The Shirt Locker
Shirts, With a Side of Whiskey

The law says you have to wear shirts.

Taste says you should try to wear nice ones.

And because the process of acquiring them should be as painless as possible, we wanted to let you know about a place with some taxidermy on the walls. One where you'll hear the sweet sounds of bluegrass and, oh yeah, the clink of ice cubes inside a gratis glass of whiskey...

Introducing the Ledbury Shirts Pop-Up Store, coming to Georgetown next Wednesday to put some cocktailing into clothing yourself.

Upon arrival, you'll find you've gone back in time about a century, and moved a few clicks farther from the Mason-Dixon line. Instead of sterile racks of shirts, you'll see saddles, vintage maps of London and late-1800s photos of Richmond, all shipped up from Ledbury's tobacco-warehouse-turned-showroom. (Blame the Surgeon General.) You'll order up a bourbon from the bar in one corner and take in the stylings of the bluegrass banjo player in the other. Presumably, you should expect the Kentucky delegation to walk in shortly thereafter.

Then, and only then, will you begin to peruse the tables of smart summer shirts, the kind that Faulkner might have worn while contemplating the eccentricities of his family. As for your two Southern shirtmakers, they met at Oxford before apprenticing with one of London's top tailors and hatching their plan at a pub on Ledbury Road.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.