I'm sure it has plagued us all, those cold days walking down the street trying to make a call or send a text, the great debate. Take off the glove or just keep going.
While we don't usually encourage t-shirts as a fashion choice, our inner film fan beat out the inner fashion snobbery when we found Last Exit to Nowhere. Designer Mike Ford launched this Nottingham based T-shirt atelier in June 2007. Each design is based on fictitious companies born out of twentieth century fiction. You of course recognize Weyland-Yutani Corporation as Ripley's employer from the Alien series of films.
If you hadn't guessed by the recent spate of cooking posts, we are culinary fans. We're captivated by everything from tasty dishes to kitchen toys to cook's fashions. This excelent number comes from Ichiro at Ichiroya Flea Market in Osaka, Japan. This is a classic Japanese store or factory apron. The one pictured above says "Miyoshi Soap Factory." Ichiro has an excellent and ever changing collection.
We have long been fans of Muji. I can't say we've been using too much of the A4 stationary, but the multi-colored ball points are nice. I've coveted the sleek simplicity of their CD and DVD players for years. They are matte black boxes with three buttons and no writing. It would seem that most electronics makers still believe the world will be baffled by a series of buttons on media players that can make your music or picture pause, play or skip forward, without a dictionary worth of information backed up by false promises of useless audio and picture filters to undo countless hours of careful sound mixing and color correction. But I digress.
It would appear that ties, however much we love them, now have competition from their downstairs neighbors. It is the sock's day in the sun. One should take as much care in matching (or mismatching) their socks as you would a shirt or tie. It is time to find some color and infuse some style in the nether-regions of the fashion body. If you're hiding behind plain black (or potentially worse, plain white) it's time to stretch out.
The shoes caught our eye, but the bow-ties held our attention. I know skull and cross bones are dead, but, not when done by professionals (and clearly Barker Black is just that). So the the brogues with perforated Skull & Cross bones are nothing short of beautiful. I'll take black and brown please.
For better or worse, we've noticed a lot more gentleman wearing pocket squares of late. As a fashion accessory, we whole heartedly endorse it. Keep in mind, the pocket square need not match the tie. In fact, it is preferable that it doesn't.
Some of our favorite pocket squares are made by Liberty in London. The image above is a selection of Liberty pocket squares. We are big fans of the embroidered edge, though they do make them in finished edges as well.
We ask guys on the street what their favorite article of clothing or accessory is and why.