#A Sulka & Company

[obeyfeline]

A favorite tie by Sulka, a version in blue of the one I had seen many years ago in the auction of the effects of Prince Rupert Loewenstein:

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Monopolists want to create human inkjet printers

Even if you don’t have diabetes, you can’t have missed that there’s something really terrible going on with how Americans with diabetes control their illness. Insulin — a century-old drug whose inventors refused any patents — has experienced double-digit, year-on-year price hikes (1123% between 2009–2017 alone!):

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/desperate-families-driven-black-market-insulin-n730026

Moreover, this is a uniquely American circumstance. In Canada, insulin remains affordable, which is why Americans — especially parents of kids with diabetes — form caravans and cross the northern border to buy insulin from Canadian pharmacies:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/americans-diabetes-cross-canada-border-insulin-1.5125988

It’s why Americans are starting to brew their own insulin:

https://openinsulin.org/

And it’s why California is getting into the insulin-manufacturing business:

https://khn.org/news/article/california-wants-to-slash-insulin-prices-by-becoming-a-drugmaker-can-it-succeed/

Why do Americans with diabetes go into debt to buy insulin? Why do they ration their insulin, risking comas or even death? In part, it’s the US government’s unwillingness to limit pharma price-gouging. But that can’t be disentangled from the monopolization of the insulin market, an orgy of mergers that allowed a small number of companies to corner the insulin market:

https://prospect.org/health/insulin-racket/

Medical technology is a favorite target of private equity rackets, who understand that when you can threaten your customers’ very lives, they’ll pay — and pay — and pay. That’s why one private equity ghoul celebrated the “golden age of older rectums” before embarking on a spree of colonoscopy monopolization:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/golden-age-of-older-rectums/

More than one in ten Americans have diabetes. 96 million American adults are pre-diabetic. Diabetes disproportionately strikes racialized Americans, who have less political capital and can be abused with impunity. No wonder that the entire diabetes supply-chain has been targeted by medical profiteers.

https://www.diabetes.org/about-us/statistics/about-diabetes

Take dialysis: private equity firms have bought and merged nearly all the standalone dialysis clinics and transformed them into charnel houses, where production quotas and cost-cutting produces rampant infections among the undersupervised patients who rely on them. Meanwhile, prices have skyrocketed, and those profits have been mobilized to fight any attempt at regulation:

https://prospect.org/health/dialysis-duopoly-spends-big-protect-profits-california/

The monopolization of diabetes goes beyond dialysis and insulin — it also extends into blood sugar monitoring and insulin delivery — the self-monitored, self-administered part of the disease that diabetes patients have taken into their own hands.

In 2013, Dana Lewis worked with John Costik to refine the code he’d written to access the data from his son’s continuous glucose monitor (CGM); they teamed up with Ben West, who was reverse-engineering insulin pumps, and created a “closed loop” system that could automate insulin delivery.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6610599/

They called this OpenAPS, and called themselves loopers. Organizing under the hashtag #WeAreNotWaiting, loopers collaborated to refine these systems into a kind of artificial pancreas, one that took CGM readings, analyzed them with statistical tools to create individual insulin response profiles, and release appropriate insulin doses.

https://openaps.org/

The movement included a lot of techie people who either had diabetes or parented a young child with diabetes — my friend Sulka Haro, an accomplished technologist, was the first looper I knew, who was using OpenAPS to help his young child maintain safe insulin levels while at day-care.

But looping went beyond the tech world; diabetes is extremely common, and lots of people struggle to get their doses right (not least because it can be hard to think clearly when your insulin levels are out of whack). The looper community grew and grew — over the objections of the med-tech industry, who went to war against them.

These companies had a very weird anti-looping message. They claimed that loopers’ exploitation of the defects in their pumps and monitors was, itself, a security risk. Med-tech monopolists like Abbott abused copyright law to force Github to nuke the code that made looping possible:

https://www.diabettech.com/wearenotwaiting/patching-librelink-for-libre2-clearing-the-fud/

Now, it’s clear that med-tech companies have a security problem. Medtronic’s insulin pumps were insecure enough that security researchers demonstrated a proof-of-concept “universal remote for killing people” that exploited its defects:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/03/turnkey-authoritarianism/#minimed

But med-tech companies don’t just have a security problem — they have a problem with their security problem. Medtronic ignored bug reports until the “universal remote” was presented. Johnson and Johnson downplayed a potentially lethal software bug in their devices:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-cyber-insulin-pumps-e-idUSKCN12411L

To the extent that med-tech companies are interested in addressing these amateurish (but incredibly dangerous) security defects in their products, their efforts are aimed almost entirely at shutting down loopers’ homebrew technology. Older tech is now prized for its usefulness to loopers:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/looping-created-insulin-pump-underground-market/588091/

Why would med-tech companies be more worried about loopers than they are about people who hijack insulin pumps to harm or even kill people with diabetes? Because open looping systems are a threat to their monopoly plans — plans to create “vertically integrated ecosystems” that lock people with diabetes into buying proprietary insulin for proprietary pumps that connect to proprietary CGMs.

In other words, the market plan is to create an artificial pancreas that works like one of HPs awful inkjet printers — a device that is more concerned with extracting money from your bank account than it is with depositing ink on a page (or insulin in a vein):

https://twitter.com/dustin_driver/status/1534333475062329344

As with other parts of the diabetes supply chain, pumps, CGMs and the algorithms that turn them into a loop are all being sucked into a vortex of corporate mergers, as private equity companies seek to corner the market on your pancreas.

In an open letter to FDA officials, Joanne Milo, raises an alarm about one such merger: CGM giant Dexcom’s bid to buy out pump manufacturer Insulet.

https://thesavvydiabetic.com/open-letter-to-the-us-fda-from-the-savvy-diabetic-re-fda-interoperability-mandate-and-end-user-on-device-continuous-access-to-our-own-data/

As Milo writes, Dexcom CGMs are currently interoperable with a variety of pumps, including Tandem’s. Dexcom has a history of fighting attempts by people with diabetes to access their own data, and the company’s acquisition of a leading insulin pump company will only strengthen their efforts to lock CGM users out of their own devices.

That would be history repeating itself. The 2020 acquisition of Companion by Medtronic triggered an immediate lockdown of Companion’s InPen insulin delivery systems so they’d no longer with with Dexcom’s CGMs. If Dexcom’s acquisition is waved through, the US market will be controlled by three pump/CGM conglomerates. That will be a death-knell for all the pump companies that don’t have a CGM division.

More importantly than these firms’ commercial fortunes is the effect on people with diabetes. The ability of diabetes patients to mix-and-match a pump, a CGM, and an algorithm to moderate their interactions will go up in smoke. If your personal biology isn’t suited to the choices of three giant companies, you’re out of luck.

Milo points out that the baby formula shortage was caused by the monopolization of another key health market. What happens if the market for diabetes tech is gathered into three companies’ hands and they seek “efficiencies” by concentrating production into a few factories and consolidating their supply chains so they depend on just a few offshore suppliers?

