New 'Essays in Idleness' & Other Reviews from The Hard Flex Cafe

  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...

We were queried today about our interests in quality boots and leathers.  It strikes me as the same as fine tailoring, the sort that gets passed through generations.  But here is a reply that I think will suffice and perhaps endure even my most hard-won self-doubts. Great footwear is a commitment to craft, function, and beauty in a world that usually cares very little about those values, much less the elegance and resilience that are their consequence.  I've no durable interest in functional things that don't have aesthetic virtues, if the latter is at all possible. How many things do we really use that get better with use and improve over time? All of my boots (and leather jackets) will certainly out live me and will get better for at least another generation of use, if those who inherit them take the time to care. I collect in the present with Pyrrhic hopes for a future I will not see. Someone might realize, "this is some of the good stuff in life..."

  “Has your discerning mind just served to drive you mad?"  ---Kamo no Chōmei     Last week I received some long-awaited boots.  I had no idea when they would arrive.  My records show the pre-order was made in September 2021.  That’s sixteen months ago.  As Petty once put it, “The Waiting in the hardest part…”   Truth is I’d neither forgotten them nor was I eagerly awaiting their arrival.  Kenko in his  Essays in Idleness  reminds us, “If man were never to fade away... but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us. The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.”  I might emend to add a tincture of “scrupulous ambivalence” even as I await the next pre-order.   The boots in question here are the collaboration from The Black Sign x Clinch via The Brass Boot Co. of Tokyo, to wit, the utterly unmistakable Transcontinentals.    In case yo...

  Two ideas here about Ivy Style.  I have plenty more coming.  Ivy Style is an important part of my narrative.  I love these clothes way more than I liked school.   First, I finally listened to the downright wonderful HandCut Radio (RIP) podcast with Rowing Blazer’s Jack Carlson.  Mr Carlson’s history of the blazer and its deep connection to rowing clubs, to traditions and provenance, to what it means to be in a blazer-community (my term, not his) was informative, interesting, spot on.  But there was another thing Carlson noted that caused me to cheer since I had had the same (or nearly) experience.  He talks about going to Ralph Lauren, with whom he has a wonderful relationship.  I would too commend the brand not only for what it has offered to Ivy, Trad, and Preppy but for good taste (sometimes) and quality.     But Carlson noted a blazer with a crest that seemed a little too familiar.  It was a ...

I was invited to a formal wedding and, at 27 years old, I need to buy my first suit. REPLY: " Danger, Will Robinson!" Listen to the wise old robot here. "Formal" means black tie. Or that's what it usually (or even should) mean. This is not a suit as such. This is a tux. I once went to a formal wedding the only guy not in a tux. You do not want to be that guy. I would ask what they mean by formal before you buy a suit. The recommendation for JCrew is a good start because they are cheap and look good for about 10 wears. Your first trip to the dry cleaner may come close to "ruining" this suit.  Try using a steamer and press yourself (look up how to do that).  Dry cleaning is not your friend with any suit. That said, JCrew is way better than the cheap mall varieties, like Men's Wearhouse. If you want to get MUCH better then you're going to have to spend twice as much. My suggestion is not to bump up unless 1. you're going to wear it often and ...

There is some VERY COLD air coming and apparently a real snow storm.  I love the bad weather.  Keeps away the riffraff.  "How do you live like that, I couldn't stand it..." says an old pal formerly of Jersey, now in (gulp) Florida.  I couldn't say to him what I can say to *you*: how else do you get to love your 25oz denim and wool shirts?  (I pity those hardcore Singapore denimheads.  It's mightily warm for heavy denim.)  But today I realized also quite by accident that I had also mixed styles that are both Japan-revered but not mixed much *here.*   And this brought on another crisis of first world problem proportions. It started like this.  I was too lazy to pick out a shirt so I took the OCBD hanger-dried in the bathroom, tucked it in with these OrSlow fatigues. OrSlow *never* disappoints. But then I was still cold so I grabbed the Iron Heart and put it on over the OCBD.  I have successfully, albeit without the slightest consideration,...

I very much appreciated a recent Shoecast segment (12.20.22) about plagiar(boot)ism and that more recent Middle Kingdom brand that makes really nice looking boots that appear to be very well made that are, well, plagiarism. There's such a thing as too close for comfort. I once edited a major academic journal (it was an onerous, horrible, thankless job) and I told contributors that our one unforgivable sin would be passing off something as yours that is, in fact, not yours. Of course most good ideas, like many kinds of boots, have all been done before and variations on the theme are how it goes. In classical Sanskrit literature Buddhist and Hindu philosophers routinely misrepresent each others' views and blatantly, shamelessly, rip each other off when an idea is a good idea and claim it to be their own. (I have documented this, it's not a put down.) It's more a cultural fact than "plagiarism" as such. Or is it? Either way, it's not cool to take shit that a...