And A Happy New Year From Le Noeud Papillon Of Sydney

Some say we make the best bow ties in the world - we don't necessarily believe that, there are other exceptional bow tie makers in the world today - but we do our absolute best to ensure that our customers get the highest quality silks with the most interesting designs and attention to detail.

Here are two notable reviews of our bow ties:

"Fantastic bow ties from Le Noeud Papillon Of Sydney, the modified butterfly shape with the wonderful mogador silk is probably one of the most beautiful formal bow ties in the world"
- Hugo Jacomet, the Parisian Gentleman

"Often copied, never equalled, The Majestic Black bow tie by Le Noeud Papillon #probablythebestbowtieintheworld"
- The Snob Report

A staple in any man's wardrobe, the Majestic Black

Our Majestic Butterfly is a head turner

A superb dual sided reverso bow tie with grosgrain and mogador satin silk on the reverse and finished with rose gold plated clips. 

Finished with rose gold plated clips, this is a variation of the Majestic Black

An Accidental Cultural Phenomenon Might Have Just Been Discovered Down Under

Recently a friend invited me in to see something that he'd amazingly found in a vintage store - a cream silk serge double breasted dinner jacket from Harrod's of London. 

My meticulous friend is not the sort of type to wear vintage. Nor a silk jacket. So, as you can imagine, it must have been something partcularly wonderful to catch his discerning eye. 

So eager was he for me to see his jacket that he grabbed his old Le Noeud Papillon wedding shirt and put it on so he could throw over the jacket. However, he didn't quite feel up to changing his board shorts for trousers. Inadvertently he got me thinking about menswear. 

Quite often we lounge around like slobs in the Australian summer. It doesn't matter what Woolmark writes on their marketing platform, it's too hot for a suit. And when you come off the beach you are usually still hot into the early evening from the sun cooking your skin. As night falls if you are sitting outside al fresco the most you ever really want is a sports jacket. 

So, this is my take on it. What about making social events in the evening somewhat formal up top with your Sunday best board shorts on the bottom. It might sound a little ridiculous to start with but let me assure you that this is summer evening cocktail chic. A pina colada or margarita in your hand, your feet in a boat-shoe/moccasin/slipper/loafer/driving shoe, your best pair of fancy print board shorts and a light shirt with a fancy jacket. It's a way to celebrate dressing well without losing the comfort of dressing light for summer.

And if you are worried about it looking funny for photos, consider it the Ron Burgundy look of fashion, if everybody takes a seat you will get a photograph that looks like it's one helluva swish soiree.

Australian men, if you give one look a go this summer, try the Ron Burgundy. I know I will.

New Silk Designs From Le Noeud Papillon For 2016

I don't know which days are more exciting, either receiving strike outs from Italy or watching the first batch of bows come off the bench. There is perhaps more excitement when you receive a strike out, and there is more risk and trepidation when you are watching them come off the bench. 

We design silks for the application of bow ties so the silks invariably on the roll look fantastic. However, not always is it possible that the vision you had when you designed the silk will actually work when cut to the pattern specifications for a particilar shape of bow tie. Diamond points are usually the riskier patterns to get right. The easiest is a big butterfly.

Below three new designs came through. The first (below) was inspired by a piece of art I had seen of recent. The thought of creating simple shapes with contrasting colours on black backdrop was in part an homage to Marc Mendelson  after I saw one of this paintings "La Limites De La Nuit" on The Snob Report. 

The second design was completed by my friend in Milan, Alarico Arenosto. Alarico, as some of you may well remember, was the architect residing in Sydney who has in the past made some of our most interesting and notable silk designs. I asked Alarico to put forward a design which might have inspired him of recent and he came back with the design below (middle image) that was inspired by tiles he found on the Church of The Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. 

Finally, the simplicity of the stars, which is another new design we will produce for 2016, is probably the most simplistic design we have produced in some time which we think will work well for those looking for a less is more bow tie for day wear.

If you would like pre-order a bow tie or neck tie in your desired shape in any of these silks, please contact us on www.lenoeudpapillon.com

The Boat Shoe - May It Return To Trend Again

Sometimes you don't know how to wear something until it is shown to you by somebody else. In the pursuit of personal style we usually head in directions we think are the ones that suit us most, only to find years later that we are bogged down in whatever it was we thought we were. It's refreshing to walk past another man in the street that shows you a new set of possibilities.

