Reviewing the Himel Heron & Excelsior

Amour de Soi Leads the Way

I’ve never been arrested though I think that an admixture of luck and a certain indefensible privilege.  However, larceny is on my private rap sheet.  I never confessed to my elder brother that I was responsible for the flight of his Schott Perfecto jacket from the hall closet.  He had long fled our parent’s house.  I was very much a teenager.  It was 1973.  Sixteen and I had a date that night.

To amend my luck, I first went “shopping” in my father’s chest of drawers for a decent shirt.  He had had his shirts made for him for years when I was a lad and they spoke of his taste for Old Ways and better things.  His collars were decidedly more 1930s, unrecognizable to the current age but they were so cool in the way that a white buttoned up dress shirt can (almost) always make the difference a difference can make.  I picked one that with an unemphatic herringbone twill and two tiny holes in the small collar for a tie bar.   “And though the holes were rather small, I had to count them all.”  That shirt lasted me well into college years.  I was like a lucky man who made the grade.

But it was the leather jacket, the Schott that I was really after.  I knew it was there.  In the hall closet.  I hadn’t pilfered before, though I could have.  My brother hadn’t been home in months, and we all knew he was never coming back but for the obligatory holiday.   I hadn’t even taken it off the hanger to try it on.  I knew it would fit. 

But at this moment, with special attention to the evening’s impending possibilities where all depended on my elevation in cool, I was going to act:  I had already gotten away with taking his boots.  Those were too small for him and already too small for me but men are known to wear the wrong sized shoes, especially ones too tight.  When it comes to boots and jackets, it’s like we’re being asked to ask for directions or have to admit we were asleep: getting the right fit seems to threaten our amour-propre.

Little did I know then that Rousseau had already offered me a way out, a rationalization that would spare me the beating my brother would follow from jacket larceny.  I meant to alchemize my amour-propre into the more primitive and unambiguous amour de soi.   This is all to say that I hoped vanity and low esteem (alas, the amour-propre) would not factor into my choices but rather the non-rational need for cool, the true, the superior, the always justifiable madness that is amour de soi.  Had I understood this at sixteen I would have felt less guilty stealing my bro’s jacket.  But alas it wasn’t all without vanity or self-comparison to a superior elder sibling that had determined I need this jacket if I’m going to have…umm, a very good date night.  I would argue instead for self-preservation and in justification of my very existence I needed a jacket this cool.

You see, as I digress even some fifty years after the purloined jacket incident, I know now as the Philosopher had well-argued in Emile, that our amour de soi is the well-spring human passion and in fact the origination of  all desires.  Such “self-love” is concomitant to "self-preservation" and thus natural a sentiment occupying every animal, all concerned with their own survival.  In other words, we gotta do what the heart demands before its too late.  I would proffer to my elder brother later the further excuse, post-detection that such self-love is particularly a feature of the young, underdeveloped brute consciousness.   I stole his jacket.  Aren’t we all the animals that Rousseau made so plainly clear?  We can take this up another day.

I did hesitate (not really) out of fear (that was real) rather than moral principle but I was determined, my loins had been girded, I might even cite Proverbs 31:17 to justify both loins and jacket piracy.  Fact is, I never heard about it again.  I think by the time my brother noticed the heist likely a few years later, I too had fled the coop.  I got lucky more than once with that jacket.

So that’s the story of my first leather jacket, the Schott Perfecto that I don’t even know how my brother came into in the first place.  Was it that he got it because one of his good pals rode motorcycles?  He’d sworn to our parents that he was not riding motos and would not though I had first-hand knowledge from the back of Indian that that was not true.  He’d likely won the money to buy his leather by drag racing his Camaro on a deserted quarter mile somewhere on the Jersey Shore.  But now, now it was mine.

Let me finish this part of the story by saying that I can’t say what the jacket had to do with it but I recall a particularly lovely date night and that the corrupting vice of my amour-propre brought an inevitable misery of karma.  The Schott was stolen from me in a bar a few years later.  Am I writing about this 50 years subsequent because confession will lead to heaven?  I refuse to believe that the difference between right and wrong can be reduced to reward and punishment, but I could be mistaken about that. I wasn’t mistaken in thinking that the Perfecto at that time was perfecto and that sooner or later I needed my own leather jacket.  The possession and loss had only confirmed the authenticity of the desire.

