Building a Serious Wardrobe

There must by now be hundreds, if not thousands, of articles explaining how to build a basic male wardrobe.

Most begin in much the same way. Buy a navy blazer. Several white and blue shirts. Two pairs of grey trousers. A dark suit. Black Oxfords. Brown brogues. Perhaps a Barbour or a raincoat.

There is nothing particularly wrong with this advice. If a man is only beginning to take an interest in clothes, it is useful.

But after a few years it ceases to answer the more interesting questions.

What happens after the first navy suit?

What does a wardrobe look like when it has been assembled over twenty or thirty years rather than bought over two weekends?

How many suits are actually useful? How should clothes change with the seasons? How much repetition is desirable? When does variety become excess? And how does a man eventually develop a recognisable way of dressing without turning himself into a caricature?

For that, it is worth looking at men who thought about clothes rather more seriously.

Three examples are particularly interesting: Michael Alden, Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr. and Will Boehlke.

They are not Russian. They come from different periods, backgrounds and circumstances, and we are certainly not suggesting that a man living in Moscow should attempt to imitate any of them.

They are useful for another reason.

Each offers a remarkably clear answer to the same question:

How does a man build a wardrobe for a life rather than for a season?

Three Very Different Men

Michael Alden is an American enthusiast and writer on classical menswear, associated particularly with The London Lounge, one of the early online communities devoted to bespoke tailoring and traditional men's dress.

His wardrobe lists are famously extensive. Alden thinks about clothes almost architecturally:

different cloth weights, different seasons, city and country, formal and informal, each occupying its proper place.

If there is a philosophy behind his wardrobe, it is breadth.

Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr. belonged to an entirely different world. Born into a wealthy Philadelphia family, he became a soldier and diplomat and served in a succession of senior diplomatic and military roles during the first half of the twentieth century.

The American writer George Frazier later held Biddle up as an example of exceptionally disciplined male dress.

Despite his wealth, his wardrobe was surprisingly restricted. He repeatedly wore variations of the same dark suits, coats and shoes.

Biddle therefore offers almost the opposite lesson to Alden.

His principle is repetition.

Will Boehlke, associated with A Suitable Wardrobe, became an influential voice in the modern revival of classical menswear. His approach sits somewhere between the other two.

Rather than treating clothes either as a vast collection or a restricted uniform, he considered the wardrobe as a practical system: enough clothes to rotate properly, divided by season and occasion, with conservative foundations allowing more individual pieces to be introduced later.

His principle is structure.

They can therefore be considered as three case studies:

the collector, the minimalist and the system-builder.

None has to be copied.

All three are worth understanding.

What Does Any of This Have to Do With Moscow?

Quite a lot.

Russia has its own long history of sophisticated male dress. Imperial Russian society absorbed British tailoring, French fashion, European court dress and strong military influences while adapting them to Russian life and, most obviously, the Russian climate.

Contemporary Moscow is different again.

A man may wear an Italian suit, an English overcoat, Russian knitwear, Japanese denim and American shoes without considering the combination remotely unusual.

But geography has not disappeared.

Moscow still has real seasons.

Winter outerwear is not decorative. Shoes encounter snow, water, grit and salt. A man can move from severe cold outside into an extremely warm building within minutes. Spring and autumn have their own requirements. And summer can become sufficiently hot for linen, open-weave wool and lightweight tailoring to make complete sense.

This makes many contemporary "essential wardrobe" lists rather inadequate.

A lightweight navy suit, two Oxford shirts and a pair of loafers do not constitute a wardrobe for Moscow.

And this is precisely where Alden, Biddle and Boehlke become relevant.

Not because Moscow should dress like London or New York.

But because all three understood something that modern fashion advice often forgets:

clothes should correspond to climate, place, occasion and way of life.

That principle travels extremely well.

Michael Alden

The Complete Wardrobe

Alden's lists are perhaps the most entertaining because they make the modern idea of a "capsule wardrobe" seem almost absurdly austere.

His idea of a minimal wardrobe included approximately:

five city suits; two informal, weekend or country suits; three tweed coats; one navy double-breasted blazer; one dinner jacket; two lightweight summer coats; ten pairs of casual trousers; a substantial collection of formal and informal shirts; eight sweaters; two waistcoats for wearing with tweed; seven pairs of shoes; four overcoats; a leather jacket; five hats; four caps; gloves; silk and cashmere scarves; two umbrellas; dress and sports watches; braces, belts and cufflinks; and large quantities of socks.

