Mr. Porter is having a one-day sale today, where you can get 20% off select items with the checkout code JUNE21. The promotion only applies to items marked as “seasonal,” which you can find neatly organized under this “sun shop” section. Don’t bother trying to apply the code to other full-priced products or already-marked down sale items – I tried and it doesn’t work.

The good news is that there’s actually a bit of good stuff in the “sun shop” section. There are some handsome camp-collar shirts from Officine Generale, Gitman Vintage, AMI, and Kapital. I have an older version of that Kapital shirt and wear it all the time with ranch jackets, chore coats, and even on its own with just jeans. Additionally, there are some summer-ready shorts from Orlebar Brown and Officine Generale; mid-length swim trunks from Orlebar Brown; and my favorite chambray, which is made by Chimala. This Rubinacci “Victory” pocket square has a cream-colored background that makes it useful in just about any tailored outfit, but also a bit of pattern that keeps it looking like the solid-colored, cream squares worn by prom DJs (no offense to prom DJs). 

I also bought a vintage Lee’s 101-J trucker jacket from Wooden Sleepers yesterday (it’s pictured below). The style was introduced in the 1930s and is known as the first slim-fit denim jacket. But more than provenance, I like the design for its slanted chest pockets, zig-zag stitching, and slightly cropped fit (they’re shorter than Levi’s truckers). You can find them on Etsy for as little as $50, but if you’re looking to splurge, this Kapital trucker looks excellent. Note, Mr. Porter’s website recommends sizing up twice. 

END, a contemporary menswear shop based in the UK, always has one of the best end-of-season sales. Since they’re located in Europe, their prices are typically 20% lower than what you’d pay for the same items in the US, thanks to VAT deductions. Which means their end-of-season promotions are even better than what they seem at face value. At the moment, they’re holding their spring/ summer sale, where you can find select items discounted by as much as 60%. Once you account for VAT discounts, however, the sale is actually closer to 68% off. 

END’s online inventory is one of the few that rivals Mr. Porter’s (who, by the way, just dropped prices for the third time and are having a 70% off sale). Which means, your best bet is to browse through the sale selection by filtering for clothing categories and sizes. This way, you can stumble upon things you may not otherwise see. If you’re looking for highlights, here are some things I think are particularly worthwhile. 

Barbour: If you’re one of the few menswear guys left who doesn’t own a Barbour, END is one of the best places to score a deal. Again, since their prices are already lower than what you’d typically find stateside, their end-of-season promotions make these especially attractive. These days, I mostly wear the waxed cotton Bedale in olive, although the longer Beaufort is better for layering over sport coats. The Liddesdale is also a favorite of many people. It’s an uber affordable, quilted jacket that looks great with jeans and Shetland sweaters. At END, you can find the Liddesdale at a very low $95, while the waxed cotton models start at $209. For sizing advice, check out the Barbour buyer’s guide I wrote for Put This On. 

In the course of his American speaking tour in 1882, Oscar Wilde claimed that some silver miners tried to play a prank on him when he visited the rough, rust belt town of Leadville, Colorado. According to him, about a dozen miners led him to the bottom of a mine shaft with the intention of getting him drunk and leaving him there for a scare. But in a twist, the Dublin wit and writer regaled them with stories about the Italian goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini and Renaissance metal working. The miners asked Wilde why he didn’t bring Cellini with him, to which he explained that Cellini has been dead for quite some time. Living in a town where every man carries a revolver and no one dies of natural causes, the miners enquired: “Who shot him?” Afterward, they took Wilde to a dancing saloon, where a piano player sat in the corner with a sign over him that read: “DON’T SHOOT THE PIANIST; HE’S DOING THE BEST HE CAN.” It was, observed Wilde, “the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across.”

Wilde is one of the few Europeans to ever leave the United States with something positive to say about American style – well, sort of. ‘‘In all my journeys through the country, the only well-­dressed men that I saw were the Western miners,” he lectured to an audience. In an issue of Harper’s Bazaar published the same year, an illustrator showed Wilde’s admiration for the miners’ uniform. “Their wide-brimmed hats, which shaded their faces from the sun and protected them from the rain, and the cloak, which is by far the most beautiful piece of drapery ever invented, may be dwelt on with admiration,” Wilde said. “They wore only what was comfortable and therefore beautiful.”

Compare this to when Albert Camus sailed into a New York Harbor in March 1946 to promote the English release of his novel The Stranger. During his three-month stay in Manhattan, Camus didn’t quite know what to make of the city’s “swarming lights” and "frantic streets,” but he was staggered by how the material abundance contrasted with the depravations of post-war France. He was less impressed, however, by American neckties. “You have to see it to believe it. So much bad taste hardly seems imaginable,” he later told a journalist. Seventy years later, Noam Chomsky recounted this anecdote to Glenn Greenwald after the two were introduced to each other at the University of Arizona. Confused, Greenwald asked Chomsky if he was trying to say something about his decorative, purple satin tie. Chomsky said plainly: “Yes.”

