I nearly sabotaged my first-ever interview with a real fashion icon. By icon, I mean one of those designers who has transcended the industry to become someone even your dad knows – a dad who still wears socks with his sandals. For three days straight, I drilled myself on everything I could find.
I read every article on his latest collection multiple times, memorized all of the proper fabric lingo, and practiced pronouncing Italian textile mills without sounding like an asshole. My leather notebook was filled with calculatedly provocative questions. My voice recorder was triple-checked for functionality.
I polished a pair of shoes so thoroughly you could see your face in them. Fast-forward five minutes into our interview.
I am wasting no time and barrel through my questions like a linebacker.
There I am, full steam ahead, asking him about his “revolutionary take on silhouette disruption within the modern menswear narrative” (I am not exaggerating – that was verbatim). Then he stops me with his hand. “Son,” he begins, with a patience only someone twice my age in the fashion industry could muster, “most fashion is bullshit.” He continued, barely letting me finish rolling the recorder back in. “With good public relations.”I’ll let the dead air that followed those quotes speak for itself. He gave me a chance to compose myself before saying, “Don’t quote me on that.” “Or do,” he scoffed. “I don’t care anymore.
I’m too old to give a shit. The things that matter in men’s fashion are things that haven’t changed in 100 years.” Nothing else matters. Trends, fashion weeks, magazines.
None of that matters to how a man looks. He went on to explain how most of that stuff is used simply to sell copies and magazines and keep his brand prominent on store floors. I’ve talked to hundreds if not thousands of industry insiders since that day; stylists, designers, tailors, manufacturers.
Some PR-guided interviews in fancy factory rooms. Others pissed in alleyways after shared bottles of whisky. What mattered to them all was the same thing, and what didn’t has formed the basis for this article.
What Matters; What’s Marketing Fluff? Fit “I can dress a man in a $200 suit that fits like it’s made for him and he’ll look ten times better than the guy walking around in a $2,000 suit from some luxury brand.” I heard this time and time again talking to tailors and industry elites who had been in it far longer than I. It sounds like a broken record at this point and yet it’s still parroted around by “style experts” as some kind of groundbreaking revelation.
But it is true. Nothing matters more than how your clothes fit on your body. Not the brand.
Not how much you pay. Not the fabric. Nothing.
Look at Kanye in a well-fitting designer suit and compare it to John Mayer in a brand-name tee and jeans that fit perfectly. Kanye will always lose that battle. Looking good is 90% just your clothes harmonizing with your shape.
If they don’t fit that shape well, you’ll never achieve that 90%. Here’s the crazy part. No matter how you slice it, that rule doesn’t change.
Ask your local bespoke tailor. Ask your favorite streetwear designer. Quality cobblers, denim machinists, they’ll all tell you the same; fit is king.
How that fit is executed will change based on style. We’re currently in a era of ultra-relaxed fit, but that wasn’t true 10 years ago when skin-tight was all the rage. Fit will continue to evolve as style does, but as long as there are clothes and bodies, fit will matter.
Why do you think they obsess over it? Because if they taught you how to properly wear clothes, based on fit for your body, you’d be harder to sell to. It takes time to educate someone on fit.
Brands can’t tell you where your waist sits or how to tailor your shirt in 15 seconds like they can with price points or design details. Brand Names Over dinner one night with a group of menswear industry veterans, we took a poll. Could everyone name a luxury menswear product that absolutely could not be duplicated on-the-low (read: cheaply) with the same quality and exact design details minus the expensive brand name?
We were shit-faced after a night watching fashion shows so we threw out plenty of stupid answers in bad Italian (mine were the stupidest). Long story short: there was a prolonged moment of silence after we posed the question. “There’s literally a factory making the same product without the logo for 1/10th of the price,” one merchandiser who worked for a luxury retailer told me. Then he drunkenly listed examples I’m sure we can all guess. “Literally the same fucking factory.” Ok sure, exaggeration.
But only slightly. Fact is, any brand name you can think of functions as a membership club. Inside that membership is a curated group of products that are, by-and-large, defined by a price point instead of quality standards.