That would also be history repeating. Private equity rollups concentrated nearly all production of medical saline drips into one company’s hands. That company closed all its factories save one, in Puerto Rico, where local authorities gifted them with favorable tax treatment. It was great for profits and shareholders, but terrible for America — Hurricane Maria created a months-long, deadly shortage in saline — that is, salty water in a plastic bag.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/hurricane-maria-u-s-iv-bag-shortage/

Milo calls on the FDA to “stop treating people with diabetes as ‘black hat’ hackers, forced to reverse-engineer access to their own CGM data.” She points to peer-reviewed studies on the safety and efficacy of community-based development of multi-vendor looping systems:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(21)00267-9/fulltext)

Though Milo addresses her remarks to the FDA, this is also an issue that Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ, Lina Khan at the FTC, and Tim Wu at the White House should have on their radars. The diabetes crisis is only partially medical — at this point, it primarily economic, a crisis of corporate profit-seeking over human lives.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Björn Heller (modfied) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Wearing_pump.JPG

CC BY 2.0 (German) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/de

[Image ID: A package of HP inkjet ink; it has been modified to incorporate the word- and logo-marks of Insulet and Dexcom. The image on the front of the box has been replaced with a man's bare stomach; the man is wearing an insulin pump. The sides of the box have been overlaid with a Matrix 'code waterfall' effect. The menacing red eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey glares out of the box.]

[nomanwalksalone]

ON NEEDLESS THINGS

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

Long ago when I first began writing on #steez, I began one essay urging readers to stop me if I got too wrapped up in the needless fetishization of possessions. Today, I stage my own intervention, albeit a small one, in preparing to get rid of this beautiful, luxurious, quite functional and completely useless antique flask.

Why did I buy it? I guess I discover esoteric and useless must-haves that I never knew I needed in my moments between more pressing obsessions. I still have my leaky old shagreen Unique lighter around somewhere although its main use for years has been lighting candles at children’s birthday parties. I have an antique box from the defunct Old England Paris I picked up after learning it was identical to the one Marcel Duchamp used in his Box of 1932 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but I rationalized that purchase, as well as that of a 1930s shirt box from Sulka Paris, since I’ve written a book about them, my true obsessions of a vanished Paris.

A flask is the logical next step in needlessness after a lighter, particularly as I don’t smoke. Like any excessively nice accessory, it promises a twinge of smug satisfaction every time I use something that otherwise could be a commonplace. That’s the thing though. The only people who actually use flasks regularly are people with severe drinking problems. And, I suppose, some living clichés pulling them out of their Brexitwear while they stand on a grouse moor. I’m usually the designated driver when I go out, and I’d feel like a creep keeping this in a drawer at work the way George Lazenby’s 007 does when he apologizes to the Annigoni portrait of the Queen before taking a pull in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

I admit, in retrospect, I wish I’d had it on me, full of Laphroaig, an hour into an interminable wedding when a Christian rock band began to play (and this was in the church the middle of the ceremony itself, not at the reception). But other than that occasion, I can’t really think of when I’d have wanted it weighing down a jacket pocket. I’ve only spiked my coffee when I was snowed in at home, and if I’d needed a drink while shoveling snow, I just had to come in.

The usefulness of a needless object is a set of pleasantly finicky details on which we construct our rationalizations: it’s wrapped not just in leather, like many flasks, but in genuine crocodile. The flask body itself is glass, not metal, so it should be easier to see if it needs cleaning. To keep the glass from breaking, the lower half of the flask is sheathed in a silverplate cup, which comes off if the owner is too prim to take a pull directly. The hinged stopper is also silverplated, and screws to the side to stay closed. The mechanisms still work. All these details bring their own complications – the fragility of the glass, and the delicateness of the leather. You can’t wash this thing under a tap – I destroyed another one when warm water caused its ancient crocodile (despite its aquatic origins) to shrivel right up and come off. Rather, I bought a fifth of the cheapest, strongest clear liquor I could find and used a funnel to pour it in and rinse out the insides of the flask to dissolve and wash away any traces of whatever had been in there before.  

For I was not its first owner. As the reader can see, the initials are not my own, nor does it bear the de Mans family crest (chat couchant on a field of antidepressants). This is a century-old flask made by a company called James Dixon of Birmingham, England, which also made some flasks for Asprey and other West End jewelers. I don’t know if anyone’s making flasks similar to this new, but they’d be certain to be unaffordable. Rather, this is one of those old fetish items my colleagues in the blogocracy and the leading men’s magazines advise us to buy secondhand, themselves having already scored their silver-trimmed crocodile cigar cases and such before prices shot up. Those cases, too, are beautiful things, but I’ve learned my lesson. Better to collect items closer to my real obsessions than to acquire, through osmosis, those I am told to.

Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This article first appeared on the No Man blog in January 2018.

[yusufserkan]

Anıtkabir'e gittiğinde seni en çok etkileyen nedir derseniz…

Tıraş setidir.

Biri beyaz saplı, diğerleri siyah, sekiz ustura, seramik tabak, madeni tas, bıyık makası, tarak, sıfır numara makine, fırça ve bileme taşı… Arkasına K.A. harfleri kazınmış gümüş el aynası, kapağına ay-yıldız işlenmiş metal esans şişesi, çiçek motifli cam krem kabı ve tırnak törpüsü.

Hayatı cephelerden cephelere sürüklenerek geçti, yatağından çok arazide yattı, bakımsız tek kare fotoğrafı yok.

Titizdi.

Kişisel bakımına büyük önem verirdi.

Her sabah sakal tıraşı olurdu.

Her hafta saç tıraşı olurdu.

Saç tıraşının uzun sürmesinden hiç hoşlanmazdı.

Ömrü boyunca sadece Trablus'tayken sakal bıraktı.

Öğrenciliğinden itibaren bıyıklıydı.

1925'te kesti, o tarihten itibaren hep bıyıksızdı.

Niye diye sordular…

“Avrupalılar bizi palabıyıklı, koca külahlı, belinde kamalı olarak tanıyorlar, eserlerinde böyle tasvir ediyorlar, onların bu yanlış düşüncelerini değiştirmek maksadıyla bıyıklarımı kestim” dedi.

Parfüm kullanmazdı.

Sadece kolonya sürerdi.

Hasan Şevki Kolonyası'nı tercih ederdi, Karaköy'den aldırırdı, Cumhuriyet'in ilk milli kolonya fabrikasıydı.

Edirne sabunu kullanırdı.

Meyve şekli verilen, geleneksel, hoş kokulu Edirne sabunu, o dönemde İstanbul'da çok popülerdi, Çankaya'ya da getirtiliyordu.

İki eli kanda bile olsa, her sabah banyo alırdı.

Trablus'ta Çanakkale'de Sakarya'da, savaşların en kritik günlerinde ne yapar eder, tenekeyle su ısıtır, çadırında yıkanırdı.

Derne'deyken bir vahada çamur içinde su bulmuşlardı, tülbentlerle süzüp biriktirmişlerdi, içmek için saklıyorlardı, susuz kalma ihtimaline rağmen her sabah bu suyla yüzünü yıkamaktan vazgeçmezdi.

1920'de Ankara'ya gelip istasyon binasına yerleştiğinde, ilk sorduğu soru “banyo işine nasıl çare bulacağız?” olmuştu.

Demiryolu ustalarının yardımıyla sactan küvet yaptırılmış, yatak odasına konulmuştu, Çankaya'ya taşınana kadar 1.5 yıl onu kullandı.

1925'te Kastamonu'dan gelirken Çankırı'da konakladı, yıkanmak istedi, banyo yoktu, etrafa haber salındı, tenekeci ustası bulundu, banyo teknesi yaptırıldı, odasına yerleştirildi, hastaneden semaver getirildi, üstüne kazanla su konuldu… Bu semaveri yıllarca gülerek anlattı.

Cumhurbaşkanı olduktan sonra Dolmabahçe'de Florya'da Yalova'da sıcak yaz günlerinde sabah akşam iki defa banyo alırdı.

Akşam balo, konser veya düğün gibi bir program varsa, kış ayları bile olsa tekrar yıkanmadan gitmezdi.

1938'de neredeyse ölüm döşeğindeyken, karnından iğneyle 12 litre su çekildiğinde bile “banyoya girebilir miyim?” diye soruyordu.

