The Snow Kerchief And The Mysterious Money Shot

About a year ago I decided that our pochettes tied as kerchiefs were the bomb for skiing and apres ski wear. Let's face it, the snow season is short and it's a wonderful chance to flex your sartorial muscles in terms of what colours you wear and how you put it all together. Ski gear has it's own genre of menswear, and just like peacocking, the more colour the better, the more details, the better, the more rarefied the brand or make, the better.

It also happens to be the sport of the rich, because you can't hop on that mountain without having dropped a pretty penny on ski gear, accommodation, lift passes, skis and poles, a Kosciuszko National Park pass and some lip balm for good measure. And that's before you have gotten stung by the price of food, drinks and buying more apparel that you apparently need so badly but which gets filed into a seasonal bag post September.

But this, I thought to myself, must be a good milieu in which to product place some silks and so began a journey over a year ago to try and get some of the more known Thredbo-loving regulars to don a pochette tied as a kerchief. Our 42cm hand-roll stitched silks, when folded correctly, become extremely charming affectations around the neck. So much so that within a few weeks I had a few of the chaps and a number of women all wearing them. They were freebies of course, because you can't ingratiate yourself without giving away a few bibs and bobs.

But this season it seemed to roughly catch on but it probably still needs a little push. Personally I went between 42cm pochettes tied as kerchiefs to my new favourite which is a 90cm foulard tied and tucked into your t-shirt or sweater. It's very charming and I only discovered the beauty of them in January when I purchased my first foulard from Charvet after interviewing Jean-Claude Colban and his sister Anne-Marie.

But it's not just that is it? It's not just walking around with a foulard or pochette around your neck - no no - it's also about the apres ski you indulge in whilst wearing your swagger kit. Of table tops and long ski shots. Of schnitzel and noodles and a slice of strudel. There is a particular shot called a 'money shot' which is served by the Denman (aka The Den Of Men) bartenders Ash and John below, the recipe of which is kept shrouded in secrecy. It tastes of cream and banana, coffee and caramel and is loved by all. And over the course of a week of drinking in this most charming of Australian ski villages, it is hard not to end up having a money shot spill over and down your fingers as you try desperately to get away from the bar counter and back to the live music coming from the one and only Mark Travers, weaving through kids, cougars and greying men who all want a piece of the next Australiana beer song.

It is, as I have said once before, a beacon of light in the depths of a dark winter. And it's nice to know that a little bit of silk colour can add to that light. There are so few years we have in us where we can ski in peak physical health and drink and be merry and back it all up the next day. Which is why we have to make the most of every year. When you hit the mountain each morning you can never take it for granted you will all be coming home. Some break their legs, others do in their knees, some hit their heads on the pavement from drinking too much .... All the more reason to dress with swagger because there is no guarantee you will have the chance again. Entering the village this season a BMW X5 was turning out from the village as I approached. Heavy snow had clogged the roads and black ice was everywhere. The vehicle span out, slid across my lane, hit the road fender, bounced off and was sliding towards my bumper. I managed to brake in time but could not shift gear into reverse in time. The car hit my front, thankfully the air bags did not go off. But it reminded me that it is a privilege to get there alive, the year before I almost came off the road after hitting a kangaroo at over 100kms an hour outside of Cooma. 

It might be a sort of glamorous death if you are found with a bruised and bleeding head at the bottom of a ravine wearing your ski apparel and a lovely pochette around your neck as the rescue team retrieve your frozen body, but it would be even more glamorous if you manage to ski out your entire trip and end it toasting the shame of cougars you were falsely accused of attempting to seduce and leaving a tip with the barman and the musician, and, turning your collar to the snowy wind, walk out into the night wearing your silk pochette around your neck, proud that you survived another round of the ski season.

This Is Seriously Funny And Americans Should Pay Attention To It - Sacha Baron Cohen's New Television Series

I have sat at dinner tables in New York and heard some seriously well put together arguments on why Americans should have the right to bear arms. But I never bought them and I held my tongue out of respect for these predominantly men. And they were not uninformed, and many of them had come from the top US universities. When we mentioned too many times guns and gun laws in front of the New Yorkers that we were staying with (it was mostly my ex partner who had the most to say - she is a left leaning journalist), our host got fairly snippy and I had to ask her to pull back, I did not want to sleep on a New York sidewalk in January.

