Classic Style

H appy 2017 everyone!  Do you have any particular resolutions for the new year?  Here are some of mine in no particular order: 1) Exercise more routinely. 2) Achieve a better work-life balance. 3) Read more fiction. 4) Enjoy, somehow, more free time. 5) Play more. 6) Spend more time with the Grand Duchess ad Young Master. 7) Listen to BBC Radio 4 online for at least 30 minutes everyday. 8) Do a better job of following world and domestic news and events. 9) Be more patient. 10) Listen to and play more music. 11) Make a tiny difference in someone's life. 12) Continue dressing with classic flair and style, or at least attempting to do so. Small things, really, but all things I'd like to do more of in the coming 12 months.  What about you? -- Heinz-Ulrich

One of my guilty pleasures is collecting Victorian and Edwardian images of Father Christmas.  I hope you might agree that this is one of the loveliest and most magical. M erry Christmas from all of us here at Classic Style! -- Heinz-Ulrich, The Grand Duchess, and The Young Master

  The first of two photographs today, taken just after the school bus departed at about 8:35am. A frigid day here at Totleigh-in-the-Wold.  Perfect weather for the pajama day they have decided to have today at our son's elementary school!  I kid you not.  Now, I like the teachers and administration at our son's school.  They have been most helpful, accommodating, and inclusive where our son is concerned during the last year.  But you can't help but wonder when messages are emailed/sent home about stuff like this.  And let's just forget for a moment that the very idea of pajama day runs counter to what I consider the dictates of good taste.  Sigh.  In any case, the weather is just how we like it in our neck o the wood.  Cold, snowy, Norwegian sweater weather.  Come to think of it, I'll wear one for my 2pm meeting on campus later this afternoon. -- Heinz-Ulrich And the second.  The snow is so ...

  My maternal grandfather, Dave, as a young paratrooper.  'Granddaddy' was originally an anti-aircraft gunner in a Pennsylvania German battery that guarded the Dutch refineries on Curacao in the Caribbean for a while .  I believe this photograph was taken shortly after he had completed jumpschool at Fort Benning, Georgia before shipping out for Great Britain sometime in 1944 and later France.  A soft-spoken and gentlemanly soul, he actually volunteered for both paratrooper and glider training!  Amazingly, he lived to tell the tale. My late grandmother, Vivian, or 'Granny' as my sister, cousins, and I called her.  I believe this photograph was taken around about the same time as my grandfather's above.  The two photographs were always displayed together in a hinged frame that I finally replaced a few years ago, so we could hang the two photographs on the wall more easily. My grandfather's parents, Myrtle and Tom, or 'Mother and Daddy Stok...

Mind your manners (table and otherwise) this holiday seasons, gents! T he holiday season is once more upon us, and with it the annual lead-up the rather frenetic Christmas and New Year's period.  While I naturally hope that regular and occasional visitors to Classic Style will have to good graces NOT to show up to any special holiday dinners or other events dressed in hoodies, sweatpants, sagging jeans, and flip-flops or sneakers -- or, frankly, any other common attire of the sort -- this post is not about that. Nope.  Instead, it's a yearly reminder to average guys everywhere to remember and practice polite table manners.  Not just on special occasions either, but everyday.  With that idea in mind, here is a reprise of a post from November of 2012 (with a few small recent edits by yours truly), which presents all kinds of useful tabletop information, most of which used to be common knowledge.  At least in my particular dimension.  Sad...

(In a Pathe Newsreel announcer's voice) Here's Heinz-Ulrich after the first sip of wine.  What a lightweight!  It doesn't take much to put him in the party mood.  More seriously, the salt shaker and pepper mill were my maternal grandmother's and were on her dining table all of my life until she presented them to me in 1994 when I left Pennsylvania to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  They have been on my own dining table ever since.  Oh, and out of sight on the lower half, a pair of balck tasseled loafers and some very subtle dark green and maroon plaid wool pants from Bill's Khakis of Reading, Pennsylvania. . .  My old stomping grounds in Berks County. The Grand Duchess enjoys her meal.  We had only just started with the wine, honest!  She also wore a dark red wool skirt and a pair of dress boots with high heels.     Up and around and into mischief once more, the Young Master models one of his ocbd shirts, a...

