The II Earl

The Man in The  Brooks Brothers  Shirt I n 1993, five-odd years under new owners Marks & Spencer, now widely agreed to have veered the brand drastically off course, Brooks Brothers took out a six-page advertorial in The Atlantic Monthly celebrating its 175 years in business. Literary heavyweight  George Plimpton  was hired to write the text, which combines history with everyday goings-on at the Madison Avenue flagship. * * * Under The Golden Fleece By George Plimpton Asked to check out Brooks Brothers on its 175th anniversary, I thought it best to outfit myself for the visit from head to foot in their clothing. It was not too difficult, since I have been a patron for years, as was my father before me, and his father before him. I missed out only on the shoes. I have an unnaturally wide foot, a triple E, and their shoe department stops at a single E, shoes that would have caused a wince at every step if I could have squeezed into them. But the rest was all theirs ...

B ack in the 1950s, the bourbon industry was still very much recovering from prohibition in America which had ended less than two decades earlier. Nearly all distillers were focused on the arduous (and, some would say, idiotic) pursuit of making ends meet in a business model that demanded they invest fortunes to produce a product that required years and years of maturing before any return was realized. And the distilleries at the time reflected this single-minded pursuit. Like the whisky they were making at the time, distilleries were harsh, intense, and largely unappealing – as unattractive a place to spend time as any noisy, dangerous and intense plant in the post-war industrialized world. And yet one individual had a bigger vision for what a bourbon distillery could be. What if, instead of just a site where you produced and manufactured bourbon whisky, a distillery was a welcoming, charming place where you could host vis...

Perhaps considered a simple accessory in the modern era, the history of the handkerchief tells us it is anything but, where its multifarious symbolisms throughout historical culture is quite something to behold. The Effect of Principle, Behold the Man (Handkerchief) - c. 1806 - Attributed to John Hewson (American, born England, 1744-1821) After Gilbert Stuart. (Photo courtesy of Getty Images) W hen, in the 1930s, Kleenex produced their slogan “Don’t carry a cold in your pocket” the death knell of the handkerchief’s ubiquity had been rung. Once an object to initiate a meet cute, or a talisman of good fortune and sexual intention, it was soon to become an optional accessory lying dormant till, say, a global pandemic were to bring it back in from the wilderness. Like all the best stuff, the handkerchief’s allure lies not so much in its practicality, but in its history. Whereas its sartorial br...

from Country life Nancy Mitford has a lot to answer for. It was she who, in 1955, set out in print what had never been written before – the unspoken rules for being ‘U’ or upper-class, and ‘non-U’. Her article, published in the CIA-funded magazine, Encounter, provoked an outcry, not least from her old friend Evelyn Waugh. In an open letter denouncing her for lobbing this grenade into British society, he wrote: ‘There are subjects too intimate for print. Surely class is one?’  Reading Mitford’s essay now, you realise how quickly everything changes. Back then, her observations on class were based on language – whether you ‘took a bath’ (non-U) or ‘had one’s bath’ (U). Whether you said ‘chimneypiece’ (U) or ‘mantelpiece’ (non-U). Today, having a bathtub at all is a sign of leisure, and therefore U (showers being much more common in every sense), while having a fireplace has become similarly recherché – and therefore U – in an age of remotely c...

The whole point of being in your teens is that you wear clothes in a slovenly manner, kick a football around in it and go to the sheds for a cigarette, ready to leg it if a teacher comes. It doesn’t exactly foster good sartorial discipline and frankly there is no point in the process of growing up if you dress like a grown man in your teens. We all have to remember the punk movement happened for a reason, we should all go a bit bonkers in our student years, try everything we need to and see what works after. Tailoring can wait. But if there are any old Etonians reading (a test of loyalty here for my dear twin), do take my sympathy as genuine, there is no reason you can really know what morning dress can look like and who can blame you. Now that Ascot has kicked off, and weddings are optimum British - all the pew squishing and hymn singing with none of the dancing - I thought a reminder might be in order. When you put on your morning dress, you have to think of the three F’s, fit,...

In this realm we call ‘Earth’, the glorious diversity of God’s creation has led to the development of some eccentric traditions.  Many of these revolve around the peculiar relationship between mankind and the animal kingdom. For instance, the Spanish have developed a habit of dancing around bulls, the native Americans like wrestling alligators and the Chinese enjoy eating bats. Whilst these actions seem bizarre from afar, they represent an essential, irreplaceable part of the cultures from which they were born. The Spanish are flamboyant risk-takers who possess the capacity for lethal violence. The native Americans lived a more ‘hands-on’ natural life than almost any other people. And the Chinese, well, the Chinese are just weirdos.  They’ll eat anything. Literally… anything. Cats, dogs, bats, you name it, the Chinese will boil it alive and serve it as soup. As British people, we should not ...