There's a wonderful photo of a grey-haired Ralph Lauren sitting at home, lounging in his leather armchair while looking pensively out the window. He's wearing coral orange trousers, likely made from corduroy, a pair of black velvet Prince Albert slippers, and a green cable-knit layered over a white dress shirt. Lauren, who's a master orchestrator when it comes to image making, knew precisely how to tell a story through the objects that surrounded him. He omitted the stuffed animal heads traditionally used to decorate rich men's hunting lodges at the turn of the last century. However, he included the books, sculptures, paintings, pillows, and throws traditionally associated with hominess and Old World domesticity. The photo says one thing: this man is comfortable.  

As many of us are spending more time at home these days, I thought I'd put together a list of some of my favorite domestic items, which are now part of various Black Friday promotions. Over at Put This On, you can find a full list of every worthwhile Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal for the next few days (I will be updating the list periodically). But this one focuses on just those things that I think make life at home more comfortable. For me, that means wearing chunky shawl collar cardigans with five-pocket cords, leather slippers, and flannel shirts. It also means rediscovering old hobbies, listening to forgotten records, and cooking up something delicious to eat. 

If you're looking to do some Black Friday shopping this weekend, here are ten things that can make life at home more comfortable. Hopefully, you can find something here that works for you. 

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Mr. Porter's massive selection puts them in everyone's orbit. Whether you favor classic tailored clothing, Japanese workwear, or oversized, minimalist contemporary garb, Mr. Porter likely carries more than a handful of brands for you. 

Today, Mr. Porter started their Black Friday promotion, where you can take up to 30% off select items. Inis Meain's sweaters are expensive, even with the discount, but absolutely exquisite and a joy to wear. Engineered Garments and Chimala are personal favorites for workwear; SNS Herning is great textured knitwear you can layer under heavy coats (be sure to size up). 

Things tend to move fast at Mr. Porter. Given the size and scope of their inventory, your best bet is to filter things by category, then brands, and then sizing. If you're on the fence about an item, I recommend just taking a chance and returning if things don't work out (Mr. Porter offers free and easy returns). If you want some quick highlights, here are ten things that I think are notable. 

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It's that time of year again. Black Friday is technically supposed to start on Friday, but many retailers have gotten a jump on their promotions. This Friday, I'll be rounding up some of my favorite sales both here and at Put This On. But for some early Black Friday shopping, here are seven stellar deals. 

No Man Walks Alone: Up to 35% Off, No Code Needed

No Man Walks Alone is a sponsor on this site, but also genuinely one of my favorite online stores. Founder Greg Lellouche worked for a time as a banker on Wall Street, so he knows his way around a classic coat-and-tie rig. At the same time, he has an exceptional eye for casualwear. Take the suede Valstar jacket below, for example, which comes in both black and tan. It has a Western styled yoke, snap button pockets, and a generously shaped collar that looks great when popped from the back. You can wear it with denim, chinos, or even wool trousers. The subtle Western details give it a bit more flavor than your average suede bomber, and it looks especially good with sneakers or boots. I recommend taking your regular jacket size. 

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In 1994, advertising executive Donald Rifkin came up with a new installment for Coca-Cola's "Obey Your Thirst" campaign, designed to promote the company's sparkling lemon-lime beverage Sprite. In the commercial, a young white teen with an unfortunate center-part haircut wrestles with one of life's eternal questions: "what is cool?" As he stands at a city intersection, our narrator considers the various identities he can adopt to boost his social standing — hip hop head, defiant skater, or entitled prep ("now that is not cool," he quickly surmises of the third). By the end of the 30-second advert, he still has not chosen an identity, but Coca Cola assures us that he can at least give his mind a rest by selecting the one reliably cool drink, Sprite.

When this commercial aired, countless corporations were already clamoring to co-opt street culture as a way to gain street credibility and reach new markets. In the decade prior, companies such as Philips, Atari, McDonald's, Hershey's, and Mountain Dew aired hip hop themed advertisements, which featured breakdancers popping and locking to sell everything from egg sandwiches to chiropractic services. Following the success of Jane Fonda's at-home workout videos, many companies also tried selling breakdancing videos to teach people how they can top rock, windmill, flare, float, and freeze. By the mid-90s, breakdancing was so thoroughly co-opted by the Suits, it was considered uncool in the streets, and a new dance movement emerged called freestyling.

It was also around this time when streetwear became legitimized as a fashion market. To be sure, street and youth culture have long existed. Since the end of the Second World War, young people in Britain and the United States have expressed themselves as beats, beatniks, bobby soxers, modernists, mods, hippies, bohemians, surfers, skaters, punks, and rockers. During mid-1940s Britain, ex-Guards officers, many of them gay, ordered fanciful Edwardian suits from their Savile Row tailors as a reaction to demob dreariness. These suits were defined by their long, flared skirt, turnback cuffs, and tight, drainpipe trousers. At the time, this New Edwardian style was fashionable in posh gay circles, having been championed by society photographer Cecil Beaton and the dandy couturier Bunny Roger. Savile Row tailors were all too happy to promote the look, as doing so helped fill their ledgers with orders.

