Notes From The South Coast And Country New South Wales

My early morning dip on Bondi was reasonably quick as I was trying to get to the Studio to shut up shop and pick up a few last things before I headed off for the South Coast.

I had decided that I would try my luck driving through Braidwood and onwards to Tilba via Batemans Bay rather than to attempt the coastal road.

The country was greener than I had expected. Often at this time of year the earth is already scorched but instead I found it lush from the inland to the coast. In fact, I don't think I saw a dry bit of land in my entire tour. 

As is usual for me I was longing to be on my own with my music. I have recently been collecting new songs and some of them seemed ripe for a road trip. Amongst them was Steely Dan's "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" , The Little River Band's "Reminiscing" , Jay Ungar's "Ashokan Farewell" which forms the opening credits to Ken Burns' documentary on the American Civil War. Then there was Marianne Faithfull's cover of "As Tears Go By", The Pretenders "Hymn To Her" , Nancy Sinatra's "You Only Live Twice", Neil Diamond's "Solitary Man", Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out" .

My first stop was to visit some friends that had renovated a house near Tilba. They were beneath a mountain that was part of lands that were on native title I was told. The mountain was sacred to the local indigenous tribes. It was a charming dramatic backdrop and as the sun faded into twilight it was backed by a beautiful violet light that saw a faint crescent moon rising. 

At night we ate very well and sat up drinking scotch on the patio with a cool wind blowing and plenty of ice in the deep freeze but no air conditioning in the rooms. Thankfully the weather was hot only on the first evening with rain setting in the following day. 

When I departed on Christmas morning I left at 4am - to ensure that I did not bump into too many police cars which seemed to be in droves on my way down to the South Coast. I arrived in Canberra, had Christmas lunch with my family, played soccer both physically and virtually on a Sony Playstation. After a lot of meat I fell into a food coma and woke again at 4am the following morning and went back to the coast to visit some other friends who had recently finished their new dwelling which was ultra modern with it's modernity offset by a very interesting garden that gave the architecture more humanity. The drive was extraordinary, cruising down the Monaro highway at great speed before winding down Brown Mountain and coming down into the valley until I reached Cobargo. Then on to Tilba, this time following the rolling green hills down to the sea. 

In the morning I got up early and swam one of the those uninhabited South Coast beaches where you have to have a certain trepidation when treading between heath and beach for there are always black and brown snakes around, and then as you enter the water you have to assume that if you get caught by the rip there will be nobody for you to call out to. It can often take the edge off your enjoyment as the waves do not seem to be as rhythmic as those that you get on Bondi Beach. 

I swam a little, rinsed my nostrils and went back to the house. I departed a little after ten and was glad to be on the road as my hosts were the clean living organic types and after a while if I hear too much of it my shadow starts to crave a double quarter pounder from McDonalds and in fact, since I was on a road trip, I sided with my shadow. I drove back to Cooma, pacing myself again up Brown Mountain and marvelling at just how beautiful the country was. It was some of the best country in New South Wales - clean- unspoilt, rolling and cascading and never short of drama as it moved from the sea to estuaries, lakes and then mountains and highlands. 

At Cooma, satiated by a double quarter pounder and a chocolate thick shake I moved on towards Canberra, collected some cables I left behind and then headed off for Kangaloon where I intended to meet up with more friends. And when I arrived a garden party was in full swing - it was perfect timing.

The following day I made an error of judgement. One which I won't go into. Suffice to say it involved two coffees and a female friend. You don't sweep an older woman off her feet it seems, instead she sweeps you under the carpet.

But this was my 2017 - a pastiche of different experiences, exciting and rich but also painful and with continued suffering. First world suffering. A bad ankle, a bruised heart, a sore back - but mostly it was all pretty well sorted. Looking back I could not have imagined so many things to have occurred in one year and none of them would I take back. But with the good you must take the bad, the hard-nosed, the cruel and the unfair. The psychotherapist I see occasionally said to me two things of great import this year, one of which was a response to the question I posed to her: 

"What the hell am I to make of all this ?"

To which she responded - "that life is beautiful, but painful".

I am inclined to agree. 

And to the next great pearl of wisdom, which I intend to exercise in 2018 - "What I Practice I Become"

My road trip was a great way to cap off a year of extraordinary highs and lows, of change, of self-awareness and overcoming a whole bunch of mental obstacles along the way. 

I am grateful that our customers have supported this business throughout the year and my hope is that all these experiences will somehow filter into making better products and having a better perspective on what makes for a bow tie or tie that you fall in love with, something which hits you on a personal level. That's my hope anyway. That in 2018 we create some great silks and that I go back to work with a relish and zest inspired by the year that just passed. 

What a year. I hope yours was equally as interesting and I look forward to serving you in the new year. I depart for Como, Italy on the 7th January to source new fabrics, meet new contacts and it will be my first time seeing Como in winter. 