One such example of this was a fortnight ago when I was asked to have an early kids and family dinner with an artist friend of mine and his architect wife. Because there are so few people in Sydney that would fit that bill I will refrain from telling you the location but the location is important. They live in the sort of area that is famed for bohemians, artists, architects, intellectuals and journalists. It is a sort of Old World enclave of Sydney which has a certain quirky Royal Tenenbaums feel about it. The feeling I often get when I am in that area is one of brown corduroy trousers, tweed style jackets, viella shirts and ties handed down from grandfathers and so on - all with a certain smell of must and sea water mixed together (hint).

When I went to open the door to let in my friend who was returning from the fish markets I couldn't open the door fully because his collection of boat shoes was piled high in the door way. I was very surprised that there were so many pairs there. I must have counted four pairs of boat shoes.

I quizzed him about it later in the evening and he explained that boat shoes were his thing. He loved them, he found they could be worked into any ensemble he wore and he had no other reason than they suited him. And they did. I recounted all the times I saw him and I tried to remember him without boat shoes on and I couldn't. About the only time I had seen him without boat shoes was on his wedding day in his bespoke grape suit, but even then I could not be sure. 

For myself, I have never worn boat shoes since I was a teenager and I wore Timberland ones. That was during my most conservative 'wasp' stage circa 1993 before I had a mid-teen crisis and swung my pendulum heavily in the opposite direction towards urban cool. I can remember the time clearly, it was the time of Arnette blowfly sunglasses, v neck t-shirts, suede puma low cut sneakers, cashmere sweaters and my first pair of leather pants. I was a cool cat for a bit.

Now that I have gone through a series of re-births I am considering once again the boat shoe but with a new frame of mind. I am going to find a shoe maker that will work with me to make a more modern and sleek version. Once I have found such a person I will report back. But, mark my word, the boat shoe will soon have another day in the sun as people have become de-sensitized to the driving shoe and moccasin. My only problem is that if they start trending my artist friend will have to find a new mode of shoe. 

The boat shoe. Photo Source: Mr Porter

Australia - You Will Soon Have More Options - Caulaincourt Comes Down Under

There are so few great shoe stores for men in Sydney. The big international brands like Ferragamo, Gucci, Tods, Bally, Vuitton etc, they are all here - but they offer variations on the same theme each year and often you get lost in their branding. I strongly dislike that branding stuff that companies like Louis Vuitton or Gucci do where you have to see their gold buckle take over the shoe or the leather has to be stamped over and over with their logo. It's so painful and I don't understand why they do it. To me it is a little like having someone walk up to you and repeat their name to you in conversation. If somebody walked up to me and said "hi, my name is Gucci, my name is Gucci, my name is Gucci, my name is Gucci, my name is Gucci, my name is Gucci, my name is Gucci, my name is Gucci " you would eventually just punch said person in the head to make them come to their senses and yet somehow thousands of people flock to buy these products each year.

I might add, and respectfully, that I am a little surprised that even brands like Hermes do this with their H. If I could tell you what I love most about Hermes it's when they make art out of a screen print on a pocket square, not an H.

So, pleasantly, I was surprised to hear that Caulaincourt of Paris, a brand that makes really nice footwear but not the type that is heavily branded, is coming to Australia. Caulaincourt, amongst many other things, make superb patina chelsea boots. Below you will see their wonderful shoes which were brought past the Le Noeud Papillon Studio in Sydney and I am hoping that at some stage in 2016 we might offer a drinks night and trunk show at the Studio to welcome them to our country.

Australian men, the wait for great unbranded shoes is over, let us just hope that the dollar picks up against the euro.

Follow Caulaincourt Australia on Instagram - @caulaincourtaustralia 

Merry Christmas From Jack Simpson Couture

Years ago around Christmas time you would get a whole bunch of Christmas cards and if you were lucky you would get a photo inside with an update. These days many of us are more likely to send these notes in the form of an email and I do love a good Christmas email.

