Kiya Babzani, co-owner of the specialty denim empire Self Edge, is mostly hush about who patrons his stores, but he shared as story once of the most unlikely of customers. One day he received an order for a few things from Flat Head and Iron Heart. Having run the credit card a few times and getting the charge declined, he became suspicious of fraud. So he looked at the customer’s delivery information – Owenscorp in Paris – and reached out. “Oh it’s for Rick,” the buyer explained. “Sorry if the credit card didn’t go through. He wants these things sent to his studio." 

Rick, of course, refers to Rick Owens, who is reverently known to his fans as the “Lord of Darkness.” His clothes are masterpieces in terms of pattern making, far surpassing anything you’d find on Savile Row, but they’re cut for the clinically underweight. The shoulders are narrow, sleeves tiny, and chests tight. If you can somehow muscle your way into his clothes, however, they become beautiful, black coiling sculptures. Owens drapes and twists materials such as beaten lambskins and silky cottons to create garments that look like they’re decaying monastic robes in some space-age Brutalist future. 

What brought Rick Owens to Self Edge? The thing that unites almost every American clothing experience: the hunt for the perfect flannel shirt. Owens found his in the form of a red buffalo check flannel from Iron Heart, but then lost it a year later. His assistant emailed Kiya again, asking if he had another (“it’s his favorite,” she pleaded). Kiya didn’t, but found the same model in blue. "No worries, just mail it. We’ll dye it,” she replied. Of course, that’s impossible. Once a check has been made, you can’t change it into a different color because the yarns have already been woven. But who’s going to question Rick Owens’ garment making techniques – or deny him of his favorite flannel?

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No Man Walks Alone is a sponsor on this site, but they’re also one of my favorite online retailers. The shop’s founder, Greg – who can be clearly seen above walking alone – simply has great taste. He knows his way around a coat-and-tie rig, but also has a good eye for casualwear. For guys who love Italian tailoring and want to build a weekend wardrobe, No Man Walks Alone is a great one-stop shop. 

This morning, they started their end-of-season sale, where you can find select items marked down by as much as 40%. Some of my favorite brands here include Sartoria Formosa, which is wonderful for high-end Neapolitan tailoring, and Kaptain Sunshine, which offers slightly quirky and offbeat takes on Americana and workwear (they’re like LL Bean with a sense of humor and a lot more style). Few stores capture my personal interest in clothing as well as NMWA, especially in the way they mix tailoring with workwear and contemporary styles. Here are ten favorites right now from their sale.

 

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Today is Boxing Day for people in the Commonwealth, as well as the start of end-of-season promotions. I’m rounding up the best seasonal sales at Put This On, but I wanted to pull out my ten favorites here. There are some tremendous deals right now. Mr. Porter, notably, launched their winter sale yesterday, where you can find things such as discounted Edward Green shoes and Schott leather jackes. End has waxed cotton Barbours starting at $175; J. Crew has their anorak discounted to $100, as well as hemp work shirts for a mere $14 (I think tax costs more for most purchases at this point). Brooks Brothers’ oxford button-downs are seeing a rare promotion. And there are some terrific deals on outerwear, from Marni overcoats to Blackmeans double riders. 

END: Up to 60% Off Select Items

If you’re one of the few people left on this planet that reads about menswear online, but doesn’t own a Barbour jacket, END has some of the best prices around. Their end-of-season promotion includes a wide range of Barbour styles, including the Bedale for $199 and Beaufort for $259. I wear the Bedale over heavy sweaters, but use the longer Beaufort on the rare occasions I layer a Barbour over a sport coat. END also has Barbour’s Ashby, which is a slimmed-up Bedale, for $175. See this Barbour buying guide I wrote years ago for sizing advice.

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The best sales event of every season is always at Mr. Porter. Where else, after all, can you find discounted Edward Green shoes and Drake’s accessories sitting alongside niche Japanese labels and American workwear? Tonight, they started their end-of-season promotion, where you can find select fall/ winter stock on sale for about 50% off. 

