The Pocket Square

I adore this Mad Men avatar generator. Here’s the Sterling Cooper version of me, replete with bowtie and classy briefcase!

One of my favorite style blogs, All Plaidout by Max Wastler, asked me to contribute a Father’s Day tribute to my pop. The week before Father’s Day Max ran guest posts from writers across the men’s style spectrum in a series called What I Learned from My Father. Have a look at mine, and be sure to check them all out. Good ones all around.

The photo above was taken of me and my dad at my wedding in October of 2007. The photo is by Alexis Tjian.

Here’s what I had to say about my dad:

If we accept the notion, and teams of advertisers are hoping we do, that our clothes are some direct representation of who we are, then my father is a man unfettered. Bolo ties, multi-hued batiked shorts, a plumed fedora, and of late, even a warm, woolen beret have found their way into his wardrobe. He runs around the Northern California town in which I grew up in clothes I would never wear, stalking the garden in Keens, a tasseled fleece jester hat flapping behind him while snowboarding, the suspenders and 20s-inspired garb he sported at his wedding two years ago.

He didn’t always dress with such abandon, and in the main he still doesn’t. Most of his clothes are those of a small-town carpenter: work boots, dirty jeans, fleece jackets and t-shirts bearing his company’s logo. Growing up, working clothes defined my father’s style of dress—not the work wear now so voraciously embraced by the urban fashion set, work clothes in which you paint a house or set forms, work clothes you mar, then quickly destroy. Anything that was initially to be kept apart from the jobsite—corduroy pants or button-down shirt—invariably came home with flecks of dried concrete or marked with spray paint. He seemed to me a man largely defined by his work, and was at times reluctant to extend beyond that, and he dressed accordingly. Fashion was not his concern. He kept his head down. Little suggested an inconsequential person more than undue flash.

But since my parents’ divorce nearly seven years ago, this inward man has expanded. Suddenly free to break from old routines, root out what was inessential and honestly reckon with what he wanted from the rest of his life, the burdens of a long marriage and a glimpse of what might lay in store invigorated him. Bouts of sullenness, or ill-temper, things that I had taken to be essential elements of his personality were revealed as little more than entrenched habit, and were cast off. He became lighter, more open, more accepting and more fun. He had always been a very kind, generous and loving father, and I saw these qualities, those which I take to be his core, renewed. Like many things in his life, his sense of style was in for renaissance.

Now let me reiterate, I’m not terribly sanguine with all his choices, but to see him embrace so many new aspects of his life has been a joy for me. From his wild hats to his Jack Nicholson glasses to his bright yellow shirts, dressing is now one of his pleasures. He’s given himself license to play, to dress for pleasure, and for all the snappy patter in the media about what’s in, what’s out and what’s next, let us–men who give it a second thought when we put on our clothes in the morning–never forget to dress for the sheer fun of it. Perish vanity, perish self-consciousness, perish trends.

For years my dad didn’t allow himself to dress for any reason save keeping out the cold. But of late his whole outlook has changed, and though he remains uninterested in what’s cool or what’s in, he has started asking himself, “What do I like?” In dressing to please only himself, in coming to see his clothes at as another avenue for expression and delight, my father has immensely pleased me. May I one day pass on that idea, that a man can do a thing to please himself without becoming inauthentic or solipsistic, to a son of my own.

- Aaron Britt

Fida, Jordan and I dropped into the Kilian fragrance party tonight at the Serge Sorokko Gallery on Grant St. Kilian Hennessy, parfumier, was on hand to hawk his latest line of wares including the men’s scents Straight to Heaven and A Taste of Heaven, each of which had a strong, clean masculine smell. The usual battery of black-clad waiters wandered around with boat-like endives and glasses of bubbling Veuve Clicquot rosé, no great surprise considering Hennesy’s the heir to the LVMH empire.

The Sorokko Gallery was an apt space considering the chichi nature of the whole affair, but the usual crowd of pricily-coiffed society types trotting out the latest cotoure and spikiest heels left one rather pleased to be left out of that particular demi-monde. I did wander off with a gift bag, though, and appear to have my choice of perfume samples. I don’t typically wear the stuff, so we’ll see how a splash tomorrow morning goes over. It will have to make a pretty big impression, however, because at $225 per overwrought bottle–an exercise in useless luxury design if I ever saw one–I’ll happily stick to the Old Spice. To Hennesy’s credit though, the bottle is made to be refilled, sparing the consumer the need to buy a whole new bottle when he’s simply out of cologne. Justifying the rest of it is on your soul.

After the party we three then hopped on down to Camper where I spied, for the first time in the flesh, the pair of plimsolls that have captured my heart. Mediterranean Sneakers, you shall be mine.

Jeans galore and beers to match at the Self Edge/Style Forum party last night on Valencia St.

After a late dinner of salad and Spanish tortilla–I do make a mean tortilla–Drew and I took a walk down Valencia St. and stopped into Self Edge as the Self Edge/Style Forum party was winding down. I missed the old time motorcycles that Paul d’Orleans had brought over for the event, but was happy to arrive when I did. The chilled-out vibe and not-too-crowded lower level made for easy browsing and an unexpectedly interesting theological debate with Mark Miller, a professor of Catholic Studies at USF.

