Today we have yet another tale of separated siblings, the ubiquitous incomplete suit that is the bane of the thrift shoppers existence...or do we?
A matching jacket and vest, vintage mid 1960s, priced at $9.99 for the "set" of two. The cloth is a lovely brown mini-herringbone tweed, lightweight for tweed and very soft to the touch. And of course, all the details are there: 3/2 roll, hooked vent, two button cuff, etc.
Puritan, Cricket Shop, Hyannis. I am a sucker for these old house brand labels. I find them so much more meaningful than brand names, even good ones. Great...but where are the pants.
Of course, I snapped up these two pieces and headed straight for the pants rack looking for a pair of flat front, narrow cut trousers in brown mini-herringbone tweed, but to no avail. Can't win 'em all, I guess. So I left the two pieces in my cart and finished looking around. The whole time I flip flopped over whether to leave these two or keep them. I decided that for ten bucks, this was a nice tweed jacket, and the vest was like bonus points. Not as good as a three piece suit, but admittedly more useful these days. Then, as I was waiting in line to pay, I noticed something:
The vest is reversible, a really killing rusty brown doeskin on the other side. Now that's the corker. It may be a little weird having the buttons on the wrong side, but I think I'll manage. Before my turn comes up in line, I'm already thinking about how great this will work with some khaki moleskin pants and my vintage pair of British made Clark's chukkas in loden suede. And then I remembered something my Dad told me years ago. Not really sage fatherly advice or anything, just a thing he said in passing.
Back when I first picked up the old Clark's, my Dad saw them and said something like "I had a pair of shoes just like that when I was in high school (in the mid sixties). I used to wear them to dances with the brown tweed vest and jacket set I had." So apparently, these two piece sets did exists in the time this set dates from. Maybe then this group is in fact complete. Again, maybe not as good as a three piece suit, but maybe it never was one.
2/3, or one whole? Either way, it's pretty cool.
