Maybe it was all those old midcentury Ivy League moodboard photos, where loafers show up with such regularity that you start to think they must have been issued alongside the acceptance letters. Maybe it was looking at photos of JFK in Hyannis Port, somehow making a pair of loafers look more natural on vacation than most people can manage in sneakers and sandals. Or maybe it was all those years spent looking through menswear forums, blogs, and Japanese magazines, noticing that whether the subject was American trad, Italian tailoring, or something entirely its own, loafers kept showing up.

Whatever the reason, they eventually became one of those things in menswear that just make sense. The loafer simply is.

Which is funny, because for a shoe so closely associated with American style, its story actually begins in England.

Or perhaps, as is often the case with these things, it begins in several places at once. Like most enduring classics, the loafer wasn’t really invented so much as refined. There were Norwegian slip-ons worn by fishermen and farmers in the early twentieth century. There were also moccasin traditions around the world stretching back much further. And then there was G.H. Bass’s Weejun, which would eventually give the penny loafer its enduring nickname after American students started tucking pennies into the strap, supposedly for emergency phone calls.

But before all of that entered the modern American consciousness, there was Wildsmith.

Founded in 1847, Wildsmith & Sons built its reputation making boots for the Household Cavalry before becoming a favorite among Britain’s upper crust and, eventually, the Royal Family. As the company grew, it established itself in the heart of London’s menswear district, first on Duke Street in Marylebone, then later in Princes Arcade between Piccadilly and Jermyn Street, surrounded by some of the most storied shirtmakers, tailors, and shoemakers in the world.

The company’s defining contribution came when Raymond Lewis Wildsmith (on the left above) was asked to create an informal house shoe for King George VI, something comfortable enough to wear around the house but elegant enough to satisfy royal expectations.

The result was the Model 98.

Few brands can say they invented an icon. Wildsmith can. The Model 98 was the original English loafer, a design that would go on to influence the way generations of men thought about casual footwear.

Strictly speaking, the first iteration wasn’t a penny loafer as we understand the term today. The penny slot and nickname would arrive later through American interpretations of the loafer. But the Model 98 helped establish the basic template: a laceless shoe that sat somewhere between formal and casual.

Seen today, it doesn’t look particularly revolutionary. But that’s usually the hallmark of a successful design — we forget there was ever a world before it existed.

At the time, a laceless shoe that could occupy that space between formal and casual represented something genuinely new.

The loafer offered ease without sacrificing elegance. A hundred years later, that’s still what makes it compelling.

A few of my own Wildsmith loafers I’ve accrued over the past two years

For all the ways menswear has changed over the last century, most of us are still looking for the same thing: clothes and shoes that let us move through different parts of our lives without constantly changing costumes. The loafer works with tailoring but never feels precious. It looks right with denim and chinos without drifting into sloppiness. It can skew preppy, continental, rugged, or polished depending entirely on what surrounds it.

It’s one of the few genuinely democratic objects in menswear, but it didn’t become that way overnight.

The Americans got hold of it and did what we tend to do best: we democratized it. Ivy League students adopted loafers as part of the uniform that would eventually become known as Ivy Style. Wall Street took Gucci’s horse-bit style and made it a symbol of quiet authority. JFK and pretty much that entire generation wore them often enough that they became wrapped up in the mythology of American ease, that elusive ability to look impeccably dressed without seeming like you tried particularly hard.

Somehow, through all of these shifts, the loafer never became trapped by any one of those identities. It just kept adapting.

Interestingly enough, that’s exactly what Wildsmith has done, too.

Wildsmith’s Model 53 Snaffle-Bit, Model 82 Tassel, Model 31 Penny, Model 98 Penny, and Model 2 House Shoe

There’s a temptation with heritage brands to believe that authenticity means preserving everything exactly as it was. English manufacturing. Traditional construction methods. Absolute fidelity to the archive.

But survival has always required some amount of adaptation, and Wildsmith’s current chapter under George Paver seems to understand that distinction better than most.

The company has moved production to Portugal, not as a compromise, but as a way of maintaining quality while keeping prices within reach. The shoes retain the details that connect them to their history, including the diamond-punch motif, which appears throughout the collection as a subtle nod to the penny slot that helped define the category. At the same time, they acknowledge that people live differently than they did a century ago.

The resoleable Blake construction makes the shoes lighter and more flexible underfoot. Newly developed lasts reflect contemporary expectations around fit and comfort. There’s even a little cushioning built into the insoles, enough to notice without fundamentally changing the character of the shoe.

Purists may object to some of these changes, but I’d argue they’re entirely in keeping with Wildsmith’s history. After all, the original Model 98 wasn’t created as an exercise in nostalgia. It was an innovation, a practical response to how someone wanted to live.

I’ve spent the past several months wearing a handful of Wildsmith styles, including two versions of the Model 98, one in black calf and another in tan suede, alongside the Model 31 in polished black leather and the grain leather Model 88.

The calfskin Model 98 is probably what most people picture when they think of a penny loafer. Elegant without becoming severe, it works as naturally with tailoring as it does with jeans and a knit polo.

Yet the tan suede version may actually be my favorite. It captures all the ease that made loafers appealing in the first place. It feels less like a dress shoe and more like an invitation to dress well without overthinking it.

The Model 31, with its rubber sole and rounder last, feels a little more suited to the reality that most of us spend more time navigating city streets than strolling through gentlemen’s clubs.

The Model 88’s grain leather brings a welcome Belgian-style tassel to a ruggedness and texture that should only improve with wear.

Across all of them, what stood out wasn’t simply the design but the comfort. They feel considered in a way that many heritage shoes don’t, balancing tradition with an understanding of what modern life actually asks of our footwear.

To me, that’s exactly why loafers have lasted. Unlike most other leather shoes, they remain relevant because they keep evolving.

The version worn by Ivy League students wasn’t identical to the one made for King George VI. The loafers worn on Wall Street weren’t the same ones worn by jazz musicians or Japanese enthusiasts of American style. Each generation has found something slightly different within the same essential form.

The best classics work this way. They give you enough structure to remain recognizable, but enough flexibility to become your own.

A hundred years after the Model 98 first appeared, the loafer has continued to find a way to belong to the present. As tried and true as jeans and t-shirts, they’re one of the few components of a man’s wardrobe that I can’t help but keep coming back to.

I’m getting rid of a good chunk of it.

I’ve always liked the idea of owning things that get better with time, but that doesn’t mean everything deserves to stay. So I’m trying to be more honest about what I actually use and what I actually like.

It turns out that is a pretty good way to refine your sense of taste, too.

Most Worns

A few things I’ve been wearing on repeat lately:

Morjas Penny Loafer in Burgundy

They’re still slowly breaking in, which is part of the fun. Burgundy is one of those colors that works with almost everything, and I’ve been wearing these enough that they’re finally beginning to show it.

Moredocks Cowboy Jean

I’ve been wearing these on my days with Sid Mashburn, paired with a jacket and tie, which is my favorite way to wear jeans. The higher rise and slight bootcut make them feel more deliberate than a standard pair of five-pocket jeans, without making me look like I’m trying too hard.

Proper Cloth “Soft Ivy” Button-Downs

I’ve settled on a very specific version: an Ivy-style soft collar, vintage hem, no sleeve-placket button, and chunky Australian mother-of-pearl buttons. I have white Oxford, white poplin, and sky-blue end-on-end for now. I’d like to add some color and pattern, but these three have become a very useful foundation.

Merz b. Schwanen 215 T-shirt

I’ve owned this for more than a year and am only just now realizing it’s probably the best T-shirt I own. The single-needle seams, slim ribbed collar, vintage fit, and slubby loopwheeled fabric all add up to something that just looks good with everything. It’s comfortable without looking like a comfort shirt.

Casio F-91W / Taxco Silver Chain

The minimalist Casio F-91W has been getting the most wrist time. I still reach for my Captain Willard when I want something more substantial and my Omega Seamaster when I want something more refined, but this little sucker is hard to beat for daily wear. On the other wrist, summer has meant my Taxco silver version of the Hermès-style Chaîne d’Ancre.

Alex Mill Perfect Weekend Tote in Olive

My olive-green tote has become the default. Their team hand-painted my initials on it in cobalt blue, which makes it feel like mine, and it’s not bulky yet more than big enough for packages, records, or whatever else I inevitably end up carrying around.

The Bengal Stripe × Papa Nui Denim Hell Cat

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the denim cap I made with Papa Nui. It’s a bit floppy and scrunchy now that it’s broken in. I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops as I continue to wear it.

I’m still on the hunt for good boxers and dress socks, so recommendations are welcome.

Why I’m Removing the Paywall

I’ve been thinking about this at the same time I’m thinking about what to keep in my closet. When I started putting some of The Bengal Stripe behind a paywall, it made sense. I wanted to see if I could build a paid readership and put a little more weight behind the work.

It worked well enough. More importantly, it taught me something about what people responded to. But I’ve reached a point where I’d rather have more people reading than fewer people paying.

I don’t want The Bengal Stripe to be something you have to decide whether you can justify subscribing to before you can read it. I want the work to travel. I want someone who has never heard of me to stumble across an article and find something useful in it. I want the ideas to reach people who are interested in clothes, objects, craft and the way we live with them.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that taste and craft are at the heart of all of this. Taste doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have an opinion on everything. It’s simply knowing what is for you and what isn’t. And craft isn’t about taking things to a place that’s inaccessible to most people, but making something well enough that it earns its keep. That is what I want The Bengal Stripe to be about, so I’m removing the paywall.

There will still be ways to support the work, and I’ll still be figuring out how to make this into a sustainable business. But the writing I do here will be free. I’m also going to write less, but with more intention. There is already enough stuff competing for our attention. I don’t want to add to it unless I have something worth saying.

That’s probably the same standard I’m going to apply to what I own: Keep the good stuff. Get rid of the rest. Make what remains count.

I’d been to Japan before, but never in the summer and never with Ruby, which made this trip entirely different. The first time, I’d approached Japan the way I approach almost anything I’m interested in: obsessively. I had lists. Shops marked on Google Maps. Saved Instagram posts from stores, restaurants, cafés, and bars that I was convinced I couldn’t miss. This time would be different, though, because it was our honeymoon, and despite my best efforts to turn it into a three-week research trip, there was a little voice reminding me that the point was not simply to collect experiences but actually to live them. Of course, old habits die hard, and I ignored that voice almost immediately.

Within the first few days of arriving, I had somehow lined up a couple of meetups across Tokyo with people whose work I’d admired for years, and a laundry list of must-visit shops, which meant that instead of easing into the trip with leisurely walks, afternoons in coffee shops, and maybe an embarrassing early bedtime, I found myself dragging Ruby through the rain as a seemingly monthlong monsoon rolled over the city. In fairness, these were not meetings I wanted to miss, and I’ll get to them later because they ended up being some of the most memorable moments of the trip, but looking back now I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it. There I was, on the first real afternoon of my honeymoon, soaked through, carrying a plastic umbrella I’d bought at Lawson’s fifteen minutes earlier, and speed-walking across Tokyo because I’d convinced myself this was somehow the responsible thing to do.

The funny thing with travel is that there’s always a version of yourself that exists before the trip and a version that actually arrives. The first version has carefully considered everything (or at least tried to). They’ve packed the perfect wardrobe, researched the perfect restaurants, built the perfect itinerary, and somehow believe that a place they’ve never been to can be experienced according to a spreadsheet. The second version arrives tired, hungry, slightly overwhelmed, and usually carrying a piece of clothing that seemed like a good idea when packing but immediately reveals itself to be completely impractical. That second version is always a little more tired, a little hungrier, a little sweatier, and, in my case, a little more willing to abandon the itinerary. But I wasn’t quite there yet.

To reiterate, the weather in Japan in late June and July is no joke. Everyone warns you about it, but warnings have a funny way of losing their meaning when you’re sitting in an air-conditioned apartment thinking about a trip months away. I assumed people were exaggerating or simply less experienced. It turns out it wasn’t the heat itself that was necessarily unbearable, but the humidity that changes everything. It turns a ten-minute walk into something that feels like a small expedition, and it makes every clothing decision suddenly much more important.

Packing for Japan was, naturally, something I spent far too much time thinking about. The challenge was that we weren’t staying in one place and our itinerary was pretty unstructured. We needed to fly into and out of Tokyo, but the middle of the trip would take us north through Morioka, Hakodate, Sapporo, and Otaru, which meant packing for Tokyo rain, cool Hokkaido evenings, endless walking, and whatever else we might encounter along the way. The answer, at least in theory, was simple: pack less, choose better.

In reality, I brought a little of the right stuff and a little of the wrong. From the bottom up, I started with Belgian Shoes, my Sid Mashburn handsewn pennies, and a pair of August Special Voyager chukkas. On paper, it made sense. I wanted something soft, something a bit more substantial, and something that could handle the occasional day of heavy walking. In practice, I probably could have survived with two of the three, especially considering we ended up walking an absurd amount every day. Still, there is something comforting about having a few presentable options when you’re away from home for three weeks and unsure of what each day will hold.

Somewhere around the halfway mark of the trip, I admitted defeat and bought a pair of German Army Trainers from Reproduction of Found at Rifare in Sapporo Station’s mall, Stellar Place. After days of walking around Tokyo, Morioka, and Hakodate, their incredibly supple leather and lightweight gum sole felt something like a small revelation. I also picked up some navy cotton dress socks from FamilyMart, which sounds like an insignificant detail until you’ve spent three weeks trying to convince yourself that your bare feet aren’t slowly falling apart in half-drenched loafers. I also bought a pair of George Cleverley Lazyman shoes at David’s Clothing in Shibuya, where Ruby found herself an iridescent 1950s Burberry’s trench coat.

For trousers, I kept things simple: my Observer Khumla Khakis and a pair of old American-made Wrangler 13MWZs that I love but quickly realized were completely inappropriate for Japanese summer. They are wonderful jeans, made from dense-enough denim to survive a small explosion, which is not exactly what you want when walking through Tokyo rains.