I approached Mark to compliment him on his rather natty double-breasted chambray blazer, but before long things turned to precisely why God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against the Jews as they sought to gain their freedom in Exodus. It’s been on my mind lately as Drew and I prepare for our annual seder this Wednesday, and it seems that God deliberately set up Pharaoh as an adversary to the Jews with no possible chance of his freeing them on his own. Drew made the point that the Exodus story is more about the founding of a nation than anything else, and though it works as a narrative device, it certainly appears that God’s love isn’t available to all when he sets certain people against him. Mark argued that God’s love is available to all–certainly a more embracing Catholic notion than the chosen people mentality of the Old Testament–but in my view he didn’t fully satisfy the question. He talked about Pharaoh turning away from God and essentially hardening his own heart, but I still read it as the first step in a display of God’s power to and for the Israelites (the plagues, parting the Red Sea) not to all of his creations.

Another element of the Exodus story with which I have always struggled is how Pharaoh’s magicians managed to perform some of the same feats as Moses and Aaron, such as turning their staffs into snakes. On what power do the magicians draw? Demons, their own gods? If there are no other gods than the God of Israel, and Exodus is certainly His book, whence the ability to turn staffs into snakes unless it is in fact God who is doing it. Considering that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to display his might to his people, certainly doing the covert bidding of the magicians only adds to the theater. Puzzling, and at some level, rather disquieting.

Nonetheless, it was a really fun time so thanks to Kiya at Self Edge and to Style Forum for a fun night.

The very mid-century modern facade of San Francisco's new Paul Smith store at 50 Geary. Photo from www.paulsmith.co.uk

I attended the Paul Smith opening party at 50 Geary St. on Thursday, and for all the worry over who got in and out–a trio of profoundly mascaraed blonds in black busily womaned the door–the sheer number of people (about 600 Smith estimated) inside the London fashion guru’s new retail space put one in mind of a tube station at rush hour. In terms of fashion, the gents, peacocking in all manner of springy neckwear and colorful pants, far outstripped the decidedly more sedate ladies, and Smith himself looked dapper in a navy suit and pink open-collared shirt. The man of the hour moved through the crush with ease, if only because everyone wanted to shake his golden hand–though one did overhear quite a few mildly-panicked whisperers bleating, “He’s here?!?! Which one is he.” Joy Bianchi, looking like the lost bride of Le Corbusier in her signature thick black frames had little trouble finding the man, nor did Apple design don Jonathan Ive, a man whose sartorial stylings extend, thankfully, beyond iPod white. Willie Brown made nice with the swells, though his broad-shouldered woolen suit and peaked pocket square evoked the powerful torsos of the 40s and 50s more readily than the reedy chests conjured by Smith’s Swingin Sixties cuts.

Robert Wallace, a jet setting window dresser and interiors fixer in Smith’s employ aptly described the large store’s concept as mid-century modern in front with a nod to a rather more buttoned-up British clothiers, wooden wainscoting and all, in back. Vintage bric-a-brac sat alongside the pricey clothes and the break in aesthetic from front to back deftly alluded to the the two traditions out of which Smith’s aesthetic was born. Design aside, one of the most hotly-anticipated elements of the evening was of course the gift bags. A purple Paul Smith toothbrush was the most coveted swag, though the long arm of the New York media world reached even into the flimsy black totes handed out at the door: No one left without the new issue of Vanity Fair and a book of essays on the movies edited by Graydon Carter. But only to be a lonely outpost, so far from the center of the world. I’ve yet to use the toothbrush, but I did port my Paul Smith tote, a tossed-off thing at best, around Glen Park Canyon on a long walk today. It did the trick but is certainly nothing to write home about. Though apparently it is something to blog about. Hmm.

I got the purple one.

A truncated version of my thoughts on the party appeared in today’s San Francisco Chronicle in the Style Section. For a video of Smith wandering around inside his store, 7×7 has the goods.

The latest edition of my column, The Pocket Square (check out the archive here), is out in the San Francisco Chronicle today. I took up ballpark style, a tricky issue at times considering what a sartorial minefield sportswear can be. I’ll actually be attending the the A’s-Red Sox game a week from Monday at the Coliseum so we’ll see how the gents fare fashion-wise. I presume that straw boaters and spectators are out of the question, though you never know when Chicken John will show up. I went to a party at Self Edge last night where I got to chatting with the owner Kiya and it seems that he’s a massive A’s fan so here’s hoping that he and I get to take in a game or two this season. I’m so thrilled that the show starts today and actually have moderately high hopes for both Bay Area squads. Now if only my beloved Nationals could catch a break and maybe, just maybe, win 75 games.

This Saturday, I sat down at Ritual Roasters Coffee with graphic designer and blogger Robert Hold, the man behind the blog Mr. Peacock for an interview. Oddly enough, he wanted to interview me, rather an unusual turn of events in this journalists’ life. We chatted for nearly two hours about fashion, our mutual affection for early British punk and how we both really like Washington DC. After I finished my coffee and he his chai, we went outside and Robert took my picture to run along with the interview on his site. Here’s the interview, which came out pretty well, I’d say, along with the photo of me (though my pants look a bit short when I put my hands in my pockets, I fear). Good job Robert, and I’m very pleased to have met you!

A photo of me at Valencia and Liberty taken by Robert Hold.