There were pyjamas, wool and silk dressing gowns and, optionally, a smoking jacket.

And then there were eighty-five neckties and thirty-six pocket squares.

Calling this minimalist requires a certain sense of humour.

Yet the quantities are not actually the most interesting part.

Look beneath them and a very coherent system appears.

Alden's wardrobe is organised around occasion, season, climate and cloth.

That becomes much clearer when he moves from his supposedly minimal wardrobe to the larger one.

Winter Tailoring

For colder weather, Alden proposed six heavyweight suits made from worsted wool and flannel in approximately the 14-19 oz range.

Three might be double-breasted and three single-breasted.

The colours were equally traditional: navy, charcoal, grey flannel and restrained stripes.

This may sound excessively heavy to somebody accustomed to contemporary lightweight tailoring.

But weight changes the behaviour of cloth.

A substantial wool hangs differently. It develops a cleaner line through the body. Trousers fall properly. A jacket acquires a natural drape that is much harder to achieve with very light cloth.

For Moscow the principle is particularly relevant, although it needs adapting.

The modern Russian problem is not simply cold.

It is the transition between cold streets, cars, offices, restaurants and homes that may be extremely well heated.

The answer is therefore not to wear the heaviest suit imaginable throughout winter.

It is to build a wardrobe in which the outer layers do much of the climatic work, while winter tailoring beneath remains substantial enough to look and feel appropriate without becoming unbearable indoors.

Heavy flannel still has a place.

It simply needs to be used intelligently.

The Middle Weights

Alden's next category consisted of suits in roughly 10-13 oz worsted wool.

These are perhaps the real workhorses of a serious wardrobe.

They sacrifice some of the magnificent drape of very heavy cloth but become considerably easier to wear in heated buildings and during the long transitional periods of the year.

For Moscow this category is arguably more useful than Alden's heaviest cloths.

A good medium-weight worsted can work through much of spring and autumn and, depending upon the wearer's life, through a substantial part of winter as well.

This is also where additional trousers become sensible.

A suit jacket generally survives considerably longer than its trousers, particularly when worn regularly.

Buying a second pair of trousers with a favourite working suit is not extravagance.

It is maintenance planned in advance.

Summer Should Look Like Summer

At the opposite end of Alden's wardrobe were approximately six lightweight suits.

His suggestions included linen, mohair and high-twist wool such as fresco.

Lighter colours became possible as the weather improved.

Interestingly, he also favoured substantial Irish linen rather than the extremely thin linen often marketed as summer cloth today.

Again, the number six is irrelevant.

The important point is that summer tailoring should actually be summer tailoring.

A navy worsted suit made marginally thinner is not the only answer to warm weather.

Linen behaves differently.

High-twist wool breathes differently.

Mohair has a crispness and subtle sheen that can be particularly effective in evening clothes.

Cream, tobacco, pale grey and lighter blues suddenly become natural rather than conspicuous.

Moscow summers justify all of them.

The Odd Jacket

Alden placed almost no numerical limit on sports jackets and blazers.

At first this sounds like simple enthusiasm for buying clothes.

In practice, the odd jacket is one of the most versatile pieces in a mature wardrobe.

Tweed, Donegal, Cheviot, homespun wool, hopsack and linen allow considerably greater variation than business suits while remaining fundamentally traditional garments.

And unlike many fashionable clothes, a good sports jacket often becomes better with age.

The elbows soften.

The pockets settle.

The cloth loses its initial stiffness.

Eventually it becomes one of those garments that looks considerably better on its owner than it ever did on the hanger.

Alden even suggested that extremely heavy tweeds could remain part of a man's wardrobe into advanced age, when their weight might finally need reducing for the sake of the wearer's shoulders.

There is something rather civilised in that observation.

Clothes are being considered across an entire lifetime.

Trousers Matter More Than Most Men Think

Alden suggested at least fifteen pairs of odd trousers per season.

For almost everybody, that is excessive.

The interesting part is not the number.

It is the range.

High-twist wool. Flannel. Cavalry twill. Cotton. Corduroy. Tweed.

Many otherwise sophisticated wardrobes become strangely monotonous below the waist.

A man may own ten beautiful jackets and wear almost every one of them with essentially the same pair of grey trousers.

The better approach is to consider trousers as seriously as jackets.

Charcoal flannel, mid-grey flannel, cavalry twill, cream cotton, corduroy and heavier wool each change the character of a jacket considerably.

