ils menswear and men's clothing part 2: 2023 until we all need stillsuits

amen brother, & the mock turt maker better send me an email saying "happy trails" after it's delivered to me.

It's the only type of shirt that is also a type of soup

As far as I know

Red wing and Nintendo have teamed up to bring Super Mario’s Shoes To Life (2023) pic.twitter.com/0yqFdXnpqf

— Outlander Magazine (@StreetFashion01) March 10, 2023

lmao

cant wait to stomp on all my enemies

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/09/australia/australia-william-leslie-arnold-cold-case-intl-hnk-dst/index.html

wow chambray double needle workshirt, such authentic, is it selvedge, where can i cop?

‘Well, he was an orphan. He didn’t lie about that, but he killed his parents, that’s why he was an orphan.’

👌

who's looking snazzy for summer

https://img.staticdj.com/0db3f52ccc134a79e32104a267bc5f39_1080x.jpeg

for real though i got this filson mechanic shirt and i can't wait to cosplay rough trade at the club

https://filson-canto.imgix.net/3qrso6g9vh57785bqmdpdcil37/gs6KD7w7k41qERPg97FERgdWi3Y/original?h=2000&w=2000&bg=ffffff&q=80&auto=format,compress&fit=fillmax

stussy has done many iterations on this workwear classic

besides the fact that i've never quite been able to pull off hickory stripe, i also have a morbid fear of catching my chest hair when adjusting the zip

i could not make it work personally but it's a cool style of shirt

my summer look is “aging crustpunk” or “hippie preppy”

The one with the half zip is odd but it is at least comprehensible as clothing for a male adult human in the western hemisphere.

I don't really understand the blue shirt above it with what I guess is a keyhole neckline?

Not my personal thing, but if that is something you wish to wear, go ahead; rock on with your bad selves.

I do not know what crust is so I'm prolly gonna keep dressing like my father, my stepfather, and almost every male person I ever knew who has a PhD in the humanities and a drinking problem. Our collective aesthetic is "louche English professor" and mostly it is working out for us.

We wear tweed nine months out of the year and linen for three months, and we do okay.

god bless

i'm also on the lookout for the douchiest sport sunglasses imaginable, i think it might have to be these oakleys

https://assets2.oakley.com/cdn-record-files-pi/c6ca0fe9-4ff1-43c5-8fa3-aefd00ef8cc0/77a5f4ac-6e0d-4929-bd9d-aefd00f83d56/0OO9271__927153__P21__shad__qt.png?impolicy=OO_ratio&width=2000

for the record, the blue shirt was a joke

i used to sling secondhand & vintage clothing as a side hustle and have the kind of eclectic wardrobe that goes with the territory.

my favorite stuff has tended to be postwar era- not too military, not too rockabilly, more outdoor and phys ed apparel. it's blockish and severe and looks good with my buzz cut.

i've gained a lot of weight in the last few years, though. i resisted buying any new clothes, instead i've tried to squeeze into anything i had that was oversized or less fitted. but it's got to the point where that's no longer an option.

so the first thing i noticed is that used clothes cost as much as new clothes now. not just coveted vintage pieces, i mean absolutely everything. wtf?? i guess i'm glad more people are buying secondhand shit but this is crazy.

i'm not going to buy fast fashion bullshit that falls apart in 3 months and ends up in a landfill. i'm not going invest in heirloom pieces because of my fluctuating weight (i was S/P and could fit into youth sizes, now i'm a true M/L) and also i'm living with uncertainties about my health. and i'm def not paying what ridiculous vintage repro brands charge for basics, holy shit.

digging around the online secondhand market a bit, it's really hard to find anything that justifies the price. Billy Reid stuff is about the best value, with a lot of pieces made in Italy under $30. i'm also seeing some deals for Steven Alan, though the quality and price point is much more variable there. this kind of stuff is a little more "normal guy" than what i usually go for, but i like it well enough i guess. the guys i see on the subway who dress like that always look like they have their ducks in a row. the problem is that as it's sort of blandish no individual piece inspires me to pull the trigger.

i'm through with buying clothes, forever. fashion is the biggest racket going, better drop those pounds fast i guess.

