Be Generous This Christmas But More With Your Thoughts Than With Your Money

Across the city of Sydney today there was a real Christmas buzz in the air from the Queen Victoria Building to the Strand Arcade and the Pitt Street Mall. You could really feel that people were starting to get traction with their browsing and shopping.

I also have been purchasing a few small items in the lead up to Christmas but one of the things I am most concentrating on this year is the quality of the paper and inks that I am using on my notes which, against all odds,  I am writing left-handed with a fountain pen. 

If I could offer you one bit of advice this Christmas it's to buy less bulk and give more thought to your purchases. The other day I had my mother and father drop by and when my father was trying things on my mother made a sigh of relief and said 'well, you better get something here then because it's so hard to shop for you'. The truth is, it's not that hard to shop for people - what people lack is the patience to understand what the other person wants. If you listen carefully, most people will tell you - but we are in such an awful rush these days that we give pathetic gifts like gift vouchers to a generic department store. 

One thing that is universally loved though is a hand-written note that tells you how wonderful you are and for those I recommend this website in Sydney for some very reasonably priced but beautiful stationary. Click here to see Papier D'Amour's range.

As for our own range we had a big win this week when the first batch of our English woven jacquard silks came in finished differently to our regular silks with a certain chemical process that gives a very bright and punchy finish. These are very dense, very expensive silks and only 10-20 will be available in each silk and then poof, they are gone.

Shop the new silks at Le Noeud Papillon by clicking here

From Little Things Big Things Grow - Gaziano & Girling Taking Very Large Strides In These Custom Made Chelsea Boots For Le Noeud Papillon Of Sydney

The Australian singer/song-writer Paul Kelly who is in my opinion the closest thing to Bob Dylan that we have in this country of ours, once wrote a magnificent song which has been all over the airwaves this last month with the passing of former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. The song is dedicated to Vincent Lingiari, an indigenous Australian who fought to get his native land back from a landed English aristocrat named Lord Sam Vestey. The song is now one which will echo through our culture for many generations to come. It is a David and Goliath story.

Gaziano & Girling strike me as very similar in the way that they have gone from working from a small outfit against the grain of what must be an overall dying trade of shoe making in Northampton, against the tide of production that moves to wherever there is cheaper labour and, instead, they turned everything on its head and started an English shoe making renaissance and in the process have opened up the first shoe making facility in Northampton to open in more than 100 years.

If you read Gaziano & Girling marketing materials then one word often pops up frequently when they refer to the English shoe making industry as it was - somnolent. Somnolent, as I did not know until I looked it up, means to be sleepy, groggy or drowsy. And indeed, although many English shoe companies continue to make spectacular shoes in an age-old manner, somnolent does often describe some of the classic shoes that come out of Northampton. The movement of shoes away from this, such as is being done by Gaziano & Girling, is imperative to the survival of English shoe making. This same enthusiasm should be taken up by what remains of Australian shoe making, especially the likes of RM Williams who have been resting on one product for nearly 100 years now.

Today, after a considerable amount of time, I received and photographed the chelsea boots that I worked with Tony Gaziano to create, which were to challenge the idea of how a chelsea should look. I was tired of walking into our own retailers and seeing one of two to three lasts to choose from in one of four colours in stock.... Tony Gaziano completely understood what I was searching for and by the first iteration of photos I knew something quite different was going to appear at the end.

When I opened the box I was expecting to be disappointed. For waiting for these shoes was like a bride waiting for her long awaited wedding and all the work that goes behind it only to sink into post-wedding blues when the whole thing is over in 8 hours. That was my concern with these custom made Burnham boots - a lot of emails, a lot of talk and chatter and blog fodder - would I be content at the end?

Those that espouse Eastern philosophies often say "to journey is to arrive" and I am inclined to agree. Everything that I most enjoyed was, so I thought, up until it actually arrived. I beg to differ in this case. I opened the box to find an exquisite pair of chelsea boots with a beautiful toe box brogued in butterfly with the richest patina in burgundy with black accents on the heel and toe box. They were wholecuts - just like our famed Australian maker RM Williams with only one seam in the rear of the boot and they had such a sleek look about them that I felt they were due more for a museum than for my feet.

