THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * Saturday/Sunday, June 13 - 14, 2020 | D1

SINGULAR GINS OF JAPANSpirits with unique flavor profiles that

reflect their Asian origins D12

NARNIA REVISITEDA classic tale takes on newmeaning in

the summer of 2020 D6

SMALL-TOWN SOPHISTICATIONShe inherited her Illinois grandmother’schairs—and found they’re design icons D4

THE HOUSEDRESS CALLSHow the curiousWFH dress code has

revived an anachronism D3

Inside

L AST MONTH, Elliott Penobtained a custom glen-plaid blazer from Yeossal,a tailor in Singapore. ButMr. Pen, a 35-year-old

business manager at a media companyin Toronto, has never even been toSingapore. The entire transaction—from choosing his fabric to selectinghis pocket shape—took place online.To nail the fit from across the globe,Mr. Pen tapped his “very patient” wifeto measure and photograph “everypossible angle” of his frame to mes-sage to Yeossal. The process tookeight weeks and cost Mr. Pen just over$1,000—a good deal for custom tailor-ing. Mr. Pen worried until the lastminute. “I opened the box with trepi-dation,” he said. But the results of hisonline experiment thoroughly pleasedhim and he busts it out for his moreprofessional Zoom calls.

We’re entering a new era when itcomes to shopping for custom clothes.Traditionally, buying a made-for-yousuit was very hands-on: A man visitshis tailor, has a drink, chats about hisdaughter’s Little League career, poresover swatches and submits to endlessmeasurements and fittings. But evenbefore Covid-19 forbade such intimacy,that way of shopping felt outmoded.“That whole expectation that I had toliterally go somewhere and shop was alittle daunting,” said Alex Villaseñor, 35,the creative director for a Chicago filmcompany, who usually buys his clothesonline. He craved a custom suit for hiswedding so he virtually commissioned ahandsome black one from Chicago tai-lor Nicholas Joseph.

While the idea is nothing new, thepandemic has hastened the embrace ofremote everything, including tailoring.No matter how much you might loveyour suit guy, the thought of spendinghours together elbow-to-elbow scruti-nizing weights of wool might seem off-putting. Prudent men are warming toremote methods, not only for theirsafety, but for their efficiency, the po-tential for deals and the scope for cre-ativity.

Mind you, custom digital tailoring isnot yet a futuristic, Jetson-ian, instantprocess. Innovation has mainly focusedon bringing a dusty process online,from videoconferences with tailors tonifty e-commerce ordering that lets youcustomize existing patterns. Once, tra-

PleaseturntopageD2

BY JACOB GALLAGHER

JOHNW.T

OMAC

Procuring custom suitsonline was gaining steambefore the pandemic,but now it’s even more

popular

DoE-TailorsMeasure

Up?

O N A TUESDAY in mid-May, af-ter New Orleans relaxed itspandemic rules enough to letdentists resume practice, Iwent in for my checkup. When

the masked-and-gowned technician brushedagainst my arm I realized she was the firsthuman being to touch me in eight weeks. Forsome reason, this gave me a terrible urge toget out of town.

I needed a road trip. Couldn’t talk anyoneinto riding shotgun, but who cares? Alone onthe road is no lonelier than alone at home,and the scenery is better. Coming from a citythat was an early hot spot, I’d been totallyisolating myself, so I was pretty sure I wasn’ta spreader. The mayor lifted her stay-at-home order just in time to keep me from go-ing pure crazy.

I flew to San Francisco on an airplane fullof people with masks trying not to breathe.

PleaseturntopageD7

As soon as his stay-at-home order lifted, a restlessNewOrleaniandrove across the Southwest in search of luxurious solitude

BY MARK CHILDRESS

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YOUK

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The GrandStaircase NationalMonument insouthern Utah.

On the Road Again, Warily

OFF DUTYFASHION | FOOD | DESIGN | TRAVEL | GEAR

Sea ChangeA quick tuna

salad where thefish is in thevinaigrette

D12

Go for theGreen

One-up yourneighbors’ lawnswith these toolsand tips D9

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D4 | Saturday/Sunday, June 13 - 14, 2020 * * * * THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

“I like your Hans Wegner Wish-bone chairs.”