The selection here is huge, and things tend to move quickly, so there are three good rules of thumbs to follow. First, if you’re on the fence about something, it’s almost always worth buying now and trying the item in-person. Mr. Porter has a hassle-free return policy, with free delivery both ways, so you risk little. Relatedly, since other shoppers are often operating with the same logic, you may want to check back often. Throughout the next couple of weeks, new sizes will pop in and out as customers return items. Thirdly, since the inventory here is so large, I find it’s often best to hit the sale section and sort by categories and sizes. This way, you may come across a serendipitous deal that you would have otherwise missed if you were just looking for brands. 

That said, there are some notable brands here. Inis Meain’s sweaters are expensive, even with the discount, but absolutely exquisite and a joy to wear. Engineered Garments, Blue Blue Japan, and Kapital are personal favorites for workwear; SNS Herning is great textured knitwear you can layer under heavy coats (be sure to size up). I’m also pleasantly surprised to see how many footwear brands are included in the promotion – RM Williams, Common Projects, John Lobb, George Cleverley, and Visvim among them. Here are ten things I think are especially worth highlighting. 

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In the world of classic men’s style, Naples holds a prominence that is only rivaled by London. The city is beautiful, energetic, and creative, always bustling with an upbeat tempo. Mark Twain once wrote of it: “The streets are generally about wide enough for one wagon, and how they do swarm with people! It is Broadway repeated in every street, in every court, in every alley! Such masses, such throngs, such multitudes of hurrying, bustling, struggling humanity! We never saw the like of it, hardly even in New York. There are seldom any sidewalks, and when there are, they are not often wide enough to pass a man on without caroming on him. So everybody walks in the street – and where the street is wide enough, carriages are forever dashing along.”

It’s among this energetic buzz that some of the world’s most celebrated tailoring traditions live, but you have to be in the region to appreciate them. Most Neapolitan tailoring houses don’t travel. In fact, that’s one of the biggest differences between English and Neapolitan firms. London-based companies have a higher level of business development – they have storied names and bigger marketing budgets. Some of their revenue may not even come from bespoke tailoring, but rather ready-to-wear. When they tour the US, some will take in hundreds of orders. 

Neapolitan firms, on other hand, are usually small, family-owned and -operated operations. There’s typically just one cutter, often an older man in his 60s, who is then supported by a complex network of outhouse workers (tailors, in other words). Most of these firms remain only known to hardcore tailoring enthusiasts – men who like to post online and share stories about bespoke craft. As a result, they take an infinitesimally smaller number of orders when they travel, assuming they travel at all. And if one or two clients drop from a city, traveling suddenly becomes a financial liability. Combine this difference in business organization with price – Savile Row suits typically cost double their Neapolitan counterparts – and, I think, you have your explanation for why some Neapolitan firms have such a bad reputation for service. 

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Flannel trousers are the backbone of any tailored wardrobe. They’re professional without looking pushy, sophisticated without being slick. Best of all, while they’re perfectly suitable for the office, they make you feel like you’re lounging in your brushed cotton pajamas. Wool flannel is so soft and comfortable, the Brits used it for undergarments up until the early 20th century. Doctors even recommended wearing flannel to ward off ailments and cure dysentery. Although, not everyone was convinced. In a 1900 issue of The Medical Times, one skeptic wrote: “The writer was a constant victim to colds. He was really a victim of flannels, having fall after fall procured underwear of heavier weight and all wool, in the determination to avoid the chills and shivery sensations during winter. [He fell] for the flannel craze.” 

Like all wool fabrics, flannel comes in two forms: worsted and woolen. Maybe these categories should be renamed to combed and uncombed, however, because it’s the combing process that separates them. Combing wool is exactly what it sounds like. Before wool is spun into yarn, a spinner can separate out the fibers by combing the material. This sets the hairs parallel to each other, as well as removes any of the shorter fibers that would spoil the regularity characteristic of worsted. After the wool has been combed, it’s spun into yarn and then woven into a fabric. And by combing the hairs first, the resulting fabric will feel a bit smoother and crisper, which is how you get shiny, hard-finished fabrics. Woolens, on the other hand, aren’t put through the same process. Thus, the fabric is spongier and loftier, as the fibers point in every possible direction. To give examples, gabardine is worsted; tweeds are generally woolen. 

