The Library

A former military man demonstrates, among other things, the ironing of a shirt, the polishing of shoes, and various domestic competencies which he has clearly practised for many years and to a standard I would describe as serviceable. His approach to the collar is sound, and his advice regarding the inspection of the iron's plate in a hotel room is the sort of practical intelligence that cannot be taught from a book, only from experience, which he has evidently had in quantity. I will note that his method of pressing the sleeves, which involves setting a crease along the upper edge, is derived from his service background and would not have been tolerated in any private house with which I was acquainted; a gentleman's shirt sleeve carries no crease, a distinction which separates the civilian from the uniformed man and which matters rather more than one might suppose. His insistence upon wooden hangers, however, is entirely correct, and his general demeanour throughout, which is calm, practical, and entirely without pretension, is precisely the tone one wishes more men would adopt when discussing matters of personal maintenance. The series is worth your time.

I will say this plainly: the Gentleman's Gazette produces work of considerable quality, and does so with a consistency that is rare in any medium and rarer still in the one they have chosen. Their knowledge of cloth, of construction, of the history and logic behind the way men have dressed for the better part of two centuries, is genuine and evidently hard won. When they explain why a jacket is cut as it is, or why a particular cloth behaves as it does, they are drawing upon understanding rather than repetition, and the difference is always apparent to those who know enough to notice it. I have watched a great many of their productions, and I have learned from several of them, which is a concession I do not make lightly or often. Their treatment of tailoring, of accessories, of the principles which distinguish a well-dressed man from a merely expensive one, is frequently excellent and occasionally superb. That said, I observe that they are, in the final accounting, a commercial enterprise, and the attentive viewer will notice that the education and the commerce are not always entirely separable. There is rather more discussion of acquisition than I should like, rather more attention to what one might purchase and rather less to the discipline of wearing what one already owns with care and consistency. An Edwardian gentleman of good standing did not think overmuch about his clothes; he thought about his duties, his conduct, and the comfort of those around him, and his clothes were simply the outward evidence that these matters had been attended to. The wardrobe was a tool, not a subject of fascination, and the man who makes a study of his own appearance has, in my experience, already begun to neglect something more important. I would also note, regarding their otherwise commendable survey of menswear in the nineteen hundreds, that the picture they paint is perhaps a shade too tidy. Fashion did not sit still during those years, and I, who lived through them and dressed gentlemen throughout, can attest that the changes from one end of the decade to the other were more considerable than a single summary can convey. The lounge suit, for instance, was gaining ground steadily against the frock coat, and the morning coat was shifting in cut and purpose in ways that a man of eighteen ninety five would have found quite novel by nineteen ten. Which brings me to a point I feel compelled to make, and I hope I may be forgiven the directness: there is a danger, in the study of historical dress, of treating the past as a costume to be replicated rather than a set of principles to be understood. I have seen men of your era dress themselves in the manner of mine, and the effect is almost always unfortunate, not because the clothes are wrong but because the intention is visible. A gentleman does not dress to evoke a period; he dresses to be correct, which is a living standard that moves with its time, however slowly. One may prefer a high collar or a watch chain, but one must wear them as a man who has chosen them for reasons of his own, not as a man who has copied them from a photograph. The distinction is subtle but absolute. The Gazette understands this better than most, but the enthusiasm of their audience does not always follow where their knowledge leads, and I think a word of caution is not misplaced. Dress well. Dress with knowledge. But dress as a man of your own era who has learned from the past, not as a man who wishes he lived in it. The past, I assure you, was not as comfortable as it looks in the illustrations.

An antiquary and raconteur of the kind I had thought extinct: a man who handles objects with the reverence they deserve and who understands that the history of a thing is inseparable from the thing itself. His book, The Stuff of History: A Curated Compendium of Curious Objects and Forgotten People, is precisely the sort of volume one hopes to find in a country house library and almost never does any longer. He writes about the material world with an enthusiasm that is genuine rather than performed, and with a knowledge that has plainly been acquired through years of handling, examining and living amongst the objects he describes, rather than merely reading about them. His television work possesses the same quality: the camera follows a man who is genuinely interested, and genuine interest, which is rarer than it ought to be in your age of manufactured enthusiasms, is always worth watching. I recommend him to any man who suspects, as I do, that the past has more to teach us through its objects than through its opinions, and that the man who can hold a Georgian snuffbox and understand what it meant to the hand that last closed it has learned something that no amount of reading will provide.

Mr Hanson is an etiquette coach, which is a profession that in my day did not exist because it did not need to, the knowledge having been transmitted through the ordinary channels of upbringing and domestic service. That it now requires a professional intermediary is, I suppose, a commentary upon the times rather than upon Mr Hanson, who performs the service with considerable skill and, what is more, with genuine warmth, which is not a quality one always encounters in those who make their living correcting other people's manners. His advice is sound, his manner is accessible without being slack, and he possesses the invaluable ability to explain why a rule exists rather than merely insisting that it does, which is the difference between instruction and dictation. I am told he commands a following of several millions on your picture-sharing platforms, which would have horrified anyone in my profession but which I have come to understand is simply how knowledge travels in your era, and I cannot fault the vehicle when the cargo is good. His podcast, in which matters of social conduct are discussed with a candour that would have been considered remarkable in a drawing room but which appears to be the custom of the medium, is worth the modern gentleman's attention. He is doing, by different means and for a vastly larger audience, what the better conduct manuals of my era attempted: teaching people that manners are not an affectation but a kindness, and that the kindness is the point.