The pictures below arrived from Jack Simpson. Jack had recently photographed our new 'Stafford' bow tie on some custom work he was doing. Jack is a tailor, not in the sense that  he sews with a needle and thread, but more that he creates custom and tailored clothing wardrobes for American men. He also designs silks each season which he turns into neck ties. They are very unique and I highly recommend them for our neck tie readers. Shop

However, there's only so much menswear that I can read about before I become a little de-sensitized to content, which was why I was so excited the other week when Jack started posting content about his other passion for vintage cars. He had photographed our bow tie with two other style influences in black and the car he posted was something I had never seen before. Yes, I had seen cars made in the 30's before, but none like these ones - they were perfection.

I would gladly type out the description, but I would prefer it to be in Jack's words. Jack knows vintage cars and I find that extra exciting, because I know nothing about them and I think I want to know more in 2016.

Merry Christmas Jack and thank you for bringing a new interest to my life.

Christmas Came Early For Us At Le Noeud Papillon

The world is getting more bereft of sartorial talent and where the Instagram has made the eccentric dapper gentleman look mainstream or perhaps 'generic', the quandry becomes separating the wheat from the chaff. The Snob Report (handle @thesnobreport ) is probably the most refined of the lot of them. Certainly if there are better ones to find, I have not found them. And, as I've often discussed on the blog, I like the fact that we never see his face so that the discussion is about the clothes, the art, the food - and not the blogger (although his beard is perhaps a moot point).

More importantly, and for the record, we didn't send him a bow tie, he must have bought it and loved it. That makes it even more of a Christmas present.

Shop one for Christmas?

Things That Have Caught My Eye This Christmas

Smythson 24 Hour Bag - 1295 GBP

I would most likely never ever purchase one of these bags because I don't do enough business to warrant the expenditure and I don't travel often enough overnight to warrant it either. However, if I were flush with money, I would not hesitate. Just look at that magnificent cognac brown, it's just so elegant.



Berluti briefcase $4340 AUD

For the pimps and the players. You might have seen us write about the bag we made with Enrile of Spain, well, this was one of my key inspirations for asking him to work on a patina bag. Berluti is magic.

Aspinal Poker Chip Set - $1460 AUD

Got free time over Christmas and the New Year? Finally having a boy's night? Consider this.

Lord Loafers - 124GBP

I have seen these guys on Instagram a lot but never tried them out. I might soon, price does not seem unreasonable. 

Mont Blanc Tolstoy Fountain Pen - $1350 AUD

It is somewhat ironic that a man who spent his entire life trying to do away with private property and intellectual property should be commemorated by a luxury pen company that specialises in items which people most definitely consider their 'private' property. Needless to say it's a beautiful pen in a very unorthodox manner.




Ralph Lauren Quilted Coverlet Bedspread And Pillows approx 650AUD

I am used to duvets and a sheet and you rarely need a blanket in a Sydney winter.  However, I like the idea of a bed as a decorative piece of art in the room and whilst my own bed is rather spartan, I would love to add some 'jazz hands' with a quilted coverlet from Ralph Lauren. The only trouble is you then need to know how to make your bed to get a 'hotel' finish. Could be good if your other half is into making beds of you have a 'Maria whoosh' to help around the house, if not, it might be too much hard work. Proceed with caution.

You Haven't Made A Success Of Yourself Until You Get A Troll

The below email was sent through the website on Friday night. It just happened to come through whilst I was using google analytics and I could see that someone in the United States was using our contact form. I was excited, I thought it might be a potential customer. It might still be, but I am not sure I would ever want to do business with this kind of character.

Last year a local celebrity woman, who was a presenter on a popular Sydney reality television programme, committed suicide. Part of her terrible frame of mind around the time she took her own life was brought on by people who were tweeting her and basically telling her she ought to 'off' herself. 

When the email below came through I didn't quite feel like that, but for a brief moment I needed to consider what this person was saying. Seneca, one of the great Roman Stoics, once said that if you are insulted you had a number of ways in which you could handle the situation. The first is that you need to assess if there is any validity to the insult. For, if someone is being truthful when they insult you, you ought to consider what they are telling you. So, for that, I owe my troll some respect. I am indeed overweight bordering on obese. It has been something I have not managed to get a grip on for some years. I exercise all the time but perhaps the stress of family life and running a small business plus the fact that I never seem to feel full when I eat until I am too full, is part of my general issues surrounding food. So, you are correct my 'friend', I am at best portly, at worst obese. 

