In Democracy in America, Alex de Tocqueville writes “Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations...There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types–religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute.”
One of my favorite ways to spend time with others is through my city club. Most cities have their own general social city club and have staggered dues based on age. But there also clubs that require more for membership or cater to members of one specific political party or the other, or by interest or occupation. The Yale Club in Manhattan caters mostly to Yale alumni. Regular members of the Army and Navy Club in D.C. are those who have served as Commissioned Officers in the armed forces. And the founding members of the Union League in Philadelphia were Union supporters of President Abraham Lincoln.
Clubs are a place to meet and mingle. They're a place to talk about work and family and sometimes it's a place to talk about anything but work and family. They serve as a stage to celebrate our wins (with a martini) and a place to reflect on our losses and lick our wounds.
I enjoy the maximalist interior design and classical architecture that most clubs have. At my club I enjoy walking through the tall greek revival pillars that protect the entrance. I enjoy swimming in the mural wallpaper and dark wood that floods the interior. I enjoy the formality. I dress better when I plan to be there. And I keep a jacket in the office for impromptu visits. Some admire a bar with three seats, I admire a bar with a dress code and walls that predate my great grandfather. I also enjoy that it's accessible. I have no aristocratic pedigree or generational wealth hidden in a Swiss trust fund. Trust me.
My ties hang in my guest closet on a rack. Each tie represents a different mood which I ultimately want to share with the outside world. I have knit ties for when I'm feeling a bit Coggins-esque or trying to pull off a Mashburn and jeans look. I have a cashmere tie that forms a very large knot that I save for winter. I have an armada of repp stripe, block stripe and print ties that serve loyally for work, and a bowtie or five if I get a wild hair and feel like channeling the soul of a tenured professor. Like with all menswear, stuff comes and goes, style and tastes change, and lessons are learned (skinny tie on big frame? Not great, Bob). Below I've broken down where I've bought my ties into four tiers while sharing the positive and negative of each. I've also included an estimated cost of a tie from each tier.
Goodwill, Salvation Army, local charity/church shops, etc. ($10 or less): The first tier consists of your usual suspect thrift stores like Goodwill & Salvation Army. But I also include in here smaller charity and church shops. Typically I find off brand ties with shiny textures and poor construction covering most of these tie racks. So here at the bottom tier this is where you have to put in the most sweat equity. A lot of the time I walk out of these stores with nothing. But I circle back every month or so because if you keep showing up and rummaging you'll find a nice Brooks Brothers or Ralph Lauren tie hiding amongst the chaos. I recommend checking out local charity and church shops first. They can also be a treasure chest for art.
Boutique Goodwill, thrift shops, ebay ($15-$30): The next tier takes some of the rummaging out of the equation for you. Boutique Goodwill will have plenty of Ralph Lauren and Brooks Brothers shirts, suits, and polos and a handful of ties. Key is to find the locations near the more affluent areas of your city. Same with independent thrift shops. By filtering out the "bad stuff" they immediately cook back this service into their prices. But the quality is higher and your chances of finding something you want to take away improve. This price range is where I start using Ebay as well. I use it as a specialization tool to find nicer ties that are listed below value. I'm a big proponent of the Buy Now function, set your price limits, use broad keywords and fire away.
Consignment stores( $50-$120): The next step up is what I consider my "retail" for buying higher end ties. The clothing consignment stores I frequent typically sale their ties for a third of the original retail price. So I can justify buying myself a $70 Hermés tie than using the rest of what one would cost me retail ($215) to go to dinner with the wife. This is where I get most of my ties as of right now. Im definitely buying less since I built a foundation through thrift stores. Now I can be more particular about filling in the gaps. Typical suspects I see are Ralph Lauren Purple Label, Drake's, Hermés, Kiton, etc.
Retail ($120 & up): The final step and the one I do my best to stay away from, is full retail. With a finite amount of means and a long list of hobbies something has to give. Therefore I think it is smart to save on ties by using the previous three methods. However this is easier to say but harder to do when you are standing in the Ralph Lauren flagship store in Paris during your honeymoon. Therefore I can only endorse the purchase of ties at full retail price if you are doing so to mark an occasion.
My wife and I have plans to build a home on a little bit of land soon. But we've been entangled in the purgatory like process of acquiring building permits from the city. I feel I am not alone in thinking that all blackholes originate from the basements of bureaucratic buildings. However, we can see a smidge of light coming from the end of the tunnel and are starting to piece together what we want from our next home. This means my weekly screen usage has increased due to a budding passion for building inspiration boards on Pinterest. Categories include gravel driveways, guest bathroom wallpaper, butler pantries, and staircase wine rooms.
