John White is a heritage British brand that has been around for the best part of a century. According to its website it supplied boots to the army in WW2 and was the first British shoe company to ship its wares to New York’s Macy’s Department store.
Now it is hoping to reinvent itself just a little by taking its classic designs and attention to detail and adding a dollop of twenty first century innovation and styling.
And that’s exactly what you get with these Brogues. Named the Langham Suede they are available in four striking colours – Navy, Brown and a very unusual Red and Olive Green.
They will be on sale soon – John White sells through a number of stores including John Lewis as well as their own website. Yours for £150.
They also have some lovely Moccasins in a variety of colours too.
Patterned shirts are everywhere at the moment from retro mod style polka dot long sleeved classic through to floral patterns in places like Uniqlo.
In fact it seems like pretty much anything goes and the patterns on your shirt can be anything from golfers through to paintbrushes with all manner of floral, willow, dots and paisley in between.
Here then is a selection of ten that have caught our eye.
We haven’t featured a Brutus Trimfit shirt for awhile so I thought I’d check the website out. And then I found this. It is an Original 70s “Golfer” Print from the Brutus archive that’s 100% cotton and comes in light blue and I love it. It straddles that line between kitsch and cool and to me anyhow is equal parts of both.
It would certainly go really well with some dark blue jeans and navy suede shoes.
The shirt also has a rolled button-down collar (apparently each shirt is specially packed so that the roll remains intact) and has Brutus’ trademark button detail and vent on sleeve. Heaven only knows when it will be warm enough to wear it though.
And yes that cover looks great too. The images were taken by ace photographer Dean Chalkley who has lots of images of contemporary mods (and a film too – see the bottom of the page) on his site here.
Anyway back to the book. There have been plenty of Mod books before, but this looks like being a fairly definitive one for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it looks like it is going to properly tackle Mod history and its greater influence on popular culture in a way that other books haven’t. It is a moot point, for example, whether the real inheritors of the Mod tradition in the 1980s were the Acid House mob at the end of the decade (they took pills and danced all night), the C86ers (they had the bowl cuts and loved the 60s music) or the Casuals (whose clothes were more in keeping with traditional sharp mod values and tended to be more working class like the original Mods).
Without pre-guessing what Weight is going to write in his book I think he will make the case that Mod influenced them all. And that’s a story that hasn’t really been written in any depth.
The second reason why the book looks great is that Richard Weight is a very accomplished author. I read his Patriots book over a decade ago, and although I don’t remember too much about it now, I recall being impressed by both the depth of his research, and also the way he wasn’t afraid to fire off his opinions. The book looks at national identity in Britain between 1940 and 2000 and the decline of British-ness in favour of stronger associations of being English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish. It really needs an update too and I’d be fascinated to read his views on the way that The Olympics, the popularity of The Monarchy and immigration have all fueled a revival of Britishness. Yet at the same time we could be just years away from Scotland leaving the Union.
In many ways too there hasn’t been a better time for the Mod book. Bradley Wiggins is still everywhere, heritage brands like Ben Sherman and Fred Perry are back in the limelight and there are plenty of bands who are creating music that has 60s influences at their heart.
The Who touring Quadrophenia a few months after the book launch should help too.
Anyhow, I am very excited by the book’s arrival and if you want to know more here’s the blurb from the publishers.
Welcome to the world of the sharp-suited ‘faces’. The Italianistas. The scooter-riding, all-night-dancing instigators of what became, from its myriad sources, a very British phenomenon.
Mod began life as the quintessential working-class movement of a newly affluent nation – a uniquely British amalgam of American music and European fashions that mixed modern jazz with modernist design in an attempt to escape the drab conformity, snobbery and prudery of life in 1950s Britain. But what started as a popular cult became a mainstream culture, and a style became a revolution.
In Mod, Richard Weight tells the story of Britain’s biggest and most influential youth cult. He charts the origins of Mod in the Soho jazz scene of the 1950s, set to the cool sounds of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. He explores Mod’s heyday in Swinging London in the mid-60s – to a new soundtrack courtesy of the Small Faces, the Who and the Kinks. He takes us to the Mod-Rocker riots at Margate and Brighton, and into the world of fashion and design dominated by Twiggy, Mary Quant and Terence Conran.
But Mod did not end in the 1960s. Richard Weight not only brings us up to the cult’s revival in the late 70s – played out against its own soundtrack of Quadrophenia and the Jam – but reveals Mod to be the DNA of British youth culture, leaving its mark on glam and Northern Soul, punk and Two Tone, Britpop and rave.