Again, thank you, see you in 2018. 

Writer's Block And The Continual Search For Meaning

Lately I have been having a terrible time keeping up the blog. Instagram is such an addictive and easy way to tell stories on the go and to create good blog content takes time and careful consideration, plus you are required to write longer passages which require more depth of knowledge. As I get older this seems to be dogging me, as well as my enthusiasm to create new menswear content. Whereas once I had few customers and more time on my hands, these days I seem to be in between one wedding party order, cutting silks on the bench, photographing new stock or packing and sending stock. It's not a complaint, but I seldom get those long stretches of 'nothing to do' which I used to fill with researching and writing blog content.

And hasn't Instagram taken off. I rarely use Facebook these days, I seldom even look at my twitter account. I seem to spend my life drawn to two apps, Whatsapp and Instagram. So, admittedly, the blog has suffered, my writing has suffered and, judging by the stats, my audience has suffered too.

The other issue has been the genuine reflexivity offered by Instagram over the blog. We get to stay in touch with our customers, repost their photos of them wearing bow ties, hear their stories and genuinely get a sense of community amongst lovers of bow ties, which the blog doesn't offer because you only get to see what I write. There is a great joy I get when I wake up in the morning and see who has tagged us over night. Most of the photos come from a select few but it's so nice to see your bow ties in Miami, New York, London, Paris, Milan, San Franciso and so on.

So, to those of you who still read our blog, be patient, I have writer's block for the moment and don't know what else to write about for the time being. I encourage you to duck across to our Instagram but I totally get it if you don't want to be a part of it - you can get sucked up into the vortex and never seem to get your head out of it.

Anyway, I thought I would add just a few shots of things that have been relevant to us over the past few weeks and stop past the website as we just uploaded some new silks.

Magnus Omme stopped past and helped me make this movie on how to tie your LNP bow tie

This is our bonsai limited edition silk design. The portrait is by Magnus Omme

This is a wonderful Franck Mueller watch on a customer who took the first of our evil eye limited edition silk.

The new limited edition evil eye silk was produced on an exceptional loom we have not had the opportunity to work on before. The silk is considerably more expensive to produce. 

This is our customer Thomas Carle who sent in this photo when he went to pick up his new car. He has been a big supporter of Le Noeud Papillon

A set of wedding ties I was asked to tie on the wedding party this Sunday just passed. The double four in hand knot looked exceptional on this navy ottoman silk.

New Japanese yuzen silk bow ties that have just been released on the website. 

Christmas Sale #2 Now Live Until Midnight

Now is the time to log onto the website and snap yourself up a bargain as we are selling down freshly made bow ties until midnight with the codes being activated by the hour. Come see. www.lenoeudpapillon.com

The First Of The Christmas Sales Begins

It's a conundrum that we have which is that we are not big enough to be able to have one of those grand accounts with DHL where everything gets tracked and logged like Mr. Porter. So quite often when customers order they get regular Australian air mail unless they choose our express option. So for international customers in the more obscure countries we sell to, the wait can be up to 3 weeks.

There are some brand new silks in the sale. I would suggest taking a good look today and add them to cart. Many won't make it to Thursday but I will leave you to decide which ones they are.

Shop now: www.lenoeudpapillon.com 

Mornings On Bondi - The Most Peace You Can Get For The Cheapest Price In Town

If you get down to Bondi Beach at 5.00am many of the spots that are free to park at until 8am are already taken by that highly motivated set that have trainers who treat them like farm animals and humiliate them with exercises, which I myself recently had to do in order to get through a rotational set workout, whereby you walk around with weights in your hands or flap rope up and down in some wave motion. These are the types that are slim and motivated, enjoy chin ups and eating 'clean' food. They can be somewhat contrived and annoying. 

There is another class of humans, I like to call us the aesthetes. We get there even earlier than the macronarcos and instead of paying some chap 25 dollars to humiliate us we take a leisurely stroll along the sand and contemplate our lives and take stock of our emotions whilst occasionally sparing a thought for the farm animals we see in the distance who are busy trying to sprint the soft sands back to the wall and then back to the beach again. 

For me and my fellow aesthetes, we are as much about the shawls we wrap ourselves in and the feel of the ocean on our feet as we are about the exercise and watching the sun slowly rise gives us great joy and solitude which perhaps ordinarily we find harder to achieve during the busier parts of our day. And the good news is that this solitude is quietly enjoyed, we never seek each other out or even wave to each other. It is a respect that this is our quiet time for pause and reflection and that we're happy to walk it on our own, at our own pace.

Occasionally when my body and my heart feel up to it I sprint sections of the beach and the exercise really wakes me up and gets my lungs going. 

