J. Crew’s Wallace & Barnes might be one of the most slept-on lines in menswear. Not everything in the collection is great, but if you’re looking for affordable basics, you could do worse than by sifting through the sale section every few months. The clothes have more of a boutique feel than J. Crew’s mainline, are made from better materials, and are inspired by vintage pieces that Frank Muytjens, the company’s head menswear designer, and his team routinely collect for their design archives.
I recently picked up a couple of their heavyweight flannels (on sale today for $48 with the checkout code SALEFUN). The term heavyweight here might be an oversell, but they’re wonderfully thick and sturdy, yet also soft enough to wear without an undershirt. Like many of Wallace & Barnes’ workshirts, these are triple needle constructed and have a chambray lined yoke to help with durability. For under $50, these feel like the kind of good, honest basics that have mostly disappeared from menswear.
As a basic flannel, these shirts go with almost anything – from raw denim jeans to dressier wool trousers. Their rugged sensibility makes them natural companions to the sort of parkas and work coats you’d find from Nigel Cabourn and Engineered Garments, and they look great with either camp mocs or boots. I’ve been wearing mine with a shawl collar cardigan I bought a couple of years ago from The Armoury, as well as a Ralph Lauren field jacket I picked up last season. The shirts here aren’t exactly re-inventing the wheel, but they’re comfortable, slim fitting, and versatile.
J. Crew has some other things on sale at the moment: Gitman Vintage shirts, Abraham Moon scarves, indigo-dyed sweatshirts, and more Wallace & Barnes workshirts in rugged materials such as moleskin and chambray. And while I’m normally skeptical of shoes that sell for less than $200, these Pacer work boots have gotten good reviews on Reddit.
Since J. Crew is always running a promotion, you’ll want to apply one of their many coupon codes. The one today, SALEFUN, knocks 40% off listed sale prices. It expires at midnight, but another is likely to pop up in the next two weeks (although sizes may be gone by then). I also found that not everything is categorized in its correct place, so you may want to browse the entire sale section. A few Wallace & Barnes things are floating around in there.
(pictured above: Wallace & Barnes blue flannel with The Armoury shawl collar cardigan, Left Field Japanese miner chinos, and Alden unlined chukkas; then Wallace & Barnes multi-colored flannel with Ralph Lauren field jacket, Our Legacy First Cut raw denim jeans, and Kapital over-dyed naval supply boots)
