Cashmere and Flip Flops

I spend the week in Utah and Colorado where the locals in both areas were glad to get a big hit of snow in the ski resorts while folks back in D.C. are basking in ninety degrees. I get home and I’m thinking cocktails outside…a little bit of sun on my pasty dermis and maybe even a courageous attempt at wearing shorts again. Alas this morning, I’m sitting out on the south veranda of Casa Minimus communing with coffee and I have to grab a sweater. Cashmere and flip flops…shut up.

So how do you spend four days in meetings with one suit? Easy…step one is to pull out the bulletproof cavalry twill Flusser unit and shroud it with a few collateral trappings. Step two is to having meetings in different cities with different constituents so nobody knows that you are wearing same said threads. A few ties and shirts and a four day trek is reconciled.

You also travel with the suit coat doubling-legitimately so with this cavalry twill zoot suit-as a sportcoat. And of course one pair of shoes for the week. Guys...we have it easy.

If you can guess this airport carpet, Allie over at Summer is a Verb will give you a Wiley Brothers belt.

This really is a decent looking contraption when worn as a sportcoat with a pair of 501s. Who is that elegantly gallant man? And why is he taking pictures of himself? Is that a wig?

Five thirty am the next morning. Shut up. What do you look like at the ass crack of dawn? I'm channeling Noel Coward with a hangover here.

Bow tie one day. Traditional neckwear the next. Long as you aren't with the same peeps...it's all good...'specially with a monogram.

I think there are at least two things that make for such a superb 3-2 roll on this baby. The first is the nature of this hard finish cavalry twill material and the second is the tailor who cut it. Oh and I almost forgot....the fine specimen who owns the thang. Shut up.

And then there’s the question of Diagonality. Sock-wise, evvybody knows that Mix Master ADG has Horizontality down to a Fuzzy Dice science. So where does the next envelope pushing Fuzzy Diceyness manifest? … Diagonal tone-on-tone Flusser custom dress shirts. The diagonal weave would be tacky enough but no, one can’t stop there. Pleated pocket adorned with the no consequence talisman…the proverbial monogram. Tintang and Toad are rolling their eyes at this one.

But the fun isn’t over yet. Barrel cuffs-double buttons-flying v cowboy barrel to be eggzack. Shut the ____.

Thomas Mahon of English Cut. Late of Anderson and Sheppard…former Cutter to Prince Charles and now to ADG.  

Check out the dorsal fins on this Anderson and Sheppard mutha.

Jury remains waaaaay out on this D.B. contrivance and I’ll wait till the essential tweaks are completed before doing a post exclusively on Messrs. Mahon et al. Ok, enough about sartorial randomosity for now.

I began looking around the Casa and noticed a delightfully disturbing dichotomy. One shelf adorned with Anglophilishness and Randomanalia germane to caricature, British sports cars, clubland and things sartorial.

There’s a Chipp pamphlet from the days when J. Press, Chipp and the Brethren used to visit campuses. The schedule included in this brochure announces stops at various universities and prep schools including a couple of them close by my neck of the woods…Episcopal here in Alexandria and Woodberry Forrest out in Orange. The brochure isn’t dated but OCBD’s are five bucks.

There’s also a rather comprehensive little catalogue of prints and books for sale on Museum Street in London. The dealer is a young man by the name of Paul Victorious. He decamped Museum Street before the outbreak of WWII and landed back in Charlottesville where he had been a medical student at UVA. Victorious has been dead for about forty years but I think his shop remains in Charlottesville. It was for many years a rite of passage to have your UVA diploma framed at Victorious’.

Then one row above the Anglo-Randomanalia line up is my homage to the Nascar Aero Wars of 1969-1970. Shut up…and I mean it. Yes, LFG and I built these babies and I’m proud of them. More Nascar Apologetics later. Cale, Richard and David are represented here and we’ve even got a few more of them. Daumier on one shelf and Pabst Blue Ribbon on another. 

If you dropped by here for a cocktail, you’d be anything but bored. There's my home town boy Cale in number 21 above.

So here’s a couple more Aero War contenders but please…let’s not forget a formidable motor sports contribution from a bygone era….

 The Ford Pinto.

Onward-Shrouded in Eclecticanalia-ADG

Ps…Anybody seen my tan version of this belt? Allie? Allie? Helllooooooo….