Of course, this is not the only exercise I do during the week, but it has been some of my most enjoyable time exercising. Soft music like Chopin's Larghetto, the ambient sounds of crashing waves and play of light as the sun comes up from beyond Ben Buckler.

And like all the best things in life, it's free. You don't have to pay for a ticket until 8am. You don't have to pay to access the beach. You don't have to pay anyone to have a shower or take a swim. 

Isn't that refreshing? If you see me at 430am on Bondi - don't wave. Just quietly go about your business and I am sure you will feel the same sense of solitude I get. 

In The AFR

In my opinion the best apres ski bar in Thredbo is aptly named the Apres-Ski Bar and it resides inside the Denman Hotel which sits on Diggings Terrace just above the main square. I like to put my ski boots into my locker and walk up there at around 4pm to catch Mark Travers on the guitar jamming. 

On one particular day I found myself seated with a chap I'd drunk shots with a few weeks earlier. He was seated with an attractive blonde curly haired woman. We started chatting and as always you trade stories from the day, where did you ski, what did you eat, who were you with... that kind of thing. 

Then I was asked about my business, which I responded in a somewhat brazen but truthful matter that I did not rely on Australians as customers - that my bow tie enthusiast customers came from all over. 

It turns out that the woman seated next to me was Philippa Coates, the deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review Magazine and whatever I had said had piqued her interest. So much so that she offered to write content on me to which I at first said no - knowing that it wouldn't bring me more customers for bow ties. But, I caved, and I am glad I did. She sent out the photographer Dominic Lorrimer who shot me in the Studio and we did out absolute best not to laugh because I told him that I had recently learned to squint to sharpen my face and would he kindly not take a fat photo of me.

It was an enjoyable afternoon and I would like to thank Philippa Coates because I was at first reluctant but in the end it was a great deal of fun and hopefully I didn't singe too many nostrils with my style tips for the racing carnival.

You can read the article here. 

It Matters To Us Too - New Yuzen And A Testimonial From California

I am off to the races tomorrow and I hope to wear a one of our new silks.  I am excited, I have not gone there in years. I do not know what to expect. Mostly I am going because I want to don a suit and tie and hang with some new and old friends I've made since I recently starting exercising on Bondi Beach in the mornings. I have been lazy lately, certainly when it comes to work - I found it hard to cut silks and hard to remember what it was I relished about work. Then, as if the Gods willed it that I find my way back into it, a message arrived on whatsapp from a happy customer in California and I feel indebted to Mr. Roberts, because his message woke me up and got me back to the cutting table.

New Yuzen silks are now online. So too many other models. Come and see.

"I received the bowtie you sent to me. I am absolutely speechless... The bowtie itself is no less spectacular than the other 10 or so I have purchased from you. But the part that absolutely has me gobsmacked is your surreal customer service. I am not even going to pretend that I am a big fish in your pond. There is no doubt that you have some real heavy hitters that are loyal to your shop. You have a product that is superior to any I've seen, by a light year... I want to tell you from a most sincere place that I appreciate very much you making me feel like I matter."

M. Roberts
California, USA

If You Have A Spare Evening, Spend An Hour And A Half With Henry Miller On An Odyssey

Recently I started reading The Colossus Of Maroussi after it's title came up again in a conversation one evening in reference to Greeks. I had earmarked it to read more than a decade ago but somehow time slipped away. 

When I began reading it I slipped into Miller's world very quickly and with a level of familiarity though he is often very liberal and flowery with his language and at times I feel I ought to have a dictionary loaded on my phone so I can search the meaning of some of the more obscure words he uses. The gist though is a love for Greeks and their culture but with reference to many of the characters that flow in and out of his world as he sails seas between islands and mainland.

I quoted in a recent newsletter one passage that caught my attention and used it to suggest that I thought that passionate people like Miller were often the types that wore neck wear of various modes and I was right. Miller, as I learned from the video below, was the son of a tailor and spent a number of years working the family business. He said that of all the things he took from his time there was an appreciation of good fabric in his hand and a knowledge of the way a suit ought to hang and drape off the human body. And it shows, Miller walks the streets of Paris in some superb ensembles. Even his pyjamas have that certain charm that shows he knows how to be in his element whether at home or out on the street.

He also offers some superb wisdom as the odyssey unfolds and you meet the fellow writers, musicians, painters, psychologists and artists that make up his unique world. It is an old man casting his mind back on the world that he lived and it makes for great television.

In my world there has often been a need to try and create content to sell product which often erodes some of the real beauty and truth that can be told in life. Miller seems to have lead a life which did not hide or conceal his reality and experience of life. It is commendable that someone lives like this, a life spent not having to cover up the ugly bits, cropping out the background, removing those things which you must keep private. He talks openly about suicide, about the lack of affection his mother showed him, his father's drinking, his detestation for war and violence. 