Seneca then went on to say that if a man insults you and he isn't stating the truth, then the best way to retaliate is with humour, if you are quick witted. Today I am not feeling quick witted, so let me just answer the incorrect part with some reasoning. 

As for my products, Paul, you are not correct. My products are designed for people who love bow ties and who appreciate silk. I love all kinds of bow tie shapes Paul and over the years we have thrown a good two dozen or more on to the website but over time our customers continually come back to our modified butterfly shape, which is the one your 'colleague' wore no doubt. 

If reducing our prices and the size of our bow ties would make you a customer then I shall have to put my prices up and make bigger bow ties. If you knew how to tie a bow tie you would know that the size of the knot and finished tie depends on your skill at tying a knot.

I am wishing you a merry Christmas - I have never had a troll before - and in a way I owe you a thank you - you made me realise we are doing okay at what we do. 

 Name: Paul

  Email: pwatsoneree555@gmail.com

  Phone: 555-555-5555

  Body: I have been looking at your bows for quite some time, and have come to the unfortunate conclusion that they are vastly overpriced.  I have also noticed from your bows owned by a collegue, that they are very generously cut...as if intended to be worn by a portly overweight gentleman.  Sure enough, I have noticed on your blog frequent photos of one of your models (who is at best portly, and at worst, obese), with dark hair and a beard, sporting your bows.  I assume I have guessed correct, and that your bows are cut for overweight men.

Perhaps you should consider both reducing your prices and reducing the generous cut of the bows, so men of normal size do not look dwarfed by them.

Regards

A Review Of Mr. Porter - The Services Of Porter Dowd, Part Of The Team At P Johnson Tailors

Over the past four years or so Le Noeud Papillon has been making bow ties for P Johnson tailors. It's been one of the easiest customers to manage since Patrick, the designer behind P Johnson has a very succinct approach towards bow ties - black satin silk, black grosgrain silk and white cotton marcella. Anything outside of this is not part of the P Johnson oeuvre and never has been. It is a consistent and clean approach and it has meant that we have always been passed on the details of the flamboyant and eccentric customers that were chasing something different.

I can distinctly remember the first time I saw a P. Johnson suit - it was in the second bedroom of a menswear enthusiast's apartment as his clothes were relegated to the empty cupboards in the spare room whilst her clothes took up the master bedroom. Single men, beware, this will happen to you too.

He opened up this Loro Piana dove grey cloth with pin stripe and showed me the interior of the jacket, nothing over the top in terms of the lining construction but it was just a lovely suit. Soft shouldered, which at the time was rarely seen from any other Australian brand, a little de-constructed and not heavily chested for a double breasted blazer, certainly unlike the handle of anything you might have picked up in the stores at that time.

From that point onwards Patrick Johnson was a name which made me somewhat frustrated to hear. In truth, I am one that partly buys into the Gore Vidal line that 'every time a friend succeeds a small part of me dies'. Increasingly Patrick's name would be spoken of around town or, as was happening all too frequently, a customer would present himself to us with his white P Johnson suit bag in hand and say ' I need you to help me find a bow tie to match this suit'. If you can't beat them, join them - and slowly, when I realised that I would never want suits to be my core business and as Patrick did make suits his core business, we came to realise that it was better to work together than against one another - not that shots were ever fired.

Many years have passed and I have made suits with a variety of other tailors to express looks or feelings for the window and blog of Le Noeud Papillon but not once had I gone down the path of actually making a suit with Patrick despite having talked about it often enough over one of Patrick's bitter espressos (that's a jab, but it's not a jab against his business :) ). Finally the time came for me to want to try the services of P Johnson but the moment I walked into the showroom I discovered the vibe had changed, Patrick was now so successful he had moved to New York to expand P Johnson tailors, his poor old dog Winston was moping around  on the floor without his Dad and I was assigned a new chap to look after me, Porter Dowd.

Porter is my kind of tailoring guy. To start with, he's no oil painting Robert de Montesquiou dandy. Rather, he is a straight down the line guy that immediately disarms you because he's not putting on any airs and graces. The next thing to note is that he's well dressed but not in an effete way (except when he ties a sweater around his neck). He wears classic suits in cuts which seem to suit his shape and proportions. He has a sort of round figure which makes you feel like he might catch your drift when you say 'and maybe try to hide that and that'.

