In an ongoing trade war with what feels like the entire world, the Trump administration yesterday slapped a 25% tariff on hundreds of European goods. The new policy comes at the heels of a WTO ruling, which found that the European Union has been unfairly subsidizing Airbus, thus hurting US jobs and exports. In retaliation, the US government will raise their import tax on European made goods.

The US Trade Representative’s Office has a full list of eligible items. It includes everything from French wine to Italian cheese to single-malt Scotch whisky. Most importantly for PTO readers, it also includes British-made clothing items, including men’s suits and sweaters. (Famously, David Ricardo put forward his theory on comparative advantage 200 years ago with a simple yet profound example about England trading cloth for wine — partly because England was famous for its cloth and Ricardo loved wine).

So, what does this mean? If you’re importing a $250 British-made sweater, you can see a border tax of $62.50. If you’re a customer buying something from a store abroad, you will be paying that entire cost. But even if you go to a US store selling British-made goods, that cost may be passed onto you depending on how the store decides to split it. For people importing expensive $5,000 Savile Row suits, the tax could be as high as $1,250. The effective date for additional duties is October 18th.

Alternatively, you can purchase your clothes from China. But there’s an ongoing trade war there, as well. Or you can buy your suits and sweaters from one of the many high-end manufacturers in the US, which is Martin Greenfield, Nobody, and No One Else. So congrats on only wearing Martin Greenfield from now on.

The post Trump Administration Slaps New Tariffs On British Suits And Sweaters appeared first on Put This On.

Capital One today announced that they had a data security breach that’s affected upwards of 100 million credit card applications. This news follows on the heels of last week’s Equifax settlement, where the credit bureau — one the three largest in the United States — reached a preliminary agreement to pay some $650 million to resolve claims stemming from a 2017 data breach. As more of our information has become digitized, Americans are finding it difficult to control who gets their sensitive data. The ultimate details of the Equifax case are still being worked out and the credit bureau may end up paying more than the current agreement. But already, it is the largest data breach settlement in terms of dollar amount and number of victims. More than 147 million people had their financial information stolen through Equifax, which means there’s a pretty good chance you’re one of them.

Equifax is currently offering two forms of recompense. You can either take ten years of free credit score monitoring or walk away with the princely sum of $125. If you take either, you forfeit your right to take legal action against Equifax in the future, even if your identity ends up getting stolen. But if you’re interested, you can check their dedicated settlement website to see if you qualify.

In the end, not everyone who signs up may even receive their $125. Equifax has set aside $31 million for this portion of the payment, and that’s only enough for 248,000 people (everything is on a first-come, first-serve basis). But if you’re lucky enough to receive $125 for having your financial data stolen, we combed through the treasure trove that’s Mr. Porter to see what you can ALMOST purchase.

Tom Dixon’s Orientalist Scented Candle, 540g ($130)

Beautifully encased in a brass, hand-spun vessel and solid Morwad marble lid, Tom Dixon calls this luxurious candle formulation Orientalist, which is Edward Said’s word for a racist. Mr. Porter describes the calming scent as being a heavenly mixture of cassis, magnolia, and patchouli. It lasts for about fifty hours, after which you can use the vessel to tidy your odds and ends once your credit score has been burned to the ground.

Man 1924’s Fringed Printed Cotton Scarf ($130)

Everyone needs a whimsical scarf. This Man 1924 collaboration with Lovat & Green is designed with an offbeat print of turtle shells, which are better at protecting who they’re supposed to protect than a leading credit bureau. Mr. Porter doesn’t give measurements for this item, but we bet the people who broke into Equifax have them.

Palm Angels’ Embellished Cotton-Twill Baseball Cap ($135)

Prominent street label Palm Angels has embellished this handsome, cotton twill ball cap with a fake anti-theft tag. Which is perfect because we’re pretty sure Equifax’s anti-theft tags also don’t work. Wear this as a sartorial statement to show how little control Americans have over their data and how security is on your mind.

Balenciaga’s Logo-Print Textured-Leather Snap Bracelet $275

The ‘90s are back! While we still await the return of Hypercolor shirts, Reebok pumps, and wearing pagers as accessories, we’re pretty stoked to see Balenciaga come out of with a $275 slap bracelet. “Italian-made from logo-stamped textured-leather with a smooth underside, it’s constructed with flexible bands to achieve that satisfying crack when it hits your wrist,” reads Mr. Porter’s site. Now both you and Equifax can enjoy a slap on the wrist.

Asprey’s Hanover Leather Scrabble Set ($11,950)

This Scrabble game board from Asprey costs nearly $12,000. But since every Scrabble set comes with 100 tiles, that means you can buy one tile for $120 (within your budget). Have your identity stolen three times so you can spell WTF.

RRL Logo-Detailed Metal Bottle Opener ($225)

This rusty $225 bottle opener channels exactly the same rustic sensibility of Ralph and Ricky Lauren’s famous Colorado ranch. Mr. Porter notes that it’s “made from weighty, weathered metal and sculpted with the label’s emblem, like a branding stamp, at the bottom.” Along with opening bottles, you can use this as branding iron to mark your possessions once someone impersonates your identity.

The post Things You Can Almost Buy With Your $125 Equifax Compensation appeared first on Put This On.

In the latest “surprising, but also not that surprising” string of fashion news, Snobette reports that Barneys New York is considering filing for bankruptcy. The American chain of luxury department stores, founded nearly a hundred years ago, is a pillar in the high-end fashion world and where many designers made their careers.

To be sure, if they do file for bankruptcy, this wouldn’t be the first time. Barneys filed for Chapter 11 back in 1996 and closed most of its stores, then recovered by the late 2000s. This time, however, the future is uncertain. The fashion retail market is facing difficult, structural challenges, including skyrocketing rents in high-density cities, competition via online retailing, and the rise of more specialized boutiques (why buy jeans from a multi-brand retailer when there are denim specialists such as Self Edge). Snobette reports:

Luxury department store Barneys New York is considering filing for bankruptcy, a plan of action that could take place as soon as this month. According to Reuters, the retailer is facing a money crunch brought on by a rent hike at its 660 Madison Avenue location in Manhattan. Rent leaped up from approximately $20 million in 2018 to $30 million in January 2019.