Sometimes when I post content on social media I often think to myself "how will this appear to those that view it" and in fact I was asked today by a company to do some contract work outside my usual hours, to follow guidelines and work towards a 'social strategy'. I wonder how garish someone like Miller might find this new world we occupy.

If you have time, give this documentary a chance. You may fall asleep half way through, but when you re-open your eyes you will learn something new. 

New Bow Ties Have Been Loaded - Come See

The Pocket Square As A Neckerchief - Another Way To Wear Silk More Casually

With regards to my previous post I thought I would elaborate on the pocket square as a neckerchief. As a general rule, bandannas are to the best of my knowledge around 56cm squared. So when you tie them around your neck not only can they be hot but they can also be quite cumbersome. The same can be said of traditional ascots or what we call cravattes in Australia. They can look lovely on a man in his 60's but younger than that and you can get quickly type-casted as a Matt Preston look-alike . Especially someone that looks like me .... And it has happened a few times.

However, I have found the Goldilocks of the casual silk neckerchief in the 42cm printed silk twills that we use for our pocket squares. If you fold our 42cm pocket squares on the diagonal and then roll them neatly you can achieve enough length to tie them at the front of your neck and then tuck them under your shirt or t-shirt. 

And because pocket squares tend to have such vibrant art (as do ours) on them, once rolled they reveal hints and colours and textures that make them so much more interesting than traditional ascots and bandannas. 

So, as spring approaches, and as the world becomes increasingly more casual - consider that your pocket square collection might double as your neckwear in a more casual setting.

As for me, I wore them under a ski jacket and whether or not they had the desired effect on my audience I do not know, but certainly I liked the look of them in the mirror, and pleasing myself when I dress is paramount. I certainly don't dress for others as much as I do for myself.

Be brave, add a little peacock and try it out for yourself. I promise you, it will bring our your inner Romeo.

www.lenoeudpapillon.com

Right, entertainer Harrison Craig is wearing our new Moth Of Sydney shirt with our latest forest green silk grenadine tie. I am wearing Marguerite 2 pocket square as a neckerchief. 

Martin Greenfield Interview For Robb Report Australia

Before I departed on my trip to see the silk mills in May I was given a green light to write two feature articles for Robb Report in Australia by its editor, Michael Stahl. The two articles, one which follows an Australian bale of wool from the time it reaches Italy until it becomes fabric for a suit; will be followed by the second which covers Martin Greenfield, the celebrated New York tailor.

Greenfield, a holocaust survivor, was there in their Williamsburg factory when I went to visit. At 88 years of age he had the good looks and charisma of an Old World movie star and he seemed to be the personification of Viktor Frankl's 'logotherapy' - that Greenfield had found purpose and meaning in his life by creating suits with intrinsic value which had kept tailors, retailers, bespoke customers and costume designers coming back again and again for their services and attention to detail.

The article will appear later this year. 

Finding Your Inner Peacock Again

There is a possibility that I am or was having a mid life crisis. If it weren't a crisis then it was certainly a renaissance or a resurrection. My micro crisis involved a lot of skiing and some other things which I must keep from this blog - I have a tendency to over share - or so those dear to me like to tell me.

Anyway, so it got me thinking, that with spring approaching, it's not really a crisis is it? I was reminded recently of that expression that psychotherapists seem to love "this too shall pass" - whatever we are feeling, whatever uncomfortable things we must sit with, whatever bliss or joy seems to be brimming over our cup of life, it will no doubt change, and change again. 

So you can view it as a crisis or perhaps you can see it as an agent of change and evolution. And with a very personal and real experience recently, which to some extent changed the colours I saw in the horizon, I found myself re-engaging with all that I love. Music, poetry, art, my clothes. 

And it was my music and my clothes that stuck out the most. I had simply forgotten how much I loved listening to music when I drive, or how much I loved spending time on my own. And then there was my dressing. For too long I turned up to the Studio like a slob because I knew by the end of the day I would either have silk threads all over myself or else I'd have stayed in my gym gear for too long. 

With spring approaching, rekindling your love for fine things again should be on your agenda. For me it was tying silk in new ways, one of which was to tie a silk pochette as a neckerchief whilst I skied down the mountain. It seemed like a small but impressive way to wear silk in a more casual and athletic environment. And it sure beat a bandanna. 

So maybe it's not a crisis at all. Maybe it's a resurrection. And spring certainly is a good time to think about resurrections.

Come see the new silks. 