Obsessions that are life-long require some Kafka.  He told us to follow our obsessions mercilessly.  I do also wonder if obsession is another way of being lazy: being too on point to know that you could do other things, perhaps better things.  But when it comes to great leather jackets, I would simply maintain that all of them will outlive me to become someone else’s obsession.  Now ain’t that grand?

Never one to lower lower the stakes consciously, my inner Bushido code demands that an obsession such as a fine leather jacket (or boots, or denim, or hats, or [insert anything]), should prepare me for battle, lead me to my quarry, cause me to chase, crusade, pilgrimage and probe until I had found my own personal Neo to engage my true inner Morpheus.  Neo is, after all, the One and Morpheus is looking for that one.  But just one would never, ever do when you could have several if you worked really hard, made plenty of mistakes along the way, and rationalized the mania with further compulsions and delusions. 

Perfection is always delusion but there’s no reason that should restrain unsound enthusiasm or injudicious folly.  Is there really dishonor and shame in passion per se?  I am a sinner if that be true.  Actually, a sinner whether or not that is true.

Himel came into my life some years ago. 

Himel is a person, David Himel.  He is man and the brand.  He is as versed in Foucault and Baudrillard as he is Japanese tanning methods.  I think of the jackets that he makes more as an extension of his being than as mere craft or business.  Inimitable, fetchingly irascible, naturally demiurgic, inveterately fertile in imagination, that describes Himel the person and the bespoke jacket maker. 

Best known for bespoke jackets made by his very small team of crackerjack cutters and sewers, their seasoned mastery never sacrifices watchful attention to every stitch.   Like all things handmade, there may be birthmarks and degrees of variability with respect to materials but nary a sign of misstep or lapse in craft.  Things this good don’t have to be perfect but one would be hard-pressed to find fault when what is at stake is signature, as much objet utile as what the Japanese call “gachi,” artistry, good taste, elegance, even grace.  Himel Bros the company, the brand, David never fails to offer distinguish as his irreplaceable cohort.  He loves his crew because what you see in a Himel jacket is a lifetime of creativity, resourcefulness, and unabridged obsession----you know, in a good way.

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Today I’ll compare two Himels that differ not much in fit but in nuance of design and actualization.  Both are short to the waist jackets, and they are by Himel’s own description something like siblings, kindred in ethos but decidedly different, at least to my eye.  Our consideration turns to the Heron A-1 and to the slightly more obscure Excelsior, a design more concealed on Himel listings.

The Heron A-1 may be Himel’s signature design: it combines a sleepless commitment to provenance and as much innovation.  This is a Cossack jacket that peers through time three ways at once: to the past for its inspired forebearers largely from the ‘20s and ‘30s, to the present as its bespoke design suits its current keeper, and to a future yet written.  This jacket of mine will someday have a future without me and likely several more generations of owners.  But not yet.  I will not give mine up until my proverbial cold dead body no longer fits its perfect mold or unless it takes me all the way to Valhalla.

I opted for a black teacore horsehide front quarter from the nonpareil Shinki Hikaku tannery and a maple-colored Canada-inspired wool lining.  Himels are made in Toronto, but you knew that.

What makes the Heron so distinctive and particularly here for the comparison is the sweep of its shawl collar and front patch pockets that form its parallel symmetry.  I availed the option to make the turn-out facing of the collar also in matching black horse hide which draws the eye to the whole rather to the offset of the collar lining.  With facing option the interior lining does not appear at the upper most bend of the shawl.

The Heron’s overall impression avoids any bit of cosplay that comes with a design not frequently seen in our current era except on other vintage-style jackets, such as the wonderful Mister Freedom Stallion.  Himel’s Cossack has an originality that makes its deep dive into provenance both quiet and unostentatious.  I will only compare Himel to Himel, the rest speak for themselves as they do.

