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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?

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.

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.”

Men’s style has never been more factionalized. Whereas men once agreed on what they thought were The Good Clothes, today’s landscape is such that the ascendency of one look doesn’t necessarily displace another. Ten years ago, men rallied around Americana and denim, then prep and Italian tailoring. Now with a million style tribes, it’s hard to coalesce excitement around any one thing. There’s streetwear and techwear, tailoring and normcore, the brutalist avant-garde and Japanese folk. Nothing is fully in or out. 

There is, however, one small sliver of overlap: the classical overcoat, loose and slightly oversized, which has somehow managed to cut across style genres. Preps pair polo coats with tweeds and flannels. Streetwear aficionados have worn camelhair topcoats ever since Kanye sported his with suede Chelsea boots. Contemporary menswear guys, those of both maximalist and minimalist stripe, like theirs with sleek jeans and textured sweaters. Even workwear lines such as RRL offer the occasional belted duster or tweed.

These are not just superficial overlappings, either. As men’s style has started loosening up, both fashion forward guys and classic menswear enthusiasts have found common ground on how they think a coat should fit. Whereas traditional overcoats once seemed out-of-touch, shoulder-hugging coats now look out-of-date. Classic overcoats right now are the one thing we can all agree on. 

Winter style is often presented as sled riding through some New England forest, or enjoying a hearth redolent of roasting Indian corn, but reality is often less romantic. This time of year is flu season, which means for many people, winter at some point will be about Robitussin, hot tea, blankets, and cough drops. I’ve been holed up at home for the past few days trying to fight off a stubborn cold, stay warm, and sleep through the night despite fits of coughing. 

Nothing will cure a cold except time, but there are things you can do to make yourself feel better. The Chinese have an herbal remedy called Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa, which does wonders for a sore throat, even if it tastes awful (I drink hot water mixed with a scoop of honey instead). Nasal sprays can help manage congestion, although you don’t want to use them for more than three days in a row. And wearing good loungewear feels so much better than laying around in sweatpants and a t-shirt. 

Years ago, Jacob Gallagher at The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece exploring whether men still wear pajamas. There aren’t many, and among those who do, some are apparently trying to sell others a set (Andy Spade, one of the founders behind Sleepy Jones, was quoted). The reasons given for PJs were predictable – they confer a better sense of self-respect when you’re at home (I have none to begin with, so that matters little), and they allow you to look presentable should an unexpected guest drop by (I have no social life, so that matters even less). 

Much of men’s style takes after British tailoring, when dress norms were set during a different time period and climate. This is why, when we imagine a fall wardrobe, we think of the kind of heavy tweeds and wool overcoats that used to be seen in periodicals such as Apparel Arts. And yet, today, the cold season has been noticeably pushed back – late September still feels like summer and we’re months away from heavy outerwear weather. The biggest challenge for dressing this time of year is managing the wide temperature swings that can bring warm afternoons into chilly nights. Back when he was still writing about men’s style, Will Boehlke used to call this “shoulder season.”

It’s easy to dress well for early autumn if you rely on suits and sport coats. Instead of lightweight Frescos and linens, you want jackets in ribbed corduroys, mid-weight tweeds (nothing too heavy), and worsted wools. Worsted is just another way of saying the wool fibers were combed before they were spun into yarn, which makes the resulting fabric a little smoother and clearer finished (as opposed to woolens, which are left uncombed and are consequently spongier). 

There’s also a class of fabrics colloquially referred to as faux or citified tweeds. These are smooth, tightly woven worsteds made in rustic patterns reminiscent of traditional checks. They carry the distinctive colors and patterns of Scottish estates, as well as the tonal range best associated with the British countryside – bark, moss, and heather. They wear warmer than true summer fabrics, but don’t trap as much heat as real tweeds. Which is to say that they fit exactly in the middle. A couple of faux tweeds, along with a heavier navy sport coat in hopsack, serge, or this Sportex, and you’d have your early-fall tailored wardrobe covered.