You do your best to function at the other end but clearly you are not quite in your old world and not quite in the new.
My hotel in Los Angeles was delightful but I wasn't able to check into my room until 3pm and so I took a shower next to the bungalows and waited to be picked up to take my friend's dog for a walk and a frisbee. The dog was a Australian sheep dog, a ginger kelpie dog but for the moment I have forgotten it's name. But a beautiful dog, a beautiful coat. We played on a patch of wet grass underneath the Hollywood sign on a water reserve that seemed to be frequented by locals on one side and tourists on the other. I had arrived in a daze and yet somehow I had to pull through for an afternoon at the Soho House in Malibu. My friend was playing music there. I had a dinner back in West Hollywood at 8pm. I was in a new city, one which I hadn't visited since I was seven years old and one which I came to detest based mostly on the opinion of Woody Allen in Annie Hall, not through my own experience.
Yet as I drove around I felt this city was charming the pants off me. The flora was enchanting, jacarandas and bougainvillea, palm trees and cacti - all neatly organised to show off these wonderful houses which all looked so perfect and pretty. We moved from West Hollywood through Beverley Hills, then passed UCLA and Brentwood. I got caught up in the romance. I was having flash backs of Ford Fairlane, All Of Me, The Big Lebowski, 21 Jump Street, Booker, The Big Sleep, La La Land and every other influential bit of Los Angeles culture we'd come to absorb through the natural osmosis of television and cinema.
By the time I got to dinner I was just about a train wreck so I used a small nap, then meditation and alcohol to get me back into full swing and we went to some restaurant with some old friends at a place called Cecconi's in West Hollywood but not before taking some typical selfies in front of the Chateau. I returned to my hotel late that same night before trading my bow tie to see a woman take her top off at the bar, her gay friend egging her on. I popped a valium to help me sleep but it had the effect of making me realise I was human, that my body could only cope with so much stress, air travel, a full day in a new city, a big dinner and drinks - I was alone in a hotel where John Belushi died - what a sad death that would be - on your first night in a new city.
I was so happy when I awoke the next day. I was honestly surprised and I made myself a promise to calm down and get my head straight and focused on the trip ahead. I had to meet up with the family that ran Anto's shirts in Beverley Hills, and I was trying to line up an appointment with Cameron Silver from Decades in Melrose. I soaked in Venice and Abbot Kinney at some point, stood in a line for an organic coffee which seemed to take forever whilst a bunch of dudes who looked like they would otherwise be unemployable made absolutely no attempt to any kind of tempo.
The truth is we Australians live in these kinds of a rambling daze from the moment we step onto an aircraft until the moment we get home. And even now, still recovering from jet lag, I am wondering it it indeed all happened or whether it was all just some kind a dream.
One such evening was on a Monday night after returning from a wedding in Connecticut where I was fortunate to enough to have been invited and also to have made the bows for the wedding party. With the wedding all done and dusted I returned to New York to have my suit pressed and ready to meet a group of contemporaries at a bar of the choosing of Mr. James Andrew, blogger extraordinaire, one of the few who responded early on in the piece when I tried to get some international attention for our bow ties. We'd never met - that strange relationship you can have with someone on the internet - you talk but you don't really talk. You chat on whatsapp. You say hello at Christmas, add each other on Facebook - but you don't really know each other.
I had a certain nervousness. Not only was I meeting someone who had become a sort of modern day pen pal, but he was bringing along Scott McBee, his partner, as well as The Snob Report, The Italian Gent and The Style Professor. It was quite amusing, to meet all these handles as human beings.
It was a great night exchanging all sorts of ideas talking about who wore what and what bunches and which tailor and how much did they pay etc etc. It was just so nice to catch up with people who had an interest in the same things and who were genuinely interested in their clothes and not from a labels perspective, but from a make, construction, cloth, cut, texture, aesthetic perspective. We moved on from drinks to have pasta together at a local Italian restaurant, taking up one of their private dining rooms before we all disbanded without dessert. It was my last night in New York, my last night in the United States. You arrive in a daze, you scramble along each day, before you know if you have the moment you have been waiting for, the soiree you have been communicating about for weeks. Then poof, it's over, the moment is gone, nothing remains but a few digital images on an Instagram wall and some credit card slips you have stowed in your suitcase.
I sincerely thank those few that came for drinks. It was just so nice to meet you all and talk like human beings were designed to do.
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| The Rotunda at the Pierre |
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| Left to right; The Style Professor, Scott McBee, The Italian Gent, The Snob Report (farthest back) , James Andrew and myself. |
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| I wore a Yuzen silk bow tie, Hermes pocket square and a royal blue barathea wool by Barrington Fabrics made by Leng Bespoke of Sydney. The shirt is a Le Noeud Papillon custom made shirt using SIC Tess fabric. |
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