Chop Style: Turtleneck Sweaters

If you’ve got a turtleneck in your closet, Autumn is certainly the perfect time of year to break it out. Cool enough for a chill to be in the air, but not quite cold enough for coats and mittens, a turtleneck is practical if nothing else.

There may be no single item of clothing in menswear that is more illustrative of the fashion cycle. Unseen anywhere for years or even a decade at a time, every once in a while some would-be brilliant designer decides to run one down the catwalk in the fall, and it’s been worn so many wrong ways by the first snow that it goes back into hibernation for several more years. It doesn’t have to be this way though. You can look good in a turtleneck no matter how far out of fashion they fall. All you’ve got to do is follow the rules.

Robert Redford

Paul Newman

Miles Davis

Rule #1: Don’t accessorize. A turtleneck is something of a statement piece. Let it speak for itself. Once you start adding in jackets, scarves, hats or anything else the whole thing begins to look clumsy very quickly.

Rule #2: Stay in shape. Just because you’re spending more time indoors and looking forward to holiday parties doesn’t mean a turtleneck is the right answer for covering up any extra winter weight. Whether your sweater is a giant fluffy chunky thing or a slim-fitting cashmere item; if you’re pear shaped, it will be pear shaped too.

Rule #3: Your sweater should be darker than your pants. While the opposite is usually true, somehow a “negative image” works best for turtlenecks. Buy a darker shade and pair it with off-white jeans, faded khakis or something similar.

Rule #4: Wear a good pair of boots. A turtleneck sweater is a pretty substantial thing, so you’re going to need some substatial footwear to match it. You should have a decent pair of boots in the closet, but if you don’t make sure you’re at least wearing leather shoes. You just can’t pull this off in a pair of Vans.

Rule #5: No mock necks! If you’re going to do it, do it right. Get a full fold-down neck. There’s probably not anyone on earth that can pull off a mock turtleneck.

Chop Style: Avoiding the Freshman Sydrome

First things first… The first thing is that we’re happy to announce that this blog was recognized yesterday by the City Paper in their annual Best of Baltimore issue as being Baltimore’s Best Local Blog. The BoB award carries a lot of weight in this town, and most of your finer local establishments display one on their walls from some year or another, so we’re excited to have one of our own to put in the office. We’re looking forward to spending long hours staring at it while we’re lazy and distracted and saying to ourselves “What the fuck are we going to write about today?” which is how blogs are made.

We also want to thank the CP staff for paying enough attention to remember that we are a blog. If we were handing out advice to a beginning blogger, it would not be “don’t write anything at all for 3 months” which is exactly what we’ve done up until yesterday. It means that much more to us for having been offline these 90 days.

A visual approximation of the Chop being the best.

So like we said, we get a little award suitable for framing. But the real prize when you win one of these is that you score an invite to the annual Best of Baltimore party, and get to hobnob and schmooze and glad-hand with the other winners, and of course, be privy to an open bar.

So we went there yesterday, and we did that. We even managed to get a date for the event. And without saying too much about it, we didn’t look at it as one of these “Oh I just need somebody to go with so let’s just go and hang out or whatever” dates. It was more like one of these “She seems pretty awesome and I really want this to go well and I’m kind of nervous about it and I still sort of can’t believe she said yes.” kind of dates. The best kind.

Which brings us to the main idea of this post. For a big date, or any type of big event whether it’s a job interview, a holiday, a wedding or what have you, the temptation is always there to go shopping beforehand and find something new to wear. It’s a temptation we usually resist, and we recommend the rest of you do the same.

Think about the beginning of high school. The first day of ninth grade is a big fucking deal for most kids. You’re out of middle school, and thrown in with a lot of older kids. You may be meeting kids from other middle schools, taking new classes, dating for real for the first time, and you’re trying you’re level best just to fit in, let alone cut a great figure down the hallways.

