Die, Workwear!

The Best Prints of the Season

Posted on April 18, 2019

Men’s style has been primarily confined to simple lines and sober colors since the days of Regency England, but the summer shirt remains one of the last places where you can still wear a bit of pattern and color. In the 1960s, shortly after Hawaii attained US statehood, mainland Americans wore Aloha shirts for the freedom they represented: a warm island life far away from cold factory work and steel offices, where you could be serenaded by ocean waves and fall asleep on the beach. Somewhere along the way, the dream got corrupted. Colorful, printed shirts, particularly those in oversized, short-sleeved form, have become the style signature of guys with outsized personalities: golfing uncles, Guy Fieri, and Smashmouth fans.

In the last few years, the summer print has started to come back in earnest. Luxury brands such as Prada and Saint Laurent have used them in their darker-themed runway collections. A little sleazier and more LA-inspired, these feel more like Scarface than “Margaritaville.” There are also upbeat designs that take inspiration from Hawaiian history, surf culture, mid-century design, leisure activities, and resort wear. For some, these outlandish shirts are little more than wearable postcards. For me, they’re a sign of positivity. I’m dreaming of wearing a printed shirt this summer with shorts and huaraches, like Donald Glover above, while listening to The Delegation’s “Oh Honey,” Kansas City Express’ “This is the Place,” and Japanese jazz trombonist Hiroshi Suzuki’s “Romance” (the last song, off the artist’s 1975 album Cat, is so gooood).

I mostly like printed shirts this time of year because they offer an interesting alternative to the pique cotton polo. A bolder shirt pushes an outfit away from business casual territory; it adds visual interest. And while I still like crisp white linens and light-blue oxford-cloth button-downs, it helps to have some bolder prints for the weekend. From retro to contemporary, here are the best prints I’ve seen this season:

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No Man Walks Alone’s Spring Sale

Posted on April 14, 2019

Every season, I find myself wanting at least a few things from No Man Walks Alone (a sponsor on this site, although I pay for all my purchases at full price like everyone else). The store has an impressive selection covering a range of styles, from Japanese workwear to Neapolitan tailoring to contemporary minimalism. But a lot of the stuff comes together in a way that works for guys who appreciate classics without wanting to look like they’re in repro, as well as contemporary clothes without seeming overly trendy. Greg, the shop’s founder, used to work as a senior investment banker at UBS, where he had to wear a coat-and-tie. I appreciate that he has a better eye for tailoring than more casual shops, but also a more stylish take on casualwear than most traditional clothiers.

For the next three days, they’re holding an early spring sale, where you can take 20% off any full-priced item with the checkout code SPRING20. They also have some deeply discounted stragglers left in their winter sale section, although the code doesn’t stack. Here are five things that I think are particularly notable right now:

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How to Wear Tailoring for Spring

Posted on April 13, 2019

A few months ago, L Brands, formerly known as The Limited, shuttered all 23 of their Henri Bendel stores, including their Fifth Avenue flagship in New York City. Founded in 1895, the luxury womenswear retailer was the first in many categories — the first retailer to hold a fashion show, the first retailer to hold semi-annual sales, and the first retailer to carry Coco Chanel’s line in the United States. On their website, they also took credit for discovering Andy Warhol, who they hired early on as an in-house illustrator.

Henri Bendel’s profits, however, have been dipping for years as the upscale retailer struggled to find footing against online behemoths such as Net-a-Porter and FarFetch. Last September, when they finally announced that they would close all their locations by the end of January, The New York Times contacted Mark Cho of The Armoury to see how his brick-and-mortars have been able to thrive in this economy. Mark said it came down to people — having personal relationships with customers and hiring sales associates who know The Armoury’s products. “For some luxury brands, the customer comes in and knows exactly what he wants, and the salesperson is just a vending machine,” Mark said. “The Armoury has no aspiration to be a big brand.”

Some of their success can also be chalked up to how they make classic men’s style feel relevant, especially to a new generation of men who didn’t grow up wearing a coat-and-tie. Their clothes are traditional and sophisticated, but they don’t reach for the same tired tropes about luxury clothing and class pedigree. They’ve also done an impressive job of pulling together small makers, such as Ring Jacket, Carmina, and Liverano & Liverano, before these names became common reference points for menswear enthusiasts. I can’t tell you how many bespoke tailors have told me about clients who ask for curvy, Florentine quarters – no doubt because of The Armoury’s influence.