Eventually I replaced practicality with necessity and bought a pair of black nylon baggies from FamilyMart, along with a pair of balloon-shaped navy Toraichi work trousers from a hardware store. Neither was something I’d planned on buying before the trip, but both ended up becoming some of the most useful.

This is one of my favorite things about traveling: the place itself starts editing your wardrobe for you. You leave home thinking you know what you need, and somewhere along the way you realize the place has a better understanding of what you actually need.

Up top, I leaned heavily into the tried-and-true with a touch of Ivy. A Take Ivy bootleg tee from Fraser Croll, and a long-sleeve JJJJound “Enthusiast” tee, a reproduction RAF end-on-end popover, a couple of Proper Cloth button-downs in light blue end-on-end and white poplin, and a butter-yellow vintage Lands’ End pinpoint oxford that somehow became my most-worn piece despite it being one of the cheapest and least casual items I packed.

I also brought along my vintage Catatonic State sweatshirt and an Alex Mill cotton blazer that I modified with gold California State buttons because, apparently, even in Japan I couldn’t resist bringing a little bit of West Coast Ivy with me.

Along the way, I picked up Whitesville tees from GLOW in Morioka (in XL, despite usually wearing an M or L in American sizing), and a vintage chore coat and sleeping shirt from Whistler in Koenji, which ended up being one of my favorite shops of the trip.

On my wrist was an F-91WB-1A, the minimalist black version of the classic Casio digital watch, and on my head was my Quaker Marine Oysterman cap in waxed canvas, which survived rain, humidity, and the pocket of my pants or Indy bag a few more days than it or I probably expected.

Eventually I did what everyone does in Japan and bought a cheap umbrella from Lawson. Eventually we also bought two new Muji suitcases because, despite all my attempts at packing responsibly, we had apparently underestimated how many things we would find worth bringing home.

And that’s where the story of this trip really begins. Somewhere during the second day in Tokyo, we decided to stop trying so hard. Not in the sense that we suddenly became enlightened travelers who understood that the joy of Japan lies in wandering—that realization would come a little later—but simply because we were tired. We’d wake up early thanks to jet lag, walk until our feet hurt, duck into whichever café happened to be nearby, spend an hour or two wandering whatever neighborhood we’d found ourselves in, and by late afternoon the idea of waiting in line or trying to squeeze in a last-minute reservation at place we’d been recommended three months earlier suddenly seemed a lot less appealing than sitting wherever we already were with a cold beer and a bowl of noodles.

It’s funny how quickly your standards change when you travel. Back home I’ll happily spend twenty minutes reading reviews before deciding where to eat dinner, comparing menus and convincing myself that one place is somehow objectively better than another, whereas in Japan our criteria quickly became much simpler. Did it smell good? Were there a handful of locals inside? Did someone seem to be enthusiastically slurping? Perfect. In hindsight, it’s the same approach we use anywhere we go. Ask the locals. It never fails.

One afternoon we wandered into Menchirashi because there wasn’t much of a line (If you go around four o’clock, you’ll avoid the crowds entirely) and ordered the spicy carbonara, which sounds like exactly the sort of trendy thing I’d roll my eyes at back home, but it was actually really damn good. Another evening, after what can only be described as a thoroughly demoralizing walk through Koenji in the pouring rain—I’d somehow managed to time our vintage shopping excursion with the heaviest downpour of the week—we ducked into a little Mandarin restaurant called 孫ちゃん上海焼き小籠包, ordered whatever looked good, and sat there drinking tall cold beers and looking over a plastic-covered menu while our clothes slowly dried.

That dinner sticks with me far more than some of the more fanciful meals we had, partly because of the food, which was excellent, but mostly because it was the first evening where I remember feeling like we’d stopped trying to optimize the trip. We weren’t dutifully checking reviews anymore. We weren’t rushing to the next thing. We were just happy to be warm, slightly damp, and eating soup dumplings in the back of a small, casual restaurant while the locals around us started filtering in, punctuating every interaction with a cheerful 谢谢 that, for reasons I still don’t entirely understand, made the room feel wonderfully familiar despite being halfway around the world.

Koenji itself ended up being something of a mixed bag, at least for me. I’d always known it as one of Tokyo’s great vintage neighborhoods, and while that’s certainly true, I also found myself a little disappointed by how much of it had become the same sort of aggressively curated Americana that now seems to exist in every fashionable city, only more expensive. Rack after rack of overpriced “reference pieces”, Champion sweatshirts, tired military jackets, faded Levi’s with eye-watering price tags that I used to only see in Harajuku, and enough Harley-Davidson T-shirts to clothe a small Midwestern town. Maybe that’s just where all vintage has gone, or maybe I’d simply built it up too much in my head.

Either way, the shops I enjoyed most weren’t the ones trying to curate the most popular vintage so much as the ones that had their own perspective on it. Whistler was probably my favorite vintage shop of the trip, less because I found anything particularly rare (although I did leave with that wonderful old Chinese chore coat and Romanian sleeping shirt) than because the whole place felt like stepping inside someone’s reference library. The garments weren’t presented as trophies or investments; they felt like objects that had been collected because somebody genuinely loved them and wanted to understand how they were made. MOGI had a similar feeling. You could sense the taste and personal history behind Terry Ellis’ buying, and the man himself could back it up.

That distinction became more interesting to me as the trip went on. For all of Japan’s deserved reputation as a menswear destination, I actually found the reproduction/”heritage” shops surprisingly underwhelming. This feels vaguely sacrilegious to admit because I’ve spent years admiring what so many Japanese brands have done with American workwear, Ivy, and military clothing, but I occasionally found myself wishing for a little more curiosity and a little less reverence. Some shops felt almost frozen in amber, as though faithfully recreating mid-century America had become the end goal rather than the starting point.

The places I loved most all seemed to have their own point of view. Every location of BEAMS, unsurprisingly, was brilliant. Ruby found a handful of pieces there that immediately became favorites, which is something she has an uncanny ability to do when in my company. I spend about three milliseconds agonizing over whether I really need another denim jacket only to leave empty-handed after a cursory glance and end up searching online for other options, whereas she’ll walk into a shop, quietly disappear for fifteen minutes, emerge with exactly one thing, and six months later it’ll somehow have become the item she wears more than anything else. Japan rewarded both approaches, although hers was admittedly much more efficient.

I had two people I wanted to meet in Tokyo. Yuhei Yamamoto runs Tailor Caid, a small atelier on the third floor of a quaint Shibuya office building. As with many of our favorite cultural stops on our Japan tour, the humble space belies his depth of knowledge and appreciation for midcentury Americana. On my visit, Yamamoto-san graciously offered me an iced coffee as he took a break from cutting a new pattern to turn over the Sinatra record on his midcentury record player. The truth, I told him, is that our mutual friend Jeff Hilliard had praised him as someone worth visiting if I could, and I was just curious to get to know his world rather than commission anything. As I told Yamamoto-san a bit about myself, I saw his eyes light up. He scrounged around eagerly and pulled open a binder. Hundreds of old magazine scans, carefully selected and arranged, filled the book. As he pointed to a few 1950s street style photos of men on American city streets, he beckoned his wife to come in and help translate. “I bet you’ve never seen any of these on the internet,” he seemed to be saying in a more polite, roundabout way. I couldn’t help but laugh along with him, and he beckoned again, this time for me to try on a heavy overcoat he’d made in the style of one of those photographs. As I slipped it on, the weight seemed to disappear. I looked in his mirror and likened myself to a collegiate schoolboy like the ones in Dead Poets Society or that photo of Paul Newman in front of The Strand (it seems we all think in references). As I glanced at my reflection, I noticed a navy double-breasted jacket in the corner, not unlike the one I’d seen him make for Alex over at the Armoury. He corrected me: Alex’s was similar but in a 1920s silhouette, while this one was truer to the 1960s. Beckoning once again for me to try it on, Yamamoto-san remarked that I fit the sample perfectly. It did fit well, but I realized in my head that my preference for silhouette lay a bit closer to the 1920s version. I thought taking photos on film would add to the romance of the shop, but my film roll was ruined at some point on the trip, so I don’t have anything to show from this visit. But anyway, I had to run to meet with Seiji McCarthy, but before leaving, Yamamoto-san riffed off a couple of his favorite vintage shops that I absolutely had to visit: Brackets (floor-to-ceiling vintage militaria and workwear from around the world) and David’s Clothing (an anglophile’s paradise), both nearby in Shibuya.

On the way to Seiji’s shop, my New York walking legs kicked in, and I made light work of the journey through Yoyogi Park and up the hills of Harajuku towards Bryceland’s and around the corner. Seiji, like myself and Yamamoto-san, is an enthusiast through and through. Originally from the East Coast, Seiji went to school in Philadelphia (with Kobe Bryant, a poster of whom hangs in the shop’s back room), where he was exposed to the sort of traditional American clothing he wears today. He then spent his 20s in Tokyo reconnecting with his Japanese ancestry before moving back to the States to pursue a career with the NBA. Seiji quickly realized success in his stateside career but longed for a more creative pursuit. Every craftsperson I’ve ever spoken with seems to share this calling, but for some it takes a little more time to fully hone in on the direction. Seiji began an apprenticeship in bespoke shoemaking in Japan, under the tutelage of Japanese makers who held the elongated, chiseled English styles like George Cleverley in highest esteem. He continued in this tradition until he had a breakthrough, thanks in part to Ethan Newton of Bryceland’s, that helped him bring his story full circle. Bringing his New England roots to the forefront, Seiji has championed a more elegant take on traditional American styles. His full strap and split toe are on my bucket list, though the gunboats are beautiful enough to warrant consideration as well.

The nights belonged to music. I’d wanted to revisit Grandfather’s for years, and it somehow managed to live up to every memory I’d had around it. Listening bars have become one of those things that people talk about almost too much whenever Japan comes up, but sitting there reminded me why they’ve become such an enduring cliché. It’s not really about the records, although the records are wonderful, and it’s not even about the sound system. It’s really about the pace of it all. Nobody seems interested in turning tables. Nobody is checking their watch. The music isn’t background noise so much as the reason everyone came in the first place. We were there in the early evening, and as I heard Greg Phillinganes on a synthesizer come over the speaker, I told Ruby this was probably a real deep cut, which turned out to just be a John Mayer record. A few drinks later, I worked up the courage to request my favorite Wings song, which Grandfather himself dutifully nodded to, though I saw a smile creep across his face. Soul Stream, in Golden Gai, felt a bit younger and livelier, a little looser around the edges, and we ended up spending far longer there than we’d intended after I made a couple of song requests and Ruby and I became acquainted with the older gentlemen sitting across from us after she bummed a cigarette off them and they handed her a few more. That’s another thing travel teaches you: the days you remember most vividly are almost never the ones that went according to plan. You’ve got to stop looking at your phone long enough to forget what the plan was in the first place. By the time we boarded the train towards Morioka a few days later, I realized we’d barely scratched the surface of Tokyo, which initially felt like failure until it dawned on me that everyone probably leaves Tokyo feeling exactly the same way, and perhaps it’s part of the city’s charm that it rewards return visits rather than completion.

On the Hayabusa headed north, I’d felt like we’d finally settled into the trip, although maybe “given up” is the more accurate phrase. We’d given up on trying to see everything, on pretending we’d somehow crack Tokyo in four days, and on believing that the list I’d so meticulously put together before leaving Los Angeles was anything more than a collection of mere suggestions. It turns out that’s a much nicer way to travel. You stop asking, “What should we be doing?” and start asking, “What’s around the corner?” and, at least in Japan, the answer is usually something worth your time.

Whenever I’d told people we were spending a few days in Morioka, I’d almost always get the same response. Tokyo made sense. Kyoto would have made sense. Even Sapporo they could wrap their heads around. Morioka? Usually followed by a slightly puzzled look and some variation of, “Really?” which, if anything, only made me more excited to go because I’ve found over the years that my favorite places are rarely the ones everyone insists you visit and are usually the places that require a little explanation, and Morioka does require a little explanation. It isn’t trying to be the coolest city in Japan or the prettiest or the most historically significant. It just quietly gets on with being what it is, which meant that within about a day it had become one of my favorite stops of the entire honeymoon.

Our mornings there looked more or less the same, mostly because jet lag had us awake at an hour that felt unreasonable by vacation standards. One particular morning, we wandered over to Cappuccino Shiki, partly because I became strangely attached to the enormous moka pot sitting outside the café, which feels like exactly the sort of wonderfully unnecessary thing every city should have. Thick-cut toast, salad, coffee, and then we started walking without much of a destination in mind besides a general area, occasionally checking the map to make sure we weren’t accidentally heading in the opposite direction of where we thought we were going.

I realized somewhere around Morioka that I’d have liked to stop looking at a map altogether if I could help it. The first few days in Tokyo I’d been obsessed with efficiency—could we squeeze in one more shop before dinner, was it worth taking the train instead of walking, were we wasting time by sitting in this café for another twenty minutes—but that instinct slowly disappeared once we got further north. We’d wander through the ruins of Morioka Castle, stop for coffee at waltz (highly recommend their waltz and cello blends!) because it looked inviting, sit by the river for a while because there happened to be an empty bench, spend an afternoon at the Iwate Museum of Art, and if we stumbled across something interesting we’d go inside. It sounds obvious now, but it took me the better part of a week to remember that this is actually my favorite way to travel.

