The La Dolce Vita Look in London

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It seems crazy to open a brick-and-mortar in today’s retail environment, but Jake Grantham and Alex Pirounis recently took their chances with their new store, Anglo Italian. It’s located in the Marylebone area of London, a small residential district mostly characterized by its Georgian townhouses. As Mayfair rents have increased, a lot of commerce has moved to districts such as this one. This is the same neighborhood where you’ll find Trunk Clothiers, English Cut, and Monocle’s offices

The name Anglo Italian obviously reflects the shop’s aesthetics – a somewhat modernized version of a mid-century style, when the Italians used to look to the English for their cues – but it’s also reflective of Jake and Alex’s personal backgrounds. Jake, a native Londoner, worked for a while on Savile Row and then Drake’s. Alex, on the other hand, was born in Biella, Italy, and got his start at Kiton (his father, incidentally, has also worked at Loro Piana and Zegna his whole life). Both met when they were employees at The Armoury, which is how most readers probably know them. Their faces have shown up often on style blogs. 

When I spoke to Jake this past May, just a few weeks before the store’s opening, I asked him if he was worried about the apparent slowdown in Italian tailoring. It seems forever ago when people were obsessed with Neapolitan shoulders and unstrapped double monks. The landscape today for men’s style is a lot more decentralized – with people dabbling in designer clothing, streetwear, workwear, and classic tailoring.  

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Casualwear for Tailored Tastes

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For guys who have been interested in tailored clothing for a while, there’s been a lot of interest lately in how to dress more casually. And while there are many ways you can dress down a sports coat, even the best strategies will leave you looking a bit formal. Christian Chensvold put it well ten years ago when he said tucking in a pineapple print shirt into some old khakis nowadays can make you look overdressed in most cities. 

The problem with casualwear, especially for guys who are mainly interested in tailoring, is that the available options often fall into two categories. On the one hand, you have the sort of stuff that works for almost anyone – J. Crew and Brooks Brothers, for example, but those are admittedly a bit boring (something like what a suburban dad might wear, even if a moderately stylish one). Then there are things I think are more exciting, but they can feel niche. I’ve been wearing Margiela’s five-zip leather jackets with slimmer jeans and side-zip boots a lot lately, but that kind of combo isn’t to everyone’s taste. 

Last month, however, I bought my first big item from Stoffa: a dark brown suede flight jacket made with a removable, beige shearling collar. I’ve written about the company before. My friend Agyesh, who founded the company two years ago, worked for Isaia before starting his own label. At Stoffa, he offers a range of accessories, including some wonderful scarves that have to be handled to be appreciated, as well as custom-made outerwear and trousers. 

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The AMJ Ring Jacket

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The Japanese are famous for their takes on American and Western European clothing – including vintage reproductions made to a fanatically high level of historical accuracy, as well as modern, whimsical interpretations on the classics. Much of what gets exported, however, is casualwear. Today, you can find dozens of retailers for niche Japanese brands such as Visvim, and Kapital, but few stocking anything that approaches tailoring. 

Ring Jacket is one of the few exceptions. As a brand, they’re relatively new, although they have deep roots. For most of the company’s 60+ year history, they’ve operated as a private-label manufacturer for top-end Japanese labels. As the story goes, in 1954, Jhoichi Fukushima decided to open a factory to produce the kind of soft-shouldered, Ivy Style suits worn by President Kennedy (and were popular in Japan at the time). In the 1980s, as Italian tailoring became more popular, they shifted to more Continental styles – still soft shouldered, but with wider lapels and rounder silhouettes.

Today, under the leadership of Kunichi Fukushima (Jhoichi’s son), the company specializes in a sort of neo-classical, Southern Italian look. In the US, they have four models – two for suits, two for sport coats. Most of what you’ll find on the racks, however, is the 184, which is something like Ring Jacket’s house style. The jacket is softly tailored, with a full canvas built in, but little to no padding. The shoulders are somewhat trim; the body short and slim fitting; the gorge high. I think it’s a more flattering cut for those who like brands such as Boglioli

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Thinking Through Trouser Details

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There are a lot of great menswear videos, but for my money, none beat this clip of President Lyndon B. Johnson ordering six pairs of summer trousers. It was recorded in 1964, like all White House phone calls at the time. In it, you can hear the President talking to his tailor, Joe Haggard, about how he’d like his new trousers made in very specific, anatomic detail:

“Another thing is the crotch, down where your nuts hang. It’s always a little too tight. So when you make ‘em up, give me an inch so I can let them out there – cause they cut me; it’s just like riding a wire fence. These are the best I’ve had anywhere in the United States, but when I gain a little weight, they cut me under there. You never do have much margin, but see if you can’t leave me an inch from where the zipper (burppp) ends, round back to my bunghole.” 