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In the last ten years, the internet has exploded with innumerable sources for high-end shoes. What used to be a small market of Goodyear welted footwear has become an electronic bazaar with virtual stalls from around the world. In the past, if you wanted a pair of good shoes, you had your pick of two American brands, a handful of Northampton makers, and some Continental labels that were hard to source. Today, dozens of specialized dealers offer MTO options, adjusted lasts, and handwelted shoes made in the Austro-Hungarian tradition.

When shopping for shoes in this environment, it can be easy to get sucked into the endless number of options, especially when you’re scrolling through Instagram accounts and dedicated shoe blogs for inspiration. The photos that catch our eye tend to be of shoes that are sleek, interesting, and creatively designed. So people pause on photos of shapely oxfords in gleaming museum calf leathers, two-toned button boots, and chukkas in jewel tones such as sapphire blue and ruby red. And since footwear blogs tend to be so singularly focused on shoes — the leather types, construction techniques, and historical origins of some style — it’s also easy to find yourself thinking about shoes as standalone objects, disconnected from a wardrobe and be to be collected like Pokémon. I found myself doing this when I first got into fountain pens. The more I learned about filling systems and specialized nibs, the more I wanted certain pens, even though my time would have been better spent practicing my handwriting with the pens I already own.

Such internet-driven shoe shopping doesn’t always lead to good results in a wardrobe. In classic men’s dress, the cynosure of an outfit is typically the triangular area formed by a jacket, shirt, and tie. When done well, this area should lead a viewer’s eye upwards toward the space that deserves the most attention, your face. This is why it can be hard to wear patterned trousers or shoes in unusual colors: they draw the eye downwards. But when shopping online, we tend to be drawn to shoes that catch our eye, which is the opposite of what you want in an outfit. This doesn’t mean you have to get the most boring shoes possible (“They are not cheap; they are also an investment,” Hardy Amies wrote in The Englishman’s Suit. “So design is of the plainest”). Dreadfully boring shoes can sometimes signal a kind of conservatism that suggests you’re too self-conscious and afraid to have a point of view. Instead, get something that complements the rest of your wardrobe and builds towards a style you want to project. Here are three friendly suggestions on how to shop for better shoes.

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A few months after the world shut down this past spring, Cathy Horyn of The Cut interviewed Raf Simons about what he thought of fashion's possible future. Simons, who's known in fashion circles for introducing a generation of men to the skinny black suit, was sitting in his apartment in Antwerp at the time while wearing elasticated easy pants and a hoodie. He ruminated on what fashion might look like after this pandemic. "'I think there must be a bunch of people out there, when they start thinking about fashion, who don't want to be reminded of the shitty time they had at home in the last five months. But —' He hesitated. 'It's just so personal. I have no clue. [...] honestly, I haven't worn a piece of fashion in months.'"

That's mostly the feeling I get when I think about fashion nowadays. But recently, I've been enjoying Mark Cho's new YouTube series, titled "Dress to Ingest." In a series of relaxing videos that run between five and ten minutes, Mark sits down with various Hong Kong restaurateurs to talk about their signature dishes. The videos are meant to give people some context on where they can wear tailored clothing, here being at restaurants. "They say you don't appreciate it until it's gone," Mark tells me. "Tailoring is often misunderstood only as a 'formal' option, but there's a difference between 'formal' and 'dressed up.' 'Formal' is serious and somber. 'Dressed up' is simply being invested in your appearance for your benefit and others around you. There has always been something precious about breaking bread with friends and family. Given how seldom we see each other now, why not give these rare occasions the celebration they deserve?" 

I don't wear tailored clothing as much as I used to, given that I mostly spend my days at home. But I've tried to make an effort to wear nicer clothes when I can -- a sport coat for short walks around the neighborhood, better flannel shirts even when I'm at home, a nicer pair of pants that I used to reserve for going to the city. "Outside" clothes help break up what's become a very monotonous life at home. Plus, on the few occasions when I can safely meet with friends, I've taken the opportunities to "dress up" more than I used to. The future of fashion is still uncertain, and yet, clothes continue to be one of our small comforts. In that spirit, here are eleven things I'm excited to wear this season. 

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Fashion is often criticized for its creative destruction. Trends are constantly coming and going; new brands are always emerging. What some see as a pointless field, I see as a subject where there's always something new, something interesting, and something different to talk about. For the past few years, I've been doing annual roundups about new brands I'm watching. To be sure, not all of them are actually new -- some have been around for a while. But they're new to me and, hopefully, you. This year, I have so many brands on my list that I decided to break this post into two parts. The first part was published last week. This is part two. 