Dünyanın gelmiş geçmiş en şık giyinen lideriydi.

Günümüzde bile rakibi yok.

Çoğunlukla beyaz, daima açık renk gömlek tercih ederdi.

Bebe yaka, Ata yaka, iğneli yaka kullanırdı. Manşetlerine ya da kalbinin üzerine K.A veya G.M.K. arması işletirdi.

Kol düğmesi severdi, yaka iğnesi takardı.

Sayfideyse, Savarona'daysa, kısa kollu keten gömlek giyerdi.

Laciverti pek sevmezdi, kruvaze'den hoşlanmazdı.

Genellikle yelekli, üç parçalı siyah takım elbiseler diktirirdi.

Her daim ütülü olmasına büyük özen gösterirdi. Buruşmasına, kıvrılmasına, orasından burasından sarkma yapmasına asla tahammül edemezdi.

Çapraz çizgili, desenli, takımına kontrast renkli kravatlar kullanırdı. En sevdiği kravat iğnesi, gövdesi burgulu, altın, devlet demiryolları amblemi olanıydı.

Mendilleri K.A. işlemeliydi, ipekti, kenarları zikzak motifli olurdu.

Seyahatlerinde genellikle tüvit takım, güderi ceket tercih ederdi, riding coat tarzı jokey pantolonları giyerdi.

Düz kemerden sıkılırdı, örgülü, tokalı yaptırırdı.

Smokin ve frak'ta beyaz papyon takardı.

Maharet isteyen pelerin'i değme aktörlere taş çıkartırcasına taşırdı. Omuzlarına illa siyah değil, bazen mavi fular atardı.

Bağcıklı siyah rugan ayakkabı severdi. Astarını kırmızı kadifeyle kaplatırdı. Çizgili siyah çorap kullanırdı. Yerine göre, gerekirse tozluk kullanırdı. Çizme'yi sadece arazide değil, şehir hayatında da giyerdi.

Ayakkabı çekeceği fildişiydi.

Yazlık kıyafetlerinin altına beyaz veya lacivert-beyaz ayakkabılar giyerdi, bu ayakkabılarla çorap giymezdi, hatta bazen ten rengi sandalet giyerdi.

Paltoyu hantal bulurdu, mümkün olduğunca giymemeye çalışırdı. Mecbur kalırsa, koyu renk yerine, gri veya kahverengi tonları tercih ederdi.

Desenli kaşkolları kış aylarının olmazsa olmazıydı. Londra ve Paris'te mağazaları bulunan Amerikan “Sulka & Company” marka kaşkollar takardı.

Hemen her renk eldiveni vardı, içi ve bileği kurt kürkünden eldivenleri severdi.

Akşamları pijama üzerine mavi-lacivert çizgili, kirli beyaz, şal yakalı robdöşambr alırdı. Ceketli pantolonlu, kuşağı püsküllü ipek pijamalar giyerdi. Pijamalarının yakası, kolağzı ve cep kapağı mutlaka farklı renk şeritli olurdu.

Pijamayla yatmazdı, gecelik entariyle uyurdu.

Kimsenin önüne pijamayla çıkmazdı.

Her gün çamaşır değiştirirdi.

Bir insan hem kalpağı, hem silindir şapkayı, hem panama şapkayı, hem hasır şapkayı, hem klark şapkayı, hem melon şapkayı, hem fötrü, hem kasketi, böylesine eşdeğer yakışıklılıkla taşıyabilir mi… O taşıyordu.

Kalpak, Kuvayı Milliye'nin simgesiydi.

Kurtuluş Savaşı'nın alametifarikası'ydı.

O dönemin yalakaları ne kadar yurtsever olduklarını göstermek için anında kalpak takmaya başlamışlardı. Resmi dairelerde işi olan yabancı tüccarlar bile Ankara'ya geldiğinde kafasına kalpak takıyordu!

Avrupa'dan ve Kafkasya'dan getirilen kuzu, kunduz veya sansar derisinden üretiliyordu. Avrupa astragan kalpakları en fazla beş lirayken, Kafkasya astragan kalpağı 100 liraya kadar çıkıyordu. Alnı tamamen örten veya alnı açık bırakan, iki modeli vardı.

Mustafa Kemal alnını örteni tercih ederdi.

Bu modele “Kemali kalpak” denirdi.

Milli mücadele için Anadolu'ya geçmeden önce, gömleklerini Beyoğlu'nda Strongilos Biraderler'e diktirirdi.

Saraya da gömlek diken bu terzi dükkanında, Yani Delagramatika adında bir kalfa çalışıyordu, vücut ölçülerini hep o alırdı.

1920… Kurtuluş Savaşı başladıktan sonra alışkanlıklarını değiştirmeyen Mustafa Kemal, gömleklerini yine Strongilos Biraderler'e diktirmek istedi.

İstedi ama, Yunanistan'la savaşıyorduk, Rumların Anadolu'ya gitmesi yasaklanmıştı.

İşte bu ortamda, yani Yunanistan'la gırtlak gırtlağa girilmişken, Strongilos Biraderler, Mustafa Kemal'in hatırını kırmak istemedi, kalfa Yani'yi Ankara'ya gönderdi iyi mi!

Macera dolu kaçak yollarla Anadolu'ya geçti, ölçüleri aldı, aynı kaçak yollarla İstanbul'a döndü. Diktirildi, paketlendi, yeniden Ankara'ya götürüp elleriyle teslim etti.

(Bu muhteşem insani ilişkinin sinema filmi yapılmaması, belgesel yapılmaması, romanlarının yazılmaması, adeta yok sayılması hakikaten üzücüdür.)

(Rum kalfa Yani Delagramatika, doğup büyüdüğü şehri terketmedi, Cumhuriyet'ten sonra da İstanbul'da yaşamaya devam etti, kendi dükkanını açtı, Mustafa Kemal'den esinlenerek adını değiştirdi, ahlaki güzellik manasında “Kemalat” adını aldı.)

(Strongilos biraderler, Konstantinos ve Theoklis'ti. Baba mesleğiydi, 1880'den beri Beyoğlu'nda dükkanları vardı. 1925'te Yunanistan'a göçettiler, Atina'da aynı isimle dükkan açtılar. Kuzenlerine devrederek, isimlerini devam ettirdiler. Yunan kraliyet ailesine, aralarında Papandreu'nun Karamanlis'in de bulunduğu siyasetçilere gömlek diktiler. 2013 yılında, Yunanistan'da yaşanan ekonomik krizin kurbanı oldular, 133 yıllık markayı kapattılar.)

Mustafa Kemal'in gömleklerine, mendillerine işlenen G.M.K. harflerinin “marka” gibi standartı vardı.

Bizzat Mustafa Kemal'in isteğiyle, dönemin en büyük hat sanatçısı İsmail Hakkı Altunbezer tarafından çizilmişti.

Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi'nde öğretim üyesi olan Altunbezer'in tasarladığı G.M.K. markası, Mustafa Kemal'in bavul, saat, ağızlık, tabak, kadeh gibi özel eşyalarında da kullanıldı.

Ayakkabılarını, çizmelerini ve terliklerini, neredeyse 40 yıl boyunca Sirkeci'deki Altın Çizme'de yaptırdı. 42 numara giyerdi.

Altın Çizme'nin sahibi Onufri Karkilidis'ti, askerliğini Şam'da, Mustafa Kemal'in emrinde yapmıştı, aynı zamanda poker arkadaşıydı, kare eksik olduğunda Onufri'yi çağırtırdı.