Our first evening in Morioka, we were wandering around trying to decide where to eat when a couple of young guys noticed us looking vaguely lost, asked if we were looking for dinner, and before we really had a chance to answer, they were already leading us down a darkened alley (against Ruby’s better judgment) to a tiny sushi restaurant they clearly loved. That’s another thing that kept happening in Japan. We obviously stood out like sore thumbs no matter how hard we tried to act natural, and people would understandably reckon we were visiting, ask where we were from, and then become oddly invested in making sure we had a good time. That night, we spent the next couple of hours drinking generous pours of junmai sake, trying natto sushi for the first time (which, despite its reputation, was excellent), and then heading to STEADY, a Jamaican oldies bar where the bartender chatted us up about everything from the Joe Strummer poster on the wall to Los Angeles and Shohei Ohtani (he’s from the Iwate prefecture that Morioka is nestled in), to why we’d ended up in Morioka of all places. By the end of the night we were exchanging bows and Instagram handles, and promising to stay in touch in the sort of way travelers always do, fully aware that the likelihood of actually seeing one another again is probably nonexistent (though he still is one of the first to view our Instagram stories). Those fleeting moments are some of my favorite travel memories.

The place I remember most fondly, though, is Johnny’s Jazz Café. I’d read a little about Johnny before we left, enough to know that his original listening bar in Rikuzentakata had been destroyed in the 2011 tsunami, and that he’d eventually rebuilt in Morioka after recovering what he could of his collection (which is an incredible story in itself), but none of that really prepares you for walking through the door. It doesn’t feel like a business so much as someone’s living room, if that someone happened to own an extraordinary record collection and wanted nothing more than to spend the evening sharing it with whoever wandered in. We talked for hours, and could have kept going. The other older people who were sitting around the living room table asked us about our favorite jazz musicians, at first, but also about the trip, Los Angeles, marriage, why we’d come to Morioka, and whatever else happened to come up between long pauses to listen to the music and contemplate. Every so often Johnny would disappear behind the shelves, emerge holding another LP with a smile on his face, and gently lower the needle as though introducing two old friends. Nobody seemed in a hurry to leave. Nobody was looking at their phone (they were all a bit too old to have that habit anyway). Johnny was the reason we’d all ended up in the same room, but it felt like we had more in common than just that.

I’ve thought about that evening a lot since coming home, partly because it was just a lovely way to spend a few hours, but mostly because it made me realize something I’d been noticing throughout the trip without quite putting words to it. Japan seems to reward enthusiasm in a way that I’ve only ever found in very unique individuals elsewhere. There’s very little expertise for the sake of status, and certainly not the sort of performative obsession the internet has become so good at encouraging, but a vein of genuine, deeply felt enthusiasm that runs through the core, especially among the older folk. The coffee shop owner who’s spent decades perfecting a very simple pourover. The couple of friends who couldn’t bear the thought of two strangers having an average dinner when they knew somewhere better. Johnny rebuilding a listening bar because he couldn’t imagine a life that wasn’t spent sharing music with people. At the time, I don’t think I recognized that I was collecting those moments more carefully than the clothes, the books, or anything else we’d eventually squeeze into the two very full Muji suitcases we lugged back, but looking back now they’re the first things that come to mind, which is the only real way to measure what actually mattered. Leaving Morioka felt surprisingly difficult, especially considering we’d only been there a few days. Though quaint and easy to check all the boxes of things to do, I couldn’t help feeling like there was something more there that I was only just getting acquainted with.

The train north to Hakodate traces the coastline for long stretches, and somewhere along the way the landscape starts feeling noticeably different. The mountains become softer, the towns a little smaller, and by the time you arrive in Hokkaido there’s an openness to everything that reminded both Ruby and me of our favorite parts of California and the Pacific Northwest—this feeling of having a little more room to breathe. Hakodate is the sort of historic city that encompasses several different centuries at once. Because it was the first port city in Hokkaido, there’s the old Western influence that everyone flocks to—the mansions, the warehouses, the hillside terraces—and then there are the neighborhoods where people are simply getting on with their day, hanging laundry, riding bicycles, stopping into little cafés that have probably been there longer than I’ve been alive. Of course, the latter appealed to us more.

Like everyone else who visits, we inevitably had to visit Lucky Pierrot, a blearingly ridiculous clown-themed fast food chain with 17 locations, all differently themed and scattered throughout Hakodate. On our first day, we ended up in the original location, which was the most modest apart from the swing set seating. I’d heard about it from a YouTube guide, but being in it transported me back to 90s fast food chains in all their kitschy excess. We landed in front of the register before I could translate the menu, so I ended up with the signature Chinese Chicken Burger, which was like General Tso’s chicken with lettuce and mayo in a bun, while Ruby got the Lucky Potato fries, which were essentially poutine. Reluctantly, I admit they may have been onto something, as we ended up at a different portside location — this one was filled with giant fiberglass fast food items and a giant Pierrot himself — for some soft serve the next day. Japan has a remarkable ability to take something that should, by all accounts, be slightly ridiculous and execute it with such sincerity that your cynicism never really has a chance. But the meal in Hakodate that stuck with me most wasn’t that one.

I don’t remember how I found MOSSTREES anymore, which is probably fitting because it felt like exactly the sort of place you’re supposed to stumble across rather than seek out. The dining room was tiny, with just a few differently-shaped wooden tables and chairs. The husband cooked while his wife welcomed guests with the sort of natural warmth that makes you feel like you’ve accidentally been invited into someone’s home instead of their restaurant. There was an old landline telephone sitting beside the register, a CD player cycling through John Coltrane hits, and a menu that looked like it was handwritten and selected by someone’s mother. Curry rice. Hamburger steak. Doria. Pasta. The sort of home cooking that you’d be hard-pressed to find in more fashionable cities because someone decided long ago it isn’t refined enough. And you could say the same about every other deliberate choice they made, which, of course, is why I loved it. Restaurants like this remind me that hospitality has very little to do with novelty. We often spend so much time chasing the next thing—the impossible reservation, the chef everyone’s talking about, the restaurant with six seats and no signage—that it’s easy to forget how satisfying it can be to eat somewhere that simply wants to feed you well and send you home happier than when you arrived.

It’s not just restaurants; everywhere we went in Japan, we encountered this general sentiment of care that still exists when you take the time to make it your priority. Online, it feels as though we’ve become obsessed with optimization, whether that’s travel or clothes or careers or restaurants or almost anything else. Every decision has to be the best decision. Every recommendation has to be the definitive one. Every city apparently has one coffee shop you absolutely can’t miss. Some of our favorite moments happened once we’d shifted our focus to hospitality.

Sapporo probably benefited from that mindset more than anywhere else. I wasn’t expecting to like it quite as much as I did. If Tokyo constantly asks for your attention, Sapporo seems perfectly content to let you discover it at your own pace, and perhaps because we’d finally stopped trying to maximize every hour of the day, it ended up becoming our favorite city of the trip. It also helped that I’d been looking forward to visiting an Anatomica flagship for years, and Sapporo happens to be better than the Tokyo one in my opinion—the interior is a little more log cabin and less shipping container, and it feels bigger. It’s next to and part of ARCH, a menswear shop that Terry Ellis had regarded in high esteem, so naturally we stopped by both.

I often wonder what separates a good menswear shop from a great one because, on paper, many of them stock remarkably similar brands. Alden. Paraboot. Anatomica. Anything by Toyo Enterprise. The usual suspects. Increasingly, I think it has very little to do with the product itself and almost everything to do with the people who work there. You can tell when a shop is buying clothes because they’re expected to carry them, and you can tell when someone has chosen every piece because they would genuinely want it in their closet. ARCH felt like the latter.

I happened to visit during an Alden trunk show, which is a dangerous situation for anyone who already owns more shoes than they need, and spent far longer trying on shell cordovan than I’d planned, eventually leaving empty-handed not because I lacked enthusiasm but because my size had, quite sensibly, already disappeared. While they carried some great pieces, it was chatting with the shop staff that I remember most—nerding out about vintage references, bakelite buttons, collar styles—the sort of stuff that only real enthusiasts find exciting. I felt like I had found a kindred spirit, and felt a little guilty leaving without buying anything because they were once again sold out of my size in the jacket I wanted. I ended up seeing my new friend later that week though, when he saw me riding down an escalator at Stellar Place (the Sapporo station’s mall) towards the small ARCH shop there. Again, there wasn’t anything that I particularly needed, but it felt great to be recognized.

By this stage of the trip, we were back to checking things off a list, but a list of our own making now that we’d been in Japan a couple of weeks. One thing I still hadn’t tried was wagyu beef. I wanted to really get a sense for it on its own, but every decent restaurant in Tokyo required a reservation and I figured it would be easier to pop in somewhere in Sapporo. I’d bookmarked a tiny sukiyaki restaurant while sitting in our Airbnb, partly because it looked interesting and partly because it was only a short walk from our stay, and later that evening we found ourselves climbing three flights of stairs in an anonymous office building wondering if Google Maps had finally betrayed us. The chef looked genuinely surprised when we walked through the door.

“How did you find us?” has become one of my favorite questions to be asked because it means the place hasn’t become crowded with tourists yet and it’s likely to be a memorable experience. There was only one other couple that evening, a Japanese businessman and his young date, and in a hushed tone, the chef explained that they usually only get the occasional Chinese tourist instead of locals. He went on to show us plaques on the wall that showed where the wild vegetables were foraged and where the cattle were raised, while he nodded at his assistant to start preparing the vegetables. Over the next couple of hours, we worked our way through the beautifully marbled wagyu and wild vegetables, and the sort of conversation that naturally develops when a chef realizes you’ve traveled halfway around the world to eat in their restaurant. Somewhere around the first bite of wagyu, I remember looking over at Ruby and thinking that if we’d come all this way for nothing more than evenings like this, it would still have been worth it.

By the time we reached Otaru, we’d settled into the pleasant rhythm that inevitably arrives toward the end of a long trip, when you start feeling, if only briefly, like someone with a routine. We knew we’d wake up early whether we wanted to or not, we’d find somewhere good for coffee without trying too hard, we’d walk until something interesting caught our eye, and we’d almost certainly end the day wondering how we’d managed to eat so much again. Otaru is another beautiful little port city, within view of Russia oddly enough, and the sort of place where tourism and everyday life coexist without getting in each other’s way. Every hour, crowds gathered around the old steam clock waiting for it to whistle, while a few streets over someone was tending to their hardware store, a fisherman was loading his truck, and students were riding home on bicycles without paying much attention to any of it. I found myself watching the locals more than the attractions, which is probably always a sign that a trip is nearing its end.

We wandered through a stained glass museum with relics from old English churches dating back to the Middle Ages, watched chefs prepare beautiful sashimi in an unassuming fish market, spent far too long browsing music boxes despite having absolutely no room left in our luggage, and somehow found ourselves eating more Hokkaido milk ice cream and melons than any reasonable person should. It reminded me a bit of summers on the East Coast, so it felt right to stop for a hot dog that first afternoon. We walked by Melody Fair Hotdog, and something about it called to me. The owner was wonderfully kind and enthusiastic, a couple of chatty college students came in shortly after us to watch the Nippon-Ham Fighters baseball game at the counter, and before long we’d all slipped into one big conversation. They wanted to know about Los Angeles. We wanted to know why there was a hot dog shop in a small port town in Hokkaido and how the owner knew how to make a perfect Chicago-style dog. Somebody asked about baseball, which naturally led to a discussion about Shohei Ohtani, then the Dodgers, then uniforms, then the regional differences of US states, and before long it struck me that almost everyone in the room had built a surprisingly rich picture of America despite never having actually been there.

One of the strongest aspects of Japanese culture is this imagined idea of Americana they’ve built up. One assembled from films, old magazines, baseball broadcasts, Ralph Lauren advertisements, vintage Levi’s, jazz records, diners, and all the other bits of culture that have a funny way of traveling much further than the places they were intended for. It made me wonder if that wasn’t exactly what had happened to me, too. Like most people, I’d built up an idea of Japan in my head. The reality was turning out to be less cinematic, but infinitely richer.

By the time we found ourselves back in Tokyo a couple of days later, trying to decide whether we really needed to shop for more souvenirs, I realized I wasn’t thinking very much about the things I’d bought anymore. There were certainly plenty of them. Enough, apparently, to justify checking an extra bag for the flight home. Those things will always remind me of Japan, and I’m glad we brought them back. But when people have asked about the honeymoon over the past few weeks, I almost never begin with the shopping. I talk about Johnny pulling another record from the shelf because he thought we’d like it. I talk about the lads who decided two strangers shouldn’t have an average dinner when they knew somewhere better. I talk about sitting in a little café with nowhere else to be. I talk about getting caught in the rain with Ruby on our first afternoon, laughing because we were completely soaked and there wasn’t much else to do.

Before we left Los Angeles, I’d spent weeks making lists. Restaurants. Shops. Museums. Listening bars. I wanted to make sure we didn’t miss anything, which now feels like a slightly impossible ambition in a country that rewards curiosity more than efficiency. You can’t “complete” Japan any more than you can complete New York or Paris or Los Angeles. The best you can hope for is to leave feeling like you’ve seen enough to know you’ll need to come back.

Essays about tailoring, denim, history, military clothing, shoes, sweaters, and all the strange little corners of menswear that seem insignificant until you realize they shape how we get dressed every morning.

I’ve always hoped the publication would eventually become something more than that. Not a clothing brand in the traditional sense, but an outlet for thoughtfully made objects—pieces that reflect the same values I write about every month. Things with stories. Things worth keeping.

Today is the first step toward that.

I’m incredibly excited to introduce the second*-ever collaboration from The Bengal Stripe: the Denim Hell Cat, made with my friend John Tesoriero of Papa Nui Cap Co.

*Technically, the first was a tiger’s eye beaded bracelet I made with my friend Amardeep back in 2011, but I digress;

If you’ve spent much time around serious vintage collectors, military clothing enthusiasts, or reproduction makers, there’s a good chance you’ve already encountered John’s work—even if you didn’t know his name. He’s one of those rare people whose influence far outweighs his profile.

Long before military reproduction became fashionable, John was painstakingly studying original garments, photographing obscure construction details, tracking down wartime manufacturing techniques, and rebuilding forgotten pieces with an almost archaeological level of care. His work has never been about nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It’s about understanding why something existed in the first place, and recreating it honestly. That mindset is something I’ve admired for years.

