Mad men

What’s the best suit? To an American, it’s something from Brooks Brothers. Classical, democratic and made with high quality. To a Brit, it might be something from Henry Herbert or Gieves & Hawkes, a tailor-made garment from Saville Row, cut from perfect navy. But a suit can be just as good when rendered in draped, colorful cloth by the late Edward Sexton, or a hot corset-blazer blend by H&M and Mugler. There is no universal best suit. There’s just the best suit for the man or woman who wears it. And so, I come around to the refined blazer of beverages: the martini. In the pages of our July magazine, Chilton Williamson, Jr. wrote about his effort to “search of the perfect martini.

During a recent chat with my twin brother, I told him about a wholesome community event I was preparing to attend. Being the evil twin, he joked, “You should bring a flask.” This idea got us talking about just how, when, and where one is supposed to use a flask. Is one supposed to use a flask? My experience has often been that flasks are shady things, carried by alcoholics or sipped from covertly at events that would be intolerable without a numbing agent. Yet I wonder sometimes if any public behavior these days is really off-limits. America’s major cities all reek of weed, a cohort of busy moms recommends micro-dosing psychedelics, it’s socially acceptable to self-identify as a cloud, and people actually vape in public.