This is particularly useful in Moscow, where seasonal changes in trouser cloth make practical as well as aesthetic sense.

Outerwear Is a Wardrobe of Its Own

Alden's four-overcoat wardrobe is similarly logical rather than merely luxurious.

He proposed a formal dark double-breasted coat, a dark single-breasted coat, a tweed coat and either covert or whipcord.

Each performs a different function.

For Moscow the underlying principle becomes even stronger.

A single overcoat cannot realistically perform every job.

There is a considerable difference between what is required on a damp October morning and what is required in January.

A useful progression might therefore include a proper raincoat, a transitional wool coat, a substantial winter overcoat and something less formal for weekends or the country.

The precise garments depend on the man's life.

The principle does not:

outerwear should be graduated according to conditions.

Formal Clothes

Alden's wardrobe also contained clothes many contemporary men would consider historical curiosities: morning dress, evening tails and the various garments once required for formal daytime and evening occasions.

Very few modern wardrobes require all of them.

But the underlying rule remains sound.

If an occasion recurs in your life, eventually own the clothes for it.

For many men this means a dinner suit.

A properly fitted dinner jacket owned for fifteen years will almost invariably look better than something hired on Friday afternoon for an event on Saturday.

Formal clothes are worn infrequently.

That is precisely why good examples can last for decades.

A. J. Biddle

The Monastic Wardrobe

If Alden represents abundance, Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr. represents something quite different.

Biddle possessed both the money and social circumstances to maintain an enormous wardrobe.

He chose not to.

George Frazier described it as almost monastic.

At its centre were only six business suits.

There were double- and single-breasted navy serge suits, dark blue pinstriped flannel and charcoal-grey flannel.

The single-breasted suits were conservative three-button garments with notch lapels.

The jackets were cut with enough ease through the back to hang naturally and comfortably from the shoulders.

What is remarkable is not any individual garment.

It is the repetition.

Biddle discovered what suited him and kept wearing it.

Repetition Becomes Identity

This is perhaps the most useful lesson in the entire discussion.

Modern clothing culture places enormous value on novelty.

A new colour. A new trainer. A new cut. A new collection. A new collaboration.

A mature wardrobe works in almost the opposite direction.

Once something proves itself, repeat it.

If navy suits suit you, there is nothing wrong with owning several.

If grey flannel trousers work with most of your jackets, own more than one pair.

If you discover a shirt collar that genuinely suits your face and neck, there is little reason to reinvent it every season.

If one shoemaker's last fits your foot perfectly, buying another pair is considerably more rational than beginning the search again.

A mature wardrobe gradually eliminates experiments that failed and multiplies the things that succeeded.

Eventually repetition becomes recognisable.

That is personal style.

Not attempting to look like a different man every morning.

Biddle Away From Business

His less formal wardrobe followed the same principle.

Several Harris Tweed jackets.

Charcoal-grey flannel trousers.

A small collection of button-down shirts.

His shoes covered daytime business, evening dress and informal wear without becoming an exhibition.

His outerwear included a raincoat, substantial double-breasted coat, covert coat and polo coat.

There was variety.

But it was functional variety.

Everything had a job.

This is an important distinction.

The aim of a serious wardrobe is not minimalism for its own sake.

Nor is it abundance for its own sake.

The aim is to have the right things.

Knowing What Not to Wear

Frazier's description of Biddle is particularly entertaining when discussing the things he avoided.

Some now seem charmingly dated.

Others remain entirely relevant.

He disliked conspicuous accessories and obvious matching.

The principle survives perfectly well.

A pocket square need not reproduce the tie.

A watch need not dominate the wrist.

Shoes do not require exotic colouring to demonstrate their price.

Cufflinks need not be visible from across a restaurant.

A jacket does not become better because every possible tailoring detail has been added to it.

There comes a point at which another flourish diminishes rather than improves the whole.

Restraint is itself a form of taste.

Will Boehlke

The Wardrobe as a System

Will Boehlke provides the bridge between Alden's abundance and Biddle's discipline.

For a man wearing a suit every working day, he proposed a minimum rotation of approximately five suits, preferably with a sixth available for cleaning, repairs or slightly less formal occasions.

The basic selection might contain:

a dark grey solid; a very dark blue solid; a medium-grey semi-solid; a grey pinstripe; and a navy chalk stripe.

The sixth could be somewhat more relaxed.

This is an exceptionally sensible foundation.

