Come With Me To NYC (Quick Work Trip)

Good morning. Good morning. It is 5.42 and we're headed to the train station. Going to New York today for a very specific purpose. I'm going to be designing some of the spring and summer pieces for the Eastbrook style shop. Just in case you think I haven't been listening, I have been and I know that a lot of you have wanted to see a more long-form video. This is a little bit different format than I think you're used to, but I heard you. So we're doing a long-form video, taking you along to New York City with me today. Let's go. I can't. I'm terrible at pulling into parking spots so I always back in, which Robin hates, but you know, you never know when you need to make a quick getaway. That's my dad joke. Okay, so we are in the car, which is like library-like environment, so I can't talk that loud. I'm on the train. I do like to get where I'm supposed to go. I'm using my pretty glasses because that's where I'm at in life right now. This is the bag that I keep all my cards and stuff in. But I'm probably not going to be reading. Maybe on the way home. Computer. This is new for me. It's the Asus ZenBook A14. It's so light. So I do always like to work when I'm on the train. It's always important to be productive. At least that's who I roll. This computer is great. One of the things I really don't like, but especially when I just bring my briefcase with me, is that it's just so heavy, and this is so amazing. I can't even tell you. It's very portable. Baseless, though. Kill crown. So it's ultralight. It's very durable, and it's hard to I beat things up a lot. It's resistant to scratches. It rejects fingerprints and all that stuff. Amazing battery life, which is a must. Up to 32 hours. I love the look. It's very premium. So as I mentioned, the reason I'm going up to New York is to design some stuff for the Spring Summer Collection. So I have made some notes already, but I'm going to take this time to kind of review everything. I'm unprepared, so I know what to look for when I'm doing fabric books. And I'm going to catch up on some emails, so I don't just think about it during the day. Maybe I'll get some ideas. I'm usually very creative in the morning, so I'll get those down. But again, the most important thing is to be ready and prepared when I get to the studio. All right, here we are, arriving at the Michael Andrews Bespoke studio. All right, so I'm here with my friend Corey Sylvester, COO of Michael Andrews Bespoke and my go-to guy for all things He Spoke style related. Today, as you know, we're here in New York City to pick out some fabrics and basically design some new things for the Spring and Summer Collection. We did a lot of the hard work. This is going to seem like it's super easy and magical, and it just happens like that. But finding fabrics and picking them out takes some time. So we were doing a little bit of that beforehand, so we can just get right to the meat of what we're here to do. And the first thing that we've been talking about for a long time is sort of filling in some gaps with perennials that were missing in the shop. That's right. Yeah, so you had a few, well actually we had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight perennials that were among the best sellers. Yeah, for how many great things we already have on the He Spoke site, I kind of took a look back historically at what over the last 10 years or so have really resonated with the Michael Andrews client, and we wanted to make sure that we were offering those through He Spoke as well. Yeah, good. So we went to a couple of our books that are, I don't know where the other one went, well there's two that we like for that. This one and the Sienna Italian Exclusives one. Yeah, so a lot of these will be fabrics from mills like Vitale Barberis Canonico, Retta Dino Filarte, really good perennial, what I always say like middle of the fairway, all season clothing. Straight down the fairway. That is definitely our guy. So the first one, there were eight suits that we were trying to fill in. We did a classic navy blue pinstripe, a gray bird's eye, charcoal sharkskin, a blue bird's eye, a navy plaid, a navy, how would you call this? Yeah, like a navy glen check. Subtle glen check. I've wanted to do one of those for a long time. Kind of like a macro glen check because it's quite a large, it has a good scale, but a real kind of subtle prominence. Exactly. The bird's eye is going to be especially nice to have because that's something that people see on the swatch and always look it by, but then you see it made up and it's really remarkable. Right, so the classic blue pinstripe, I wear a lot of chalk stripes. Sure. But I don't have a pinstripe, so yeah we do. Yeah, so the chalk stripe comes from the milled finish of like a flannel fabric. It's the only way you get that kind of like fuzziness that we think to be like chalky. So here it's going to be a lot more clear cut because it's just a nice fine worsted wool. The classic navy blue pinstripe, the gray bird's eye, the charcoal sharkskin, the blue bird's eye. Yeah, that's going to be- Which I really like because it's sort of a combination between the like darker navy blue and the lighter royal blue. Right in the middle, you know, it gives you some variation between navy and gray and also with texture. It's not just a solid suit. Right. You see it. Subtle texture. Yeah, it looks, it's got that detail when you come up close you can see it, but from far away it looks like a solid. Exactly right. Yeah, and then we had our navy plaid. We're also going to do a charcoal herringbone to sort of complement the navy herringbone that we've already got on the site. And then this one I'm kind of excited about. We're calling it the light gray James Bond suit. I didn't even know if we were going to talk about this one or if it was going to be a secret agent, so to speak. Ah, yeah. So yeah, actually we knew that that was the Bond suit, but we weren't exactly sure which Bond film it was in. It just so happens that there's this handy dandy feature on the Asus ZenBook A14, the Copilot Plus, where you can hit that button and the AI comes up and we could say, what movie did James Bond wear