Trad Ivy Tuesday: Cabot Lodge, Jr. and Cotton Poplinosity

I’ve already written rather extensively on the role of seersucker in my sartorial life and I gave Haspel their due in one of my New Orleans reports. But one of my lengthier posts on poplin was lost when my blog crashed and I accidentally deleted forever the first one hundred-plus stories that I’d ever written. The good news is that a loyal reader was able to send most of my stories back to me for re-posting. My poplin post wasn’t one that could be resurrected. Probably a good thing though. It was a gut wrencher of a story—NOT the poplin part—the parts about my two years in New Orleans and the circumstances regarding my departure. So it’s poplin proper time y’all.

Poplin…probably the only fabric in a Trad wardrobe where a hint of synthetic fiber in concert with cotton is acceptable. Why? Because one hundred percent cotton poplin shatters with wrinkles like spun sugar Hollywood prop glass. You look at it on a hanger from a hundred yards away and an instantaneous spider web of wrinkles cascades before your eyes. Don’t believe me? Go to J. Press and purchase the all-cotton poplin suit offered above. It will look like crumpled legal pad paper before you get out of the store with it. And it’s not the “guaranteed to wrinkle”… the desired and expected creased subsets of fabric topography shifts that are de rigueur with seersucker and linen. Wrinkled poplin is uglier and less desirable. Phyllis Diller for some reason comes to mind.

I love linen and my summer sportcoat line-up includes four of them. But linen is that anti-poplin and seersucker is poplin's cousin who attended slightly better schools. Linen is more elegant and less provincial than poplin and if you want the skinny on linen from someone who loves it more than me, go over and visit my best buddy Toad. He’s always tinkerin’ with flax but in the shot above, he's sporting poplin from Cable Car Clothiers. Oh, and my “poplin is provincial” bias pretty much gets debunked towards the end of this story.

 So the standard poplin suits of my earliest Trad years had just enough synthetic fiber content to play the wrinkle blunting Sargeant-at-Arms to the Grand Master Cotton. Brooks the Brethren of course, was the go-to source for the poplin suit color trifecta…tan, olive and navy blue. Brooks wasn’t in every shopping mall when I got my first poplin suits so mine came courtesy of the little Trad shop that I grew up in. And they were private label house brands made by a little factory in Georgia. That same factory by the way made for years, the Nantucket Brick Reds that the Murray family sold/sells in their Toggery shop. It always kinda cracked me up that this New England Yankee iconic trouser was made in Crackerland. And leave it to LFG's pal Alan Flusser to offer a snazzy alternative to the formulaic poplin with a button down collar edict. Here above is Flusser's rounded collar interpretation in tandem with the standard.

These mostly cotton utilitarian poplin things I reckon, came to light amidst the same utilitarian desperation that spawned seersucker and pincord suits. The pre-air conditioned South was beyond oppressive from late June till Labor Day and men had to find options for business attire that wouldn’t have them fainting from heat stroke. Folks, I grew up in the air conditioned version of that world and I can attest that the heat at its most humid peak, is nauseating. Nowadays of course, men just wear wife beater t-shirts and butt-crack winking shorts and rubber flip flops to work. I mean it’s all about comfort, right?

And poplin suits at least to me, seemed more utilitarian and less stylish than seersucker. In an “it’s ok neighbor, we are all just trying to trudge through the dog-days intact” kinda way. Seersucker, even before you segregate it into style centric categories of single or double breasted options, has more syncopated swagger just lounging there as a bolt of cloth. The alternating colors and the warp-weft deliberate looseness that creates its seersuckling piccolo washboard of texture is gonna dictate more élan than poplin from the get-damn-go. Seersucker begs seven additional minutes of thought about whether to wear white bucks, spectators or some other shoe. Poplin says “either put your damn Weejuns or your Alden Tassels on and let’s get this over with.” Seersucker says “top me off with a Panama”. Poplin says “you might wanna grab an extra cotton hanky…not for show…but for brow wiping.” Shut up.