To finish off my climactic anti-climax I found on the sole that the team had made a small surprise and finished the boot with LNP nailed into the fiddle back waist.

All this I mention without telling you about how they felt on my feet. Well, as I type this I am seated and it's a sultry muggy day outside in Sydney and my air-conditioning unit is blowing a very cool wind, cool enough to make it bearable to wear these chelsea boots which went on a little tight but after half an hour I feel as snug as a bug in a rug.

I recommend Gaziano & Girling to you without hesitation and look forward to the day when I receive a letter from England with their work being commemorated on a stamp by UK Mail. And it will happen one day.

The design drawing I submitted to Tony Gaziano which worked off their Burnham model. Initially I was wanting to do black and greys on a patina until I saw a burgundy antiqued patina on their Instagram page.

Arriving in a lovely black box with silver stamped logo

The Gaziano & Girling difference - an explanation on the reasons one chooses their service.

The first hint of the great beauties that lay beneath

Sleek and stylish, the Gaziano & Girling Burnham boot with custom butterfly brogue and burgundy antiqued patina is a decided move away from traditional chelsea boots.

The depth of colour and tonality in these shoes means that you spend some time studying them on different angles in different lights revealing different tones. 

One of the few companies that are able to make a wholecut chelsea boot liked our famed RM Williams does in Australia. There are no side seams on this boot which is a stark contrast to most Italian chelsea boot makers who uniformly use a side seam underneath the sided elastic.

The beautiful english oak bark soles finished with the black fiddle-back waist that G&G are famed for. The addition of our companies initials was a wonderful additional surprise.

A New Kind Of Silk - Textured Woven Jacquard New To Le Noeud Papillon

Every year designers around the world put their best foot forward to design a range of fabrics that the consumer might want. Each year there are experiments and revisions; the incorporation of a new weaving machine, the change of composition in yarn or the blending of fibres, changes in dyes and the use of seasonal colours etc etc. Just like Derek Zoolander was once asked to dance like a monkey on a photo shoot - so too weaving mills and print houses have pressure put on them each year by design houses to come up with something different which they can offer their customers according to the season. Something, hopefully, which will give them a competitive edge.

Although we design a great deal of our silks ourselves, sometimes things are put under our nose which are no brainers. One such silk was the one that arrived last week which was new to one of the silk mills we deal with. This particular mill was working with textured "puffy" silks which were a combination of fine cotton 44% and silk 56%. The fabrics are now being cut as we speak into bow ties for evening wear - contrasted on the rear side with our luxury black satin silk which will make them available as a fancy black tie bow tie as well as a regular black bow tie. We hope to offer them to you in the coming weeks and if we're lucky, some of you will have them in your Christmas socks before the big day.

If you would like to know more about these new fabrics, feel free to contact us on www.lenoeudpapillon.com 

Adding texture and a 'puffy' feel to the handle of this woven jacquard silk, this blend of silk 56% and cotton 54% will be available shortly as an evening wear bow tie from Le Noeud Papillon .

Follow Us On Instagram

Lately, unfortunately, we were getting too many young half nude girls from Eastern Europe adding themselves as followers on our Instagram feed. Although purchasing a bow tie is not expensive, it seems the image of life wearing our bow ties does look somewhat ritzy and perhaps these girls thought there was some sort of a gravy train somewhere along the way. How silly, because bow tie customers are rather discerning and don't like giving anything away for nothing!

The short of it is that we've had to turn our Instagram profile onto the private setting to filter out some of the young girls that would be wives to our customers. Feel free to add yourselves on and we'll get to your request within an hour or so.

www.instagram.com/lenoeudpapillon

If It Doesn't Have The Seal, It May Not Be Real

In a digital age where nearly everything can be reproduced by the click of a button - especially things such as patterns for garments, it is harder and harder to tell whether something is authentic or not. Which is why we took the trouble of having our logo carved by hand in Melbourne and then shipped to Sydney where it sits with our printers who apply a significant tonnage of pressure to each instruction card which bonds the foil to the paper and embosses our logo in raised red foil so that when you get a Le Noeud Papillon bow tie, you know you got it from us or one of our resellers and not some other mob with access to a label maker. Anybody can weave a label these days - it's not so easy to carve by hand something this ornate into metal. So if it doesn't have the seal, it may not be real. Shop the real thing here.