T o all U.S. visitors to Classic Style, I wish you a peaceful Thanksgiving Day wherever in the world you might find yourselves this year.  Regardless of whatever life drops in our laps, we nevertheless have a great deal to be thankful for in the everyday small things that we (probably) take for granted.  If we have the company of loved ones, a solid roof over our heads, enough on the table, gainful employment (maybe even a job we like), with a little extra for a rainy day, a few pleasurable diversions that bring us happiness, plus a life lived in relative safety, then we can count ourselves very fortunate indeed.  Many in the world lack one or more of these things and suffer for it.  We ought to keep that in mind. --Heinz-Ulrich von B.

The upper half today, featuring a wool challis necktie by Rooster.  Italian material hand-stitched in the U.S.A.  It's amazing what people will unwittingly unload on thrift/charity shops. And the lower half, featuring those recently recrafted Allen Edmonds suede  brogues once more and a pair of flying geese Merino wool dress socks by Dapper Classics. D ecidedly nippy here in Mid-Michigan today, so a perfect excuse to trot out this heavy tweed suit by Chipp for its inaugural wearing.  A lined, winter weight garment here kids., so it's got to be below 40 degrees Fahrenheit to wear this one comfortably.  The only alteration necessary was to have the waist of the pants taken in a bit, but otherwise, it fits very well.  A pleasing silhouette with slight waist suppression and side vents, shoulders with almost no padding, not too tight, but not billowing around me either with a medium break in the pants, which I wore with actual braces today. ...

The upper half today, featuring a thrifted Donegal Tweed jacket (with Gaelic language labels inside) and a thrifted Ancient Madder necktie among other things.   And the lower half, featuring freshly polished and buffed shoes along with a new pair of Merino wool Argyll socks from Dapper Classics. T he weather has at least turned cold here at Totliegh-in-the-Wold, but I'm not complaining.  It is, after all, late November in Michigan! -- Heinz-Ulrich

Every man should have a tie with shrimp on it in his wardrobe. And the bottom half.   I t seems winter weather has finally arrive here in my neck of the woods, so it might be a while before these calfskin monkstrap loafers see the light of day again. -- Heinz-Ulrich

As above. . . So below. D on't fret, ladies and gentlemen!  I tamed that pocket square with a mind of its own and stuffed it back down in my pocket just after snapping these photos early this last Wednesday morning. ------------ W oody Allen remarked in a 1977 New York Ti mes article, "Showing up is 80 percent of life."   ------------ S omeone, anyone, please inform those numerous undergraduate neer'do'wells I have each semester, who, despite having all of this information on the syllabus from Day One -- and keep in mind we talk incessantly about these assignments in my courses in the run up to paper due dates (Shame on me!  It's the way my courses are designed) -- somehow cannot manage to develop , polish, and turn in on time ( if at all ) four 3-4 page, double-spaced papers .   Keep in mind, t here isn't even a research component to these four assignments, due at four-week intervals.  Students must simply formulate carefully ...

The upper half today, another delightfully soft and warm Ralph Lauren wool flannel suit complete with my 'Drones Club' necktie.  The stripes are in the wrong direction on this Brooks Brothers number, but otherwise, said item looks strikingly like the tie worn by club members in the Wodehouse stories. And the lower half. Finally, here is a close-up to showcase the Barney's cufflinks I was given by my younger sister for my recent birthday. O verkill (for a public university campus in the United States at least) was the name of the game this morning, but I felt good, and that's the main thing.   It strikes me that, among the menswear blogeratti at least, there is way too much anxiety about wearing a suit in 2016.  You know the kind of thing I mean.  To wit: When do I wear one?  How do I wear one?  Why should I wear one?  Where do I wear one?  Is it appropriate to wear one?  Am I trying too hard if I wear one?  Wi...