Five working days do not require twenty-five suits.

But they probably require more than two.

Clothes need to rest.

Trousers need to recover.

Shoes certainly need to recover.

Things occasionally require cleaning.

Buttons come loose.

A seam needs attention.

A wardrobe should contain a degree of redundancy.

That is not extravagance.

It is simply a system that continues working when one component is unavailable.

Building Beyond the Foundation

Boehlke's larger wardrobe became considerably more ambitious.

For a temperate climate he imagined separate spring/summer and autumn/winter wardrobes, each containing a substantial group of city suits plus country or weekend alternatives.

Most of the city suits remained conservative.

Solids. Semi-solids. Stripes.

These garments did the repetitive work.

Only after this foundation was established did the more distinctive pieces appear.

Mohair could provide a sophisticated evening sheen.

Brown Cheviot introduced texture.

A black-and-white flannel might carry a restrained overcheck.

Summer permitted houndstooth, gabardine and lighter colours.

This order is important.

Character comes after competence.

The man buying his first proper suit does not need an extraordinary windowpane check because he saw one beautifully photographed online.

He needs a good dark suit.

Once the basic wardrobe exists, unusual clothes become much easier to accommodate because they are no longer being asked to perform everyday work.

Three Men, Three Answers

Alden, Biddle and Boehlke appear at first to disagree.

Alden's wardrobe can become enormous.

Biddle's was remarkably concentrated.

Boehlke sits somewhere between them.

Yet underneath the numbers they agree on almost everything important.

They believe in good cloth.

They believe in seasonality.

They distinguish city from country.

They recognise differences between day and evening.

They believe clothes should be maintained and kept for years.

They understand the value of repetition.

And none of them treats fashion as the organising principle of a wardrobe.

That is why their ideas remain relevant.

The Moscow Wardrobe

What happens when those principles are brought to Moscow?

The first thing to discard is the numbers.

Alden's eighty-five ties are not a target.

Biddle's six suits are not a rule.

Boehlke's seasonal totals are not a shopping list.

Instead, take the structure.

A Moscow wardrobe should probably be more explicitly seasonal than one built for London.

Winter

This is where substantial clothes earn their place.

Flannel. Heavier worsted. Tweed. Corduroy. Cavalry twill. Cashmere. Proper knitwear. Serious overcoats. Gloves and scarves that exist because they are necessary rather than decorative. Shoes and boots capable of surviving actual winter streets.

But there is an important complication.

Moscow interiors can be very warm.

Therefore the intelligent winter wardrobe does not simply become heavier at every layer.

The overcoat should do much of the work.

Underneath, tailoring and knitwear should remain comfortable enough for the office, restaurant or home.

Layering matters more than brute weight.

Spring and Autumn

These may be the most enjoyable seasons for clothes.

Tweed jackets. Flannel trousers. Gabardine. Covert coats. Raincoats. Suede and calf shoes. Fine knitwear. Medium-weight tailoring.

This is where the wardrobe becomes particularly flexible.

A small number of good jackets combined with intelligently chosen trousers, shirts and knitwear can produce a very large number of combinations without requiring an enormous collection.

Summer

Moscow can become properly hot.

Dress accordingly.

Linen. High-twist wool. Fresco. Lightweight hopsack. Mohair. Cotton. Cream trousers. Tobacco linen. Pale grey wool. Lighter blues.

Summer clothes should not look like winter clothes made from thinner material.

They should possess their own character.

City and Country Still Matter

The distinction sounds old-fashioned until one considers what it actually means.

It does not mean that a man requires a shooting estate.

It means recognising context.

A charcoal suit and black Oxfords belong naturally in one environment.

A Donegal jacket, corduroy trousers and heavier brogues belong naturally in another.

A linen jacket in July occupies another space again.

The modern wardrobe can relax these distinctions.

It should not necessarily abolish them.

Knowing what is appropriate remains part of dressing well.

Build the Foundation First

The temptation now is to produce another definitive Kirsanov list.

Ten suits.

Six jackets.

Twelve shirts.

Eight pairs of shoes.

That would merely repeat the mistake of every "essential wardrobe" article with which we began.

Start instead with categories.

A man who regularly wears tailoring needs enough city suits to rotate comfortably.

He needs several odd jackets capable of working with more than one pair of trousers.

He needs proper seasonal outerwear.

He needs enough shirts that laundry does not dictate what he wears.