“What?”“Hans Wegner, he’s a famous de-

signer.”A little googling revealed that

indeed my grandmother’s Wish-bones, so-called because of their el-egantly curved Y-back, are iconic inthe design community. Wegner(1914-2007) is often called the “Mas-ter of the Chair,” having created 500before his death. In 1944, he began aseries inspired by portraits of Dan-ish merchants sitting in MingChairs. The CH24, or “WishboneChair,” is the best known of these,and has been in continuous produc-

tion since 1950.“The appeal I think comes from

not only the design, which is obvi-ously beautiful, but because they’reso functional and well-built,” saidRoman Alonso, co-owner and cre-ative director of Commune, a designfirm based in Los Angeles.

Though visually simple, thechairs involve complex constructionreflecting the extensive knowledgethat Wegner, trained as a cabinetmaker, had of wood. The separateparts are mass-produced, but eachchair is woven and finished by hand.

Since the pandemic closed his of-fice, Mr. Alonso has been workingfrom his own vintage Wishbone. It’s

the rare minimalist chair that’s alsocomfortable. “There’s just some-thing about this chair!”

Perhaps that’s why I love them.But as my family used the chairsdaily, they continued to fall apart.The woven cord seats suffered themost, becoming frayed or severed.I’d tie the loose ends around the legsin a vain attempt to minimize thedamaged appearance.

Under our neighbor John’s direc-tion, Jeff spent the summer of 2013refinishing the chairs. After cuttingaway the seats, he sanded the oakframes, then carefully rubbed themwith layers of Danish oil. That’swhen he fell in love with the chairs.

Then came the re-caning.The first batch was completed in

a year and nine months. The secondtook at least two years. I couldn’tunderstand why. “There’s only oneguy in New England who does it,”Jeff had explained. “He’s very busy!”

Jeremy Shaw is indeed very busy.As owner of the Caning Shoppe, oneof only a handful of stores dedicatedto caning in the U.S., he’s bookednine months out and “that’s beinggenerous,” he tells me. Caning isalso hard work. “You can’t cane allday every day without going mad orcausing your fingers to go to thebone.” One of his caners, he ex-plained, couldn’t apply for a greencard because he had no more finger-prints. He had to take six months offcaning to grow them back.

I was about to have Jeff check onthe chairs again when Mr. Shawcalled with an update. Because ofthe Covid-19 lockdown he finally hadenough time to finish the job. OurHans Wegner table and chairs havebeen reunited. If only I could havepeople over to celebrate. RO

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ration for this month’s bou-quet. Its ethereal depiction ofNormandy’s chalky cliffs gaveme a breezy reprieve from themuggy weather in New York,transporting me to a place I’dsooner summer. The play oflight and shadow fills the can-vas with emotion and I imme-diately saw how to capture thepainting’s billowing cloudsand frowzy trees in flowers.

To ground the arrange-ment, I chose an earthy, deepbrown vessel and poked inQueen Anne’s lace and densecreamy white ranunculus tostand in for cliffs, clouds andsurf. Young blooms of snow-ball viburnum, hawthorn andfritillaria evoke the pastureand other vegetation, with thehawthorn’s woody stems re-calling the dark trunks of thetrees. Larkspur reference the

sky and sea, and rusty orangebutterfly ranunculus are mytake on the resting cows. I cutthe stems to different lengthsto mimic his gestural brushstrokes. The eye travels overInness’s scene, never pausinglong as he guides you deepinto his world.