So the poplin suit ain’t steerage but it knows better than to show up on the upper decks, even as an employee. TinTang over at the Trad mentioned showing up for work one hot London summer day at Lloyds in some heat forgiving cotton suit and was at once interrogated about whether he was going on Safari that day. I can’t remember but they might have sent him home to change. Bottom line is that a poplin suit has its place and its limits. Fancy styling options? Not so much. Bespoke? Why in the world would you do that unless you had more money than sense?

 So what about styling? The construct and options for poplin is about as basic as the fabric itself. Three button sack—hook center vent—flat front trousers…hemmed with no break. A slight puddle of extra linen cloth on trousers a bit too long might be forgiven till you can get back to the tailor for a tune up. Poplin trousers with a break…poplin gathered in non-puddling, poly-cotton accordion-osity can’t be allowed out of the house. And…No ticket pocket no open breast pocket no double breasted nonsense. Get it? The Brooks interpretation did have patch and flap lower pockets but that's about it-styling nuance-wise. Remember the objective here. We are trying to avoid heat stroke, not win a preening contest. I’m all about having at least a white cotton handkerchief in my breast pocket. But a poplin suit seems to be an exception to even this basic sartorial rule. Poplin…the anti-fuzzy. And thanks to my buddy over at Heavy Tweed Jacket for the image above  that I stole from his site without permission.

 I wore the hell out of my tan and olive poplin suits when I was a sales rep in the Carolinas during my mid-twenties. I’m not sure what happened to them but by the time I moved north and worked indoors all day, they were absent my closet. I had plenty of lightweight tropical wools and as always, one seersucker suit, but no poplin. And it seems that my olive poplin suit was always rigged with an Argyle and Sutherland rep tie and a blue button down. I rarely wear button down shirts with suits but anything but the OCBD classic with poplin seems wrong.

And then I moved to New Orleans. Oy. I grew up in the South but had never set foot there. I agreed to a two-year assignment that would have me visiting state agencies and legislatures and legislators and advocacy groups and spending more time in and out of places than sitting in just one. All of that previous shit is code for being a lobbyist and shill for big pharma. Kinda of a Daumier version of Robert Macaire or a "reverse Ratapoil." I was fairly streetwise before rolling into New Orleans but nothing…and I mean nothing…prepares one for doing THAT kind of work in THAT kind of city and state and in THAT kind of heat. I think I’ve mentioned before that it was time to leave my thirteen year career after this assignment. I couldn’t shower long enough or often enough to rinse off the smarm.

But until the smarm calculi became unbearable I shilled. In poplin. It was May and things were already uncomfortably warm and sticky humid. I commented to an office worker who had been there all her life that even in our plush, hyper air-conditioned office, everything seemed “wet.” I’d pick up a memo or a report and it seemed limp like overcooked pasta. She just laughed.

By this time my Flusser bespoke habit was well in place but I couldn’t wear even my lightest weight tropical wool suitings. There was a Joseph A. Banks on St. Charles Avenue and over there I went. This was by the way, before Banks lost their way…before they became the Men’s Wearhouse…back when a reasonable but declining argument could be made that they were the “poor man’s Brethren.” I hadn’t yet discovered Perlis and I was in one of those “any port in a storm” predicaments so Banks set me up with one tan and one olive poplin suit. These two options that became my uniforms for that summer and the next one. Trad icons, yes. Fuzzy style preening platforms? Nope. Not poplin. Plus, the last guy who preened excessively in the Baton Rouge Capitol building got shot.

So what motivated a poplin post? Unequivocally I can say that the young man above, one Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was the catalyst. Obviously not the exact photo above but I’ll start with it because it speaks volumes of an era and a man who like all of his ilk…cared about what they wore and how they looked. But not too much. Point collar. Pinned thru and anchoring a woven, grenadine maybe? …tie. Strong. Lodge passes typical WASP Ascendancy muster including a St. Albans and Harvard legacy, World War II distinction as well as a long history of public service. The only tweak I'd have made to this WASP's ensemble would be to tuck that white breast pocket linen in just a bit more.

