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A few months ago, when the Criterion Collection debuted their online streaming service, a user on Blamo’s Slack channel noted the film company also sells branded totes. There are three designs, two made from cotton canvas and the other a ripstop nylon. They feature clean graphics, promise to hold almost anything you need, and are downright cheap at just $20 or so. They also inspire you to daydream. “I could use this for grocery shopping,” I thought to myself. “Or carry my books and laptop to the coffee shop.”

Affordability, identity, and imagination are a potent mix for impulse shopping. I made it to the Shopify checkout page before stopping myself. As a sanity check, I reached back to the nether regions of my closet, where I extracted a beige, cotton canvas tote smushed somewhere between my raincoats and umbrellas. I found four smaller totes scrunched up inside — totes within a tote — like nesting matryoshka dolls.

Totes are taking up an expanding part of our lives. If you live in a major US city, there’s a good chance you have them hidden somewhere – in the back of your closet, under your sink, or in your car’s trunk. As counties and states are imposing fees or outright bans on plastic bags, many people are carrying lightweight totes as a way to save money. But totes have also become the new graphic t-shirt. Culturally, they’re everything: a useful item for daily carry, an inexpensive thing to manufacture, a cheap item to purchase, a marketing tool, and a symbol of identity. If you understand what’s happened to totes in the last 20 years, you can understand a lot about American consumer culture.

In 1968, Tommy Nutter was exasperated with his sales job at Donaldson, Williamson, and G. Ward, a bespoke tailoring firm based in London’s Burlington Arcade. Nutter derisively described their house style as “little” and wanted to update it with some flair. The traditional-minded tailors in the workroom, however, dismissed his ideas as technically impossible and, in any case, tasteless. “People did not come here to be measured up for tents,” one journalist documented. So Tommy petitioned for a new job at Henry Poole. When the firm’s managing director, Samuel Cundey, saw Tommy’s fashionably long hair, however, he sent him away, horrified.

Tommy would save his ideas for himself. Shortly after quitting his job, he and Edward Sexton went on to form one of the most important tailoring houses of the 20th century, Nutters of Savile Row. If you believe menswear lore, many of the long-standing firms, such as Huntsman, viewed Nutters at first with suspicion. Bespoke tailoring at the time was a hush-hush and stuffy business. Tailoring shops didn’t even have display windows and firms such as Anderson & Sheppard considered publicity vulgar. The expression “it’s not done” not only sums up the hard-edged attitude of many in the solvent class, but also the tailors who served them.

Nutters not only displayed their goods to the public, they also talked to journalists and attracted younger customers into the then-stodgy precincts of Savile Row. They tailored for Elton John, Mick Jagger, and The Beatles, as well as women such as Twiggy and Diana Ross. Men walked out of the Nutters shop clad in box plaid suits, flared pants, and mini-platform shoes. As they strutted down the street, competing tailors stared, mouths agape. Perhaps they were offended by the garish designs. Or maybe they feared Nutters made them look stodgy by comparison.

In 1966, following his first successful art show, James Rosenquist commissioned a custom suit from fashion designer Horst. It was tailored from large sheets of brown paper, which the artist sourced from the Kleenex company. To be sure, this wasn’t the first paper garment. Women at the time were already wearing pleated paper dresses made from “Campbell’s Soup” prints, which were a perfect embodiment of the pop art movement Rosenquist helped pioneer. But his was the first of its kind in menswear. When he received his paper suit — pressed crisp and flat — he unfolded it, wrapped it around himself, and wore it everywhere. Rosenquist wore his paper suit to galleries and museum openings. He wore it to his art shows, where he met Very Important People, presumably while sounding like a crinkled lunch bag whenever he moved. The suit garnered him media attention, including an interview in New York Magazine.

Thirty years later, Rosenquist had a hundred more suits made through Hugo Boss. These were produced from Tyvek, a nonwoven synthetic material made from spun-bonded olefin fiber. Tyvek is mostly used to cover and protect construction buildings, but its thin, weblike structure also mimics the appearance and texture of paper. These suits were later sold to art collectors, and a small number were hand-signed. Today, they hang in museums and private estates, but if someone wanted to, the suits could also be worn and washed like everyday clothing. 

Rosenquist’s paper suit combines utility with disposability. When he conceived the idea in the 1960s, throwaway consumer culture was starting to emerge. The disposable safety razor first found commercial success around this time, as did things such as disposable lighters and rollerball pens. Rosenquist’s paper tailoring, however, was surreal, not just because it’s visually strange, but because it transferred the idea of disposability to fashion. Who could have guessed that, fifty years later, disposable clothing would become our new norm?

In his 1966 essay “The Secret Vice,” originally published in The New York Herald Tribune, the white-clad chronicler of American culture, Tom Wolfe, starts by talking about men who love handmade buttonholes. This was, of course, before surgeon cuffs were standard on ready-to-wear, but the passage will ring true to anyone who’s ever obsessed over the details. 