It was through this thankless research I found the work of Mr. Gil Schafer III. He is an award winning traditional architect based in New York City who I've come to admire for his passion and ability to design new homes with old souls. To understand exactly what Mr. Schafer does you only have to read the succinct summarization on the inside cover of his 2012 book, The Great American House: Tradition For the Way We Live Now:
As a traditional architect, Gil Schafer specializes in building new "old" houses, as well as renovating historic homes. His work takes the best of American historic and classical architecture–its detailed moldings and harmonious proportions–and updates it, retaining its character and detail while simultaneously reworking it to be more in tune with the way we live now–comfortable, practical, family-oriented.
Before I found Mr. Schafer's work I thought I was alone and crazy to want a new home styled like its witnessed the passing of generations. But I was relieved to dig into his book and discover that he shares this sentiment. We can have both the essence of being in the middle of a grand houses story, while in actuality we're the authors at the beginning of a chapter-less book. Mr. Schafer accomplishes this feat using the three elements that he deems make a "Great House": architecture, decoration, and landscape.
The first element is architecture. While the moldings, columns, panels, patterns, and overall style of classical architecture conjures deep nostalgia for traditional architecture, Mr. Schafer says we must acknowledge that the layout of the traditional home, the bones itself, doesn't fit our modern lives, "Thus the challenge, architecturally, is to retain the well-loved proportions, details, and character–the feeling–of a more formal, traditional residence, yet balance these elements with rooms that reflect the realities of informal twenty-first-century family life." This means while having two adjacent formal parlor rooms would be interesting... it's much more practical to embrace and incorporate modern architecture layouts that promote openness. However, Mr. Schafer also encourages that there are non-aesthetic things we can pull from the past. When planning the layout of a great house, he encourages us to "think thin", "...historic homes were often only one room wide because, in the days before in-home electricity, their residents wanted to be exposed to the pleasures–indeed, the necessities–of cross-ventilation and sunshine." In contrast, he describes today's McMansions, or any thick home like "...the rings of a tree, their inner spaces get farther and farther away from fresh air and natural light."
The second element is interior design. While Mr. Schafer primarily collaborates with interior designers like Bunny Williams and Miles Redd, including on his own properties, he still shares two primary principles we should consider when decorating a great house: comfort and color. Comfort is something everyone can and will figure out for themselves. I think his main point is that the things within a house should be used. If a room is filled with antiques and furniture that must me protected and stressed over all the time then it verges on becoming a museum and thus stops being a comfortable space. Second, and what I plan on incorporating into our new house is the wide use of color in rooms and hallways. We have been quite tame in our current home with color. I have an accent wall in my office. But within this chapter inspiration for the next house is found on every page in the murals, block stripes, and pattern wallpaper that catch the eye's admiration but doesn't hold its attention in an off putting manner. While I can't share the photos from the book due to copyright, I encourage you to look up examples of some of these rooms, here is a video of Mr. Schafer giving a tour of his Greek Revival home in upstate New York. Notice how all of the white molding and fireplace pop against the walls.
The third and final element is landscape. This is where I've learned the most from this book. Tying the surrounding landscape is paramount into creating a true sense of place for a great house. Mr. Schafer does a wonderful job injecting feeling and the importance of landscape in the opening paragraph of the chapter:
Have you ever visited someone's house in the country for the first time and enjoyed a growing sensation of wonder at what awaits at the end of that long, winding driveway? You may catch a glimpse of the house or of a special view along the way before turning again to find yourself traveling through woods, over a creek, or across a meadow. That sense of mystery and anticipation, followed by arrival, when you finally see the house in full, is one of the more special experiences you can have in a landscape–one that has profound impact on shaping a house's unique character.
For me the above paragraph took me back to my Great grand parents back road mobile home sitting on 20 acres in the Texas Hill Country. It's where my brothers and I learned to fish and wandered through dried up creek beds with a .22 hunting anything with wings. Mr. Schafer reminded me that the area that surrounds the home is as important as the house itself. Thus he believes "...it is important to incorporate landscape design into a projects overall budget from the outset, even if it requires scaling back on other things." On top of that, there are two factors of landscape design that Mr. Schafer mentions. The first is placement, where are you putting the house? Is it nestled within the trees and looks as if it was always apart of the land? Or is it on top of the highest hill you could find? What feels more natural? The second factor is the divide between the formal yard and the "wild." The formality in which you make this divide depends on you. It could be a manicured hedge cut into a modern design or a pile of rocks. It could be plants placed like landing lights on an airport runway from the driveway to the front door. Or it could be a simple dirt country road. Mr. Schafer's only real requirement is that as you get closer to the house the less wild and more calming the landscape should appear.
The above three elements are what Gil Schafer suggests makes a great house. I continue to go back and re-read certain bits and look at the inspiring pictures for channeling that sense of place. And if I ever get the permits from the city maybe I can create my own soon.