Snowy Mountains High - The Mid Winter Beacon Of Light

When he first came to the mountains his life was far away

On the road and hanging by a song

But the string's already broken and he doesn't really care

It keeps changing fast and it don't last for long

But the Snowy Mountains makes him high

I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky

The shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullabye

Snow Mountains high.... (Thredbo)
(With reference to John Denver)

Nothing quite turns me on like a great solitary car trip with great music and fresh country air. I have been driving through country Australia since I was a late teen but perhaps the years when I did the most kilometres were at University whilst I pursued a degree in agricultural economics. They were heady days of either deep winters and frozen fingers or of moleskin trousers and screaming down the highway listening to Paul Simon, hot winds and dry sweat.

The other morning as I drove towards the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales I remembered fondly those same drives and how much they had evolved. Back in those days you had to make fresh CD's regularly so that they wouldn't skip and the book in which you held all your CD's was as important as your luggage, stowed usually in the front passenger seat. There was one such journey on the Narrandera road near Wagga Wagga in the peak of summer, cockatoos congregating on the side of the road, hot dry air blasting through the window onto sunburnt forearms and the bouncing rhythm of Graceland blaring on the speakers.

The Mississippi Delta was shining 

Like a National guitar 

I am following the river 

Down the highway 

Through the cradle of the civil war 

I'm going to Graceland 

Graceland 

In Memphis Tennessee 

I'm going to Graceland 

Poor boys and pilgrims with families 

And we are going to Graceland 

My traveling companion is nine years old 

He is the child of my first marriage 

But I've reason to believe 

We both will be received 

In Graceland

And it was this very same song that I listened to, twenty years later, as I shot down the highway heading towards Thredbo this week, excited by the prospect of skiing fresh powder that had just fallen the night before. 

There is something so unique about our Snowy Mountains and I have never really been quite able to explain what that is. In part I would suggest that it is the Alpine Ash eucalyptus trees which I believe are not found in any other Alpine region. They have a manner in which they are suspended that is hauntingly beautiful and when they are laden with snow they remind me of Japanese wood block prints, as though their graduated trunk and ornate shapes of branches and leaves could only be interpreted and understood by a Japanese artisan's deft incisions of his bespoke carving tools. It could also be the drama of the landscape that leads into those mountains that form the Kosciuszko National Park. Prior to entering the mountains the landscape is sort of like a high plain of undulating land which seems to be dotted with large granite boulders and trees which look somewhat haunted, looking more like the marking of a burial site than something which offers life. It is a forbidding landscape almost all year round.

These moments, especially when I am on my own, offer up some of the most peaceful and joyful moments of solitude that I have found. It's in fact one of the reasons I romanticise about the country so much. I am certain that living there my problems would not go away - but to leave the city and go for a drive in the country invariably decompresses me. 

This time as I drove in I had found a new song to listen to and it was fast becoming a song which might define this winter for myself. I had, one night a few weeks back, watched Martin Scorcese's documentary 'The Waltz' on Netflix. And one performance stuck out a great deal. It was Joni Mitchell's 'Coyote' which had instantly grabbed me and for a week or two it has a significant grip on me.

Now, twenty years later as I drove down the highway, my phone was cabled to my aux slot, bluetooth enabled and streaming 4g data from my Spotify on an excessively large data plan. How heady. How times had changed. And this is what I heard:

No regrets Coyote

We just come from such different sets of circumstance

I'm up all night in the studios

And you're up early on your ranch

You'll be brushing out a brood mare's tail

While the sun is ascending

And I'll just be getting home with my reel to reel

There's no comprehending

Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes

And the lips you can get

And still feel so alone

And still feel related

Like stations in some relay

You're not a hit and run driver, no, no

Racing away

You just picked up a hitcher

A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

It was like a solid meal for the soul. 

If you haven't listened to Joni Mitchell or Paul Simon for a while, if you haven't taken a drive through the country or put some skis on and tore down the mountain side, I highly recommend all of the above. You will decompress and I promise you your soul will be reinvigorated.

Getting Nudes Right For Silk

One of the hardest things to get right in creating a new silk design is what will and won't work in the confines of either a bow tie or a pocket square. Getting this right is so important. It's not an oil on canvas, so you can't get the kinds of graduation and tonality as you get in the Tamara De Lempicka's 'Musician' below. Instead you are chasing simplicity and defined lines and colours.

I was not trained in textiles and so this has become my hardest obstacle in pursuing this as a business. I have taste but often I lack the conversion skills in both illustrator and in hand drawing that allows you to express yourself in an exacting manner. 

More importantly, fabric is not a blank canvas on which you can paint. Each form of textiles, be it digital, screen or weaving is constrained. Even yuzen silks, which are perhaps the ones that leave themselves most open to individual interpretation, are constrained by stencils. 

All this I write because there is one thing that has always remained elusive for me creatively, and that is the female form. 

Tamara De Lempicka's 'Musician' . 

Where's My Suit Roy?

I was warned that Roy was his own worst enemy prior to entering his tailoring and alterations shop on Union Street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York.