Barneys began battling with building owner Ashkenazy Acquisition over the looming price hike two years before the lease expired in 2019. At the time, the two companies were working with an arbitrator to determine a fair increase. The Madison Avenue store rakes in about one-third of the company’s annual sales so choosing to decamp isn’t necessarily the best solution. Filing for bankruptcy would be one way the company could find its way out of expensive leases

Bankruptcy is not certain, however. The company has hired law firm Kirkland & Ellis and M-III Partners, a financial advisory firm, to explore all possible options including a sale or seeking further financing.

If Barneys were to close, it would be one of the most high-profile victims of the current retail downturn, and show that even luxury brands aren’t immune to the rapid commodification problem in fashion.

The post Barneys New York May File For Bankruptcy appeared first on Put This On.

In the second episode of Dressing Funny, a new comedy webseries on Netflix, Tan France gives Big Mouth co-creators Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg a wardrobe overhaul. The trio meets at Fred Segal, a leading fashion boutique in West Hollywood. Kroll and Goldberg show up in dumpy hoodies and pre-washed jeans — the uniform of comedians — and follow France’s direction for how they can develop a better sense of style. To be sure, it’s not clear if Kroll actually needs the advice (I’ve definitely seen him in some good outfits), but Goldberg admits that he’s lost when it comes to clothes. “I have two young kids, and there’s a puppy, and there are lunches,” he says. “I grab the thing that’s on top.”

France lets the pair loose in the store with their first challenge: to dress each other in an outfit they think is fitting. Goldberg makes an earnest attempt to dress his friend stylishly (although he doesn’t quite get it right). Kroll, on the other hand, decides to pull together something ridiculous. After passing on polyester track jackets and psychedelic vacation shirts, he lands on an outfit consisting of a fitted sport coat, patterned swim trunks, and buckle-strap sneakers. Upon seeing Goldberg emerge from the fitting room, Kroll jokes: “You look like a sexy schoolboy.” Goldberg would later get the last laugh, however. So far in the show, he’s had the biggest style transformation, moving from what Kroll described as a “depression outfit” to something that could have once been featured in the Japanese mag Free & Easy.

Each episode of Dressing Funny follows this same formula: France dresses his guest in slightly ridiculous outfits until they emerge in something amazing, and along the way, he talks with them about their relationship with clothes. Comedic guests include Tina Fey, Ali Wong, Pete Davidson, and others. And while the show is mostly just for laughs, it also highlights some of the challenges of building a casual wardrobe. Every episode takes place inside an upscale fashion boutique — the kind where you always notice something is off when you enter. The air somehow smells a little fresher; the clothes are set a little further apart from each other on the racks. Once you see the prices are handwritten on artisanal paper, you realize you’ve wandered into all all-too-expensive store.

(photos: John Mulaney meets Tan France in Dressing Funny)

For guys who aren’t used to shopping in such spaces, this kind of environment can be intimidating (to be sure, I still find them intimidating). The prices are astronomical, and you always feel like you’re not supposed to touch anything, let alone try things on. Then there are the styles — three-legged pants, deep-pile fleece socks, and doleful, patchwork Franken-jackets with narrow shoulders. In the first episode of Dressing Funny, France dresses John Mulaney in a high-fashion streetwear outfit that involves a sleeve-printed field jacket, luxury track pants, and Balenciaga Triple S sneakers. Mulaney, rightfully, says he looks like an undercover teenager trying to buy drugs.

These are the sorts of designer outfits that make many men — particularly older men — feel like they can’t dress nowadays without any sense of dignity. Every trend seems more ridiculous than the last, especially now that fashion is governed by notions of camp, irony, and insider-humor. Combine this with the prices, and it’s easy to wonder if fashion is just a prank on unknowing victims.

To be sure, it’s possible to wear these things well, but doing so requires a few things. It helps to live in a big city and and work in one of the creative industries. You also have to be willing to stand out a little from your peers, as well as follow fashion somewhat closely. All style, including the traditional coat-and-tie, is about learning a visual language. The main difference is that, while everyone understands the language of suits — it’s the uniform of “respectability” — there are a million tribes in casualwear, each with their own language, which can make it difficult to understand something if you’re not already acquainted with a look.

The death of traditional dress codes has, ironically, made it more difficult to dress well. A hundred years ago, men dressed according to time, place, and location. Brown suits were for the country; navy suits for the city. Black oxfords were for business; brown brogues were for sport. As dress codes became less constrictive, creativity has bloomed. During the pre-war era, earlier forms of ready-to-wear clothing were little more than watered-down imitations of their better custom-tailored counterparts. But in the last seventy-five years, the fashion has exploded with energy and imagination, especially as production has been reorganized to include specialized designers, improved technologies, and global supply chains.

We’ve reached an age where there’s a full kaleidoscope of possibilities in terms of appearance, and the ascendancy of one look doesn’t necessarily displace another. Modern minimalism (Uniqlo) and maximalism (Gucci) are both considered legitimate, as are soft Italian tailoring (Sartoria Formosa) and ironic normcore (Balenciaga), conceptual deconstructionism (Margiela) and rugged workwear (RRL), futuristic techwear (Acronym) and folk clothes (Kapital), the bohemian hippie look (Visvim) and new internationalism (18 East), Japanese avant-garde (Yohji Yamamoto) and prep (Ralph Lauren), vivid colors (Kenzo) and dusty earth tones (Stoffa). You can layer the high and low; wear slim-fitting clothes or wide-fitting garments. As Gilles Lipovetsky writes in The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy: “Nothing is taboo any longer; all styles are accepted and exploited unsystematically. There is no longer a fashion, there are fashions.”

(photos: an outfit from Division Road and Goldberg on Dressing Funny)

It’s no wonder why so many men find casualwear exhausting and confusing. In each of the Dressing Funny episodes, Frances puts his guests in a very on-trend outfit. Kroll wears a Kanye-esque sweat suit, Mulaney sports a Hedi rocker uniform, and even Goldberg’s sport-coat-with-swim-trunks outfit could pass for an Engineered Garments look. And yet, while these outfits look great on some men, they look absurd here. One of the great things about classic men’s style is that, relatively speaking, you don’t have to contort your personality as much to fit your wardrobe. The downside? Without a tailored jacket, classic casualwear tends to look bland and boring. (Preppy readers will protest and say everyone looks good in OCBDs and khakis, but while that’s true to some degree, those outfits lack something. Just see how terrible the business casual movement has been for modern wardrobes).

