Fashion Monday with JJ Lee

It's not a Barbour jacket because that would be too posh for English cockney kids. Not a trucker. Not enough seams. With classic bomber jackets, I see shearling and welt pockets. Or pilot jackets with no shearling and patch pockets mid-torso for navigation maps and cigarettes. Need more detail? Sorry, didn't mean to cut off his wand. It was especially made, presumably, by UK costumiers, Angels . I would describe it as a zip-front ranch jacket. Belstaff, the motorcyle jacket company, refers to this kind of cut as a blouson . Quiksilver (below) has something close but the collar is different. It also comes in gunmetal grey.

SIMPLE ANSWER: No. THE MORE NUANCED, LESS DOCTRINAIRE ANSWER: Still, no. If we were to take Prince William as an example, and after their royal to-do, who could deny the awe-inspiring elegance of the day (Pippa, call me), unbuttoning your coat is not consider correct etiquette. In the case of Will and Kate, for the evening the newly-wed prince wore a double-breasted jacket for the evening to do, which one never leaves open as David Letterman eventually learned after years of complaint from men's fashion magazines. What is correct for the double-breasted is correct for the single-breasted dinner jacket. Tuxedos look GOOD buttoned up. Why settle for less. My rule is always this: if the jacket is too hot, get a lighter jacket. Now, it's going to happen. When the cameras were gone and Camilla and Charles had left the young ones to rage on at Buckingham Palace, I'll assume they got down and dirty because, heck they're royals, what do you expect? And I'm ...

As a recent San Francisco Chronicle article declared: pocket squares, handkerchiefs, puffs, what have you, are returning to the menswear lexicon thanks to TV shows like Mad Men. In Vancouver, a city which takes going casual seriously, the spray of fabric has become an acceptable replacement for a tie. It is dressy but not too dressy. But what of the pocket that holds it: the breast pocket? Imagine if the breast pocket were not there. What would be lost? Angled correctly a breast pocket, distinguished by the tab of fabric known as a welt, has the desirable effect of visually lifting and broadening the chest. Sometimes careless suit makers will make a breast pocket dead, flat horizontal, in which case, it would only visually fatten the wearer’s torso by making it look boxy. But a great breast pocket rises slightly towards the shoulder. Not too acutely. If done right it can enliven the dead zone between the lapels and the shoulder and through the introduction of a slight diag...

The break down. While notch lapels are not my favourite. Shawls and peaks are. This example of a trim notch with a nice James Dean-like skinny bow tie (the only way to interpret the skinny trend in a bow tie) is youthful and modern. Perhaps too much shirt is showing but what can be done? A higher button stance would lead to showing more of the white triangle at the bottom. This matters as this isan era when most men choose not to wear a cummerbund. I often go without, however, one time a photographer insisted I open my dinner jacket. I refused. The best man became piqued and I obliged. Later that year I bought a cummerbund. (And I wear it! - JJ, 2012) One solution to the belt -ine triangle problem is to wear high-waist pants. In any case, for semi-formal wear, where one should never open their jacket in polite company, this would be a great solution. If only I became a real tailor, I could do these things myself.

A quick check up with all this talk of tuxes....a sign of taste and quality is whether or not tux rental shops offer simple classics. Many don't. I called around Vancouver and these are the one that have the "classic". Black and Lee offers the classic one-button, peak lapel called style "780" - romantic isn't it. But it is a catalog service which means, you can't try them on before ordering it. They do have a shawl collar with is a style I very much like, "700". I lost my shawl collar at my old tailoring shop. I think my master tailors sold it to someone else. True story! Freeman does, it's style 1000 (admittedly, two-button) but it's Calvin Klein and has a narrow fit. My good friends wore this cut last year and I was impressed. Plus you can have style 2087 (one-button, yeah!). Debonair , one of the few rentals which house suits on site, carry a two-button peak, style 270. NB the best part of renting from shops that have their own sui...

UPDATE - I despair. I just did some additional research on rental tuxedos. Leading Man - who carries a single-button, peak lapel - only offer the classic style with a pinstripe or with a strip of satin on the lapel only, both are the antithesis of classic! Hi JJ, Can you please suggest some Vancouver business to rent a wedding suit? I saw your blog on dinner jacket faux-pas and rules to follow. Thanks in advance, Dave Hi Dave. Thanks for writing. I love answering questions so keep them coming. I have to admit, I've rented only once in Bethesda, Maryland, an awful white double-breasted, dinner jacket with a ruby cummerbund. Ugh. Since then, I don't rent. Instead, I've had my dinner jackets custom-made and later, I bought, an Austrian number in mohair which, because I'm a duffer/tailor, I altered myself. I turned pleated pants into plain fronts. Not easy. For those, who've never apprenticed, there are good looks to be found in rentals. Outfits such as Tip Top (Freeman...