Flannel is available in both forms. Worsted flannel will have a subtle but visible twill weave just beneath its fuzzy nap. Woolen flannel, on the other hand, tends to look cloudier (like the every-which-way direction of the hairs on tweed). I prefer woolen flannel this time of year because it’s softer and spongier next to the skin, its lofty surface helps trap heat, and its mottled finish lends visual interest. None of these characteristics are present to the same degree in the increasingly more common worsted variety, whose only virtues are that it’s studier and can be woven into a lighter weight material. If you have the money for it, get worsted flannel for spring/ summer, then heavier woolen flannel trousers for those bitingly cold winter nights.

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George Frazier, the famous jazz columnist and author of “The Art of Wearing Clothes,” had one of the most accurate and least helpful ways of describing style. He used the term duende, a Spanish word for a kind of mythological hobgoblin, but when used colloquially, at least by Frazier, it refers to a kind of irresistible magnetism. Some things have duende and some things, while they may still be good, simply do not.  

“It’s the thing that Fred Astaire had, but Gene Kelly did not; what made a Ted Williams strikeout more exciting than a Stan Musial home run,” Alex Belth once explained in Esquire. “It was difficult to even describe – you just knew it when you saw it – but Frazier never tired of trying. For him, style was a matter of utmost importance, as he revealed in a 1969 column: ‘It is my own conviction that there can be no style without … an immense honesty, and inviolability in the matter of one’s craft, a relentless being-true-to-one’s-own image.’”

Duende goes by many other names – it’s similar to sprezzatura in Italian and sang-froid in French. In any language, it points to a kind of naturalness that can’t be imitated. And after chatting with Dick and Ben for a couple of hours last week, trying to get at some helpful tips on how others may want to dress, I left with little practical advice. Dick and Ben wear many of the same things others do, they just look cooler.

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When did you start wearing tweed and flannel on a consistent basis this year? About a generation or two ago, these two robust fabrics would have made their first appearance after Labor Day, which marked the natural end of summer fashion. After all, that was the spirit behind the saying “no white after Labor Day,” a rule so sacred among etiquette hardliners that Patty Hearst’s character was murdered for it as punishment in the 1994 movie Serial Mom. But this year, my autumnal clothes have been dashing in-and-out of my wardrobe, with summer pieces continuing to be useful as late as November. Last month, thirteen US federal agencies released a stunning report saying climate change has already had devastating impacts on our health and economy. On a more superficial level, I can’t help but wonder if it’s also affected our wardrobes – and menswear retailing. 

Every year, the traditional concept of four seasons seems increasingly outdated. Scientists have found that, as the planet warms up, the tropics have been expanding 0.1 to 0.2 degrees latitude every decade, so that places that once had four seasons are now shifting to having just two. Vox had an article this week about how global warming could change US cities by the year 2050 (“In some cities, it’ll be like moving two states south”). “You can see that Scranton, Pennsylvania, will have a climate that resembles that of Round Hill, Virginia, today,” they wrote. “That’s a distance of about 220 miles as the crow flies, but it means that Scranton will face average summer peaks that are 4.8°F higher and winter temperature lows that are 5.5°F higher.” 

This is happening all over the place, not just in Scranton. In parts of New England, winters have warmed at an average rate of more than 1°F per decade since 1970 — that’s more than 4°F total. Last year, some eastern US cities were beset with summerlike temperatures as early as February. And across the US, winters feel shorter and generally milder, with the transition from cold winter weather to warmer spring temps happening earlier. Alexander Stine, an Assistant Professor of Earth & Climate Sciences at Harvard, says: “Once we account for the fact that the average temperature for any given year is increasing, we find that some months have been warming more than others. Most of the difference is the result of this shift in the timing of the seasons, and a decrease in the difference between summer and winter temperatures.”

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