Cumhuriyet'in ilanından sonra pırıltılı öğrencileri mühendislik, arkeoloji, sanat, hukuk eğitimi almaları için Avrupa'ya gönderirken, umut vaadeden altı terzi kalfasını da Paris'e gönderdi.

Bunlardan biri Levon Kordonciyan'dı.

Yurda döndükten sonra İstanbul Sultanhamam'da atölye açmıştı.

Smokinlerini fraklarını jaketataylarını Levon'a diktirirdi.

Baston, hobisiydi.

Kimisi fildişiydi, kimisi lületaşı topuzluydu.

İçinden süngü çıkan bastonu vardı, kılıç çıkanı vardı, kabzası yılan derili olan vardı.

Tek mermi atabilen, tetikli olanı en meşhurudur ama… Aslında en çok, sapında tavşan yakalamış aslan figürü bulunan, ucunda metal halkası bulunan, ahşap bastonunu severdi.

Köstekli saat takardı.

Zenit marka, platin olanını kullanırdı.

Tespihi aksesuar olarak taşırdı.

Kimisi ateş kehribar, kimisi gümüş püsküllüydü.

Öd ağacından, lüle taşından tespih yaptırmıştı.

Kıyafetine hangisi uyumluysa, onu alırdı.

Sivas Kongresi'nde siyah kehribar sallıyordu.

9 Eylül'de İzmir'e girerken, elinde mercan tespihi vardı.

Sıkma kehribar olanı çok severdi.

Tespihleri 33'lüydü.

Ayrıca, gümüş püsküllü mercan, 99'lu tespihi vardı.

Minik zincirleri olan, iki tane muskası vardı.

Fanilasına takardı.

Bavulları Amerikan'dı, Innovation markaydı.

Şapkaları için özel bavulu vardı.

Piknik için tabaklı-çatal bıçaklı, hasır bavulu vardı.

Son yıllarında güneş gözlüğü kullanırdı.

Çevresindekilerin şık giyinmesini teşvik ederdi.

Özendirmek için kendi kıyafetlerini, kravatlarını, gömleklerini, kemerlerini hediye ederdi.

Sabiha Gökçen'in hatıralarına göre, bazen bütün gardırobunu dağıttığı, tek elbiseye kaldığı günler olurdu.

Dünya modasını takip ederdi, stilist gibi model çizerdi.

Sadece kendisine değil, manevi kızları Afet'e Sabiha'ya Rukiye'ye Nebile'ye diktirmek için de modeller tasarlardı.

Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri'nin general ve tören üniformalarını, Fransız moda ikonu Coco Chanel'e tasarlattı.

Time dergisinin “100 yılın en önemli 100 kişisi” listesine girmeyi başaran tek moda tasarımcısı Chanel… Kadınlara ilk kez pantolon giydiren, o zamana kadar matem rengi kabul edilen siyahı kadınların vazgeçilmezi hale getiren, çığır açan, sıradışı biriydi.

Mustafa Kemal'in Coco Chanel vizyonu, dünyada ilkti.

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nin Coco Chanel'le çalışmasından yıllar sonra, 1938'te Hugo Boss, Alman ordusunun üniformalarını tasarladı.

Amerikan gözlük efsanesi Ray-Ban, 1937 yılında Amerikan hava kuvvetlerinin pilotları için yeşil camlı güneş gözlüklerini üretti.

İngiliz klasiği Burberry, İkinci Dünya Savaşı'nda İngiliz ordusu için, ağır paltolara alternatif olarak gabardin kumaştan trençkot dikti.

Mustafa Kemal öncüydü.

“Moda” kavramında dünya ordularına örnek olmuştu.

Boyu 1.74'tü.

74 kiloydu.

Genelkurmay Başkanlığı Muamelat-ı Zatiye Dairesi (personel başkanlığı) tarafından 21 Kasım 1925'te böyle kaydedilmişti.

1920'lerde Türk erkeklerinin ortalama boyu 1.65 civarındaydı. Mustafa Kemal “uzun” kabul ediliyordu.

2018 yılında Türk erkeklerinin ortalama boyunun 1.72 olduğunu düşünürsek, bugün bile ortalamanın üstündeydi.

Hep fit'ti.

Sağlıklı yaşam için spor kavramının keşfedilmesi, egzersiz bilincinin yaygınlaşması anca 70'li senelerde başladı. Ama, Mustafa Kemal'in tee 1925'ten beri kullandığı kürek çekme aleti vardı.

Çankaya'da, banyosunda kilo ve boy ölçen tartı aleti vardı.

Değerli anneler babalar, memleketimin güzel insanları…

Bugün Anıtkabir'e, Dolmabahçe'ye veya bir başka anma adresine giderken, en bakımlı halimizle olalım, elbette eski-yeni hiç farketmez ama, mutlaka tertemiz, çocuklarımıza en güzel kıyafetlerini giydirelim.

O bizi nasıl bekliyorsa…

Lütfen öyle gidelim.

Çünkü…

Her 19 Mayıs.

Her 23 Nisan.

Her 9 Eylül.

Her 29 Ekim.

Her 10 Kasım.

Aynı zamanda, kılık kıyafet devrimidir.

Kaygı duruşu değildir.

O'nun bize…

Bizim O'na…

Saygı duruşudur.

[chenfwdw]