I’ve never specified bunghole measurements to my tailor, but I have gotten pretty picky about my trousers over the years. One of the nice things about custom-made clothing is that you start from scratch. Details that you never really considered in ready-to-wear can now be fussed over. Should you get flat fronts or pleats? Belt loops or side tabs? What about Daks? When are cuffs appropriate? A lot of this is personal preference, but in case anyone found it helpful, I thought I’d lay out my own logic for these things. 

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Some Thoughts on Fashion in 2016

Every December brings with it a new crop of “year in review” stories. The best one for fashion this year is probably this piece by Vanessa Friedman, who recently penned something on the biggest headlines of 2016. If you’re interested in the fashion industry as a broader topic, it’s a great read. 

When I look back at 2016, however, the story that sticks out in my mind wasn’t even written this year. It was something Cathy Horyn wrote for T Magazine the year prior. In it, she suggests we may be entering a “post-trend universe.” That is, whereas fashion used to be cyclical – going from skinny jeans to baggy, then back to skinny again – it’s now possible for many styles to coexist. As she put it, “there is no single trend that demands our attention, much less our allegiance, as so many options are available to us at once.” 

Horyn’s article was about women’s fashion – tracking things from “the hobble skirt of the 1910s, a Paris invention that spread to small cities and was ultimately sold by Sears, to Dior’s radical New Look of 1947, to the ‘60s miniskirt” – but it may as well have been about men’s style. 

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Bryceland’s Opens in Japan

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It takes a lot of guts to open a new men’s store nowadays. With fast trends, copycat competitors, and the ease of online comparison shopping, it’s just harder and harder to build customer loyalty. When I spoke to George Wang about this last year, on the eve of him opening BRIO in Beijing, he said he hoped his taste would help set him apart. And it’s true – many of the best boutiques are a cut above thanks to the owner’s high-level of taste. See the late Wilkes Bashford, Charlie Davidson of The Andover Shop, and Mark Cho and Alan See of The Armoury

This month, a man who has been inspiring others for years will be opening his own shop. Ethan Newton – who has worked everywhere from Evisu to The Armoury to Ralph Lauren – will be opening Bryceland’s in Japan with his business partner Kenji Cheung. The store’s name is taken from Ethan’s family. “Bryceland is my mother’s maiden name,” Ethan told me. “There aren’t any more males on that side of the family to carry it forward, so I decided to honor it by using it for my business.” 

When I talked to Ethan about his shop back in October, he described it as Ivy, although he meant it more in approach than aesthetics. “When I first started studying tailoring, I realized there are certain products that are just perfect in design – whether it’s a Zippo lighter or a blue blazer or a Buco J-24 jacket. Basically things that are made right and don’t need to improved on, they are as they should be. I think a lot of Ivy stuff embodies that – the perfect grey flannel suit, the perfect tweed jacket. I want a business that revolves around that spirit.” 

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More Than a Soft Shoulder

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The appeal of soft Italian tailoring has set style trends in men’s clothing for at least a few decades now. Although the technique is commonly attributed to Giorgio Armani (particularly in the business press), it really goes back to the Rubinacci and Caraceni families in Naples and Rome, respectively. They’re the ones who took the “stuffing out of suits” by using thinner and lighter shoulder pads, reducing the weight of the canvassing and haircloth inside, and striping away the lining.

In popular writing, this technique often gets reduced to a simple description about a “soft shoulder,” but when I think of what makes this style appealing to me, it’s about much more than a shoulder line. Instead, I think of style icons such as Gianni Agnelli (who often wore Caraceni) and Vittorio de Sica (who often wore Rubinacci), as well as the many men who represent Neapolitan style today (Rubinacci, Solito, Ciardi, Panico, etc). The styles worn and created by these men isn’t just about their softer shoulder, but rather the overall “roundness” of their silhouettes.

