Style

Brooks Brothers sold its first button-down collar shirt in 1896, borrowing the idea from English polo players who fastened their collar points so they would not flap during a match. Plenty of menswear started that way, as a practical fix that outlived the problem. The Oxford shirt and raw selvedge denim live here, along with the MA-1 bomber and its orange rescue lining, the waxed Barbour from South Shields and the Champion hoodie. So do the designers who bent those shapes into something stranger, such as Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons and Massimo Osti, who founded Stone Island in 1982. History comes first because it explains the details on the garment. After that comes the useful part, which means fit and fabric, and the difference between a jacket worth twenty years of wear and a copy that pills by spring.