the then trs snob brand Sulka,

Lauren's success as a salesman and his observation that the Mod movement had hit a wall in America inspired him to think he could design some ties for himself that might just fill a niche. "So I asked the company if I could. They said, 'The world's not ready for you, Ralph!'" Lauren left, found the manufacturer for the then trs snob brand Sulka, and produced some three and a half inch wide ties under the then inconsequential brand name Polo. Another technical feat in the film is the light show carefully programmed inside Helena Bonham Carter's Fairy Godmother gown. "I wanted it to light up so we went through Phillips to design a system that could put 4,000 LED lights in the dress itself. It was complicated: Each day a man from Phillips had to get under her dress, connect her then operate the sequencing of the lights," Out of all the costumes Powell created she calls the Fairy Godmother "The most typical fairytale look. gioco cubo di rubik amazon Your menstrual cycle begins on the first day of your period and continues up to the first day of your next period. You are most fertile at the time of ovulation, (when an egg is released from your ovaries) which usually occurs 12 14 days before your next period starts. This is the time of the month when you are most likely to get pregnant.. Held in an intimate downtown gallery each year, the front rows of this show are always a who's who of every nike delta force ár major fashion magazine, and the clothes are always, always breathtaking. (This year, which also marked the debut of a new, casual line called Polo, was no exception.) Seeing Anna, Grace and company is always a thrill, and last February, I had the loveliest chat with Joe Zee, creative director of ELLE Magazine. The best part, of course, is when Ralph Lauren himself walks the runway after the final model, waving graciously to his adoring audience and stopping to grasp the hands of friends and family to thank them personally for their support.. Scott Austin, who pitched for the trailermen, had a double, drove in a run and scored once, while Kevin Kawaguchi had a two run triple. In the other game, the Titans overcame a 5 1 deficit with six runs in the fourth inning and beat the Cardinals, 7 5. Sydenham broke a 5 5 tie with a two run homer in that one. There are around 450 children at the camp, and many of them are able to attend local Jordanian state run schools in the nearby towns. Everyday, Save the Children helps to transport the children back and forth between the schools and the camp, separately busing girls and smučarski kombinezon hlače boys to their different schools. To maintain a sense of normalcy and reduce the tension that the upheaval has caused, the Syrian children go to school in separate sessions from the adidas retro schuhe männer Jordanian children. To qualify for mortgage loan modification, your mortgage loan must be your primary mortgage (not a second mortgage) and you must owe less than $729,500 on the mortgage. Your mortgage must have been written and closed before January 1, 2009 and you must neve e sale amazon live in the home for which the mortgage is written (not a rental, investment or vacation property). You must be able to verify your current income with a tax return and copies of your most recent pay stubs or pay statements. By the way, you can not buy the sport shirt that's made of plastics. From a warm day, you canrrrt afford to wear this sport shirt, because runners drk gumicsizma sütétkék will touch hot once they run. Such type of shirt is not protected without being suitable for running. Individuals are pondering the rest of the type warm and friendly looking bag things of their life in contrast to the actual plastic material counterparts since the identical provides flawlessly stressed our way of life using a portion of the pollution consequences. From your individual on the environmental perspective, vinyl is rolling out by itself since the normal foe individuals life, one good reason why individuals have largely switched their usage of plastic bags to your dynamics welcoming ones. The very first thing which often raises their appreciation will be ease. The idea that Erik and Lyle were abused by my sister kitty is absolute insanity. I thought that was pretty gratuitous and just thrown in as an example of how awful the parents were that, that kitty deserved to die too because she was complicit. Because the problem from their point of view was Jose was a jerk, but what do you do with the mother? It was hard to know what kitty really did, to make them shoot her in such a way. Inside spring season dolce gabanna adidași bărbații time and summer season duration period, you like a thing light, fresh new, off traffic as well as rewarding together with the perfume connected with lemon great, grapefruit along with moist blueberries. A few of these are very manufactured and also vendors keep in mind of the within and backyard with the original copies long before many people recreate every one. Balenciaga handbags are made jean coquelin by means of anyone of the very liked manufacturers inside industry, Cristobal Balenciaga. Indeed, just as nike sb prod x we need to track the Colombian community for drug trafficking and the Ku Klux Klan for adidas goalkeeper jersey white extremists, believe we should monitor the Muslim community because we sure don't police ourselves enough.The first part of her sentence, about Colombians, is actually right on (by her silly logic); the second part contradicts her own logic (she can call for profiling some Latinos, but she doesn have the courage to apply her racializing logic to white America), and everything after "I believe" speaks to how little Asra actually knows anything about the Muslim community, as well as the several seconds of your life which you could have done something better with. For law enforcement to go after white extremism the way it seems to be going after Muslims (at least, with respect to the NYPD), they wouldn be going after the KKK, as Asra suggests unless Asra means to suggest that Muslim student organizations at Yale and UPenn are offshoots of al Qaeda. Enforcement would instead have to spy on as many white institutions (churches, civic clubs, student organizations, etc.) as they could.

[putthison]

eBay Roundup

We spend hours trawling for the best of menswear on eBay so that you don’t have to. To get a third eBay roundup each week, along with a list of the best sales, subscribe to our exclusive Inside Track newsletter. It only costs $5 a month. The savings you’d earn from just one eBay purchase a year will offset the subscription.

There are some really nice finds today in the footwear section. Alden’s tassel loafers could be a nice addition to your spring wardrobe, Carmina’s single strap monks are a good way to add a bit of visual interest to a sport coat outfit, and these black Crockett & Jones boots would do well with blue jeans and olive field jackets. 

To find more menswear on eBay, try using our customized search links. We’ve made them so you can quickly hone-in on quality suits, excellent dress shirts, fine footwear, good jeans, workwear, contemporary casualwear, nice ties, great bags, and well-made sweaters.

Outerwear

Red Margaret Howell field jacket, XS

Olive Ten C field jacket, 36

Black coated APC field jacket, S

Real McCoys M51 fishtail parka, S

AMI burgundy leather bomber jacket, M

Black Ten C MA-1 bomber jacket, 40

Camoshita olive wool wrap coat, 40

Olive Buzz Rickson M-43 field jacket, 40

Red Engineered Garments CPO shirt jacket, L

Gray checked wool Mackintosh coat, 44

Black Sandro double rider, XL

Sweaters and knits

Cream colored Canadian Sweater Company cowichan, XS

Orange cashmere Margaret Howell sweater, 38

Olive Kapital Ring jacket, S

Fuzzy brown Acne Studios mohair sweater, M

Oatmeal cabled Cucinelli sweater, 40

Blue Fair Isle Cucinelli cardigan, 40

Cream cabled Inis Meain cardigan, M

Olive Our Legacy textured sweater, 40

Vintage Polo Sportsman Shetland, L

Gray Carroll & Co shawl collar cardigan, 42

Gray cashmere Margaret Howell sweater, XL

Navy textured SNS Herning Stark cardigan, XL

Chunky McGeorge shawl collar cardigan, 44

Burgundy chunky shawl collar Howlin cardigan, XL

Shirts and pants

Burgundy herringbone Luciano Barbera flannel shirt, M

Brown checked Orslow flannel shirt, L

Shoes

Loake suede chukkas, 6

Tricker’s cap toe boots, 7.5

Carmina austerity brogues, 8

Paraboot hiking boots, 8

Alden tassel loafers, 8 (pictured above)

Edward Green suede shortwings, 8.5

St Crispin’s semi brogues, 8.5

Crockett & Jones black cap toe boots, 8.5 (pictured above)

Meccariello black perf toe oxfords, 8.5

Meccariello perf toe bluchers, 8.5

Carmina tan suede Chelsea boots, 9

Crockett & Jones suede chukkas, 9

Margiela black side zip boots, 9

Loake suede chukkas, 9

Tricker’s black boots, 9.5

Crockett & Jones cap toe boots, 9.5

Viberg suede service boots, 10

Ralph Lauren shell cordovan shortwings, 10E

Truman Boot Co cap toe service boots, 10

Our Legacy side zip boots, 10.5

Chippewa black work boots, 11

Carmina quarter brogues, 11

Quoddy Telos chukkas, 11

Crockett & Jones black cap toe oxfords, 12

Carmina single monks, 11.5 (pictured above)

Quoddy moccasins, 13

Ties

Some nice Brioni and Gieves & Hawkes ties

Gray Eidos floral tie

Brown wool Tie Your Tie striped tie

Gray Ralph Lauren silk knit tie

J. Press madras tie

Brown knitted Tom Ford tie

Some nice knit ties

Dark green E. Marinella floral tie

Navy Sulka dressing gown

Holland & Holland navy doggo motif tie

Navy Battistoni tree motif tie

Brown wool Panta tie

Brown Rubinacci foulard tie

Blue striped Drake's grenadine tie

Navy striped J. Press tie

Misc.

Some Begg scarves

Bunch of Drake's pocket squares

Green Pineider leather dopp kit

Rimowa aluminum carry-on luggage

Wispy cashmere Begg scarf (very lightweight)

Bunch of pocket squares

Drake's tiger motif scarf

Leather dress gloves (7.5, 8, L)

If you want access to an extra roundup every week, exclusive to members, join Put This On's Inside Track for just five bucks a month.

[fashionsfromhistory]

Robe

Sulka & Company

c.1940

The MET

[franni22]

I just added this listing on Poshmark: 🦩Vintage A. Sulka & Company Tie..

[citypillow2-blog]

What Makes a Great American Food City?

What makes a great modern food city in America? Over the nearly five years I roamed the country as Eater’s national critic, this question almost involuntarily rumbled through my brain. Some standout criteria are obvious: A city’s dining culture needs baselines of excellence and eclecticism in every tier of restaurant. It needs first-rate grocers, farmers markets, and single-focus shops (coffee, ice cream, wine, bread, and pastries). Restaurant-goers should support culinary traditions but, at the same time, encourage creative momentum. And the “sense of place” about which food writers love to crow must include an innate respect for a city’s collective communities, both rooted and new.

