Search Results for: italian tailoring

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. 

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. 

In an interview with The Telegraph, Patrick Grant of Norton & Sons and E. Tautz once described fashion as being an “ever-moving feast.” I often find that the quick-paced nature of fashion – where things are constantly being created and destroyed – makes the field endlessly interesting. There’s always something new, something different, something to talk about. And while my taste in tailoring leans classic, I like casualwear that’s a bit more progressive and experimental.

For the past few years, I’ve been doing these annual posts where I roundup new brands. To be sure, not all of them are actually new – many have been around for years – but they’re new to me. Here are seven labels I recently discovered. And while not all of them sell things I’d personally wear, I find them inspiring in some way. For more of the same, you can see previous years’ posts here, here, here, and here.

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. 

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. 

Mr. Porter’s massive selection puts them in everyone’s orbit. Whether you favor classic tailored clothing, Japanese workwear, or oversized, minimalist contemporary garb, Mr. Porter likely carries more than a handful of brands for you.

Today, Mr. Porter started their Black Friday promotion, where you can take up to 30% off select items. 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, Yuketen, and Visvim among them. 

Given the scope and size of their inventory, your best bet is to filter by sizing and brands to see what you like. That said, here are ten items that I think are worth highlighting. 

If prep ever makes a comeback, it’ll be because of lookbooks like Drake’s. For this coming fall/ winter season, they shot their collection of brushed Shetlands and tweedy outerwear against the collegiate Gothic architecture of Oxford University. The combination makes the photos look as though they were lifted straight out of Take Ivy. One of Drake’s employees, an Oxford alum who helped put this project together, led the team through his favorite parts of the campus and his old, familiar watering holes. 

Drake’s Creative Director, Michael Hill, doesn’t want you to think this is about Ivy Style, however. “We’ve always been inspired by Ivy clothing, but this isn’t about recreating a look,” he says. “It’s just that we’re close to Oxford and it’s a beautiful setting. Ivy is a style that inspires us greatly – we look back at provenance and history a lot. But this is also very much about doing something right for today, in our own way, and presenting our clothes in a manner that we feel was fun and playful.”

Playful is a good way to describe some of the new items this season. There’s a pocket square decorated with a spinning collage of space-floating astronauts (if you buy a truck-ton of those squares, I imagine they could make for cool wallpaper inside a nursery). I also like the single-stick London Undercover umbrellas that feature an archival print on the underside of the canopy, as well as the brightly colored, Kelim scarves (I bought the blue one). For the bold and fearless, there are block striped Shetlands coming soon. Those look as though Drake’s mashed together all the Shetland yarns they’ve run separately in the past and turned them into a single sweater. David Hockney, a man known for his eccentric embrace of color, would be proud. 

Hidden in the history of the tassel loafer is the story of why men’s dress has become increasingly casual with each passing generation. In the post-war period of the late-1940s, right when tweed jackets and Shetland sweaters dominated prep schools and Ivy League campuses, debonair actor Paul Lukas came back from Europe with a pair of oxfords. Their laces had little fringed tassels at the end, which Lukas thought made them look jauntier. So he took them to a couple of custom shoemakers to see if they could make something similar, and they in turn took the job to Alden. The company’s president at the time, Arthur Tarlow, came up with tassel loafers. That makes Alden’s model the original, and Paul Lukas the first man to wear this style. 

Alden’s tassel loafers were an instant success, but they didn’t exist in a vacuum. If you flip through any men’s clothing catalog from this period, you’ll see how much the idea of comfort had already supplanted Edwardian norms of propriety. Instead of high-button dress boots and gaiters, American clothiers were selling low-cut shoes such as white buckskins, brown oxfords, and canvas tennis shoes with rubber soles. In his 1982 Town & Country essay on loafers, which was later collected in his 1985 book Elegance, Bruce Boyer wrote: “To see these newer low-cut shoes side-by-side in the [1915] Brooks catalogue with the then more traditional higher-cut shoes is to realize immediately that back in 1915 the tide was unquestionably turning – had already turned in reality – and that men were allowing themselves more comfort in their dress. Heavy suits and boots, stiff collars, and high hats were all on the way out. Lightweight tweeds and flannels, button-down shirts and soft golf caps, Shetland sweaters and white bucks, had arrived.” The only thing missing from those 1915 catalogs were loafers, which were “the logical extension of comfortable and casual dress that marks the current century.” 

Tassel loafers were the norm by the 1960s, worn to business offices and government buildings alike, and favored by college graduates who wanted something dressier than their school-day pennies. But the tide turned again in the 1990s, when the style became a synecdoche for the country-club set and dishonest lawyers. In an all-too-often-cited New York Times article, Neil Lewis once reported that the term “tasseled loafer” was not just a way to describe a simple slip-on anymore, it was a political epithet:

As the world gets smaller, so do our possessions. What may have been that stack of books and papers you’d schlep twenty years ago is now just a few PDF files. The daily newspaper is now online. And your iPod, which used to be a technological wonder that fit your entire music library into the palm of your hand, has disappeared into your phone. My daily carry nowadays is usually not more than my laptop and its accompanying charger – and all that neatly fits into a portfolio, which I think of as a modern briefcase. 

Folios are surprisingly uncommon here in the US, but they’re tremendously useful. For one, they’re easier to manage than a traditional briefcase. If you’re running through the city, climbing in and out of cabs, it’s easier to reach into your belongings when you don’t have to fumble through a bunch of clasps or buckles. Plus, unlike a backpack, a folio doesn’t have any straps that could ruin a tailored jacket’s shoulder line. 

The downside, of course, is that they don’t carry very much (by design). But who carries more than a couple of electronics nowadays? Lunch gets eaten on the go and I’m not health-conscious enough to carry a water bottle. Plus, leather bags are heavy, which means I only break them out when I need to. Take it from the Japanese, who are often photographed with a folio under their arm. If you’re walking around the city all day, you’d be happy to not have to carry around five pounds of luggage.