Not my personal thing, but if that is something you wish to wear, go ahead; rock on with your bad selves.

fixed

gah

Not my personal thing, but if that is something you wish to wear, go ahead; rock on with your bad selves.

:D

i doubt this is up your alley because it's very military but i need to evangelize about soffe silkies (or "ranger panties") for a second. if there was a god in heaven more men with nice legs would wear them. they're incredibly short. they're also incredibly comfortable. i wear them to the gym every day, whaddup.

https://cdn10.bigcommerce.com/s-19fkae7/products/361/images/1548/M020_ranger-olive__50494.1563829773.1280.1280.jpg?c=2

i once sold a pair of champion running man herringbone gym shorts in military olive color with a < 3" inseam for like $150.

i have 1940s basketball shorts somewhere that are shorter. alas, my legs have seen better days.

ftr i am pro gym shorts. on guys with nice legs it's not even a question.

YMP, “crust punk” is wearing cut-off tees with hardcore bands or cop-fighting anime characters or trains on them with booty shorts . it gets hot in Philly.

“hippie preppy” is wearing nicer clothes but they’re a little too bright and strange and it might seem like i’m on drugs. LL Bean but make it drug-running

preppie gone druggy is classic story

i like ll bean too, but it's a good example of the secondhand market insanity with items that used to reliably fetch $10-15 starting around $50. guess i'm done with ll bean.

Seth from Dufus is the ultimate crust punk. he doesn't wear a ton of black but i saw him on the G train c. 2001 with huge mounds of actual garbage glued to his shoes.

whats a good bargain on the second hand market these days

Wow I literally have no idea what you folks are talking about but okay

I only shop LL Bean at discount shops or at the outlets in Maine— I save a couple hundred just for clothes on my annual Maine trip.

(or at least I try)

i find ll bean made in usa pieces on ebay for $10-15 regularly. usually when sellers don't put it in the title and you gotta scroll the pics to see the tags. 90s era denim/chambray shirts in partic.

not usa but ll bean camp collar shirts are plentiful, affordable, and good for summer. i have two in a pleasingly colonialist batik print that look great with the sleeves rolled way way up for flexing purposes (the default unrolled silhouette is very tommy bahama).

levis 550s (the relaxed fit) are very cheap on ebay and comfortable year round in nyc imo.

my man!

am i not as patient and resourceful as i used to be or are we looking at different pieces?

not seeing a big price difference between made in usa and imported tbh. i have seen the camp shirts real cheap! i don't want em because tommy bahama silhouette is otm

also i like camp shirts a lot but why does every fucking short sleeve shirt have a camp collar now?

annual Maine trip.

ppl who have figured out how to live

As much as I like the patterns on a lot of camp collar shirts, I am very much sticking with butch collars; they just sit better on me. I’m currently scouting around for colourful print shirts, but with long sleeves. I never actually wear them long; instead I roll them up high above the elbow, as the shape nicely masks my skinny upper arms.

camp collar is code for “i’m available”, can’t believe you guys didn’t know this

deflatormouse, one of my oldest friends comes from some money, her family has a spot on an island off of Maine— dreamy place, but i certainly couldn’t afford such a trip if i were paying for anything besides gas, tolls, and gifts

I'm happy that this forest-green Land's End barn jacket, with a corduroy collar -- it was my late dads, from the 80s/90s -- is now suddenly in style.

like a Barbour jacket?

A lot like this one (I guess Lands' End is still making them!).