But at some point during my wanderings, I realized greatness might boil down to the Long Weekend Theory. The core hypothesis is this: In most every American city with a sizable population and sufficient degree of cultural density, you can eat (and drink) with consistent pleasure throughout three leisure-filled days.

Almost anywhere, for example, you could kick off Friday at the irreverent cocktail bar; fill the major meal slots with the buzziest restaurant in town, the big-ticket splurge, and the indie marvels serving regional dishes from, say, Mexico, or Thailand, or Syria; go crazy at the do-what-we-want sandwich shop serving delicious monstrosities; moon over the soulful pie counter or the ice cream parlor concocting mind-jangling flavor combinations; and wrap it all up with one final blowout at the coolest breakfast hangout in town.

So the real test of a superior food city is, what would happen if you kept eating past the dreamy Monday-morning breakfast?

In a merely standard city for dining, a steep drop in quality and enticement becomes evident. Other hyped restaurants wobble in execution; places serving similar cuisines seem to duplicate one another’s menus. A great food city surpasses the long-weekend itinerary. It is replete with restaurants that deliver their own unique versions of the special something that can make dining out one of life’s sincerest joys.

Of course it’s unrealistic to expect that every meal at every restaurant will be near-mystical in any place. But an exceptional dining town has enough restaurants delivering abundant individuality and constant attention to detail that the choices don’t feel limited to a dozen or fewer true standouts.

Our most immense and our most richly aesthetic metropolises (New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, San Francisco, and New Orleans) can pass this test easily, as do the expected smaller urban centers whose food scenes draw plenty of notice, like Austin, Charleston, and Portland, Maine.

But what about a place like Phoenix? It’s the fifth-largest city in the United States by population, and, including adjacent cities such as Scottsdale and Chandler, the country’s 11th-largest metropolitan area. Despite its magnitude, Phoenix’s restaurant scene largely goes overlooked in the national media. There’s a vague perception of the city as an indistinguishable, sprawling flatland full of middle-of-the-road dining options, many of them chains. Local publications are acutely aware of its reputation as a culinary dead zone.

Scattered national acclaim does materialize. Veteran local chefs like Kevin Binkley (chef-owner of the tasting menu restaurant Binkley’s) and Silvana Salcido Esparza (lauded for her Barrio Café and sublime chiles en nogada) receive steady nods as James Beard semifinalists. Chris Bianco, whose game-changing Pizzeria Bianco has made him the country’s most famous pizzaiolo, is Phoenix’s most recognizable food ambassador. On a countrywide level, that’s about it.

I’ll admit to largely ignoring Phoenix on my Eater beat. I went once during those five years, and even then sped through only a polite survey of the town — I was really there to research a story about Bianco and how his dominion had grown since I’d first tasted his pizza in the 1990s. This past September, the Association of Food Journalists held their annual conference in Phoenix. I didn’t go, but the few attendees I informally polled about their dining experiences didn’t seem overly impressed.

Still, I wondered if treasures had gone unnoticed. Latino residents comprise 41 percent of the population: Surely they were paragons serving specialties from the neighboring Mexican state of Sonora? Ranching and agriculture is a $23.3 billion business in Arizona, and the intense heat equates to unique growing cycles: Asparagus was in high season during the February when I blitzed through Bianco’s restaurants. What other chefs were plugged into the rhythms of the Arizona seasons, and how were they expressing them? Dominic Armato, dining critic for the Arizona Republic, ate hard to compile a recent list of his 100 favorite metro-area restaurants. His roster of curries, tacos, tasting menus, biscuit sandwiches, and dishes that defy easy labeling makes a compelling case for the scope of local dining.

So in October I returned to Phoenix to see if the Valley (as its metro area calls itself) could pass — or surpass, really — the long-weekend test. I came for seven days to understand dining in Phoenix as best and as quickly as I could. A week, obviously, could never be enough to truly absorb the depths of a city’s food culture, though I trusted it was enough to judge if we’ve all been missing something. Or not.

Dinner at Tratto, a handsome restaurant of calming white walls and oak in the Town & Country shopping center, began with chicken livers spread over some righteously charred toast. Sweet-sour plum jam offset the livers; the fruit was left in big, melting hunks and scented with lemon verbena. Wide-mouthed rigatoni came next, sauced in a guinea hen ragu whose lightness felt ideal for a warm Arizona fall evening.

Conveniently located right next door to my favorite branch of Pizzeria Bianco, Tratto is the restaurant I’d most fervidly recommend to anyone visiting Phoenix right now. The finessed cooking, focus on stellar ingredients, and spirit of generosity put it on par with the finest modern Italian restaurants in the country.

A colleague and I ended up sharing the pork chops with apples, and a side dish of garlicky oyster mushrooms, with the group of four seated next to us; it was our sixth meal of the day. We were pointed toward a bottle of Klinec Medana Jakot, a funky Slovenian varietal that was as orange in color as it was in its citrus-blossomy notes. The wine saw us through to the finale, a wedge of custardy lemon tart exactly right in its simplicity.

Tratto opened in 2016 to rhapsodic reviews by local critics. Why don’t more people know about it coast to coast? As a maker of best-new-restaurant lists, I’ll speak to my own (flawed) thinking: Chris Bianco owns Tratto, and I didn’t think he needed any more attention. Yet Bianco has moved into a career phase where he is as much or more of a restaurateur and mentor as he is a chef. At Tratto, he cedes some of the spotlight to the energized team of chef Cassie Shortino, pastry chef Olivia Girard, and beverage director Blaise Faber for the day-to-day operations.

Bianco steps into more of an advisory role at Roland’s Cafe Market Bar, an all-day restaurant launched last year as his collaboration with Armando Hernandez (who previously worked for Bianco), Seth Sulka, and Nadia Holguin. In my long-weekend matrix for Phoenix, Tratto is the Friday-night stage-setter, and Roland’s is the Monday-morning finale. Hernandez and Holguin, who are husband and wife, also run three-year-old Tacos Chiwas on McDowell Road, a bastion of old-line Mexican restaurants northeast of downtown. “Chiwas” riffs off of Holguin and Hernandez’s heritage; both have roots in the northern border state of Chihuahua. The tacos and burritos at Chiwas are solid, but the gorditas — yawning wheat-flour pockets most memorably filled with deshebrada roja (shredded beef in red chile sauce) — steal focus from every other dish.

At Roland’s, the Mexican-with-hints-of-Italian cooking is uplifting and individualistic. An open-faced (read: pizza-shaped) quesadilla dotted with mortadella and asadero cheese is a palpable tribute to Bianco, whose company provides the organic Sonoran wheat flour for the tortilla on which the quesadillas are built. Yet this is really Holguin’s show — an expression of la cocina norteña (the cooking of northern Mexico, born of its desert and Gulf of California geography) that merges her background and her culinary training.

Beyond the fantastic quesadillas (they rightly star on the breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus), the entomatadas highlight Holguin’s precision with textures: crisped and stacked corn tortillas bathe in chile-spiked tomato sauce, fused by shredded asadero melting in the heat, and crowned with a fried egg. Alongside the flaky, painstakingly plaited empanadas filled with cabeza (beef head meat), ask for an array of salsas, bright in color and flavor, that aren’t automatically brought to the table. Chihuahua is the spiritual home of the burrito; Holguin fills her concise, captivating version with pork saturated in ruddy, garlicky chile colorado.

Breakfast or lunch at Roland’s makes for an apt conclusion to a long-weekend agenda, especially in how it frames la cocina norteña: This is a chef ascending to her deserved platform. If in a decade Phoenix becomes nationally synonymous with chefs ingeniously upholding and interpreting variations on northern Mexican cuisines, I predict Roland’s will be seen as a major touchstone in that progression.