This is not to say that the jacket ever fails to elicit comments and compliments when worn.  Perfect strangers have barricaded my way in order to query, endorse, and otherwise offer ovation for the jacket’s affable statement.  There’s nothing dainty, anachronistic, or timeworn about this thing: for an historically inspired design it breathes of currency and unaffected appeal.  That, I think, is the Heron’s sorcery, that it stands for something rather than against or in search of confirmation.

This design wins without trying.  Comparisons to other Cossacks are not unseemly but, honestly, I don’t think comparison would be fair:  hitting a double-AA fastball into the seats is not to face this kind of Major League pitching.

So what must you accommodate to revel in the Heron’s joys?

First, you gotta know that the front patch pockets are pretty much only for emergencies.  They’re not really for phones, gloves, cigs, much less for hands looking for warmth.  I leave them buttoned closed.  The buttons, like all Reese-machine button-holed entry ways, will ease with use and must be addressed with specific instructions (more about this later), but the Heron looks best and wears best with pockets empty, button closed, undisturbed.  It would be unjust to call them less practical than, say, the pockets on the Excelsior, but that’d be true.  Meh.  I am more unimpressed by those who must turn every wonderful thing into utility.

The Heron’s inside pocket will suffice for necessaries and you can put your phone in your jeans and your bad habit in the pocket of your Himel Camp Shirt, ‘cause that’s got just such a pocket, so you’re no worse for wear.  The world will be forced to revere the jacket’s refinement and you will have to find another place to put your stuff than in Heron pockets.

If the drape of the shawl collar creates an opportunity for infiltrating cold take note of the leather button tab.  You can pull the top of the shawl across the neck to create a barrier and I’ve found the enclosure designed to leave room to breathe and to provide an additional control over the elements.  The shawl sizes modestly, it’s not some big horseshoe that butt dials calls to the farrier.  That said, you really must learn how to button up this jacket.  The jacket buttons from the front,  I recommend starting in the middle and working both directions.  Allow me to explain.

I’ve already mentioned the Reese-machine button holes, which I won’t detail further here---Himel talks about them in plenty of videos, and lots of other heritage makers will gladly wax poetic over this peculiar machine’s genius.  The antique buttons are not going to break, the stitching is perfect with plenty of room to tug as needed (yeah, I just said that) but there is a required legerdemain.

To button properly you must pull the jacket’s implicit placket (it has none in fact) so that the buttons meet the middle of the buttonhole.  Then take the button so that its top is flat and pull the button gently forward, and then into the buttonhole where you push the top of the button through the hole using your thumb to leverage the bottom.  If this sounds complicated, then it’s my fault.  What you don’t want to do is just push the button from the side through a button hole that is itself horizontal.  Instead go with the flow of the horizontal buttonhole: push the button through horizontally.  I hope that’s clear (enough).

The jacket will fit perfectly across the top of the shoulders, which might be the most important measurement for any jacket, though fit is a gestalt, it requires all the bits to be in just the right place.  he armholes are designed to suit your arms in diameter which means that the armholes are high enough but not too high nor too narrow (as can sometimes be the case on off-the-rack well-designed jackets when fellas have big guns.)

The sleeves come to a buttoned barrel cuff and you’ll have to do the same horizontal button mambo that gets the rest of the jacket buttoned.  No problem.  This jacket is more flight jacket than rider in its provenance, so don’t expect longish sleeves meant for reaching handlebars, like you might on a Café Racer.  Again, bespoke solves this problem since Himel makes the sleeves as long as they need to be for you.  If I lift my arms over my head it might appear that the sleeves seem short but this is not really the case.

There is some trim in the sides and the bottom yoke comes to a kind rounded v-shape, not too exaggerated, as if Gary Cooper is wearing a proper six-gun holster.  The entire sensibility of the Heron is softer, rounder bends and turns.  If you’re looking for that hard edge that rider styles have, this is not really that---head for a Kensington or another café style. 

On the bottom corners the jacket has substantial metal adjuster loops that let you modify the waist almost two full inches, and there is plenty of gusset on these waist-adjusters to shelter winter weight gain.  As it is with any bespoke garment, it’s best to know how much room you think you need.  A jacket like this can be altered later within some reason but my personal strategy is to stay within the jacket, which will also make me have fewer beers I don’t need.

