Community Products, Community Service
There are a lot of new and not-so-new kids on the block when it comes to great menswear. Online haberdashers and forum-hawked goods benefit everyone. Stylish guys decide to go out and make what they want, and their humble roots translate to better products at better prices. We all win.
If you’re reading this you have most likely ordered from one of the guys I’m talking about. Kirby Allison’s Hanger Project, Kent Wang, Howard Yount, Panta, DC Lewis, Finickey, the list goes on and on. Some people, like the guy behind Finickey, have spent decades in the clothing industry and just want to do their own thing, while others, like Kent Wang, came from Kent not being satisfied with the products on the market.
Whatever the founders’ backgrounds might be, there is a common impulse – to come to a market as a consumer of some kind, to see that what you want is either not their or inaccessible to you, and to say screw it and fill the void yourself.
That’s how we end up with trousers that are masterfully constructed with a moderately slim cut at a reasonable price (I’m looking at you Panta and Howard Yount). Or, say, shoes in hard to find styles and lasts with drool-worthy details like fiddle-back waists at under $500 (DC Lewis has this one covered).
Because the makers approach the process as customers, they understand the price-to-feature structure needed to move product. Plus you’re not paying for some huge designer brand infrastructure. I know how much it costs to make most of these products, and unless someone has a secret subterranean factory they’re not telling me about, none of the internet haberdashers are making a huge margin selling garments at these prices.
As Styleforum approaches its tenth birthday (congrats guys), it’s nice to reflect on how forums like that enable this kind of communal-creative energy. Just the other day Derek, of Die, Workwear! and Put This On fame, floated the idea for shoe polishing mats on Styleforum. Because customers get to weight in before the product is made and Derek doesn’t have to sink a ton of resources into making the product, marketing it, and getting it to customers, everyone gets exactly what they want with minimal waste and burned resources. Everyone wins.
So to all you guys out there who in the pursuit of the perfect sub-$100 necktie or the quintessential shoe tree started your own business, I congratulate you. I can gush all I want about dressing, but if no one is keeping the good stuff coming I am, as they say, up the creek. You all make it easier for guys like me to be excited about where this industry is going, so keep fighting the good fight. And most of all, thank you.
