Style

NB: I am not paid to post nor do I receive a discount for posting this review. 

Money is the root of all evil - until you don't have any - then you don't see it in quite the same light. I love money. As someone once said to me 'money's not everything - but it ranks up there with oxygen'.

But money is changing. It used to be visceral. Show me the cash and then we'll negotiate. Now it's this strange milieu of web apps, desktops and NFC tapping that has take some of the glamour away of having a fancy credit card or a lovely wallet in which to put it in.

This year, after nearly fourteen years, I finally had to get a new wallet. My last two were purchased from Heather Brown of Di Croco in Sydney's Double Bay. Since then she moved to Darwin and keeps a single store up there. Her skins, from memory, are tanned in Singapore and she uses only the best Australian saltwater crocodile skins. Plus, she's clever enough to design them for Australian notes, which is so much more alluring than the European wallets that often are much deeper. It's the smartest best quality wallet for Australian's that I have seen. Simple, elegant, lithe. And, it has crocodile both inside and outside. 

I promised myself I would never get a stack. But my friend was naturally confident wearing his stack and I came to find them very charming. I owned but one Rubinacci bracelet from a habadasher since gone out of business. My friend told me about Maor Cohen, the Los Angeles based bracelet designed and his go to contact for his Stack.

What can I say, I thought to myself, well, technically I own my business, and I am a CEO I guess. I am creative, I am an artisan. I probably never recognise that. So, what the hell, let's give it a go. 

Three months later I have something to tell you, stacking is fun. Stacking is easier to wear than I thought, it just feels like a second wrist watch. And stacking is charming to look at when you have nothing to do but twiddle your thumbs. No, I will never be a billionaire, perhaps never even a millionaire. But I am at the helm of my tiny silk chop shop and I think I have earned my right to a stack.

 Bow tie enthusiasts we are witnessing something special.  LNP undoubtedly is in a class of it's own. The quality is unsurpassed. The designs are pure artistry. They have revolutionized self-tie with their unique pre-tie technique. There’s always something on the platform that satisfies my taste and style. I thought I had a pretty good tie collection until I discovered LNP.

The writer Leo Tolstoy once, in his savage indictment on the institution of marriage by way of his novella The Kreutzer Sonata, said that both marriage and cigarettes were extremely similar in the sense that they were both terrible habits that one couldn't kick. 

Tolstoy himself found it hard to give up cigarettes all his life and if my memory serves me correctly, his biographer Rosamund Bartlett said that he never quite kicked it.... Read more....

My fixation with white shirts hasn't quite dissipated. In fact it might of gotten worse. Though I rarely get more than one wear out of a shirt before I have a dirty collar, there is something deliciously simple and elegant about a white shirt which works for bow ties. It is like white bordering a painting or having a blank canvas on which you build out from.

The Carlo Riva fabrics chosen on this round are the Voile Etamine and the Linen Arsenal. Very clean fresh fabrics from looms that are considered the best in the world. And though I have tried and love Alumo, Canclini, Monte and the now defunct SIC Tess range, I always feel like Carlo Riva is the only one which creates a second skin.

Bespoke shirt appointments can be booked by sending a Whatsapp to +61413140994