Maybe it’s different for girls, but for most of us boys your mom dragged you to the mall to hit the back to school sales and made you try on jeans and shirts for hours on end, wouldn’t let you get any of the things that you really wanted, or anything that wasn’t on sale, or anything that couldn’t double as church clothes- in short, anything good. So the first day of school rolls around and now that the clothes are bought you actually have to wear them, and in addition to all the hassles and stresses and pressures of starting high school, you’re constantly thinking “Do these jeans look like Dad jeans? Do these look like floppy clown shoes? Does this shirt make me look like a doofus?” And you wish you’d never gone shopping at all.

We’ve got it better as adults. Most of us have a much improved sense of style and a better sense of self than we did at 14, and we’re free to buy and wear what we will without any help from Mom. All the same, the Freshman Syndrome still persists.

Sure, those pants look great, but do they look great on you? That sweater is nice enough to be an investment piece, but will it itch your neck until you wash it a few times? New shoes are great to have, but they’re even better after you’ve broken them in and they’re not stiff and unforgiving. At the end of the day, looking good is mostly about confidence, and it’s hard to be very confident in something you’ve seen only once in a store mirror. The clothes that really inspire confidence are the ones that we know fit the best; that we’ve seen in our own mirrors, that we’ve been photographed in, that have generated plenty of compliments in the past. Better than new clothes are your favorite clothes.

Having a closet full of clothes that we can count on is one of the best things about being a bona fide adult. In our case, we’re always prepared for anything from a wedding to a funeral to a formal event, or even a date… no trip to the mall required.

Chop Style: Pocket Knives

It’s time to talk about knives. It’s time to talk about knives because we’re in the market for a new one before we go back overseas. We never really thought we’d be the type to carry a knife around everywhere we go, but over the years we’ve come around to the opinion of Gentlemanly Means, and we’re almost never found without one.

The makers and retailers of pocket knives would have you believe that their products can be elevated to the level of talismanic objects; heirlooms passed from generation to generation, the old romantic notion of this was Grandpappy’s GI knife and he used it to cut his way out of a POW camp in Korea and all that. That’s entirely possible with a quality knife… if you don’t lose it first.

Our favorite knife to date... the CRKT Carson M16. Approximate actual size.

We lose knives all the time. As the GMP post points out, it can be tough to find the right intersection of price and quality, because you have to buy thinking you’re going to lose it sooner or later. We can hardly keep a knife longer than a pair of sunglasses, and usually end up having to buy a new one every 12-18 months. By now we’ve formed a pretty strong opinion, and knife shopping doesn’t take nearly as long as it once did.

For us, less is more. We’re not a fan of the Leatherman multitools or the top of the line Swiss Army models. That’s just too much steel. We want one blade- and we want that blade to feel large in the hand and small in the pocket, and be designed in such a way that it matches a suit as well as everyday jeans.

the first knife we really liked was ta Buck Nobleman, which served us quite well until it ended up at the bottom of the bay. It drew a lot of compliments, and our only real complaint about it was the lack of a belt clip, a feature we really like. (Tip, most belt clips are easily removable.)

We replaced that with a Gerber EVO Jr, which was a crappy piece of junk that fell apart in hand in less than a year. Last Gerber knife we’ll ever buy.

Our most recent knife, and quite possibly our next knife, was a Columbia River Tanto. We bought it for less than half of the $50 price tag on the website, and it was worth twice as much to us. It did absolutely everything asked of it, sharpened up nicely, and looked as good as it felt clipped to the pocket when not in use. In fact, throughout our travels we’ve probably met half a dozen others carrying knives from the CRKT EDC series, and every one swears it’s the best knife he’s ever owned.

Chop Style: No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service

Well, it’s pretty hot outside. In the dead of Summer, most people want to get away with wearing as little as possible. Jorts sightings have been at at all time high in Baltimore recently, and tank tops and flip flops are out in force as well.

We would hope that it doesn’t still need to be said in 2011, but apparently it does. The old rule still stands: No shirt, No shoes, No service.

Even the diviest of dive bars require shoes and shirts.

These things may be optional in your backyard or rooftop deck, but out in the streets, shoes and shirts are still mandatory, no matter what the temperature. Sure, okay, if you absolutely must you can wear sandals the right way but you’ve got to have something on your feet.

