British Beard and Moustache Chammpionships

British Beard and Moustache Championships
What's all this about the British Beard and Moustache Championships, Tweedy? Well, its a bi-annual competition where beards and moustaches attached to people are judged in specific categories. This year it takes place in Liverpool on October the 16th at St George's Hall, hosted by Liverbeards, a Liverpool-based beard club affiliated  with the British Beard Club.

This year's event is sponsored by Woody's for Men, who sell an interesting-looking beard balm for conditioning and styling.

Beards and moustaches will be judged in categories based on shape and length. Beard categories include such partial beards as the Musketeer, and full beards are judged by length with or without a styled moustache (it gets complicated). Moustache categories include the English and Handlebar. Handlebar Club members are sure to be in attendance. Fun and frivolity guaranteed for pogonophiles, though I'm not sure including a fake beard category doesn't devalue the event a little. Keep it real.

The portraits of competitors from the 2014 event in Bath you see here (at the bottom) were taken by Lee Neil Photography. You can see further portraits from that event here.

And here's the Chap's very own Atters compering a previous event. He's normally involved with these things.

Good luck to all our hairy-faced readers.

Lots of beard and moustache-related posts here, including recommendations for smashing grooming products. 

Drake & Hutch - Socks Appeal

Invest in Socks
Drake & Hutch of Manchester Brief fame are hoping to do a bigger bit for British manufacturing by expanding their range to include UK-made socks. They hope to bring bold coloured and patterned cotton socks — like the ones above — in chunky and fine-knit to market. And they want you to help by investing in this new line (and keeping banks out of the picture).

Founder Peter McGuinness (in a remarkable hat) makes a convincing case for your investment in the video below by reminding us of the incredible textile heritage of the UK.



Back the Socks Appeal Here
If you like what he says and you're ready to back the campaign and keep British sock-makers in honest employ go here.

Plymouth Pipe Man

Askwith Handmade Pipes
The English  pipe shapes — such as the bulldog and billiard - remain timeless. Over at Askwith Pipes, Chris Askwith of Plymouth, England, is bringing a freshness to these classic shapes through the materials used in his Askwith Handmade in England range.

The natural finish revealing the grain on the bowl and the amber stem of the Askwith Bulldog (above and below) gives this pipe a contemporary feel.

The youthful Askwith Billiard pipe  (below) is quite the statement piece with its heavily textured 'weathered bone finish'  and lilac stem — an unusual and visually striking pipe.

Introduce a pinch of Fox Squires ready rubbed to either of these pipes and you're fit to sit and contemplate anything, attaining a level of  concentration that can only achieved with a pipe in the mouth.

Chris has been making pipes by hand since 2007 using the best and most complementary materials for the components of each pipe, working with woods such as briar, English morta (bog-wood preserved in peat bogs) and strawberry wood for the bowls, and adding stems made from lucite and horn.

If you would like to commission a pipe, Chris is able to discuss any particular needs in terms of shape and materials. And from the look of these examples, the possibilities are, well probably not quite endless, but you're going to be able to have something made that's really quite unique. That's the beauty of handmade.

J. Keydge - Slack Jacket

To the student readers of The Tweed Pig, might I suggest a robust jacket that will not only hold your pens, pipe, mints, prayer book and spectacles, but endure the knocks and scrapes of academic life.

The J. Keydge Slack Jacket, 'devoid of any needless artificial features' and with an emphasis on 'flexibility, comfort and lightness', will see you through all scholastic situations — whether you intend to be protesting or procrastinating, this jacket will see you right.

J. Keydge is a Paris-based company that scored an instant hit with their Slack Jacket when it was originally brought to market in the early 1990s. The popularity of the jacket gained traction first in Italy and has acquired a loyal following in most well-dressed enclaves. I think the company started in the 1970s, but I'm not going to continue looking for a precise date, because we won't gain much from knowing will we?

Let's concentrate on the jackets themselves. J. Keydge (a pretend name concocted by the company's founder, François Ferdinand) produce summer and winter versions of the Slack Jacket; so called because of its casual Ivy appeal, with a soft-shouldered unstructured style and relaxed construction — jeans-like double-stitching and patch pockets.

Summer options might be released in Madras cotton or seersucker. Heavier and warmer fabrics come to the fore in winter, like the Ivy cord jacket in autumnal orange above and the lambswool Ivy below.

The Slack Jacket has never been made in France (origin is all-American, design is in accordance with French know-how), but if they're now made in China, that might be something actually worth protesting about.

Photographer - George Hoyningen-Huene

The Photographer
George Hoyningen-Huene worked as a fashion photographer for French Vogue and Harper's Bazaar in the 1920s and 1930s.

A contempory of Horst P. Horst and Cecil Beaton, he divided his time and work between England, France and the United States.