“Real buttonholes. That’s it!” Wolfe exclaimed. “A man can take his thumb and forefinger and unbutton his sleeve at the wrist because this kind of suit has real buttonholes there. […] Yes! The lid was off, and poor old Ross was already hooked on the secret vice of the Big men in New York: custom tailoring and the mania for the marginal differences that go into it. Practically all the most powerful men in New York, especially on Wall Street, the people in investment houses, banks and law firms, the politicians, especially Brooklyn Democrats, for some reason, outstanding dandies, those fellows, the blue-chip culturati, the major museum directors and publishers, the kind who sit in offices with antique textile shades – practically all of these men are fanatical about the marginal differences that go into custom tailoring.”

The phrase “it’s all about the details” has been exhausted, but in classic men’s tailoring, it’s still true. Suits and sport coats follow a template that’s the result of many generations and skilled hands. But there’s still plenty of room for personal expression. Much has been written about pocket styles (jetted, welted, and patched), lapel shape (peak, notch, straight, and bellied), and closure (single button, two-button, three-roll-two, and the never to be worn hard-three). However, there’s not much online about how the edge of a coat can be finished. It’s a detail that’s easy to forget but can make a surprisingly strong impact on how a garment looks. Here’s a run-through:

The Talented Mr. Ripley, the film version and not the book, opens with a brilliantly economical line about clothes. Matt Damon, as the film’s anti-hero Tom Ripley, borrows a Princeton jacket from a friend while working as as a piano player at a party. The Ivy League jacket ends up getting him the attention of a wealthy shipbuilder, who thinks that Tom went to Princeton with his son Dickie. He sends Tom away to Europe, hoping Tom can convince his ne'er-do-well son to come back home from southern Italy. Having left his bleak Manhattan life, however, Tom becomes enraptured by Dickie’s charming dilettante lifestyle. So he strikes up a Faustian bargain and steals it. “If I could just go back … if I could rub everything out … starting with myself, starting with borrowing a jacket,” Tom silently dreams to himself at the beginning of the film. And doesn’t Tom’s line neatly sum up what we all wish for when we purchase a new jacket or pair of shoes? The fantasy that it’ll somehow magically transform our mundane lives? (Well, maybe without the murderous crime.)

The film is important to fashion in other ways. Every summer, men reference Anthony Minghella’s chilling thriller as one of their favorite sources for warm weather style inspiration. The Talented Mr. Ripley captures the feeling of being young and carefree, not unlike the films of French New Wave, but with more of a la dolce vita vibe and touristy idyllic scenes of a sun-drenched 1950s Italy. It’s a hypnotic, voluptuously beautiful film with tons of references to menswear cliches: inherited wealth, Ivy League education, and an impossibly glamourous lifestyle in an Italian seaside town. 

For that Dickie Greenleaf vibe, even if not its literal look, you can turn to Joyce. The relatively new brand offers the same laid-back, vacation style that defines the film. Their clothes are loosely cut, retro-inspired, and pair well with tortoiseshell sunglasses and well-mixed martinis. The company even has the same America-to-Italy backstory. The idea for the brand was first seeded when John Walters, the company’s founder, was working as a product designer in New York. However, it didn’t materialize until Walters visited his girlfriend in Florence, Italy (where they now both live). Today, it’s based out of their Florentine studio, while product fulfillment takes place out of Indian Wells, California. “Stylistically, our online visuals reference a lot of Pink Floyd’s earlier works, as well as some of Alain Delon’s films, such as Purple Noon and The Swimming Pool,” says Walters. “Aside from that, we also get a lot of our style inspiration from traveling.”

It’s that time of year when I post a spat of seasonal sales. The third big one started this morning: No Man Walks Alone, where you can find select items discounted by as much as 40% off. Their sale is one of my favorites for two reasons. The first is that I get to post a photo of the shop’s founder, Greg Lellouche, and note that he is, in fact, walking alone. The second is the shop’s selection. While No Man Walks Alone is a sponsor on this site, they’re also one of my favorite online retailers. Along with some excellent tailoring, they also carry Japanese workwear, contemporary casual, and a bit of the avant-garde.

The selection here is big, but not massive. It’s reasonably easy to scroll through the entire sale selection to see if there’s anything you want, but No Man Walks Alone also has filters on their site so you can narrow in on sizes, colors, and brands. Some of my favorite makers here include Sartoria Formosa, Drake’s, and Kaptain Sunshine. If you’re looking for highlights, here are ten things that I think are notable.