This is Baltimore City… it’s filthy. Aside from the typical urban grit and grime, our streets and sidewalks are often full of broken glass, chicken bones, strip club postcards and all other manner of hazards. The Chop happened to sight a girl walking barefoot down Cathedral Street a few days ago, and we were nothing less than revolted. Walking or (God forbid) running barefoot in an urban street is not only dangerous, it’s disgusting. Not even Rex Ryan would tickle those toes.

As far as shirts go, you’re gonna have to keep that on too. Nothing says absolute white trash redneck like going shirtless publicly. Have you ever seen COPS? The shirts to skins ratio on there is always at least 2/5.

It doesn’t even matter if you’re a sitting congressman who hits the gym regularly… shirtless is simply not a good look on anyone. This summer, just keep it on. You might even think about a lightweight cotton or linen jacket as well.

Chop Style: How to Dress for Summer

Just do this… all Summer, all day long, every Summer, every day. These sons of bitches are so goddamn dapper that poor Brigitte Fossey can’t decide which one of them to devour first… and third.

Martin Sheen, Brigitte Fossey, and Sam Neill at Cannes, 1981.

If you ever wanted to know how to dress for Summer, cancel your GQ subscription and pay no mind to the blogs and the mall. Just do this. See how they’re standing on the middle of a beach in jackets and not looking overdressed? That’s style.

Wearing this in Baltimore could literally take you from the office to happy hour to the ballgame, from dinner at Bluegrass to Flicks on the Hill, or from a day at the zoo to a night on the Avenue. It’s also got the subtle advantage of being absolutely timeless. This photo is 30 years old, and it’s still going to look fresh 30 years from now.

Whatever you’re doing this Summer, do it in this.

Chop Style: The Emperor Has No Clothes

‘”But the Emperor has nothing at all on!” said a little child.’ Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s not that the Emperor of Cupertino has no clothes. It’s that he’s got just the one outfit.

We’re tempted to draw a lot of parallels between Apple, Inc. and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. One powerful man’s knowledge and word is placed beyond question by the public, supposed good design is meant to make up for a complete lack of functionality, exclusivity is made a priority, people pretend to be smarter than their peers, and good money is thrown after bad on something that doesn’t work as it’s supposed to. We’re tempted to draw all those parallels, but we won’t because we know that our readers are clever enough to draw them on their own.

We’re just going to say that from a style standpoint, Steve Jobs needs some new clothes.

Same clothes, different year.

For someone who’s so often lauded for his products’ design, you would think he could realize that high design extends into the world of fashion as well. You’re supposed to be so creative? Create a damned wardrobe, why don’t you? It’s not hard at all. Any intern with an acceptance letter to business school understands that he needs to own at least two suits. Just because you’re at the top, you’re not exempt from that rule.

Steve Jobs only has one outfit. Don’t believe us? Google it.

Now, we get it. Jobs is a super rich dude and can wear whatever the hell he wants. But still, a black mock turtleneck and a pair of dad-jeans aren’t going to cut it. What? It’s comfortable? Balls. Zegna pants and cashmere sweaters are comfortable too. Why not make that your trademark? Don’t feel like shopping? Hire someone to do it for you. That’s what being rich is all about. Is there no app for that, huh?

But maybe Jobs is beyond all that. Maybe he transcends mere money. Maybe he really is the century’s most brilliant mind or a true cultural icon. Maybe he’s even an uncompromising idealist and man of the people. Whatever he may be though, he needs to start dressing better while there’s still time.

Before too long, he may be committed to a new signature look.

Chop Style: Best Summer Flip Flops

We’re reluctant to admit that we may need to acquire a decent pair of flip flops.

Now, we do not recommend sandals of any type for the men of Baltimore. You’re a grown man in a major city after all, not a dirty hippie at Bonnaroo. The only time sandals become acceptable for general wear is when you’re in very close proximity to a body of water. The kind you can swim in; the harbor doesn’t count, but swimming pools do.

