Even when it’s online and you can shop from the comfort of your own home, Black Friday still feels like a mad dash to find the best deals. Over at Put This On, we’re rounding up the best of Black Friday promotions. The list is massive, with the number of sales going into the hundreds, and we’ll be adding to the list over the weekend as we learn of new promotions. For those who want something more manageable, I’ve pulled together someof my favorites in these two posts. Combine those with the ten sales listed below and you have what I think are the nineteen best Black Friday sections this year.
Unionmade: 20% Off Orders Over $250, Code BLACKFRIDAY
Unionmade is a great shop for workwear, heritage brands, and hard-to-find Japanese imports. They carry everything from the sort of slim-straight jeans a guy can wear with sport coats, to more experimental lines such as Kapital. And in the last year, they’ve branched out to more contemporary labels such as Studio Nicholson and Deveaux.
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.
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.
Black Friday sales are upon us. Every year, I roundup some of my favorites both here and at Put This On (we’ll have a comprehensive list of every worthwhile sale later this week, on Friday). Some stores, however, are getting a jump on things. Many have already started their Black Friday promotions, with discounts going as deep as 50% off. There’s even a topcoat below for just $150. From affordable workwear to contemporary casualwear, here are nine really good early-bird specials.
No Man Walks Alone is an advertiser on this site, but also one of my favorite stores. In the last ten years, the average menswear shopper has become a lot more sophisticated – they know just as much about Neapolitan tailoring as they do about directional casualwear. No Man Walks Alone serves that kind of customer. They have classic suits and sport coats, but also interesting clothes for the weekend. It’s one of the few shops where a guy can pick up a wardrobe for almost any part of his life.
This weekend marks their fifth year of doing business, and to celebrate, they’re holding a sale. For the next five days, you can take 20% off any order with the checkout code 5YEAR. The code even works on already-discounted sale items. Here are ten things I think are particularly worth a look:
When Hubert de Givenchy passed away earlier this year, many noted that his relationship with Audrey Hepburn helped set up today’s fashion-Hollywood complex – a system where designers dress famous faces so they can raise their brand’s profile and move units. Except, the relationship is so thoroughly deformed today, few would recognize the connection. Givenchy and Hepburn had an honest relationship and found in each other kindred spirits. They worked together to craft mutually supportive identities. Givenchy was Hepburn’s courtier; Hepburn was his muse. Today, however, clothiers and celebs work on a pay-for-play basis. Celebrities will profess their undying love for a brand one season, they say they like something entirely different the next.
One of the few exceptions is Daniel Day-Lewis, who by all accounts has a genuine interest in style. He’s a second-generation Anderson & Sheppard customer and once studied shoemaking under the late Stefano Bemer. In preparing for his role in Phantom Thread, where he played the fastidious courtier Reynolds Woodcock, Day-Lewis learned how to cut, drape, and sew – at one point even recreating a Balenciaga dress all by himself (I admit to being skeptical, but that’s what was reported). George Glasgow Senior, of renowned British shoemaking institution G.J. Cleverley, tells me that when the actor is in London, he often stops by the shop to talk about shoes. “He has a keen eye and a very strong interest in clothes,” he says.
So it was great to see Day-Lewis wearing the fisherman sweater pictured above, knowing it came from his wardrobe and that he had chosen it sincerely. The photo is from a W Magazine cover story published earlier this year. In it, he sports a striped Breton shirt, some heavy jewelry, and a fantastically rugged, moss-stitched sweater fashioned after something he inherited from his father. And true to form, instead of the sweater being supplied by a big name fashion house – who would have gladly paid for such exposure – it was from a small, unknown knitting cooperative located in British coastal town. My friend Pete wrote about it at Put This On: “The sweater caused a stir in knitting circles, and the knitters got to the bottom of it. His sweater, apparently, comes from a maker called Flamborough Marine, an outfit that still makes the sweaters entirely by hand.”
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.
Men’s style in general, and tailored clothing in particular, can be very serious at times. Most of our clothes are inspired by hunting and war, and made in colors such as drab olive, stone gray, and stark white. Fashion historians trace this back to what they call The Great Masculine Renunciation, when men around the world – from the French court to Chinese nobles – traded in their colorful, sumptuous garb for the kind of austere, somber clothes British aristocrats favored.
Rumisu, an accessories company based in Istanbul, is the antidote to this seriousness. They’re a young brand, having started in the summer of 2013, but they’ve already made big waves. They’ve been picked up by leading boutiques such as The Armoury, shown up on Ozwald Boatang’s runway, and received favorable write-ups inMonocle and L’Uomo Vogue. Much of that is because of how they’ve transformed luxury scarves and pocket squares – which are traditionally more conservative items – into playful, at times even goofy, accessories. Their designs invite you into a dreamed-up world of creativity, have a child-like wholesomeness, and are built around themes that are both inspiring and relatable. I find they’re a good reminder that, even when things aren’t going that well, it helps to have a sense of humor.
