Shooting His Cuffs With the Royals

The Duke of York and Huell Howser and I were doing drinks and canapes on the Royal Yacht Britannia and chatting about where we buy our shirts.

Having set that impressive scene, let’s readjust the picture a little. The duke was there because he was hosting the reception and it’s his boat. Howser and I were guests in the receiving line.

It was Howser, from KCET’s “Videolog,” who had brought up the subject of shirts. He thought it might serve as his royal ice-breaker when finally meeting the duke. Howser, you see, had covered an earlier royal visit and maybe Prince Andrew would remember being filmed as he bought some Turnbull & Asser shirts during a British promotion at Neiman-Marcus?

Of course, Prince Andrew said.

That suggested a companion approach. For I had carefully chosen a Turnbull & Asser shirt (cream, Sea Island cotton, with triple-button cuff) for this elegant evening and was flattered to notice that the duke was wearing one of his Turnbull & Asser shirts (blue striped voile, French cuffs) and how about that, your Highness, for an overseas coincidence between blokes?

Of course, Prince Andrew said.

However, that such an obscure topic had any conversational legs at all was a tribute not to male vanity but to those Turnbull & Asser shirts, indisputably, by any stretch of the superlative, the best in the world.

And that’s why--this weekend through April 13--you’ll find a half-dozen Turnbull & Asser shirts, all stripes and whites, from heliotrope through orchidaceous purple, hanging behind glass as a sartorial centerpiece of a vest-pocket exhibit at the California Museum of Science and Industry.

Their display is yet another facet of the continuing UK/LA festival that brought the Duke and Duchess of York to Los Angeles in the first place. Beneath its banner of “Anglophilia: British Design,” the exhibit offers 21 products that have survived wars, generations and fads to become classics indigenous to the English tribal system.

Such as the spoke-wheeled MG-TC of the ‘40s. Or Wedgwood pottery that has been in production since 1775. Or handcrafted Wick’s saddles, or the enduring map of the equally faultless London Underground--first drawn from verticals, horizontals and diagonals and quite unchanged since 1932 . . . and Turnbull & Asser shirts.

Reginald Turnbull was the shirt maker. Ernest Asser was the salesman. Their partnership began 103 years ago and their shop on London’s Jermyn Street remains the gentle man’s highest indulgence.

Imagine any public figure who ever looked quietly splendid. Laurence Olivier. Prince Charles. David Niven. Walter Matthau, David Frost. Al Pacino. Robert Redford. Tom Selleck. Maybe it was their shirts. All are, or were, Turnbull & Asser regulars.

Off the aristocratic peg, a Turnbull & Asser shirt costs $110. Bespoke is twice as much. But for that, you get hand-sewn buttonholes and hand-anchored buttons. Plus an unmistakable panache and a perfect set for collar and cuffs that has been known to tweak gorgeous ladies into asking: “Isn’t that shirt a. . . ?”

Turnbull & Asser’s silent trademark is the three-button cuff on cottons from the Windward Islands, France and Switzerland. Its noisiest hallmark is the shirt with white collars and bodies in single or multicolored and shouting stripes.

To enter the Jermyn Street store (a short stroll after lunch at nearby Fortnum & Mason) is to be cosseted and served by Sir John Gielgud’s unctuous doppelganger. To buy a Turnbull & Asser shirt anywhere else (although they are sold through Neiman-Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman in the United States) is rather like buying a Rolls-Royce from Cal Worthington.

Meanwhile, back on Britannia, it was my turn to be greeted by the delightful Duchess of York. We chatted briefly about helicopters, Los Angeles and American newspapers.

Odd. I was sure she was going to ask me: “Isn’t that shirt. . .?”

“Anglophilia” at Edgerton Hall, California Museum of Science and Industry, Exposition Park, until April 13. Admission free and open daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (213) 744-7400.