Dual sided velvet and satin silk tie your own bow tie in wide butterfly shape custom cut for a groom in Sydney, Australia . Either over email or via our Studio by appointment - www.lenoeudpapillon.com

A Gucci Chelsea Boot Given A New Personality With Patina

These Gucci chelsea boots were lying around on Ebay without a home and I could tell that nobody had bought them because of the colour of the leather. It was a light olive that had so little it could be paired with.

Using a bit of elbow grease, some leather dyes and Saphir waxes (which you can get from Double Monk in Melbourne), I decided to embark on the perfect brown patina boot. I am not sure that I got there entirely, but I will let you make that decision.

Firstly, I washed the boots with saddle soap and then stripped them with leather strippers using cotton balls and pads.

Before I begin with the explanation of dyeing I wish to say that the lighter the leather you have as the base, the more options you will have when it comes to patina. This leather was light enough that I made my first layer of dye a brushed on yellow and then orange. Graduating from yellow at the front to orange at the top of the boot.

The next process was to begin bringing the browns in using tan first with a beaver brush that gave a certain stringy brush stroke which allowed the patina to soak in unevenly giving me the beginnings of that patina which is more like old wood. I followed this by using the colour whiskey on the shoes and then finished with a more viscous dye called antique mahogany which was applied with a different, smoother brush. The final act was to use a cotton ball dipped in black to try and give the toe box and heel some additional tonal depth and to 'dirty' up the boot a little so that it did not look too much like a 'manufactured' treatment.

The result was here for me when I arrived this morning. It was a very exciting brown because the colour of the base had allowed me to stay in a rich brown colour range rather than something heavy. This morning, to finish the boots I used Saphir Renovateur to give the leather back some nutrients and then I finished with Cognac and Tabac waxes from Saphir.

NB: These boots are now sold. Thank you for your enquiries. 

These shoes are brand new, they've never been worn before. They are a UK 10, a European 43-44 and a USA 10.5. Since I don't fit the shoes I am offering them for SALE. The price is $495.00 AUD plus postage. If you like the look of them, please drop me a line on www.lenoeudpapillon.com 's contact page and I will be sure to respond ASAP.

Stage 1: right is the original colour boot after washing and stripping, left is the beginning of the yellow dye brushed on.

Graduating dye from yellow on the to box and heel to deeper oranges towards the top of the boot.

Adding in brown begins using beaver brushes to streak the boot.

Additions of black to toe box and heel to add some scruffy tonality and to not make the boot look too manufactured. 

The final result is a rich brown patina with hints of orange and yellow through the toe box and heel.

Some Say The Greatest Rolex Of All Time - President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Datejust With Jubilee Bracelet

The world has become increasingly obsessed with Rolex watches. The company, which started as Wilsdorf And Davis in 1905, changed it's name to Rolex when it moved from London to Geneva. Some say the name was made up, others believe it is derived from the French words for 'horological excellence'. Whatever it was, it has become one of the world's most recognised brands and to own a Rolex is a status symbol.

Rolex has had a long-running and successful ambassador programme - placing product in the hands of people of influence, power, prestige, in the arts, in humanities, in sport, in science and in exploration. The advertising campaigns that have and always will stick with me are the ads I read in the National Georgraphic magazines throughout the 1980's where it seemed to me that if you went out on a limb, if you separated yourself from the pack or did something which was completely challenging the status quo - you wore a Rolex wrist watch.

This is in fact exceptional marketing from Rolex who have spent an enormous amount of time cultivating this Rolex 'idea' which sits in the minds of consumers. Starting with associations with pioneers of motor car speed records on Daytona beach with Sir Malcolm Campbell aka 'The Speed King' - which evolved over time into their current Daytona model - to creating the first waterproof watch which they named the 'Oyster' and along the way creating some extremely unique models like the datejust and day-date watches which went on to become synonymous with heads of state and presidents alike; Rolex wrist watches must be one of the most successful marketing campaigns that has spanned more than a century and continues go from strength to strength despite the logical threat of traditional watches by smart watches and mobile telephones having clocks.