The company is run by a trio: Deniz and Pinar, who are sisters, and Deniz’s husband Emir. Deniz and Pinar grew up together in Turkey, but have dramatically different backgrounds. Deniz studied fashion in NYC, and then returned home to Turkey to be a designer for an upscale clothing boutique, helping them produce their in-house line. Pinar, meanwhile, studied economics at Harvard and then earned an MBA at Wharton. Later in life, when she decided to do something more creative, she co-founded Rumisu with her sister and brother-in-law. “She’s become the total bohemian in the family,” Deniz says affectionately. “Early in our collections, we had a print titled ‘Come Out of Your Closet,’ which was inspired by Pinar coming out as a more artistic person when everyone expected something different from her.”
By their nature, basics aren’t very exciting to talk about, but they also form the backbone of our wardrobe. I imagine that’s one of the biggest challenges for Luca Faloni, a relatively new Italian company specializing in fine dress shirts, knitwear, and leather goods. They started in 2013 on the idea of selling high-end Italian products directly to consumers, cutting out the middleman and offering more value (a common marketing angle these days, even if the idea of value is more complicated in reality). But there’s an important difference between them and other brands doing the same thing. Since their items are so basic and simple, on first blush they can seem indistinguishable from the thousands of other products online. Think of how the market for white t-shirts work – since t-shirts are mostly fungible, they compete on price.
Luca Faloni, the company’s founder and namesake, recognizes this. “We rely on word of mouth and repeat business,” he says. “Selling classic men’s shirts and knitwear on the internet comes with a lot of challenges, namely the customer can’t feel the materials. But we hope to offer such tremendous products, customers come back after their first purchase.” For Luca, this distinction on materials is paramount. He prides himself on using top-end Italian yarns, such as Cariaggi cashmere. In fact, the entire production process is done in Italy, from the yarn spinning to the cutting-and-sewing (although the fibers themselves are sourced elsewhere).
The collection here is simple and likely wouldn’t catch many eyes on Instagram. In today’s attention economy, wardrobe basics such as these can fly by our screens. At the same time, they also form the foundation of the “casual Italian” look that’s popular among men who are trying to find new ways of dressing down their tailored clothing, or wear slightly more refined versions of casualwear. Luca Faloni has slim-fit linen shirts, in both spread and band collars, then some brushed cotton equivalents for cooler days. These are single-needle sewn with mother-of-pearl buttons and crows foot stitching (typical for this price point). They also have some basic knitwear, including plain crewnecks and shallower v-necks, as well as linen shorts. The entire collection has that semi-resort vibe that’s common in Italian casualwear.
To understand male fashion today, you have to go back to The Great Masculine Renunciation. Somewhere around the time of Beau Brummell and The French Revolution, European elites traded their sumptuous garb for utilitarian clothes that underscored their commitment to work over aesthetics. Ornate fashion was for women, not “serious men” focused on living out a life of the mind. The difference between these two eras couldn’t be starker. Just compare how extravagantly King Louis XIV dressed to the sobriety of President Macron.
This split in history, which divides men’s dress like the BC and AD periods of the Gregorian calendar, explains our attitudes towards male jewelry. Jewelry has a strange place in the world of men’s accessories. Scarves, gloves, and wristwatches are acceptable because of their utility; pocket squares and neckties are OK for no other reason than tradition. But once you get beyond a modest wedding band, the idea of a man wearing something ornate, expensive, and metal seems tacky. They offend a certain sensibility we find difficult to pinpoint or even justify, but nonetheless stand by.
After the Second World War, jewelry has come in and out of fashion depending on how we feel about gender and class. In the 1970s, when it was socially acceptable for men to show a more feminine side, hippies and counter-culture types wore bracelets and necklaces; high-flying business elites wore flat links with pinstriped suits in the ‘80s; and surfers have been known to use Saint Christopher medallions as good luck charms. Throughout these periods, many men have worn jewelry well – even magnificently. Like others in the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes occasionally wore a silver onyx ring to show a bit of personality. Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Paul Newman sported chunky, silver ID bracelets with jeans and t-shirts. And Yves Saint Laurent, one of the chicest to ever wear a suit, accessorized with a precious metal bracelet.
English fashion designer Hardy Amies had a simple rule for getting dressed: if it looks right, it is right. The only rule for combining colors is to create a visually pleasing outfit, but doing so requires more than transplanting concepts from art theory books. Fashion isn’t like other art forms, to the degree it can be called an art form itself, and you can’t combine colors for an outfit in the way an artist would for a painting. There’s a social and emotional language to clothing. A neatly folded, white linen pocket square says business in a way that other squares don’t.
Most people know the basics when it comes to color combinations. Grey trousers and blue jeans go with almost anything; dress shirts are often best in solid white and light blue. It’s moving beyond the basics that becomes challenging. How do you wear lighter colored sport coats? Which colors besides grey and tan work for trousers? How do you wear brighter, more unusual colors without looking like an Easter egg?
I recently spoke to Greg Lellouche about these questions. Greg, for those unfamiliar, is the founder of No Man Walks Alone (a sponsor on this site, although this isn’t a sponsored post). I’ve always admired Greg’s eye when it comes to color combinations. Before launching his online store, he worked as an investment banker on Wall Street, where he had to wear a suit-and-tie every day. At the same time, he often wears more progressive labels such as Stephen Schneider and Junya Watanabe on weekends. That appreciation for both classic men’s dress and avant garde casualwear, I think, gives him a unique perspective. Greg wears things that are a little off the beaten path, but in ways that I think are easy for others to adopt.