Dressing Funny leaves us with some hope. There are three episodes so far featuring men. The one of Pete Davidson ends with the SNL comedian wearing a 2010 GQ outfit. France puts Davidson in a closed, slim-fit trucker jacket, over which he layers an equally slim fitting topcoat. It looks a little forced and, to be honest, I prefer Davidson’s usual attire (which former Esquire editor Jay Fielden once described “intentionally ugly streetwear”). The two best transformations, however, have been Andrew Goldberg and John Mulaney, both of whom ends up with something vaguely Americana and workwear-ish. Mulany gets out of a ho-hum striped sweater and puts on a mauve t-shirt, tan suede jacket, and some black Chelsea boots — not strictly workwear, but a distant cousin. Goldberg, on the other hand, goes the whole nine-yards with a waxed rancher’s jacket, black slim-fit jeans, and oiled suede work boots.

The great thing about Americana and workwear is that they’re geographically neutral. They work just as well in New York City as they do in the mid-west. They work for almost any guy of any age. Like suits, they point back to a language that many people understand. The style is dense with traditional masculine references that are common throughout modern culture, including film, books, and music. You don’t have to learn a new visual language, unlike with very trendy or avant-garde wardrobes. And yet, unlike American prep or Italian casualwear, the style is more directional, pushing it away from just dad-wear or bizcaz. Will it work for everyone? No, but nothing will.

If you’re just starting to build a casual wardrobe, start with a good pair of slim-straight, raw denim jeans (I like 3sixteen’s SL-100x as a do-all cut, but a lot depends on your preferences and build). Jeans are the foundation of many casualwear styles, and will prove useful even if you later decide to move on from Americana and workwear. Then get a sturdy, grey cotton sweatshirt for layering, some plaid flannel shirts and light-blue oxford button downs, and a pair of work boots. For outerwear, consider olive field jackets, waxed cotton Barbours, and maybe a leather bomber or cafe racer if you’re up for a splurge. I also really like the stuff Goldberg is wearing in Dressing Funny: black jeans are a little more directional than blue, and a tan rancher jacket will go with black or blue denim. I often wear one from RRL, although the model is from an older season. Finally, check out our two-part guide on casualwear for more suggestions.

The post Dressing Funny And The Challenges Of Casualwear appeared first on Put This On.

We’re off to the political horseraces, folks. As election season creeps in, candidates are jockeying for air time, airwaves, and even air space. So how can a candidate stand out? The answer, of course, is sweet, sweet merch!

All the candidates have workshopped their slogans, hired graphic designers, and are ready for you to support them with your wallet in exchange for a tee or tote. Democratic hopefuls want to counteract the red MAGA hat of nativism, so they’ve gone all out on the design front. Those bland political logos that are just red, white, and blue? So 2016. Let’s take a look at these grails, or at least more unique items, from each of the candidate’s official stores.

Joe Biden’s Pride Shades

Just in time for LGBT Pride, Joe Biden’s campaign, like many others, has released some rainbow items. Considering Pride is a tank top time, not a t-shirt time, he’s already ahead of the game. But ole Joe goes the extra mile by making a legitimately okay graphic tee based on his penchant for aviator shades. It’s got a real 80s/90s rollerblading-by-the-beach vibe that’ll play well on the coasts and could be a Scumbro classic.

Elizabeth Warren’s Very Good Bandana

Most booster swag falls into tees, totes, and hats, so it’s nice when someone wants to make a more unique item. Elizabeth Warren drops straight, focus-tested fire with this doggo bandana. Her dog Bailey cuts a mean silhouette and the paisley print is nicely peppered with dog elements like slobbery tennis balls. Golf claps to this designer, he should get work at Kapital.

Pete Buttigeig’s Phonetic Crewneck Sweatshirt

Crewneck sweats are surprisingly rare in these shops, so Mayor Pete is ahead of the game with the layers. Befitting of the “millennial candidate,” much of his store features tongue-in-cheek slogans and cute graphics, but credit where it’s due to the catchy phonetic messaging seen here. Nice to know that the guy realizes his name might be pronounced “butt judge” unless he gets ahead of that narrative. Plus, you know how you can beatbox by saying “boots and cats and boots and cats?” Boot Edge Edge has the makings of the next EDM hit.

Beto O’Rourke’s Varsity Cap

I have no idea why but Beto’s website is so stark and black, like the Texan heartthrob is going through a goth phase. Or maybe he’s taking design cues from Unionmade? Either way, Beto’s merch is bold and simple, and this hat is committed to minimalism. Just a first name in a college sports team font. If nothing else, you can reinterpret it as “Bet 0” which reflects the Vegas odds of Beto actually becoming president.

Bernie Sanders’ “Classic” Tee

Now here we have a novel idea. Like when an Americana company creates new clothes with their old logos for that nostalgic, auto-vintage feel, Bernie is just running his 2016 logo again but calling it “classic.” Because if there’s one thing we’re all nostalgic for, it’s the 2016 election.

Kamala Harris’ Fearless Patch

Another rainbow design in time for Pride. “Fearless” feels like a pretty weak slogan for a presidential campaign, personally, but if you’re looking for something generically motivational to add to a denim jacket, I guess this patch could work. This is the apparel equivalent of a Bay Area tech company’s lobby art.

John Hickenlooper’s Crunchy Beanie

Hickenlooper, the candidate that won’t win but who has the most fun name to say, has a logo that makes you want to think it’s Adidas afar. But it’s not a bad logo considering his home state of mountainous Colorado. This is a great swag for the type who goes ice fishing with a cooler of local beer.

Julian Castro’s Lotteria Tee

This is a fun idea, playing up the time-tested iconography of Mexican Loteria cards, but oh Julian, this is the portrait you’re working with? This is the face you make when you try to be nice about that garbage sweater your aunt got you at Christmas. Good plan but poor execution, like skinny fit sleeves.

