Custom Suits and Dope Shoes: Save Money by Spending Money
When I posted this, Undefeated Gucci Loafers, a lot of people asked me, “But what if I don’t have the money for Gucci Loafers and Custom Suits?”
Here is the thing most people don’t realize: Custom Suits and Dope Shoes actually save you money.
Let me break it down:
You throw down 5 G’s for a Custom Suit.
If you take care of it, you can have it for minimum 10 years (if not a lifetime and hand it down to your little baby G’s if you go that route).
$5,000 / 10 = $500 per year.
Pretty damn cheap.
Now ask yourself, what would you rather have, a Custom Suit, or some crappy off-the rack job by Hugo Boss for $500 where the buttons will pop off after a heavy night?
Same thing with Gucci Loafers, let’s break it down:
Now ask yourself, what would you rather have, a dope pair of Gucci Loafers or some weesh Kenneth Cole’s that will fall apart in 6 months?
Side note: It’s a little harder to pencil out handmade shoes, but they are worth every penny.
And here is the kicker.
With all the money printing that Bernake is doing, investing in Custom Suits and Dope Shoes is investing in real assets. So you are actually hedging against inflation.
Trust me, when the apocalypse comes, you are going to want to have some silver, some gold, some emeralds, some diamonds and shooting it out with an AR-15 and taking Thorozine while Custom Suited Down.
For Style Points, of course.
International Playboy of The Apocalypse.
The Rest is Up to You…
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
A few months ago, I was rolling with my Corporate friend and he had to go to South Coast Plaza to pick up a suit and some shoes. I told him he should just go Custom with my tailor, but him being a Corporate guy, he is kind of a cheapskate. But that is neither here nor there, and I decided to roll with.
While he grabbed an Armani suit (which was actually not bad, nothing compared to the handmade craftsmenship of my my tailor though), I decided to dip into Gucci and picked up a pair of Gucci Slides (pictured above, although the ones I grabbed were dark brown), even though I prefer handmade shoes from London these days.
So far I have been happy with the purchase.
I have swooped a fly girl everytime I have worn them so far: I went 1-0 in Los Angeles, 2-0 in Palm Beach, FL, 2-0 in Buenos Aires and 2-0 in Miami Beach. Decent.
(Side Note: I am only counting nights where I swooped a fresh girl. I am not counting nights I wore them and swooped a girl I already swooped. I don’t want to “pad” the record, so to speak).
The price tag? 5 bills. But knowing what I know now, I would have easily paid double.
I would strongly recommend picking up a pair or three, although I think they are discontinued. I anticipate they should work great for summer in coastal Spain at the topless beaches and for The Del Mar Racetrack.
Keep in mind though, I am not sure if these Gucci Loafers were 100% of the reason I went undefeated. It is really kind of hard to track. Furthermore, I have been feeling great lately (minus a health scare), traveling, making mad CASH, sparring heavy, and I have been doing it all in Custom Suits. So you could say I am on a roll, and I don’t mean E-tabs either.
These days, I can pretty much tell any top flight actor, musician or athelete to f*ck off with lifestyle.
I am a pretty big advocate of the International Playboy lifestyle choice.
I am mildly surprised more people out there aren’t embracing it.
Jim Rogers, Custom Suits, Wynn Las Vegas, Drug Wars, Jesse Ventura, Online Gambling and Steve Wynn Again
Undisclosed Location, South America –
Jim Rogers says:
Q. Given that kind of outlook, where are you investing in China?
Jim Rogers. The only thing I’m buying in China is the RMB. I can’t just pick up the phone and buy millions of RMB as you know, but when I can buy more RMB, I do so legally. I’m not buying Chinese shares. I would like to buy Chinese shares when they collapse. I don’t know when the next collapse will come, but there’s always a collapse in every country, so I would buy more. My view toward China is different from any other investment. I buy these shares, and I plan to hold onto them for my grandchildren – my children, anyway. I hope they own them for their grandchildren, because I’m convinced that China will be the great country of the 21st century.
As dining rooms fill with T-shirt- and Converse-clad social networkers, is dressing up the new way to stand out?
Over the past several years, the dress codes abided and enforced at those ceremonies of formality and occasion, at everywhere from fine-dining restaurants to evening soirées, have become mostly unspoken, unwritten or loosened like so many Hermès ties. And just as these rules—that for so many years were out of favor—disappear, a new generation of formality-loving dandies is choosing (not being told) to dress up.
