A Walk Through the Park in the Himel Excelsior

 Last fall I left for NYC early enough on a Friday morning to see the sun rise over the City.  Always a beautiful thing.  I hadn’t anticipated the unusually warm temperatures or the bright, clear skies.  The weather was to bless us the entire day.

I’d gone to the City for a weekend of work but, lucky me, I can often dress as I please.  My plan was to drop off my bag quickly and meet a very good friend for an early lunch.  We were then going to amble, take a planfree saunter about our familiar vicinage, without need for much schedule.  It was at last post-Covid enough to meander indifferently bemused by the sites of the metropolis.

 

When I travel light I’ll bring only the boots I’m wearing and one jacket, especially if I’m not obliged to assume another persona.  Here’s the bluff run down on the kit: selvedge denim from Ooe Yofukuten and Clinch Yeager boots in dark horse butt brown---both via the inimitable purveyance that is Standard & Strange.  The short sleeve loop wheel tee from The Real McCoys I’d chosen seemed just right under the even brighter star of the show, the Himel Bros Excelsior jacket, made unlined in Shinki’s black pigment finish.

 

A jacket for the ages deserves more than a good walk.  So a prelude and panegyric first to such wondrous artistry.

 

Himel’s Excelsior is a slightly sleeker, more depurated version of the Cossack styled Heron A-1, the jacket that may well be Himel’s most diagnostic.  It would be unfair to delimit Himel Bros to just one signature but the Heron could suffice because it is so often imitated and still unequalled.  I’m not done yet with this effusion: the Heron warrants more attention.

 

As fluently as David Himel time tunnels through the provenance of leather jackets and across all continents there is also something decidedly Canadian about his Heron.  There is something pliable, even tractable about the Heron’s sensibility.  But it also guileful and damn good humoured [sic].  The jacket’s design evokes its name.  And vice-versa.

 

Himel’s Heron is named for the bird that stands as still as Dogen sits in zazen and flies with the same fluid serenity it has known since the Jurassic.  It also happens to be a symbol of good luck and prosperity to Canada’s First Peoples.  In every way it’s just redolent with Canadaness.

 

The Heron’s design warrants such florid comparison: it will prove a classic in any future for all the ways past that will be compared.  I think it unsurpassed in the worlds of bespoke leather because its design rises to the occasion of singularity in a world of emulators, enthusiasts, imitators, and worthy competitors.  (I speak from my own promiscuous experience: I have more than one Heron because once you have one you couldn’t possible not want to have another.  Also, there are plenty of other nice Cossack designs and this is no zero sum game, even if the Heron is the benchmark.)

 

Now that said, the Excelsior jacket clearly takes its cues from the Heron.  I think Dave came up with the jacket before he had the name but the Latin adjective means “higher” or more elevated, and of course “excelsior” has served on New York’s coat of arms since 1788--- even if Canada is actually more “ever upward” from my perch here in the Finger Lakes.  Himel and I look across the same Great Lake of Shining Waters since we share a common border.  It only makes sense that the Heron has come to Excelsior, no?

The Excelsior noticeably modifies the Heron’s cherubic collar to a less conspicuous demeanor thus offering a slightly more modern, colonial flare. It also replaces Heron’s patch pockets with slashes ingeniously stitched with a pointed gusset that prevents them from tearing with hard use.  I have spent many a moment stuffing my hands hard into the Excelsior’s pockets with no signs of attrition.

 

Though bespoke means you can ask for the fit you have in mind, my Heron is a bit more blousy in the style of a 30s rider’s fit while the Excelsior takes the same buttoned-up A-1 style and slims it ever so slightly through the sides.  Himel makes both the Heron and Excelsior with a zipper front.  Even though Einstein called the zipper our greatest human invention, I maintain that buttons came first.  Mine are button-fronts that require a modest learning curve to master, another feature I prefer---you actually have to learn how to button up this jacket---and Dave will aptly demonstrate before you go tearing off a button and ruining a thread too soon.

Designing a horsehide jacket without a lining should come with caveats, advisories, moral portents, and honest words to the wise.  Himel offers all sorts of wonderful linings in cotton and wool, from camo to Pendelton.  If I were the recommending type, I would say choose a lining that suits you or let Himel choose.  You won't go wrong.  But sometimes a jacket should be drawn neat, and as David explained, that makes them harder to make.  An unlined jacket like this reveals all its techniques of construction.  When I asked David Himel for an Excelsior unlined he didn’t hesitate but reminded me that actually wearing such a jacket will prove an education.

