There was a time when I thought buying pants was simple enough. So long as I could comfortably close the waist and the pants didn’t fall down, they fit. Then I learned about Floppy Butt, also known as the “silent killer of silhouettes.” Hidden behind people, unseen without special mirrors, Floppy Butt all too often goes undetected. Truth be told, I still suffer from Floppy Butt — my butt, indeed, is very floppy. But the condition no longer shows up in my pants, which is the important thing. 

Floppy Butt is a technical term, not a colloquial one, for when you have horseshoe-shaped folds underneath your seat (a polite person’s way of saying butt, which is rude). The condition is often accompanied by ripples down the back of the legs and fullness around the seat (again, butt, or in the Queen’s English, arse). It can be difficult to spot this at home with a regular mirror. When you crane your back to see how you look from behind, you’ve already distorted your silhouette. Better if you can find a three-way mirror, say when you’re walking through a department store. Or, if you have friends and family members, ask them to inspect your posterior (i.e., seat, butt, and arse).

It brings me no joy to say this, but you probably suffer from Floppy Butt without even knowing it. Much like how a suit jacket hangs from the shoulders, trousers hang from the waistband — and the rise determines where the waistband rests. Swing this delicate balance scale in one direction or the other, and suddenly, things can get distorted. You may have Floppy Butt because your trousers are too large for your pancaked-shaped seat (no judgement, as my seat is inverted like crescent-shaped Florentine lapels). Or, like most men, you stand with your hips forward and knees locked (a posture my friend David describes as Auditioning Male Pornstar).

In academia, and particularly social science, research methods have become more rigorous, but the field has produced fewer big thinkers. Take David Ricardo, for instance, the British political economist who transformed the world at age 37 after reading Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Having already made a fortune as a stockbroker and loan broker, Richardo published his first political economy paper on the “bullion controversy” in 1809. He posited that the Bank of England’s propensity to issue excess banknotes was causing inflation, an early theory in what is today known as monetarism. A few years later, in his “Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock,” he articulated the law of diminishing marginal returns.

His most significant contribution, however, came when he studied Britain’s protectionist Corn Laws. Using the simple, yet profound example of how Britain could trade cloth for Portuguese wine, he formulated the idea of comparative advantage — the basis for much of free trade thinking today. Like other great political economy theorists before him, such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx, Ricardo had the uncanny ability to arrive at complex conclusions without the mathematical tools deemed essential in today’s academic research. In his book Price Theory, David Friedman wrote of the man: “The modern economist reading Ricardo’s Principles feels rather as a member of one of the Mount Everest expeditions would feel if, arriving at the top of the mountain, he encountered a hiker clad in T-shirt and tennis shoes.”

Ricardo’s examples, however, were not arbitrary. Portugal at the time was renowned for its sweet port wine, and Britain excelled at producing woolens, linens, cottons, silks, and all things textile related. In the Scottish Border towns, tweeds and cashmere were woven and knitted from local and native wools. Further south, Manchester’s steam-driven textile mills produced almost a third of the world’s cotton, thus giving the city its nickname, Cottonpolis. Spitalfields, similarly, was known for its exquisite and lustrous silk. French Protestant refugees (Huguenots) in the 17th century established the silk trade in this East London district after fleeing from religious persecution. The tradition was later taken up by Irish immigrants who arrived with little more than their weaving skills. It was a simple example involving Britain’s textile industries that helped to set up the following 200+ years of economic theory.

When I lived in Moscow, Russia many years ago, I relied on my gray flannel trousers, tweed sport coat, and waxed cotton jacket to get me through fall. Superficially, the primary function of an autumn wardrobe is to protect you from cold, wind, and rain. But in a faraway, foreign land, cocooning myself in layers also brought some psychological comfort. The renowned Russian playwright Anton Chekhov – whose haunting and lyrical prose helped define the modern form of short storytelling – wrote about this feeling over 120 years ago in his story, “The Man in the Case.”

[T]wo months ago a man called Byelikov, a colleague of mine, died in our town. You have heard of him, no doubt. He was remarkable for always wearing galoshes and a warm wadded coat, and carrying an umbrella even in the very finest weather. And his umbrella was in a case, and his watch was in a case made of grey chamois leather, and when he took out his penknife to sharpen his pencil, his penknife, too, was in a little case; and his face seemed to be in a case too, because he always hid it in his turned-up collar. He wore dark spectacles and flannel vests, stuffed up his ears with cotton-wool, and when he got into a cab always told the driver to put up the hood. In short, the man displayed a constant and insurmountable impulse to wrap himself in a covering, to make himself, so to speak, a case which would isolate him and protect him from external influences.

