gloves - The Seventh Sphinx

Have been browsing for a pair of leather driving gloves for a good 5 years or so, always finding it difficult to find them in a brick and mortar to try on, especially women’s gloves with their sleeker fit and more delicate fingers. The most promising options were in British menswear shops with understandable-yet-still-galling postage fees, and I delayed. A few years ago a glove shop opened on Newbury St, Sermoneta gloves, selling Italian-made gloves, and I finally gave it a proper browse last week.

I found the salesperson pleasantly tolerant of my endless trying on (I have large hands, and glove sizing is been pretty inconsistent in my experience, making it quite a risk to buy a pair without trying them on first,* not to mention feeling the quality of the leather first).

*As there is variation in each pair, this means not only trying on multiple sizes, but trying on multiple pairs within the nearest size.

I pronounce the visit a success.

I do not always feel that my shopping is a success, reader. I return a fair amount (though, too, there is some amount of returning built into my shopping methods re: sizing and comparison, etc.), and have to sometimes resell or eat the cost of something I changed my mind about. My whims are fallible, my tastes are sometimes—only really in retrospect, inconveniently—questionable. Often I return something because I recognize that I have made a compromise (of fit, construction, quality, adherence to some vision) I did not want to make, and should not make. It’s a steady stream of stuff coming in and stuff going out again over here.

It’s all the more satisfying, then, when there are no doubts and no reservations. White 1/2 finger driving gloves? Don’t mind if I do. I was looking for basic turquoise gloves but…that’s how it goes. These were the ones that sang.

There is something about a pair of sublimely fitted gloves that is as sensually tempting as it gets.

It’s satisfying when you get home from a bout of acquisition and can say, I got this.*

*Like, in the sense of ‘I’m all over this’…not like ‘I acquired this’…though you do technically now have it…oh never mind.

The wrist-length (or not quite wrist-length) glove is smart and sleek, the standard winter glove around 2 inches past the wrist is practical—though a bit dull without any inherent charm of its own—, the opera or elbow-length and beyond glove is formal and elegant…and then there is this length: a few inches short of the elbow but decidedly long. This length strikes me as an excellent modern compromise; neither the (now very bold/costumey) elbow length common in the 19th century nor the short (quaint, retro) day gloves of the early 20th century. And they are not the standard issue glove, either. They are something a bit new to the casual ensemble, and this gives them the ring of style.

To accentuate this out-of-the-ordinary feel I chose a dark purple shade instead of brown or black.

I only took my jacket off for a moment to show what was underneath. One really needed a jacket.

Warm climate style mavens really have the rest of us at an advantage.

I’m squinting slightly due to the wind and end up look like a reserved matriarch or something. I kind of like it.

This look features a bunch of textures, which I like doing lately. I think I will always like doing that.

Tweed coat (thrifted) with fur collar (eBay), monki scarf, Sorel boots, leather gloves (thrifted), J Crew buttoned shirt, Cotton Candy (?!*) skirt, golden akoya pearl studs from Pearl Paradise, love necklace via asos (right, like I was saying, cute things in moderation), Mulberry bag (thrifted), Japonesque Velvet Touch blush (which will tell you about soon). On the lips: Chanel Rouge Coco Shine in Esprit. This sheer lipstick is blotted, with a bit of a pink Rimmel pencil (Pure) added to the center such that the color fades to nothing at the edges. Nothing too precise about it (that irregular have-been-eating berries stain effect), and I would experiment with this kind of gradation more.

*Where do I get this stuff.

Tag: gloves

the leather driving gloves

the mid-length gloves