Sure, those brands might offer better products than others. But how much better are they, really? Twice as nice?
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Three times? Sure, the dress shirt may be made from 100% Egyptian cotton while the other is made from 80s Egyptian cotton. But does it really look twice as good?
I spent an entire day in northern Italy touring factories that produce clothes for some of the most well-known luxury brands in the world. We watched, side-by-side, shirts being made on the exact same factory floor. One brand will sell that shirt for €320.
Another will sell the exact same shirt – same fabric, same worker, same machine – for €95. Luxury brand,” the factory owner told me. “But other than that?” Same shirt. Material Quality (But Not In The Way You Think) This one is sort of piggybacking on fit, but it deserves its own platform.
If fit is the foundation of menswear, materials are the frame. What’s tricky here is separating what you’ve been told is quality materials and what actually is. We’ll start with dress shirts.
It’s constantly referenced. “Fabrics this season feature 1200 thread count Egyptian cotton!” Stuff like that. But what does that even mean? I spoke to fabric experts who work directly with high-end Italian mills about what “quality” really means when it comes to dress shirts. “Thread count doesn’t mean shit,” laughed Antonio, who manages fabric development for a few Italian mills I won’t name. “Sure people brag about their Egyptian cottons or Sea Island cottons or whatever, but when it comes down to it that isn’t what matters.
It’s all about the staple length, the yarn integrity, and the finishing process.” Same thing applies to pretty much every material you can think of. Want to look at knitwear? Sure, cashmere is the “best” they’ll tell you.
But what they won’t tell you is that cheap cashmere pills like nothing else and loses its shape rapidly. A high-quality merino will perform thousands of times better. Want to look at suiting?
Everyone talks about Super 150s and Super 200s as if the higher the Super number, the better. But Super 150 wool is usually much weaker than a Super 110 or Super 120. The “Super” refers to yarn size.
Like anything else, there is always a trade-off with extremely high-numbered wool. Instead of focusing on some made up numerical superiority, look for materials that perform how you need them to. Quality Materials: -Dress better than their cheap counterparts -Are consistent in their appearance and behavior -Age well Obviously, “is from Avral Valley or was spun by dwarf worms” does not make the list.
Brand Names Everything “drops” these days. Hats, shirts, shoes, you name it. Fashion “drops.” Sneaker “drops.” Even electronics “drop” now.
Few industries manipulate artificially scarce products quite like streetwear – and for good reason. Have you ever wondered why people will wait in line for days to cop a shirt that costs brands $20 to manufacture? Because there’s an undeniable psychology trick at play. “They cannot sell these t-shirts in store without marking the price up 10x,” one streetwear brand marketing director told me about how they price items that are purposefully made in limited quantities. “We make sure of it.” The whole idea of limited quantities and NEEDING to cop something while it’s “available” is a proven marketing strategy.
Think of the last time you saw a shirt you loved only available in “four sizes.” You wanted it. Maybe you bought it. That’s no accident.
Think about from an evolutionary standpoint for a second. Scarcity used to apply to things you needed to survive. Water.
Food. Cover from predators. Our brains are hardwired to seek out those things first, which is why brands trick you into thinking you NEED that new drop.
We’re talking graphic tees and Jordans here. True Value I could probably split my honorable mentions into what’s actually meaningful and what’s not.
But here’s the kicker: how much you spent on something matters only in one specific way.
Can you afford to care about what brand it is? Can you afford that shirtdress you’ve been coveting? Then it doesn’t matter if you bought a generic brand from Target.
It looks good on you, fits perfectly, and doesn’t strain your wallet. Case closed. Sure, you might get some shit for wearing cheap brands.
But odds are if you wore that shirt with the brand dyed out to your hipster/raw denim-wearing friends they’d never know the difference. Style Illustration: Sam Shapter Shoot A special thanks to my friends at AGOLDE for letting me unleash hell on their product shots. All clothes featured in this story are available in their web store.
Our model Sam Shapter is also the brains behind the oneandthreebears illustration project. You can find more of his work on his website.
