Tower of Sleep

Ovadia & Sons Fall 2012

What’s impressive about these guys is how they can be so incredibly traditionalist without being at all retro or costume-y. But they’re not stodgy or boring, either: their looks feel natural and fresh, if not exactly new or original.

Of course, it’s easy to look natural in a finely-cut traditional suit when you have the means to keep a wardrobe full of them and the kind of life that actually calls for daily suit-wearing. Streetwear this is not.

I really like the look of these clothes, especially since I’m getting older and I want to step my game up, but it does make me slightly uncomfortable that the #menswear sphere seems to be getting more one-percent-y all the time, throwing around #wealth hahtags as if piles of money were a) actually a thing people could reasonably aspire to and b) something to be unproblematically admired. Not that fashion hasn’t always been aspirational.

And not that this is necessarily what designers like Ovadia & Sons are all about, either. I’m bitter because I’m broke. A person can dress in a mature and stylish manner on a ramen noodle budget, and grown-up clothes don’t make the “grown-ass man,” anyway.