There’s something oddly comforting about fall/ winter clothes, not just in terms of how they keep you warm, but also emotionally protected. Encased in woolens, with a Scottish cashmere scarf around your neck and your coat’s collar turned-up, you feel like you can take on the world. At the same time, there’s something genial about autumnal clothing — materials such as soft cashmere, nubby oxford, and suede leather invite a smile and conversation. The other day, a stranger complimented me on my outfit. It felt warm. 

Anderson .Paak’s fire engine red sunglasses beamed like a lighthouse when he covered Lil Nas X’ “Old Town Road” on BBC Radio 1 earlier this week. Paak’s cover brought a country-inspired rap song into neo-soul, making this a triple fusion in terms of music genres. And while the room was only dimly lit, he may as well have had ten spotlights on him. In the nearly pitch-black room, it was hard not to notice his safety yellow tracksuit and ‘90s-era sunglasses (oh, and his music was amazing as well).

.Paak’s ensemble beautifully demonstrates the power — and more importantly, joy — of dressing for self-expression, rather than out of fear of getting things wrong. While getting some sunglasses filled with prescription lenses yesterday, I noticed my local optometry center was filled with the same eyewear options: rectangular, mostly minimalist, and above all, inoffensive. There’s nothing wrong with subtle eyewear, of course, but does the world need more versions of the same frame?

Forget dressing for your body type. Dress for your personality or, better yet, dress for fun. A pair of distinctive frames can underscore the stylistic references in an outfit — the mid-century modernism of a slim-lapeled suit or the sleazy 1970s style of slim jeans with a leather jacket. Notably, many of the best-dressed men wear frames as a style signature. Think of David Hockney in his thick, coke-bottle glasses, or the different styles Michael Caine cycled through as an icon of English cool. Even Bruce Boyer — a measure of good taste, if there ever was one — doesn’t just wear his P3s in black or brown. He wears them in spotted blonde tortoiseshell. Here are five eyewear brands with some personality if you’re open to trying something new.

A few months ago, when the Criterion Collection debuted their online streaming service, a user on Blamo’s Slack channel noted the film company also sells branded totes. There are three designs, two made from cotton canvas and the other a ripstop nylon. They feature clean graphics, promise to hold almost anything you need, and are downright cheap at just $20 or so. They also inspire you to daydream. “I could use this for grocery shopping,” I thought to myself. “Or carry my books and laptop to the coffee shop.”

Affordability, identity, and imagination are a potent mix for impulse shopping. I made it to the Shopify checkout page before stopping myself. As a sanity check, I reached back to the nether regions of my closet, where I extracted a beige, cotton canvas tote smushed somewhere between my raincoats and umbrellas. I found four smaller totes scrunched up inside — totes within a tote — like nesting matryoshka dolls.

Totes are taking up an expanding part of our lives. If you live in a major US city, there’s a good chance you have them hidden somewhere – in the back of your closet, under your sink, or in your car’s trunk. As counties and states are imposing fees or outright bans on plastic bags, many people are carrying lightweight totes as a way to save money. But totes have also become the new graphic t-shirt. Culturally, they’re everything: a useful item for daily carry, an inexpensive thing to manufacture, a cheap item to purchase, a marketing tool, and a symbol of identity. If you understand what’s happened to totes in the last 20 years, you can understand a lot about American consumer culture.

In 1968, Tommy Nutter was exasperated with his sales job at Donaldson, Williamson, and G. Ward, a bespoke tailoring firm based in London’s Burlington Arcade. Nutter derisively described their house style as “little” and wanted to update it with some flair. The traditional-minded tailors in the workroom, however, dismissed his ideas as technically impossible and, in any case, tasteless. “People did not come here to be measured up for tents,” one journalist documented. So Tommy petitioned for a new job at Henry Poole. When the firm’s managing director, Samuel Cundey, saw Tommy’s fashionably long hair, however, he sent him away, horrified.