Like a flying horde of locusts sweeping across a wheat field, Mr. Porter’s end-of-season sales are always a feeding frenzy. After all, where else can you find discounted dress shoes sitting alongside rare Japanese labels and American workwear?  Tonight, they started their summer sales event, where you can find select items discounted as much as 50% off. Before you dive in, however, there are some caveats.

First, discounts are still being rolled out, and not everything is up yet. You can expect to see the entire sale selection up by tomorrow morning, but it’s worth checking back often since the stock here moves quickly. Second, the best way to tackle their sale is by filtering for sizes – pants in size 32 or shoes in size 9. That way, you raise your chance of coming across a serendipitous find. Third, if you’re on the fence about something, I suggest buying it. You can always return things for free if they don’t work out. 

You can browse the sale on Mr. Porter’s dedicated sales page, at least for what’s currently already up, but here are some things I think are notable:

On a Sunday afternoon in May of 1955, a ragtag group of forty people crammed themselves into The Black Swan, a cozy pub in the market town of Leominster, England. They were responding to a letter published in The Bicycle magazine the previous October. Penned by W.H. Paul — a thin, bespectacled man better known to his friends as Bill — the letter asked if the cyclists of the day were only interested in replicating the road-racing feats of Tour de France competitors. Paul, an enthusiast of the great outdoors, wondered if anyone else liked using bikes to explore less trodden paths.

“I have always been a searcher of the remote, wild, and more desolate country, which is to be seen ‘off the beaten track,’” he wrote. “I wonder if the modern lightweight, with its ‘Continental this’ and ‘super that,’ prompts the rider to keep on the billard-table surfaces of modern tarmacs. Nevertheless, I believe there is still a small select circle who love the rough and high ways amongst the mountains of Wales, the Lakes, and Scotland. […] Who then, would care to become a member of The Rough-Stuff Fellowship?”

The response was immediate and positive. A year after the inaugural meeting, the club grew from 40 hardened riders to 160 scattered across the country — and today is 800 members strong, making it the oldest off-road bicycling club in the world. Riders meet on a weekly, if not daily basis to explore every corner of the British countryside and beyond. They shoulder their bikes as they climb up mountains and wade through streams, then hop on them again to ride across rocky dirty paths and through grass-covered fields. “They prefer a far less beaten track – one where no ascent is too steep, no mud too thick, no destination too distant,” Niall Flynn wrote of the group. 

When Volodymyr Zelensky emerged from the voting booth in Kiev last month, he was wearing a dark worsted navy suit and a crisp white t-shirt. It was the biggest night of his life. Over the previous six months, the actor and comedian had been campaigning for the presidential seat in Ukraine. An early frontrunner in opinion polls, Zelensky was expected to win the election handily with over 70% of the votes — and he did. Not long after the polls closed, and with little more than 10% of the votes counted, early results showed Zelensky was coming in for a landslide victory. Incumbent President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Twitter: “We succeeded to ensure free, fair, democratic and competitive elections. I will accept the will of Ukrainian people.”

It was a big night for t-shirts (and a bigger night for Zelensky). About a hundred years after its invention, the t-shirt has gone from being underwear — replacing the union suit, which is the all-in-one undergarment you’ve likely seen in black-and-white cartoons — to an everyday piece of clothing that even presidential candidates can wear on election night. Like chinos, pea coats, and cardigan sweaters, the t-shirt has its roots in the military. Around the turn of the 20th century, the US Navy replaced square-necked, shoulder-buttoning shirts with cropped sleeved undershirts. American seamen wore them while swabbing decks and manning armaments. The shirts were made white (still the garment’s most popular color) for several reasons: white t-shirts are cheap to produce, as they don’t have to be dyed, and they marry well navy uniforms. Besides, since white t-shirts show dirt easily, it was believed they’d instill a sense of discipline and help maintain personal hygiene.

Stuffed shirt traditionalists love to mark the t-shirt as the end of Western civilization — the replacement for collared shirts and, ultimately, the suit. It’s true that t-shirts were initially undergarments that were never meant to be seen, but within my lifetime, they’ve always held the same cool appeal as blue jeans. In the run-up to the United States’ entry into the Second World War, a Sears, Roebuck, and Co. advertisement proclaimed: “You needn’t be in the army to have your own personal t-shirt,” suggesting the quotidian garment had an inherent sense of heroism and machismo. A sweat-soaked, sexually magnetic Marlon Brando wore a white tee when he shouted “Stella!” in the 1951 film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire. Virile heartthrob James Dean also sported one in Rebel Without a Cause. People who complain that t-shirts aren’t “proper” miss the point. The t-shirt’s military roots, machismo nature, and ability to rouse elites are exactly the reasons why it feels rebellious (although, a strong case can be made that it’s now just part of a middle-class uniform, losing all of its tough political edge).