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You used to have to muscle your way into stores and stand in long lines to take advantage of Black Friday promotions. Nowadays, everything is online, so you can shop from the comfort of your own home. The difficulty, of course, is that you're then swamped with possibilities, making it impossible to know what to buy. To make the landscape a little easier to navigate, I round up some of my favorite Black Friday 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. Here's this year's list organized by increasing order of price with a smattering of miscellanea at the end. 

J. CREW: 50% OFF EVERYTHING; NO CODE NEEDED

In 2020, when J. Crew filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, I wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post about how this preppy brand plays an important role in the menswear market. For many guys, J. Crew is their entry point into building a better wardrobe. The company's prices are relatively affordable, and the designs are fairly classic. The company sells things such as chambray work shirts, field jackets, and flat-front chinos—things that look good on almost everyone. However, the departures of Jenna Lyons and Frank Muytjens in 2017 casted a shadow of uncertainty. Speculation surfaced about plans to transform J. Crew into a version of The Gap, potentially distributed through Amazon. So it was a relief when the company ousted the old management and design team, replacing them with Brendon Babenzien, the new Creative Director, who has steered the company clear of such a fate, injecting renewed vitality into this iconic label.

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.

I envy people who aren't interested in clothes. Just the sight of a chunky cream sweater or camp collar shirt is enough to send me into a daydreaming tailspin, where I waste hours of my day poring over online images and reading about the product's construction. Then I imagine the new and exciting life I would lead if I only had that outfit, temporarily forgetting that I'm actually sitting on my couch with my laptop, cat, and Pendleton blanket on my lap, having not moved for hours and with no intention of doing so. I recently found myself doing this, as many of the best online stores are having their end-of-season promotions, each product page ripe with the hope of possibility—the opportunity to dress up for a friendly lunch, a celebratory dinner, or a walk to the market to buy flowers for one's self. So here is a roundup of some of the sales I've been admiring online, peppered with ideas of when and where you can wear such items. 

SSENSE: UP TO 60% OFF; NO CODE

Maybe it's because I recently watched the Lemaire SS24 show, but I've been once again daydreaming about the artsy, cultivated life I assume I would live if I just owned a few more pieces from this French designer. Lemaire's clothes fit loose, giving you comfort and room to hide an aging dad bod, but they're rendered in fabrics and details that allow you to pretend you're a sophisticated Belgian artist excited about the coming relaunch of the beloved book-lit mag Bookforum. I really like the company's summer pants, which come with self-belts, twisted side seams, and topstitching in unusual places. They move and swish when you walk and lend an attractive silhouette to plain summer outfits. I've been wearing the company's taupe twisted pants with a cream-colored, silk camp collar shirt I bought from The Post Romantic last year, modeled after this Umit Benan design (the shirt isn't on Post Romantic's site, but is available if you just email them). 

For the last few years, I've been doing these posts about things I'm excited to wear for the season. They're a way for me to talk about things I'm excited about without getting into the fraught concept of "wardrobe essentials" (which feels increasingly less relevant nowadays when people have such different needs and lifestyles). Still, readers have found these posts to be useful as seasonal style guides. Here's this year's "excited for spring" post with a bonus soundtrack at the end. You can check previous years' posts for 2018, 2019 (I also did one for summer), 2021, and 2022. 

CHAMBRAY AND SILKY SHIRTS

I've always been primarily an oxford cloth button-down guy. I admire the style's place in American clothing history, as well as its casual, rumpled nature and bookish appeal. However, in the last few years, I've also added two other shirt styles to my regular rotation: snap-button Western shirts, mostly those rendered in denim or needlecord, and silky shirts made from slippery materials such as rayon, Tencel, and actual silk. 