I’ve mentioned the light wool lining and I particularly like the brown maple colour that makes me spell the word Canadian style.  Himel offers plenty of linings and you can ask for others not listed, my Heron was meant to cause no alarms and as much as I love, say, the tiger camo lining,  I opted for veiled elegance.  Of course, the lining largely disappears with the jacket on and obviously when closed.

The overall statement of the jacket is not red Ferrari, more like urbane and almost vintage Land Rover.  There is something utterly unobjectionable to the way the Heron looks on you that is quite different that how it may appear off person.  When you look just at the pictures, it can seem of a different era but put it on and its as well-mannered as, say, a classic Barbour where that timeless thing becomes not only apparent but  real.  While a waxed jacket will at some point need refurbishing, this quality of horsehide and craftspersonship will not only endure but get better (and better and better) with use.

A few weeks back I found myself in a downpour wearing the Heron.  When I hung it up, I just made sure it had plenty of room to breathe and, of course, away from any heat.  The result is a jacket even more shaped to my shape, not in the slightest worse for wear.  It fits slim but I can get a hoody to fit tight and my favourite Gansy sweater feels downright seductive beneath it, even with the jacket buttoned all the way up.  The jacket is at its best when its closest to the skin because it is, in effect, a second skin.

The Heron never feels wrong.  Its short cut is less formal than a car coat, of course, but for that fit Himel will make you a Chinook, a longer design that will cause your accent to go full Ontario.

Now to the Excelsior.

On my timeline, the Excelsior actually came before the Heron, and it too is in Shinki horse front quarter leather.  The Excelsior swaps out the Heron’s front patch pockets for side slits, which Himel makes with these nifty external reinforcements that guarantee that repeated hand dives will not cause the pockets to rip.  The Heron’s shawl collar gives way to a kind of mini-shawl, round at the ends but shorter and revealing more jacket, less turnout.  The Excelsior collar reminds me of those old Arrow shirts with round collars.  Know what I mean?   It too has button placket-style cuffs, the same side adjusters, and a button only front.

You can get either Heron or Excelsior with a genuinely beautiful zipper, which changes the look some, not in a bad way, but to my tastes adding the zipper is too much technology.  Buttons rule but aren’t the rule, you can decide.

My Excelsior has one quite peculiar feature, as it is unlined.  This means it has no inside pockets and that it feels like you are the leather when you wear it with a short sleeve tee.  That said, it’s no matter to slip into the sleeves and the overall effect takes the Heron’s second-skin-feel with its lovely soft lining and turns it up to a skin in the game Spinal Tap Goes to Eleven.

I have worn the unlined Excelsior for a seven-hour stroll across Manhattan island on an unseasonably warm day, the kind that makes you sweat (Who me? Sweat?) and it was a bit hot in there, even a touch clammy.  But when we slowed down and the sunset brought a decided chill and breeze, it was alive,  as if it could breathe and move as an extension of your own person.  Sometimes when there’s a chill in our house (we are deep in the country mice, living in a log cabin and enjoying winters most choose not to endure), I put on the Excelsior just to feel it on the skin.  I know that might sound a little creepy, so apologies.  But this unlined leather is a very cool feeling.  It also fully reveals the inner craft: there is nothing unconcealed about the joints, gussets, and stitching.

Putting the Excelsior next to the Heron, you could see they are unmistakable kith and kin.  Tribe Himel is distinctive too even when compared to the finest alternative makers.  These jackets are nothing like replicas nor brilliant tributes like a Real McCoy’s J-100 or J-24.  These play an original score in a style that reminds you of Mozart leaving room inside the piano concerto for, you know, a few bits of you, or like Coltrane riffing on My Favorite Things.  You’ll never feel done, it won’t get old, you’ll feel like you're standing in front of Thomas Couture’s Romans during the Decadence and only want more.

The key to all of this declension into the imperative where you just gotta have one requires a few important choices on your part as the client.

