whole history of menswear teaches that today’s ultra-simple work or sports wear is tomorrow’s formal clothing.  This was the insight of the lionized though misunderstood Beau Brummel.  Though extravagant by today’s standards, his clothing was, by the standards of the Regency, shockingly simple.  He understood better than most that the past is little more than a collection of barnacles.

So perhaps the B in BIG B WORKWEAR stands for BEAU.  Perhaps it stands for BROTHER.  But one thing it does not stand for is BARNACLE.  It’s the future.

Get used to it.

Gentlemen of Bacongo also examines the strange merging of colonial and Congolese culture. Tamagni notes Sapeur Salvador Hassan “thinks that a real sapeur needs to be cultivated and speak fluently, but also have a solid moral ethic: that means beyond the appearance and vanity of smart, expensive clothing there is the moral nobility of the individual.” Says Hassan, “The label is not important, what is important is to be able to dress depending on the taste of the individual.”

From here via M1k3y

November is a cold and slimey month.  It drizzles but never quite rains, sleets but never quite snows.  It’s as damp and sick as a Tuesday.

It’s a time for hot beverages spiked with brandy, warm fireplaces enjoyed with warm women and tweed suits with heavy ties.

I’ve put away  my summer suits –the pink, the light and the spiritually gay– and pulled the heavy ones out of the closet.  This year, fresh from my tailor, Don Fabien Lee, I have a new addition to the collection:

This one won’t get much play in the warmer months but for November to June, it’s invaluable.  Heavy, warm and cut to perfection, it’s everything I want in a winter suit.  I won’t bother describing the colours, as you can see them, but it’s a three piece, rolling three button made from –if I remember right– a 14 ounce Dormeuil Derby wool, with no pleats or break in the trousers, a button fly and a belt-loop.

I don’t usually get belt-loops on bespoke –they’re unnecessary– but since I plan on doing some bird watching in this one, I need a belt to hang my binoculars from.  Now, strictly speaking, it’s incorrect to wear a belt with a three piece suit, but I doubt birdwatchers or birds much care about that rule.  Trees, on the other hand . . .

But one of things I love about this suit is its lack of formality.  Not many suits could look equally good at the theatre with dress shoes or in the field with a pair of rubber boots.  This one could.

It almost makes me wish it was always November.  Almost.

. . . I will crush you all with my robot army!

During my last trip to my tailor, I met Gregory Allen.

He has his flagship store in the same building as my tailor and has apprenticed beneath him.  He makes shirts and bowties and has received all sorts of positive coverage in magazines that I’ve heard of but don’t read.

The only magazine I read is New Scientist, which I subscribe to.  Even the Men’s Fashion Something mags that I got for free at some party still sit, poking out from beneath my couch, unread.  Men’s Fashion? I never would have even taken those if it didn’t come in the bag that contained the cologne I’ll never wear and the moisturiser that gave me a pimple.

But anyway . . .

Gregory Allen was nice enough to give me the bowtie you see in the picture above.  He also gave me a pack of gum.  He said my suit was fresh but apparently thought my breath was not.  After some confusion, which had me wearing the gum and chewing the bowtie, I finally came to my senses and figured out where everything went.

I like the bowtie.    The gum is pretty good too.

A little while ago, I planted a couple of seeds and waited to watch them grow.  Here’s how they looked then.

One of them has finally matured.  Here’s how it looks now.

This journey from little swatches of cloth to perfectly fitted suit is one of the many things I love about bespoke.  While shopping is much like finding some ripe fruit then plucking it from the tree, having something built for you is more like planting a garden.  It all starts very small.  So small that it’s hard to imagine what the end result will actually look like.

You might have a notion but a notion is all.  There’s a big difference between  a fabric sample and a whole suit.  Colour and patterns change with size.  Loud patterns become quieter, plain colours become noisier.  And when you’re dealing with something like a pink suit, you really have no idea how it will look.  There’s not a lot of them out there.

This is only the second that my tailor, Don Fabien Lee, has made.  The first was for a British Sea Lord.  This one, the second, is for a grumpy Canadian waiter.  But I have read a book about Horatio Nelson.  So there’s that.

As usual, I’m extremely happy with the work that Don and his staff have performed.  Aside from his excellent bedside manner, he has added a host of little details, some visible to the public, some known only to myself, that are quite pleasing to the subtle mind and educated eye.  Most, if not all of these, would need a better camera to detect them.