I’m not interested enough to learn too much more about Lodge Jr.’s one-year stint as JFK’s Ambassador to South Vietnam but I can speculate that it might not have been his easiest year. I will at some point, enjoy listening to Lodge Jr.'s firsthand account of  his South Vietnam tenure over here at the WGBH Media Archives.

What I will say is this. The man sported one hell of a poplin suit while glad-handing those who might overthrow the corrupt puppet leader and while reconnoitering the local terrain. I suspect that Lodge Jr. probably felt that there were days during this year-long assignment when he couldn’t rinse away the taint of South Vietnam instability and corruption. Puppet leaders and protracted instability post Lodge Jr.’s one year visit didn’t seal South Vietnam’s fate but it didn’t help it. But I digress to more world changing topics. Let's get back to the superficial. If duende could ever manifest in poplin, this would be exhibit one at the Duende Poplin Possibilities Trial. Open patch pockets all the way round. 

Sleeve linen showing just so. Trousers hemmed short but not Thom Browne child molester short. High middle button stance vectors the three-two roll. Trousers appropriately covering a middle age paunch but in no way tries to hide it. Those may not be Belgian shoes but damn they look close. The swagger here says "South Vietnam is headed down the shitter and I've got a paunch. Wanna make something of it?" This is poplinessence all to be damned.

So do you think he had this one made in Hong Kong or back home by some east coast purveryor? Three-two roll. Open patch pockets. It’s way too Yankee for me to assume that anyone on Savile Row would acquiesce to such requests. And it defies the formulaic edicts of Brooks, Chipp and J. Press poplin. It says "Where I'm headed is hot in more ways than one." It says that "Even though these straw man scenarios and puppet leader whatevers are gonna test me, I'm at least gonna have trace elements of style amidst the drudgery."  Style he had. And I like it.

Finally, this is off the poplin topic grid but Happy Birthday two days ago to George Frazier. Happy Birthday to the man who won the Bowdoin Prize courtesy of an all-nighter at the typewriter. Happy Birthday to the man who wrote scorching, edgy stuff for Downbeat Magazine when he was in his mid-twenties. Stuff that smacks of what Rolling Stone editors would have lapped up like catnip if they’d existed in the 1930’s. Happy Birthday to the man who wrote Esquire’s epic treatise… The Art of Wearing Clothes…a treatise on men, some of  whom most probably wore poplin when appropriate and who cared about how they looked. But not too much.

Onward. Sans poplin and will probably remain so. Because I don’t wear suits very often and you never wear poplin as a sport coat. And five gets ten that Frazier never wore poplin of any ilk. Maybe shorts on Nantucket. Maybe.

ADG II

 And speaking of puppets.

New Orleans Installment Four: Higgins and Haspel

Here’s Andrew Higgins and Harry S. Truman. I’d like to think that Truman is wearing a Haspel suit. Lore says that he preferred them and God knows, summers in Washington D.C. can be as Haspel requisite as almost anywhere in the world. Except New Orleans…Haspel’s hometown.

My hometown haberdashery—my Trad Instructional Dojo, sold Haspel seersucker, pin cord and poplin suits. I’m not certain where they were made by the time I began working there but assuredly, since my hometown Trad shop opened in 1927, most of their Haspel receipts originated from the old Haspel plant in New Orleans. Speaking of the Haspel plant, John Kennedy Toole worked part time there at some point and it’s said that the Levy Pants factory in Confederacy of Dunces is loosely based on his brief Haspel plant experience.