the gray plaid suit? Sean Connery. And then the third one, which was a bit of a wild card I would say, was the dark green suit. You said that is one for a very specific guy. Yeah, we've been seeing more and more requests for green. It's been pervasive in the collections more and more each year. What I like about a dark green, like a forest green, is it almost appears like a gray or like a charcoal when you walk in the room. And then when you get on top of it, you see that it's a more sophisticated color choice. It's an earth tone, so it goes well likely with a lot of the stuff that you would already wear like a navy or gray suit with. So it's kind of easy to wear and pair, a good alternative for somebody who doesn't want just another blue or gray. Yeah, I agree. All right, so those are the perennials that we're filling in our gaps. Then one of the things I really wanted to do, and now we're getting into more specific things for spring and summer, I've been doing a lot of traveling. You had this jacket you wore at Pity. It was like a twerk coat. Yeah. And we definitely need to do those. We're going to do two versions of that. The first one we're going to do in a moleskin, a navy moleskin. Oh, that'll be killer. And it's going to have four pockets, two down at the sides. Yeah, for the twerk coat model, the right breast pocket is actually on the interior. So you have kind of like a stash pocket for things like this. So that's going to be cool. And then we also had a canvas, like an ivory canvas. Yeah, it's a Japanese canvas made from cotton and linen, actually, in an ecru. I don't know where that went. I guess I forgot to bring the thing up. Must be downstairs. Suits, we're already doing a lot of suits. And we'll talk about the details of how we'll style them, not necessarily here. But I always like to do something new. I'm trying to do a little bit less, as I mentioned at the beginning of the year. So this year, I really wanted to do, I do all this with pity in mind. You know, and also things that make me happy. But like a cream, so we have the cream linen suit, but there was a, I'd really love to do like a cream kind of yellowish, more of a yellow in the cream double-breasted suit. I love it. And the fabric we chose for that one was from where? From this one. Actually, right from the book that's downstairs, I think. Oh, there. No, there it is. There it is. So for suits, cream linen. No, this isn't linen. So for suits, cream wool. Yep. And then I also wanted to do a brown linen DB, because I love my brown linen suit. But let's just say I got it a long time ago, and it doesn't fit quite the same as it used to. So for the brown linen, we're going to do this. Fits of change, bodies of change. Yeah, exactly. That's why you need a good tailor. So the sport coats, there are a couple that we have that where the fabric is out of stock. And I think that's something people don't realize is that fabrics go out of stock. We're not able to get them. So despite our best efforts. Despite the best efforts, right. So we're unable to find a replacement for this cream houndstooth wool, silk, and linen blend that we have, unfortunately. And then we did have a very beautiful loropiana, kind of glen plaid, beautiful fabric. We did find a little bit of a replacement for that. It's going to be new. A new version for spring. It's the Havana collection by E. Thomas. I think that would be really nice. That's great. And the one note I would make on that is when you see something, don't sit on it. Because they do go out of stock. Especially, you know, when there's something more unique or special. Something I think people don't realize or just think like, oh, it's always available. Unfortunately not. So yeah, if there's something that's really unique, that's when you have to kind of jump on it. Or it's going to be gone. I always like to do new formal wear too. Especially if we've been hosting our pre-pity party. So this year, I usually am pretty classic. I'll do black. In the winter, I'll do burgundy. But for this year, I thought I'd maybe do something a little bit lighter. Makes sense for the summer. Yeah. Where was that book that had that? That's not this one. Glatz and Summer Breeze? Yes, it was the Summer Breeze collection. And this beautiful linen. Yeah. Oh, it's a wool silk linen blend. It's even better for that purpose. Yeah. I'm going to do this as a dinner jacket with a peak lapel. However, I'm going to do flat pockets. Okay. So I can tuck them in. I love that. I have jetted pockets. But the question is, if you're going to do that, if you're going to do a dinner jacket that you can tuck in with flat pockets, do you do one button or two buttons? Oh, good question. For me, I would rather have a one-button jacket. I think it just looks super rakish and sartorial as a sport coat than a two-button dinner jacket. Yeah. There was another version of this. I saw that had a three-roll too. I don't think that was the way to go. Not for a dinner jacket? No, definitely not. So we have... Unless you're from Naples. Right. Beautiful summer breeze fabric. And then that's pretty much it. So we're keeping it kind of tight this year. Really going hard into the perennials and things we need. We know that people really love. Yeah. Some key seasonal pieces, but also really building out where we thought there might have been some gaps in the perennial investment grade pieces. Yeah. And you can see, I've been talking to you guys for a while now, but literally like probably two, two and a half hours of searching through fabric books, trying to find everything. So all this stuff is great. We're going to get it into production and it'll be up on the site soon. And that's two, two and a half hours after doing this for like 12 years together. Yeah. And there are certain things I don't even ask about anymore because he knows me so well. Like linings, whatever, make a decision for me. Buttons make a decision for me. He knows what I like. It's what having a good tailor is all about. It's my pleasure. All right. Well, thanks for sitting down here and we'll wrap this up and I'll get everything to you and we'll get it ready to go and up on the site. Great. All right, man. Thanks.