Andrew Yang’s Math Hat

Adventure Time is a perfect television show and its catchphrase was yelling “mathematical!” when something was cool, so I choose to believe this is in homage to that. This is like the Beto varsity cap, but for the indoor kids. However, the product description reads Celebrating numbers and facts an essential part of our campaign [sic] so maybe a COPY EDITING hat should come next.

Marianne Williamson’s Full Force Fashion Tee

This is apparently a self-help guru that Oprah and a bunch of other GOOP-types like. Okay, whatever, it’s 2019, all the rules are useless. But this shirt was designed by British fashion illustrator David Downton, previously of Vogue, and I have to commend Marianne for going all out to not be relatable. This should be an extra large painting hung above a $9,000 couch in a Malibu living room. Even if Marianne is as likely to win the presidency as me, let it not be said she did not stunt on them fools during her stunt campaign.

The post Which 2020 Democrat Brings The Heat With Their Merch? appeared first on Put This On.

Politics has always been a dirty business, but it’s never been this dirty. Over the last few weeks, angry Brits have thrown, chucked, and hurled creamy milkshakes at far-right politicians. The first victim was far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who was hit not once, but twice while campaigning in public. The first time, a protestor threw his milkshake from afar, like Steph Curry from the three-point line, cleanly hitting Robinson and covering him with sweet, sticky liquid. The second episode, captured on video, happened the next day. No matter your politics, the video is hard to watch. Decent people everywhere can agree: no one should film vertically.

This past Monday, the latest victim was Nigel Farage, who’s deeply unpopular in Britain for his extreme views on topics such as immigration and Brexit. Farage hadn’t been campaigning for more than twenty minutes in Newcastle when a man splashed him with a creamy and delicious drink. His navy suit, Macclesfield print tie, and Brexit Party badge were left dripping with banana and salted caramel milkshake, making his outfit look like an avant-garde runway piece by Maison Margiela. In a video of the episode, witnesses can be heard laughing while Farage tries to swiftly exit the scene. Farage reprimands his security team: “Complete failure. How did you not stop that?”

Paul Crowther was later identified as the milkshake thrower (which disappoints me to no end because, if his name was John, I could have written John Lobbed). According to PA reporter Tom Wilkinson, Crowther said he was very much looking forward to enjoying his Five Guys milkshake ($6.68), but thinks it went to a good cause. “It’s a right of protest against people like him. The bile and the racism he spouts out in this country is far more damaging than a bit of milkshake to his front,” Crowther said. After the attack, Crowther was arrested and held in custody. Farage says he will press charges.

Dear people of Scotland.

We’re selling milkshakes all weekend.

Have fun.

Love BK #justsaying

— Burger King (@BurgerKingUK) May 18, 2019

Throughout history, unpopular public figures have dodged rotten eggs, tomatoes, and even cabbage, but milkshakes are the newest foodstuff in the angry protestor’s arsenal to cause embarrassment without serious injury. Burger King over the weekend even reminded Scottish people that they sell delicious milkshakes, seemingly in response to McDonald’s being asked to not sell milkshakes and ice cream in Edinburgh during a Farage rally. We obviously don’t endorse anyone throwing anything, but the recent spate of attacks made me wonder yesterday: what can you do if you get milkshaked?

I reached out to Stu Bloom, owner of Rave FabriCARE, considered by many to be one of the best dry cleaners in the United States.“Milkshake stains will depend on the material,” explains Bloom.”Milk is a protein and protein stains react differently depending on the fiber. A protein stain on silk is one of the most difficult of all stain/ fabric combinations. Linen is next, then wool. Cotton is relatively easy because it can be wet cleaned, but you still have to be careful. We have two position papers related to this topic. They address stains of almost any kind, milkshake or otherwise.”

If you want to try your hand at washing a garment at home, it helps to have something that has a more straightforward construction (e.g., one layer of material, rather than multiple layers with interlinings) and is made from cotton, rather than wool. Bloom also recommends against using pre-treatment methods, such as Tide sticks and pouring liquid detergent on the stain before washing.

“You don’t know how those products will react with the dyes,” Bloom says. “Some fabrics are made with poor dyes that are top-dyed or surface-printed. These will easily fade over time, particularly if they’re in darker colors. It’s not limited to cheap garments, either. Today, we see jeans from high-end manufacturers such as Adriano Goldschmied that are easily damaged in this way. Remember the golden rule: Don’t rub, scrub, or wipe. Just blot up the excess and wash (using common sense).”

Our recommendation: if it’s a simple, cotton garment that you can stand to lose, try to clean the garment at home. Milkshakes are mostly made of water, and unlike oil stains, may come out in the wash. For slightly more expensive clothing or things made from wool, linen, or silk, use a reputable dry cleaner. For items you care about, send it to Rave FabriCARE (they take mail-ins). A few years ago, Jesse poured kefir all over himself as part of a PTO episode, and we sent his moldy, drenched suit to Rave to see what they could do. Amazingly, the garment came back looking new.

The post What To Do If You Get Milkshaked appeared first on Put This On.

Put This On isn’t exactly the place you turn for financial news, but when Ralph Lauren released their quarterly earnings report yesterday, I was curious to see whether their turnaround strategy has had any effect. The ailing prep giant has seen a 50% drop in sales in recent years, pushing its market value to $9 billion (down from $16 billion just five years ago). Some say it’s because athleisure and fast fashion have made it harder to sell expensive suits and pony logo’d shirts. Others say Ralph Lauren is overextended.

In 2015, Ralph Lauren announced Stefan Larsson would replace the company’s founder as CEO. Shortly after his appointment, Larsson unveiled his new grand strategy to make Ralph Lauren a leaner, cheaper, and trendier retailer. The brand’s global supply chain would be streamlined so that new products could be brought to market faster. They’d test for trends, close lagging retail locations, strip out three levels of management, and potentially even shutter RRL. Suzanne Kapner wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “The new CEO is even considering testing some ideas pioneered by online startups, such as creating a subscription service for shirts and ties and allowing shoppers to rent high-end tuxedos.” In short, Larsson wanted to make Ralph Lauren more like H&M and Old Navy, two companies where he once worked as an executive.

