HHH Holiday Shopping Guide | Skins

{1} Fratelli Orsini Open Back Leather Driving Gloves, Leather Gloves Online, $59.95

{2} Opening Ceremony Two Tone Faux Fur Coat, Browns, £485.00

{3} Hermès Kelly Double Tour Leather bracelet, chocolate with gold plated (2.25" diameter), Hermès, $410.00

{4} Dunhill Sidecar Palladium Alligator Fountain Pen, Fahrney’s Pens, ~$450

{5} The Beauty, Barneys New York, $795.00

{6} Tortoise Gusseted Envelope, Barneys New York, $65.00

{7} Marni Striped Leather Belt with Gold Buckle Detail, Browns, £215.00

Happy Holidays!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!  Porter and I are staying local this year, working diligently to transform the loft into a Frontier Holiday dream land.   As part of the theme, we figured an updated H crest was in order, so I set to work with my watercolors.  19th century shotguns, it turns out, are quite easy to paint.  Pine sprigs are not.

May your bellies be full tomorrow and may the sales be grand on Black Friday!  Holiday gift guides and holiday decor photos to follow in the coming weeks! 

German Americana | Burg und Schild

As much as American guys love classic American workwear, the Berliners certainly don't hate it.  Red Wing boots galore there.  Burg und Schild was the first store we visited in Berlin and one of the coolest.  Bomber jackets, motorcycles, oodles of good man stuff.  (Photos by Porter Hovey)  

Burg und Schild

Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 3 (in Mitte)

D-10178 Berlin

Harvard-Yale 2009

At Washington & Lee, my college, major binge drinking was practically required on Fridays (as it is all all colleges).  That would've been fine if we didn't have to face the cruel rituals of Saturday morning: rise at the crack of dawn, throw on a sundress/pearls/seersucker suit/bowtie, perform legitimate grooming, hike up to the ruins in time to throw your hand around a plastic frat cup of Jack Daniels before the football game started, ignore the start of the football game, continue to drink Jack Daniels and then go back to the dorm to sleep.  Very. Tough. Stuff.  

I didn't expect such fanciness outside of the South, but I sort of figured that those Crimson kids and Bulldogs would put themselves through similar rigors and dust off the ole sport coats for The Game.  A few of 'em did - but mainly the Yalies. I've always had a particular affinity for Harvard - I went to summer school there and they have the world's best letter emblazoned on everything, but while Harvard ended up winning the game (in the last seconds), Yale won for style (and binge drinking talent).  Photo evidence follows:

Wahoo!

Cornhole - The Other Game of the day

Our friend Caitlin bonds with a new friend over their love of circle sunglasses...

...more of the Other Game...

We made him show off his duck boots...

(Photos by Porter Hovey)

The Mad Men Verdict Is In!

Yep. That little photo of her in a Jackie do, smokin' away on the steps of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank with a pram full of blankets and ciggies did the job.  She won Banana Republic's Mad Men Casting Call and will have a little walk on role in an episode during season 4!  Thank you - sincerely - to all of you who voted and voted and campaigned for her.   Hello, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce!  So exciting!!!

Check out her interview on the AMC Mad Men Blog.

Auctions | War + Peace

The folks over at The Magazine Antiques kindly asked me to guest blog this week, highlighting some of my favorite pieces that will hitting the auction block in the coming days.  Per usual, the result was utterly feminine and sweet.  In the end, I went with a Militaria-meets-Martinis theme - an apartment full of furnishings for a man who fights as hard as he drinks.  Not sure if a true alpha male fighter type would spend time drooling over Lalanne elephant candlesticks, but hey, they do look great.

Disptach from London/Royal Tunbridge Wells | Addiction Illustrated

Libras tend the be very aesthetically driven and being a very aesthetically-driven libra myself, I've always used this as a great excuse to continue my collections.  The need to surround myself with items of beauty is not greed or gluttony, it's simply what the stars had carved out for me.  The sun and the moon aligned in such a way that rabid pith helmet and velvet slipper consumption became my destiny.  My friend Steve, another libra, was born to live out a similar, yet much more pricey prophecy in London.  He simply cannot stop buying beautiful vintage sports cars.  He just added two to his collection, including this little all original 1970 XKE S2 Jag which he will use to drive himself to the Goodwood Revival. It's a hard life, Sven. Very hard.

