The devil thing sounds more worthy of Ruskin or Morris.

And THIS is why the two great Brooks Brothers products are so fantastically functional and plain and austere :

The Brooks Number 1 Sack Suit
The Brooks button-down shirt

Not sure on precise dates but let's say between 1920 and 1985 these two items were mass produced and were majestic and inspirational in their perfection. Don't exist any more. Not really.

Everything else made in the Ivy genre is either a copy, or a corruption, of these prototypes.

I have found my recently acquired Brooks USA-made shirts wanting.  The collar roll is not what it was, even on some of the Malay shirts. 
TRS is making some of the same observations/offering the same critique as JFMs old mentors back in the early 80s.  They (if memory serves me well) were highly displeased by the updated Brooks suit. 
I still think of Ruskin when mooching around the vicinity of Ashbourne parish church.  He wrote a stern letter to the vicar concerning the quality of his glass.

He and Morris were both oddballs.  Would have made excellent jazz musicians.  Billy 'Wallpaper' Morris and Johnny 'Lamps' Ruskin.  Strictly Dixieland 'Mouldly Fygge'.  TRS, on past evidence, would not approve. 
Each was over-indulged by his elders and betters. 
My wife is something of a Morris/Pre-Raphaelite collector and authority.  Missed her vocation.

‘William Morris is perhaps the most significant name in a book about pub carpet patterns and design.... Morris once said ‘ What business have we with art at all unless all can share it?’ If we allow ourselves to admit that some of these carpets are actual works of art, then certainly we are sharing something quite profoundly in the Morris mode.’

‘Spoons carpets An appreciation’ Kit Caless

(In this pub the walls are more impressive than the carpet)

Last edited by Kingston1an (2022-06-06 05:48:19)

Kingy is right to say I would shun the naffness of the Wetherspoons' boozer besmirching the great name of WM. I would venture instead to the excellent William Morris Museum in Walthamstow and rejoice in the bearded one's advanced engagement in socialism and aesthetics. And both WM and JR would have been all over the workwear thing - Monty Don's of design. Posh boys in bleu de travail as they engage the brain and the hands in the creation of a finer universe. They would have been horrified at everything in the modern world, but especially the vulgarity of places like Wetherspoons where working men waste their money and intellect sobbing into piss weak ale.

A good retort to the ill informed Kingstonian without need to mention Ringwood Old Thumper (5.1%) that has become a regular  alongside the many fine guest ales that grace the pumps at Spoons, convivial establishments where music is not played in case it stifles the erudite conversations taking place between patrons.

When it comes to producing a beverage as tasteless and insipid as a virgin’s piss and passing it off as beer, the French and Italians have no equal.