Christmas Cloakroom voucher

Our new Cloakroom vouchers have arrived from the printer, so if you're stumped for a present this year we can box something up for you, and with any dollar amount you'd like.

New window Surry Hills

A new window for Surry Hills. The shops around us are now doing battle in the Christmas decoration stakes. Inspired by Benja and his recent work for Hermes, we decided to do something a little different. Not to mention the slightly smaller than Hermes' budget we have to work with.

Cloakroom James st - Now Open!

The doors are open today on our latest Cloakroom.


Located on James st (Fortitude Valley, Bris) the new store will allow us to present a larger range of our ready-to-wear Pistols at Dawn pieces.
And in the coming weeks we'll have our in-house tailored service (shirting, jackets, suiting) up and running.
For those of you in the city our Queen st store will remain open, and I will continue to be here 6 days.





On the rack we have 10 new styles of shirt, 4 styles of light / unconstructed jacket as well as shorts and pants.
Also on offer we have our roman sandals, knitted ties (from London), bow ties (Le Noeud Papillon) and pocket squares.
In production at the moment we have 2 new styles of jeans and drop of our t-shirts in 100% NZ wool. We're hoping for both of these to be in all our stores in the next week or 2.


Our newest member of the team, Leif, will be running the new store for us. Leif will bring a wealth of experience and knowledge, and his understanding of menswear will be a great asset to the team.



Thanks also to Damien who has been working on a new piece of art just for the shop.
It looks fantastic, though I'm sure once it's priced it'll be snapped up in no time.

Cloakroom #3 - James st Brisbane

It's been a very busy week here in Brisbane as we've been working around the clock on the fitout for a new store we're about to be open on James St. It's slowly starting to take shape and we're hoping it will be open for business as of tomorrow.

There's been too many nights of painting til midnight, but it has been very exciting to see a cream coloured shell slowly develop into our latest Cloakroom installment.





Working tirelessly has been our support team of Mark (who's just realised his talent for painting), James (ideas man / expert silicone applicator), Leif (heavy lifting / handyman all-rounder) and Eleisha, who when she's not been painting has been keeping us fed and stocked with beer.
Thanks guys, we greatly appreciate your time and efforts.









Stay tuned for more...

Kid in a candy store

New season Grenson samples arrived this morning and I already have some favourites. For everyone who has been hanging out for this season stay tuned. We will order new styles as well as top ups of the classics for both Sydney and Brisbane.

Fin Review

It is always special to get a mention in the Financial Review magazine, and Andrew and I eagerly await each edition.
A great read and always beautifully styled by Virginia Van Heythuysen. A privilege to rub shoulders if only on the pages of the magazine with Dries van Noten, Gucci and Ann Demeulemeester.

Sydney Magazine December

Nice little spot in the Sydney magazine this month. Every little bit helps in a new city.

Bow Ties

In Sydney, and on their way to Brisbane, bow ties from Le Noeud Papillon in silk, cotton and velvet by Holland and Sherry.

Benja's amazing paper wings at Hermes

Since opening here in Sydney I have been fortunate to meet some very interesting people doing amazing things. Benja Harney is one of them. One of his latest creations is a winged instalation in the window of Hermes you can see more of his work at paperform.wordpress.com.

On the Mannequin

The weather is warming up in Sydney and so begins the difficulty of looking and feeling well dressed during the heat of summer.
Linen half lined blazer, white pinpoint with our #5#3 medium spread collar, knit cotton tie.
Denim is always a constant in our wardrobe. This is our straight cut raw selvedge rolled with tan Grenson Noble.
It's amazing the cooling effects of showing a bit of ankle.

Meatpacking on a Sunday afternoon

There's nothing like a stroll around the meatpacking district on a Sunday afternoon, especially if it's a beautiful Autumn day.









Heading East takes you toward the water (The Hudson), and Andre Balaz's Standard Hotel - a very striking building, that feels somewhat out of context.

Uptown & Tom Ford

Uptown is a different world.
We visited both the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Upper East Side and the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side.
Affluence abounds and you can almost smell it in the air.
One can only guess the cost of an apartment in this part of town.

This concentration of wealth Uptown means that every big international fashion brand has an presence, and often in an imposing way.
Even though we didn't do too much shopping Uptown, it was here that we had some of the best service of anywhere in the entire city.

Though we could have ventured into many stores, time was tight so we window shopped our way downtown past the likes of Miu Miu, Chloe, Zegna, Loro Piana, Gucci, Jil Sander, Dolce Gabbana etc etc.

We did manage to visit Ralph Lauren's impressive 3 level store on Madison Ave and 72nd.
The breadth of products was amazing. The full Ralph Lauren 'lifestyle' was presented in its entirety. Ralph Lauren openly acknowledges the inspirtion he draws from English country living, and this store encapsulates that. There were leather couches, open fires, tweed blankets, shooting jackets and hunting boots.
The staff were completely disarming and were happy to show us around the different levels of the store and even ride the elevator with us.
* unfortunately no photos


Tom Ford - Madison Ave & 70th St



We almost missed seeing the Tom Ford store after we lost track of time at The Met and made the trek to Madison Ave only to find it already closed.
We did come back a few days later and I'm glad for it. Although we had heard it was an intimidating store to visit, our experience was the complete opposite from the first moment we stepped inside.
Any store that has someone on a front desk to greet you as you enter is bound to frighten a few, but we were greeted with warmth by the pretty girl manning the counter, and this set the tone.


