An Example of a Bespoke Picnic Attire for Men

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picnic attire

Picnic attire. Perhaps.

I didn’t think of it as picnic attire beforehand. I just wanted to create a bold, yet classic and pleasing look for summer.

Now it seems to be a sort of picnic attire. The corn white trousers, the Panama hat and the blazer like jacket all connect to that story.

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I try to balance the contrast between the cold blue shade and the warm cream white and brown shades through making pairs. The jacket relates to the socks. The brown hat band relates to the tie and the loafers. The cream white Panama hat relates to the trousers. Shirt and handkerchief are alike in shades.

picnic attire

Everything is bespoke: the unlined jacket made from vintage cloth, the shirt (Frank Foster), the unlined tie, the trousers, the penny loafers (Warsaw), and even the handkerchief in silk crepe.

Photography: Torsten Grunwald

White Summer Style for Men

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white summer style

White summer style of bespoke light brown jacket and bespoke off-white duck trousers.

I see two main traditions in regard to men’s summer style wear.

Victorian white summer style

There is the white summer style that goes back to the Victorian era. You can also say it is the pre-World War 1 summer style. It is about white and off-white shades with an occasional splash of a stronger colour.

The bold preppy style

Then there is the inter-war summer style from the 1930s, an era beloved by many sartorially minded men. Roomy cuts and colours arrived, for summer as well. The bold preppy style of the 1950s can be traced back to the gaily coloured 1930s.

I think it is right to say that the preppy style has won today. The white summer style tend to look dated and retrocentric.

How to use white summer style

That being said you can of course wear white clothing in summer without looking lost in the good old days. I think the trick is to vary shades and textures just a little. That brings a bit of energy and Zeitgeist into the old summer style.

In the present photo I sport a half-lined light brown jacket of “open-air” jacquard vintage cloth. Sleeves have been lined with a striped summer fabric.

I pair the jacket with light tan duck trousers.  Duck is a traditional weave of hard spun yarns. It was used for small sails and duck trousers that you could pair with a blue reefer jacket. Today the weave is popular for upholstery and backpacks mainly.

Underneath the jacket I wear a white jersey popover. My feet are covered by white plimsolls.

Francesco Guida has made jacket and trousers, and Camiceria Carmen had made the popover shirt.

Photography: Sartorial Notes

Country Life in Summer

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Country life in summer and menswear by_Torsten_Grunwald

Country life in sandals and evening sun.

Anybody can be good in the country, as pithy Oscar Wilde wrote.

You can wear your panama hat aslant, unbutton your shirt’s collar and cuffs (shirt from Frank Foster), smile effortlessly, and even wear sandals, can’t you?

Country life - Summer_Clothing_Linen_Shorts_mens_by_Torsten_Grunwald

Tools for country life in summer.

Most of the time I have little need of a suit or even a sport jacket, when I live in the country during summer. I manage with shorts, shirts, a knit jersey, good food, and liquids. Moreover, I try to read fiction, poetry, a biography. Crime novels are not for me.

Reading Material

This summer I read Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education (1869) about Frédéric Moreau, a young man, who travels to Paris to conquer life, which to him means love, enjoyment, money and status. The engine of the novel is Frédéric’s relationship to Marie Arnoux. She is married, but it doesn’t stop him. He is in love with her, and little by little she finds out that she has deep feelings for him as well. They cannot carry out their relationship though. Not because it is not socially feasible. They are in Paris afterall. But a mysterious force holds them back.

The theme might sound romantic or sentimental, yet Gustave Flaubert’s writes without much pathos. You get a refined, humorous, and sometimes ironic description of Frédéric and his friends selfishness and shattered dreams.

Sartorial Glimpses

There are sartorial glimpses here and there in the novel. One thing I noticed was the use of black tailcoat and black breeches in evening wear, which Gustave Flaubert lets us know is old-fashioned. Fashionable men would sport trousers with the tailcoat. Frédéric has a tailor, of course. He makes him frock coats, which are the most important garments for men in the 19th Century. The quality and cut of a frock coat pointed to a person’s social status as few other artefacts. For the neck men were using a cravat. Here I need the original text French though. I have a suspicion that the translation into Danish is not accurate. According to fashion history men had started to wear stocks and bow tie cravats around 1850.

Photos: Sartorial Notes

Sartorial Meet Up

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Sartorial-meet-up-The-Journal-of-Style-1

As you can imagine the sartorial community in Copenhagen is a small community. It is strong nonetheless. We had a meet up in November, and Thursday afternoon some of us met again. In the photo above Butler dresses his royal blue Hitchcock coat in patterns and blue shades.

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Jakub in a brown made to measure summer suit, white shirt and Hermès tie.

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Shoe show-off. Butler on the right in blue suede loafers, and on the left bespoke summer shoes made up from old style canvas linen.

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Jeppe in a fresco suit made by Musella Dembech in Milano.

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Michael was bold as always combining colours and patterns nonchalantly. Peter Undén has made the bespoke summer jacket.

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The crowd. The bags on the quay boards come from the local makers Broe & Co and Piet Breitholm.

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An impeccable summer attire. Seersucker jacket and trousers are bespoke by Ripense in Rome.

You can find a movie clip at Youtube from the meet up here.

Photos: The Journal of Style

Tradition and revolution

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Pitti-Uomo-summer-Stricker-The-Journal-of-Style Pitti-Uomo-summer-raw-The-Journal-of-Style They share style. Both men wear summer odd jackets, shirts and leather shoes. Both use blue, white and brown. Both sport a beard.

In spite of that results differ significantly.

The man in the upper photo follows tradition. Neither cut nor patterns stand out, although shoes, the folded shirt cuffs and jacket shoulders mark a subtle dandification.

In comparison the man in the lower photo is a sans-culotte, a revolutionary. The cut of jacket and trousers breaks with tradition. Patterns are unruly. Evidently, the man knows classic style but he has substituted it with drama and romance.

Source: The Journal of Style in Florence

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