The argument for guns was better understood by me when I watched Ken Burns' documentary on The West. It suddenly became a practicality. If you wanted to move west in territory occupied by hostile natives (who had every right to be hostile), where there was no rule of law and men behaved like savages, well then, you had to defend yourself. The land was yours if you were willing to fight for it. As crazy as that sounds, it made sense to me that I would want the right to bear arms in that situation.

But America reached the West Coast. So the reasons behind those constitutional rights no longer made sense post that event. 

It is not for Australians to discuss US gun laws in a self-righteous ad nauseam manner but I do find this comedy extremely funny, tongue in cheek and very very naughty. It reminds me of the Australian comedic character Norman Gunston. I remember seeing Sacha Baron Cohen in London at a book launch. I could see him behind a screen and he was preparing, totally normal as one would expect a human to be, and then, as they announced him to come out I saw him don his mask as though it was literally a mask that he lowered, and from that point onwards he did not break character. He is truly a genius and to think these ideas up is marvellous. More importantly, the idea that those that he interviewed did not cotton on suggests something about their own intelligence. 

I love all my US customers, but to those who love the right to bear arms, I simply say, let's agree to disagree. 

Charvet Of Paris: Interview With Jean-Claude Colban - Head Of One Of The Most Revered Menswear Institutions In The World

When I managed to get through to Jean-Claude Colban on the phone he was as quiet as a church mouse. The snow filled wind around me was howling which made it even more difficult to hear him. But I did not dare ask him to speak up. He was a God of the world of menswear, especially of silk, and with these types you show nothing but deference. When he was finished he put down the receiver and was gone. And now I needed to get myself to Paris by Friday.

The glory of entering the Place Vendome

The famed Charvet window display

Charvet is diagonally opposite the Ritz Carlton

Charvet is located at 28 Place Vendôme, diagonally opposite the Ritz Carlton (where Princess Diana was last seen alive) and next to the jeweller Boucheron. It is an institution of menswear or what I like to call the ‘Mecca of shirts and ties’. It has been referenced in so many great novels that I stopped counting the number of pages I’d dog-eared over time. Its clients were also so famous that they had their own Wikipedia page divided into categories like ‘heads of state’, ‘royalty’ and ‘film stars’.
So, what is Charvet? In its most basic analysis it is a menswear store skewed towards shirts and neck ties. But, for the enthusiast menswear devotee, it is the most comprehensive arrangement of cotton shirting for bespoke shirts in the world along with one of the most exclusive and vibrant collection of woven and printed silks which are predominantly expressed as both long neck ties and bow ties. And whilst Charvet offers a wide range of other products, this remains their core.
The Charvet brand has a long and rich lineage, tracing back to the curator of Napoleon Bonaparte’s wardrobe, Jean-Pierre Charvet. Then came Louise Charvet, a relative who was Napoleon’s linen keeper at the château de Malmaison. It was her first cousin, Christofle Charvet, who would eventually start the first shirt shop in Paris in the year 1838, coining the term ‘chemisier’ in the process. Until then, shirt making was often the dominion of the linen keeper or customers would take their own fabric to a tailor or seamstress. Charvet changed all that by assembling the cloth and the makers in one house and performing a complete bespoke service for their customers. In doing so they perfected the art of shirt making and to this day some of their fabrication techniques are still considered the best in the world.

Jean-Claude's office and meeting room which was once occupied by his father

‘Probably our reputation as a shirt maker was bolstered in the 1800’s by the association with the Jockey Club, a group of wealthy Parisians and their aspirational friends who were known as ‘lions’ or what we these days call ‘dandies’. Basically, it was young men who perhaps had too much of their parent’s money and those people that hung on to them or wanted to be like them" says Jean-Claude. And those that wanted to hang on the periphery were the painters, writers and poets of that time. Eventually this would create the ultimate cache in menswear kudos over time. In Brideshead Revisited, Charles Ryder’s first introduction to Lord Sebastian Flyte has him in a Charvet neck tie with a print of stamps. In Somerset Maugham’s ‘The Razor’s Edge’ the aspirational aristocrat Elliot Templeton had Charvet embroider a count’s crest into his underwear. The list of literary references is long, but my personal favourite is that of Jean Cocteau who said that Charvet ‘is where the rainbow find’s ideas’. ‘But’ says Colban, ‘there does exist a bunch of nasty English writers that would like to put us down. They can be so, how shall I say “Queen Victoria” ‘.

Archive fabrics often used for bespoke orders. 