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Unionmade Starts Early Spring Sale

Posted on April 8, 2019

If Marie Kondo left you with a clean closet, but nothing to wear, Unionmade is holding an impressively good sale from now until the end of Tuesday. Take 30% off any order with the checkout code GETHAPPY. The code applies to both new arrivals and the sale section, although only new arrivals are returnable for a full refund (the website’s return policy suggests otherwise, but I called Unionmade’s store in San Francisco to clarify).

Unionmade is a great shop for workwear, heritage brands, and hard-to-find Japanese imports. They carry everything from Levi’s to Deveaux, but the clothes come together in a way that can be roughly described as a semi-classic, casual West Coast aesthetic. There are slim-straight jeans for guys who normally wear sport coats, as well as a huge selection of casualwear drawing from militaria, workwear, and neo-retro outdoor gear. Here are five things I think are particularly worth a look:

LVC 1947 501s: Levi’s 501s has gone through a number of iterations over the years. The 1947 edition was the first one produced after the end of WWII, and as a result, it featured details that were previously lost due to wartime rationing measures. The watch pockets were made with rivets, and the back pockets regained their arcuate lines (those double needle, “batwing” stitches). It was also made with a classic slim-straight cut – slimmer than the company’s current version of the 501, but with a bit more room in the leg and slightly higher rise than many slim-fit jeans today. If you’re looking for a slim-straight jean that can be worn with workwear and sport coats, you could hardly do better.

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Making Bespoke Casual Shoes

Posted on April 4, 2019

John Lobb’s shoemaking workshop on St. James of London looks like an old university office. Harsh florescent bulbs hang overhead, casting light upon leather armchairs, glass showcases, and dusty objects left untouched. The shop feels fusty and cluttered. Thick, ancient ledgers stretch across the shelves that run high and around the back offices. Racks are covered deep with wooden lasts, which are arranged in no apparent order. In a BBC documentary, Brian Dobbs, who wrote a book on the firm’s history fifty years ago, climbs a stepladder to retrieve one of Lobb’s archives. “Well the shelves weren’t arranged for historians, that’s for sure,” he says wryly. “This is less archaeology and more mountaineering.” As he tries to take the book down, a bundle of wood tumbles off the shelf below, clanking onto the floor.

John Lobb’s building is much larger that one might imagine for a shoemaking firm that produces 500 pairs of bespoke shoes per year. Before the 1950s, this space housed a Rolls Royce dealership. Towards the back, a lift carried fancy cars up and down between the floors for visitors in the showroom. The Lobb family moved in after their old premises were destroyed during the Second World War. Today, lastmakers on the ground floor carve made-to-measure lasts from roughly turned blocks, and three flights down lead to additional workrooms. The shop is big and somewhat quiet, animating Thomas Caryle’s observation that “a man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he does it in a devout manner.”

If you walk down those stairs today, you’ll be flanked by stacks of shoeboxes, each containing a pair of handmade shoes. Some of those are customers’ orders ready to be collected; others are apprentice projects; and others still are forgotten shoes left unclaimed. For whatever reason, whether sudden death or unforeseen poverty or simple forgetfulness, many people fail to claim their shoes after ordering. On the upside, if you can make it to John Lobb’s workshop in London, that means you can purchase bespoke shoes – made to someone else’s measurements – at half price. Nicholas Templeman, who worked as a lastmaker at John Lobb for seven years before starting his own bespoke shoemaking firm, used to fetch those shoes for people hoping to test their fortunes. “To be honest, it rarely works out,” he says. “It’s not like pulling a pair of ready-to-wear shoes off a shelf and trying a size 8. These are all made for someone, so all their idiosyncrasies are built into their last. Every now and again, however, someone gets lucky.”

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The Color of Roussillon, France

Posted on March 27, 2019

In August of 1942, not long after Germany took over Paris, Samuel Beckett and his companion (later wife) Suzanne Deschevaux fled their apartment in the French capital. The pair had been working in a Resistance cell known as Gloria, where they translated Axis documents and relayed information about troop movements for Allied powers. The info was coded into microfilm, hidden in candy boxes and slipped into toothpaste tubes, and then passed along through a chain of Gloria members, with each person reporting to the next in line, until the message reached Allied headquarters in London.

