A Time For Tweed
You’ve got to be kidding. Dressing like Cary Grant in his tweedy professor mode? Mimicking George Bernard Shaw or Robert Frost in times past?
Here’s my Tweed Saga recounted at greater length in my 200+ page opus Threading The Needle.
Back in 1969 I set up a window at our 44th St. heyday emporium that stopped passersby highlighting a portrait of the great Irish playwright provided for us by Magee, our premier Irish Donegal Tweed resource, headlined “George Bernard Shaw Loves His Irish Tweed.” So did Frank Sinatra on his many visits to J. Squeeze. Several years later fitter Felix Samelson joined me on our visits to Cary Grant’s suite at the Warwick Hotel on West 54th Street to fit him for a tweed or two.
A brief encounter with Robert Frost occurred 1955 during my freshman year at Dartmouth. After his annual class lecture, I gracelessly introduced myself complimenting his black/brown J. Press herringbone tweed suit. Mr. Frost frostily replied, “I own many more from your grandfather’s shop, but I need to ask if you are here to question me about my poetry or my clothing?”
Darwinian change makes J. Press Tweed a “fitting” choice for coming out of hibernation after months of Co-vid sensitivity in sweatpants and tee shirts. Here’s the deal—3 for 1. Order a tweed suit from Donegal fabric that translates to either a suit, sport coat or odd trouser.
Pour through our vast collection of tweed swatches featuring volumes of Irish Donegals. Choose a mid-weight tweed honed down for climate ready comfort without losing its Downton Abby character that displays both history and class for an otherwise vulgar age.
J. Press Tailored To Individual Order offers a perfect fit together with choice of style, our classic center-hook or side vents, two or three button, and choice of lap stitching sensibly priced a touch beyond off the rack.
Dressing needn’t be senselessly boring. Celtic weaving has an inherent feeling for color, amazingly dexterous and an inbuilt sense of rhythm.
Dance the jig made to order.
RICHARD PRESS
9 comments
During the two years me and my fiancé chose to stay away from the public in a Covid-stricken Sweden, I spent as many days I’ve possibly been able to wearing suits and jackets in flannel, corduroy, moleskin but most of all, tweed! I dread the summer months where temperatures often make heavier fabrics too warm to wear.
Even though I do enjoy a good linen, cotton or lightweight flannel suit, tweed, is what keeps my heart warm, in a wide variety of ways. While many men of my age resorted to jumpsuit-like grey jersey frenzies, that after a few months of video meetings even started to show in these channels, it was a profound joy and inspiring part of my morning routine in seclusion to pick out the combination of the day, playing around with shirts, ties and hanks, pondering whether it was an odd-jacket day, or another suit day.
My interpretations may sometimes be “unorthodox” regarding fit and cut, due to heavy subcultural and musical influences, but a glance and visual document om this journey, day by day, can be seen on Instagram on my account @fourinhand.
I wish you all a good day, and thank you for the time you now seemingly spent reading my humble words.
I live in South Carolina but my wife likes to tease me that I have a “New England wardrobe.” I do dearly yearn for tweed-appropriate weather which, thankfully, I enjoy consistently now in early December. And a sizable portion of my tweed wardrobe is from J. Squeeze. A new addition was purchased just a few minutes ago! Here’s to December in the South!
Decades ago I bought a tweed coat at Saks University Shop in Princeton.. WOW it was expensive! Wrote a hot check for it which dad covered.. Wore it hard for over 25 years. Really got dad’s money’s worth out of it. God bless tweed!
I have your book but temporarily cannot find it on my shelves. I recall filing it with the famous photo of Elvis entering the Warwick. Doubt that he was seeking a fitting. A great read I recall. I’ll be in to check out some tweed.
“…Pour through our vast collection of tweed swatches featuring volumes of Irish Donegals….”
But…where does one do that? I saw no link to any other information about tweets? Does this vast library of tweets actually exist?
Splendid. I’m wearing a Magee “Donegal Mist” tweed jacket today. An older Southwick-for-J. Press
Wonderful article! However, WHERE can one find your page for the Tweed Collection ??? It doesn’t exist !!!
It was a pleasure to read your book. Stimulated alot of undergraduate memories,
and more recently, purchases from your New Haven and DC stores. It is nice
to have documented significance to the clothes I/we wear.
Best regards, George, (Brown ’57)
Ah, tweed. . . Great piece! I have four such jackets in the rotation (one of which is a J. Press model), plus a very heavy tweed suit, currently at the tailor’s for some minor alterations. Can’t wait to get it back, wear, and enjoy it.
Kind Regards,
Heinz-Ulrich