Bulletin Board 42

Preppy spring gear, a twist on the old-fashioned, and a tweed update

RETAIL THERAPY

I love a good clothing store. You can’t beat seeing the product in person, feeling its fabric and actually trying on the fit. Over the years I’ve made great friends via the retail experience, and Chase Winfrey is one of them.

I first met Chase when he was working at the old Drake’s NYC store on Crosby Street, and we ended up spending a lot of time together after he joined the team at J. Mueser. I was happy when I heard that his next gig was to be at J. McLaughlin, a preppy brand founded by brothers Kevin and Jay McLaughlin in the 70s. Their original Upper East Side shop was just around the corner from J.G. Melon (and essentially, their target audience), and filled with casual prep staples like Shetland sweaters and needlepoint belts. Today, J. McLaughlin has around 200 stores nationwide—and a flagship conveniently located two blocks from my new apartment in NYC.

The brand’s been on my radar for a while, as I’ve long liked its classic, Palm Beach-style vibes and bold use of color. I recently met Chase for coffee and a shop tour to get more acquainted with their latest spring collection. I gravitated immediately to a stack of fine-wale corduroy trousers, with the green and blue pastels grabbing my attention first. And while I sometimes imagine myself as a bright trouser guy what I ended up trying on were the white cords (they were keepers).

I also appreciated the long-sleeved, open-neck Amalfi cotton knit polo, which I can imagine wearing under a blazer or poolside (I snagged one in navy). The blazers are thoughtfully made in cotton or wool/linen blends, and a great value at between $500-600. A few other standouts from my visit were the Bengal stripe shirts, linen Gramercy shirts in gingham, glen plaid safari jackets and leather-soled mocs. And I can’t neglect mentioning the great selection of what I call “party pants”: bold-patterned oxford pants in toile or garden prints. Just great stuff to add a little sense of humor to your next cocktail party.

Generously, J. McLaughlin has thrown in a little discount code to give readers 20% off full-priced items through the end of this month. Just use the code MATT20 at the checkout—easy to remember!

HAPPY HOUR

Left: The Grand Club; Right: Bar director of Le Veau d’Or Sarah Morrissey; Photos by Chris Mottalini.

All eyes, understandably, are set on spring. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get there without another cold patch or two. You can, however, make them more tolerable with a Grand Club, a cocktail dreamed up by Le Veau d'Or bar director Sarah Morrissey, and featured in our most recent fall issue. It’s a more exotic (yet foolproof) riff on the old-fashioned, made with rye, Armagnac and aged cachaça. We’ve excerpted the recipe below, should you find yourself in need of a warming, spirit-forward drink or just need to break out of a bourbon old-fashioned rut. —ET

Grand Club

1 oz Rittenhouse rye whiskey

1 oz Armagnac

1 oz Amburana cachaça

.5 oz cane syrup (2 parts cane sugar to water)

4 dashes Angostura bitters

Orange twist, for garnish

Combine rye, Armagnac, cachaça and bitters in a stirring glass filled with ice. Stir until chilled. Strain into a double old-fashioned glass over a single large ice cube and garnish with orange twist.

THE UPDATE

Way back in the Fall 2022 issue of Wm Brown, I chronicled the near-Quixotic quest of my friend Nate to have a bespoke suit made from raw wool he’d purchased himself and later had dyed and woven by a Vermont handweaver named Justin Squizzero, who weaves historic fabrics on a Colonial-era loom (the story appeared as that issue’s “Factory Tour”).

Left: Sample swatches as they appeared in Wm Brown #12, photo by Heather McClintock; Right: Nate’s finished tweeds.

I say “near-Quixotic,” because for all of the project’s daunting logistical hurdles and DIY nature, Nate texted me earlier this month to share photos of the finished tweeds at last, some two-and-a-half-years after I’d accompanied him to see the yarns dyed on Justin’s 19th-century farm (there were even newborn piglets, and I got to hold one, much to its mother’s consternation). Where we’d last left off, the yarns had been successfully dyed using madder root and black walnuts foraged by Nate himself. Sample swatches had been produced, and Nate was just waiting for Justin’s centuries-old loom to clear.

However, a series of jobs from Mount Vernon (“I got bumped by George f*cking Washington,” Nate told me) kept Justin busy for many months. Finally, by May 2024 he had completed roughly 10 yards each of the two tweeds Nate had landed on: a dark brown overlaid with an ecru windowpane consisting of undyed yarns plus an orange-red windowpane made from yarns dyed with madder root; and a lighter brown (which had been dyed second) patterned with just the orange-red windowpane.

Once they’d come off the loom, there was just one step left: waulking, the traditional, pre-industrial method of finishing fabric by essentially kneading it against a table for hours (the resulting pressure essentially binds the yarns together, making for a dense, hardy tweed). So Nate returned to Justin’s farm with about a dozen friends and family, who took their positions around a table propped up on saw horses and proceeded to beat wool against wood with their bare hands for the next three hours. In traditional Scottish fashion, “waulking songs” were sung–with Justin leading—not for entertainment, but to ensure that the group kept its tempo. Just as crucially, the fabric was rotated around the table with each beat, to evenly distribute the forcefulness of each waulkers' contribution across the cloth.

Three years in, this is just the halfway point of Nate’s project. Starting with the lighter brown, the tweeds will now be made into suits by Frank Shattuck, a self-described “old world bench tailor” based in Upstate New York who’s been in communication with Nate since the project’s inception. While Nate and Shattuck are just on the fitting stage, the veteran tailor’s already provided a service by appraising the homespun, single-ply tweed as being about 15 oz per yard: in other words, the good stuff. —Eric Twardzik