He was greatly admired for the lighting and shadows he brought to portraiture; and famous for his swimwear shoots.

More from the Photographer series

Subjects

Frank Capra

Phillips Holmes

Gary Cooper

The Kray Triplets

The Respectable Gangster
How do British gangsters dress since the days of Harold Shand and the Kray twins? Is it all tracksuits like we see in The Sopranos and Gomorrah? I sincerely hope not. I don't know about you, but if I'm going to be extorted for a monkey or more, I'd much prefer the exchange were conducted by someone in a well-cut suit.

Watching the recent Krays film, Legend, I was impressed with its style and the incredible acting from Tom Hardy playing both twins. The man's talent seems limitless. (And he doesn't get on his soapbox like that windbag Cumerbatch has of late.) The twins' dress in the film was impeccable. Looking at old photos of the original Krays, I would venture to say that Hardy's Krays were slightly better-dressed than the originals. If that's okay?

No doubt about it though, the Krays had verve and charisma — and their allure seems undiminished. I like, for instance, the fact (or legend) that they had their hair cut every day. Attention to detail and trying to look your best was the Kray way.

We can discern from photos of the Krays that they seemed to settle on single-breasted suits. I'm not sure I've seen them in a double-breasted suit like in the film. Reggie also appears to favour a spearpoint collar shirt most of the time. The Krays certainly wanted to look respectable and didn't experiment too far from the constraints of conventional modes of male dress.

Joining the Firm
If the Krays were around today, and you wanted to ingratiate yourself into their gang to keep the East End of London safe and sound, I would focus on details that might impress.

For example, I might wear this DAKS suit which has a sixties feel to it in terms of the boxy cut and striped cloth. The trousers have turn-ups, which Ronnie and Reggie seemed keen on.

I would also wear my antique jade pin, a touch that might just clinch it.

Before long, we'd be drinking 'Luger and lime' in the Blind Beggar and they'd be treating me as if I were their long lost brother — the Kray triplet —and Ronnie would be wearing my jade pin and I'd never see it again.

Tweedy's Request: If you consider yourself a dapper underworld character, get in touch and we can add you to the Pin Up wall. Say, don't worry, we can cover your mug so that the rozzers don't get no ideas. See?  

Scottish Tea Best in World

Wee Tea Company
News is out. Or at least it was a couple of years ago. (Time moves very slowly at Tweed Towers.) Apparently, for some time now Scottish tea has been producing world-beating tea.

The Wee Tea Company continues to garner all kinds of accolades for their Dalreoch Smoked White Tea.

Dalreoch tea is (most certainly) grown in 'the foothills of the Scottish Highlands' in Perthshire. The Wee Tea Company says that because 'the plants are under stress for the majority of the harvesting period they naturally produce a finer leaf quality.'  I picture serried ranks of shivering tea plants.

A delicate smokiness is added to the Dalreoch Smoked White Tea using local beech wood to 'complement the natural sweetness of the tea'.

Scottish Tea Plantations
Dalreoch tea isn't the only tea grown in Scotland. The Wee Tea Company has become something of a hub for Scottish tea plantations scattered over the highlands, lowlands and islands, creating an informal cooperative that self-sustains and assists — a business model that always creates the best products for the consumer, and in this case brings sublime top-end loose-leaf tea-tasting experiences to the market.

Scottish teas also available through TWTC:

• Garrocher Grey grown at Garrocher Market Garden in the Scottish Lowlands, Dumfries in Galloway.
• Scottish Antlers stem tea grown on the Isle of Mull by husband and wife team Martyn and Reverend Liz Gibson.

More in Tea News
Fortnum's have remained true to tea like no other company, but they should also be acknowledged for their continuously loyal support of British food suppliers and manufacturers for the several hundred years they've been in existence (and inventing the scotch egg).

True to form, Fortnum's stock teas from The Wee Tea Company. They also provide the best English china from which to appreciate them, giving you more than enough reason to set aside time from the demands of your day to take tea properly.

Note that on taste alone tea should never be drunk from anything other than fine china. I'm sure you're patently aware of the conclusive research behind this fact. 

Fortnum's exclusive Camellia tea service is made in the Staffordshire Potteries. Camellia Sinensis is the Latin name given to the tea plant, which is represented in the pattern.

The design of the Camellia range is inspired by the colours used on the interior of Fortnum's Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon — designed by David Collins Studio —  and, in particular, the hand-painted wallpaper with its splendid little bluebirds who look like they're eyeing up your Battenburg cake ready to swoop.

Crombie Single-Breasted Wrap Front Coat

It's a Wrap
Classic good looks and erstwhile wearability bring this coat from Crombie to the pages of The Tweed Pig. The coat is constructed in a navy wool and cashmere cloth with a three-button closure.

I like how it's been teamed with flannel trousers and suede double-monk shoes below. I also like how the coat flares out a little when open. Very elegant. Top marks, Crombie.