Zalman, the owner of a made to measure tailoring outfit from that area, had offered me to come back to Crown Heights for a different experience. Previously he has chaperoned me around to the local Jewish tailors who knocked out traditional kapotes, this time he offered to take me to a tailor that could knock out a suit in 7 days of a great quality at a very modest price.

I thought this would be a great piece for the blog but I didn't need a new suit. I had to think for a bit about what possible suit I did not have. I had just made two for the window of our Studio in Sydney and I really didn't plan to make another until spring. But it sounded like such a good blog post....

I immediately put in an order for wool from Barrington Fabrics to be shipped to Crown Heights. It was one of those international moments where you are on whatsapp talking to the UK on one time zone, I was in Los Angeles myself, and Zalman was in New York. These are the times when I feel like Jason Bourne and I love business. Dynamic, hustling, typing ferociously so that everyone can meet their goal.

Then when I walked into Roy's everything was reset. Roy wasn't going to be pushed around, this was his shop, his rules. Zalman told me that when Roy went to work he got stuck into it with the kind of relish you'd expect from Zorba the Greek, but just like Zorba, when his mind was no longer on work, nothing could drag him away from his other pursuits. I was told that sometimes Roy would go in there and get stuck into some rum and either come out at the end of it with a fantastic suit, or else you would hear him and his buddies laughing and arguing all night - and it was anyone's guess which one it would be.

Inside Roy's it was spartan. Those old timber slat walls, decor that hadn't been changed in decades, a time warp back to the 70's. There were strange characters coming and going every few minutes and an odd chap that was sort of an assistant, sort of just there to watch the old television that was above Roy. The noise from the television made it hard for us to communicate but when we asked for it to be turned down, nobody could find the remote control and the old volume button on the set wasn't working.

I tried to ask Roy about his life but he seemed like a man of few words. Zalman told me he used to be a boxer and when he stopped fighting he picked up a needle and thread. He certainly had the stature of a boxer and the look of someone whose joints caused him pain and frustration.

The suit was supposed to be ready after a week but I couldn't wait long enough after the first fitting for it to be collected. I paid Zalman the money and told him to ship it to me when it was ready. "This is where it can go wrong with Roy. Once his focus on the suit is no longer on it, it could be weeks before he picks it up again. I will stay on him for you".

Zalman did stay on him. But Roy, he works to the beat of his own drum, and what might be good for him, may not be right for some....

I learned a few things from this experience. Roughly it is this - the best custom tailor in the world is one that resides in the nearest city to where you live. Second, never rush a custom made tailoring experience. You will lose every time. Thirdly, never get greedy when it comes to making suits. There must always be a reason or a season as to why you will be getting anything new made.

I received a text a few days ago saying Roy and Zalman had fallen out about the suit. Roy was not going to be told when to finish it. He now sits on my money and my cloth and is in total control of both the quality of the finish as well as the delivery date. I could ring Roy and start a screaming match but he keeps a very big sign on his fitting mirror "NO INDECENT LANGUAGE" , so I doubt my call would last more than five seconds.

Oh, and I learned one more rather grotesque thing - I am going bald. Zalman, doing his best to capture the detail of my shoulders, managed to secure a rather awful angle that ordinarily I'd not have seen myself. Not every tailoring experience is fruitful and blessed. I am grateful that I had fun on this one regardless. And I hope that one evening soon Roy picks up a bottle of rum and finishes my suit.

Work In Progress - The Three Parcae By A Newly Unearthed Artist

I have an artist friend of mine who gets very upset with me when I don't name a new artist. He has a doctorate in fine arts, so I am not doubting that he has his reasons to be upset with me.

However, my experience is the moment that you tell everyone your trade secrets you are soon to lose your competitive advantage. One former illustrator of ours, Dick Carroll, now works for The Armoury in New York and I noticed that within a few weeks of being employed there he was sketching away for them in between selling suits and shirts.

In another instance, a chap who had done some graphic design for me in Sydney was visiting a tailor when he announced that he had designed a few silks for us. The first question the tailor asked after my graphic designer stopped bragging was "where does he get his silk" . In turn this caused a rupture between myself and the graphic designer who one week later announced that he simply refused to do another design for me without having direct access to the loom.

The old Greek adage, once relayed to me by an Irish Catholic who was enamoured with the merchant Greek class, was that the secret to success in business was to hold your supplier and your customer very close, but to make sure the two never met. The truth is, it's not that hard to find a silk loom. It's not that hard to make a bow tie either. But it's the relationships that you forge between your loom, your seamstresses, your graphic designers, your artists, your freight companies, your landlord and, most importantly, your customers, that keep you in business.