Those plans were cut short in 2017 when Larsson stepped down, citing creative clashes with the brand’s namesake and founder. A year later, instead of becoming just another fast fashion brand, Ralph Lauren decided they would go upmarket and champion their view and heritage.

Since then, they’ve garnered a ton of press coverage, including Complex’s Horse Power documentary and all the glowing reviews for their 50th-year-anniversary fashion show. Ralph Lauren has also reissued some of their most iconic designs, including the Stadium and P-Wing collections, famous Snow Beach pullover, Polo Hi-Tech, and America’s Cup-inspired CP 93. They’ve done exclusive reissues for The Rake and Mr. Porter, and are now carried at high-end boutiques such as Canoe Club (a considerable step up from your average Macy’s). Last fall, they did a special collection with British skateboard brand Palace. The “Kickflip” Polo Bear sweater was in such high demand, you can only find it today on StockX for about $1,200.

But has this had any real effect on profits? Ralph Lauren as a brand has cropped up more in high-level fashion and streetwear conversations. However, the brand still mostly relies on moderately-priced core categories such as denim and dresses.

While yesterday’s quarterly earnings report beat out expectations, the stock got hammered, showing that traders had doubts about the company’s future. “People are saying comparable sales are weak, especially in North America,” says Frank White, a trader who works for an investment bank. “As a company, they decided to stop selling through certain discount retailers, so people expected some decline in sales in the US, but the drop was steeper than expected. Sales growth in Europe and Asia were better, however. They also revised sales data for the last several quarters. Those revisions wiped out much of the reported sales growth since the turnaround strategy would have commenced.”

Looking forward, Ralph Lauren faces new challenges as the Trump administration continues its trade war with China. This past week, US proposed fresh levies on about $300 billion of goods, and apparel items face up to an additional 25% in tariffs (in the new list of rules, there are more than two dozen pages for apparel alone). Ralph Lauren sources about 25% of their manufacturing from China, and new tariffs could mean they have to raise their prices or put up with compressed profit margins. “Think sweaters, polo shirts, some of our footwear,” Ralph Lauren CEO Patrice Louvet said in an interview, Bloomberg reported. “As you can imagine, we are working on different scenarios, absolutely.”

So, has the turnaround plan had any effect? “There are so many cross-currents, it’s really really hard to meaningfully judge a turnaround plan this soon,” says White. “They are doing what they said they would do: sell less but at a higher price. Whether that will pan out is anyone’s guess.”

The post Ralph Lauren’s Turnaround Still Murky appeared first on Put This On.

Now you can say you have something in common with royalty. When Prince Harry emerged for his first interview as a father last week, he sported the same gray, quarter-zip sweater he wore when Meghan Markle’s pregnancy was announced last October. Which is either a touching bit of symbolism or the most dad thing ever — wearing the same sweater because, well, that’s your sweater. Quarter zips are also appropriately the most dad-ish of dad sweater styles, beating out the v-neck layered over a dress shirt look by a clean mile.

His most surprising outfit, however, came Wednesday, when he and his wife appeared together to introduce their newborn Archie to the public. Meghan wore a white tie-waisted dress, while Prince Harry wore a somewhat unassuming light-gray suit with a white shirt and navy tie. Except, there was something unusual about that suit. Instead of being from a Savile Row tailor, as you might expect on a British royal, Prince Harry was wearing none other than J. Crew’s Ludlow — a suit that’s still available on J. Crew’s site as separates for $650. And you know what? He doesn’t look half bad. Which just goes to show that anyone can look good with a Ludlow suit and the unshakable confidence that comes with being sixth in line to the British throne.

Prince Harry seems to really like his Ludlow suits too — the cut of these jackets, soft tailoring, narrow lapels, and slightly shorter length all look very J. Crew-y. I prefer the more traditional proportions on this suit, but you could do a lot worse than this look for a summer wedding (although, if pressed, we recommend going to Suitsupply instead of J. Crew, if for no other reason than the fact that narrow lapels today look dated).

The question remains, however: how did Prince Harry wind up in a J. Crew suit? The suit, while genuinely nice, isn’t the sort of thing you’d expect on a British royal. For one, his father Prince Charles is a strong advocate of British manufacturing, so he gets clothes from British makers such as Anderson & Sheppard, Gieves & Hawkes, Tom Mahon, Steven Hitchcock, and John Lobb. Those companies are dearly expensive, but they represent the best of British craft and make the kind of stuff you’d expect on someone who may one day hold the title of King.

Prince Harry visits some of the same tailors and shoemakers. Gives & Hawkes — the historic Savile Row bespoke tailoring house that makes military dress uniforms for the British Army and Royal Navy, and by extension the Royal family — lists Prince Harry as one of their clients. Prince Harry has also been pictured with monogrammed shoes from John Lobb (the bespoke shoemaking workshop in London, not the Hermes-owned ready-to-wear brand). According to John Lobb’s website, a single pair of oxfords today will run you whopping $8,200 (or a nearly-free $7,000 if you get them without shoe trees). To put it in terms you and I can understand, $8,200 is the equivalent of 13 light-gray Ludlow suits.

The royal family has to pay for everything that they purchase, too. “One criterion for obtaining a royal warrant is that the royal household has to spend a certain amount of money regularly,” explains Nicholas Templeman, a bespoke shoemaker who worked at John Lobb for seven years. “It’s good in that this means every product or business you see with a royal warrant was actively chosen by them. But it also means that some strange companies get royal warrants — such as cereal brands and once upon a time Benson & Hedges cigarettes — because the royal households buy these things for the staff.”

So, how did someone with the title of Prince end up in J. Crew’s Ludlow? Some ideas:

It’s a Well Calculated PR Stunt

In an effort to see more relatable, the Prince wears $650 suits that only upper-middle-class people can afford.

