Time, and Accessories: #30folds30days, Rolled Puff Fold, Day 13

We had more time yesterday than we do today.

There are 365 days in a normal calendar year, but 365.25 days in a solar year. This gives us leap days every four years. Apparently, there are also leap seconds. You see, the earth spinning on its axis and the moon rotating around it apparently create some sort of slowdown of the rotation of the earth, lengthening the day ever so slightly. Accordingly, every few years or so, some scientists get together and add a leap second to the clock. It happens on either December 31 or June 30. There have been about 25 or so seconds added since the 70’s. It’s a timey-wimey thing.

So yesterday, we had an extra second on the clock. One single extra second. It was added at midnight, so I was sleeping through it. But a single second can make a difference.

A lot of times, when getting dressed in the morning, that’s what we’re talking about, a few extra seconds. The details take that few extra seconds. Yesterday, talking about making sure the tie and tie clip are positioned correctly. Or making sure that your shoes match and go with your suit. But what about other accessories? The details. It’s all about the details, as I have said many times. As with most things, there are a few considerations to keep in mind.

First, with shoes, it is simple. Brown shoes, brown belt. Black shoes, black belt. That’s easy. Try to match your shoes as closely as you can to the leather of your shoe. With some browns this can get tougher, but basically don’t pair a cognac shoe with a dark brown belt. If you start going into different color shoes, then you should still try to match your shoes to your belt. Unless the color of the shoe lies more more on the bright side of the rainbow, rather than the black/brown/burgundy/tan/olive family. You can get away with a black belt and grey shoes, or a brown belt and blue shoes (or vice versa, depending). However, if there’s a chance to get a matching belt, I would vote for it.

This brings up the topic of the belt buckle, and metals. For the most part, do not mix metals. If you have a gold tie clip, your belt buckle, any shoe buckle, collar holder, and cuff links should all be in the gold family, and same for silver. The one exception to this is a man’s watch. A man may wear a watch that is not the same metal as his accessories. I would still reccomend keeping this at a minimum, and if possible not at all, but it is an option.

The rules on this are fairly simple. Leather to leather, metal to metal. It’s just making sure you take the etra few seconds to have them all go together. And you got an extra second yesterday, so why not take the time today?

Today’s fold doesn’t take much time at all. A variation on the puff fold, you essentially simply tuck it back upon itself to provide some nice texture and a bit more sturdiness to the fold.

1. Start with your square.

2. Grab it by the middle.

3. Pull it through your hand until at least half or 2/3 of the fabric of the square is above your hand. Remember, you’re rolling it back on itself, so you’ll need some extra fabric.