Over the past few years, John and I found ourselves talking about history and references. What began as conversations about British colonial uniforms somehow drifted into discussions about U.S. Navy workwear, Japanese textiles, vintage denim, obscure military contracts, and, naturally, his hats.

Eventually one of us said the obvious: “We should make one together.” The Denim Hell Cat is the result.

Rather than inventing something entirely new, we started with one of Papa Nui’s signature patterns. The Hell Cat takes its cues from late-war U.S. Navy caps developed for sailors operating in the North Pacific, where the longer brim wasn’t a stylistic flourish but a practical solution. Endless hours beneath the reflected glare of the ocean demanded more protection than earlier naval caps provided. Good military design often looks inevitable in hindsight, and this is one of those examples.

The part I was most excited about was choosing the fabric. Anyone who has read this newsletter for a while knows I have an unhealthy fascination with denim that actually ages well. I didn’t want something that looked vintage on day one. I wanted something that would become beautiful because someone had lived in it. Storytelling is my jam, and nothing tells a better story than a well-worn garment.

We eventually landed on an extraordinary Japanese reproduction of an 1860s Amoskeag denim, recreated from an original salesman’s swatch book. It’s deeply saturated with indigo, remarkably textured, and already has the sort of irregular character that modern denim mills have spent fortunes trying to imitate. It not only has pedigree, but provenance—a real history.

The best part is that it won’t stay this color for long. If you wear it gardening, hiking, traveling, fishing, walking the dog, throwing it into the back seat of your car, or simply grabbing coffee every morning, it’ll slowly become your cap instead of mine (which is what I’m hoping for).

Like everything Papa Nui produces, it’s made in Japan with exceptional attention to detail, from the selvedge sweatband to the duck canvas visor lining. It’s built to be worn hard rather than admired from a shelf. Which has always been the point of all this. For me, this collaboration represents something bigger than a single cap.

It’s the first physical object from The Bengal Stripe, and hopefully the first of many. I’d love to bring together my writing and love for well-made products naturally, and make this a place where the things we discuss every week occasionally become tangible.

I’m incredibly grateful to John for trusting me with his work and for bringing this project to life with the care it deserved. If you happen to grab one, I hope it becomes the cap you instinctively reach for every time you head out the door.

And if, years from now, it’s faded to a soft blue and carrying the marks of your own adventures, we’ll have done our job.

Details

• Made in Japan

• Japanese reproduction 1860s Amoskeag indigo denim

• Papa Nui Hell Cat pattern

• Selvedge sweatband

• Grey tonal stitching

• Grey cotton under visor

• Army duck canvas visor lining

• Three sizes: Medium (57–58 cm), Large (59–60 cm), X-Large (61–62 cm)

• Ships internationally from Australia

You can buy one here.

Thank you, as always, for reading—and for making projects like this possible.

— Nico

We gave each other complete freedom over what we wore. And naturally, I’d already made up my mind. The same day we picked our wedding date, I texted Robert Spangle to chat.

He’d recently finished a tuxedo for himself under his Observer collection, and it had lodged itself firmly in the back of my brain. Not because it was flashy, quite the opposite. It had its own DNA but looked settled in the world he and I live in. Comfortable with itself but pushing towards something new with an innovative pocketed vent and hidden buttons. Something a man could keep wearing for forty years if given the opportunity.

Luckily, Robert is an old friend.

A few weeks later I found myself in his studio, coffee in hand, looking at swatches. His first tuxedo had been cut from a thicker cloth with an almost charcoal cast—beautiful, but heavy. Mine needed to survive whatever New York decided to do in late May. It could be humid enough to make you regret cloaking yourself in black flannel, or cold enough to wish you’d brought an overcoat. Traditional evening cloths are surprisingly adaptable, but Robert pointed me toward a summer wool mohair from Dugdale, which felt like the right balance. Airy without feeling flimsy and still formal without looking too rigid.

He took body measurements and photos, and did some initial assessments by eye. As we wrapped up, he casually suggested the rest of the outfit. A Turnbull & Asser shirt with a hidden placket, a velvet bow tie from La Bowtique, suede Arthur Sleep opera pumps—essentially his own uniform.

I sat with it for a couple of days before realizing I wasn’t actually trying to recreate Robert’s outfit. Weddings are communal things, and it seemed more meaningful to invite as many menswear compatriots as I could into mine.

Chris Callis and I both got our start blogging in the late aughts, and these days he’s designing tailored clothing at Proper Cloth. I’ve had measurements on file with them since 2013, updated often enough that they’ve probably watched my body age more consistently than I have. They make an excellent tuxedo shirt, but I wanted to have a little fun with it.

I started with DJA Sea Island cotton, the finest shirting they offer, and decided on two shirts instead of one. White for the ceremony. Pale blue for later in the evening, after the first dance, once everyone had loosened up a bit. It also let me dodge a decision.

Rather than choosing between a spread collar and a wing collar, I chose both. The white shirt received the spread collar, while the blue shirt became the more theatrical of the two. Both had hidden plackets instead of traditional bib fronts, following Robert’s advice. Purists may object, but I slept just fine.

Luxuriating in Sea Island cotton has a way of making these sorts of decisions feel less consequential anyway. It’s remarkably soft but has enough body to hold itself together through a long evening. Sometimes the best investments simply allow you not to think about what you’re wearing.

Morjas drifted into the outfit almost by accident. Henrik and I were chatting one afternoon when I realized they made opera pumps, along with the appropriate silk evening socks.

Morjas has become my loafer of choice because they consistently fit my feet better than just about anything else. Anatomical without looking orthopedic, elegant without trying too hard. The pumps were perfect too.

Opera pumps expose more sock than almost any other formal shoe. The silk socks were sheer enough that my tattoos ghosted through them. An entirely useless detail that naturally became one of my favorite parts of the outfit.

Patent leather is something I’d almost never wear under normal circumstances, but weddings seem to exist precisely for those few things that don’t belong anywhere else.

The bow tie was easy. I’d been wearing La Bowtique for years and already owned one of Mickael’s wonderfully louche Laurent bows, all droop and seventies glamour. I assumed I’d wear that one, but Mickael disagreed.

After a few messages on WhatsApp and some photos of the tuxedo, he gently steered me toward his Medium Classic in silk grosgrain to match the lapels.

He was right (Often the best thing an advisor can do is save you from your own instincts).

The remaining pieces almost assembled themselves. Somewhere in a box I’d forgotten about was a decade-old Drake’s cummerbund in silk grosgrain. Apparently I’ve had a preference for grosgrain over satin for longer than I’ve been consciously aware of. The longstanding existence of which was oddly comforting.

The cufflinks took a little longer. I wanted them to complement the plain gold wedding band I’d eventually settled on, but still carry a little bit of meaning. Before deciding on the gold band, I’d briefly entertained the idea of having one carved from jade. Though I’m not particularly religious, I’ve always had a sense of spiritual connection to nature that was fostered by my Mexican relatives. Throughout much of ancient Mesoamerica, jade symbolized water, life, and resurrection. It felt appropriate for the occasion, and while the ring never materialized, the idea lingered.

Since the cufflinks were mostly for me anyway, I found a simple pair of half-cylinder jade cufflinks on Etsy. Nobody else noticed them, but that was the point.

On the big day, my mom surprised me with a pin that had my grandparents’ portraits on either side. I kept it pinned on my inside left breast pocket as a subtle reminder that they were there in spirit.

Almost two months later, as I look back through the photographs, beyond the memories made that night, I see the tuxedo first. Then I remember Robert showing me swatches of cloth, our friend Junn assisting with my later fittings. Neroli at Proper Cloth helping me sort out the shirt options. Henrik kindly emailing me to check in and wish us his best. Mickael politely talking me out of the bow tie I’d convinced myself I wanted. Chris Fenimore tirelessly photographing the entire evening. And all the memories that came before that.

Weddings compress entire lives into a single afternoon. Families, friends old and new, histories that rarely occupy the same room all suddenly finding themselves around the same table. It feels fitting that the clothes worked the same way.

By the time I walked down the aisle, I wasn’t really wearing one bespoke tuxedo. I was wearing little pieces of the people I’d been lucky enough to know.

Every Sunday and every holiday, my parents would doll me up in a uniform of pressed khakis, a stark white Oxford cloth button-down shirt, a silk repp tie, and burgundy penny loafers. Face unbesmirched, hair neatly combed and parted. I was a pretty complacent kid, and though it felt fussy at times, I learned early on that we, as humans, are remarkably adept at adapting to our circumstances when there is no alternative.

As I got older, I felt increasingly out of place in the small town where I grew up. The internet became an escape hatch, a portal into other lives and possibilities. Clothing, meanwhile, became something more tangible. It quite literally cloaked my identity. By the time I left the nest, it had dawned on me that dressing the part, much like setting the stage, is an integral part of shaping the reality you want to inhabit.

Most men get into menswear because they want to look the part. The part of their contemporaries. The part of their aspirations. Or, crucially for me as a teenager, whatever version of myself I imagined a potential love interest might find attractive. Vanity, at its purest form. At the time, I found comfort in reframing it as style. In hindsight, I might excuse myself on account of an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex.

But the truth is that menswear has always had a complicated relationship with vanity.

Many of the rule followers, and certainly many of the rule-makers, frame their point of view as good form. A sort of style etiquette for polite society. And aesthetically, even socially, they have a point. Traditional codes of dress developed as outward displays of civility and belonging. They signaled that one understood the occasion, the environment, the people around them. They were also, unavoidably, markers of class, education, and access. Another form of vanity, perhaps, but one dressed in the language of propriety.

Yet etiquette has never really been about correctness.

At its best, etiquette is simply consideration. Respect for yourself and for the people around you. It’s less a rigid set of instructions than a framework for navigating communal life with grace. A code of conduct rather than a badge of honor to be paraded in front of others.

Dressing well, then, should be a celebration of the ceremony of daily life. The small rituals that transform ordinary moments into occasions worthy of our attention. But I don’t believe the rules surrounding that ceremony are what many people think they are.

Beyond matching your shoes to your belt, avoiding black with brown, steering clear of mixed metals, or whatever else the self-appointed experts of social media are proclaiming this week, lies the far more interesting work of developing an actual point of view.

Many of today’s style rules are modern equivalents of “no brown in town” or “no white after Labor Day.” Well-intentioned attempts to manufacture certainty in an area that has always resisted it. Beginners, of course, benefit from guardrails. Rules can provide confidence when you’re learning a new visual language. They offer a place to start.

But rules alone do not produce taste.

At some point, style requires moving beyond compliance and into discernment. You have to decide not only what looks good, but what feels true. What reflects your values, your aspirations, your sense of humor, your contradictions. The goal isn’t to become someone who dresses correctly, but to become someone who dresses deliberately.

Ivy style remains so influential not necessarily because it objectively flatters everyone, but because it has become embedded in the American imagination. Generations of cultural figures people admired and aspired to emulate wore those clothes. Over time, the look absorbed meanings beyond the garments themselves. Ease. Competence. Good sense. Optimism. It became a kind of shorthand for taste.

But clothing has always been shorthand. The real substance lies elsewhere.

Anyone with genuine sensibility can make almost anything work because good style is rooted in attention. In understanding context while maintaining conviction. In knowing the rules well enough to recognize when they serve you and when they don’t.

I spent years believing that style was about getting it right. Finding the perfect proportions, the correct combinations, the approved answers. But the older I get, the more I think style is less about arriving at certainty and more about developing trust in your own judgment.

The point was never to become the kind of person who knew all the rules, but rather to become the kind of person who no longer needed them.

To me, getting dressed isn’t merely an exercise in aesthetics. It’s one of the small, everyday ways we participate in the ongoing project of becoming ourselves. And that project, thankfully, has no dress code.

Anyway, first let me tell you about the wedding planning. Ruby and I had been working on this for over a year and a half, and being the high-achievers that we are, we were hoping for things to go off without a hitch. It turns out that hoping and planning are two different things, and while Ruby was much better at proactively strategizing around possible problems, we both realized at a certain point that embracing [a certain amount of] imperfection was the only way we were actually going to enjoy the day of the wedding. Leading up to the wedding, I wanted to embrace some sort of fitness and diet routine that wouldn’t impede on my day-to-day operations. I remembered reading that Pharrell started his morning with a 5-minute plank (among other insane things), so I figured I would shoot for that. The closest I got was 3 minutes, which was agonizing, but hitting that 3-minute mark felt like an accomplishment and notably improved my posture throughout the day. I added 30 push-ups and crunches to that, which I know isn’t a lot, but for someone who never works out, this was enough to keep me from collapsing in the face of all the moving parts we had to nail down. To help manage the stress, I started taking creatine daily. I also got hooked up with Ryze coffee, which I would mix in with my morning coffee to give me the mental and physical benefits of adaptogenic mushrooms. Along with my morning walk and breakfast of berries, yogurt, and granola, this set a pretty good foundation for the day.

Another side effect of stress, and likely aging, was hair thinning and alopecia areata, a form of hair loss that appears as small, round bald patches. I took a few supplements from Nutrafol starting six months before the wedding, and by the day of, my hair was actually the thickest and fullest it’s been in at least ten years (I also credit this to my finally getting a proper haircut from my brother, Dane, at The Westerner in Echo Park). I’m not a big supplements guy anymore — I try to stick to just eating healthy and maintaining my stress in other ways — but a wedding is a big deal, and I knew I needed the help.

The most effective stress relief was honestly just talking through things with Ruby, taking whatever action we could, and figuring it out together. The payoff was worth it. I think a wedding is essentially a lesson in project management, and a test of how well you work as a team. Ruby and I were able to play to each other’s strengths, take things off each other’s plates when we could, and give ourselves enough grace to let certain things go when it felt like they just weren’t worth the effort required to make them work. The day of our wedding was one of the best days of our lives, and every day since has felt notably different, like we’re both fully committed not only to making a life together but to making it the best it can possibly be for both of us. I want to tell you about the actual day of, and the clothes I wore, but I’ll wait to get our photos back from the photographer before I write in detail about that.