That year, however, Gloria was betrayed by Robert Alesch, a Catholic priest and double agent who sold out hundreds of Resistance agents for his own financial gain. As a result, the Gestapo went around the Paris rounding up Gloria members and other anti-Nazi agents. One of the people arrested was Alfred Péron, a Jewish writer and Beckett’s closest French friend. He was interrogated and eventually deported to one of the most notorious concentration camps, Mauthausen on the Danube River. All categories of prisoners here, from Jews to gays to political opponents, were starved, beaten, used for medical experiments, and subjected to slave labor in the local stone quarries. Péron survived until the end of the war, but tragically died two days after the camp’s liberation in 1945.

In researching for Beckett’s biography, James Knowlson interviewed the extraordinary Germaine Tillion, one of the first Gloria members to be betrayed by Alesch. She was involved with one of the earliest underground organizations of the French Resistance, the Musée de l’Homme, and many of her friends had been executed by Nazis. Knowlson writes of the interview at The Independent:

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Support Stores That Bring You Value

Posted on March 22, 2019

In a bittersweet address on Facebook last week, Simone Righi of Frasi told his followers he’s shuttering his menswear boutique in Florence, Italy. The store, which is located just a few blocks from the Arno River, has long been known for its personalized service and quality clothing. Inside were luxurious cashmere knits from Fedeli and Hawick; tastefully patterned ties from Mattabisch and Tie Your Tie; and natural-shouldered sport coats from Sartorio Napoli and Orazio Luciano.

The store’s main draw, however, has always been the man behind the counter. Simone has exceptional taste and an easy-going style, and he dresses with a natural sophistication that arguably can’t be taught. He has what antique collectors call The Eye, which is that unteachable and irrevocable power to discern art from trash, real from fake, inspired from derivative. “Most of the great dressers I know tend to dismiss complaints such as ‘your sleeve is a quarter-inch too short,’” David Isle once wrote of The Eye. “It’s not that they don’t care about these details. It’s that they have developed the ability to look at an outfit holistically, rather than in parts. They have The Eye. […] The legend of The Eye would have it that this talent cannot be learned.” Still, that hasn’t stopped many men from trying. Over the years, men from around the world have come to Frasi not only to shop, but also to pick up a few lessons from Simone on how they can wear clothes in such a carefree but considered manner.

Unfortunately, the store is now closing, going the way of Louis Boston and Harvard Square’s J. Press. While wrapped in a brown checked tweed and duo-toned scarf, Simone remained composed throughout his Facebook video, but was also visibly choked up. “This is a peculiar message for you all. It’s a thank you message for everyone who came to meet me, who came here to my shop, a shop that’s like a home to me,” he started. “To all those people, I want to say thank you for giving me your trust and for letting me create a connection with you, for a few minutes or a few years, so that I could give you a tool for you to express your personality. Thank you for letting me grow and express my creativity. Thank you for your kindness. This, however, is a peculiar thank you message because it’s also a goodbye. A part of my life is coming to an end, a part that includes my profession. My shop here in Florence is closing. I truly hope we can meet again on some future project because it has all been really beautiful.” His last Instagram post is of two people hugging.

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On Nostalgia and Raincoats

Posted on March 15, 2019

Before nostalgia was considered sweet sentimentality, it was thought of as a mental disorder similar to paranoia. In the late-17th century, a medical student named Johannes Hofer coined the term to describe a set of peculiar anxieties he observed in Swiss mercenaries fighting abroad. Symptoms included melancholy, loss of appetite, and an intense longing for bygone times. Initially, nostalgia – from the Greek nostos, meaning homecoming, and algos, meaning pain – was mostly associated with soldiers. The Swiss military even forbade the playing of a particular milking song, Khue-Reyen, for fear that it would lead to desertion or suicide. But soon doctors found other people afflicted with the mania: newly arrived immigrants, children sent off to the countryside for nursing, and women who were forced into domestic servitude.