Look at the photos below and see. The lapels are a bit wider; the chests a bit rounder and fuller; and while Voxsartoria will chastise me for saying this, a few of them look like they were designed with slightly wider shoulders as well. To my eye, this not only helps build a broader, more masculine look, but it also gives the illusion of a trimmer waist without actually needing to pinch it in. It’s this wider lapel, rounder chest, and soft, extended shoulder line that gives the casual, relaxed look that so many men love. Compare this to a number of other “soft” Italian jackets – especially the more fashion forward ones with a trimmer lapel, cleaner chest, and narrower shoulder – and you can see the effect isn’t the same.

I don’t mean to say that “clean and lean” silhouettes look bad, of course. My first love for suits – well before Man Men came around – was for the 1960s styles seen on Sammy Davis Jr. here. Very modern; very clean; and very, very smooth.

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Ten Of The Best Black Friday Sales

Even when it's online, and you can shop from the comfort of your home, Black Friday always feels like a mad dash to find the best days. To simplify the landscape, I round up the best menswear-related promotions every year and post them here, along with a selection of notable picks at each store. These guides are designed to cover almost every budget—from relatively affordable basics to designer items—so there's something for everyone. This year, I've organized the list to move from "general and affordable" to "specialized boutiques with higher prices," along with a smattering of shoe deals, underwear sales, and grooming products at the end. 

J. CREW: UP TO 50% OFF; PRICES AS MARKED

I've always felt that J. Crew is one of the better one-stop shops for men just starting to build a better wardrobe. The prices are accessible, the designs are classic, and the quality is reasonable. However, it helps to know what to buy. 

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Excited to Wear This Fall

About eighteen years ago, Monty Don, the British horticulturist and human Peter Rabbit, penned an article for The Guardian titled “Dirty Dressing.” It was about how to dress for the dirty task of gardening. “Never wear tight trousers,” he advised. “Always buy trousers at least one waist size too big, make sure that the pockets are big enough to comfortably hold penknife, hanky, string, phone, pencil, labels, and perhaps a mint or two. […] If you are not familiar with their joys, high-rise trousers are fantastically comfortable and keep your lower back warm. My children still squirm with embarrassment every time they see me in them (which is most days) but that is probably some kind of seal of approval.”

I remember being charmed by his intransigent views; each proclamation was stated matter-of-factly without the need for justification or even elaboration. “Do this, that, and the other thing.” Sometimes, it feels like writers are unwilling to criticize anything nowadays or put their foot down on something they know. This admittedly includes me, a menswear writer who feels it’s impossible to responsibly dole out generalizable menswear advice because people have different needs, personalities, and lifestyles.

So, in the last few years, I’ve been doing this series called “Excited to Wear,” which isn’t about things everyone should buy—no one can recommend those—but simply the things I’m most excited to wear for the new season. These posts allow me to get a bit Monty Don-ish, with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek and with the recognition that I’m only speaking about my personal views. Here are ten things I’m excited to wear as the weather gets cooler. There's also a fall/ winter playlist at the end for you.

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Excited To Wear This Fall

For the past few years, at the start of every season, I've made it a tradition to publish a post about things I'm excited to wear. These posts are a deliberate shift away from the conventional notion of "wardrobe essentials," a concept that has, in many ways, lost its relevance as people lead different lifestyles. They also allow me to just talk about things I'm excited about. I think that emotional connection—rather than a coldly calculated and rational approach about supposed "essentials"—is a much better way to build a wardrobe, as it makes you think about what you'll love wearing ten years from now. I've been encouraged by readers who tell me they find these posts useful in helping them build a wardrobe. So here are ten things I'm excited to break out this season, along with a Spotify playlist at the end that will hopefully set the mood.

THE POLO COAT

Like many things, the game of polo is an international phenomenon with cultural origins now long forgotten. The modern version of the game was first played in Manipur, India, where locals called the fist-sized wooden ball pulu, a Tibetic term later anglicized to polo. In the mid-19th century, British cavalry officers picked up the sport in India, imported it to England, and then spread it around the world during the height of empire. It’s through this intoxicating mix of sport and nobility that polo has become such fertile ground for menswear. The game has given us the button-down collar, jodhpur and chukka boots, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso, and the most recognizable menswear logo. It has also given us the polo coat—the most American of dress outerwear styles.

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