It Was Frank Muytjens

Prince Harry still orders suits from Gieves & Hawkes, but he’s been tricked into wearing J. Crew. In an effort to regain his job as the head of J. Crew’s menswear design team, Frank Muytjens wore a mustache-and-glasses disguise before sneaking into Gieves & Hawkes at No. 1 Savile Row. He then knocked out Gieves’ actual head cutter Davide Taub out cold in the back, and then emerged into the front of the shop (while still in disguise) to meet Prince Harry. Pretending that he was fitting him in a bespoke suit, he slipped the Prince into a ready-to-wear Ludlow suit, patted him on the back, and let him go on his way. Five days later and voila! You have a picture-perfect J. Crew publicity moment. Muytjens, right now, is calling up J. Crew’s Board of Directors from his new bed-and-breakfast home, showing them how he can turn J. Crew around by tricking other royals around the world.

It Was Forty Percent Off

I mean, it was 40% off.

He Can Dress It Up or Dress It Down

While shopping at J. Crew, our Prince Harry met Sally, one of J. Crew’s sales associates. Sally showed The Duke of Sussex how the Ludlow can be dressed up or down. The jacket can be worn with jeans to a nice pub or dinner with the wife. Or it can be used with morning dress and military uniforms for coronations and royal weddings.

It’s Meghan Markle’s Doing

Meghan Markle, a known J. Crew enthusiast, offhandedly suggested J. Crew to Prince Harry when he was shopping for a new suit. The stuff looked nice on J. Crew’s website, so he had his valet order 82 Ludlows. He’s just like us!

Meanwhile, we hope J. Crew is keeping tabs on Prince Harry’s spending so they one day can get their royal warrants.

The post Some Ideas On How Prince Harry Wound Up In A J. Crew Suit appeared first on Put This On.

It seems that it wasn’t an April Fools joke. Yesterday, the President of the aptly named company Vested — a brand that describes itself as doing something with #finance #fintech #communications #marketing — tweeted that she was informed that Patagonia would no longer do branded products for financial services companies.

News – @patagonia just told us they are no longer doing branded vests for financial services companies. This is going to cause a #fintech crisis. Run for the hills.

— Binna Kim (@binnaskim) April 1, 2019

The finance company-branded Patagonia fleece vest is the banker bag of our time. The banality of the vest, the lack of any real aesthetic has personified the busy bees of late-stage capitalism. The finance bros, startup bros, and tech bros of Wall Street and Palo Alto can be seen in the same uniform. The vest-clad finance guy has become a schtick from HBO’s Silicon Valley to the Instagram account that put the trend on the radar, Midtown Uniform. Just to put a finer point on it, this isn’t just an internet meme. According to CNBC last year, “vest sales hit $76.5 million for in June 2018, up 13 percent from the year prior.” That is no joke.

Chances are, if you are reading Put This On, you already know about the Synchilla clad finance masses and you know that Patagonia is a stand-up brand. Remember the commercial? Since the beginning, they have been about not just making money, but trying to hurt the world as little as possible and stand up for what is right. Patagonia is really the archetype of how brands can reflect the values of their customers and in the age of Trump, they have decided to take a more vocal stand.

I will admit that I had never fully thought it out, but it is hard to reconcile a brand like Patagonia outfitting the finance bros taking part — and benefitting from — some of the more unsavory industries (ie industrial farming, mining, oil drilling etc.). A note, presumably from Patagonia, that the president of Vested also tweeted, outlined some of the industries that Patagonia was looking to steer clear of:

The end of the #fintech uniform?! Farewell #patagonia vests. pic.twitter.com/3PpykELkZb

— Binna Kim (@binnaskim) April 1, 2019

It was later put by Patagonia in a Tweet reply “we have made some changes to our Corporate Sales program to increase the number of Certified B Corps, 1% For The Planet members, and other mission-driven companies who prioritize the planet. This shift doesn’t affect current customers in our Corporate Sales program.” The politics of fashion can be a tricky needle to thread sometimes, but it is hard not to cheer for Patagonia as a brand that doesn’t just have interchangeable values but has earnest just values. As their mission statement says “we’re in business to save our home planet”, and that means you can’t make deals with the devil.

Of course, people in these industries will still buy Patagonia vests and their corporate branded ones will be from Lands End or some other likely place. But it is a step in a better direction. When the revolution comes you don’t want to be caught in a fleece vest.

The post Patagonia Drops Co-Branded Fleece Vests appeared first on Put This On.

Ryan Morgan is a 17-year-old, high schooler who lives in West Bend, a small Wisconsin town with a population of thirty thousand. Like many other Midwestern kids, he likes hunting deer, playing Call of Duty, and hanging out with friends. He’s also on the cover of this month’s Esquire, not in spite of his averageness, but because of it. In the first of what will be a series of profiles on American teens, this story promises to unpack “what it’s like to grow up white, middle class, and male in the era of social media, school shootings, toxic masculinity, #MeToo, and a divided country.”

Much of the story delves into the more mundane parts of Morgan’s life — he wakes up at 5:30 AM to go to school, wonders why he needs to take English Comp, and thinks about what he wants to do with his life. The real reason he’s on the cover, however, is the fact that he’s a white male who likes Donald Trump, something he feels has unfairly made him a target in today’s political climate. “Last year was really bad,” he’s quoted as saying. “I couldn’t say anything without pissing someone off. Everyone hates me because I support Trump? I couldn’t debate anyone without being shut down and called names.”

In a letter to his readers, Esquire’s Editor-in-Chief Jay Fielden says this is his attempt to get people out of their information silos. “These days, most of us have splintered off into our own ideological echo chambers, regurgitating the talking points of Fox or CNN or MSNBC,” he writes. “Add to this the passions and change this moment has unleashed — MeToo, gender fluidity, Black Lives Matter, ‘check your privilege,’ and #TheFutureIsFemale — and the task of grappling with the world has to be more complicated for kids than it’s ever been.” Fielden wants to give us an up-close and personal view of what it’s like to be a conservative white male in today’s America, a story he feels isn’t represented enough.

That, of course, has garnered a lot of backlash. Many feel this is not only a story that’s often told, but it’s another example of how the media privileges already-dominant voices. The New York Times, for example, often gets criticized for its rehashed profiles on the average red-state voter and how conservative-leaning Heartlanders feel uneasy in a changing social order. Many feel like they don’t know how they’re supposed to behave anymore without offending anyone. Morgan echoes the same frustrations when he says, “I know what I can’t do, I just don’t know what I can do.”

