Week Forty: Getting squeaky clean, metro-style!

Is soap really just a placebo? Whatever the case, like most people, we like our soap! Checked in at the boutique-y St-Paul Hotel this weekend during what has now become an extra feature to our trendy-restaurant-dinner-anniversary-celebration-tradition, Kumee brought his own soap from home, just in case the hotel's complimentary "shea butter" soap just wouldn't do. Soap-on-the-rope used to be that lame last minute gift given as a token gesture, well, at least up until Tom Ford launched his personal line of men's toiletries, that is. Perfumed with his own signature scent, he put as much thought into this exfoliating bar as you will have into giving this to the special sophisticated metro male in your life. Warning: has aphrodisiac properties:))))

Week Thirty-nine: Checks!

And so while I love black clothes, Kumee adores checks, and if he had his way as well, that's all he'd wear, well, when I come to think of it, it is almost all he wears, down to his boxers, and socks! Well I might have something to do with the underwear bit there for, for the first time I ever assumed another incidental wifely role - that of boxer-purchaser, with the plethora of choices before me, I ended up choosing a three pack of medium-sized fruit-of-the-loom (I will indulge him with silky Burberry ones one day!) assorted check patterned underjammies. You could imagine my relief to find out that Kumee approved of my selection when he sighed wistfully and told me how he wished that he could make shirts out of them!!! Yeah, and so Kumee likes check shirts...

The responsibility of dressing up Jaden kinda naturally just fell upon Kumee, the same way it had on me for Maya as traditional gender roles dictate. I must say that Kumee does a great job at it - at least 99% of the time! As I had explained in a previous post, while in the past, the clothing choices for little boys were limited to pint-size overalls and middy(midshipman)/sailor outfits, we generation X-ers have so much choice at our disposal and like to dress up our progeny the same way we dress ourselves, rendering them little mini-me's that it is almost scary! With the warmer weather this exercise, really is a cinch, but it's all to easy too to underdress. And so Kumee dresses Jaden one evening in a red check short-sleeved shirt and a green check pair of shorts. I didn't realize that he had until we arrived at our destination and brought it to Kumee's attention. "Isn't he mis-matched, huns??? I asked incredulously. "Mais, non!" came Kumee's snooty reply. "It goes" Kumee insisted "I guess, in a "festive" kinda way" I sarcastically replied, I mean, I learned that inKindergarten, that is, not to match red and green or pair green with yellow, etc. I ended up explaining to everyone I met that evening that Kumee had dressed Jaden, but funny enough, at the end of the day that was all the explanation needed, because when it comes to fashion, nobody argues with Kumee:

Week Thirty-eight: Sartorialist-borrowed Inspiration

So I must admit that I haven't been as religious in checking out The Sartorialist's daily (or almost!) daily picture but I don't think I've been necessarily (sorely!) missed, either or missed more than is necessary at least, the way I miss the visits of all my five followers lol. And that's the thing about blogs - interest and/or inspiration waxes and wanes, flows and ebbs, if you know what I'm saying, lol, it comes in waves and spurts and then there are these lulls...

And so I broke my Sartorialist fast, my interest piqued and stirred by last Tuesday's post title, "The New Prep Standard, Paris" and was pleasantly surprised, no, actually, I practically fell in love all over again - I mean, what's not to love about these three photographs? They've got all of the elements such as the seersucker blazer, the ankle grazing pants, the skinny/knitted tie, the pocket square - pretty much everything right there that I've been preaching and harping on and on about for the past couple of months, so much so that it feels validating...

Funny that he posted something on prep, for just the other day a girl at work who (alas!) knows her fashion and I got talking about clothes and I couldn't help but smile as she gushed and (lusted!) over lined lapels and crests - just who does that? that is look beneath a lapel and cares enough whether it's lined or not??? Prep is indeed quite the trend. While traditionally, it used to identify one, strictly speaking, as an enrollee of the better academia ("prep" schools) of New England (different still from the narrower but related Ivy style, encompassing a wider variety of key garments) these days it's more of a personal look that unlettered laymen/streetsmart/disgruntled Harvard aspirants - dropouts from anywhere can pull off with the exercise of a little caution, of course...so as not to appear as if one is trying too hard...(now to convince Kumee to get a pair of dress shorts!)