With a colour as loud as pink, these tiny little notes keep the thing from being a blunt and overwhelming instrument.   Just as a symphony needs its quiet parts lest it become all blaring horns, beating drums and terrible racket, so does a suit, lest it lose its music for cheap effect.   The louder the noise, the quieter the silence, the better the melody.

I did not want a zooted-out pimp costume.  My mission, as usual, was to see how extreme I can go while remaining within boundaries.  I like that tension, that push and shove between conformity and crazy.

My favourite artists have always been those who frankly and simply depict insane things, those who render the very odd in a highly realistic style and somehow make it believable.  Logical even.   It’s part of what attracts me to science fiction.  These stories are often wild, the ideas borderline bananas and the creatures as strange as the worlds they inhabit but the prose itself is often simple, blunt and clear.   I attempt something of this attitude in my dress.

Everything in bounds but out.

My ideal is not debatable but, of course, how well I succeed at reaching it certainly is.  Some days, I don’t even try.  The tension and balance between crazy and not-crazy, are elements in the higher work of my wardrobe and, sometimes, clothes are very low work.  But this pink suit is a definite step towards some uncertain goal.

And it’s already caused one pedestrian collision.  So it’s amusing, if nothing else.

Of the many advantages women have seized for themselves over the years, there is none as important as the purse.  I don’t know how they managed to do it but they’ve somehow convinced men that carrying a bag is feminine.  And that, of course, puts them in charge of carrying stuff.  This makes them indispensable and leaves us at disadvantage.

Macho men, that fifth column of female domination, have been all to eager to play along.  Any bag which is not a toolbox, backpack or briefcase — that is, anything not directly related to work or fun so onerous it might as well be work– is derided as a man purse.  Yet being able to carry your own stuff is simple self-reliance.

Why would they revolt against that?

Most of these chaps are simply superstitious.  A woman once made them hold their purse at the local mall.  And there they stood: Their male mind aflame with the terror of being thought homosexual, they believed their every movement to be infected with such an awful mince that they dare not even touch their hair for fear that their wrist may suddenly fall limp while doing so, and they endured the imagined looks from men who either didn’t care what they were holding or were sympathetic because they would, in ten minutes time, be in exactly the same situation.

They were deeply traumatized.

And they did what traumatized people do:  They did the very easy and very wrong thing.  They blamed the purse.

My trauma, of course, lies in a different direction.  I hate to run out of pockets and hand my tobacco over to a woman for her to carry.  I hate having to ask her for it whenever I feel like a smoke.  It reminds me of a childhood incident during which I asked my dear Nan for one of her cigars.  To express surprise, she lifted her eye-patch just long enough for me to see that her glass eye had been replaced with a grape.    And then she squished it.

Having run out of cigarettes, I accepted the cigar but I failed to enjoy it.  I was too worried about the large purple stain the grape had left when it squirted onto my shirt and too busy making a silent vow to smoke a pipe and never again ask a woman for tobacco.  So I suppose we all have our traumas.

Yet, in spite of these incidents, we must try to do the correct thing.  Any man who wears a well-fitted suit must ask himself if he’s willing to bulge out his pockets or give up carrying things.  If he’s unwilling to do that, he must look to his soul and inquire whether it’s right to encumber another human being with his load.

I’d say it’s not.

We must all bear our own crosses upon our own backs.  Even if those crosses are made out of pipes, tobacco and comic-book pornography. With perhaps a sandwich tucked away for later. And because we must carry them, the best we can do is make them look good.  You don’t want to lug all that weight up to Calvary only to discover you have the ugliest cross on the hill.  And with Jesus in mind, I show you my new man purse:

It’s alligator skin.   Or maybe it’s snake.  I don’t know.  But it’s certainly made out of  some reptile.   Just as Jesus would have liked.

Black Dandy on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Torpedo Typewriter (1926) on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

I love pictures of smoking men in suits with typewriters.  What’s great about this one in particular is that his typewriter is called a torpedo and he has a sort of fascist Freudian look to him.

I wonder what he’s writing.  I bet it’s about you.

Green socks on Twitpic.

Yesterday’s socks and shoes.

You’ll have to excuse me.  I’m experimenting with some of the new features now available to me on this blog.