First, good things don’t come cheap.  So, save, decide you want one, be patient to put away the extra coins it’s going to take.  Don’t settle, don’t tell yourself some story about how there are “better deals.”  Stop thinking in terms of price and instead speak to your soul---make room to gather resources, collect your acorns for winter.  There are off the rack that cost as much or more, some very, very nice alternatives that cost less, but if you want a Himel, there’s only one.  The sooner you stop talking more about money than worth, the sooner you’ll get the point.

Next, brood and think and know thyself.  Don’t buy a jacket that you won’t really wear because it’s too cool for the real you.  Man, I’ve done that, more than once, not just with jackets, sometimes with whole life decisions.

But if a Heron or Excelsior is to your taste you will likely first gravitate towards them and simultaneously work into a groove.  These are easy designs to like, it can just take a minute.  Not everyone likes a Rum Martinez replete with toasted wood chips, digital smoke infusers, 23-year-old rum with a combination of maraschino liqueur and vermouth a boost.  Love at first sight gives way to a long standing relationship.   Do remember,

And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

So having spent hours looking at these jackets too late into the night, toothpicks propping open eyelids like A Clockwork Orange, call Himel and start the process.  You will need measurements and have to follow directions and be careful, attentive, and do the work to get the fit.   It can be helpful if you have a garment, particularly a jacket, that fits you well.  But do you?  No two of us are the same, this is bespoke, and since you’re not likely doing it in person, communication and following instructions is vital.

Good news: Himel Bros will spend the time you need to get it right.  The reason this communication is the third stage in the process is that it’s good not to call just to screw around with “thinking it over” too much.  Go all in when you go in.

Now, once you get the fit numbers, leather choices, and the rest of the details done, there’s another sort of “rule” of bespoke.  Most bespoke makers don’t want to say this.  Most will tell you that you can have anything you want, and some will say that the customer is always right and that it’s their job to meet customer needs.  I don’t believe that and none of these are reasons to “go bespoke.”

Bespoke is as much involvement in the process, thus “collaboration” as it is demurral and relinquishment.  You don’t go to Henry Poole to get an Armani suit.  Telling Himel or your bespoke maker---think shoes, suits, bicycles, you name it---what you like, your tastes and ideas, all of this is vital information.  But it’s their job to know more than you do about everything involved and, well, that’s also what you are paying for.  You’re paying for experience that cuts so deep that if you started to learn the craft right now and spent the rest of your life learning you wouldn’t be half as good as they are no matter how long you live.  So at the crucial moment, back off, let them do the work.

We live in an age in which everyone thinks themselves the expert.  You know that uncle who says he does his own research?  On the internet?  Yeah, that guy.  We also seemingly think that because there’s money involved we get to dictate or demand.  Let’s add the ways we disclaim expertise as if having someone like The Rock become President would be good for foreign policy or fate of the planet.

What you’re asking for with bespoke is give the job to someone who really knows what they are doing.  For all of your input, there’s a time when you have to trust that he knows what he’s doing and your job is not to be passive or indifferent---that takes all the fun out of it and passion will prohibit that response anyway.  Rather, your job is receptivity: let the process unfold, be excited and patient.  If things go sideways, they’ll get fixed.  Don’t lose the plot.  This is supposed to be pleasant and fun and good manners are never out of style dammit.

I think of the Himel jackets as lifetime purchases.  Sure, you might sell someday, sometimes tastes evolve or circumstances require.  But its best to go in thinking that this isn’t even like a really nice car that lasts you a decade.  This is more like that watch your partner gave you for your wedding.  Well, maybe not that sentimental but take my point.  Okay.  It’s not marriage or the dog.   The consequences remain less consequential but the possibilities of joy, of genuine satisfaction abound if you think long term.

If you’re into it, if a cool leather jacket stills your beating heart, then when you get it this right you’ll be fine.  Swear not by the moon, as the Bard reminds us, lest thy love proves otherwise variable, but what I think what have here between Heron and Excelsior is a marriage of true minds that admits no impediments.

When you’re ready, get yourself something that you can love as much as I love these jackets.  Don’t wait too long because good stuff goes away.  And don’t leave it alone in a bar whilst you wander to the dance floor ‘cause it might walk off with someone else without your consent. 

There are few things I’ve owned in life as satisfying as these few things.