Oh, and here's the jacket itself on Ebay, though mine is less faded.

that sounds amazing table, my last comment was without irony or judgement, i'm glad you get to experience that place! i've only been to maine once, with a guy i was dating who grew up in the portland area. we went for a visit and hit boothbay, it was insanely beautiful.

as midcentury leisure shirts go i'm into the early 60's italian collar and have one in my rotation currently
https://www.themoviescene.co.uk/reviews/_img/8384-3.jpg

those barn jackets never went out of style.

i have one, it makes me look hopelessly awful

my enormous 80s bean barn jacket--with a waxed poacher's pocket and webbing for shotgun shells--is one of my prize ebay scores. it is best with the collar flipped up

I've been thinking about what I could contribute to this thread. I bought this pair of shoes a couple of months ago, they're the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn:

Allbirds Men's Tree Dasher Relay

How often do you carry shotgun shells adam

better to have extra pocket features today than to be the guy with loose shells rattling around like a fucking dork tomorrow

I might be tempted to use those shotgun-shell loops for those mini airplane liquor bottles

Or harmonicas in a bunch different keys, like the dude from Blues Traveler

Maybe just go straight-up absurdist and carry like five different kinds of toothpaste or skin moisturizer

i inherited a waxed canvas Barbour-type jacket from my uncle which i absolutely love but am wary about wearing here in the UK because of pretty vivid associations with rich land-owning Tories

something his brother told me that i never knew before is that they were originally invented as motorcycle jackets!

wear mine a fair bit in spring and autumn. walk around brockwell park with a shotgun under my arm. bray loudly at the ducks etc.

a bit of brexit for lunch

xp don’t forget your red cords

correct xp

i haven’t got any red cords. i have got a splendid brick-coloured… well what colour are we calling this?

https://i.imgur.com/UPlDBuA.jpg

Rusty, which is just brown-red

lol my favorite plaids from LE all look like somebody took a picture of a malfunctioning computer screen and hit invert in photoshop, it is true

i like Land's End henleys fwiw

Pendleton is good for flannels and wools. Full price is kinda steep, but they have sales often. I live near their factory store, luckily, and have found some good deals there. (And maybe I was the last to learn that The Beach Boys originally called themselves The Pendletones because of their matching flannel board shirts.)

Who is wearing all the neon plaid from LE, I wonder? Only plausible answer I can imagine is working guys trying to match their hi-vis vests.

BTW if anyone was in suspense I’m pleased to
say my foot went back to normal, though I’m still spending a lot of days in Oboz Bridger boots. I think the trick with modern hikers as everyday wear is actually to avoid any of the ones that make you think “oh nice, that mostly looks like a normal boot,” because those will indeed seem like you’re wearing normal boots you have really bad taste in. You want something that is confidently up-front with technical details like toe kicks or speed lacing or different materials — everything that says “hello yes I am 100% a hiking boot” apart from garish sneakerish colors. Also helps to get them scuffed and dirty as quickly as possible; half of what can make them awkward is looking unnaturally fresh

(PS Pendleton sometimes has a really good pearl-snap western shirt, both in trad poly-cotton and wool, with top-notch color schemes.)

Also helps to get them scuffed and dirty as quickly as possible

so relatable, also one of those things that makes me feel that i'm a grown man who has not progressed past the mentality of my nine-year-old self

re wool, we have these vacuum storage bags that work wonders.

Aww, I don't consider it juvenile or superficial to say some things look awkward when new! Daily-wear hiking boots actually hit all three of the main categories I can see for such stuff: things meant to be broken in and molded (leather, raw denim, waxed canvas), things where part of the aesthetic goal is to feel like you're casually throwing on an old practical favorite (trucker jackets, certain flannels, old-school puffers), and things built for a purpose specific enough that it looks actively odd if they've clearly never been used for that purpose (outdoor gear). But I dunno, I guess I may be too much of a fan of the old WASPy "wearing nice stuff that's been absolutely beat to hell" thing ... not to a cracked-shoes Adlai Stevenson level, but my favorite sweaters definitely feature some 20-year-old holes

Those cherry Merrell 1trl's posted above are beautiful. Picking up a pair today.