Some say the casual-Friday-everyday mandate came from the top: the White House. When President Obama took office in 2009, he quickly declared the end of George W. Bush’s jacket-and-tie requirement for staffers and the policy of no jeans, sneakers, miniskirts, tank tops or flip-flops for visitors.
Now, from Manhattan to L.A., the majority of the iconic old-school restaurants that once mandated jackets and ties for men have replaced “required” with “requested.” At the iconic Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel—a second home to Hollywood’s elite since 1912—the once strictly enforced dress code is now “no tank-tops after 10 p.m.” “A few years ago, we had a ‘no-baseball-caps’ policy after 7 p.m.,” said a Polo Lounge manager, “but after Steven Spielberg was turned away for wearing one, we dropped the policy, like, the next day.” Other proper-attire outposts such as Houston’s Da Marco and Baltimore’s The Prime Rib have also recently replaced their jacket-and-tie requirements, with “business casual” encouraged. Some mainstays are simply opening their doors entirely to the sportswear-favoring public.
These establishments tip their fedoras to many of the old haunts that have now eased their rules—and to some that have not. At the 105-year-old New Orleans restaurant Galatoire’s, a weathered plaque on the edifice reads: “Proper Attire Required: Jackets after 5 p.m. and All Day Sunday; Long Pants for Lunch Tues.-Sun.” And that’s the way it will stay, according to John Georges, the principal owner of the French Creole cuisine stronghold. “New Orleans is a town of traditions, with deep respect for them,” he said. “We’re not going to change because of the needs of out-of-towners, or because of the dressing trends of the day,” Mr. Georges said. “If you stick to your principles it pays off—in whatever economy.” In other words, some things never go out of style. A point that will certainly hit home as a new generation of wing-tipped Taleses and Wolfes hit the town, showing everyone how it’s done, again.
Revenue on the Las Vegas strip declined for the fourth straight month in February, the Gaming Control Board reported on Friday. On a year-over-year basis, revenue fell 9.6% in the month, against a 33% gain the previous year. Because the comp was so difficult, analysts didn’t think the result was awful, but they considered some numbers troubling.
The biggest culprit? Analysts are blaming baccarat, which more than doubled (in terms of revenue) last year as Chinese New Year fell in mid-February. Baccarat revenues fell 31% on the strip this February, when the Chinese New Year fell early in the month, the gaming board said. Revenue from table games excluding baccarat actually rose 2.7%.
“Today’s numbers are disappointing,” wrote Hudson Securities analyst Robert LaFleur. “During 4Q10 earnings season we heard commentary that Chinese New Year was very strong. While, drop was basically flat and the comp was tough the strong growth in baccarat that had been sustaining the Strip through much of the downturn appears to be evaporating.”
Organised crime is moving south from Mexico into a bunch of small countries far too weak to deal with it
FOR most of the 20th century, the small countries of Central America were a backwater, a tropical playground for dictators and adventurers. In the 1970s and 1980s they turned briefly into a violent cockpit of the cold war as Marxist-inspired guerrillas battled US-backed tyrants. Places like El Salvador and Nicaragua generated daily headlines around the world and bitter partisan battles in Washington. When the cold war ended, peace and democracy prevailed and Central America slipped back into oblivion. But its underlying problems—which include poverty, torpid economies, weak states, youth gangs, corruption and natural disasters—never went away.
Now violence is escalating once more in Central America, for a new reason. Two decades ago the United States Coast Guard shut down the Caribbean cocaine route, so the trade shifted to Mexico. Mexico has started to fight back; and its continuing offensive against the drugs mafias has pushed them down into Central America.
Whatever the weaknesses of the Mexican state, it is a Leviathan compared with the likes of Guatemala or Honduras. Large areas of Guatemala—including some of its prisons—are out of the government’s control; and, despite the efforts of its president, the government is infiltrated by the mafia. The countries of Central America’s northern triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) are now among the most violent places on earth, deadlier even than most conventional war zones (see article). So weak are their judicial systems that in Guatemala, for example, only one murder in 20 is punished.
U.S. Government Moves To Shut Down World’s Biggest Online Poker Companies
Federal prosecutors today unsealed a sweeping indictment against Isai Scheinberg and Raymond Bitar, founders of the world’s biggest online poker companies, and moved to try to shut down their businesses.
