A Treasury Of…

In pulling together my personal looks for Fall, I noticed that basic blue denim just doesn’t seem to be a big building block this year.

I’ll be carrying over my white jeans from summer, and loosening up my new pale blue self-shrunk Levi’s 501s, and spicing up a ton of outfits with these selvage jeans by New York-based label 4 Stroke in a deadstock fabric color the company calls “Warmtape”.

Their Warsaw-fit Warmtapes are proving a perfect option for this transitional time of year when sartorially Summer’s become a bummer but its still too hot to truly dress for Fall.

Thinner than traditional denim while still robust and rugged in feel, the Warsaw’s harvest-time tone brings a bold hint of Autumn into an outfit without weighing me down in weighty and woolly fabrics while August and September take their sweet time in cooling the hot city down.

The cut is trim but non-fashion-victim-ed and the jeans, through their unusual hue, seem to lend new life to old pieces I’d been tired of taking out of the closet.

Old shades of gray or faded chambray are given a good twist by pairing them up with a punch of orangey-red rust. I figure, once you’ve got your closet covered in the basics (which I guess I basically do now), it comes time to spice it all up.

…as the tagline heralds, or is it just Abercrombie a la Amsterdam?

Their new line just newly on-line, sportswear label Scotch & Soda nixes any trace of their Netherlands heritage for a Super-American collection for Fall 2010.

Rugged, one-buttoned blazers rendered in crinkled wool and lined in casual cotton would cover quite well those dressed up/dressed down days we live half our lives in.

While plaid flannel perched atop the shoulders of button-up lambswool sweaters further the toughly tony aesthetic.

These ribbed-bottomed hiker chinos are where the collection starts to get especially adventurous. Arguably Alpine and almost awesome, I am, if nothing else, intrigued by their high-trail heartiness.

The shade, shape, and sheen of this classic bomber jacket, as well as its price, make it one of this Fall’s classiest takes on the classic coat. I now suddenly regret dropping dough for the brown bomber jacket I bought last Winter and had been liking quite a lot (up until the split second I spotted this Scotch & Soda version.)

And lastly, an über-Abercrombie style flannel, but Montana manly instead of so Michigan mall-like.

Scotch & Soda’s prices range from around $70 to $300 US, so it’s definitely not true couture, although hitting it with the snippy A&F quip isn’t quite fair either.

A number of these and other Amsterdam goes American pieces from S&S look like witty and reasonably priced pieces for all this Fall.

In my ongoing process of transitioning to a pleated-pants lifestyle, I came upon a trio of $4 pairs at an iffy thrift store. After trying them on at home, only these no-name tweedy ones proved a potential winner.

Their colorful flecks fulfill most of the 50s-slanted chic of a similar Beams Plus pair at the Inventory Stockroom, with a more 80s angle perhaps. Their only problem is they’re awkwardly an inch too short.

There is some leeway up inside the hem, so the question becomes, when I take them to my happy, hispanic tailor do I have them lengthened into respectable yet rote man pants, or do I hike them up even more – mischievously, like Thom Browne’s interns probably would?

I don’t know that I’m up for (again) outfitting myself exactly like this lumberin’ Jack this fall.

But I’ll tuck his look deep down in the bottom of my rucksack so that traces of it might sprout up around and on me in new, non-logger ways.

From Riviera Club’s A/W 10 lookbook.