Edward Green Westminister Double Monk...from Sky Valet...

...in Tobacco Suede. I pounced. 

Butcept with a Dainite sole. 

Even though the unbuckled Double Monk has become the poster child for off-the-mark, overwrought adolescent sprezzatura (In tandem with a bunch of beads and bracelets piled up on one's wrist) , I still think it's a workhorse shoe for any man's closet. Mine should be here in about 10 weeks. I considered banning the Double Monk for a while-similar to what I did with patch madras a few summers ago but then decided against it. Let me say this to those who are working out their own sense of style.

 It ain't fuzzy...it ain't sprezzanothin' if you have to think about it too long or try to hard. Here's a canary in the coal mine of tryin' too hard test for you. If you spend more than seventeen seconds arranging a pocket square in your coat pocket, guess what? You're trying too hard. Most of the guys on George Frazier's Best Dressed list cared about what they looked like. Few; very few, really worked at it. Being cool, having game, is the by-product of manifesting your personal style. It becomes rather obvious when the by-product becomes  your objective. And as a result, most times unknowingly, you've outed your own damn self. Shut up.

So I won't ban them but I may invoke a shoot-on-sight order if the skinnyjeaned androgynous pussezzturas continue to wear them...one-undone. Hell, I know gay guys who would pull the execution trigger to get the purveyors of that Justin Beeber-Thom Browne love child look out of the way.

And where did I commission these babies? Listen, I love Leather Sole Beverly Hills and Leffot in Gotham is off the hook on the taste level meter. And I wish that I could engage in more trade here in DC but your nation's capitol ain't exactly, as Tintin would say, "bangin' eleven" on the style meter. This town remains amorphic...and not amorphic in the sense that Los Angeles is an aggregate of suburban archipelagos. LA has some cool hamlets. Washington DC is, as I've said before, a Company Town with the associated hangers-on and opportunists who feed off of said Company. Sure, there's a power base and some old money and some tradition and some gentility here. But nowadays it lacks elegance. Case in point...even that nauseatingly base television show "The Real Housewives" got canned here in DC. I mean come on...low ratings for that show is like leaving a bag of Cheetos and a quart of Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull on a picnic table in a trailer park and discovering them untouched three hours later. Shut up.

Oh, that's right, where did I order the shoes? Sky Valet on upper Wisconsin is the bomb. And no, they don't know that I'm writing this and they didn't give me a deal on the shoes. I don't shill. I do take a buck or two from folks who pay me not to wear their stuff. 

If you live in the DC area, PLEASE go by and check these guys out. Hetom, the owner, is a trained cobbler/shoemaker and he offers expert repairs as well.

The taste level for their in-stock goods is stellar and they'll special order whatever you can dream up. Edward Green, Crockett and Jones, Alden and a gaggle of other makers are in residence.

I felt proud to trade right here in my neck of the woods as opposed to the other locales that siphon LFG's college money from me.

Traditional Aldens are here in tandem with some unique cordovan color variations of which you already know I'm a devotee. Oh, and I pulled the trigger on my replacement Briggs umbrella. Stay tuned for that update.

Onward. Awaiting Dainite. Monked Doubly. ADG II