We don’t find ourselves by the pool often enough to warrant sandal ownership, but now that Spring has sprung we’re getting a lot more use from the outdoor living spaces here at the Chophouse. We could use a pair of sandals for lounging on the decks, taking out the trash, or even popping over to the corner store. We haven’t got anything that’s really good for just slipping on briefly, and as we’ve already discussed, socks are not optional for shoes. So we might need sandals, and the very best sandals are flip flops. Here are three options we like at Macy’s, which all look great and cost about $30.

Clarks 'Jays'

There’s two things we like a lot about these Clarks. Their simple design makes them suitable for everything from running out to move your car to wearing at a beach wedding, and the combination of leather and rubber fuse high style with maximum comfort. $35.

Lacoste 'Molietts'

For an alternative to leather, Lacoste’s Molliets are made of rubber without looking cheap. Anything with that little gator on it is going to come off a little preppy, but as long as you steer clear of Madras shorts or ribbon belts you ought to be able to stay Mobtown Official and Chop Approved. Available in 4 colors. $32.

Tommy Hilfiger 'Lloyd'

Only a few notches lower on the prep factor scale is Tommy Hilfiger, but we like the retro styling of their Lloyd flip flop. These also combine rubber and leather, and if we’re going to have to shell out for a pair of flip flops, we’d like them to last through at least several Summers of sun and wear. We think these will. $30.

Chop Style: Cheap Sunglasses vs. Expensive Sunglasses

We did a basic discussion of the style points of sunglasses back in January. That post was mostly just a visual primer on what to do and what not to do, with no mention of specific brands or models.

We’re not going to get too specific today either. But now that Summer is right around the corner and the sun is becoming a regular fixture in the sky again, we are going to try to settle one peculiar question which has been bugging us for quite some time: Should sunglasses be cheap or expensive?

Does Sonic Youth wear cheap sunglasses? Does it matter?

There are two schools of thought on this, and both are equally correct. Those who favor expensive sunglasses will point out that most $100+ pairs of shades are incredibly sturdy. The little tiny screws won’t loosen over time and the lenses won’t pop out of the frames at random. Speaking of lenses, at that price you mostly get nice lenses that are polarized and U/V gamma ray resistant, scratchproof and all that good shite. When you’re shopping really nice sunglasses, you typically get what you pay for.

Cheap sunglasses are cheap. There’s no two ways about that. But sometimes cheapness can be a virtue unto itself. With $100, you can go buy a very nice pair of Ray Ban’s that you can wear day in and day out, or you can buy 15 different pairs of cheap knockoffs and have a pair that’s a perfect match to any outfit. You can keep your pricey shades for years, but that’s only if you manage not to lose them. With cheap ones, you needn’t care if you lose or break them, because they were cheap. You can replace them so easily.

The bottom line: We might go ahead and invest in a really nice pair of glasses that we could adopt as a stylistic trademark if we lived in some place like LA or Miami, but this is a Baltimore blog and we’re talking Baltimore Style. We say keep it cheap. Enjoy the art of thrift, and spend that extra cash on a decent shirt.

Best Bets: Using Books as Home Decor

When we moved into the Chophouse about a year and a half ago, we were basically starting from scratch. We had moved around so much previously that we had accumulated very little furniture, and what we did have was in desperate need of replacement. Since then, we’ve been slowly figuring out how to fill up all this space.

Roommate moved in and brought his furniture, then moved out and took it away again, so we’re in the strange position now of having a completely bare living room, while at the same time being ready to put the finishing touches on most other rooms. In just about all of our rooms, those finishing touches are going to include books.

Books should fit into a living space organically, without dominating the room.

Incorporating books into design is nothing new, and there are any number of ways to go about it. Sites like Book Decor and Books By The Foot will even sell you books in bulk to suit any design aesthetic you like, from goatskin covers to shelves arranged by size or color, or even books wrapped in custom covers. Just don’t try to actually read them though, since they’re selected solely for appearance and may not even be in English.

We see this as a tacky, slothful solution, and prefer a more organic approach. Books should say something about their owner, and need to pull their weight in any design scheme by actually being functional. If it’s not something we’d want to pick up and idly look over on any lazy Sunday afternoon, then it’s just not worth having around.