THE INSPIRATION

Frothy Queen Anne’s lace andglobes of snowball viburnumcapture the color and textureof ‘Etretat’ (1875), a canvas

by American landscapepainter George Inness.

tion. Its hand-molded drumshape and irregular rib-bing—unrefined and un-usual—remind her of hand-made pottery. “Furniture ismoving away from beingrectilinear,” she noted. “Thebest pieces are now morefluid and organic.” Thesemi-matte rust colorreads as a neutral, “justlike a terra-cotta plantpot.” And, since it’s weath-erproofed, the piece canvariously, valiantly performas a trusty bedside tableor a perch for shampoo ina shower. “I love piecesthat are flexible,” Ms.Bridges said—extra impor-tant today, when “suddenlyyour dining room has be-come your classroom oryour home office.”

MANY CONSIDER George In-ness (1825-1894) the father ofAmerican landscape painting.Born in Newburgh, N.Y., Innessworked in his teens as a mapengraver in New York, wherehe went on to study paintingin earnest. On display at oneof the nation’s oldest art mu-seums, the Wadsworth Athe-neum in Hartford, Conn., is In-ness’s 1875 “Etretat,” thepainting I chose as the inspi-M

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PastoralAgreement

Floral designerLindsey Taylor nodsto a painting of the

French seaside

THE ARRANGEMENT

FLOWER SCHOOL

DESIGN & DECORATING

MyMendedWishbonesCovid-19 brings home a beloved set of heirloomHansWegner chairs

LOVE STORY

LEG UP Examplesof the covetedchairs in designerKevin Carriganand architect TimFurzer’s Bellport,N.Y., home

Fluted Side Table, also in white, $149, westelm.com

E VERY FEW weeks Iwould ask my husband,“Have you checked onthe chairs?”

And every time Jeffwould answer, with a sigh, “I’ll leaveanother message.”

My preoccupation was the sixHans Wegner “Wishbone” chairs I’dinherited from my grandmother thatJeff had sent out for repair, inbatches, beginning in the summer of2013.

The times I’d spent sitting inthose chairs around my grandpar-ents’ table, also by Wegner, I nowrealize, are my strongest summermemories. My grandparents boughtthem from a Danish furniture shopin Chicago in 1972, after moving intoa two-bedroom ranch home in Ke-wanee, a small Illinois town. Everyyear my family would fly in fromboth coasts and crowd around thetable to eat dinner. But it’s the lazymornings I remember best, with mygrandmother sitting on one of the

chairs, working on her crosswordand coffee, and offering late-riserslike me the bialys she’d grill in theoven and slather in margarine.

Munca, as she was affectionatelyknown, had a distinctly un-grand-motherly sensibility. She was a tall,athletic woman, with a big vocabu-lary and a disdain for anything “an-tique.” She rarely looked backward,perhaps because she’d lost two chil-dren, including my mother.

But looking backward is amongmy favorite pastimes. After Muncadied in 2008, all of her midcenturymodern furnishings held enormousappeal. What other family membersdidn’t claim, I put into storage. Andwhen my husband and I bought ourfirst house, two years after herdeath, I decided to make my grand-mother’s table and chairs the centerof my home as well.

Jeff was, at first, skeptical.Grandma’s chairs? After 35 years ofheavy use and two years in storage,they were definitely ratty. But Iloved them, and he loved me. So, weshipped them from Illinois to ournew house, an open-plan octagon inCambridge, Mass. I didn’t think theyheld value beyond sentimental, untilour architect neighbor, John Lodge,came over.

BY ALYSIA ABBOTT

I didn’t think theyheld value beyondsentimental.

Seat Feats

CH29 Sawbuck Chair (1952),$1,065, hivemodern.com

The Ox Chair (1960),$8,924, danishdesignstore.com

The Three-Legged Shell Chair(1963), $3,865, dwr.com

Three of the 500 chairs thatHans Wegner designed

CATALOG CURATION

Seize the ClayAn interior designer’s top pick fromWest Elm’s summer collection

SHEILA BRIDGES wantsto dispel the notion thatthe main way to add tex-ture to a room is throughfabric, be it silken, nubbyor flocked. As the NewYork interior designer (il-lustrated above) pointedout, furniture, too, canlayer in complex, charis-matic surfaces. Take thefluted earthenware sidetable she spotted in WestElm’s summer 2020 collec-

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