This is the story of Britain’s biggest and brassiest youth movement – and of its legacy. Music, film, fashion, art, architecture and design – nothing was untouched by the eclectic, frenetic, irresistible energy of Mod.
As ever Clarks has a superb range of classic casual men’s shoes and of its latest arrivals I am quite taken with these Marden Grove leather shoes. These are in navy and are already sold out on the Clarks store though you can get them here. There are also versions in tan leather and wolf suede.
They are great quality navy leather with the twist being the piping, which is this year’s big thing apparently. Nevertheless they look great and retail for £59.99.
We are big fans of the Farrell brand. In case you haven’t come across them yet they are an quirky English indie with ex-Burberry fella Ben Dickens at the helm and Robbie Williams, yes him, providing some of the inspiration.
They also have a blog that sometime can be laugh out loud funny.
And they have just unveiled their spring summer collection and we really like a lot of it. There’s a lot of navy and white, some very classy lightweight rain coats, striking knitwear and more. There’s a whiff of the 1950s about it, especially that bowling shirt.
Here are five of their items which caught our eye. You can view the whole collection on their website.
Ok, so it might still be freezing outside and summer wear probably isn’t that high on your mind, but spring and summer collections are already filtering their way through to the stores and one very impressive range is from Levi’s.
But it is the striped T shirts that have caught my eye. This £62 striped T shirt is available in four different incarnations including burnt orange, but I reckon it is this blue version that will be the big seller.
It has a great pattern and is made from super soft cotton. It is quite fitted too.
As you probably already know Primark doesn’t sell its range online. You have to go into the store to buy its clothes. It can also be a bit hit and miss with what it sells too. However the spring collection, which seems to be filtering its way into its stores now, looks like its strongest for a while.
We have already written about blue suede shoes (well navy ones, but that doesn’t have the cheesy pop culture link) already and Primark has a pair of blue Desert Boots for the give-away price of £15. Like the grey/brown trim and laces too.
Another £15 goodie that caught our eye are these waterproof hooded jackets. They are available in light (Man City esque) blue and brown and sport a white piping at the bottom. They remind me of a jacket that Lambretta sold a few years back. They look like perfect festival wear.
The Savile Row based Richard James has been around since the early 90s and in that time has delivered thousands of sharply cut suits, classic shoes, super warm Merino socks and more.
And if you want some classic, but very contemporary English style then it is worth having a quick peek at the brand’s website now as its sale is about to come to an end.
Up until Saturday you can get as much as 50% of a lot of the winter range including this 100% camel wool zip front, funnel neck cardigan in Atlantic which retails for £150, as opposed to just shy of £300.
I have never worn camel wool but apparently is is light, durable and very warm.
While you are on the site don’t miss the colourful Cashmere and Merino socks – from £9 a pop.
And here’s a quick video of what the brand has planned for the rest of 2013.
Still agonising over whether you need a bag to lug all your gear around? Well I’d get over it. How else are you going to transport your iPad, Kindle, various chargers – and maybe even the odd book or mag if you are old school?
One option that more and more blokes seem to be adopting are medium sized Barrel bags. These are the smaller versions of the the kit bags that you used to put your footy stuff in back in your fourth form days.
There’s now a good range that are suitably stylish, classically retro and big enough to accommodate a load of gadgets.
I love this Navy one from Fred Perry that has just gone on sale via The End. It not only has a striking Blue and Beige finish, but there’s a load of little details too like the Embossed Laurel Logo Stud and the small zip pocket at one end.
You can buy it now for £55. its is also available in grey and yellow and there are also a pair of Fred Perry shoulder bags that sell for £45.
Train travel was much more fun in the 80s. Then you had the wrong sort of leaves on the track, pissed footy fans on Inter City Specials, Jimmy Saville doing the TV adverts and timetables that were quite possibly penned but The Brothers Grimm. Yes those days sure were fun.
Actually the best bit about the, coughs, golden age of train travel, was the Inter City logo and it is great to see that it is making a bit of comeback on a T Shirt or two.
Leading the trend is Renaissance Man, and quite possibly serious train spotter, Damon Albarn who was seen wearing one in the summer when riding The Africa Express to Glasgow. They are available from the V&A but it seems that they are short of stock at the moment.
This is as close we could get to the Albarn shirt and guess what, it is out of stock. I can't imagine that the V & A won't be selling them again though.
V&A
From:Why Arsenal will announce a new signing today