On the eve of the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, which added the prohibition of liquor traffic to the Constitution in 1919, there were two schoolboys on their way home in the impecunious Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York, and they witnessed a street craps game break out into a fight when they heard police whistles. According to Meyer Lansky, the young protagonist, they were not familiar with each other. As the police drew nearer, he forced Bugsy Siegel to drop the gun he brandished, which irked Siegel. However, this action led to the formation of the Bugs and Meyer Mob, one of the most renowned street gangs in the United States of America of all time.
Gambling, extortion, theft, racketeering, and other heinous crimes, but notably with Prohibition in full swing, the gang joined with mobster Arnold Rothstein, nicknamed “The Brain,” in establishing a lucrative entity running bootleg liquor along the East Coast. Otherwise known as moonshiners, it was criminality that police officers deemed easier to pounce on than others. In response, they ingeniously invented cow shoes to evade detection. They were normal shoes, even superior quality brogues, and they were fitted with pieces of wood on the bottom that were carved to look like cow hooves. Now you had suave gangsters like Siegel hobnobbing from his personal apartment at The Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Midtown Manhattan, to meetings in the backroom of Ratner’s restaurant, Lower East Side, and he’s dressed in bespoke pinstripe/chalkstripe suits, a fedora, and then on occasion the infamous cow shoes.
Hardy Amies, the iconic designer and Royal Warrant holder to Queen Elizabeth II, later succinctly described the distinction between the stripes: “Pin’ stripes… look very set’ when compared to ‘chalk’ stripes, the outlines of which blur and thus blend with the background.” The first two decades of the 20th century were a poignant period for pinstripe/chalkstripe suits. Prior, the American Mafia had yet to infiltrate society with unremitting crime on such a damning scale, and the financial elite of Frankfurt’s Bankenviertel, Wall Street, and the Square Mile considered striped pattern suits overly informal.
Otto Hermann Kahn, often referred to as the “King of New York,” and his German-born Jewish banking contemporaries, such as Paul Warburg, Sir Ernest Cassel, and Jacob Schiff, have left an indelible legacy in corporate finance. Kahn, in particular, has spent significant portions of his life in all three banking denizens. It’s interesting to note that prior to 1910, he, along with other behemoth banking figures, would often be seen in black morning coats, short coats, shirts with various detachable style collars, single-hued suits, and dress trousers, to today’s sponge bag grey striped morning trousers and top or boat hats.
Then, as the Roaring Twenties emerged, Khan would appear in every dominion, including Palm Beach, donning immaculate three-piece chalkstripe suits. The complex social order still inhibited Jewish personalities in this era, and its only papers in the subsequent decades that have exposed Khan’s peerless influence in Palm Beach are all the more remarkable. One day, Khan magnificently illustrated the tapered meaning of dress formality, posing between his close friends Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Charlie Chaplin. He wore a charcoal chalkstripe jacket and a matching single-breasted waistcoat, adorned with curved white piping. While this trimming may not always enhance the outfit, it was exquisite. He also paired a white starched collar shirt with black pants, an outfit displaying the gentle modification of formality.
Meanwhile, in the ‘30s, Siegel moved from New York and set up a new criminal empire on the west coast. It was there that his debonair yet plucky look and demeanour washed well with the likes of Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and Gary Cooper—all Old Hollywood actors who portrayed the ultimate examples of how to wear a chalkstripe suit. So popular and deeply entrenched in Hollywood society, Jean Harlow became the unofficial godmother of his daughter.
However, sometimes you have to look back to move forward, and it’s Alexander Kraft who has done this with his sartorial enactment, and it’s the chalkstripe fabric that has been a fundamental part of this revolution. As alluded to, chalkstripe have a softer, more subtle appearance than pinstripes. Chalkstripe, especially when tailored in sui generis flannel, diffuse the power punch that the thinner white pinstripe can occasionally emanate. Exuding an allure of restraint, yet worn with purpose at formal meetings at Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo and then retreating a few yards to Salle Belle Epoque for lunch, the light grey flannel chalkstripe three-piece suit, made from a soft, elegant Vitale Barberis Canonico flannel featuring all of the unique and revered AK MC details, transforms you into a modern era in Monaco while maintaining the gravitas of Old Hollywood. This is particularly evident when an Albert chain is affixed to the waistcoat, and underneath you opt for a high-quality thin Bengal striped shirt.
Mixing and matching doesn’t lessen the desirability of the aforementioned outfit. The jacket, trousers, and waistcoat are all sold separately, and with that you have a plethora of AK MC designs to be inventive with to conjure up a chic outfit. The double-breasted Signature Barchetta wool blazer in a navy chalkstripe is an excellent garb to embody a more casual elegance guise, especially when staying cosy in the impending minus temperatures, even in Central Europe, as we witnessed in 2021 when Madrid was buried in a foot and a half of snow. The delectable AK MC roll neck sweater assortment would certainly play a stylish role in helping you brave such an unthinkable weather event.
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