And this last literary quote I mention humours Jean-Claude Colban, and he responds with “we at Charvet are always impressed with how knowledgeable our customers are about our history”. He sits lightly reclined in a somewhat worn red leather timber framed chair with a coffee table of books and baubles between us. He is dressed in a navy suit, a paisley green silk neck tie, a white shirt with Windsor collar, horn rimmed glasses that belong to another period. One eyebrow is bushier than the other and flicks out and over the rim of his left frame. He goes without a pocket square, a surprise for me. He’s corpulent and has a light stubble and thin lips. When we begin talking he is again very softly spoken. “These long-term customers of ours, they register each time we make a new silk, that we make a wink and to what it is we make a wink at, because our customers know back to front the Charvet silks. There is an immediate fraternity that is developed with the Charvet customer once he purchases from us”.

The office we sit in belonged to his father, Dennis Colban. It is timber panelled in a light honey oak colour. There are statues of jaguars, books on chairs, gold framed photos still leaning against the wall unhung. Colban bought the business from the Charvet family in the 70’s. He was their chief supplier. Jean-Claude had studied political science and had thought of another career but then began working with his father and picked up skills in Photoshop. He explains that he still uses this programme today to design silks as he opens a book with all his last collection of silks. It is at this point that I realise the level of commitment he has to his craft. Every silk he designs goes through multiple iterations before it is realised, and each change is carefully documented in his artisan styled notebook with meticulous and tiny hand-writing. But perhaps this Old-World way of doing things has hampered the brand and I ask him why they never went online. ‘Around 2007 I thought seriously about the online world – is this screen able to well enough render colour. And, can people be stupid enough to spend a lot of money on something they cannot touch and feel. And so, I decided not to proceed in this manner. I am more obsessed with doing well what we are supposed to do well.’
And what they do well is to make predominantly neckwear made of silk and to make shirts for both off-the-rack and bespoke customers. Where possible they wholesale to other retailers who then place their ties on their websites, but they stay well clear of this sphere and their website is and has always been merely a placement holder page with their address and phone number. ‘My job is to remain focussed on running our own warps, our own patterns and our own colour combinations’. All this, and might I add that running your own warp with a silk loom is prohibitively expensive, is to protect the product from being replicated in the 21st Century.

I ask him what goes through his mind when he begins designing a new silk collection. “Firstly” he says, “I have to consider that every silk must work across a variety of products from a silk neck tie to a bow tie, to a cummerbund and a vest”. He tells me that he often studies primitive tribes to better understand repeat patterns and that it was as important that the silk should look attractive on the bias (how you cut a silk neck tie so that it has spring in the silk when tying) as it should on the warp or selvedge of the fabric roll.  ‘And really, unlike the English, we do not seek out these animal prints and designs. We find this to be less than masculine’. Colban also works directly with luxury shirt cloth companies in England, Italy and Switzerland to deliver possibly the most comprehensive range of shirting bolts assembled anywhere in the world. There are over 400 whites on their ‘Mur Des Blancs’ (wall of whites) with over 104 varying shades of it. In solid blues they carry over 200 shades from the babiest of blues to the inkiest of them that you cannot tell the difference between it and black.
Jean-Claude Colban is interrupted by his sister, Anne-Marie, momentarily. She is the other half of the business as it stands today. Although the designing of fabrics remains the exclusive dominion of Jean-Claude, it is clear Anne-Marie is an integral part of their daily operations. I ask Jean-Claude if he intends to bring his own sons into the business. He softly responds, ‘if they show and interest in the business then yes, otherwise I would never force them to work in a job they did not want to do’.
As I peep out of the room onto the Place Vendôme through the half floor window (this building has a traditional Mansard façade creating half floors internally) I am struck by a thought about progression and succession.

The wholesale division of Charvet makes for some of the most reputable menswear and department stores in the world. 

“How does an institution like this survive in the 21st Century?” I asked, given all the traffic that is now digital and less human.
“Our customers best respond to creativity and quality and we have built up a good rapport with our customers over time. This is what we concentrate on”.
And for them to make you a bespoke shirt, you had to turn up too. Charvet was, is and probably will remain, very much a hands-on experience.

Jean-Claude Colban in front of his cutting table. The seamstresses collect sheets of silk and finish them off site before dropping them back as finished ties. 