Before a meal at Roland’s, seek out some Sonoran- and Chihuahuan-style cooking throughout the Phoenix metro area: It puts a nationally under-sung aspect of the city’s culture in delicious perspective. A rambling Saturday outing began for me with those lush wheat-flour gorditas at Tacos Chiwas. At the original Carolina’s Mexican Food, not far from downtown, sunshine slipped through narrow windows, revealing a nearly imperceptible blizzard in the streaks of light. The air was filled with flour; Carolina’s doubles as a tortilla factory. I ordered a simple, blazingly hot burrito wrapped around scrambled eggs and machaca — a Sonoran staple of dried and rehydrated beef, served shredded and often combined with other ingredients.

I’d return to Carolina’s for the atmosphere, but El Horseshoe Restaurant, on an industrial stretch west of downtown, is the place to truly savor homemade machaca for breakfast. Here, the Avitia family sautees it among potato, egg, and onion, its concentrated beefiness permeating every molecule of the dish, with sides of rice, beans, and a freshly made tortilla. The state of Sonora, beyond its desert interior, stretches across much of the Gulf of California’s eastern coastline; Horseshoe serves a restoring version of cahuamanta, a classic brothy stew bobbing with shrimp and pearly hunks of manta ray.

For a deeper immersion into regional seafood dishes, I swung by El Rey de Los Ostiones, a seafood market in a low-slung strip mall northwest of downtown. The bilingual staff graciously quizzed me on my tastes, finally delivering customized aguachiles and ceviches full of shrimp and oysters, along with several kinds of hot sauce and other condiments to tweak the seasonings. A 10-minute drive from El Rey, I had my favorite tacos of the trip at Ta’Carbon, an always-packed draw specializing in carne asada (among other meats like lengua and cabeza) grilled over mesquite.

Before the afternoon ended I veered off the Sonoran trail for a “taco” of another kind: a puffy, palm-scorching, mood-elevating flatbread filled with green chile-laced beef, refried beans, and cheese at the Fry Bread House, a Phoenix institution started in 1992 by Cecelia Miller of the Tohono O’odham Nation.

Restaurants serving American Indian cuisines are too few around the country and in the Southwest. Kai, the flagship restaurant at the Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass and one of the Valley’s toniest dining experiences, vaguely themes its dishes in Native American directions with indigenous seeds and beans and plants. But really, Kai falls more into the category of modern-American splurge restaurant.

The signature grilled buffalo tenderloin came surrounded by sides and adornments straight from 1990 — smoked corn puree, cholla cactus buds, a light chile of scarlet runner beans, chorizo, a drizzle of syrup made from saguaro blossoms — that manage to coalesce. That entree is $58. The setting, with the sun disappearing behind mountains in the distance, is gorgeous, but for a more consistently dazzling and sure-file splurge, I’d suggest Binkley’s immersive tasting menu, or Silvana Salcido Esparza’s Barrio Café Gran Reserva for beauties like pan-seared corvina served with rose pepper mole sauce and salsa fragrant with smoky morita chiles (and her chiles en nogada, as superb as ever).

On Sunday, I needed extra coffee to jolt me after Saturday’s taxing schedule. A skillful macchiato and pour over at Giant Coffee animated me. First stop: Little Miss BBQ. Every major city in America has a pit master whose next-level dedication has pushed its scene to great smoked-meat raptures in recent years. Scott Holmes achieved this in Phoenix with his blackened, barky brisket, deliriously fatty in the style of Austin’s famed Franklin Barbecue. Loved the on-theme smoked pecan pie for dessert.

Second lunch, a restaurant recommended by local food-writer friends, was the trip’s sweetest surprise. I’d been briefed on the setup at Alzohour Market. Owner Zhor Saad takes orders and prepares the tiny restaurant’s Moroccan specialties herself. I poked around, looking at the clothing and candies and bric-a-brac she sells in the retail space adjacent to her dining room while I waited for bastilla, the sweet-savory masterpiece traditionally made of spiced pigeon and roasted almonds wrapped in phyllo and dusted with sugar and cinnamon. Saad substituted shredded chicken in her bastilla, but it was among the best versions I’ve had in America. Her lamb tagine was nearly as poetic.

Charleen Badman, chef and owner of FnB, also regularly appears on Beard semifinalist lists; her restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale gave me the trip’s most accurate and evocative sense of Arizona’s growing cycles. Salads of persimmon and pistachio, or little gem with pears, plums, and pecans; rice-stuffed squash blossoms with a riff on shakshuka made with summer squash; sheets of pastas entwined with foraged lobster mushrooms: I felt myself settle into the land in Badman’s dining room. Like many modern chefs, she thinks about flavors globally. For example, wonderful lamb manti (Turkish dumplings) dolloped with yogurt, sprinkled with pine nuts, and served in butter flecked with urfa chile was one of several dishes that evoked Middle Eastern cuisines. That dish also paired well with a fairly spectacular syrah from Rune Wines, a luminary among Arizona’s maturing viniculture industry.

I sat finishing the last bites of huckleberry-lemon sponge cake with fig-leaf ice cream, thinking that in a city with a glossier dining reputation, Badman and FnB would be basking in even more accolades. If I’d have beelined to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport right after this dinner, I would have climbed into the heavens happy and sated.

A quartet of Addison’s favorite tacos in Phoenix, at Ta’Carbon

Assuming that most people don’t gorge through a city like a food critic on a research jag, I’ve detailed more than enough meals to exceed a long eating weekend in Phoenix. (And here I’ll fill in a couple of potentially empty slots in the Long Weekend Theory itinerary I vaguely followed above: You can drink as well as you eat at Tratto, but for a pre-Friday night dinner starting point, the move is Bitter & Twisted Cocktail Parlour, cheekily located in a building where the Arizona Prohibition Headquarters was once housed. Also, for a second breakfast option, try local darling Matt’s Big Breakfast for Americana personified.)

Sure, there were ups and downs as I continued grazing through the area. Other charmers included Pa’La, where Claudio Urciuoli writes out his affordable daily menu on a chalkboard behind the counter, anchored by a top-shelf mix-and-match grain bowl. But there were mid-level letdowns, too. Two memorable disappointments came from newer arrivals with strong local word of mouth. Maybe I totally misordered at Cotton & Copper in Tempe, but the oddly mealy corn dumplings in parmesan cream and carpaccio topped with citrus segments and chunks of chewy cheese felled my dinner at the bar. And I was intrigued by the promise of “modern Southwest cuisine” at Ghost Ranch in Chandler; that amorphous genre could use some sharp redefining. I didn’t find it in a ho-hum sampler platter (pork and chicken enchiladas, cheese-filled chiles rellenos, grilled skirt steak) and bland grilled chicken with polenta and green chile jus.

Overall, though, I left impressed by Phoenix. I knew there were pleasures and pockets of potential gems I’d left untried: dim sum at Mekong Palace Restaurant in Mesa, other serious pizzerias spurred by Bianco’s success, and upscale stalwart Rancho Pinot, for starters. But even after only a week of immersive gorging, it’s clear that dismissing the Valley as a snowbird’s destination for chains and lowest-common-denominator palates is anachronistic and plain wrong. I’d nudge other national food writers to come test out the Long Weekend Theory here for themselves. Is Phoenix’s restaurant culture on par with a similar sprawl of urban vastness like Houston? Not yet. Is the breadth and depth of dining better than most of us are giving it credit for? It won’t take more than a few happy, immersive days of eating to know the answer is: absolutely.