Best of Britten by Bostridge

One for the Funeral?
I really don't think it's possible to find more English-sounding classical music than Benjamin Britten's Serenade. (If there is, then tell me.) Written in 1944 towards the end of the Second World War, Britten set English verse — from the likes of Blake, Keats, and Tennyson  — to horn and strings. The music engages the melancholy, sometimes weary, mood of the verse (and England at that time) to perfection.

You can find a documentary and performance of the piece here.

Bellow you can see the brilliant tenor Ian Bostridge performing the Pastoral from Serenade, introduced in Prologue by Radovan Vlatkovic on horn. Note that the horn is played without using valves to get that wonderfully eery sound that sends you straight into the correct mood to listen to the rest of the piece.

Imagine having this piece played at your funeral — fabulous stuff.



I've seen Ian in concert a couple of times and he never disappoints. Be sure to delve into his magnificent English Songbook.

Ian also has a new release out on Warner Music this month. Shakespeare Songs with the ebullient Antonio Pappano contains musical settings of Shakespeare's verse. Your Where the Bee Sucks and Pretty Ring Time are present, natch. When I was a Little Tiny Boy — also present — has always been a favourite of mine. (Spiers & Boden do a cracking version of that song.)

Cleeve Shirts via Drake's

Shirt Tales
A timely video from Drake's London for this time of year. A chap comes into Drake's dressed in the summer fashion and leaves in wintry attire.

We say it time and again, but it needs to be more widely understood how much effort goes into making something of quality, and with provenance, that will last. You get what you pay for, buy cheap and you buy twice and so on and so forth.

Cleeve shirts are now part of Drake's, so they can measure you up and get a custom-made flannel shirt on your back before you can say winter is coming.

Tequila Herradura 1870

Hold the Salt and Lime
How are you meant to drink tequila? Most people see the spirit as a shortcut to oblivion, downed in a quick succession of shots with salt and lime. That's fine for the misto tequilas that aren't made from pure agave pulp (from the blue agave tequilana plant), though you'll get an absolute howler of a hangover from the added cane sugar. Aged tequilas deserve a little more respect, and can be treated and drunk in the same way as a decent whisky — sipped and savoured.

The golden bottle of tequila you see here is a Seleccion Suprema - Extra Añejo by Herradura, a tequila distillery and hacienda based in Amatitán, Jalisco, Mexico. Herradura (or 'Horseshoe') was a family concern for over a century, but was taken into Anglo-American ownership in 2007. The new owners have preserved the original estate and approach to distilling, using only the best estate grown agave. Herradura's Extra Añejo is an award-winning select tequila that has been aged for four years in oak barrels. The taste is of a smooth tequila with oak and caramel — something like a good cognac — very pleasant.

In Herradura's words: 'Leave behind the social accessory of a cocktail and let this drink rest on its own gravitas.' They also say it's good with pudding after a meal.

A Glass of Its Own
I have to mention the glass you see in the photos. The Ouverture is designed and made in machine-blown crystal glass by Riedel (1756) —they do hand-blown too — specifically for drinking decent tequila. Does it make a difference? I'm highly credulous, so for me certainly. If Riedel's glassware experts are willing to spend months searching the right shape, width and stem of a glass to get the most from a type of drink, I'm happy to follow their lead.

Four Inches of Fun

I must also mention the cigars in the photos, although I think I've mentioned them before. (Was I busy in the duty-free shop after the hols!) Vegafina's Perlas are one of the smaller handmade cigars at around four inches. The cigars are made at the famous Tabacalera de Garcia in the Dominican Republic, and the end-product is a mild cigar with a creamy, spicy taste and a good even burn — a nice cigar for after dinner with a coffee, I'd say. 

VegaFina is one of the premium cigar brands owned by Altadis whose parent company is our very own Imperial Tobacco. How the world turns.    

Burtonwode Boxer Shorts Bear Fruit

To Autumn
Underwear often makes me think of poetry — sometimes a limerick. For the fine Fruit Boxer shorts you see above — made in London, England by Burtonwode — it was the first stanza of Keat's immortal To Autumn that popped into the old noggin, and that description of an abundant and maturing harvest period.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!  

  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;  

Conspiring with him how to load and bless  

  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;  

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,          

  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;  

    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells  

  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,  

And still more, later flowers for the bees,  

Until they think warm days will never cease,   

  For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

The boxer shorts are in Burtonwode's Classic Cut style, with a five-panel construction designed so they stay in place. The cotton is printed in Carlisle using custom dyes, then finished to a plush, softened handlle.

The print on these shorts has a certain something about it that draws the eye.  I could see Bertie Wooster wearing these under his jazzy suits —  to Jeeves' disapproval —  though he'd be unlikely to be reciting Keats.