As clothes crazy as I’ve always been, my college cache of rags was predictably, for a college boy with no money, a bit limited. But I did have a few Haspels. Three actually…olive poplin, blue seersucker and a blue pin cord. And my summer internship in Washington D.C. affirmed why men like Harry Truman would prefer a Haspel or three in their wardrobe.  D.C. can be a dreadful place during some summer weeks. Not quite as challenging as New Orleans but close. To quote Eugene Morris Jerome in Biloxi Blues… “It was hot. Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot.” Haspel’s unstated strategy, I think, from the beginning was something like…cotton clothes for when it’s too hot to wanna wear ‘em.

After college I drifted away for a while from the ultra Trad flat front three button sack suit…trousers hemmed slightly too short…Weejuns on the rig’s south end. You see, I’d fallen under the influence of a book…Clothes and the Man written by a guy named Alan Flusser. While I couldn't yet afford his clothes, I began to order Corbin suits with pleated trousers and would pick up a Polo suit on sale from time to time with more shape and drape than what Haspel would allow. My Weejuns were reserved for the weekends and my shoddings began leaning fuzzily towards brown suede wing tips and cap toe lace ups. By this time I’d seen photos of the Prince of Wales wearing them and Tom Wolfe allowed Tommy Killian to sport them in Bonfire of the Vanities so why not? 

But Cary Grant proved that Haspel and elegance weren't necessarily bi-polar. Grant was wearing Haspel in Charade. On the other hand, Cary Grant looked elegant in anything.

But then I moved to New Orleans. My poplins and seersuckers were long ago lateralled off to someone or simply lost in one of my moves. And by the end of my first May in the Crescent City, I found myself miserably swathed. Surely, if I had to be in Baton Rouge at the legislature for something or at a meeting with the Louisiana Healthcare Authority, I’d wear my tropical weight navy blue suit. But I was still miserable. By the way, whatever one would wear back then, to a meeting with any stakeholders in the above two Louisiana deliberative or administrative bodies, would be covered in graft and taint by the time you got home and “smelled something kinda funny” on yourself. I think I mentioned in my long ago  and best to have been lost, post on moving to New Orleans, that one of the reasons I resigned and left was that I couldn't shower enough to rid myself of that taint.

Ok, so I digress. What's your point? Shut up. I needed cotton suits and I needed them fast. So I went immediately to Perlis…the Uptown go-to haberdashery for all things cotton and Trad. “One tan and one olive poplin please.” In an instant, I was as cool (temperature…NOT style wise) as one could be when having to dress for work. Flat front trousers hemmed with no break…Alden tassels on the south end. What comes around goes around or whatever. Sort of a Haspel Saṃsāra I reckon.

So Haspel is to warm, humid weather like Andrew Higgins is to D-Day. An essential ingredient. Ike was a bit more enthusiastic in his characterization of Higgins... "Andrew Higgins ... is the man who won the war for us. ... If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different." Even that maniacal bastard Hitler had something to say about Higgins. “Hitler recognized his heroic war efforts in ship production and bitterly called him the "New Noah.””

And I assume that Higgins was a Haspel man as well. It’s obvious from photos that even though he probably ambled around boatyards and production lines with regularity, he always seemed to have dapper flair. Bottom line is that this shallow-draft watercraft genius…a man who struggled to get the Pentagon to take a serious look at his craft and his crafts…played a vital role in the success of D-Day. Or should I more accurately say that the thousands of workers who built Higgins boats at a frenetic pace in New Orleans, played a vital role.

I’ve always known about Andrew Higgins but I’d never seen a Higgins boat. And until my visit to the WWII Museum in New Orleans the other week, I hadn’t known the Higgins was also one of the manufacturers of PT boats. 

Peering into the Higgins LCVP conjured chilling thoughts of all the boys who stepped off of these vessels, never to return. More than twenty five hundred of the boys who plopped into the Omaha beach water once the bow front opened, died before sundown.

