Nancy, wow. It is November 19. You are ahead of the game when it comes to the holidays… I have enjoyed putting shirts and sweaters together for several decades now… just about as long as I've been working. So this is gonna be fun.
There was this fantastic old-school haberdashery in Jackson called The Rogue, where I would work on breaks from college. The next rung of the ladder up from my high school gig at Busick’s over in Pearl, Mississippi. Anyway, the Rogue was a very formative place for me. All year round — but especially around this time of year — women would come in looking for our help with a gift. “I need something for my son/brother/boyfriend/husband/dad/granddad…” – any special guy in their life. So we’d come back with a shirt and you could tell by the look on their face, it didn't feel like quite enough. Same thing if we’d come back with a sweater. On its own, each piece wasn't quite enough. It wanted a friend.
So I figured out pretty quickly if we came with a combo of the two, that was the ticket. And it was not intended as an upsell… I didn't even know what upselling was. (Fortysomething years later I'm still not that comfortable with it.) It was a customer service piece… a way of spinning a gift to feel slightly more curated than just a random shirt the salesman brought to you. Even if it's the same shirt-and-sweater combo he's bringing everyone, the mix makes it feel more special.
Some people would try to stretch out the unwrapping ceremony and get two gift boxes – other women loved the presentation element of putting the shirt inside the sweater and folding them together in a single. Selfishly, I would have rather received two boxes myself but no one was asking me (and I was trying not to overwhelm the wrapping team, Helen Puckett and Vicki Pickle.)
The world is filled with things that are better combined. I could run down a rabbit hole with so many ways this works: food (peanut butter and chocolate) people (you and your better half)… but if you'll indulge me for a second, my very favorite rabbit hole is music. Warning: you may have to take some time off from work to watch the following video… it’s a tad long!
I was blown away by this video I saw recently on Instagram breaking down the making of David Bowie's Space Oddity. The magic of the multitrack. JJ Blair, who is this producer and engineer, isolates each of the 8 tracks that make up this total masterpiece of a song. It's been one of my all-time favorites since it came out, but I have a whoooooole new appreciation for it now. The story is that Tony Visconti was producing the album but he was not down to produce the song. He thought it was a gimmick. DB hadn't even had a real hit yet! I can only imagine. “Yeah, right, they're doing a space launch and you're wanting to do a space song? Like, okay, David, why don't you write them a jingle?” George Martin said no, too. Eventually they got Gus Dudgeon to do it.
Are you still with me? I promise it's worth it.
But there's a whole cast of characters on each of those 8 tracks and each one is practically a star in its own right. There are so many elements that they've got to pair up. The drums and the bass share a track (Terry Cox on drums, I don't think I'd fully appreciated that bassline until now; JJ says he could do a whole video on just Herbie Flowers' bass)… the guitar and the stylophone share a track (Mark Bolan of T.Rex made him figure out how to squeeze the stylophone in there)… the cello and the flute share a track (Tony Visconti did wind up playing the flute)… the harmonies and the Mellotron share a track (allegedly Rick Wakeman did this in one take!)… anyway, I could go on. You can watch the whole video if you're as into this kind of thing as I am. But the point is, everyone is playing their part. And as much as I love the full thing, hearing these parts paired up on individual tracks makes it all feel a little more magical to me. Hey, kinda like sweaters and shirts. For me, anyway.
But back to your question, and apologies for the tangent. I still have a lot of fun pairing shirts and sweaters together, and find it easiest to do it in person… so I went over to the Atlanta shop and got to work on the ping pong table. I got some help from the inimitable Tom Jackson, who has been selling menswear for decades. Here's 8 combos — in the spirit of Space Oddity, let's call them 8 tracks — that got us really excited. We even added a bonus piece on the last one in case you really want to step things up and throw in a tie.
Nancy, thank you — this was FUN. I don't know how many sons you've got, or if any of them care about clothes, or David Bowie… but hopefully there's a combo or two in here that'll feel right to you. And if not, holler back to us and we'll dial in the right mix.