In the mid-2000s, I used to take the bus to Kinokuniya, an Asian bookstore in San Francisco that sold Japanese magazines like Men's Precious, Men's Ex, and, of course, the famous Free & Easy. Non-English publications, then as now, covered classic menswear better than their English counterparts. While American magazines like GQ and Esquire featured articles on Thom Browne and Tom Ford, Japanese publications discussed the differences between English and Italian tailoring, Alden's many lasts, and specialty retailers like The Andover Shop. The issue, of course, was that the writing was in Japanese, making it unintelligible to anyone who did not know the language. Aside from English brand names, there were only a few amusing English phrases, such as RUGGED MAN and DAD STYLE (terms for workwear and trad, respectively). Despite my misgivings about spending $25 on a magazine I couldn't read, no one else did this kind of print coverage. The photos alone were an education.

Last summer, I was delighted to learn that Eisuke Yamashita, a former Men's Precious editor, now runs his own website, Mon Oncle (French for "my uncle"). His site features profiles on menswear legends such as Luciano Barbera, celebrities such as Juzo Itami, and artisans outside the menswear space, such as woodworker Takafumi Mochizuki. I was also pleased to see a multi-part series on Yukio Akamine, whom I regard as the most stylish man alive. Akamine has a long history in the Japanese menswear scene. He's introduced generations of Japanese men to classic style and consulted for brands such as United Arrows. Nowadays, he runs a made-to-measure tailoring company called Akamine Royal Line and appears on Japanese shows to discuss menswear.

In his Mon Oncle interviews, Akamine shares some charming observations and advice. He encourages people to wear jackets that are full enough to allow for comfortable layering ("It doesn't make sense if you can't wear a sweater underneath your jacket") and recommends using fountain pens on a regular basis ("Write letters and take notes. Dozens of years later, they will be a memory for the next generation."). Akamine also emphasizes the importance of good manners ("Don't arrive at someone's home empty-handed. Purchase something that you enjoyed eating. Take it out of the bag, hold it with both hands and say, 'Please enjoy this.' Or wrap it in a furoshiki."). Regarding style, he says, "You don't have to read fashion magazines. Open the window and look outside when you wake up in the morning. A man who can cook rice is a hundred times cooler."

I was having dinner with Nicholas Templeman a few years ago at Besharam, a small Indian restaurant located on the outskirts of San Francisco. Over spicy vegetarian curries and delicate semolina puffs, we discussed how the British shoemaking trade has changed over the years. I told him I'd recently spoken with Daniel Wegan and Emiko Matsuda, two bespoke shoemakers who, like him, left prestigious West End firms to launch their own shoemaking businesses. Wegan and Matsuda's operations are modest, with no advertising budgets, celebrity endorsements, or visible shopfronts. When I asked how customers typically find them, they said, "Instagram." "That was a big part of why I left John Lobb when I did," Templeman told me. "At the time, some independent makers in Japan made good use of social media, but not many people in the UK. Even the big shops were barely visible online. With the rise of social media sites like Instagram, I felt this was a good time to become independent."

In the last twenty years, the British bespoke trade has changed dramatically along two fronts: skyrocketing rents and the loss of skilled labor have made it more difficult for larger firms to earn profits and maintain quality. Simultaneously, the internet has created a more informed consumer. These customers, who can be described as "shoe mad" enthusiasts, scour blogs and forums for niche details about shoemaking that few people know or care about. Like Athenian philosophers or Tibetan monks, they use the dialectical process to arrive at truths about handwelting and Goodyear welting, Celastic and leather stiffeners, and the specialized construction techniques that go into the uppers and soles of shoes, such as split-and-lift sewing and fiddleback finishings. For men who have succumbed to the allure of craft, celebrity endorsements and shallow, romantic accounts of the bespoke process are not enough. They want to know the intricate, technical details of shoemaking.