The measurement process was very thorough and a funny little mix between old and new world tailoring. An ipad was being held by an assistant as Porter went thoroughly through my torso and trousers, measuring me using a block size which they place on all their customers to base measurements off ( I was on the high side of those sizes). The process was lengthy but it felt very light and breezy owing to high ceilings, a quality air-conditioning system and decent natural lighting with the added benefit that at P Johnson they have wonderfully generous change rooms areas that allow you to really spread out. There's not a feeling that anyone is in a rush to get you in and out like you sometimes feel if you use the services of a city store at lunch time. It's your time and the team seem to acknowledge this by conversing with you in a manner which is personable and informative. There was a constant relay of information between myself and Porter all the way through the measurements to inform me of key observations and ways in which he might tackle a muffin top, the slope by which the trousers might hang on my hips, my shoulders and how how I'd like the suit jacket to sit. It is made all the more palatable when Porter declares that his weakness is beer and that he too has to find ways in which to work with what he's got as a silhouette.

The suit that had triggered me to finally set up an appointment was a navy double breasted jacket dinner suit I had seen a month earlier. It was quite possibly the most exquisite suit I had seen all year - mostly for it's cut and secondly for it's cloth. It was effortlessly chic, neither too outlandish nor too sterile. The double breasted sample seemed to hang and drape so well on the suit hanger, then there was the lovely faille silk in navy that had been used on the lapel which seemed to marry perfectly with the chosen navy super 130's twill worsted wool - it was all just bang on. The only additional change I wanted, which was just my taste at play, was that I wanted to the jacket to be longer than the middle of my thigh as I wanted it to carry a certain 'kapote' look that the Jews get with their Prince Albert frock coats. I am hoping that this will be 'trending' in 2016.

In the end I chose an orange satin fabric for a half lined finish in the jacket as I wanted to be able to wear this dinner suit all year round, including any summer weddings I might be invited to (though the invites were fast drying up and being replaced by kids party invites on my fridge ( :) :( - that signifies mixed feelings ).

My concerns with the programme, as nothing is ever perfect, is that there was demand for full payment up front before commencing the work. Traditionally I am used to 50% as a deposit and 50% upon completion but I am quite certain that customers must use the final 50% balance as a means by which to extort time and additional services/changes out of their tailor. In fact, I know this, as one English acquaintance once said to me 'it's always good to owe your tailor money, that way he'll always take on your next commission'.

My only other complaint is that despite the fact that Porter got the fit 99% right, I was a little disappointed that some things like the width of your trouser band could not be increased. As many of you that read this blog frequently will know, my admiration for tailors like Leng Ngo is that you can literally build your suit from the ground up. With MTM programmes like P Johnson, you can get your fit right, but you may be confined in terms of certain elements you might want to add or subtract. It is not possible, for example, to ask for a new shape of a lapel or to stand over the tailor whilst you work on changes to patterns or workmanship.

However, the argument against using traditional tailors is that often they are dogmatic in their beliefs and can be as inflexible as stubborn mules to changes in construction and design. P Johnson, by contrast, sit on a much more fluid platform in which they can seasonally alter design and construction and in doing so can offer products that a traditional tailor would not offer unless his customer specifically knew enough about tailoring to be able to say confidently 'make this using this material from this cloth company in this shape with this construction'.

Since most Australian men do not have this knowledge, men like Patrick Johnson and his salesman Porter Dowd are the next best thing. They have a style/aesthetic, they have the systems in place to fit any man within that aesthetic and when it comes to bang for buck, they are considerably cheaper than a fully hand-made suit by a Sydney tailor. Though strictly speaking there is no apple for apples comparison, a suit which would cost roughly $1400 AUD from P Johnson would start at $3750AUD from a bespoke tailor.

Anyway, why not try it for yourself and make your own decision. I am happy, I think you will be too.

Porter Dowd
0408 833 161
prd@pjt.com
pjt.com
@pardowd

Pentagonal Tessellations - The Mathematics That Goes Into Making Something Repeat

Tessellations are very challenging from a design perspective. When designing fabrics you have a whole host of ways in which you might approach a fabric. The basics are changing the weaving techniques and keeping a solid colour and/or adding a hidden colour (through the warp). In this case you might choose a basket weave, a satin, a grosgrain, a grenadine, a hop sack, an ottoman or a garza for example. That gets you texture in a solid colour which is as much as some men want to go for. You can make an entire living out of this if you get it right. I can't tell you how many exactly but I would assume that hundreds of Charvet grenadine ties in solid colours would sell each Parisian summer as men flock to make a pilgrimage to the Place Vendome store.