(Get a load of that gear shift! My god. And the wooden steering wheel...and the perfect leather, etc. etc.).

Prague Acquisitions | 1950s Czech Hunting Book

We found this wonderful 1950s Czech hunting book in the little used book shop where we picked up the falcon school chart below.  It opens to the map above, detailing where native game could be found through the former Czechoslovakia, followed by countless photos of those species, humans hunting those species, and then humans filling their homes and bellies with them, as well.

Well Hung | Walton Ford at Paul Kasmin

For even fancier, larger "school charts," pop to Paul Kasmin for the opening of Walton Ford's new show tonight (runs until December 23).

(Last night at the show, my friend introduced me to Artforum publisher Knight Landesman who in turn introduced me to...Walton Ford!  We chatted taxidermy.  He doesn't have any.  But that's ok, because the Museum of Natural History lets him come in and sketch from the archives, he said.  Of course!  The show was pretty incredible. If you haven't seen Ford's paintings in real life, you must.  They're absolutely epic wall-sized beauties).

     

(The Royal Managerie at the Tower of London - 3 December, 1830, 2009)

Paul Kasmin Gallery

293 Tenth Avenue (at 27th Street)

Prague Acquisitions | School Chart

We found this great old school chart from 1910 at a cute little used book shop across from our hotel in Andel.

A Break from Bohemia | Dressin' Like it's 1890

Today's NY Times shows the gents how Alexander McQueen, Ann Demeulemeester, Woolrich Woolen Mills and the like can help them dress like they did 120 years ago - all in tintypes by David Sokosh.  So cool.

(Note: As much as I go on about my love of men's boots, they are an accessory most certainly only meant for their original purposes - hunting, mucking, riding - not urban prowling or marching through the office. About a year ago, I saw a a gent exit Ralph Lauren corporate HQ on Madison Ave. in virtually that exact outfit from the top photo. It was quite a beautiful costume, but a costume, nonetheless. That said, I think we ladies can get away with modified versions of it all. We're lucky that way).

Prague Acquisitions | 1940s Boys' Magazines

Throughout our lives, our parents waged an ongoing battle:  mom's love of buying and saving magazines vs. dad's love of throwing away magazines.  While on their honeymoon in Paris, mom stocked up on French mags (so much cheaper there!), dad became enraged and those newlyweds nearly severed the union a week in.  

Porter and I inherited our mom's magazine lust and have expanded the fetish into all printed matter.  And for vintage printed matter, Prague was nearly orgasmic.  Wonderful little used book shops are scattered all over town and we found treasures in each and every one we investigated.  Military themes and deco/Bauhaus fonts galore.

We picked up these great looking, politically incorrectish magazine/pamphlety things from 1947.  They seem to be a Czech version of something like Boys Life, with little DIY tips, news of the day and comics.  Interestingly the cover image above was one of many, many items about Native Americans we came across.  Must've been quite a hot topic back in the day.

These comic strips appeared on the back covers...

Prague/Berlin | ShakeIt Photo Evidence Pt. I

Taps at Cafe Indigo...

Where Istanbul was a trip in which we photographed each other in profile in front of fancy buildings, this trip was one in which we photographed each other staring off into the distance while wearing 1,345 different accessories.  In this case, it's a British wool striped bobcap from J.Press. I wore a Swedish military Elmer Fudd hat much of the time, as well...

Porter in a beret I found online from some European army surplus shop...

This little Anastasia Romanoff-ish jacket is from (shhhh!) Forever 21!

Devon + Dorset Regiment schoolboy scarf from J.Press...

Cafe Indigo

A crazy eyebrow at Lokal...

In Prague, they don't just do cobblestones, they do colored, beautifully patterned cobble stones...

Looking atomic energy in the face at the National Gallery's Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art...