Of all the watches though that have been made by Rolex one is considered to be of the greatest historical importance. In 1950 the then head of Rolex, Rene-Paul Jeanneret approached a close friend of Generel Dwight D Eisenhower, a lady by the name of Nana Rae, and asked her if she would kindly ask the General, who had recently been made the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Europe, if he would do Rolex the honour of receiving their 150,000th official chronometer. In the letter to Nana Rae, Jeanneret explains that the 50,000th had been bestowed upon Swiss General Henri Guisan, protector of the Swiss during WWII, that the 100,000th had been bestowed upon Sir Winston Churchill - would the General accept the 150,000th?

The letter between Nana Rae and Rene-Paul Jeanneret

The General accepted the invitation and had the date that he was made Supreme Allied Commander of Europe by NATO inscribed on the underside of the watch as well as his 5 general stars and his initials which were later also added on the jubilee golden bracelet which was added to the watch some years later by Rolex during a service. Rolex could not have known in 1950 that 3 years later he would be President of the United States Of America - but that is how fate would have it. Rolex was offering the 5 star General the Rolex as a token of their appreciation of his service to Europe by the success of his D-Day invasion and the liberation of Europe from Nazi tyranny.

The watch that President Eisenhower received was a datejust Rolex in 18k yellow gold. The watch became something very dear to him and over the years he is pictured wearing it in many photographs although some say that depending on the company he was in, Eisenhower use to slide the watch up and down his wrist to hide it behind his shirt cuff.

When Eisenhower died he left the watch to his valet and long time associate Sgt John Moaney who in turn left it to his wife who in turn sold it to Raleigh DeGreer Amyx, a former FBI agent turned Presidential memorabilia collector.

On the 8th of June 2014 the Daily Mail reported that the watch was going to be auctioned off as Amyx's children did not want it and his house in Florida was being clogged with Presidential memorabilia, including Dwight's WWII leather jacket. The watch was sent to Boston to be auctioned off but according to Bloomberg the watch, despite it's provenance and despite what some Rolex aficionados declared was the greatest Rolex watch of all, it failed get a rise above $475,000 USD despite estimates that it could crack $1 million USD.

The watch is of cultural importance, not just because it belonged to one of the most important men of the 20th Century but because it is also the precursor to the phenomenon known as the Rolex 'President'. General Eisenhower's watch was a date-just but the addition by Rolex to it of the jubilee bracelet became known as the 'president bracelet' which in turn evolved into the 36mm day-date model that was given to Eisenhower on his successful campaign for a second term in the oval office. The same watch is said, but not verified, to have been given by Marilyn Monroe to John F Kennedy when he was President and then after Kennedy's assassination, it was the watch chosen by President Lyndon Johnson - who wore an 18k gold jubilee bracelet with a day-date face and fluted bezel. Until this point Rolex had only referred to the bracelet as a President bracelet - having ensured with President Eisenhower that there was absolutely no advertising tie up with the gift - but by the time Johnson was wearing the watch Rolex slowly began including the world President in much of it's marketing to associate the watch with people who had achieved great things or were in the highest office of their company. In one image from the mid 1960's, Rolex uses an image of a hand holding a red telephone and wearing an 18k yellow gold day-date with the caption 'The President's Watch' to convey a strong message that this is a watch associated with power.

The watch then went on to be associated with Presidents Nixon, Ford and Regan also but the genesis of this relationship begins with the datejust Rolex bestowed upon General Dwight D Eisenhower's 150,000th official chronometer gifted by then head of Rolex Rene-Paul Jeanneret in 1950. It is for this reason that some say it is the greatest Rolex of all time - which is why I was surprised to hear that it didn't reach the reserve at auction in September.

For a more in depth history of the Rolex President - read Jake's Rolex blog or read the Daily Mail article on the sale of Eisenhower's watch here.