OK, enough about my personal life. Here are some clothes I picked up that I’ve really been digging.

First up are the Moredocks cowboy jeans. Kyle hooked me up with a pair after I sent him my waist and inseam measurements, and they’re the best-fitting jeans I own. The rise is quite high, and they hug the body, while the leg opening gently flares out to about 19 inches on the size 32. At $395, they’re not cheap but not unjustifiably priced either. Made entirely in Portland, Oregon, from Nihon Menpu-sourced sanforized organic cotton denim with pure copper hardware, there’s a beautiful simplicity in them. The only thing I could think to change is the brass zipper fly, but it’s hidden away for the most part, and I’ve already grown accustomed to it. Did I mention how good these look with tailoring?

Merz b. Schwanen finally opened an LA shop this month, and I picked up their 215 classic-fit loopwheeled tee, which has instantly become my favorite. I need to try more of their tees because this is seriously the only thing I’ve wanted to wear the past two weeks.

I also grabbed coffee with my buddy Jon Alan, who advised me on some of his favorites from the latest Buck Mason collection, including a chunky Seafarer cotton-knit quarter-zip and the breezy “Chateau” jacket. I’ve been into jackets that button all the way up, and while the Chateau one doesn’t, it does include a spare button you can sew on yourself — as I was naturally compelled to.

Speaking of sport jackets that button all the way up, this Alex Mill blazer in cotton twill is a sleeper hit — seriously, the best light jacket I own and all I want to wear. It has functional single-button cuffs too! I’m usually a size 38-40 and sized down to a Small in it for a more fitted silhouette.

Warren — a newer Vermont-based brand that makes all its clothing in New England — sent me their Barnard chore coat at my request. Whoever designed the pattern totally freaked this; the sleeves have an open end with a single button above the wrist, and the front placket itself has a unique button placement that feels slightly off-kilter in a good way, especially paired with the smaller Nehru-style collar. The pockets are typical of a chore coat, except that the hip pockets have built-in slant-entry pockets. Overall, it’s a great, subtle shift to a familiar silhouette, made from wool milled in Stafford Springs, CT, and sewn in Fall River, MA. Being that close to where I grew up is something I fuck with heavily and will adamantly support. I’m excited to see more brands like Warren and Mark the Tailor make use of local makers.

Speaking of local makers, have you heard of Quaker Marine? They started out of Philly back in the 1940s and famously made Ernest Hemingway’s fishing cap, among hats worn by many other notable figures. In 2008 [peak #menswear days!], the guy behind J. McLaughlin revived the brand, moving it to Brooklyn and slowly building out its offerings. While the expanded collection looks great, I was really keen to try out their hats and grabbed a couple while I was in New York — the iconic Oysterman in an acorn-colored waxed canvas, and a classic bucket hat in good ol’ bleeding Indian madras plaid patchwork.

The Oysterman is the Hemingway hat with a glossy black extended brim and sleek four-panel construction. I fold it in half as I do with other ball caps and keep it tucked in my back pocket when I’m not wearing it, so when I do don it, the crease gives it a little added character and gives me a little more visibility.

The Sailing Hat is super light and floppy up top, which makes it quite breathable for such a large surface area, while the brim is reinforced with the same green cotton underside as the Oysterman’s brim. This gives it just enough structure to stand on its own and not flap into your face. I like to rest it just at the top of my head and pinch the top as I would a beanie, so I get a little reservoir tip. I don’t know why, I just like the look.

This is perhaps because the brand was dreamt up during a particularly hot, hazy New York summer by three friends (now co-founders) Ben, Mackenzie, and Rami. Rami made a trip back to his family’s home in Egypt, and there, within the cotton-farming communities along the banks of the Nile, the real seed for Kotn was planted: a traceable supply chain, naturally biodegradable fibers, and reinvestment in the local community. If we vote with our dollars as they say we do, this foundation is something worth investing in. In the decade since, they’ve grown the collection to hundreds of products, spanning men’s and women’s, and including denim, wovens, and knitwear in a range of silhouettes and styles that all seem to work effortlessly together.

Their latest collection builds on that sense of ease with utilitarian details and more contemporary fits, updating the pocketing, shortening tops, and widening bottoms for that Goldilocks, golden-ratio silhouette that flatters nearly every body type.

To illustrate this, here is the Wadi Denim—a wide-leg buckle-back jean with a welt cargo pocket—paired with the boxy Sadeem Shirt—a classic collared shirt in a boxy fit with a straight hem and perforated texture. Beneath it, the Luxor Jersey Tank, knit from organic cotton, has a dry hand and the most breathability of any tank I’ve tried, thanks to its lofty yet lightweight terry-like knit.

Another highlight of the collection, the Zayd Postal Jacket resembles old school uniforms and sports jackets with its blouson cut. Far from the restrictive poly-blends of yore, the stretch cotton shell enhances your range of motion. Noteworthy are the perfectly shaped collar, ruched waistband, and corozo-buttoned storm cuffs.

If I had to boil it down, what Kotn effectively does is refinement. An elegant simplicity, matching versatility with comfort and polish. It’s difficult to dance around the clichés in describing what I like about these clothes, but in the most casual terms, they look and feel good, the ethics behind them are reassuring, and they don’t require you to do much thinking beyond that.

“Bleu de chauffe” (literally, blue of heating) was the name given to the blue jacket worn by French railway workers in the early days of the railroad, when they had to heat water to build up pressure in the first steam locomotives. Today, the brand Bleu de Chauffe is best known for its artisanal leather bags made in the Aveyron region of France, which carry the same spirit of pride in craftsmanship and durability. I picked up one of their Adele totes a year ago, which my wife Ruby has since co-opted as her daily kit bag. The leather is supple and buttery-soft yet tough as nails, inviting a deeper appreciation of the act of wearing and carrying it. This same ethos has been carried into the rest of their collection, which now includes simple French-made jackets and knitwear.

As the winner of this giveaway, you’ll get all of the items below in your style of choice:

• Meline Tote Bag

• Léon Messenger Bag

• Melo 48H Tote Bag

• Raw 50 Sweatshirt

• Heavyweight Champion T-shirt

So basically an oversized beach bag, a daily tote, a sacoche for short trips, and a hearty organic cotton tee and sweatshirt.

You can use the link below to enter by April 27, which will also subscribe you to our partnering websites (which you can unsubscribe from at any time, though I think you’ll enjoy them):

• Heddels: Connecting people with items that are authentic, useful, and lasting.

• Valet Mag: Dedicated to the art and science of acquiring what you want and need.

• InsideHook: A lifestyle publication and daily email newsletter tailored for men, covering travel, style, food, drink, technology, and health.

• Stridewise: In-depth reviews and stories about the best men’s boots and casual wear on the market.

• Denimhunters: Helping you find jeans worth wearing since 2011.

• Fabricateurialist: Technical fashion reviews, spotlighting independent premium and luxury brands, and dashes of marketing.

^ just click that big black button above to enter.

And the stories were kind of the whole point. The catalogs read like fever dreams, half travelogue, half fiction, with illustrations that made everything feel slightly unreal. More than a jacket, you were also buying into some vaguely defined expedition. It didn’t really matter where. The idea was enough.

I’ve been thinking about that version of the brand a lot lately, especially when I write copy for other brands, but it feels especially poignant with the reissue they just dropped with The Explorers Club. On paper, it’s what you’d expect: field jackets, a trekking jumpsuit, a photojournalist vest, a big nubuck fireman’s coat, all the right signifiers. But what it’s really reaching for is that earlier feeling, when Banana Republic was less about “wardrobe staples” and more about building a world you could step into.

My first experience with that world was pretty indirect. In college, I had this beat-up briefcase I carried everywhere, an antique canvas-and-leather thing that looked like it belonged to someone with a much more interesting life than mine. It was Banana Republic, but not the version most people think of. More like something adjacent to what Ghurka does today, all straps and compartments and slightly overbuilt in a way that made no practical sense for my small life. I didn’t realize until one day, when I looked closely at the inner tag, that it traced back to their 1987 Safari & Travel era, which really explains everything.

I’ve dropped a photo in here because it’s one of those objects that does a lot of the talking for you. It made even the most mundane routines feel a little staged, like I was on my way somewhere important when I was really just going to a lecture. That’s what they used to be so good at: giving ordinary life a bit of narrative weight, making you feel like leading a bigger life wouldn’t be that much of a stretch.

There’s also this old catalog story by Hunter S. Thompson that I keep coming back to, which I’ll include too. The fact that a brand like Banana Republic once commissioned Hunter S. Thompson to write copy for a jacket feels almost impossible now. Not a campaign, not a big splashy collaboration, just a strange little piece of writing tucked into a catalog. That kind of thing only works if your team actually believes in the world you’re building, or at least commits to it fully.

Which is why this new collection is interesting. It doesn’t try to perfectly recreate that era, and honestly, it couldn’t even if it wanted to. Too much has changed, culturally and otherwise. But it does understand that the archive isn’t just the garments, it’s the tone, the sense of curiosity, the slightly romantic idea that getting dressed can be a form of self-mythology.

Some of the pieces get close. The trekking jumpsuit is the obvious one, same with the packable jacket and the field backpack, things that feel functional but still a little theatrical. Even the more straightforward items carry some of that energy, or at least gesture toward it.

We’re in this moment where every brand is obsessed with “heritage,” which usually just means reproducing something old as faithfully as possible, refining the details for a contemporary mainstream audience, and calling it a day. But Banana Republic, at its best, was never really about pure reproduction. It was about reinterpretation, about taking fragments of history and turning them into something slightly exaggerated, slightly aspirational.

I don’t know if this reissue fully gets there, but it’s closer than I expected. It at least understands what made the original version of the brand compelling in the first place, which already puts it ahead of most of these archive plays.

More than anything, it just made me think about that old briefcase again. The idea that something you carry, or wear, can suggest a bigger life than the one you’re currently living. A prompt or even a challenge, rather than a delusion. And that’s exactly what gets me excited about getting dressed these days.

Andy Spade, Tony Bourdain, Bob Dylan, Steve McQueen, The Gallagher Brothers, Raekwon, Slick Rick, Joshua Kissi and Travis Gumbs of what was one of my favorite #menswear era blogs Street Etiquette, Jake Wigham of Jake’s, my buddy Andre, and—at one point—probably also several of the worst guys you knew. Rugged and easy, beloved for the ability to untie and slip them off quickly with one hand, irrespective of the wearers’ reputations, this cast of characters has heavily influenced me from the late aughts to now, instilling a reverence for the simple, the humble, the everyman’s desert boot, aka the chukka.

While the originals were an offshoot of veldskoen, the category today is vast, ranging from more formal dress boots to the very casual and crudely constructed. Fully lined or unlined, the best options in my view are typically suede, which tends to breathe better than leather and—once you know how—tends to be easier to care for. I’ve been shopping around for months and finally narrowed down four options that I think cover every angle you’ll want to explore in this oft overlooked category.

J.Crew’s MacAlister Boot

J.Crew’s 1990s MacAlister boot reissue is by estimation the best representation of the OG Clarks Desert Boot I’ve found. I really dislike the orange stitching on Clarks’ current take, and though the beeswax one still looks great, the quality just isn’t quite what it used to be. By contrast, the MacAlister has the right silhouette and price, and is somehow made in Italy like some of J.Crew’s other greatest hits. As an aside, the shoebox branding scratches such a design itch in me that I felt bad throwing it out. To make the shoes a bit more weatherproof, I dubbed mine in Huberd’s Shoe Grease which pleasantly made them a shade darker to contrast with my chinos a bit more. These are so easy, they’re a refreshing reminder that dressing well, like most things in life, doesn’t need to be as hard as you’re making it for yourself.

Grant Stone’s Unlined Chukka

Grant Stone makes a great unlined leather-soled chukka, much like Alden’s but done up in China for a few hundred dollars less. I went with the Bourbon suede, which is a rich auburn color similar to the original Polo suede (Polo Ralph Lauren’s long-retired but much-revered signature shade that pairs best with charcoal flannel and all the usual shades of denim and cotton twills). I like how rich this hue is, which works best with the leather sole as a slightly more polished take on the boot (and yes, I scored the soles).

Sid Mashburn’s Chocolate Chukka

For a gussied-up dressier option, it gets no better than Sid Mashburn’s almond-toed, Vibram-soled take. An incredible value for the price (as with everything Sid), he’s also narrowed it down to a few correct yet distinctly different leather colors, though the chocolate suede is my pick as it’s actually a shade lighter than the ecom photos. This is as formal as a chukka can get—it looks great with a suit, and I still really like how it wears with chinos and denim.

August Special’s Voyager

My favorite chukka boot of all time, however, is August Special’s Voyager. It’s a tier above most other options in terms of price, but also in design integrity. Integrity is what really matters to me and these are engineered for a contemporary lifestyle. Replacing the traditional crepe sole is a new Vibram gumlite sole (half the weight of conventional rubber, without sacrificing durability). The last is an elegant yet anatomical shape, providing comfort and versatility. I went with the Antelope suede, which is quite understated but pairs best with all the various shades of blue, gray, and khaki that I wear. I know “less but better” is a cliché, but without a doubt this is my desert island boot, the one I’d take to my grave.