Testimonials - We Need Them And We Receive Them Graciously

One day soon I will die, by soon I hope it will be 45 years, but in the scheme of the billions of years our planet has existed, I mean really soon. And all that I will leave behind will be some digital photography and some ties in people's drawers and as they get old, so too may their collection of bow ties if they don't look after them. Then one day, some day, I will be a period piece and somebody will rummage through 'The Old Internet' and discover some wonderful portraits of our customers and they will somehow think that this represented the manner in which people of a sub-sect of society dressed in that period. And, maybe, some historian will use a cache of the images somewhere and in turn it will become a minor exhibition within a larger exhibition which talks of the early days of the internet... I might be getting away from myself but stranger things have transpired. I mean to say, there was an exhibit in the city of Sydney of 1920's gangster mug shots, why not our images? Our portraits might be just as alluring in years to come to people who want to hob nob around a museum one lazy Saturday.

And so the point of it all is that our images are not enough. Just like my favourite Instagram handles that I follow, the best of them are always a mix of pictures and vignettes, well crafted and thought out, to add some background and story to the image to really romance us.

Those same words, when applied to our products, obviously help the customer on the other side of the world decide that we really are who we say we are. And the honour, it seems, is that because we wrote a blog that attempts to talk about matters in an attempted high-brow manner, when our customers write in, they often seem just as high-brow and with an even great eloquence than the author of this blog. How can you tell an American that a little Studio in Sydney really does make the best luxury satin silk bow ties around, or that we offer the best quality woven jacquard silks from the best looms in Europe? The simple answer is, you get another American to tell them in their own words.

In short, we love your testimonials, keep sending them in. :) 

Ken Burns - The Vietnam War - Superb Netflix Television

I would have thought that in my current frame of mind, watching a Ken Burns documentary might be the wrong thing to do. However, it's had quite the opposite effect on me. It is so enlightening and shows so much of the spectrum of humanity that I find myself glued to it every evening and last night I could not wait for a futurist to get off the podium at an event so I could get home and watch the next episode. 

Ken Burns breathes life into the subjects he tackles. I have been enamoured with his work, having never heard about him until last year (I can't pretend I was there since the beginning). I started with a documentary he did on the Roosevelts that had me streaming with tears. Then last year whilst stuck for things to do in the evening on a ski adventure I tackled The West. After that I tore through The American Civil War sucking up as much of the history of the country as possible and felt at the end like I was starting to get a real grip on how the States formed into what it is today. I fell asleep too often on his Jazz and World War II documentaries that I think I finished neither. 

Last week I saw that Netflix Australia had released The Vietnam War and of course I put everything aside to consume as much of this as possible in as short a frame as I could cram it in.

What a documentary! The soundtrack is just magic, the footage so much more dynamic than what could be mustered for The Roosevelts and The Civil War. Photo journalism and video that makes you privy to some of the most disturbing warfare that I have ever witnessed. The savagery of both sides, what human beings are capable of doing to one another, and the bungled judgements of successive US Presidents and their cabinet and advisers compounding the problem. 

'There is a solution to everything but death" I was once told by an ex-girlfriend who quoted her father before he passed away unexpectedly. And in the case of Vietnam, the solution was that it was in fact unsolvable and unwinnable but still the US government pursued it's cause. Whether the domino effect might have come into effect had they gotten out sooner, nobody will ever know. But they didn't and since Macnamara knew the war was doomed from 1966 it is understandable how angry and upset those veterans are that saw the war continue to go on until 1975 (note combat troops left 73).

For me, having studied the Vietnam War in modern history at high school and having a teacher say 'now turn to the chapter titled Operation Rolling Thunder' was so limited. What Ken Burns and Lynn Novick do is to make it a tale that often feels like it is the documentary version of Forest Gump. Such wonderful music and such remarkable footage from both domestic USA and on the battle field and in the streets of Saigon. I just feel like I am finally getting the modern history lesson I did not get in high school. 

If you haven't watched it, watch it. 

The Gift That Keeps On Giving - A Bow Tie Is Something That Can Be Passed On For Generations If You Care For It Correctly

Very few of our customers ever go to our HOW TO CARE PAGE of our website and subsequently get frustrated when, after a few wears, especially with a grating clear shaven face, they start to get frays on the edges of the bow ties. It can be remedied with fingers scissors and a small bic lighter in less than two minutes but for those without finger scissors and who don't smoke, this can often cause alarm before an event. However, coupled with dry cleaning occasionally and pressing the silk correctly with cloth between so that the silk doesn't get scolded, your bow tie, cared for, might last more than two generations. And that's not a joke. There are collections of bow ties from men who wore them in the 1920's that form parts of estate auctions that still look beautiful today albeit with a certain vintage feel for them. It is our job to make the best bow ties, but it is the responsibility of the customer to maintain them. So, if you haven't thought about some noeud papillon TLC lately, perhaps, in the depth of an Australian winter, you can sit by the fire and prune your bow ties one lazy Saturday afternoon.