President Eisenhower wearing his prized Rolex date-just gifted by Rolex to mark the 150,000th official chronometer and as a token gesture of gratitude for the role Eisenhower played in freeing Europe from Nazi tyranny during WWII

The watch was inscribed by Rolex with the date that Eisenhower was made Supreme Allied Commander of NATO along with his initials and the 5 stars relating to his rank as a General.

Part of the marketing for the watch prior to the auction was to show it referenced with the cover of Life magazine where the President wore the watch. 

The watch as it was presented for auction in September 2014.

The face of Eisenhower's watch was fitted later on with a cyclops lense at the request of Rene-Paul Jeanneret . Note also the red date numbers. 

President Johnson wearing a 36mm Day-Date with gold bracelet circa 1964 - it was this watch which became more widely known to be the Rolex 'President'.

A great example of the watch sold in the 1960's - this is an example of the 36mm 18k yellow gold watch with jubilee bracelet. Today the watch is mostly superseded by larger faces of up to 41mm

The first use of Rolex in marketing the watches as a 'President' watch - this ad from 1966 clearly infers that the President, who hold a red phone after a black tie function, wears a gold Rolex just as Lyndon Johnson did. From this point forward the day-date in 18k yellow gold stuck with the name 'The Rolex President'.

The Majestic Black Satin Silk Bow Tie From Le Noeud Papillon - Best In Show For Some!

This is just a short note to tell you that we are running low on black mogador satin silk and that we have just finished a small batch off the bench of the last remaining silk whilst we wait for a fresh batch to arrive. Our famed 'Majestic Black' has been very popular this season with customers returning to satin silk after a couple of years of grosgrain silk being more popular. You can shop the Majestic Black online now at www.lenoeudpapillon.com 

Those Blooming Jacarandas

Every year in Sydney I wait for four events with regards to our local flora. The first is when the Moreton Bay fig trees drop their fruits. This is a terrible time because your car paint work easily gets stained with the fruit marks if you don't wash it off and then accidentally bake it the following day in the hot sun. The second thing I wait for is the fragrant smell sometime in spring of wisteria. It for me is the big mark that winter is over. The fragrance that permeates the air takes me back to years ago when the nights were so charming and seemingly endless and I wasn't in a rush to do one thing or another - those years when you still have time to soak it all in. The third thing I wait for is the blooming of the jacarandas which always casts my mind to a Clive James documentary on Hamlet where he talks about sitting underneath the jacaranda in the main quadrangle at Sydney University reading Shakespeare. Underneath the same tree, many years later, I read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. When that quadrangle has the greenest trimmed grass and a lofty breeze blows through the corridors of that impressive sandstone structure there is nothing quite like reading under that jacaranda. And the final thing  I wait for is the frangipanis. This is the final sign that summer is in full throttle and when those frangipanis turn to mush on the ground you know you are not far off the summer ending. These are the things I look forward to for the Sydney summer.

But more importantly, the reason that I post is that there seems to me to be an unprecedented bloom in jacarandas this season and it is very inspiring for someone who likes textiles as I can't help but feel that it deserves to be turned into a silk - I am just not sure that I have the skill to translate it. Nothing can replicate nature's beauty - although some, like Antoni Gaudi, do come close. I might give it a nudge but I cannot work out how express such detail in such a confined space.

Click to expand. Jacarandas are having a big bloom in Sydney this year. 

Experiments In Patina - Trying Not To Desecrate The Noble Name In Shoes Of GJ Cleverley

Ebay is a wonderful place as I said the other day. Like a Great White Shark we lurk as Ebayers, stealth like, wanting to creep up on what we think are our seals and sea lions and then.... SNAP them up at the last moment.

I had been eyeing a pair of shoes for my next patina experiment for some time but without luck I lost at least 3 pairs of shoes to higher bidders. In one instance I waited until Friday night at 6pm just to try and snatch them down to the last second using my wifi and my mobile phone but on the other end of the internet someone trumped me and I hung my head on my hand and thought 'what a waste I just had of a Friday night!'.

Recently however I found a pair of GJ Cleverley shoes via the Ebay seller 'Shoes Of Distinction' . For one reason or another nobody seemed to want these penny loafers and they seemed to have a lovely look about them. Whilst they were not the light brown I prefer for patina, I thought I would give them a go to see what might come of it if we went from brown to black.