That being said, I have been gaining some traction writing for other publications here and there. I have a couple of things in the pipeline that I’m eager to share, but here are a few GQ articles I wrote earlier this year:

• These Cushy Boots Outclass Sneakers Every Day of the Week

• I’ve Been Writing About Bengal Stripe Shirts for 15 Years. Here’s Why I Won’t Stop

• The Best Men’s Fisherman Sweaters Fear No Trendy Headwinds

Someone actually emailed me about the chukka boots in that first link; which ones I wear most often and how I wear them, so I’m working on a post for that, but today I want to spotlight a few new-to-me things:

Haitch

A few months ago, Haitch struck me with their sleek spearpoint collared shirt, tailored raw denim, and a few closeup photos that reflected an acute focus on fabric, drape, and silhouette. The attitude and fine construction to back it up are equal parts Harry Tillman and Nate Pozin. While Harry has the polish to elevate any garment thanks to his British luxury tailoring accolades, it’s Nate’s SoCal/indie rock pedigree that eases the aesthetic into familiar territory. Relaxed and refined, it’s reminiscent of indie rock icons in the early 2000s without the kitsch. Perhaps what I like most about Haitch is that nascent as it is, Harry and Nate are still developing their signature. There’s a DNA there, but so far it shows up in the small but intentional details and light, easy layering that connote a certain freedom and finesse that makes it easy for men to dress better. Something which is (at least to me) aspirational.

Terrace Club “609” Chino

Chinos are on the rise, in spite (and likely also because) of how hard they are to pull off. Frumpy, baggy, lifeless, or otherwise too slim and cropped. Overly garment-washed in the wrong hues, or stiff and unbreathable as cardboard. The potential problem areas are many. What Terrace Club has mostly gotten right with the “609” is treating them as a dress trouser. The curtained waistband, zipper fly, higher rise, and classic fit with a slight taper are reminiscent of a 1960s chino, though they’ve made a few key updates. Firstly is fabric; a smooth yet robust 10 oz cotton drill from Brisbane Moss, one of England’s finest fustian fabricators, that almost wears like moleskin. Then there’s the allowances; a term for the extra fabric in the seams and hidden areas at the hem and front fly; generous in this case. Designed for true long-lasting wear, these are both one of the most durable and most tailored takes I’ve seen yet, and made to be treated as such so you can wear, repair, and alter at will.

Aurélien Yacht Loafers

Aurélien is a brand I stumbled on recently as I was searching for a pair of rubber-soled summer loafers to replace my well-worn Baudoin & Lange ones. Though slightly ostentatious, I haven’t been able to get my mind off of their white suede Yacht loafers. On the surface, they might appear to be the sort of thing a flashy, aging magnate might gravitate towards, but they’re as close to my much-loved Belgians as a boat shoe can be, and feel in line with something my personal style icon Serge Gainsbourg might have worn with their soft, translucent white gum soles and bright white Softey® suede upper. It’s a stretch for me to say they’re something I will wear often, but for a summer party, they’re perfect.

Parsel East West Tote System

About a month ago, Parsel sent me their East West Tote System in XL — an oversized take on their signature carry system. I haven’t had a reason to use it yet, but I thought it was worth sharing because the idea of such a modular system is something I’d normally expect to find in some sort of military or midcentury interior design context. The basic premise here is that each bag system includes both a soft shell and an injection-molded case in lightweight materials that are finished with aircraft grade aluminum fixtures and a magnetic closure. The idea is that you can configure it depending on your use case; a backpack for hiking, a crossbody/tote for daily use, or my favorite, a weekend/travel bag that you can sit firmly on top of your luggage.

The Observer Joe Jacket

My buddy Rob remains one of my favorite designers and the culmination of his time in Ukraine and abroad—The Joe Jacket—is finally on the market. The Joe Jacket starts with the classic Vietnam-era jungle jacket that Rob has been wearing every summer for the better part of a decade. The one I got is a limited desert tiger stripe cotton herringbone twill, but the two on market are an OD green Japanese cotton poplin (an exact reproduction of the original Vietnam era fabric) and a battle grey English cotton ventile (a highly water-resistant cotton weave). It also features a more anatomical fit and reconfigured pocketing for contemporary use cases (including hidden side pockets and slightly enlarged cell phone pocket at the chest), as well as a velcro tab bungee cord throat latch that he developed to protect his neck through the cold Ukrainian winter. Design integrity is something I will always champion and Rob is one of the best living examples of someone whose designs are intelligently built around a vigorous and demanding lifestyle. I’m looking forward to putting this one through more modest paces.

The problem is that there are too many reference points.

A Perfecto. A café racer. A bomber. Something worn by a pilot, a punk, or a movie star. When the options start to multiply like that, it’s usually a sign to go back to the beginning, to the source.

Vintage has always either felt a little too delicate or funky for me. The amount of care required to wear an old leather jacket is more than I want to deal with. Which leads me to repros. In the world of reproduction menswear, Japan has long reigned supreme. The category is broad, but the premise is simple: recreate garments from the early to mid-20th century with obsessive fidelity. Military uniforms, denim, workwear, even period tailoring. Since the 1980s, a global network of specialists has developed the tools and techniques to reproduce original fabrics, stitching methods, and hardware with uncanny accuracy.

Japan’s reputation in this field is rightly revered, and China and the rest of Asia are quickly catching up. For leather, India has become an economical hub for most contemporary brands. But there’s a smaller, less discussed outfit in Greece that has quietly been doing remarkable work since 2008.

Which raises a simple question.

Who is Bill Kelso?

The story starts in Athens (Greece, not Georgia — pay attention!). In 2008, an existing leather boutique was looking for a new direction. Leather jackets have always been a niche interest. Outside of motorcyclists, it’s mostly aficionados, the sort of people who notice stitch counts and zipper pulls, and are willing to spend serious money on them.

Their customers then, as now, were often chasing a familiar image. Hollywood heroes, mostly. Indiana Jones. Steve McQueen as Captain Hilts. Marlon Brando’s Johnny Strabler. Even the Terminator.

The name Bill Kelso itself is a bit of a joke. It’s a nod to John Belushi’s Wild Bill Kelso in 1941. If the idea of naming a brand after a fictional character sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it follows a long tradition in repro circles. The brand Buzz Rickson takes its name from a character played by Steve McQueen in The War Lover. Buck Mason’s founders will openly admit they just liked how the name sounded and both their dads worked in masonry. These brands know the territory they’re operating in, and they lean into it with a certain amount of self-awareness.

At its core, Bill Kelso is singularly about reproductions. Meticulous ones. Jackets modeled directly on WWII contracts, built with a level of detail that borders on academic.

Online, you’ll find the brand mentioned alongside some of the best in the field. They’re respected, though perhaps a bit less solemn about the whole enterprise.

The leather options reflect that balance between authenticity and practicality. I chose their Italian “Liberty” horsehide, which is one of the most popular choices. Some people say it has a vinyl, slightly plasticky feel at first, and it does wear quickly, distressing faster than heavier hides. But that’s exactly why it appeals to purists. It’s a remarkably period-correct leather.

For those who want something more luxurious, they also offer “Victory” horsehide, a vegetable-tanned leather that is, quite literally, among the best horsehide you can buy today.

The Star 28557 A-2 Jacket

Like their namesake, Bill Kelso has a particular fondness for A-2 flight jackets. It’s the backbone of their business, favored by WWII reenactors, Indiana Jones enthusiasts, and Japanese collectors alike.

If you visit their website, the number of variations can be overwhelming. Each model corresponds to a specific wartime production contract, and the differences can be subtle: pocket shapes, collar construction, stitching patterns.

After outlining what I was looking for, they pointed me toward the Star 28557, one of two jackets produced under a WWII contract awarded to Star Sportswear Manufacturing Company in Lynn, Massachusetts (the other jacket, Star 18245, is the exact same jacket but one label referenced the contract number and the other the order number).

I’ve wanted a horsehide jacket for as long as I’ve worked in this industry. The challenge was finding something that felt authentic without feeling like a costume. Something that could pass for period-correct but still look natural with jeans, chinos, and a white tee.

The Star 28557 checked every box.

I kept almost everything to their recommended spec:

• Liberty Horsehide in Seal

• Dark tan cotton lining

• 100% cotton “Perry Purple” stitching, a faint pinkish-purple tone used on originals

• USAAF wool ribbing in medium brown (russet)

• Reproduction collar hooks

• A 1942 bell-type Talon zipper

In other words, the prototypical WWII A-2 jacket, reproduced down to the smallest detail.

How I Wear It

I went with a size 40, which is probably a size smaller than I should have. My arms are a bit longer than average, and I can just barely claim to be six feet tall, so the sleeves are a touch short.

But strangely, I like that it doesn’t fit perfectly.

Original military garments rarely did. The sizing was blunt, the grading inconsistent, and the result was often a little awkward. Somehow that imperfection makes the jacket feel more authentic.

The Liberty horsehide also encourages a certain attitude. It wears quickly, so there’s no point in being precious with it.

Most days, I throw it on over a white tee, big chinos, and some kind of boot. It works just as well with denim. I haven’t really tried it over a button-up shirt, partly because the jacket itself negates the need for one. If I added another layer, it would probably be a chunky knit or a sweatshirt when the weather cools down.

I’ve only had it for about a month, but it’s already starting to show the early signs of wear. From a distance, you’d never notice. Up close, the inner elbows are beginning to form the faintest honeycombing and the horsehide has picked up subtle marks and creases.

That’s the real beauty of a leather jacket.

It ages the way raw denim does. Slowly, unevenly, and entirely according to how you live in it.

Yes, the jacket is about as archetypal as they come. A textbook A-2. But that’s part of the fun. The goal now is to subvert it a little. Wear it in a way that feels less like a reenactment and more like something alive.

I like to think of it the way the Ramones wore their leather jackets. Or the way WW2 pilots customized theirs with hand-painted artwork and patches.

Take something classic, something stolidly sacred, and make it entirely your own.

If you want to do the same, I got Bill Kelso to generously extend 15% off through the end of March with the code BENGSTRP15 which you can enter at checkout when you shop on their website here.

That’s Jake.

He runs Jake’s London, a small, word-of-mouth shirt operation built slowly, almost privately, out of Soho. No moodboards, no iPad, no elaborate launch cycles. Just paper patterns, cloth, reference, and a tight circle of people he trusts: photographer Alex Natt, his right-hand man Albert, and his fiancée. It feels less like a brand and more like a working studio that happens to have a name, orbiting around someone who simply wants to make things that last.

And that really is the whole point.

Jake grew up working-class. His dad spent his life in a factory; his mum worked odd jobs. Both took pride in how they presented themselves. Dressing well was a matter of self-respect. His dad leaned punk and psychobilly, scooter culture, Discharge, The Exploited, but also cared deeply about quality. Japanese imports, raw denim, mail-order Carhartt in the ’80s, Red Wings before anyone around him knew what they were. Jake inherited the instinct, just filtered through different sounds, soul, reggae, jazz, hip-hop, and the same underlying belief stuck: What you wear affects how you feel.

Fashion wasn’t inevitable. His brother moved to London first to study promotion and visual merchandising and loved it, and that opened a door. Jake followed, starting with a foundation in art and design before teachers steered him toward craft: shirtmaking, tailoring, hatmaking, the physical act of making things. They pushed him to aim higher and apply to London College of Fashion for bespoke tailoring.

His application, he says, read like a beat poem, John Cooper Clarke through a Kerouac filter. He got the interview. They remembered the writing. He walked out convinced he’d been accepted.

And he was.

Those years clarified more than they defined. He loved the making, the history, the culture of clothes. Less interested in theory for theory’s sake. Tutors pushed experimentation with strange fabrics and conceptual details and, while the work was good, it never felt entirely his. By the end, he had landed on a simple internal rule: only make things you would actually wear yourself.

Then came the usual reality. Money was tight. Back home, he plied the trade properly with bespoke tailors, then a paid role with Steed, getting deep into trousermaking and hand-finishing. He missed London though, and eventually returned, freelancing, making trousers for other brands, piecing together a living. During COVID he was producing masks and small runs for shops like John Simons, doing whatever kept things moving.

Jake’s started almost accidentally. He made a shirt for himself: mid-century in style, full-fit, Ivy-leaning, refined the pattern, graded it, found the right fabric, then sent a handful out to people whose taste he trusted. They wore them, talked about them, asked for more. That was enough. Everything since has grown the same way, slowly, through people.

The shirts are still the anchor. Blousy, straight-cut Ivy button-downs with real collar roll. Popovers, leisure shirts, pearl snaps. Unstructured collars, no linings, clean machine construction, good cloth, mother-of-pearl buttons. The cut is the thing you notice first, straight through the body, no aggressive shaping, meant to sit easy rather than cling. Slightly mid-century, even a little ’80s and ’90s depending on your reference point, more about posture and attitude than precision.

They’re made to order, though not in the precious, hyper-bespoke sense. You start with sized try-ons, adjust sleeve or body length, choose cloth, refine from there. Small scale, flexible, human. Trousers came back last year, straight-leg, flat-front, mid-century officers’ chinos, and jackets are on the way. Nothing releases until it feels right. Patterns resolved, grading dialed in. There’s no sense of seasonal panic, no retail deadlines dictating the pace.

His studio sits in Soho, on a street that once housed the musicians’ union, a place where jobbing players gathered for work, where figures like Ronnie Scott passed through regularly. That residue is still there if you’re sensitive to it. The references pull from the same orbit. American Ivy, jazz-era silhouettes, old British pulp, Soho in its mid-century life, records, magazines, films, old men on the street. The shapes skew American, the attitude lands unmistakably British, a bit tougher, less polished, lived-in.

He works the old way because it feels natural. Paper patterns spread out, cloth in hand, fabric sourced from merchants he trusts. Development takes time because it has to. He works with friends because those are the people already in his life. Alex shoots because they would be hanging out anyway, customers become collaborators, and nothing feels overly staged. No forced casting, no heavy styling, just people who actually wear the clothes, in situ.

Brand loyalty matters to him, though he would probably never use that phrase. Some customers order constantly and have never spoken to him. Others become evangelists because they are proud of what they are wearing. That pride becomes the marketing. Instagram matters less now, so he is leaning into mailers, fittings, conversations, actual relationships. His constraints mean planning ahead, not cutting corners. The operation stays small, Albert cutting, Jake sewing, Alex shooting. Handloomed fabrics are coming when they are ready, naturally.