My mentor, another surrogate father to me and love interest of LFG, landed, courtesy of Higgins, on Omaha Beach D-Day plus one…June 7^th 1944…sixty seven years ago today. Here he is after making it all the way to Paris. God only knows what kind of carnage he stepped over as he made his way beyond the surf. And he made it home...forever shaped by what he saw and did after being dropped off by Higgins. He only spoke about it during the last few months of his life and surely, I got the highly edited version of events. 

More on that later but for now, I’ll end this little ramble on a happy note. He and LFG genuinely loved each other. And I feel so fortunate that they were able to revel in each other’s company for her first and his last six years of life.

Onward. Haspelating in the heat. I said in THE heat. Not IN heat. Shut up.

ADG, II  

New Orleans Installment Three: The Culinary Easy

I have deep respect for a particular vegetarian friend. I worry not a bit about securing options for dining with her when the opportunity arises…the friendship is worth the effort. But I concluded when I moved to New Orleans in late 1993 that this town…this tropical, delightfully smarmy Third World-esque haven was no place for a tee-totaling vegetarian. In other words, New Orleans and I would get along just fine.

Having not set foot back in New Orleans in fifteen years saw me missing lots of things about the Easy. It’s a city of texture, sound, shape and taste that’s quite frankly unrivaled. Sure there are cities that roll-up said mélange in equally memorable ways but none, at least for me; do so with the same taste bud emphasis on which the Crescent City delivers—in spades. Emeril's ... I used to go to the Tchoupitoulas Street restaurant before he got so famous that the noise and frenetic movement of staff made it a no-go. And back then, said particular street, even in the daytime, wasn't one that you tarried on.

I used to look for clients to entertain when I lived here so that I could eat on my expense account. The highbrow is rightfully high…and expensive. But the lowbrow is such an equally facile deliverable that once I discovered my go-to standard Big Easy fast food, (a cup of gumbo and a shrimp or oyster Po Boy…dressed) I wondered why the hell anyone here would ever go to a McDonald's or Wendy’s…ever. And till you get out in the Jefferson Parish burbs, the typical homogenized lineup of national chains is for the most part, comfortingly absent.  

Galatoire's, Brennan’s, Commander’s Palace, NOLA, Emeril’s…I mean really. The bar for average is so darned high in New Orleans that it’s hard to make a bad dining decision—as long as you stay out of the absurd tourist traps on Bourbon Street.

 Galatoire's being the Bourbon Street exception of course. As my friend George Frazier, IV…who decamped Gotham and his job at Esquire to attend law school at Tulane and never left aptly stated, “we don’t talk about Bourbon Street in polite company.” Frazier IV by the way, is the little fella with the perfect Brooks Brothers collar roll in my previous post. He gave me permission to shoot a few pictures that line a hallway in his home.

 Surprise…I also photographed his Belgian loafers, the oldest pair I've ever seen…his mother-in-law bought them for him over forty-five years ago. Ok, I’m digressing, this is my food post. I’ll do one on things sartorial and Frazier later. Here’s one of the greatest things about culinary New Orleans; once you make your way through all of their nationally renowned restaurants there’s at least another year’s worth of equally, if not more satiating places to discover.

So here’s my journey…the four day meanderings of a redneck gourmand. I arrived from Charlotte early enough Wednesday evening to join my small client group of eight for dinner at Muriels, on the back corner of Jackson Square. I’d never been there before and while it isn’t tops on my list, it was a fine place to begin my tastebudian reorientation. Turtle soup and a pecan crusted piece of fish was great but as I shared with one of my clients, a local, my New Orleans food-itch was barely, just barely scratched by that meal.

Thursday evening was the culinary highlight of my visit. The New Orleans Cooking Experience is indeed--an experience. It’s housed in a lovely old; I’ll coin this one…two acre Plantation-ette on Bayou Road. Yep, two acres. 

Thankfully the property was just purchased by an artist foundation in New York and they are beginning to renovate and transform it into a residential retreat for artists…kind of a Yaddo for visual artists. The other good news is that the cooking school will remain.