Until the turn of the 20th century, the Western medical community came up with all sorts of strange remedial measures for nostalgia. Among the many dubious cures were using leeches, purging stomachs, and even shaming the condition out of patients. During the American Civil War, a military doctor named Theodore Calhoun thought nostalgia was a symptom of the weak-willed and unmanly. In a paper titled “Nostalgia as a Disease of Field Service,” which was read before a medical society, he maintained that “battle is to be considered the great curative agent of nostalgia in the field,” for men would find themselves with a clearer mind after having survived an onslaught. In her book Homesickness: An American History, Susan J. Matt recalls this passage from Calhoun’s stunning lecture, where he recommends public ridicule as a cure:

Any influence that will tend to render the patient more manly will exercise a curative power. In boarding schools, as perhaps many of us remember, ridicule is wholly relied upon and will often be found effective in camp. Unless the disease affects a number of the same organization, as in the case narrated above [Dr. Calhoun is referring to a case in which there is something of an epidemic of nostalgia in a particular regiment – where “nearly all who died were farmers” – before he came to its rescue], the patient can often be laughed out of it by his comrades, or reasoned out of it by appeals to his manhood.
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How Sound Branding Changed Fashion

Posted on March 9, 2019

If you were just getting into menswear ten years ago, you likely updated your wardrobe in one of two directions. The first was the sort of skinny lapeled, Mod-inspired tailoring that prevailed after Mad Men debuted in 2007; the second was a sleek and colorful “metrosexual” style that was represented through Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Those two looks dominated the editorial pages of GQ and Esquire, who showed the before-and-after transformations of men who learned how to buy slimmer clothing – and get things made slimmer still through a local alterations tailor.

Today, those transformations are running in the opposite direction. Silhouettes are filling out and dressing like a dad is coming back in. High-fashion boutiques now stock the kind of “sensible” clothes your father likely buys from Kohl’s: relaxed-fit jeans; vacation shirts; schlubby tennis shoes; tactical fanny packs; and pastel-colored, washed-cotton caps (“they’re soft, shapeless, and familiar – just like dad,” writes Pete Anderson at Put This On). Mr. Porter even stocks the most fatherly of leg coverings this season: zip-off cargo pants that convert into cargo shorts, giving value-minded fathers a two-for-one (which is good since Mr. Porter’s version is a mind-boggling $1,000).

You can chalk some of this up to the fashion cycle. Once a look becomes popular, first adopters move on, thus swinging the pendulum in the other direction (fuller silhouettes give way to skinny silhouettes until the second collapses and fuller styles prevail again). The other is about the rising influence of Demna Gvasalia, the Georgian designer who led the design team at Maison Margiela before becoming the creative head at Balenciaga and his own label Vetements. When he showed his spring collection last year at the verdant Bois de Boulogne park in Paris, he sent models down the runway in “oversized color-striped windbreakers, pale jeans similar to those that made Barack Obama dad-in-chief, and bloated running shoes in the style of podiatrist-approved Asics.” Male models even carried children, the most literal interpretation of the trend. Dad style today is so au courant, Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine even tweeted about it.

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A Relatable Casual Uniform

Posted on March 7, 2019

In a firm-wide email sent Tuesday, the top-brass at Goldman Sachs told employees they’re loosening the company’s fashion standard. Historically known as a white-shoe investment bank, Goldman Sachs will be joining the Silicon Valley crowd by allowing its 36,000 employees to shed their coat-and-tie uniform and put on more casual attire. This shift would have been inconceivable thirty years ago when bankers relied on sober suits to earn their clients’ confidence. But as Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon wrote in the memo, workplaces today are more casual and he wants to accommodate a younger workforce. One Goldman Sachs employee told GQ yesterday the firm’s dress code has actually been loosening for years. Still, the person noted, “all the men are psyched."

So if bankers no longer wear banker stripes, what should they wear? The email didn’t specify. The management only said they want employees to dress in a manner that accords with the company’s and clients’ expectations (whatever that means). "We trust you will consistently exercise good judgment in this regard,” they wrote ominously. “All of us know what is and is not appropriate for the workplace."

This is the problem with modern dress codes. Hard-written rules have been replaced by softly coded norms, which leaves many confused on how they’re supposed to dress. Are grey flannel trousers too dressy? Are sneakers too sloppy? What should I wear for the meeting or office party? When the accounting firm Crowe Horwath gave up on the coat-and-tie a few years ago, they had to film a video explaining what was not acceptable.

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