Underneath it all is a simple idea. Make things that last. Physically, yes, but emotionally too. Clothes you reach for without thinking, clothes that steady you. He talks about dressing as a mental state, how putting something considered on changes how you carry yourself, how you move through a day.

That is why the pace is what it is. Why nothing feels rushed. Why the whole thing feels less like a launch and more like a practice.

Jake’s is the kind of thing you usually discover sideways. A shirt on someone whose taste you trust. A name mentioned casually, passed along without fanfare. “Who the hell is Jake?”

For now, just a shirtmaker in Soho building something small, deliberate, and real, at his own speed, on his own terms.

And if you care about clothes, really care, you will probably be hearing that name a lot more.

In terms of clothing, and what I’ve been wearing, and what I’ve learned from it (which is the point of this whole thing), well, I guess I’m leaning deeper into things I feel comfortable wearing, and thinking less about what others are doing or what I ought to be wearing or trying. As much as I love experimenting with different styles and silhouettes, I have so many clothes in my closet that things are being lost and forgotten and I feel neglectful towards my own wardrobe. I just don’t have enough days in the week to wear all the stuff I want to be wearing. A good part of that is due to me wearing a proper shirt and tie more often, which necessitates a good suit or at the very least a sportcoat. It’s something I wore all through the early 2010s #menswear era, and stranger still, in my infancy.

When I have days to myself, I tend to linger in pajamas and a good chunky knit, or even wear jeans and a jacket around the house (I get some confused questions for the latter, but I’m comfortable, so who cares?). It makes me think of my dad who used to starch and iron everything, even his jeans and t-shirts. Could be his naval training, but when I think of my late grandfather’s closet I imagine its something deeper and more hereditary. I also grew up in a WASPy enclave and idolized Mister Rogers, so there’s probably equal parts nature and nurture in how I dress and my reverence for everyday objects.

I want to devote more time to this newsletter, but my own understanding of my style and my relationship with clothing feels stuck in amber lately. Not in a bad way. If anything, it feels good to stop and rest in the shade of a confident point of view and understanding of my style. But as my own worst enemy, I fail to see the point in writing at length about anything I own or any outfits I’ve worn lately. I should probably suck it up and get on with it, but it’s hard to commit to any one thing right now. I suppose what I can commit to is that none of this is all that serious. If I’ve learned anything lately, it’s that clothing is just a conduit, it’s a tool, the means but not the end. I’ve had such rewarding bonding moments with friends and family lately, that I sometimes wonder if my obsession with clothing (and making a career of it) may have overshadowed the real relationships and connections I already had. Not in any grandiose way, but it begs the question.

When I think about my wardrobe, the best pieces have the strongest personal connection, a real story behind them, and more than that, memories. When heritage brands capitalize on nostalgia, that’s what they’re really hoping to sell you; the idea that you can buy back the best moments of the past, real or imagined. I have a real problem with that, but I understand it’s essential for some people. As for me, as of now, all I want is tools for living.

Here are some highlights from the past month:

At just twenty, Sandro has already developed a remarkably patient way of looking at style: one rooted less in novelty than in memory, lineage, and quiet observation. Based in Amsterdam, with Italian and American roots, his approach to dressing pulls from early 20th-century workwear, military uniforms, and classic suiting—not as costume, but as continuation. Each garment is a thread back to the person who wore it before him, the life it witnessed, the labor it endured.

What struck me most in this conversation wasn’t just Sandro’s knowledge of vintage clothing, but his sense of responsibility toward it. He speaks about watches, shirts, and accessories the way some people talk about family heirlooms or old photographs: as vessels of meaning, capable of collapsing time. Getting dressed, for him, is less about self-expression than stewardship—keeping certain values, rituals, and ways of moving through the world alive.

This is a conversation about nostalgia, yes—but also about care. About dressing with intention in an age that rarely asks us to. And about why looking back can sometimes be the most forward-thinking thing you can do.

In Your Own Words, Who Are You and What Do You Do?

My name is Sandro Schaffner. I’m a 20-year-old, half-Italian, half-American living in Amsterdam. I’m a menswear and vintage style curator whose work centers on sourcing, preserving, and interpreting workwear, military, and sartorial history through styling, education, and community engagement.

How Would You Describe Your Personal Style?

At the center of my personal style is nostalgia—looking back to an era that no longer exists. I’m especially drawn to vintage clothing from the first half of the 20th century. As I learned more about where garments come from and why they were made the way they were, my style naturally evolved alongside that knowledge.

I like to blend three worlds: workwear, military, and suiting. I’m drawn to the utility and purpose of workwear and military clothing, then balance that with the elegance and structure of tailoring.

We’ve all heard the phrase “they don’t make things like they used to,” and while it’s easy to dismiss, I think it’s true. The daily act of getting dressed isn’t what it once was. Most people no longer need to wear suits to work, and somewhere along the way, we lost the idea of dressing as an art form. For me, dressing well makes my days feel brighter, lighter, and more intentional.

I spend hours looking at vintage photographs. There was a time when people dressed up for everything—going to the airport once meant wearing your best suit. Today, it’s sweatpants and a hoodie. Dressing to impress has been reserved for special occasions, but there was a time when every day carried that mindset.

I try to keep that mentality alive. I want to be thoughtful about what I wear—to tell stories and keep history alive through clothing.

What’s Something You Wear That Holds Real Meaning for You?

The items that mean the most to me are my accessories—especially my watch and my necklace. I think you can learn a lot about someone by asking about the story behind their favorite accessories.

I wear two watches and two pendants that tell my story. From my father’s side of the family, I’ve inherited a 1960s Omega Seamaster and a small TAG Heuer 1000 Professional.

My grandfather battled ALS, a condition that took his ability to speak before I ever had the chance to speak with him. The diver’s watch reminds me of who he was and what he loved. He was passionate about the outdoors—an excellent fly fisherman, a talented diver and underwater photographer, and an explorer at heart. Those passions were passed down to my father, and then to me.

Some of my most cherished memories are of diving with my family. It’s something I wish I could have done with my grandfather, but wearing his watch allows me to carry that connection with me every day.

On my necklace, I wear two pendants. The first is a cornetto, an Italian amulet meant to protect against the evil eye. My mother gave me one as a child, and I still wear it daily as a reminder of my heritage.

The second is a shipwreck coin. My dad originally bought it on a diving trip and passed it down to me when I was younger. I lost it during my senior year and was devastated. My girlfriend noticed how much it meant to me and surprised me with a nearly identical pendant. Together, these pieces hold a lifetime of stories.

Was There a Moment or Person That Shaped How You See Clothing or Style?

My nonno and nonna—my mother’s parents—shaped how I see style more than anyone else.

There was an effortless class to the way they lived. They embodied la dolce vita, and their clothing reflected that ease and joy. Every year growing up, our family trip was returning to Italy, often spending summers in Sorrento, where my grandparents lived. I remember light fabrics, polos, classic silhouettes—and my grandmother’s timeless, often ’60s-inspired outfits, full of color and character.

About six months ago, while visiting my grandmother, I found a box of old photographs. Looking through it felt like stepping into a time machine. The colors, the smiles—the outfits—everything felt golden.

Then I found a photo that stopped me cold. A few months earlier, I had thrifted a blue polo with subtle white stripes. It quickly became one of my most-worn summer shirts, and I packed it for the trip. In the photo, my grandfather was standing in the kitchen wearing the exact same shirt.

It’s been years since he passed, but in that moment, it felt like he was right there with me.

What Values Guide How You Get Dressed?

Respect for the history of clothing comes first. Garments carry generations of stories, and if those stories aren’t told, they risk being lost. Workwear and military clothing, in particular, often come from hardship—years of labor, or young people sent to war.

The fades, repairs, and wear marks we admire aren’t aesthetic accidents. They’re evidence of a life lived. Much of the vintage clothing we wear today exists because it outlived its original owner. Ignoring that history feels like a form of disrespect.

I’m also drawn to older clothing because of its construction. Pieces were designed to last. Planned obsolescence wasn’t part of the equation. Most people owned one or two jackets and needed them to endure years of use. That intention matters to me.

What’s Bringing You Joy or Fulfillment These Days?

The research. The hunt. The history.

I think of it as modern-day fashion archaeology. Each garment feels like a fossil—something forgotten, waiting to be rediscovered. Beyond finding the piece itself, I love repairing it, cleaning it, and learning everything I can about where it came from.

My favorite part is finding old photographs of people actually wearing the garment. It grounds the piece in real life and reminds me that it once belonged to someone else—often long before my parents’ time.

Learning a garment’s history is how I connect most deeply with what I wear.

Is There a Brand, Designer, or Community You Admire Right Now?

Pinup Rags does incredible visual storytelling rooted in vintage workwear. Their attention to fabric, hardware, and fit—and their genuine care for clothing history—really stands out.

The Long Haul Co. is an exciting new brand focused on sustainability. Their Founders Denim uses recycled materials throughout and NOS denim for a small run of beautifully made, traditionally cut jeans.

Among creators, The Iron Snail makes deeply researched videos on fashion history that are genuinely fun to watch.

Elliot Duprey does an excellent job making sartorial and vintage clothing accessible. His sourcing guides and Before celebrities had stylists, they had style series are constant inspirations.

What’s a Piece of Advice That’s Stuck With You?

Prioritize fit and confidence. If something fits well and you’re excited to wear it, it will almost always look good. No one has the right to take that joy away from you.

Anything Else You’d Like to Share?

My girlfriend introduced me to a quote by Heraclitus:

“A man cannot step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.”

I think it applies to fashion—and to life. Every day, you’re different, and the world is different. Take the chance. Wear what you want. Try something new. Do what your dream self would do.

Each day is its own moment.

Not the corporate kind, but the personal kind. The moment when you stop chasing and start living with things. When style shifts from performance to practice.

This is a paid dispatch about comfort (real comfort), retail reality, runway myth‑making, and the slow, compounding work of growing into your own taste.

Andiamo ragazzi

A Cozy, At‑Home Guide

Home is where style either dissolves or sharpens. There’s no audience, no algorithm—just you and the long stretch of hours between coffee and dinner. If a tree falls in the woods, well, you get the point.

Here’s what’s been working for me lately:

• Akimbo sweats: generous, unfussy, and honest. They sit in that good middle zone—not athletic cosplay, not sloppy surrender. Pants that don’t apologize.

• Vintage cotton pajamas (one of the first gifts Ruby got me), plus L.L.Bean flannel sets: I’ve been wearing pajamas my whole life. And rotation matters. Lightweight cotton when you want air. Flannel when you want weight. Pajamas are, functionally, my most-worn garment at home—worth taking seriously.

• Stoffa cashmere cardigan with their drawstring pants (and the Mark the Tailor drawstring pants): tailoring logic, translated for domestic life. Soft structure, elastic waists, materials that do the heavy lifting.

• King Kennedy rug slides: slip‑on, grounded, quietly designed. The kind of shoe that makes even a lazy day feel intentional.

• UGG Tasman: unfashionable in theory, excellent in practice. Warm, durable, deeply useful for these colder months.

For me, it’s all about giving myself permission—permission to be comfortable without being careless. To invest in the private hours that quietly make up most of life.

Ralph Lauren, Revisited

Last week’s Ralph Lauren men’s runway show was a reminder of something Ralph has always done better than almost anyone else: blending worlds.

Western and Eastern. Aristocratic and workwear. Ceremony and utility. Ralph’s genius lies in turning nostalgia into synthesis.

This season, the tension between the Black Tie elements and Native American silver and tribal pattern influences stood out to me as each was more than a decorative flourish. They added gravity. Texture. Along with the [irreverent] takes on traditional British and American prep elements, there was a sense of lineage that grounded the collection in something older and more human.

The diverse model casting mattered, too, as a narrative reinforcement. When different bodies inhabit these archetypes, the clothes stop feeling like costumes and start feeling like options.

Ralph doesn’t sell garments so much as he sells a way of moving through history without getting stuck in it.

Zen and the Art of Retail

For the past few months, I’ve been working a new retail job that’s given a sense of clarity and purpose to what I do.

Retail has a way of sanding ideas down to their essentials. People don’t come in asking for theories or theses. They ask for things that fit, last, feel good, and make sense in their actual lives.

A few early observations:

• Most men want fewer decisions, not more choices.

• Comfort isn’t a luxury anymore—it’s table stakes. But that doesn’t mean giving in to stretch or slouch.

• Fabric literacy beats brand literacy every time.

• The best‑selling pieces are almost always the quieter ones.

Working retail has pulled my head out of online discourse and back into lived reality. Less interested in flexes. More interested in repeat wear.

There’s something grounding about helping someone find their version of enough.

In Defense of Aaron Levine’s Zara

A little over a month ago, Aaron Levine’s Zara collaboration received the kind of criticism from certain menswear circles that felt inevitable (and mostly predictable).

But I don’t see the collaboration as celebrating fast fashion. It feels more like it’s nudging it.

Within real constraints, Aaron is advocating for:

• Timeless silhouettes

• Better, longer‑lasting construction

• More natural and higher‑quality materials

• Clothes that are easy to wear and hard to tire of

If fast fashion is going to exist—and it is—then improving the default matters. Intervention beats abstention. Progress doesn’t always arrive loudly. Sometimes it shows up quietly, stitched into everyday garments, acquiescing to the lowest common denominator.

Garage Denim

I recently picked up the Garage Denim from Belafonte Ragtime, a reproduction of the Montgomery Ward 101—and it feels like a small thesis statement in defense of modern replicas.

The details:

• Fuller leg

• Cinch back

• Tool pocket

• Levi’s‑style arcuates, placed higher on the back pockets

• Felled, triple‑needle stitched seams

• No selvedge pageantry

This is reproduction without preciousness. Not a museum piece. Not a vintage‑head flex. Just the best ideas from the past, chosen because they still work—functionally and aesthetically.

Fidelity to history matters most when it serves the present.

