Topic
Menswear History
Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received their patent for riveted work pants in 1873, and the blue jean has been passing between miners, cowboys, punks and collectors ever since. Menswear History follows garments like that through the people who wore them. The Oxford cloth button-down came out of English polo and landed at Brooks Brothers in 1896. Champion, founded in Rochester, New York, in 1919, made the hooded sweatshirt standard athletic gear. The varsity jacket began on American college fields. Savile Row turned London tailoring into a global benchmark, and Rei Kawakubo's Comme des Garçons spent the 1980s taking that benchmark apart in Paris. Hip-hop gets a long thread of its own, from Run-DMC in adidas to the Lo-Lifes in Polo and Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton. Then there is the MA-1 flight jacket, issued to American military pilots in the 1950s and later picked up by skinheads, ravers and runway designers. Its orange lining was meant to help rescuers find a downed pilot, and it now shows up on jackets that never leave the city.
Stories
Style5 min read
The Chore Coat Was Built for Men Who Worked
French laborers wore it boxy, blue and patched at the elbow. Menswear adopted it as the jacket you reach for once you're done with blazers.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
The Hoodie Started on a Rochester Sideline
A 1938 patent turned a sweatshirt sideways. Eighty years later MoMA collected it and Authentic Brands paid $1.2 billion for the company.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
The Oxford Button-Down: From Polo Collar to Ivy Canon
How a collar borrowed from English polo players became the most democratic shirt in menswear, and why the details still matter.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
CultureFeature4 min read
How Hip-Hop Rewrote Menswear, From Run-DMC to Nigo
Shell toes, Harlem couture, boosted Polo and a Tokyo ape. How four moments in hip-hop took over menswear and never gave it back.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style5 min read
The Penny Loafer Started in a Norwegian Village
A fjord shoemaker, a Maine bootmaker with a pun for a product name, and a coin in the strap that nobody has ever fully explained.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
The White T-Shirt Was Navy Underwear First
Issued to sailors in 1913, worn as an entire outfit by Brando in 1951. The plainest thing in your closet has the busiest résumé.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Grooming5 min read
Why the Barber Pole Is Striped Red and White
Long before barbers sold fades, they opened veins. The spinning pole outside the shop is the last piece of evidence.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
Raw Denim, Selvedge and the Loom That Started It All
Raw is about finishing. Selvedge is about the loom. A Reno tailor, a closed North Carolina mill and Okayama's makers explain why it matters.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
The MA-1 Was Built to Be Found
Sage green outside, rescue orange inside. How a Cold War flight jacket from Knoxville ended up on punks, mods and a $47,000 Grailed sale.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Travel4 min read
Savile Row: A Visitor's Guide to Bespoke Tailoring in London
Two and a half centuries of cutting, fitting and quiet rivalry on one Mayfair street, and how to walk in for a first fitting without feeling out of place.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
Stüssy, the Laguna Beach Signature That Started Streetwear
A surfboard shaper signed his boards in marker, printed the scrawl on a T-shirt and accidentally drew the blueprint for every streetwear brand that followed.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
Barbour's Wax Jacket Was Made for the North Sea
Oilskins for sailors, a motorcycle suit for Steve McQueen, a riding coat for the Sloane set. The waxed cotton jacket keeps finding new owners.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
Pharrell at Louis Vuitton, Three Years of Showtime
A gold bridge, a Wild West garden, a snakes and ladders board and a wave rising out of sand dunes. Pharrell runs Vuitton menswear like a headline tour.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Grooming4 min read
Grease, Shine and the Long Life of Pomade
From a Chicago barbershop in 1925 to a Rotterdam tin named after lard, the story of the product that built the pompadour.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
The Varsity Jacket Began With One Letter H
In 1865 Harvard's baseball team stitched an H on its shirts. The letter turned into a reward, then a sweater, then the most borrowed jacket in America.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
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