That is why the other night, when an illustration artist sent through his first sketches for my new pocket square and I was blown away with the first sketches, I asked him to come up with a pseudonym. For those of you who have read the blog for a while, you'll know that Carlos Oppenheimer is a pseudonym for a friend of mine who is the director of a public company and whose name can't be mentioned along side a running commentary on menswear and fashion. I love a good pseudonym - so I left it with said artist to tell me his when he felt he had found something he was happy with.

The work, which is based on the three fates, the Roman 'parcae' will take some inspiration from Greek mythology, something from Gauguin, a little from the graphic artist Dave Smith, and a touch of impressionism. Our aim was to continue on that theme we spoke about a few blog posts ago - that infatuation I had with the idea that our live's are like woven yarn; spun, measured and cut off by three fates. It makes me think of quilts, fabric, spinners, artisans and, most of all, women. My relationship with women has always been complex and most men would be reluctant to admit to it, but a part of me fears and dreads women.

They are beautiful and whimsical, they are ever-changing, never fixed in one spot. Rarely do we understand them. Most of us men are ruled by them from cradle to grave. I spent my formative years trying to dodge my mother's relentless nagging and reminders. Then later as an adult you spend your best years believing that you are in a desperate need to find the right sort of woman so you can marry and settle down - only she becomes just as domineering as your mother. Later still you have your own daughter and you think perhaps now, with this innocence in front of you, that you understand women and their role in your life. But it doesn't take long for her to learn the ropes and pretty soon you are running around to meet her needs too.

And so, for a simple man mind like mine, prone to conspiracy theories and easily distracted by story over fact, it's quite alluring to think that your entire fate is in the hands of three whimsical women who spin, measure and cut off your life.

We men, we think we are kings and that is our folly. We work for women our entire lives and as much as we enslave women, they enslave us back - they just play a longer and more thought out game. We are kings of a lifetime, they are the queens down through the ages of ages.

Here are the first sketches of the three parcae - and yes, my ilustrator has been informed that he was missing an 'r' on the banner.

Once the sketch is complete the artist will vectorise the entire picture, lay down colours and then it will go to the printers where, depending on the complexity and prices, we will choose between a digital and a screen printed process. Fingers crossed, this will be one of those pocket squares you keep forever.

New Japanese Yuzen Silks Now Online. Come See

www.lenoeudpapillon.com

New Silks Are Arriving Each Week Along With New Shapes That We Are Working On - Bow Ties Galore It Seems!

Much of the silk that has been arriving these past few weeks is the culmination of working directly with my contacts in Italy over coffee and bottles of fizzy water to try and find ways to deliver more vibrancy to our silks. Looking at warps and wefts and working out which warps and which structure of making a silk will deliver the best result for our limited edition designs is not something that is clear cut. We rejected two silks, something we rarely do, because they didn't show the design up well enough. Sometimes, if you choose the wrong warp and weft, you can get a scratchiness in a silk and the colour comes out lacking lustre and depth.

It's for this reason that a lot of silk designers don't deviate too much from standard classics where they roughly know the lie of the land. In that instance, take a pin head for example, one only needs to change the colours the following season based on the new warp colours available.

But then there are the unique designs we run, like the tiger below, or the virus centre. Both are exceptionally different which means that you run a greater risk when realising them that either you lose definition in the design, or you lose richness and lustre in the ground. As these designs are very much unlike anything else that the loom is weaving at the moment, it can perplex the technicians and in some instances, the samples come back and are rejected.

In between these limited edition silks we also work on existing silk weaves in plain colours which are often already sampled by the loom. New garza and grenadine weaves that arrived this week, for example, are not designed by us. These solids are usually developed by the loom each year with only the colour changing depending on new thread colours and warps that are being offered. This is the usually the easiest part of any buying trip - when it's merely the weight and handle of the silk along with the visual and sensory texture of the silk which decides it's fate. 

The beneficiaries of these explorations are our customers. Where once you might have seen four bow ties in a collection each season from a brand, now we are able to build a collection once a week, post them online by Friday afternoon and be sold out by Monday. 

It is a wonder whether the consumer does appreciate this? I can recall that not ten years ago you could not find a self-tying bow tie of any reputable quality on the internet. The companies that did produce silks did so once every six months. There was no opportunity to order a different shape other than what they told you you could have. Neck ties weren't that different either.

These days a silk arrives on Monday morning. By Tuesday afternoon it has been cut and is almost sewn. By Wednesday it's in a Fedex bag. By Friday it's in New York. 

What a wonderful world for consumers it has become!

The Conservative Tie I Still Grapple With

A few weeks back when I had the privilege of being in front of the cloth design team at Vitale Barberis Canonico, a company which makes over 10 million metres of cloth each year,  I was interested to know what exactly the designer's designers wear?