GIULIVA HERITAGE

If you've seen the 1948 Italian neorealist drama Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, sometimes mistranslated as The Bicycle Thief), you'll know that post-war Italy was not always the carefree European paradise we imagine today. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the country's economy was in tatters. Allied forces had bombed the country for years until the German Army surrendered in May of 1945, leaving Italy's manufacturing and transportation infrastructures in the rubble. Yet, it was only about a decade later when the Italian economy rebounded — so much so that economists call the period from 1958 until 1963 the "Italian Economic Miracle" (or what Italians call "Miracolo"). This period transformed Italy from a poor, mostly rural economy into a global industrial power. It also propelled Italian fashion onto the world stage.

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In an interview with The Telegraph, Patrick Grant of Norton & Sons once described fashion as being an “ever-moving feast.” I find that the quick-paced nature of fashion -- where things are constantly being created and destroyed -- makes the field endlessly interesting. There’s always something new, something different, something to talk about. For the past few years, I've been doing annual roundups on new brands I find to be interesting. To be sure, not all of them are new -- many have been around for years -- but they're new to me. This year, there are so many brands on the list, I'm splitting the post into two parts. Here's part one, with part two coming later this week. 

NORLHA

With a camera in her hand and a translator by her side, Dechen Yeshi arrived at the Amdo region of the Tibetan plateau in 2004. She came partly to explore her family's history on her father's side, a Tibetan academic who once served as a Minister to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She also came at the behest of her mother, Kim Yeshi, a French-American anthropologist who co-founded the Norbulingka Institute, a Tibetan cultural center based near Dharmsala, India. Kim has always been fascinated by textiles, and long believed that yak wool could be a source of income for Tibetan families. So she sent her daughter Deschen to investigate.

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In the last few months, the fashion press has been abuzz about whether the coronavirus pandemic will sound the death knell for the suit. Over on Savile Row, bespoke tailoring houses are getting crushed by soaring rents and the lack of overseas orders. In the United States, three of the largest companies to declare bankruptcy this year — J. Crew, Brooks Brothers, and most recently Men’s Wearhouse — are known for their affordable tailoring. In her recently published New York Times Magazine article, Irina Aleksander wonders if Americans may have settled into sweatpants forever.

As most people only wear tailoring to the office, suit sales will likely be in a slump for a while. But for people who dress for pleasure, I imagine the suit and its accoutrements will remain relevant for some time. The fact is, it feels good to dress up. “Outside” clothes help divide the day into distinct periods, which is especially nice now that work-from-home culture threatens to make every activity feel the same. A few weeks ago, I got coffee with my friend Peter Zottolo outside of a cafe, where he told me that he and his wife still try to find occasions to dress up now and again. One day we’ll return to bars, restaurants, and perhaps even offices. And when we do, “nice” clothes will return.

The good news is that the tailored clothing market has never been better. Ten years ago, if you wanted a semi-affordable suit, your options were mostly limited to J. Crew, Brooks Brothers, and various haberdashers who worked with Southwick. You could shop second-hand, of course, but what you saved in money, you spent on time. Today, there are many more options at affordable prices, particularly for people who favor classic Italian style. If you’re looking to get a suit any time in the future, here are three places that I think are worth being on your shortlist.

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Three years ago, I was in an elevator in a San Francisco hotel with Agyesh Madan, co-founder of Stoffa, after he finished a trunk show. We were on our way to get lunch at a cafe across the street. Madan, who's always immaculately dressed, was wearing a grey suede double rider with a pair of cream-colored trousers, a dark blue Camoshita pullover, and some beat-up Belgian loafers. As we exited the hotel lobby, Madan told me about his design process. "We spent years developing this jacket," he said of the double rider he was wearing. "For everything we create, we go through cycles of prototyping and testing, as I want to be confident of the things we offer to our customers."

The things Stoffa offered at their trunk show that day in 2017 — including the luxurious faded chevron scarves, lightweight Tuscan leather bags, peached cotton trousers, and core line of made-to-measure leather outerwear — are still with them today. In an industry that reinvents itself every season, with designers wiping the slate clean and starting anew, Stoffa is a remarkable example of slow fashion. Not only does the company take its time to incubate ideas and develop new products, but items stay in their collection for years and years. In this way, consumers don't feel pressured to continually replace things they already own.

Over the years, I've admired Stoffa's approach to slow fashion, which starts with its product development process and extends through to their repair service. A couple of weeks ago, I talked with Madan and his business partners over the phone about their latest capsule collection. We also discussed whether sustainability is possible in an industry that relies on selling people new clothes every season.

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