Tommy would save his ideas for himself. Shortly after quitting his job, he and Edward Sexton went on to form one of the most important tailoring houses of the 20th century, Nutters of Savile Row. If you believe menswear lore, many of the long-standing firms, such as Huntsman, viewed Nutters at first with suspicion. Bespoke tailoring at the time was a hush-hush and stuffy business. Tailoring shops didn’t even have display windows and firms such as Anderson & Sheppard considered publicity vulgar. The expression “it’s not done” not only sums up the hard-edged attitude of many in the solvent class, but also the tailors who served them.

Nutters not only displayed their goods to the public, they also talked to journalists and attracted younger customers into the then-stodgy precincts of Savile Row. They tailored for Elton John, Mick Jagger, and The Beatles, as well as women such as Twiggy and Diana Ross. Men walked out of the Nutters shop clad in box plaid suits, flared pants, and mini-platform shoes. As they strutted down the street, competing tailors stared, mouths agape. Perhaps they were offended by the garish designs. Or maybe they feared Nutters made them look stodgy by comparison.

A friendly reminder: the order window for this year’s summer tweed re-run closes this Friday, August 30th. Since introducing it in 2016, I’ve been happily surprised to see it pop up in some unexpected places. It’s shown up in GQ, The Sartorialist, and Permanent Style. Bespoke shoemaker Nicholas Templeman wore it in a Last Magazine feature. Dionisio D'Alise, the head cutter at Sartoria Formosa, sometimes wears it at fittings. Anderson & Sheppard trained coatmaker Lee Oxley says he loves the cloth. The best response, however – and I mean this genuinely – has come from readers, who email me to say how much they like their resulting suits and sport coats. 

I originally designed the fabric because I was looking for something like the silk jacketing you see on Taka from Liverano & Liverano above (the photo above is from The Armoury, my fabric is pictured below). There was once a time when raw silk jacketing was a bit more commonly available. The material has the same slubby texture you see in raw silk ties, but it comes in a weight that’s suitable for tailoring. Today, however, it’s all but impossible to find outside of vintage fabric vaults. So I designed my own.

This is a mid-brown, 9/10 oz fabric made from a 60/ 40 blend of linen and silk. Despite having a bit of silk, the cloth is matte and breathable. It has a semi-open weave that’s suitable for the heat. It holds a crease and is hard-wearing. Most importantly, it has a bit of irregular texture and slight flecking, which makes it look like your favorite Donegal tweeds. It can be hard to find a good spring/ summer fabric once you get past your basic tropical wools and linens. Most are a bit too flat-looking, or too crisp to hold a pattern (on a clear-finished worsted, sometimes a pattern can look too vivid). This allows you to add a bit of a pattern to a summer outfit while still making it easy to wear.

In 1966, following his first successful art show, James Rosenquist commissioned a custom suit from fashion designer Horst. It was tailored from large sheets of brown paper, which the artist sourced from the Kleenex company. To be sure, this wasn’t the first paper garment. Women at the time were already wearing pleated paper dresses made from “Campbell’s Soup” prints, which were a perfect embodiment of the pop art movement Rosenquist helped pioneer. But his was the first of its kind in menswear. When he received his paper suit — pressed crisp and flat — he unfolded it, wrapped it around himself, and wore it everywhere. Rosenquist wore his paper suit to galleries and museum openings. He wore it to his art shows, where he met Very Important People, presumably while sounding like a crinkled lunch bag whenever he moved. The suit garnered him media attention, including an interview in New York Magazine.

Thirty years later, Rosenquist had a hundred more suits made through Hugo Boss. These were produced from Tyvek, a nonwoven synthetic material made from spun-bonded olefin fiber. Tyvek is mostly used to cover and protect construction buildings, but its thin, weblike structure also mimics the appearance and texture of paper. These suits were later sold to art collectors, and a small number were hand-signed. Today, they hang in museums and private estates, but if someone wanted to, the suits could also be worn and washed like everyday clothing. 

Rosenquist’s paper suit combines utility with disposability. When he conceived the idea in the 1960s, throwaway consumer culture was starting to emerge. The disposable safety razor first found commercial success around this time, as did things such as disposable lighters and rollerball pens. Rosenquist’s paper tailoring, however, was surreal, not just because it’s visually strange, but because it transferred the idea of disposability to fashion. Who could have guessed that, fifty years later, disposable clothing would become our new norm?