These changes have impacted the British bespoke trade in some crucial ways. In the mid-19th century, Punch co-founder Henry Mayhew published a seminal study on London's laboring classes. He estimated the city had 28,574 shoemakers (or "bootmakers" if you prefer the Queen's English) in the 1840s, making it the third most popular occupation. By the end of the century, improvements in ready-made footwear dramatically shrank this number to around 3,000, consolidating many workers into a handful of large firms. Among these businesses were gilded names such as John Lobb, Peal & Company, and Henry Maxwell, who built reputations by making shoes for presidents and pioneers, authors and actors, titans of industry, and other members of the ruling class. They also reaped the benefits of a fawning press. After reading enough breathless prose, wealthy men convinced themselves that spending thousands on shoes "would itself be an act of poetry," as my friend Réginald-Jérôme de Mans put it. 

For the past few years, I've been doing these posts every season where I talk about what I'm excited to wear for spring/summer and fall/winter. I usually do these at the beginning of the season. This one comes a little late, but on the upside, I get to talk about some new things I've purchased and have been wearing. There are also more links to in-season options. 

Flamborough Marine Guernsey

Daniel Day-Lewis once said he hates to be "dressed." By which he means, "dressed by others." He rejects the conventional photoshoot routine as an artifice—photographers and stylists carefully dress their subjects in clothes borrowed from fashion labels, often those advertising on the pages next to the celebrity being featured. So when DDL was photographed for the cover of W Magazine a few years ago, he brought with him a small duffle full of his own clothes. His wardrobe that day included a thoughtful mix of styles: a bespoke three-piece Harris tweed suit made by a tailor in New York City, a blue plaid shirt, a white tee, some rugged jewelry, a pair of slim-straight selvedge jeans, a striped Breton pullover, and some rugged work boots he designed himself. "I want to wear soft, comforting, plain things," he told the interviewer. When the article was published, a small line was printed below each photograph, taking the place where brand names would usually appear. Each line read: "All clothing his own."  

Over the summer, I emailed Fred Nieddu, the skilled cutter behind the independent bespoke tailoring house taillour, to see if he would be willing to extend his US trunk show schedule to include California. After a bit of emailing back and forth, I'm delighted to report that he agreed. Next month, he and his business partner will be visiting San Francisco and New York City to meet with clients and take orders (subsequent trips will happen once every three or four months, as usual for traveling tailors). 

I became interested in Fred's work at the end of 2020, when I wrote a piece for the Vulture about how the Netflix series The Crown used Barbour jackets to represent each character's relationship with power. Although the article was about waxed cotton field coats, it was the tailoring in the show that truly captivated me. Josh O'Connor's Prince Charles wears the three-button, narrow-lapel suits that the real-life Prince favored as a youth before switching to drapey double-breasted numbers later in life. I remember thinking that the silhouettes were more faithful to the Golden Age of tailoring than the bespoke sport coat I commissioned from Anderson & Sheppard in 2016. 

I later learned that Fred made all of the menswear in the series. He's also made bespoke clothes for Ralph Fiennes in Bond and all of the lead actors in Murder on the Orient Express (along with countless other films and TV shows). This, combined with the fact that he teaches pattern drafting to third-year tailoring students at the London College of Fashion, makes him a rather unique tailor. Most tailors are known for a specific house style they've perfected over time, such as Anderson & Sheppard's soft drape cut, Huntsman's padded look, or Edward Sexton's strong, angular lines. While Fred has a signature style, he's much more adaptable, as evidenced by how his clothes fit like puzzle pieces into the worlds depicted in these shows. 

Bespoke tailoring and the restaurant industry share something in that they both use the terms "back of house" and "front of house" to describe how their businesses are structured. "Back of house" refers to the behind-the-scene activities that customers typically don't see, such as the cutters, tailors, chefs, and line cooks who prepare the things that are eventually given to customers. "Front of house" is a little different. In the restaurant industry, this term refers to the customer touchpoints, such as the waitstaff and host who work to create a pleasant experience. The front of a bespoke tailoring house, which can consist of salespeople and fitters, also provides those things. However, they also offer something more important: a sense of taste.