After a bit of wandering we found ourselves in the fragrance 'room' where we were met Samuel. Samuel had moved from Chicago especially to work for Tom Ford, and had been working in the store from its first day.
His understanding of the different products, as well as the vision of the man himself was impressive. 'Mr Ford' had definitely had been successful in his hiring policy.

After a tour of downstairs including trying on some suiting, we were taken upstairs in the velvet walled elevator. Here we were shown rooms such as the 'bespoke shoe room', 'VIP room', and even given a peak behind a curtain which revealed waistcoated tailors behind a glass wall working away on their machines.
Off the rack suits are altered onsite, while the bespoke suiting is made in Italy. Though you're up for $10k+ for anything that is fully tailored.

One retailer (at another store) had told us that the store had taken $25 million in its first 2 months, and you could see why.
For those with the money this place offers a bounty of temptations.

Tom Ford has done a very impressive job is creating a complete service for men. As well as the comprehensive collection of suits, shirting and jackets the store has everything a customer could want, from umbrellas and sunglasses to fragrances and driving gloves.


The store has its own 'gardener' who tends the many bonsai.



The shirt and jacket room with fragrance room at the rear.






Autumn was just kicking in so got to see the city turn shades of yellow and orange.



Another pretty view!





Its an impressive site walking back south from the Upper East Side, particularly as the sun is going down.

5th Avenue




Is that Bruce Wayne's penthouse in the distance?

No Cameras Please!

One of the big frustrations was how narky people were about me taking photos, particularly in retail stores.

As a result we weren't able to take many pics inside stores. I did my best, but once the camera was out staff were all over us.

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Soho-Nolita-Noho

It's very easy to neglect a lot of the island and to spend days exploring and getting lost in Soho, Nolita and Noho. This is a real hub for interesting stores, cafes, restaurants and in particular retail.
Prince st, Spring st, Broome st, Lafayette st and Broadway are littered with a vast array of places to easily spend your money.





Mercer St
On one of our first days we headed to Mercer st which provided the chance to check out some big name brands including the likes of APC, 3.1 Phillip Lim, LV, Marc Jacobs and Prada - which runs for a whole block between Mercer and Broadway.
Some edgier brands can be found at stores such as Seven NY (below).



Rag and Bone
Rag & Bone is a brand we've followed for a while and their store looked great. Not too much stock, displayed in an uncluttered way with enough quirks to make it interesting.



Toward the front there were some great ties, gloves and accessories amongst denim, shirting and suits, while toward the back of the store a few chesterfields and fabric books gave the impression it was set up for a tailoring service.
Staff were a little busy so we weren't given too much assistance or clarification.
The 'no cameras' policy restricted us quite a bit, but for some good pics check out this.

For the girls there is plenty to look at including Agent Provocateur, which we had to visit.
With NYU just up the road, there were plenty of snappy students out and about, and this is one of the stomping grounds for Scott Schuman (the sartorialist).

It's an easy street to find, and after a few hours we decided to go hunting for some less obvious gems.

Lafayette St


Lafayette runs parallel to Broadway and it was where we stumbled upon LafCo hidden behind some scaffolding. This was one of the best of this style of store I'd ever been in. The staff were fantastic and very helpful. They stocked an extensive range of soaps, fragrances and candles under their house brand, as well as Italian brand Santa Maria Novella, which has apparently been around for some 600 years. Their candles in particular were very good.



Just down the street and the past the massive G-Star flagship (which we bypassed), there was In God We Trust, a store with an interesting mix of clothing, jewellery, shoes and accessories. It was in a cool cluster of stores that included a hole-in-the-wall florist, a few vintage stores and the Ladder 20 fire station - whose Dalmatian made friends with us.






Broadway
One rainy afternoon we were heading up Broadway, fighting the wind and rain, and stumbled into Uniqlo. A few days earlier one of the retailers had mentioned it was worth a look, and he wasn't wrong.
For a low priced department store this Japanese brand really delivers. Due to the season we were somewhat restricted, but their jeans (japanese selvedge), and basics were extremely impressive. All manner of knits and scarves in wool, cashmere and mixes were also on offer at very competitive prices.
2 hours later we were done, and laden up with 2 bags of goodies.



Across the road on Broadway I ducked into a newsagent and was very excited to see Aust magazine Men's Style on the shelves.

And flicking through the new Monocle it was fantastic to see a piece on Brisbane architect Paul Owen (Owen & Vokes), including a pic of him snapped in his black cotton Cloakroom suit.
Also Monocle had a piece on Richards & Spence (Adrian Spence is Brisbane interior designer and Cloakroom customer), and architects Donovan Hill (where our part-time house model James works, as well as a number of guys with pieces from us).
Brisbane was everywhere!




Around every corner there seemed to be a monument of note off in the distance.
Often when I'd lost my bearings I'd just try and find the Empire State Building and then I'd know which direction we were walking.