Great Grandpa Jack – Old World Sprezzatura
Meet Great-Grandpa Jack. Last week I went to visit some family in New Jersey and went digging through old photos and books at my grandparents’ house. I’d somehow never seen this photo before, but I just couldn’t get over how great this guy looked. People spend their whole lives trying to look this good in their clothes, and Great-Grandpa Jack looked like he’d been born in them.
Cordovan Week – Color
It’s Friday, so time for some seriously lust-worthy shoes. Everyone knows cordovan comes in Colors #6 and #8. This is in fact responsible for the slippage of the word cordovan into being used for any shoe with a reddish-burgundy hue. The shoe fanatics know about the harder-to-find Ravello and Cigar, and things progress from there.
Cordovan Week – Care
Just as you don’t care for a cotton poplin shirt the same way you would care for a flannel coat, you don’t treat cordovan like other leathers. Giving them a good cleaning and polish starts relatively the same way, with a vigorous brushing, but then you can pull out your trusty deer bone. Yes a dear bone.
Cordovan Week – Production
Cordovan is one of those fanatic-inspiring phenomena. When talking about it, words like “love” and “obsessed” are run-of-the-mill. But, even with all the ink spilled (or pixels in many cases), I’m yet to find a single source that covers all the cordovan basics. Here’s my attempt at solving the problem – Cordovan Week on Simply Refined.
Perplexing Patterns
You may have seen the other day when I bemoaned Mr. Wooster’s seemingly out-of-place cordovan boots. Or not. Either way, forget the boots at just look at how this man mixes patterns. I stumbled upon this picture in Men of Habit’s great article on beards, but for our purposes you can forget everything above the collar.