George Wang, the founder of the Beijing-based bespoke tailoring company BRIO, works the front of house. When you commission something here, you're not just paying for the skillful craftsmanship that goes into each garment, but also George's sense of taste. He's the one who created the company's overall aesthetic. He's also the person who will guide you through decisions such as fabric choices and stylistic details. George tells me that each customer is different, and it's important to be sensitive to a person's needs, lifestyle, and even personality. A conservative businessman who needs a winter work suit has very different requirements than a young creative who wants something to wear to summer parties. It's easy to trivialize this service now that there's so much information on the internet, leading people to believe they can do everything independently. But over the years, I've come to appreciate how useful it is to work with a tailoring house that has both "front" and "back" staff persons (tailors, while wonderful, are better thought of as technicians than stylists). At Rubinacci, Mariano does the vital work of ensuring every client walks out of his shop looking "right."

I often ask George for his opinion on things, such as the right fabric to use for a project, what color the lining should be in a folio, and what watch best matches a certain kind of wardrobe. He always gives me an answer that feels like a step above what I would have initially considered. Instead of the usual recommendations for linen, wool-silk-linen blends, and Fresco for warm-weather garments, he recommended to me slippery Super 150s wools in colors such as light blue, coral, and citrus yellow. He also turned me on to London Shrunk, as well as world-class makers such as Sartoria Corcos, Sartoria Marinaro, The Work, Saic, and Masahito Furuhata. In a word, I find his taste to be sophisticated. So, for the last entry in this series, I'll start with George's thoughts on how to develop good taste. 

Style is still something of an art and has not, in Bruce Boyer's words, "descended to one of the sciences." The process of developing taste is akin to developing a worldview or personal philosophy—it's a highly subjective process not easily given to hard rules. But over the years, I've noticed that people who've been able to develop tasteful wardrobes in a short period of time often rely on the gentle guidance of tasteful merchants, tailors, and friends. So for the remainder of this series on how to develop good taste (part one was published a few weeks ago), I'm surveying stylish people on how they think others can develop a similarly keen sense of aesthetics. Consider these entries like gentle advice from a friend who has the kind of high taste that almost seems unreachable.

When I first considered who to include in this post, I immediately thought of Mark Cho. Mark is the co-founder of The Armoury and someone I occasionally turn to for wardrobe recommendations. But it was his interview with WatchBox Studios a few years ago that made me want to get his views on the broader subject of taste. In the interview, Mark discusses his watch collecting journey, which started many years ago with an affordable Omega Chronostop he purchased at a second-hand watch store in Hong Kong. He was drawn to the watch for two reasons: he liked the shape of the case and had never seen a gray watch before. That purchase sparked in him a horological passion, and he was soon obsessed with collecting the milestones and classics in watch-making history. But as he's chopped and changed his collection over the years, he's found that almost none of those iconic pieces have remained. Instead, his watch collection is just a reflection of his taste, which is threaded together by nothing more than his emotional connection to objects. Having seen and handled thousands of watches since that initial Omega purchase, Mark has also developed what art dealers call The Eye—“that irrevocable power to discern art from trash, real from fake, inspired from derivative."

There's no better representation of what it means to have taste than Mark's tantalum and steel Royal Oak. Originally made to celebrate Nick Faldo's 1990 Masters and British Open back-to-back championships, Mark purchased it in 2013 because he wanted a baby version of the jumbo-sized Royal Oak 5402. But the only way to achieve that smaller, thinner profile was to get a quartz movement, which the Faldo version houses. High-horology purists would probably frown on the idea of spending thousands of dollars on a quartz movement, but Mark didn't purchase his Royal Oak as a flex or an "anti-flex"—he simply wanted a smaller version of that design. "The Royal Oak used to be the watch no one wanted, and the quartz even less so," Mark told me. "In the US, many people considered that watch too small, almost like it's a ladies' watch." True style means dressing like you know yourself, and having the confidence to wear things others might dismiss as uncool. At the same time, it requires cultural awareness and sensitivity to the social meaning of your aesthetic choices. I love that Mark's Royal Oak captures all of those things, so we'll start today's post with his views on how to develop good taste.