My client takes her team there about every six months or so and nothing against the other local chefs who rotate through the program, she only goes when Frank Brigtsen is cooking and teaching. 

And after spending an evening with him I can see why. He’s a kind soul—manifesting it immediately in ways that can’t be faked for ten people who've paid to semi-circle and needle you with questions. 

His stories and anecdotes aren’t some contrived pile of gumbo ya-ya bullshit delivered with an exaggerated New Orleans Irish Channel play to the tourist accent. He’s thoughtful and thorough in explaining technically what he’s doing as well as supplying just enough history, back-story and lore to make a tale loving guy like me, sit up and literally, take notes. Tale loving. I said tale loving. Shut up.

It’s all about drinking wine and learning and tasting. You do no work. This isn’t some cook it yourself pseudo-sous chef boondoggle. You sit, you sip, you query and then you eat. I’d go back in a heartbeat and I’d go to Frank’s restaurant just as fast.

Friday morning sees me at Café Du Monde early...real early before the crowds thicken and my breakfast meeting begins. Beignets will kill you. But damn, what a way to go.

My breakfast meeting concludes and my personal agenda manifests. New Orleans thankfully, remains a great literary town and the evidence I needed to assure myself of it was the survival post Katrina, of most of my favorite bookstores. More on that later when I do my Literary New Orleans post. But after walking through the Quarter and dropping serious coin in used bookstores, I needed lunch. Nothing against Acme Oyster House but to me, it’s a tourist trap with a line of people craving admission. And I don’t do lines. (I NEVER did THAT kind of line…ever…I understand the price has come down somewhat but that stuff was always too expensive and unappealing to me) Felix’s is right across the street on Iberville and it has always been my go-to joint for a dozen oysters and something cool to wash ‘em down with. 

On this my return visit, I moderated my intake with a half dozen oysters and an oyster po-boy. Nice.

And I couldn’t return to New Orleans without going to Mandina’s on Canal Street in Mid-City. To most folks, it’s average. To me, the Turtle Soup and Trout Almandine are the only things ADG on the menu and Friday early evening saw my Mandina’s itch on the scratch list.

Saturday early lunch…Mr. B’s on Royal Street. Mostly because it was my go-to destination for entertaining clients and it’s also really, really good.

Saturday evening offered me a delightful alternative to my French Quarter, fried, sautéed Cajun/Creole cravings. It also reminded me of something I’d quickly learned within a few weeks of moving to New Orleans. There’s another New Orleans that unless you live there or have personal friends who do, you’ll likely never discover. The small and somewhat secreted watering holes and eateries in Uptown and the Garden District are somewhat deliberately, I think, off the beaten path. New Orleanians are gracious people and are very welcoming. I met more people and was invited to more homes and events within a month of living in New Orleans than my entire first year in Washington D.C. But the locals selfishly covet a few safe harbors of their own. Places where you know people when you walk in. And more importantly, can rest assured that there won’t be an ersatz who dat? drunken gaggle of tacky-ass bead wearing drunks from Poughkeepsie sitting next to you. Oops...sorry Poughkeepsie, I meant Cahoes.

Gautreau’s would be that place. George Frazier, IV and his lovely bride suggested Gautreau’s for our dinner visit and it was a great choice. So I cabbed it over to casa Frazier and after a glass of wine, we ambled over. I loved meeting the Fraziers and my Creole culinary time-out manifested in a superb duck entrée. I was also reminded of another New Orleans custom…long dinners. Here’s evidence from a Frazier, IV email…“I really enjoyed our talk -- over seven hours…” Yep, I’m chatty.

Ok, let me close this rambling drivel and get to work. I got a lot to do work-wise and it’s a good thing. The food/bar tab on the good ole American Express bill this month is gonna be a zinger.

Onward. Satiated.

ADG, II