The oldest barbershop in the world, and one I knew well. They held the Royal Warrant, which in my day was not a marketing device but a statement of fact: the Royal household used their services and their products because both were beyond reproach. Their shaving creams and colognes have changed remarkably little in the intervening century, which is either a testament to the original formulation or a confession that improvement was unnecessary, and in this case I suspect it is both. The rose shaving cream is what I would have placed upon a gentleman's washstand without hesitation, and I would place it there still. Their brushes remain excellent. Their prices have, naturally, increased, but the correspondence between what one pays and what one receives remains honest, which is more than can be said for most establishments trading upon history.

The new arrival, as we thought of them, though I concede that a firm established in eighteen fifty-four can hardly be called new by any reasonable standard. They were the younger firm on the street, and they knew it, and they compensated by producing work of a quality that left little room for condescension. Their sandalwood shaving cream was, and remains, a thoroughly civilised product: the scent is warm without being assertive, the lather is dense and protective, and the tin, which has not changed materially in its design, possesses the quiet confidence of a thing that knows it does not need to shout. I would recommend them to any man who wishes to shave properly and who has not yet found a cream worthy of the effort. The Eton College cologne is rather good, though I would not say so within earshot of anyone from Harrow.

Trumper's premises in Curzon Street were known to every gentleman of any standing, and their Extract of Limes was, in my considered opinion, the finest gentleman's cologne produced in England during the period in which I was competent to judge. Whether it remains so I cannot say with the same authority, for my nose has been subjected to a great deal since then, not all of it voluntary. Their skin food is a practical and unpretentious preparation which does what it claims to do, which is to soothe skin that has been scraped by a blade, and does not attempt to do what it has no business attempting, which is to make a man smell as though he has been dipped in flowers. A sound establishment, conducted with the restraint one expects from a firm that has never felt the need to explain itself.

The finest bootmaker I have had occasion to observe, and I do not say so lightly. A pair of Lobb's bespoke shoes, properly maintained, will outlast the man who commissioned them, and has frequently done so in my experience. The firm kept measurements and lasts on file for decades; a gentleman's grandson might order from the same last, adjusted for the particularities of his own foot, and find the fit superior to anything produced from a fresh measurement by a lesser house. Their ready-made line, which is a concession to the modern era that I imagine caused some internal discomfort, is nonetheless excellent, though it is not the same thing, and the man who can afford the bespoke service and chooses the alternative has made a decision I find difficult to respect. Good boots are the foundation. Lobb understood this before I was born and has not wavered since.

A Northampton firm, which is to say a firm from the county that has produced the finest English shoes and boots for as long as English shoes and boots have been worth producing. Tricker's country boots are, in my estimation, the best value in serious footwear available to the modern gentleman: built on traditional lasts, Goodyear welted, and constructed from leather that will, with proper care and occasional resoling, serve a man for decades. They are not cheap, but they are honest, and the distinction between an honest price and a cheap one is the distinction between a boot that repays its cost over twenty years and a boot that repays nothing over two. Their Stow brogue boot in particular is a thing I would have been pleased to see in any gentleman's hall, and I do not say so of many modern productions. A note: buy them in the correct fit, which means visiting a proper stockist or measuring carefully, for a boot that does not fit is merely an expensive source of misery, and Tricker's deserve better than to be blamed for the consequences of vanity sizing.

Every house in which I served kept Kent brushes: clothes brushes, hair brushes, hat brushes. They were not purchased because they bore a particular name but because they were, simply and without qualification, the best brushes one could obtain, and a good brush, properly cared for, is a tool of genuine daily utility. The clothes brush in particular is something I find the modern gentleman has abandoned almost entirely, to the visible detriment of his garments. A Kent clothes brush, used for thirty seconds after each wearing, will extend the life and appearance of a jacket by years. The bristles are set properly, the handle sits well in the hand, and the construction has survived two and a half centuries of use without requiring reinvention. I can think of no higher recommendation.

The umbrella, properly chosen and properly maintained, is the single most useful accessory a gentleman can own, and Brigg have been producing the finest examples of the form for longer than most nations have existed. Their umbrellas are not inexpensive, and I will not pretend otherwise, but a Brigg umbrella, carried daily and treated with the respect it deserves, will accompany a man through decades of weather that would destroy a dozen of the collapsible abominations sold at railway stations. The Fox frame, which Brigg have used since its invention, remains the standard against which all others are measured, and the solid stick, which doubles as a walking cane of considerable authority, is a pleasure to carry even when the sky is clear. They also produce leather goods of the highest order, though the umbrella is their masterwork, and the man who owns one knows it.

The oldest hat shop in the world, and the firm that invented the bowler, though they called it the Coke, after the gentleman who commissioned it. I am aware that the hat has largely disappeared from daily life, a development I regard with the resignation of a man who has watched a great many sensible things disappear and has learned that protest changes nothing. Nevertheless, a good hat remains a practical garment: it keeps the rain from one's collar, the sun from one's eyes, and the cold from one's head, which is where most of one's warmth departs. Lock's will fit a hat to your head with the same care that a bootmaker fits a shoe, and the result is a thing that sits as though it belongs there, which is the only way a hat should sit. If the modern gentleman wishes to wear a hat and is uncertain where to begin, he could do worse than to begin at St James's Street, where they have been answering that question for three and a half centuries.

A French firm, and I mention this without apology, for the French have always understood certain things about the production of simple, well-made objects that the English, for all their other virtues, have sometimes overlooked. The Opinel folding knife is a masterwork of economy: a carbon steel blade, a beechwood handle, and a locking ring, and nothing else, because nothing else is needed. I encountered them during my time in France, where they were carried by working men, farmers, and gentlemen alike, without any sense of incongruity, because a good knife is a good knife regardless of who holds it. For the kitchen, their paring knives are exceptional and astonishingly inexpensive, which is a combination your era has largely persuaded itself is impossible. Buy one. Use it. You will not require a second for many years, and when you do, the replacement will cost less than the luncheon at which your current knife gave out.