Valstar’s Plaid Wool-Alpaca Topcoat

When Volodymyr Zelensky emerged from the voting booth in Kiev last month, he was wearing a dark worsted navy suit and a crisp white t-shirt. It was the biggest night of his life. Over the previous six months, the actor and comedian had been campaigning for the presidential seat in Ukraine. An early frontrunner in opinion polls, Zelensky was expected to win the election handily with over 70% of the votes — and he did. Not long after the polls closed, and with little more than 10% of the votes counted, early results showed Zelensky was coming in for a landslide victory. Incumbent President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Twitter: “We succeeded to ensure free, fair, democratic and competitive elections. I will accept the will of Ukrainian people.”

It was a big night for t-shirts (and a bigger night for Zelensky). About a hundred years after its invention, the t-shirt has gone from being underwear — replacing the union suit, which is the all-in-one undergarment you’ve likely seen in black-and-white cartoons — to an everyday piece of clothing that even presidential candidates can wear on election night. Like chinos, pea coats, and cardigan sweaters, the t-shirt has its roots in the military. Around the turn of the 20th century, the US Navy replaced square-necked, shoulder-buttoning shirts with cropped sleeved undershirts. American seamen wore them while swabbing decks and manning armaments. The shirts were made white (still the garment’s most popular color) for several reasons: white t-shirts are cheap to produce, as they don’t have to be dyed, and they marry well navy uniforms. Besides, since white t-shirts show dirt easily, it was believed they’d instill a sense of discipline and help maintain personal hygiene.

Stuffed shirt traditionalists love to mark the t-shirt as the end of Western civilization — the replacement for collared shirts and, ultimately, the suit. It’s true that t-shirts were initially undergarments that were never meant to be seen, but within my lifetime, they’ve always held the same cool appeal as blue jeans. In the run-up to the United States’ entry into the Second World War, a Sears, Roebuck, and Co. advertisement proclaimed: “You needn’t be in the army to have your own personal t-shirt,” suggesting the quotidian garment had an inherent sense of heroism and machismo. A sweat-soaked, sexually magnetic Marlon Brando wore a white tee when he shouted “Stella!” in the 1951 film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire. Virile heartthrob James Dean also sported one in Rebel Without a Cause. People who complain that t-shirts aren’t “proper” miss the point. The t-shirt’s military roots, machismo nature, and ability to rouse elites are exactly the reasons why it feels rebellious (although, a strong case can be made that it’s now just part of a middle-class uniform, losing all of its tough political edge).

“Polo” is the most confusing word in men’s fashion. When Brooks Brothers put their new button-down collar on sport shirts in the early 1900s, they marketed them as polo shirts. The tan, double-breasted overcoat popular with Ivy Style aficionados is called a polo coat. In Britain, the turtleneck sweater is sometimes called a polo jumper. Ralph Lauren named his mainline Polo. And for some reason, the tennis shirt is called a polo even though it’s more likely to be worn to play golf.

In the early 20th century, tennis was a sport of strict dress rules. Women played in blouses and full-length skirts; men wore cream-colored, cricket cloth trousers and full-sleeved, white oxford shirts, typically with the sleeves rolled halfway up to the elbows. Only a man of means could afford to indulge in a country club pursuit that came with a large laundry bill. Tradition-bound sportsmen found a snobby pleasure in sweating it out in stuffy, all-white uniforms. So when French player René Lacoste came onto the courts in 1927 with a short-sleeved shirt, he was responsible for a minor cause célèbre.

To be sure, Lacoste didn’t invent the polo. First seen on the French Riveria about two years earlier, it was taken up by fashion-conscious British players before getting the stamp of approval by young Americans on the courts of Palm Beach. But when Lacoste won the US National Championships that year — and several titles since — he helped popularize the style. In 1933, he partnered with a knitwear manufacturing entrepreneur Andrew Gillier to produce la chemise Lacoste, a lightweight, breathable piqué-cotton pullover with an unstarched collar, a three-button placket, and comfortable short sleeves. Known as the L.12.12, the shirt isn’t stiff, but it has rectitude. Tennis, after all, is often referred to as the “most genteel of sports,” so the tennis shirt – or polo — is in many ways the most genteel of sportswear.

Spring is the season for songbirds and meaningless baseball, cool mornings and warm afternoons, but for people who love clothes, it’s also the worst time of the year. Spring clothes are often less interesting. There fewer opportunities to layer. The cuts reveal more than conceal, and few of us look good naked. Whereas dressing for winter can be a paint-by-numbers exercise, dressing for spring is more like trying to solve a puzzle. How do you dress well, but also comfortably?

It always takes me a while to switch wardrobes this time of year, but I often go back to the same things – breathable tailoring, button-down shirts, and loafers. For casualwear, it’s usually a workwear styled jacket and some raw denim jeans (gotta get those fades). I also like bolder shirts nowadays with unusual collars, and have even been embracing things such as graphic tees. If you’re looking for some early spring inspiration, here are some things I’ve been thinking about.

MY KIND OF FUN SHIRT