Then there is the art of the motif or recurring image, be it a star, a horse, a gun or a bikini clad lady as one designer in the States specialises in. You can then add into genre of silks things like paisleys and geometric repeats which sit on top of the base warp whilst weaving the weft, usually on a satin, well at least that is what I am most familiar with.

Finally there is each season a wave of tessellations which have a very interesting effect on a silk and can really alter the appearance of the fabric both in how it is perceived as a weave and how it affects the eye as a motif or geometric repeat. If this sounds a little confusing it is because as I write I am not entirely sure I know what I am saying exactly either.

Examples of tessellations might be squares, rectangles, triangles, stars and other polygons. Of the polygons, the more sides you get to a polygon the harder it is to tessellate. For example, it is easy to make a rectangle tessellate into a herringbone formation or for that matter to make it into a whole bunch of tessellations which we might find commonly seen in parquet floors, or a quadrilateral which forms the basis of a chevron parquet floor. These more common shapes we find are expressed in silks each season too. Depending on the thickness and placement of these polygons you can change the handle and the appearance of the silk drastically. The smaller the shapes are the more it appears that you have changed the 'weave' when in actual fact the silk is woven in the same manner on say a satin warp.

Not since the 1970's has a new mathematical tessellation been derived for pentagons. They are a tricky lot to tessellate. The original tessellations had come from the German mathematician Karl Reinhardt in the early 1900's and then there was another wave in the 1950's through Marjorie Rice, a San Diego housewife. Recently, however, a new mathematical equation was derived for a tessellating pentagon and it was completed by Casey Mann, Jennifer McLoud and David Von Derau of the University of Washington Bothell.

I found the article in the The Guardian and immediately set about trying to turn this new pentagon into a silk. Whilst we were there we found another pentagon to tessellate and the results are very unique. No, they are not for everyone, but I envisage that the intellectual at an evening cocktail party would greatly benefit from one, something to begin a conversation with - about tessellations, about mathematics, about polygons or maybe just about about Christmas and the year that's passed.

Roughly 20 bows will be made from each silk. This is a limited edition silk.

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You Know You Just Can't Find Anything Decent To Buy A Man At Christmas .....

I find people present me with a variation of the above blog title line every time they are discussing gift ideas - as though there really isn't possibly anything to buy a man. It continues in this vein "he already has a lovely pen, he doesn't wear shirts with French cuffs so cufflinks are out, he doesn't wear ties because he's no longer in the city, he's very picky when it comes to his sneakers and he has a wide foot, I could get him socks but then that doesn't say much does it? I was thinking of some gardening tools but then I am not sure he does anything around the house".

When people like this babble on in front of me, especially women, I keep thinking 'if they would draw breath I'd give them an answer'. The answer is a bow tie, because it's something fun and interesting that you don't necessarily have to wear this week or next, something you will keep for years, something which, if we did our job correctly, will remain timeless in his wardrobe. Yes, you can complain that you can't find anything to buy, but sometimes things are right under your nose.

The below silk has just come in and we have begun cutting them into bows. Every time we run a limited edition there is an inherent risk that it might all go wrong - there is no guarantee that your wonderful initial idea or sketch will translate well to silk. The shape below started in my head as a by-product from a drawing based on a shape I witnessed in the making of our Solitude silk last year. Refining the drawing over time I came up with the approximate idea I had in mind and I began re-working the design in vector graphics in Adobe Illustrator. Some might say it was part Indigenous Australian in it's look and appearance. For me it might be a mixture of that influence coupled with things we might find in deep space or as we break down structures in nature. Whatever it is that this thing represents, it's not normal, it has a life of it's own and if you thought wearing a bow tie was controversial then adding this jacquard into the mix is like pouring diesel onto the fire.

My advice is to let the bow tie speak for itself, paired with a navy suit and white shirt or in the instance of the gold colour way, with a lighter grey towards silver suit.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and hopefully you will be able to find a gift for the men in your life - be it dads, bros, broheims or beaus. www.lenoeudpapillon.com