Gilt Plane to Jakarta: New style thread

[Bernard]

Any of you dudes familiar with Harris Tweed? What are its properties? They've got a bolt in at my local fabric shop and I'm wondering if it's really worth $4/yard more than a non-name tweed. It's about 2/3 as wide, too, so per square inch it's actually more than $4 more. I could squeeze a little tweed hacking jacket or something for HT out of it.

[coldforge]

Harris tweed is good shit. But it doesn't have any properties that you wouldn't be able to observe just by handling it.

[Bernard]

On personal examination it appears to be not remarkably different from other wools of similar weight. Perhaps the weave is a little tighter, creating a denser fabric, and the black and white are a little softer. By comparison, an unbranded and similar wool (the one they have is a b/w herringbone) is a trifle garish. Maybe if I find one of the patterns I have really cries out for it.

[ellaguru]

In my thrift store days I sported some fine Harris tweed sports coats. I recommend them. In my experience they are all $5 and about 40 years old.

[Antero]

I need some tweed coats.  I've got tweed pants, and I enjoy them greatly.  I need tweed EVERYTHING.

[Antero]

Ayo, input needed.  I'm going to a close friend's wedding in a couple weeks.  I'm not in the wedding party so I have no uniform requirements, and I'm a man of class so I'm going to be wearing a proper suit (navy).  It's going to be a pretty fly wedding too, since both families have cash.

Now the question is: Shoes?  I've got the proper black cap-toe oxfords (court shoes!), and I've also got a pair of less-formal dark-brown shoes.  Am I obligated to wear the more formal black shoes?  I can see that argument, but on the other hand I'm trying to pack very light (a few days in NYC first) and the brown shoes will kind of go with anything I own and look appropriate, whereas cap-toe oxfords and jeans seems like idiocy and I'd need a second pair of shoes with me.

[Bernard]

How much less formal?

And ellaguru, I hadn't thought of looking for a coat in a thrift shop. I could presumably cut it down into a tiny coat with no problem.

[clare]

Navy suit and brown shoes sounds wrong to me, no matter how light you have to pack, but I guess "what kind of brown?" is relevant.

[Bernard]

Really? I guess I automatically assumed it would be a shade of brown that worked with the navy, but yeah, now you mention it, there are many combinations of those two that would look awkward.

Man, you really can find anything on the internet: http://www.gq.com/style/style-guy/shoes/200501/navy-suit-brown

I was picturing this:
http://freshlyeducatedmen.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/brown-shoes-blue-suit-60508-1.jpg

More than this:
http://i32.tinypic.com/2lbf0x3.jpg

[coldforge]

Brown shoes are conventionally worn with navy, so no problem there. The only place that navy + brown is still frowned upon is the highest strata of British business and law. If they're nice brown shoes and you have a nice brown belt, you shouldn't feel any compunction.

[jess]

Yeah, I don't think navy and brown are wrong—I wear my brown boots with my darker navy dress for example—but I guess it might depend on the navy and brown in question.

[elpollodiablo]

I just got a great new Columbia water-resistant jacket for biking. It's trim and black and makes me look like Fat Special Forces. I rode from the office-home today in the rain and the water just beaded up and rolled off.

[Antero]

Brown shoes are conventionally worn with navy, so no problem there. The only place that navy + brown is still frowned upon is the highest strata of British business and law. If they're nice brown shoes and you have a nice brown belt, you shouldn't feel any compunction.

Yeah, I'm certainly not worried about the British.  As long as there's no wedding rule I'm good to go.

I kind of think navy with black shoes is fairly dull, unless it's a very plain navy.

[coldforge]

There really isn't any color of brown that is a priori inappropriate to wear with navy clothes. Of course it also bears mentioning that a tan or chili shoe is going to be more casual than a mahogany. Really, if you're looking for hard rules, there's 'no brown in town'—generally brown is associated with the country and the city is reserved for black. But that is unsurprisingly a verrry old fashioned and Old World rule.

To be honest if I had to make that decision according to a single criterion it would be time of day; daytime wedding, bring the brown. Night time wedding, pack the black.

Also, you can wear black captoes with jeans comfortably if you're a little canny about it and they're the right jeans.

[Antero]

To be honest if I had to make that decision according to a single criterion it would be time of day; daytime wedding, bring the brown. Night time wedding, pack the black.

That's a good point, I forgot to check.

*checks*

4:30 PM.  So that's...

*facepalm*

[coldforge]

Where's the wedding? Outdoors or indoor?

[Antero]

Probably inside, I don't know if I'd bet on Boston weather quite yet.  That would probably lean towards black, no?

[coldforge]

Boston, higher latitudes, colder weather. Anglo-Saxon pretensions. Let it be black. My ruling is delivered. Bring with you a pair of dark raw denim, a sturdy belt (if you can, you may bring two: one dress, one other), and sin no more.

[Antero]

*salutes*

I'm still not rocking the raw denim thing yet.  Is it really worth it?  Is it just A Thing?

[Greg Nog]

Boston wedding? Windbreaker and Sox cap, New Balance for the feet.

[Bernard]

Parka with software logo, baseball cap from the Gap, khaki shorts, white athletic socks, Teva sandals.

It's the baseball cap that makes it formal.

[jess]

if this is a Boston WASP wedding, all that really matters is that you come with a minimal appetite and ready to drink a minimum of four martinis. Eat the olives—you will need them.

[coldforge]

*salutes*

I'm still not rocking the raw denim thing yet.  Is it really worth it?  Is it just A Thing?

It's complicated. The thing that one can say about raw denim is that if you look into buying raw denim, you will in all likelihood pay considerably more attention to the cloth itself than otherwise; and if you buy from raw denim producers, the manufacturers probably have done the same.

That said, high quality raw denim, with high quality indigo, fades and breaks down in a beautiful way that cannot be replicated by any other means. And that's the game for some folks.

[Antero]

Do you have to do the "I wore these for six months every day without washing them!" thing?

if this is a Boston WASP wedding, all that really matters is that you come with a minimal appetite and ready to drink a minimum of four martinis. Eat the olives—you will need them.

My boy's LA-bred.  He and his fiancee are, like, having a personal flock of ducks slaughtered.  No lie.

They also had a problem a few months back trying to choose minimalist/modernist compositions for the processional that wouldn't frighten or confuse their less-interesting relatives.

[jess]

Awesome, if I were still in Boston, I might ask if I could crash—a personal fleet of ducks sounds delicious. They probably deserve the fancy shoes.