Tan Loafer and Belt Thursday. . .

A sunny, cool autumn day here in Mid-Michigan today, so out came the light tan loafers and belt to wear with a sports jacket from Hickey-Freeman, navy grenadine tie from Chipp, a white OCBD-collar shirt, and some wonderfully soft wool flannel pants from Luciano Barbera.

The latter have been hanging in the overflow closet in the TV room across the hall from our bedroom for about a year, but I only managed to get them to the tailor in May. So, this is their first outing. The pants are more taupe than they appear in the photograph.

The monkstrap loafers, from Allen Edmonds, are a recent acquisition to replace a similar previous pair that were always too stubby looking on my narrow feet. The last on which these were made has a more pleasing, elongated appearance in my view. The matching leather belt (Ben Silver) was a birthday gift last year from The Grand Duchess by the way.

Now, some visitors might tsk-tsk my choice of light tan shoe for today, or suggest a more expensive brand like Alden. First, I would most likely never wear light tan shoes with a dark suit, but possibly a light beige summer cotton number, or a light tan linen model. Hmmm, I'll file that idea away for next summer since we are definitely now beyond cotton/linen/Madras/seersucker suit weather in my neck of the woods.

Second, I will indeed treat myself to a pair or two of Aldens the next time I purchase a pair of leather dress shoes. The trouble is, I don't really need anything at this point, and I am pretty easy on shoes anyway beyond the occasional resoling and related recrafting of the internal footbed, which the folks at Allen Edmonds do very nicely. And for a pretty reasonable price, thank you very much.

Make do and mend as it were. Leather dress shoes are, after all, not something to throw away like a pair of smelly, old athletic shoes. A decent pair that is occasionally moisturized and polished up, lives with cedar shoe trees inside when not on your feet, and is maintained by a cobbler when needed, simply gets better with time as shine and/or patina develop and deepen. Nevertheless, some of the Alden models of dress shoe are lovely to behold.

Ok, enough of this sartorial frivolity! Time to get some actual work done for the day now.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

Comments

Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake. J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville. A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended. But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available. In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination. I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age. As it is, my sister and

Classic Style

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