Aside from the library of novels in our home office, we’re envisioning a few choice vegetarian cookbooks living in the kitchen. It’s nice to have some fresh ideas for dinner close at hand, and trying to double check something on a smartphone while three burners are going and your hands are sticky is never a good idea.

The wine rack in our dining room has shelf space on it as well, perfect for a couple of cocktail compendiums and a book or two on wine. After all, no home is really complete without a copy of Imbibe! or The Modern Drunkard, is it?

We’ve got some stubborn empty space atop the wardrobe, and we’re thinking the bedroom would be the ideal spot to house a collection of the Harvard Classics or a vintage encyclopaedia set, easy enough to acquire on eBay. We’ve also got two nightstands and have been thinking of a floating shelf or two, which would be perfect for stacking a couple first edition hardbacks.

Of course, we’re still pretty far away from putting finishing touches on the living room, but there’s no end to the possibilities. Here’s a few we think we could live with throughout the house:

Chop Style: Grilling Aprons

Now that baseball season is officially underway, we’re about to see all the hallmarks of Summer in Baltimore unfold rapidly. We’re on the cusp of several months of crab feasts, Arabbers, festivals, open fire hydrants, stoop sitting, and all the other things that make Summer in the city such a wonderful time.

Last week wasn’t just the beginning of baseball season, it was also the de facto start of the grilling season. Whether you favor Esskay dogs or Ceriello steaks, charcoal or gas, it’s time to get cooking. If you’ve read this blog before you probably know that we’re very careful about choosing clothes and getting dressed, and we aim to keep the A1 and the Pickapeppa far away from our shirts this Summer. How? By being careful about choosing an apron.

Sure, you *can* grill without an apron. We don't recommend it though.

Aprons still have a bit of a feminine connotation attached to them, and while there are plenty of patterns and designs available out there, few of them are suited to men. In choosing one for yourself, you should be guided by the same principles that inform the rest of your wardrobe. Pick something that’s made of quality cloth in a classic color or pattern that works for all occasions. Most importantly, stay away from stupid novelty aprons. Whatever it looks like, your apron should not distract from the rest of your outfit. Here are three choices for your Summer cookouts which are damn near foolproof.

Dean and DeLuca apron. $24.

The thing about aprons is this: even the fanciest ones you can possibly buy are under $30. This one from Dean and DeLuca is plain white and perfect for outdoor use. Even if you’re just serving up hot dogs and ketchup, the prominent label will lend you a little gourmet credibility and your cookout guests will come away thinking ‘Oh he shop at Dean and DeLuca. He think he fancy, huh?’

Williams Sonoma Marseille apron. $24.

The Marseille apron from Williams Sonoma does in fact have a bunch of flowers all over it, but we’d dare anyone to call it girly. The pattern is so tight and the color so muted that it falls squarely into the ‘classic’ category, and at $24 it might be the least expensive item in any Williams Sonoma store.

Sur la Table Black Muted Stripe apron. $19.95

Of course, there are few things more masculine than butchering, and if you’re the kind of backyard chef that literally likes to go whole-hog, then this butcher-striped apron from Sur La Table should be right up your alley. It may not have the prominent branding of the D & D apron, but if any of your guests should ask about it you have the added enjoyment of getting to pronounce Sur la Table which can be a launching pad to a five minute comedy routine complete with Julia Child impression if you’ve had a few Summer cocktails.

One final word: Although we fully endorse aprons, and even aprons from fancy-schmancy stores like the ones listed here, we would caution anyone against going the extra mile and wearing a chef’s coat at home. Nothing screams ‘I’m a pretentious asshole and am only cooking for you to feed my own ego’ like wearing a chef’s coat outside a commercial kitchen. Plus you’ll look like a sweaty jerk wearing a full coat in the middle of Summer. If you’re hosting a cookout, you can always fold an apron down to the waist, grab a beer and mingle while the grill is going. In a chef’s coat, you’ll look more like the help than the host, and be at a remove from your guests until you take the damn thing off.