For those if you who seek new bow ties sent in our new textured gold paper gift boxes, click on this link. We are currently working on a new range of silks but there are still a few heirlooms on the site. 

Please Don't Listen To This Unless You Feel Like Breaking Apart For The Evening - Who Knows Where The Time Goes ?

I walk with a particularly smart fellow, one who can talk derivatives and mathematics before switching to film and literature and then on to music. Yesterday morning I had to ask him to stop. He was in the middle of giving me a run down on the latest Russian films he'd watched and I turned to him and said 'enough, I feel like my brain has been pruned'. Incidentally, I had done the same to someone in my life last year and she would stop me in my tracks and say 'Nicholas, stop, I just can't absorb anymore'. Sometimes we get like that, don't we.

But, he did steer me to one particular song after we got onto the topic of Nina Simone and her voracious appetite for men accompanied by her very serious bi-polar condition and bi-sexuality. I was quoting her journals that were quoted in that wonderful Netflix 'What Happened Miss Simone? ' , the title, I believe, being a reference to a Maya Angelou poem. He said softly to me as we made our way along New South Head Road, just near the part where you get a big glimpse of the harbour, a very clear and fresh morning ' of all the songs of Nina Simone, my favourite must be 'Who Knows Where The Time Goes?' .

I was at home in the evening, still suffering that general malaise of taking stock of my life when I decided to put on my air phones and listen to the song and I got lulled into an emotional Sunday night considering all the things that had transpired in the last decade and wondering where all the time had gone. Two weeks earlier I was writing all this sort of optimistic gratitude sort of stuff, which I believed then and I believe now, but no, now it was catching up. And having been sober for 4 months with one night off for my birthday, I was processing it all in a very raw manner. Normally the tears would flow as the whisky bottle reached half way, but in the morning in a haze and smelling of cigarettes, you make you way to the shower and try to scrub it off. But when you are perfectly sober and come up against the same currents, well it cuts much deeper.

I do not encourage you to listen to this song unless you are in that mode where you are ready to shed a skin. It has that melancholic cadence and haunting suffering that sits behind the voice of Nina Simone and it almost demands that you take stock of life and weep.

Who knows where the time goes, who knows?

Creed Viking - New But Old - Going Out With New Dispatches

Creed Viking is the latest scent to be released by Creed and I picked up a bottle recently so I could get our customers to experience the masculinity of the scent. It's not something that is a natural fit for me but I think it will resonate with our customers, even if just to get an idea of the scent. Creed does not release fragrances often, the last one being Aventus 6 years ago. The notes suggest something which does not exactly marry with my experience but I am told that Viking goes on strong and then mellows over the hours. 

To my mind the fragrance reminds me of new but old sunglasses. The kind of eyewear that was perhaps designed in the 80's but looked so interesting for the time that they still look modern in 2018. That's my impression of Viking. But you can be the judge when it heads out.

CREED VIKING NOTES

Top note: Calabrian Bergamot, Sicilian Lemon, La Réunion Baie Rose (pink peppercorn) 

Middle note: Peppercorn, Bulgarian Rose, peppermint 

Base note: Indian Sandalwood, Haitian Vetiver, Indian Patchouli, Lavandin Absolute

A Few Portraits From Our Portrait Competition Which Closed Off 30th June

The portrait competition has closed. Participants were asked to tag us on Instagram with our handle @lenoeudpapillon or else with the hashtag #lenoeudpapillon. The winner will receive a $1500.00 gift voucher. 

The portait competitions have always been fun because it allows us to see how our customers wear our products, it gives us a window into their respective worlds, a glance at their character as well as their sense of style which reflects that.

I get a thrill because the images come from far and wide. Zac posted in from Venice, David from Sag Harbour, Andy from California and some of the enthusiast bow tie wearers of Sydney. 

In one post the customer said he felt he was wearing a little piece of art around his neck and that he might like to sleep with it on. I wasn't sure I could do the same but I was chuffed he loved it that much. 

And finally, the thing I love about the portrait competition is the same thing I love about psychology and group therapy - that roughly speaking, though we are individualists, we are all interconnected as human beings and though our stories will each tell a different tale, joined together they are stories of one broader life experience.

Thank you for sending in your portraits, I will narrow down a select few and then choose a winner.

Regards,

Nicholas.