The shoes arrived and I must say that they were packed beautifully and the box has a certain charm about it although not as nice as the dusty green from Foster & Son. I then opened up the contents and noticed that my problem was going to be getting any colour into the deep brown they already were.

My first act was to wash the shoes with Hermes saddle soap in the hope of getting anything off that might be top level and to get the shoes ready for leather strippers. Once the shoes dried I got into the leather with acetone but acetone hardly picked up any colour at all which was very unusual. It was as though the leather had not been dyed and was it's natural colour or alternatively, that is had been dyed exceptionally well.

One thing I did note was that the soles had an exceptional organic leather finish to them which I have never seen before. They felt as though they were straight from mother nature. I therefore wondered whether they were indeed the traditional English Oak Bark soles that Tony Gaziano had told me about many weeks ago.

Having finished with the leather strippers and to not much avail, I arrived at the time I had to choose a colour for the first coat of dye. I decided I wished to do the following. Using a long thin brush I was going to coat the toe box to heel in purple, the bridge in oxblood and then highlights in the heel and toe box with black. If I pulled it off it would be graduated front to back in a deepish brown purple with black accents and then a subdued second tone in the bridge piece.

When I finished I was worried because it would be a kind of desecration to ruin a pair of GJ Cleverley shoes if you got it wrong but I am hoping that the morning light will be kind to my work tomorrow and that I won't die feeling like a wasted an evening of my life or that I did not adequately respect what are very very well made shoes.

I am going to show you each picture I took and I will briefly describe each process in the caption.

The original shoes as described on Ebay

The parcel arrives

A lovely original box from Cleverley

Some really luxurious looking soles. 

Very earthy and organic looking sole on these Cleverley shoes. 

The shoes out of the box and ready for a saddle soap wash

After the saddle soap wash, you can see the shoe on the right was drying with lighter intonations than before the wash

First brush strokes using a long thin brush. I am using a purple leather dye here

Across the bridge of the shoe (not sure if this is correct terminology) I pained the penny strap with oxblood instead of purple but then used cotton balls to move colour around so as to make it relatively subtle in colour change. 

Top shot I have used pomade on the front and back in black and centre in cognac. At this point, if I could have kept the shoe looking this way I would have. It had a certain Tom Ford appeal to it. 

Here you can see left the depth of purple and then right, an additional layer of cognac which then aged the purple

Ageing the purple with cognac pomade by Sapphir

Here you can see some of the changes in tonality although it was very difficult to truly show up the changes in tonality and the subtleties within the leather. 

And voila, hard to see but this is a two tone penny loafer which was originally a flat brown and now has deep purples, cognacs , black and oxblood mixed in. 

On The 11th Hour Of The 11th Day Of The 11th Month - We Will Remember Them

November 11 for those in the Commonwealth is Remembrance Day when we remember those that have died serving our respective countries.

Regardless of whether you believe there should be nation states in this world that we share; I love my country and many people have laid down their lives to protect it. Below is the reproduction of the Ode Of Remembrance which was first published in September 1914.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam

The Greatest Obstacle To Your Dream Career And Dream Wardrobe

I once had a dream that I was an old man and I went to a free cinema on Sydney's Macquarie Street (of which there currently are no cinemas) to watch a free film that was sponsored by Coca-Cola. I was in a grey pin-stripe suit (something I would never wear), it was cold out and as I left the film, which was visually very red and white, I noticed that there was a big bright banner of Coca-Cola above the cinema listing facade. It was just a dream but it made sense to me in the morning after, that one day a company like Coca-Cola, instead of making vignettes of life with Coca-Cola, will make an entire feature film as part of an advertising campaign. This excellent free idea I have just let out of the bag will no doubt make some aspiring advertising creative director a great fortune somewhere in the near future. (Copyright Le Noeud Papillon Sydney 2014) !

The vignette I post below, a Coca-Cola Life commercial from Argentina, is so wonderful in its brevity in pin-pointing the changes in a man's life once he becomes a parent that I had to watch it over and over the other night just because the amusement and truth would not leave me. Of course in doing so I built up a latent demand to have full sugar Coca-Cola too - so it was a win-win for both consumer and producer.