The designer's designer? That was the expression used by G Bruce Boyer to describe the role of VBC in the fashion industry. The designer offers you a new cut of suit each year, but mostly they don't get to design their own cloth, it's up to the team at Vitale Barberis Canonico who put together seasonal cloths which get picked up by designers who then knock them into suits, jackets, skirts, overcoats and more.

So when I met Michele Papuzzo below, a conservative man in his forties, salt and peppered hair, a melange wool suit - I was interested to see that his choice of shirt was a conservative windsor collar Oxford weave in white with a double four in hand knotted tie in the most conservative silk. 

The designer's designer was not like the designer - he was far more measured in his approach to fashion. And it kind of made sense. When you are in charge of designing 10 million metres of cloth, you are not likely to be staying too long in business if you go long in canary yellow and electric blue like some designers might (guess who don't sue). 

As for the tie - I had mixed feelings. It so suited Michele but as I travelled Italy and the silk mills I have this funny feeling towards Italian silk designers who never ever ever deviate from these conservative designs and colours. On the one hand, I appreciate that it looks refined, neat and tidy. On the other, I wish someone would shake up those Italians and tell them to stop trying to look so conservative all the time. 

A few days later I was at a wedding expo in Milan looking at all sorts of makers and designers who were pitching at grooms and groomsmen across Europe with regards to the menswear on display. Now the pendulum was totally on the other end of the spectrum, brazen, gaudy, over the top. Vibrant polymer based designed fabrics on jackets, bright patent leathers, silky trousers. 

This was Italy, two diametrically opposed cultures operating in one theatre. And what was in the middle was usually boring and lacking in enthusiasm.

This is how I feel about neck ties and what I still grapple with. For me, it is still an area of menswear that I have not really found my groove. I have found wearing a tie like the one below makes me feel like I have grown old before my time. But when I go for something too vibrant I feel like I am lacking in sophistication.

I am a bow tie guy, first and foremost. But I like neck ties. And the one thing that is still exciting for me is that long neck ties are still very much unchartered waters for myself. 

 

How Do You Make God Laugh? Tell 'im You've Gotta Plan

These were the famous lines delivered to me by an Italian Australian farmer at the end of a period in which I had been working in the bush. He then laughed one of those husky farmer laughs that is part chest phlegm from tobacco smoking, heaving in his chair almost, one of those rustic big leather recliners you might find in the spartan furnishings of a farm house where everything is practical before it is aesthetically pleasing. 

I am sure this phrase has been used many times before by many different walks of life all over the globe, but this was where I first heard the expression and it's impact has been long lasting. I can still see that farmer sitting in his chair, happy with his own joke. And it seems to be a joke he shares with the Gods.

The Greeks were the first to come up with the three fates. They were called the Moirai and included Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. Clotho spun your life, Lachesis measured it, Atropos cut it off. The Romans, because they loved to copy the Greeks, and who can blame them .... - called them the Parcae. 

Nona, Decima, Morta. In the painting below, which I found on that wonderful Google Arts And Culture which I think is one of the best things to come about on the internet since Wikipedia, the artisans of the court of Madame Pompadou plead with the fates to spare the life of their patron.

The painting serves to remind me that we are not guaranteed success, longevity, a following, an income, love, children, a vocation or even a passion. And even if we find it, nobody will be able to tell for how long we get to keep it. The Gods are a capricious and whimsical as the three parcae - spinning and measuring and cutting off your life at their whim. 

A reminder this week was that I became ill. I had a hundred plans to put into place, a thousand chores that needed reminders, a new computer I wanted to spend time with, doodling here, writing notes, adding this file to this folder and on and on. And then I became very ill. Suddenly. And it got pretty violent as my body shook itself senseless to get rid of the fever. The nightmares swirled around in my head and I kept waking up feeling like I was being choked and couldn't breath. Over and over again.

In moments of chaos like that we forget the old adage 'this too shall pass' and instead are overcome with fear and dread. What if it goes on like this forever? What will happen to me and my business?

I had set up new suppliers that were now taking longer than expected to deliver, the fabrics were arriving in the wrong order, there wasn't enough time to get this to marry it with that. And in that chaos I could hear that old farmer laughing until his voice felt like it was winding up a croaky engine. Yes, you are right, God must be laughing, because I thought I had a plan. 

We forget to remember that we are not here forever, that quite frankly, we barely have any control over how our bodies digest our food so how are we to think we know what will constitute the nature and course of our lives. 

My advice to all of you out there who haven't been sick in a while is this : get sick for a day or two - see how you realign your goals from complex ones to very very simple ones. Prior to getting sick I had 436 mini plans to execute. After a day of being sick I had but one plan - get better.

I wish you all a pleasant weekend. I am back up and running now. But, we should never take it for granted that we'll all be here tomorrow. Maybe I won't. Maybe you won't. Only the parcae seem to know.