Coming up: those fine fall days. There'll be a nip in the air, red-and-gold palettes daubed on the trees, a pleasant hint of wood smoke on the crisp autumn breeze – all of which spells football games, country weekends, and all the other harvest time pleasures that take a man out of town. It's a wonderful time to pile in the Porsche and whisk out to the countryside to poke around those auctions held in the old barns, visit the county fair or look in on the local sports car rally, skeet shoot or horse show. And there is a kind of elegant, casual clothing to go with the atmosphere. This year's crop of sartorial suggestions is unusually stimulating, and the big news is in sweaters – heavyweight, lightweight, bright in color or richly dark – often replacing jackets for casual ease. Cardigans are going great guns: finespun alpaca with big sleeves that allow you plenty of swing-space for active sports, or heavier ones, striped and piped with color, or sleeveless ones for wear under your jacket. Cashmeres still rate high, but luxury lurks too in the shetlands, lambs' wool and orlon knits as well.
In jackets, there are the bold district-checks cut in a slanted-pocket, nipped-waistline model patterned after the classic hacking coat favored by horsemen. In slacks, the long-standing ubiquity of gray flannel is giving way to lovat tones and other greens. Country shirts, too, come out with rich autumn colorings and patterns applied to the standard button-down: gold, assorted greens, fireman's red, lively stripes, plaids and checks. You can spot these features yourself in the photos at the right, snapped at Ward Acres Farm, a showplace but also a working farm where fine horses are bred and trained for the show ring. It's precisely the sort of setting for the high, wide, handsomely turned – out life you'll be leading this fall – just 45 minutes from Broadway.
Left: swinging on the pasture gate at Ward Acres Farm, the fall fashion news is anything but on the fence – sweaters are swell for all at-ease occasions. Things are looking up for the guy looking up: Catalina's alpacalow-buttoned cardigan, $29.95, worn with a checked button-down shirt by Gant, $8.95, and Dunlee whipcord slacks, $14.95. The lad brow-to-brow with the brunette sports a bulky-knit pull-over with double-thick V neck by Activair, $19.50, and a foulard-print tie by Liberty of London, $4. Helping to impress the blonde are a soft cashmere job by Alan Paine of Godalming, $37.50, worn over a Van Heusen brushed-cotton plaid shirt, $5, and Bachrach's knit – silk tie, $3.50.
Top left: horsing around with one of Ward Acres' thoroughbred hackney ponies, the three pacesetters have donned, from the left, a sports jacket of oatmeal-tone striped Scottish shetland by Linnett, $49.50, over a lambs' wool sweater with crew neck, $14.95, and slacks of buggy-whip worsted by Corbin, $28; (center) lzod's sweater-shirt of tie-print wool jersey, $18.95, and a Pioneer side-link belt, $3.50; (right) Puritan's cable-knit, crew-neck pull-over, $20, worn with Corbin flannel slacks, $23.
Top right: eminently jacketed for a fast ramble across the Farm's graveled stableyard (the cocktail call just sounded), the fellow on the left wears Norford's district-check sport coat with hacking (slanting) pockets, $55, Norford slacks, $20, a Cox-Moore sweater vest, $16, and a Tucker necktie of striped India silk, $5. The other guy making time prefers E.S. Dean's olive-brown imported shetland jacket, $60, an antique gold oxford shirt by Marlboro, $5, and a Bachrach rep tie, $2.50; his bluchers are by Clarks of England, imported by Tom Austin,N.Y.,$14.95.