Some have also criticized Esquire for its timing. This is technically the cover of their March issue, but because of how publications work, it hits stands during Black History Month. Many on social media feel the cover is tone deaf at worst, clumsy at best. Monica Hesse at The Chicago Tribune goes a step further, noting that — while Esquire plans to profile black, female, and LGBTQ teens in the future — starting with this one reinforces the idea that white males are the default for what it means to be an American, the standard which others are judged against. “The problem isn’t that Esquire wrote a story about Morgan,” she wrote. “The problem is that it presented the story using a rapidly outdated way of thinking: that white men are the default model. That the #MeToo movement can be seen as a metaphorical assault on white male identity rather than women’s attempt to avoid being literally assaulted.”

Plenty has already been written about Esquire’s cover story (see The New York Times, Salon, and The Guardian, to name a few). Most of them revolve around how we talk about race, gender, and privilege in today’s society, which are beyond the scope of Put This On. On a more clothing related topic, I think Esquire’s cover reveals something deeper about the state of men’s style publishing — and how two very different men are reshaping the two biggest titles.

The Beginning of Men’s Publishing

For those who are just getting interested in men’s style, the media landscape today can be disorientating. There are hundreds of blogs, podcasts, forums, YouTube channels, and niche publications dedicated to everything from classic men’s style to the avant-garde. You can learn the basics of how to dress or delve deep into the worlds of techwear, Japanese Americana, the arte povera look, hyped streetwear, and bespoke Italian tailoring.

Things weren’t always like this. In the 1930s, there was just one main title: Apparel Arts. It was a large format, quarterly publication aimed at helping haberdashers give advice to their customers. Instead of talking about the latest brands, they’d run through how a man might want to dress for different occasions. A midnight navy, double-breasted shawl collar dinner jacket, for example, was to be worn in the evening; an open-front beach shirt made from a cotton-silk mixture was for the resort. From the Riveria to clubhouses, campuses to high-rise offices, Apparel Arts gave men instructions for how they should dress for different seasons and settings.

Although Apparel Arts was initially aimed at people in the clothing trade, shoppers eventually got a hold of the publication through sales associates — and they loved it. Due to the positive response, the publication’s founder, Arnold Gingrich, started another periodical called Esquire. Apparel Arts continued as a trade publication, but Esquire was for the public. For a variety of reasons, however, Apparel Arts’ usefulness waned after the Second World War. So it too eventually became a public magazine. In 1957, it was renamed as Gentlemen’s Quarterly (and later, more simply, GQ). This is how we got today’s two biggest men’s style publications, both offshoots of a now little-known trade mag.

Esquire is ostensibly about men’s clothing and style, but it’s really a general interest publication for and about men. Its stable of writers over the years reads like a Who’s Who of 20th-century literature. Their writers over the years include F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemmingway, Joan Didion, John Steinbeck, Dorothy Parker, Tennesse Williams, Sinclair Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, John Updike, and Phillip Roth. These people wrote about much more than clothes; they wrote about politics, society, and adventure.

There’s that famous story, for example, of how Ernest Hemingway came to write for Esquire. Gingrich was out fly-fishing and drinking beer with Hemingway when he tried to persuade him to submit a story for one of Esquire’s first issues. Hemingway was proving difficult, but willing to make a deal. If Gingrich could shoot down more beer cans than him with a rifle, he’d pen something. Despite never having even held a gun before, Gingrich was up for the task — and he won. “I guess he was drunker than I was,” Gingrich explained later. Hemingway ended up working as a regular columnist for the publication. One of his greatest works, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” was first published in a 1936 issue of Esquire.

It’s hard to overstate Esquire’s influence. They helped spread a very specific look — East Coast, WASP, and slightly upper crust — across the United States. Penny loafers, for example, first became popular when they appeared in the magazine (formerly, they were brought over to the US by Bass, who in turn took inspiration from the kind of shoes worn by Norwegian fishermen, hence the name Weejun).

Esquire also helped draft the template for 20th-century men’s publishing. They defined many of the things that we take for granted today as “masculine pursuits” — a sporting life that included playing polo, horse riding, and angling; an interest in high literature; a pedigree that included Ivy League schools and East Coast clubhouses; a taste for fine whiskey and tobacco; and an admiration for the feminine. The changing cultural meaning of masculinity in the United States owes itself, in part, to issues of production, consumption, advertising, marketing, and editorial agendas — issues that were filtered through the kind of men’s lifestyle publications Esquire helped pioneer. And while Esquire certainly didn’t invent this lifestyle, they helped expand it beyond its initial borders (much like how Ralph Lauren infused a very specific WASP aesthetic with a strong element of fantasy, helping to mainstream it to popular culture).

Such taste would later be presented as “generally masculine” in other publications. Playboy, for example, was mostly Esquire with nude photos (although, notably, early issues of Esquire had pinup girl drawings by the then-controversial Alberto Vargas). Much of the styling and content in Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and Field & Stream were also first evidenced in Esquire.

Like all print publications, Esquire and GQ have seen declines in both circulation and ad pages in recent years. The internet allows people to find more narrowly defined communities that connect with their very specific set of interests, and advertisers can target people more closely than ever before. As a result, it’s no longer enough for a publication to say that it’s “for men.” Whereas people used to turn to Esquire for direction on how to dress for work and weekends, host parties and clean grills, much of that information is now found through Google or specific niche communities. In 2015, Esquire saw its single-copy sales slide by nearly 15%. Condé Nast, similarly, has cut back their GQ publishing schedule from twelve issues per year to ten.

The New GQ and Esquire Editors

The two men tasked with turning GQ and Esquire around are Will Welch and Jay Fielden, respectively — and they couldn’t be more different as people. Will Welch is a tall, scrappy looking New Yorker with a genuine interest in street style and popular culture. He was a bartender for a while before going to work for the music magazine Fader. When Jim Nelson asked him to come aboard GQ many years ago, he hesitated. “What the hell do I know about fashion?,” he recalled rhetorically asking a friend. But Welch was excited by the opportunity to work for Condé Nast and figured that the original act of creative expression, music (his main wheelhouse), was more often than not the source of style anyway. “If you’ve ever seen a photo of Miles Davis, Dwight Yoakam, Debbie Harry, or OutKast, you know that writing about music and writing about style are basically the same thing; I could figure out the rest from there.”