 

The finest tanned horsehide is not for the brittle bodied or the squeamish---even pulling it on demands conscionable effort.  Without the lining your clothes sorta’ wanna’ stick to the insides even before your arms reach the sleeve-end and your bare skin will carp censoriously before you settle in all the way.  You don’t so much put on an unlined horsehide jacket as figure out how to wear another skin.   Literally.  This may not be your vibe so think twice about a lining.  The Manhattan story here will make this unsubtle.

What I didn’t anticipate this especially warm autumn day was the workout that the Himel Bros jacket was going to get and how the combination of weather and Manhattan ramble was going to bring it to a new level of evolution and actualization.  

 

This day was going to be intrepid, even grandiose if we could manage that, but otherwise dauntless, doughty, and elevated without doing much of anything. Our aim was to take a long walk and have a good conversation.  I wasn't worried about the hard flex: the McCoy’s loop wheel tee is indeed a breather and my arms weren’t yet stuck with perspiration onto the sleeves of the unlined Himel.

 

I’m not usually too bothered by “too warm” and YMMV.  Would you walk around all day in New York Cit somewhere close to 70 degrees in a leather jacket?  Keep reading even if you wouldn’t.  This was one of those absolutely perfect New York City days and I was wearing a leather jacket that is warm on a cold day.

 

There wasn’t going to be much opportunity to take it off or put it aside if we were going to make the most of the glorious weather, not if the plan was to walk the Island’s streets and parks without having to turn back home for a drop-off and refit.  And anyways, it was going to cool off considerably into the evening---at that point I would welcome that wonderful way leather makes the cold warm.

 

So walk we did.  From the Upper West Side at the height of the day when the sidewalks on both sides of the street are flooded with sunshine and into the Park.  We followed the pathways up and around, past the Delacorte Theatre, Belvedere Castle, and the Turtle Pond, made our way out to Fifth Avenue on the other side.  From there past the Guggenheim to 90^th St to make our way to the River. Our plan conjured on the go was to make it all the way to the East 90^th Street Ferry station where at sunset we would be able to travel down the East River to Wall Street.

 

In my sixty some years this was something I had never done either as a tourist or a commuter.  Lemme tell ya’.  You gotta do this, especially just as darkness falls on a chill but not too cold evening.  The skyline’s luminosity was sublime, the Brooklyn Bridge alit as we made our way south on the water was enough to make you cry.  We arrived downstream in less than 30 minutes at Wall Street and hailed a cab back uptown,  It’d been a long walk and an unforgettable river trip.

More than eight miles afoot at a good pace---and until the sun began to set, not merely disappear into skyscraper shadows, it had been quite warm.  In an unlined horsehide jacket.

 

Like I said the white McCoy’s loop wheel may be the most comfortable, breathable t-shirt since ever.  But the Himel Excelsior proved a most interesting complement.  I was never too hot even when I was really warm under that jacket, albeit unbuttoned and open wide.  My bare arms had stuck inside the sleeves but the abrasion had soon given way.  At first, it’d been more than a little clammy.  How could it be otherwise?  Sweating in horsehide makes you feel inside the jacket like the sweaty horse that you begin to smell like.

 

Actually, ‘twasn’t so bad though it was pretty wet in there. But that’s when the alchemy did its work: the jacket started to fit like fluid skin.  It was so near to being my own flesh it felt transparent.  No longer pasty or sticky.  In truth, the smell of sudoric horsehide had become downright pleasant.  (Well, at least to me. My buddy was likely too kind to comment.)  The sleeves had molded ‘round my arms, the creases had gathered, contracted, and rimpled.   This might not have been actual satori without residues but it was undoubtedly a fine personal kensho: the Excelsior and I had arrived at nonduality, perhaps another fleeting illusion but also truth wrapped in leather.

 

You can see from the photos that the jacket never recovered.  It is now in my shape.  Clearly, neither have I.  I would recommend any Himel to any true lover of leather jackets---and once you start there will be no release, only more to love.  Go unlined if you want to try something Wholly Other. But no matter what you choose, wear it hard, put on dry, take it off wet, and do it again and again.