rag & bone, Spring/Summer 2010

When OYL hero Matt Berninger employs his listener to "cover me in rag and bone" in a recent song, I can't confirm that he's talking about the increasingly popular design company. Probably he's not, and probably he's just hinting at a little self-destructive impulse, asking someone to just please slather him with trash and compost (the song's called "Sorrow," after all). Still, you never know -- dude's a well-dressed man.

rag & bone (caps lock must be turned off for the name, lest we slip into HEDONISTIC EXCESS) has been around for almost a decade now, racking up attention and awards. They're based out of, who knew, New York, though they started in the distant borough of Kentucky (bridge-and-tunnel-and-systemic-economic-disenfranchisement crowd). What they do, more or less, is the kind of disarmingly simple, vaguely militaristic, old London-inspired clothing that's the tip of everyone's bowler at the moment.





Check the rolled trousers, perfect for sidestepping the human waste of the lower classes on High Street (can a bloke just get to the bloody haberdashery, please?!). I love most of the pieces in their newest collection, though I'm not quite sure they fit the company's manifesto of making clothing for the day-to-day needs of the masses. Don't be fooled by the Holmesian (Sherlock, not Oliver Wendall) affectations, here. After all, these are Southern boys at heart, with no "formal fashion training" who made a start-up company and saw wild success, in a finely American pull-up-your-preposterously-expensive-bootstraps tradition. That being said, I'd feel a little ostentatious in some of these garments, which is to say they're erring on the side of high fashion rather than friendly consumption (navy tailcoat, anyone?) -- but then again, runway shows have their own goals and designs (sorry), while storefront operations have theirs.

What I do like are the shirts. I would wear these shirts. Unfortunately, they are for ladies. You might not know it at first, since rag & bone's military or blue collar bent shows up in its women's line, as well. Still, the designs -- simple, classic Americana -- are enviable, even for a hypermasculine, testosterone-drenched, football-leather-chewing man like myself:




That first shirt is made of chambray (or cambric), a tough but soft classic workshirt fabric that I'm happy to see coming back around to collections from the runways to rag & bone to J. Crew and Gap. Steve McQueen would be proud of rag & bone here, if Steve McQueen was into ambiguously crossdressing. Were he alive today, he just might have been, folks, he just might have been.

Bonobos Pants, with Not Even One Monkey Joke

Hey, do you guys ever get busy living an actual analog life and neglect your burgeoning internet presence? It turns out that finishing a semester and grading papers takes up a lot of time (time reflected in my docking each of my students one letter grade for taking me away from you, the readers! C's for everyone!) OYL took the week off, but we are BACK! I promise you, literal dozen of readers, that this blogger (and that other blogger here) won't abandon you to the catacombs of the internet for such a length ever again. Wayne keeps up with his blog, and he's in prison!

Prison! Free Wayne, by the way.

But enough ballyhooing (although can you ever really get enough?). Let's talk about what you came here to talk about. Men's fashion! Do you male OYL readers ever tire of Megan blogging about beautiful floral necklaces? Do you feel left out, wishing that I would contribute some hypermasculine, beefy, McQueen (Steve, not Alexander)-style counterparts? Something smelling of football leather and Worcestershire?

Too bad! Pastels, suckers!


I say "suckers" not only to insult my readership (because I am a doctor of BUSINESS), but also to denote the material of this beautiful pant. This, of course, is seersucker. You could buy these (for yourself or for me -- first OYL fan to send me pants in the mail [preferably not used, this time] gets a shout-out on the blog, maybe!) at Bonobos, erudite producers of the garment. As Megan pointed out in her earlier Band of Outsiders post, people ("hipsters" is what I mean by "people," right? or is that the opposite?) are slathering on layers and layers of preppy style this year. Bonobos is at the crest of that trend, making -- as they put it -- men's pants that Gatsby himself could be seen in, whether languidly golfing or covering up a murder!

A southern man myself, I have a deep affinity for seersucker. The pastel colors Bonobos are running right now delight me in deep, unspeakable places -- the blue above is my favorite, but you can also score green, pink, or, for the less adventurous, browns. Slide on some Sperrys, knot yourself a Band of Outsiders skinny tie, and you're ready to begin the summer mating ritual in the city, or to get savagely mugged! If you're not quite ready to be borne back ceaselessly into the past (of the 1920s below the Mason-Dixon), Bonobos also makes khakis and dress pants in blues that pop or in grays more suitable for your quietly deadening office job.




I will say that the legs here aren't tapered quite enough to my liking, nor are the pants priced at what I'd comfortably call "affordable." The latter, at least, is due to Bonobos using old school, New York City sewed-and-pressed factory labor. I'm willing to trade fair wages for higher prices. What I really like about the company, though, is that they're doing the 2010s prep with tongues planted firmly in gin-soaked cheeks. They get it. It's fun to dress in pastels and in white Sperrys, but it's also just a little obnoxious. That's why I like it, anyway. They're not as self-important as Brooks Brothers, but not as Big Brand impersonal as J. Crew. Here's to highballs in the summer, I declay-uh.

--Corey