My daily wear Tasmanian Laincot pants have acquired a purple hue from sunbleaching. Mixes well with a vintage Australian made flannel (still plenty of beauties to find in this nations rural op shops) + my cherry Salomons. Summer is set. No desire to wear anything else

xp me neither but to me there's something quite mature about being able to lean into it, "yup, i know looks a bit off but it's brand new and that comes with the territory, they'll develop wear soon enough but in the mean time i'm wearing them anyway" yknow rather than scuffing them up shamefully in a corner

Washing machines and dryers on no-heat / air fluff mode are astounding at making your good new things look beat up fwiw

I find it hilarious that my friends and colleagues consider me a stylish person despite the fact that I thrash hard against all the orthodoxies espoused in this thread. It has to be because I live where I live, where the ability to match colors and wear outfits that aren’t just brown and navy blue or gray and black is like some flagrant expression of individuality people can barely get their head around

getting called a hidebound traditionalist from the guy who only wears one type of shoes ever, designed in the 1920s smh

ouch, well zung

My mother is a violinist; a while back she bought a new violin case to replace the one she got in like 1953.

Apparently she thought the new one looked incongruous and possibly dorky (like the other violinists were gonna give her shit about it and call her teh noob).

Anyway she had me take it outside and kick it around in the driveway for 10 minutes

Hahahaha, sorry that tickled me

Are there any orthodoxies in this thread? I can't remember any.

Not really. I do feel like the tendency here seems to be somewhat conservative? I’m still grumpy that nabisco suggested that some of my favorite flannels look like alienware laptops.

I've always been a little on the conservative side myself. I grew up with a dad who wore suits to my little league games. We have a photo of him as a young child in a suit on the beach. His dad made suits.

I also work in a field that tends to be more conservative, although my office is casual now. I still feel a little weird when I wear jeans to work even when they're "nice" jeans. I had an argument with my family about how I don't think there's such a thing as "nice sweatpants."

Most of my dressing is either for the office or just weekend bumming around. I'm a suburban dad and have no reason to not dress like one. I like wearing my patagonia jacket (actually the inside of a 3-in-1 coat) everywhere not so much because I love the way it looks, although I like it, but because it says "I'm here to pick up my kids." No one will ever doubt that I'm there to pick up my kids when I'm wearing my patagonia jacket.

There are pairs of sweatpants that cost as much as 2-3 pairs of decent jeans, and they’re better constructed than those jeans, too.

in my world, jeans and suit pants and pretty much all other forms of long pants other than sweatpants are simply not even part of the thought process. this world sucks, why do i need to be uncomfortable in it just so i can fit into some bourgeois ideas of propriety?

It's prob a life's work to define our own personal relationship to menswear or streetwear or both, lol

I would completely agree with that

yeah, agreed. i only came around to sweats a few years ago, now i wear them most of the time in the colder months and actively resent when i have to put proper jeans on. i even bring an extra pair of sweats with me so if i have to run errands after teaching, i don’t have be uncomfortable.

I received my overshirt, and I'm very happy with it. I'll probably wear it as a shirt rather than a jacket for the most part. Very lucky to nab one at a steep discount that is an actually nice, non-garish color combination.

Probably the most comfortable pair of pants I've ever owned is my tailored wool pants from Suit
Supply. But... almost as inappropriate for everyday use
in my life as sweats.

Moleskin pants have been the most comfortable ones I've ever worn. Had a Gap pair in the 90s and then a few from the Canadian brand Caban...All wore out from heavy use, but loved 'em and still keep an eye out for similar ones.

Ok but do you have any idea how many moles need to die to make those pants

I am becoming a suits an t-shirts person. I really like wearing a suit especially since I lost weight. I also got a bunch of really good had me downs from my dad who is going the other way.

I don’t like the open collar under a suit, wear a tie if you are going to wear a shirt. Australian men, especially estate agents love a blue suit that doesn’t fit and is far too tight. A well fitting suit is a joy.

Anyway I was walking down the street in shinjuku today - green custom tailored suit from vietnam, pink. Onitsuka tiger shoes, pink paul smith belt, white Uniqlo T-shirt and brown and silver Sou Sou hanten - I walked past a street fashion suit and and the thought came to me, ‘you should be photographing me’

Utter vanity but I feel very good about it.

That sounds pretty great.