Before becoming GQ’s new Editor-in-Chief, Welch headed the smaller and edgier GQ Style title, an offshoot of GQ that explored the more forward-facing parts of menswear. There, he featured the romantically styled designer Haider Ackermann, cult-favorite streetwear label Noah, and Guathier Borsarello’s private Paris showroom, which is full of vintage inspiration. He sent writers and photographers to cover African style at Coney Island’s One Africa Music Fest and Fela Kuti’s New Afrika Shrine in Lagos, Nigeria (the second story is pretty amazing and very much worth a click). There were stories on the audacious, bold style seen at a Madison Square Garden bull-riding rodeo and Grateful Dead concert on the beach in Mexico. GQ Style was also one of the first mainstream publications to prominently feature Dapper Dan, a custom clothier who helped to define the high-flying look of Harlem during the 1980s. Welch’s own coverage included profiles on everyone from OutKast’s Andre 3000 to minimalist designer Christophe Lemaire to spiritual teacher Ram Dass.

You can hear Welch’s personality come through GQ Style’s Corporate Lunch podcast, which he co-hosts with Noah Johnson. Welch isn’t afraid to assert an opinion, but while he splits his time with Johnson on the podcast, he also often seems like he’s more interested in hearing what others have to say instead of dictating what he thinks is good. He rarely talks bad about brands or certain fashions, instead preferring to comment on what he finds exciting. He speaks with a lot of slang, but without the air of in-group exclusivity that makes you feel like you should be sitting at another table. He generally just seems excited about the world and eager to learn more.

This sense of openness and optimism defines his editorial work. Chantal Fernandez at Business of Fashion said “his sense of stylishness can encompass everything from vintage Japanese sports cars to psychedelic Scandinavian sweaters.” When it comes to how he’ll change GQ, Welch is more interested in highlighting the diversity in dress and all the cool happenings in style-related culture, rather than writing about what men should wear (the kind of service journalism that touches on how to dress will continue at GQ.com). In a Business of Fashion interview, he said:

Instead of dictating what’s good and what’s bad from some sort of imaginary mountaintop, if we can be meaningfully participating in a community of people […] helping to elevate and tell the stories of the people who we think are doing stuff that is really exciting and that is something to believe in, to me that is a higher calling than, ‘Don’t wear those pants, wear these pants.’

In some ways, Esquire’s editor Jay Fielden is the opposite of that kind of figure. In interviews, he likes to remind people that he was born on a West Texas oil patch (his grandfather owned an oil company). “I’m not ashamed of it or trying to hide that I’m a descendant of cowboys and roughnecks, not Mayflower bluebloods,” he once told The Observer. But Fielden also doesn’t mind the trappings of blue blood life, either. He went to Boston University to study Milton, a gentlemanly pursuit that presumably prepares one for a rarified career in publishing. His Instagram looks like a photo collage of the once idealized Esquire man, which is to say the sort of high-society life that peaked sometime around the 1960s — photos abound of expensive vintage cars and rare Rolexes, him boating somewhere in southern Europe, him playing golf and tennis, and generally all things swank.

Before heading Esquire, Fielden went through Manhattan’s publishing circuit. He was the Editor-in-Chief at Town & Country for five years, where he worked to transform the publication from “a slim portfolio of Midwestern debutante parties and East Coast WASP weddings, to a Vanity Fair manqué, a sassy primer to the good life with a bit of meat thrown in.” And before that, he was an Arts Editor at Vogue and, briefly, at the helm of Men’s Vogue before the publication folded in 2008. “I was taught to parse sentences by Eustace Tilley,” he told The New York Times, “and everything else by Anna Wintour.” The Times said that he edited Men’s Vogue “with a taste for Kiton suits, rare Scotch, and Hinckley yachts.”

Unlike Welch, Fielden doesn’t seem to have much interest in streetwear or popular culture — at times, he almost seems a bit disdainful of that world. He’s rarely seen wearing anything less than a two-piece suit, dark tie, and white pocket square. When he’s in casualwear, it’s in the sort of plush suede jackets you might find at Loro Piana or Cucinelli. Last year, when he served on the panel at a New York symposium, he was asked how he feels about men dressing down. “Many minefields for me to walk here,” he said hesitantly. Fielden then pulled out Pete Davidson, frequently heralded as a street style icon today, as an example of the sort of “random ugliness and lack of thoughtfulness” that he dislikes. (He did say, however, that he likes Supreme and Virgil Abloh, although less-than convincingly).

The main thing that separates Fielden from Welch is his willingness to jump into politics on social media. Welch continues the long tradition of editors being fairly private and elusive figures — his Instagram and Twitter accounts are mostly reserved for promoting his publication’s work. Fielden similarly uses social media to promote Esquire’s stories, but he also engages in politics. It would be wrong to characterize him as purely conservative or liberal, but his social media has a running theme of frustration with the academic and far left. He tweets about how socialism leads to mass murder, “the apparatchiks of high academic PC goofballery,” and the “sanctimonious thought police.” His “likes” page includes tweets about “cancel culture,” the liberal media, and how “intersectional rhetoric is driven by affluent, older white men in the media who are crippled by guilt and an insatiable need to curry favor with female Millennials who work in their milieu.” (Welch, by contrast, mostly likes tweets about pop culture, streetwear, and fashion).

Fielden has been Esquire’s Editor-in-Chief for three years now. During that time, he’s pushed for politically charged stories — a profile on Jordan Peterson, an examination on how many Texans want a wall along the southern US border, and an article on “the fucking P.C. culture problem.” In a letter to his readers last year, Fielden tried to tackle the gun control debate. “This isn’t just a gun issue, for instance — it’s evidence of a mental-health crisis,” he wrote. “Let me add one more unpopular and perplexing question: What might our eerie pop-culture obsession with bloodthirsty video games and movies have to do with mass shootings? These things might not encourage people to kill other people, but they certainly don’t encourage them not to.” And when a senior editor proposed the idea of profiling what it’s like growing up as a white, male conservative in today’s age, Fielden turned it into this month’s cover story.

The post How Two Men Are Reshaping Men’s Style Media appeared first on Put This On.