The nub is that once we men become parents, as I have recently become, it is not just the women that get hemmed in in terms of their careers and financial independence. Most new fathers will be able to watch this vignette below and recognise almost every aspect of of it as a truth: from the late nights with one eye opened watching the baby monitor fearing even the slightest twitch or sound, to trying to navigate through a crowded room with prams and bags like a mobile bric-à-brac store, watching your child treat your 200 2 ply fine cotton shirt like a dirty handkerchief as she rubs her snot into your shoulder, tripping on the strangest objects late at night in a half light you can barely recognise your haggard face in, watching single people have fun in the street with not a care in the world as they dance their way to the next party, or having to scrub the floor on your hands and knees around the high chair after you've finally got her to bed.

In an internet age when we, as businessmen, are expected to be available to our customers in all time zones at all times via our websites, when we are already poor for time and where looking good for work is important to keep up the appearance of success; having children must be the most beautiful and yet antagonistic experience to undergo.

I would not change it for one minute - but, as my father once said to me - "you smart arse, one day you will see what sacrifices you make to have a family" - I am fast becoming aware that the greatest asset you have in your life is also the single greatest obstacle to your dream career and wardrobe.

But, as Richard Prior once told Eddie Murphy to tell Bill Cosby - "have a coke and a smile and shut the f up" . And on that note I think I might take his advice!

The Ebay Round Up - The Things I Can't Afford To Purchase, Perhaps You Can

I heard recently that there is a blog that focuses on every week putting a list together of things that they like on Ebay. My first thought was 'how silly, why would you want to have more people competing for the things you want' but this was only Ebayer talking. I realised that of all the things I trawl, most items are out of my budget or else in the wrong size so I thought I would be generous with my time and right you readers out there a list of things which I think are heavenly and if you have Ebay you ought to jump on them.

Vintage Rolex 1806 Yellow Gold With Original Box And Papers

This is a beautiful piece and would look elegant on most men with the leather strap making it a little more subdued and less bling bling.

$15,550 USD
Shop it here








Genuine Hermès Belt Kit 32 mm Reversible BROWN Gold Brushed Buckle

 Because gold doesn't feature heavily on too many men these days I am inclined to give this a go just because when they zig you should zag. I used to find the H offensive and brash but in actual fact it's fairly clean and uncomplicated and has a lovely set up where it is detachable.

285 GBP
Shop it here




$1300 Zilli Mens 2014 Patent Leather Black Shoes Size 10.5 / 11.5 US

Given that dinner suit shoes are hard to come by I think that these Zilli oxfords represent very good value on their sale price of $499 USD. Zilli is perhaps very 'Russian' in some of it's offering but I think these shoes would look swish no matter what tuxedo you wore with them.

$499 USD
Shop it here








Brand New Brioni  Polo Neck Contrast Short Sleeve 100% Cotton Size 3XL

Coming into summer I think this is a pretty fun loving t-shirt that could be worn on the back of a yacht on Sydney harbour with a pair of trousers and you would look like a new Onassis.

I particularly like the contrast between the pannacotta jersey and the trim.

$199 USD
Shop it here





SMYTHSON Mara Collection Dark Berry Cardholder

I have always been partial to Smythson so I think this Mara card holder in berry is a great way to present your business card. And for 49.95 GBP I think it's very reasonable and looks undamaged.

49.95 GBP
Shop it here







GUCCI MENS SHOES GREEN LEATHER CHELSEA DEALER BOOTS UK 10.5 US 11.5 EU 44.5

Finally, I think these Gucci chelsea boots are not exactly good value for money at 349 GBP, especially since they have been worn a couple of times, but I still think they would be exceptional shoes and make any chap look cool coming into winter in the northern hemisphere.

349 GBP
Shop it here











Well, I think that for a first Ebay round up that's not a bad start and I have a whole lot more I wish to tell you about in the coming weeks. Stay tuned to the blog as I will post the next round up in a fortnight towards the Christmas rush.

Adios,
LNP.