He needs shoes appropriate to business, informal dress, summer and bad weather.

He needs knitwear.

If his life includes black-tie events with any regularity, he should own a dinner suit.

And he needs enough informal clothing that abandoning a tie does not mean abandoning standards.

How many examples of each?

That depends entirely upon the life.

Buy Slowly

This may be the most important advice of all.

A serious wardrobe should take years to assemble.

Perhaps decades.

That is not an inconvenience.

It is precisely why mature wardrobes become interesting.

The first navy suit teaches you something about the second.

The first bespoke jacket may reveal that the lapels were too narrow, the gorge too high or the coat slightly too short.

A pair of shoes that seemed beautiful in the shop may prove intolerable after three hours.

A tweed initially considered rather dull may become the jacket worn more than anything else you own.

Taste develops through use.

Buying an entire wardrobe at once denies you that education.

Cloth Before Novelty

There is an important distinction between visual interest and quality.

A remarkable cloth can be almost plain.

Grey flannel is interesting because of its surface.

Hopsack because of its weave.

Donegal because of its irregularity.

Linen because it creases.

Cavalry twill because of its structure.

Cashmere because of its handle.

Good clothing does not require decoration when the material itself possesses character.

This is perhaps where older wardrobes differ most noticeably from much contemporary luxury clothing.

Texture once did much of the work now assigned to branding.

Fit Before Brand

A famous name cannot rescue poor proportions.

A moderately priced jacket that fits properly will generally look better than an expensive one that does not.

The shoulder should belong to the wearer.

The collar should sit cleanly.

The jacket should have sufficient length to look like a jacket rather than an enlarged cardigan.

Trousers should have enough rise and width to hang rather than cling.

Sleeves and trousers should finish deliberately rather than approximately.

None of this requires extravagance.

It requires attention.

And once a man knows the proportions that work for him, Biddle's principle returns:

repeat them.

Maintain What You Own

A serious wardrobe requires maintenance.

Shoes should be rotated, brushed and polished.

Shoe trees are useful.

Good knitwear should be repaired rather than automatically discarded.

Trousers can be pressed.

Jackets should be brushed and aired.

Buttons can be replaced.

Linings can be renewed.

Shoes can be resoled.

A good overcoat can remain in service for decades.

This changes the economics of quality considerably.

An expensive garment worn regularly for fifteen years is not necessarily expensive clothing.

A mediocre garment replaced every two years may be considerably more so.

Do Not Dress Like an Archive

There is a danger in becoming too interested in traditional menswear.

One can begin dressing like an exhibit.

The purpose is not to recreate 1935.

Nor 1962.

Nor to dress like an English country gentleman when the actual destination is a restaurant in central Moscow.

Tradition should provide a vocabulary.

It should not become costume.

The best contemporary traditional dress often removes rather than adds.

The trouser may be fuller.

The coat slightly longer.

The cloth more substantial.

The shoe simpler.

The colours quieter.

The logos disappear.

The result should look entirely natural.

Personal Style Is Mostly Editing

Young wardrobes tend to accumulate.

Mature wardrobes tend to edit.

Eventually a man learns that certain colours do very little for him.

Certain collars never look right.

Certain shoes remain unworn.

Certain fabrics irritate him.

Certain jackets are admired in photographs but never chosen in the morning.

These are useful discoveries.

Personal style emerges partly through addition, but perhaps even more through elimination.

You stop buying the things you merely admire and concentrate on the things you actually wear.

That is when a wardrobe begins to become coherent.

The Point of It All

Alden's extraordinary lists, Biddle's disciplined repetition and Boehlke's systematic wardrobe all lead eventually to the same place.

The purpose of a wardrobe is not to own clothes.

It is to remove uncertainty.

You should reach a point where almost everything works with something else.

Where the correct coat for the weather is obvious.

Where there is always a suitable suit available.

Where shoes have already been broken in.

Where your preferred shirt collar has ceased to be a subject requiring thought.

Where getting dressed becomes instinctive.

And perhaps most importantly, where the clothes begin to look less like clothes that have been purchased and more like your clothes.

That cannot really be bought in a season.

It has to be accumulated.

Used.

Maintained.

Refined.

And occasionally discarded when an experiment proves unsuccessful.

The old wardrobe lists are fascinating not because we should reproduce them, but because they describe a very different relationship with possessions.

One bought carefully.

One kept things.

One discovered what worked.

And then one bought another of it.

A serious wardrobe is built, not bought.