Style as Compound Interest

The last thing I want to say right now is that growing into your style is more about iteration than arriving at some preconceived destination.

You gotta try things. Live with them. Notice what keeps coming back into rotation. Over time, the small decisions will stack up.

Taste becomes intuition. Intuition becomes ease. Ease becomes style.

Accumulation rather than reinvention. Quiet confidence. Needing less and enjoying it more.

In doing so, you create space for thinking slowly, honestly, and with care.

Thanks for reading.

Daniel Baraka belongs firmly in the latter camp. A stylist, photographer, writer-in-progress, and deeply self-aware menswear obsessive, Daniel approaches clothing the same way he approaches living: with intention, curiosity, and just enough irreverence to keep things interesting. His outfits often look composed at a glance—but linger a moment longer and you’ll notice the tension. A workwear staple rubbing shoulders with Ivy. Velvet slippers where you don’t expect them. Practicality masquerading as provocation.

Born Congolese and shaped by both his parents’ sense of pride in presentation and his later immersion into American style codes, Daniel’s relationship to clothing is layered, functional, and deeply personal. He cares about warmth, pockets, movement, and ease—but also about language. What garments say when they’re placed next to one another, and what happens when they don’t quite agree.

This conversation is about recklessness (the good kind), about knits that don’t pill, about journals worth writing in, and about dressing in a way that never gets in the way of living. It’s about craft, memory, and the quiet discipline of doing things very well—without taking yourself too seriously.

An honest, thoughtful exchange with someone who reminds me that style isn’t about resolving contradictions. It’s about learning to live comfortably inside them.

In your own words, who are you and what do you do?
My name is Daniel Baraka. I am a stylist, a photographer, an aspiring writer, and a self-proclaimed menswear nerd.

How would you describe your personal style?

The other day I wore a waffle thermal henley under a cashmere V-neck, and I feel like that encapsulates my personal style really well. Having such a workwear icon next to an undeniably Ivy piece is what makes dressing interesting to me.

When I think about my personal style, I keep going back to the word “reckless.” Or maybe irreverent. To most people, at first glance, my style looks somewhat put together and cohesive—albeit a little complex at times. But to the trained eye, it’s very reckless. I’m unpredictable as a person, and I like my style to have that same edge.

There’s nothing more boring to me than having all the pieces fit within the same code in every rig. I love and can appreciate a perfectly executed black-tie rig, but when you round out a workwear fit with some velvet slippers, that’s when things get interesting to me.

What’s something you wear that holds real meaning for you?

I always carry a Smythson journal and a Lamy LX pen on me. The journal is way too expensive, but sinking that much into it motivates me to use it. Plus, I want the experience to be the best it can possibly be. My memory isn’t very good, so taking notes is necessary for me.

Was there a moment or person that shaped how you see clothing or style?

I’m Congolese. We take a lot of pride in how we present ourselves. Both my parents are very stylish. By age four, I was already very opinionated about my style—what pieces worked together and what shoes to wear. I was a real pain in the ass to dress.

My father had a huge impact on how I see clothing.

Then I moved to the U.S. when I was 17 years old, which forced me to learn all aspects of this new culture I found myself in. From what I observed, few institutions in the U.S. were more venerated than Ralph Lauren, so I studied Ralph and combined that with the high fashion my father introduced me to.

What values guide how you get dressed?

For me, function comes first. How my clothes serve me dictates everything. The reason I wear a thermal under a cashmere V-neck is because they’re both great for warmth. I like pockets for my EDC. I wear a medium-rise jean on shooting days for mobility. The velvet slippers are easy to slip on and off, and they work with everything from sweatpants to tuxedos.

I also like clothes that require little to no maintenance, which is why I love suedes and heavy wools.

My style might look a little complex at times, but I’ve set up my wardrobe to require minimal effort when getting ready.

What’s bringing you joy or fulfillment these days—inside or outside the wardrobe?

I absolutely love a good knit. The fact that the vast majority of people have accepted that cashmere and wool pilling is inevitable makes me mad. I blame Quince, J.Crew, and Uniqlo for this.

Few things make me happier than a good Scottish-made knit—those heavier cashmeres and wools. They’re tanks. They’re warm, beautiful, and they bring me so much joy around this time of year.

Outside of the wardrobe, writing thank-you notes is a habit I’ve been cultivating for a while now. Even if I don’t do anything else all day, writing and mailing one or two thank-you notes makes me feel like the happiest and most accomplished man on earth.

Is there a brand, designer, or community doing something you admire right now?

Rubato is making beautiful knits right now. I bought two of their knits last year—a cardigan and a V-neck sweater—and they haven’t formed a single pill. They’re practically better than when I bought them. I later found another one, a 100% alpaca crew from them, on eBay for $80 and have since turned on alerts for any new listings.

I love Rubato’s styling, their designs, their art direction, and—more importantly—how they make their garments: slowly and thoughtfully.

In the U.S., my friend Aaron from Willie Taylor & Co. is hand-rolling ties in Nashville and has recently expanded into making a few other items, including a beautiful chimayo jacket. I love his taste. He has extremely high standards.

My other friend, Kelsey at Baucom Denim, is making denim at standards very few are living up to in the U.S. these days. Michael at Loyal Stricklin made my favorite jacket of the year: a stonewashed denim chore coat with huge gusseted pockets that can carry a Leica Q3. And finally, the brothers at Unsung House are making some of the best boots out there. I’m saving up to get a pair from them.

What’s a piece of advice—style-related or not—that’s stuck with you?

My father always told me and my siblings, “Tout ce qui vaut la peine d’être fait vaut la peine d’être très bien fait.” Which is French for, “What’s worth doing is worth doing really well.”

He’d also repeat Proverbs 16:18: “Pride comes before the fall.”

Anything else you’d like to share? A story? A mantra? A detail that doesn’t get enough credit?

I was recently thumbing through my pocket journal and came across these personal style principles that I wrote many years ago and never finished. It’s a work in progress, but I want to share them here, unedited, exactly as they’re written in the journal:

1. Never have all the items in the same language.

2. Mix the old and the new.

3. Have on one item that kids will appreciate.

4. Dress for the weather.

5. Never let your clothes get in the way of life.

6. Embrace stains, rips, and stretches. Like wrinkles, they are proof of experience.

7. Iron your clothes how you want them to sit.

Looking ahead to 2026, I’m thinking less about rotation and more about commitment. Fewer pieces. Better ones. Things that feel rooted, but not stuck. Familiar, yet quietly strange. Clothing that understands its past well enough to move forward without anxiety.

That idea—looking backward in order to build something meaningful now—has become a guiding principle for me, not just in how I dress, but in how I want to live.

Two Jackets, One Philosophy

At the center of this are two jackets by Paul Harnden.

One in black ventile cotton.
One in olive herringbone tweed.

On paper, the materials couldn’t be more different. In practice, they feel like siblings.

The ventile jacket is all discipline. A fabric developed for extreme conditions, rendered without any overt technical signaling. It’s protective, dense, and almost severe—but never cold. There’s something deeply calming about wearing a garment that doesn’t ask to be optimized or explained. It just works.

The tweed is softer, warmer, more pastoral in spirit. Olive herringbone has a way of disappearing into daily life—pairing with almost everything, absorbing wear, improving through use. It feels less like an “outfit piece” and more like infrastructure.

What connects them is restraint. Neither jacket is nostalgic, and neither feels contemporary in a trend-driven sense. They exist slightly outside of time, which is exactly why they feel relevant now.

The Brutalist Sweater

Then there’s the Brutalist sweater by Kate Forbes (costume designer for the eponymous film).

At first glance, it feels almost futuristic—architectural, sculptural, avant-garde. The kind of piece that looks like it belongs to a world slightly ahead of ours. But the longer I sit with it, the more I realize it’s doing something much older.

Its logic is rooted in long-standing design principles: weight, structure, human scale, material honesty. It borrows from the past not just visually, but intellectually. That tension—ancient thinking rendered in an unfamiliar form—is what gives it its edge.

I love that contradiction. Something that looks forward-facing, even radical, while being deeply respectful of the systems that came before it. It’s proof that innovation doesn’t always need to look sleek or minimal. Sometimes it can look heavy, opinionated, and slightly impractical—in the best way.

The Foundations (Yes, Those Ones)

For all of this talk about jackets and sculptural knits, my daily foundation remains almost aggressively simple.

Midcentury-style chinos and denim—

—and white T-shirts.

They’re clichés of menswear, and I’ve made peace with that. Clichés stick around because they’re functional, adaptable, and generous. They don’t collapse under scrutiny.

What’s changed isn’t the items themselves, but my relationship to them. I’m no longer searching for the “perfect” version. I’m looking for the version that disappears when worn—the right cut, the right fabric, the right balance.

These pieces support rather than taking center stage. Everything else works better when they’re in place.

Jewelry, Time, and Repair

One thing I came to really understand during my time at Buck Mason is how much jewelry—and objects worn close to the body—matter. If you look at the styling in images from 2022–2023 versus 2024 onward, the shift I helped usher in is subtle but decisive.

Right now, I’m wearing a turquoise tab from my brothers, Kurt and Troy Oveido, on an old Goro’s silver chain. Along with that, a few silver bracelets, a gold Goro’s ring—and my Serica 4512 with a California dial.

The watch was recently returned to me after being repaired by Serica, and that experience crystallized a lot of what I value right now. There’s something deeply reassuring about an object designed not just to be worn, but to be maintained. To be opened up, cared for, put back into service.

Repair implies a future. It assumes the object is worth keeping alive.

The watch doesn’t feel “new” now—it feels confirmed. Like it’s been recommitted to. And in a strange way, so have I.

Jewelry and watches carry time differently than clothing. They move with you. They absorb gesture and habit. They quietly document your life. None of these pieces are loud, but none of them are accidental either. Together, they feel like punctuation—small marks that shape the sentence rather than dominate it.

Fewer Things, Deeper Meaning

As I move into 2026, the goal is simple, even if the execution isn’t: less, but better. Fewer decisions. Fewer compromises. Deeper investment in pieces that align with how I actually live and what I value.

I want things that feel considered rather than clever. Things that carry history without performing it. Things that can be repaired, adapted, and kept interesting over time.

Looking back—not nostalgically, but attentively—has turned out to be the most reliable way forward.

2025 felt like a year of narrowing rather than expanding. Fewer impulses, fewer experiments for the sake of novelty. More confidence in what I actually like, what I reach for, what makes me feel like myself. Clothing was still central, but it was rarely the point.

Here’s what stayed with me.

1. The Things (That Earned Their Place)

Casio F-91WB-1A
A minimalist take on a watch that refuses to pretend it’s anything other than what it is. Light, cheap, legible, and weirdly calming. I grabbed it after my Omega Seamaster bit the dust (so I could send the Seamaster to be repaired). It reminded me that utility can be comforting, and that not everything needs a story layered on top of it to feel meaningful.

Decot Hy-Wyd Sunglasses
Designed for shooting, these are my daily driving sunglasses. They feel like they belong to a lineage of tools rather than a cosmetic trend. Serious without being stiff, handsome without being precious. They’ve made me appreciate how a small, consistent accessory can quietly shape your sense of self over time.

There There High Slim Jeans
The jeans I still reach for when I don’t want to think. Which, increasingly, is the highest compliment. They sit right, wear well, and disappear into the day in the best way possible.

PANE Light Training Shoes
I’ve been wearing these more than I expected—and I think about them less than I usually do with shoes. That’s rare for me. Functional, unassuming, and perfectly suited to the way I actually move through the world.

Spier & Mackay Cavalry Twill Trousers
A reminder that fabric still matters. These brought a little weight and intention back into everyday dressing as the air has gotten colder. I got the light and medium brown colors and put a 2” cuff on them. They’ve made even simple outfits feel considered without tipping into costume.

Norbulingka Tibetan Buray Shirt
This one slowed me down. You feel the hands behind it. The history. The care. It pulled me out of the endless product cycle and back toward clothing as a cultural artifact, not just another purchase.

Proper Cloth Tobacco Linen Double-Breasted Suit
Proof that tailoring doesn’t have to be stiff or ceremonial. This felt relaxed, personal, and lived-in almost immediately. I wore it more casually than expected—and that felt like a very natural return to how I’ve always liked to dress.

Proper Cloth Light Blue Awning Striped Shirt
A quiet workhorse that, like the linen suit, I designed myself. Crisp but friendly. It made me appreciate how much mileage you can get out of a single well-chosen shirt when it actually fits your life.

2. The Non-Material Stuff (That Mattered More)

More than any single item, 2025 was about settling in.

Settling into my personal style and voice—not as some aspiration, but as a daily reality. Letting things repeat. Letting outfits be boring on paper but satisfying in practice. Trusting that coherence comes from time, not constant refinement.

I also found myself enjoying the peripheral parts of clothing more than the garments themselves: the conversations, the references, the shared language. The culture around menswear—the jokes, the deep cuts, the long emails, the DM exchanges—started to feel like the real reward.

Most importantly, I leaned into the friendships that came along with all of this. People I met through clothes, writing, or adjacent interests who slowly became actual friends. Less networking, more kinship. Less of a “scene,” more of a real community.

3. Personal Wins (Worth Pausing For)

I don’t always stop to acknowledge these things, but this felt like a year to do so.

I was lucky enough to be featured on a couple of podcasts I genuinely admire—Menswear by a Woman and Apocalypse Duds—both of which asked thoughtful questions and treated clothing as something worth taking seriously without taking it too seriously.

My writing also found new homes: appearing in The Strategist, GQ, and the latest issue of Permanent Style magazine. Seeing my work live alongside voices I’ve respected for years was quietly affirming, and a reminder that consistency compounds in ways you don’t always notice day to day.

4. What I’m Carrying Forward

If there’s a thesis to 2025, it’s this: fewer things, deeper roots.

Clothes as companions, not trophies. Style as something you inhabit, not perform. And community—not consumption—as the thing that keeps the whole project alive.

That feels like enough right now.