Bill Addison is a food critic for the Los Angeles Times; he was Eater’s roving national critic for nearly five years until November 2018. Fact checked by Pearly Huang Copy edited by Rachel P. Kreiter

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Source: https://www.eater.com/2019/1/23/18183298/best-restaurants-phoenix-scottsdale-tempe

[silverandsilkworld]

I just added this listing on Poshmark: Sulka Silk Scarf Pink Green Blue Handrolled Hem. #poshmark #fashion #shopping #shopmycloset

[obeyfeline]

vintage Sulka roundup

A roundup of vintage finds on the internet of stuff from Sulka and other places I write about in my book Swan Songs: Souvenirs of Paris Elegance, available through the link in my bio. 

Vintage vicuna from the pre-ban era

Crewneck and funnel-neck

A more normal cashmere sweater in a barleycorn knit with contrast collar and cuffs:

Enamel jockey hat cufflinks

Precious fripperies. I’ve posted pics of enameled Sulka ladybug or shamrock cufflinks before.

Belted cashmere overshirt with epaulettes. If this had been my size I would have been all over it.

1960s-1970s crazy pattern shirt. More interesting than what they ended up selling in the 1990s, or what is now being sold under the Sulka label on Mr Porter.

Jacquard-woven Sea Island cotton pajamas.

A 1970s-early 1980s polo shirt by Schiatti:

Ties and scarves:

all with the stupid diamond-tipped reinforcing stitch:

Incredible tasseling and monogramming:

The irregular spot pattern was a Sulka specialty:

Raoul Dufy for Charvet silk scarf:

Chavet crocogator belt:

Dunhill Tradition boxed alligator flask set. Handmade in Walthamstow England, in vanishingly small numbers.

[optimisticprincepainter]

A cream-coloured silk scarf belonging to former US President John F Kennedy has been sold for USD 6,490 at an auction in the US. The scarf from A Sulka & Company was worn by Kennedy during his tenure as a congressman and into his early senatorial career. It has an attractive herringbone pattern, classic black- and-tan fringe ends, and an embroidered open monogram bearing Kennedy’s initials, “JFK.” An accouterment of his classic style, this is an exquisite scarf sported by Kennedy as he strolled the chilly sidewalks of Boston during the early 1950s, according to US- based RR Auction.  The Sulka brand became synonymous with the style of the upper crust and political elite, and long served as the go-to haberdashery for the likes of the Duke of Windsor, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, and Clark Gable, among others.   The Rediff.com : 8th. Feb,18

FORMER US PRESIDENT JOHN F KENNEDY’s SILK SCARF AUCTIONED FOR USD 6,490 : A cream-coloured silk scarf belonging to former US President John F Kennedy has been sold for USD 6,490 at an auction in the US.

[ransomeandgwynn-blog]

For your consideration: A vintage A. Sulka & Company satin finish silk neck tie in a wonderful pattern! Follow the link in our bio and choose our auction listings to see more. #vtg #vintage #vtgmnswr #vintageforsale #vintagemenswear #vintageclothing #mnswr #menswear #mensvintage #mensvintageclothing #mensfashion #dapper #dandy #ransomeandgwynn #ebay #sulka #sulkatie #necktie #tie

[nomanwalksalone]

ON NEEDLESS THINGS 

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

Long ago when I first began writing on #steez, I began one essay urging readers to stop me if I got too wrapped up in the needless fetishization of possessions. Today, I stage my own intervention, albeit a small one, in preparing to get rid of this beautiful, luxurious, quite functional and completely useless antique flask.

Why did I buy it? I guess I discover esoteric and useless must-haves that I never knew I needed in my moments between more pressing obsessions. I still have my leaky old shagreen Unique lighter around somewhere although its main use for years has been lighting candles at children’s birthday parties. I have an antique box from the defunct Old England Paris I picked up after learning it was identical to the one Marcel Duchamp used in his Box of 1932 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but I rationalized that purchase, as well as that of a 1930s shirt box from Sulka Paris, since I’ve written a book about them, my true obsessions of a vanished Paris.

A flask is the logical next step in needlessness after a lighter, particularly as I don’t smoke. Like any excessively nice accessory, it promises a twinge of smug satisfaction every time I use something that otherwise could be a commonplace. That’s the thing though. The only people who actually use flasks regularly are people with severe drinking problems. And, I suppose, some living clichés pulling them out of their Brexitwear while they stand on a grouse moor. I’m usually the designated driver when I go out, and I’d feel like a creep keeping this in a drawer at work the way George Lazenby’s 007 does when he apologizes to the Annigoni portrait of the Queen before taking a pull in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

I admit, in retrospect, I wish I’d had it on me, full of Laphroaig, an hour into an interminable wedding when a Christian rock band began to play (and this was in the church the middle of the ceremony itself, not at the reception). But other than that occasion, I can’t really think of when I’d have wanted it weighing down a jacket pocket. I’ve only spiked my coffee when I was snowed in at home, and if I’d needed a drink while shoveling snow, I just had to come in.

The usefulness of a needless object is a set of pleasantly finicky details on which we construct our rationalizations: it’s wrapped not just in leather, like many flasks, but in genuine crocodile. The flask body itself is glass, not metal, so it should be easier to see if it needs cleaning. To keep the glass from breaking, the lower half of the flask is sheathed in a silverplate cup, which comes off if the owner is too prim to take a pull directly. The hinged stopper is also silverplated, and screws to the side to stay closed. The mechanisms still work. All these details bring their own complications – the fragility of the glass, and the delicateness of the leather. You can’t wash this thing under a tap – I destroyed another one when warm water caused its ancient crocodile (despite its aquatic origins) to shrivel right up and come off. Rather, I bought a fifth of the cheapest, strongest clear liquor I could find and used a funnel to pour it in and rinse out the insides of the flask to dissolve and wash away any traces of whatever had been in there before.  

For I was not its first owner. As the reader can see, the initials are not my own, nor does it bear the de Mans family crest (chat couchant on a field of antidepressants). This is a century-old flask made by a company called James Dixon of Birmingham, England, which also made some flasks for Asprey and other West End jewelers. I don’t know if anyone’s making flasks similar to this new, but they’d be certain to be unaffordable. Rather, this is one of those old fetish items my colleagues in the blogocracy and the leading men’s magazines advise us to buy secondhand, themselves having already scored their silver-trimmed crocodile cigar cases and such before prices shot up. Those cases, too, are beautiful things, but I’ve learned my lesson. Better to collect items closer to my real obsessions than to acquire, through osmosis, those I am told to.

[obeyfeline]

A tweet thread on why 1990s Sulka lost the plot. A rare interesting item, the brocade tapestry pattern robe, below.

At https://twitter.com/x/migrate?tok=7b2265223a222f726a64656d616e732f7374617475732f313834373636303239373737363939363834323f733d343626743d684b59775750302d6d343469595935417441646d5751266662636c69643d50415a58683062674e685a5730434d5445414161624f61435561496b657337766649384971516e496c326339644b693731784f315054526d3547382d79727672683074657367385f57577866515f61656d5f6936485a4835764a32775a71717951546d3676374b67222c2274223a313732393433373039367d3a36253c140bb928f4ee4dc3054bf7cc

https://twitter.com/x/migrate?tok=7b2265223a222f726a64656d616e732f7374617475732f313834373636303239373737363939363834323f733d343626743d684b59775750302d6d343469595935417441646d5751266662636c69643d50415a58683062674e685a5730434d5445414161624f61435561496b657337766649384971516e496c326339644b693731784f315054526d3547382d79727672683074657367385f57577866515f61656d5f6936485a4835764a32775a71717951546d3676374b67222c2274223a313732393433373039367d3a36253c140bb928f4ee4dc3054bf7cc

[obeyfeline]

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Sulka cufflink and catalog that detailed them.