We have to say something about the packaging from Burtonwode. The shorts are presented in the lovely book-like box (with a magnetic fastener) that you see below. I'm sure you could think of multiple secondary uses for such a fine box; answers below if you feel so inclined.

Hockney Reproduction

Hockney in The Elegant Male
David Hockney has now been added to the The Elegant Male. Some may think him to be less meticulous in his dress than other incumbents; true, but blimey does he have a great sense of style — and it's all his own, which is more than can be said for the plethora of 'men's style' bloggers pompously regurgitating each other's words and delivering sermons on what it means to be well-dressed to an echo chamber of entrenched ideas.

Case in point is the wonderful photo of Hockney with Cecil Beaton above, taken by Hockney's special friend Peter Schlesinger.

Beaton's looking pretty dapper too.  I suppose we ought to add him to the roll call, too. The Would-be-Goods would approve.

September's Here Again

Work?
Hello and let me extend a handshake to you. It seems like centuries since we chewed a bun together. I hope you've kept the country in good order since I've been away? Ready to return to the coalface? I know the feeling.

So, the House of Commons adjourned on the 21st of July for summer recess and returns to sit again today. (No doubt they'll be working hard to achieve all that we ask of them.) It's still warmish here in Somerset, so I'd recommend something like the three-piece wool fresco pinstripe suit from The English Cut (above) for our local MP's return today.  The English Cut was founded by former Anderson & Sheppard cutter Thomas Mahon. Looking at his website — Do all MPs have websites now? — our MP doesn't appear to wear ties much, so the suit might be of more interest to Jacob Rees-Mogg over in neighbouring North Somerset. He's quite fogeyish — and they're saying that fogeydom is once more in the ascendancy in the UK. Is that an effect of the post-Brexit 'Brenaissance'?

Whilst out of the country, it's been too hot to wear anything. Numb with gin most of the time, I've become dewy-eyed with a hankering for the odd thing from home on occasion — most notably this silk tie from Cordings.

They say this tie with the Cordings crest personifies 'inimitable British style' and it's hard to disagree.

It's good to be back, gents.

The Cloud Appreciation Society
Don't hack away at your inbox like a loon when you return to work. Pace yourself and allow time to disengage from the sturm und drang of corporate life.  Why not head out into the park this lunchtime with your cheese and pickle sandwich and follow the advice of The Cloud Appreciation Society — look up.

The society believes that we should fight the 'banality of "blue sky" thinking' and live life with our head in the clouds. This advice reminds me of Room with a View and George Emerson's reflection: 'My father says there is only one perfect view, and that's the view of the sky over our heads.'

The Tweed Pig Break

The place is Here, The time is Now
Up until a couple of days ago, it would be safe to say that the image on The Beach (above) by Chrissy Angliker — plate 26 from the Tectonic Plates collection from our great chums at The New English — fairly, and rather charmingly, captured the reality of the British seaside in summer. And then the sun shone and the months of damp and darkness were instantly forgotten.

Whatever the weather, it's time to rest on my oars, chaps. The gates of Tweed Towers will now close until September and everything with an 'on' button will be switched off.

Oh, sacrament of summer days. 

Have a wonderful summer and stay safe.

Gin Delivered

Gin Delivered
I shuffled to the front door this morning and found the first consignment of gin had been delivered for summer. It's Tanqueray No. TEN, which is blended specifically for martinis and comes in at a robust 47.3°. The gin is hand-crafted in small batches made using whole citrus fruits, and is described as a full-bodied gin.

What a beautiful bottle, gentlemen. The award-winning design was created by Design Bridge. The design references a 1930s cocktail shaker, and uses a light green glass that brings in the light. At the base of the bottle you will see a lemon squeezer shape inside. The cap represents a citrus grater. Your drinks trolley will be enhanced no end by nestling one of these lovely bottles on it.

Black Tot Day with Pusser's Rum

Splicing the Mainbrace
Today's the day the Royal Navy ended its tradition of supplying a daily ration of rum to sailors. The 31st of July is known as a Black Tot Day. The Queen is still allowed to issue an order to splice the mainbrace and provide sailors with a measure to reward good service, which she does.

The bos'n piped Up Spirits for the last time on this day in 1970; the tradition ending disappointingly on health and safety grounds.

You may not keep up with your own daily tot, but today, if any, deserves a drop of Nelson's blood in your veins. Pusser's remains the rum of choice at Tweed Towers, as it was for the Royal Navy. Remember we tried their 15-year-old rum? Absolutely splendid stuff.

Pusser's also produces Overproof (top), a high-strength rum made for layering in a cocktail like a Rum Runner. Overproof comes in at a manly 75% alcohol by volume, and is only available in Germany, apparently — until we petition our local Pusser's rep that is. I'm no killjoy, but it probably is best to avoid operating machinery after a couple of measures of this one.