Philadelphia stories: Men’s shops and shirtmakers

I recently stayed about a week in Philadelphia and visited or walked by a few establishments. I stopped by Wayne Edwards, an independent men’s retail shop, and chatted with the owner Wayne and his assistant Franz on a recent weekend. They carry RTW business and sportswear and also do MTM (Isaia). I was curious to […]

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Denim disputations: ‘Distressed’ over rules

In recent weeks, an intellectual dispute with the ‘denimification’ of clothing has surfaced up to the mainstream media. Exhibit A is journalist Daniel Akst’s Wall Street Journal op-ed piece describing the pernicious assault of denim on sartorial taste. He argues that the principal crime of denim is “undifferentiated dressing”. Picking up where Akst leaves off,

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Recession-savvy shirt care: How to iron a shirt Old World style

As a follow up to my recent entry on shoes, here’s another feature in the “recession-savvy” series of wearing your clothes for longer wear. This time we’re talking dress shirts and how to care for them. This blog entry by shirtmaker Laliquette goes into detail on each step that he goes through in ironing a

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Enzo Caruso: An Ulster-style overcoat

The idea of clothing as a uniform is a historically rooted one and quite appealing. Comfort through conformity has worked for men for ages. Nothing wrong with adhering to a reliable formula for dressing. It’s worked in a military setting for centuries and has crossed over repeatedly into the business/civilian sector. However, I’ve always have

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Edward Green & Alfred Sargent unplugged

Styleforum member manton visited Northamptonshire last year for an article he was researching on English shoemakers.  He posted photos of his Edward Green and Alfred Sargent factory visits in this Styleforum thread. I’m posting this partially for the very informative photo essay above but also because Alfred Sargent has been under some financial distress recently.

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