I don't currently own a suit, which is a shame on my behalf. Since the WFH revolution i haven't actually really needed one. The last wedding I went to, I went summer casual as it was very warm. I find the cut of suits seems to change quite dramatically in just a few years, so im holding g off for tge right occasion to buy one

lol Ed that rules.

i've started wearing bandanas with collar shirts as a kind of halfway house. it's fun (for me) and kind of "finishes" the shirt but without any of the formality implied by a tie.

I have recently started buying wool (or similar) suits too. I feel like it can go nice with a plain coloured cashmere jumper underneath, as its chilly atm.

Re: fit, I have a few jackets, some of them pretty high quality but the one I keep coming back to costs like £60 that I got at John Lewis because it just fits absolutely perfectly. The more I've investigated tailoring the more I've realised my shoulders are quite narrow and one of them has a pretty significant drop, so pretty much everything I look at the shoulders are too wide, or one of them is fine and the other is too wide, or they're too tight. Annoying! i think this is why so many people like Italian unstructured jackets because they just kind of drape on you a bit more, they're more forgiving.

I'm also big into bandanas with collared shirts. I've got six bandanas, and it's fun to match them up.

https://cdn.hanna-barberawiki.com/thumb/4/47/Fred_Jones.png/300px-Fred_Jones.png

I have two Engineered Garments suit jackets, a linen one for summer and a wool one for winter. Idk what the chances of it are but the fit is absolutely perfect for me off the peg. They weren't cheap but they are truly all-time pieces.

lol it me

xpost

I love those Engineered Garments jackets. I should be combing the internet for those.

If I could afford it, I'd have a closet full of different suits and jackets. The older I get, the deeper we get into casual WFH-wear, the more I love getting dressed up and do so at every opportunity.

I also really love the contrast of piercings and neck tattoos with high end fashion. (I don't have any neck tattoos but there's still time.)

That’s the thing right there. I’m such a shlub when I’m WFH or even at my coworking so it’s nice to turnout to a meeting or an event well turned out.

And I’m lucky to have had this amazing batch of hand me downs which included some Oswald Boatengs and some Gieves and Hawkes which add to a couple of paul smiths, and a vivienne westwood (all a bit big for me now) and a couple of suits I had tailored in Vietnam.

Suits can be a challenge down here. So much blue - and I get why blue is the default colour, it matches most skin tones, just not the pasty pink Northern European one.

Look at the state of this:

https://cdn.prod.www.manager-magazin.de/images/d4277bad-27be-4bdb-a61f-a7968a20ca6d_w1840_r1.778_fpx52_fpy30.webp

This photo gets used a lot, it’s the last public sighting of Rupert, Lachlan and James all together. Surely they could afford a decent tailor?

Too tight, wrinkles everywhere, and the worst possible blue; at least they are wearing ties. It’s the style template for every Australian estate agent, banker, big four consultant…

they are bad ties tho

I really dig a good bandana. Unfortunately there is another shaven-headed black man on my floor at work who has made them a real signature accessory, to a point where it'd be genuinely awkward for me to show up in one.

The hiking-boot thing I was going on about upthread has led me on an unexpected tilt into outdoorsy stuff in general, in sort of a 70s climber vein. Came in handy as we got slammed with snow and cold here, and it suddenly worked especially well to be in, like, serious boots and a Bean sweater and layers of retro fleeces and thin puffers. (I've spent thirty-some years wearing wool winter coats, but I gotta admit, some of these ultralight technical things are ... functionally satisfying.) The usual gorpcore stuff still looks bad to me — too techy and synthetic, I think — but old-fashioned Ivy-League-goes-hiking things are nice? I'd assumed this was all me getting old and abandoning style in favor of utility, but I think it's actually a function of (a) growing up in Colorado in the 80s and having nice associations with this stuff, plus (b) the current general vibe being boxy-baggy and casual in a way where being sort of cozy and practical feels right. Only wrinkle is that I've been wearing fuzzy wool sweaters most every day for months — gonna be a wild shift when it warms up and I have to put them away.

I love those Engineered Garments jackets. I should be combing the internet for those.

idk what city you're in but there's a shop in london owned by eg and needles and a few other brands and they have sales where the eg jackets are half price.