The indictment filed by Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, charges Scheinberg, the founder of PokerStars, and Bitar, the founder of Full Tilt Poker, as well as nine other individuals, accusing them of operating illegal gambling businesses. Federal prosecutors also filed a civil lawsuit seeking $3 billion in civil money laundering penalties, alleging the online poker companies disguised money they received from U.S. poker players as payments to online merchants selling jewelry and golf balls.
The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan moved to try to shut down the online poker business in America by seizing five Internet domain names, including pokerstars.com and fulltiltpoker.com, used by the three main companies facilitating online poker games in the U.S. In addition, a federal judge issued a restraining order against 76 bank accounts in 14 countries utilized by those online poker firms.
Billionaire Steve Wynn Makes Big Online Poker Bet With PokerStars
In a dramatic move that will forever change the online poker landscape, billionaire Steve Wynn has announced he is joining up with PokerStars, the world’s biggest online gaming company, to establish a strategic relationship that aims to regulate online poker in the U.S.
“We are convinced that the lack of regulation of Internet gaming within the US must change,” said Wynn, chief executive of Las Vegas casino company Wynn Resorts, in a statement. “We must recognize that this activity is occurring and that law enforcement does not have the tools to stop it.”
And
How Casino Mogul Steve Wynn Went All In On Online Poker and PokerStars
Nearly two years ago billionaire Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn met Isai Scheinberg, the founder of PokerStars, the world’s biggest online gaming firm, for the first time. Scheinberg generally avoids traveling to the U.S., but the meeting took place on Wynn’s boat while it was anchored in the Mediterranean Sea. Over a three-hour lunch, Scheinberg tried to convince Wynn that the two of them should work together to regulate online poker in the U.S. with an eye toward setting up a joint venture.
It was a tough sell. Wynn had for years opposed online gaming. He was not a big user of technology. When Wynn needed information from the Internet he would just ask his secretary to find it. He also thought it would be tough to regulate online poker. “If the Internet people got in trouble it would bring the wrath of the government down on us in the live gaming community out here in Las Vegas,” Wynn recalls thinking prior to the meeting. “I didn’t see the business opportunity, I just saw problems.”
During their lunch Wynn found Scheinberg to be quiet and reserved, carefully precise with his language and paying close attention to detail. Still, Wynn didn’t take the meeting too seriously. He did, however, take up Scheinberg’s offer to learn more in the ensuing months about how PokerStars conducted business. Wynn says what he learned shocked him, especially the company’s ability to identify any abnormal activity on its web site and stop it. “I only had misconceptions, I had no idea on a number of issues,” says Wynn. “They are highly regulated [in Europe] and I found out they had 1,300 employees and the average salary is $110,000 because they are so intellectual in the design of the programs. One of my concerns was about young people playing. It turns out they have more control about young people playing than we do.”
Good article on the Cocaine and Banker scene in Hong Kong:
Out on the streets of Central, barmen and the public relations staff at nightclubs even dole out free cocaine to regulars and models, keen to get the party started at the weekend.
“That’s the way the clubs work,” says one industry insider. “They dish it out for free because they want the attractive people in there, so that the men will go in and spend money. They give the models coke to get things going.”
“I know guys who hit the clubs, pick up these models and then go back to a suite at the Four Seasons and keep partying all weekend, fuelled by the drugs,” he adds.
I always thought I would do well in Hong Kong. Just added to my travel docket.
Good news, Custom Tailors Enjoying a Boom:
Custom-made clothes—which were popular in the ’50s and ’60s—are making a big comeback in Europe.
“People have come to realize that the expensive designer suit they are used to buying is made to fit a thousand other people,” says Rome-based tailor Luigi Gallo, who has been in the trade for more than 30 years. “In addition, they’re paying a huge price for that logo sewed into the jacket.”
Business is thriving as well on London’s Savile Row, where an average of 10,000 hand-made garments are sold every year. The Row has seen a steady increase in business in the past five years despite the economic downturn. In 2010, order books swelled more than 10% from 2009, says Mark Henderson, founder and chairman of Savile Row Bespoke, a group of 14 companies formed to protect and promote the art of hand-crafted tailoring on Savile Row.
Mr. Henderson said he’s convinced the recession has made people question the true value of things. “People have started to look for real quality,” he says.
Steady increase in business in the past five years? Interestingly enough, that is about how long I have been yapping about the value of the Custom Suit.
I think Savile Row owes me a thank you card. Or at least some pro-bono pocket squares.
