Allen Day’s Blog

I’ve been looking into building a wardrobe for a few months now. I’m going to summarize what I’ve learned in this post. Mainly through hyperlinks. I’m writing at novice level of knowledge at best, so caveat emptor with all of this.

Motivation for this post: I’ve been finding that with greater frequency I’m not able to attend social events because I don’t own formal (or even semi-formal) clothing. That’s right, I only own jeans, short sleeve buttoned- and t-shirts, jeans, flip flops, and sneakers. Goose thief on the AskAndyAboutClothes forum put it really well, so I’ll quote from his thread:

I am new to this forum, but have been lurking for a few months. I would humbly like to consult the collective wisdom of this community for assistance.

I am a 31 year old writer and have recently moved to Los Angeles. Like many in my field, I kick it casual in t-shirts and jeans with a pair of sneakers to round out the slacker uniform.

Recently I suited up for a meeting to accept a new job. The suit was OTR, but fit well and I splurged on a MTM shirt.

As far as shirts go, there is no going back. A garment made to fit my measurements not only makes sense, but paying a craftsman is a rewarding experience. The difference in comfort was also incredible.

What surprised me most however was how differently people treated me. Not that they are rude to me when I am not dressed up, but by me doing so, it actually seemed to brighten the mood of those I walked by.

Which led me to ask the question. If I feel more comfortable, look better, and have greater power to please – why am I still dressing like a man child?

Nice. Sounds a lot like me. Even lives in LA.

Anyway, first thing I did a couple months back was go to several department stores in Los Angeles. First stop was Bloomingdale’s in Century City, followed by Alandales in Culver City, and finally in Beverly Hills I went to Barney’s NY, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue. I did this over the space of 2 days, and tried on every designer label I could find so I could calibrate quickly and compare everything while I was in the mode of comparing what to me seemed like very similar items.

I was surpised to find there is actually quite a bit of variety, and found there were generally two types of coats, those I liked and those I didn’t . Seriously though, there are some coats which are Neapolitan-style, and others that are Roman. They differ in the amount of structure built into the garment. A salesman at Barney’s described the Roman style as being more like a suit of armor. It definitely felt like that, and I definitely preferred the Neapolitan style.

I also noticed that the amount of handwork that goes into each garment really does make a huge difference in my perceived quality of the fit and appearance of the garment. On the appearance it’s possible that the fabrics just looked nicer, but I got to the point that I could tell the mass-produced coats from the handmade coats even without looking at the label. They’re that different. Noticeably more comfortable. Visual detail is also noticeable. For instance, the garments with more handwork have little things like pique/contrast stitching on the lapels and working buttonholes on the sleeves. Of course, the price of the garment goes up along with the number of hours of human labor used to make them. I found that I particularly liked the garments from Kiton****, Isaia, Zegna. Dolce & Gabbana and Theory were also nice.

Now, I’m just starting to build out a wardrobe, so I’m looking for a few basic key pieces from which I can get the most value. A sportcoat fits the bill here. As I learned, a sportcoat is a specific type of coat that generally has the pockets sewn on the outside with flaps at the top. It’s meant to be worn with jeans or pants. A blazer is a subclass of sportcoat that is made of solid fabric, typically navy, charcoal, or black. All other sportcoats are made of patterned fabric.

Again, not looking to spend a lot of money. It seems there are several ways to stretch the dollars.

1. Sale shop. Last-call clearance items are typically 50-80% off. I’m now on several dept. store mailing lists for a few months. The best sale is around the beginning of the year because it’s where you can get garments that can be worn year-round, as opposed to the lighter weight garments that would be available in a summer or fall clearance sale.
2. Outlet malls. Maybe Palm Springs or Las Vegas for those also in SoCal. This might not work for me, as I’m a 42L which is a slightly unusual size.
3. Barneys has a warehouse clearance sale twice a year at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, approximately in August and February.
4. Ebay. I can occassionally find a Kiton 42L on Ebay, but it’s hard. I’ve bid on a few items, but I don’t really know yet what a good deal is. I’m also a little freaked out about the prevalance of counterfeit garments on Ebay. I’ll keep looking and post on this again later. It looks promising.
5. Thrift stores. Apparently you can get good stuff at Goodwill, etc. Maybe not in this economy though, it could be well picked over. I also don’t know which Goodwill stores have the good stuff. Beverly Hills maybe? Need to do more research here.
6. Student deals. I’m not a student anymore, but for those readers who are… some of the manufacturers give steep discounts for grad students. Brooks Brothers is apparently having a 40% discount for grad students right now. Check it out.

I looked into other guides on how to build a wardrobe. I found some good stuff here:

• askandyaboutclothes.com – amazing article on pattern matching on an amazing site. I’ve been doing a lot of reading here for the last couple of days. Wow.
• Wikihow has an article on building a basic men’s wardrobe. Seems like reasonable advice. AskAndy… also has some great threads/advice on this topic, like this one and this one.

I really liked the sales staff in Alandales. Stan was the salesman helping me, and he gave me a lot of attention and answered a lot of questions. These guys are working w/o commission, and it showed. I didn’t feel pressured/ignored like I did in the dept. stores (exception: Barneys was also great), and the staff seemed knowledgeable.

I’m going to take the advice of the Wikihow article and get a few made-to-measure (MTM) shirts from Alandales. They take measurements and send off to a tailor that makes shirts for them. Seems like an inexpensive way to get the process going, and I’ll need a few shirts no matter what other items I buy anyway. I might also buy an off-the-rack (OTR) high-end designer shirt from Ebay to see if its worth spending any money here.

To be continued…