A good article on 25 Guys to Avoid on Wall Street. Some of the best ones:
8. Avoid the guy who offers his clients ‘a very special opportunity’ to invest in anything. He has a problem with cocaine.
10. Avoid the guy who throws his phone across the trading floor whenever his positions go south. He’s an angry dude, and the more time you spend with him the more reasons he’ll find to dislike you.
11. Avoid anyone who tells you that you should relax and have a couple of drinks—at 9:15 on a Tuesday morning. You’re not cool enough to hang out with this guy.
12. Avoid anyone who won’t relax and have a couple of drinks—at 9:15 on a Thursday night. They’re not cool enough to hang out with you—and ultimately they’ll resent you for it.
16. Avoid the guy who tells you, “Seriously, all I do is work and then go home and lift.” He’s telling you the truth—and he’s as dumb as a stone.
21. Avoid the guy who can drink all night, take a shower, and come into the office as crisp as a $100 bill. He’s got an oxlike constitution—and it will be fatal to your career to try to emulate his example.
It’s no secret that I spent a tour of duty in the financial world. I like #10. However, I didn’t throw my phones across the trading floor. I would just smash them. I led the league in broken phones.
I also like #21. That was me. I would come into the office minimum two to three days a week on no sleep after a night of partying and swooping fly girls. And it did ruin other cats that tried to keep up with me.
Michael Mason: I like Ozwald Boateng, however I have mad respect for all the cats on Savile Row (one of my favorite streets in the world). I made a stop by Ozwald Boateng on Savile Row last September when I was in London. I picked up some dope shirts and they were really hyping me up on thinner ties so I picked up a few. Top notch blokes. I rolled with them a little during London Fashion Week as well.
Question: You have mentioned before the Custom Suits help a G gain “access”, can you elaborate?
Michael Mason: Sure. Here is a perfect example:
I was in Miami Beach a month or so ago doing some biz and some sparring at the legendary, newly re-opened 5th St. Gym. I wrapped up dinner early and had nothing to do. I decided to swing by the Fountainebleau Hotel for a drink. Nothing was really happening there except this private party which had mad people and tons of fly girls. Everyone was Suited Down.
Since I was Custom Suited Down myself, I had no problem slipping into the gig (I saw a few weesh underdressed “regular guys” get denied entry) and gorging myself on pro-bono cocktails and Stone Crabs. Made a decent biz connect and left the gig with two fly girls in cocktail dresses and high-heels a few hours later.
If you can pull all of that off in jeans and a T-shirt, you should be selling “Game lessons” to the masses at 100k per pop.
Question: Do you think girls like men in suits?
Michael Mason: Of course skippy. Here is a little tale:
One of my good friends is the opposite of a Suited Down G. However, he is still straight G, a pro surfer; but he typically just rocks boardshorts if it is up to him.
Recently, he pulled me aside at this nightclub and said, “I have to admit after all this time, you are right. My girlfriend told me the other night, that she loves when I wear a Suit.”
And this is coming from a fly rich Southern California beach girl who conventional thinking would lead one to believe she would hate guys that are Suited Down.
Question: Do you always wear a tie?
Michael Mason: I go through phases. A few years ago, I almost always wore ties. Lately I haven’t worn them at all (unless the gig called for it). I think I am on the verge of going on another heavy “tie run”.
If you are not wearing a tie, make sure you wear a pocket square. Matching or non-matching are both dope.
My tie collection is so ill, I figure why not?
Question: Which venues do you think Custom Suits work best?
Basically everywhere a G finds himself on a typical day or evening.
Question: Can people really tell the difference between an Off-the-rack suit and a Custom Suit?
Michael Mason: If by “people” you mean the majority of fly girls you want to swoop, then no.
However, when I first walked into my current tailors’ shop for the first time, I was wearing a Gucci Suit and he proceeded to rip it apart so badly that I would only probably wear it now if I was going to go hang sheetrock or something.
So yes, the trained eye can easily tell the difference.
Question: Which body types work best while Suited Down?
Well, lets see. If you are in mad good shape, a Custom Suit is crazy dangerous. If you are mad skinny, you can look super fresh in a dope suit. If you are a fat f*ck, then you better wear a suit.
So I would say all body types.
Question: What is a “must-have” accessory to a Custom Suit for an up-and-coming G on the rise?
Michael Mason: A pocket square of course. But maybe more important is a lit cigarette. Watch this if you need to know how its done:
Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong – Old 50’s Live show
The Rest is Up to You…
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
