Affordable stylish stuff you can find on eBay and elsewhere 🧵
Note that not everything on this list is going to fit your criteria for affordability because I didn't write this list specifically for you (as I don't know you). It's for a general audience. Take what's helpful; leave what's not.
Carhartt Double Knees (~$60)
Tough, durable, and handsome. Also a little fuller through the leg, which looks better than skinny chinos. Wear with denim trucker jackets, chore coats, and bombers. Black and brown are good colors.
Shetland Sweaters (~$50)
Type "(scotland, scottish) shetland sweater" into eBay's search field and click the box for "include description." Shetlands are a bit itchy (wear them over a collared shirt) but they have more texture than the smooth merinos at the mall.
Ralph Lauren Outerwear (~$100)
Ralph Lauren has been making clothes for over 50 years, almost always with the same aesthetic but in diff proportions. Go to your local thrift store. Find a Ralph Lauren coat, like this one below. Try it on. I bet you will look great.
Lee 101J (~$100)
Sizing is all over the place, so try to shop at a thrift store. These run super cropped, so not great for tall people. But IMO cooler than the Levis Type 3 bc it has dropped shoulder seams and neat silhouette. Storm Rider has corduroy collar & blanket lining
Vintage Sweats ($30)
You know the cropped hoodie with dropped shoulder seams that designers sell? Those are modeled after vintage sweats by companies like Russell Athletic and Champion. You can find those on eBay for super cheap. Camber is pretty great too, but runs big
LL Bean Totes (~$30)
If you see someone with this bag at a flea market, they're rich. The good news is that you can get their bag for like $30 on eBay. Find the most beat-up version possible and just put it through a wet wash. The patina is charming.
Vintage T-shirts
Find a vintage t-shirt you like. Prices can range anywhere from $5 to a bajillion nowadays bc of collectors. But if you're not hung up on status, there are tons of cool looking ones for cheap. Wear with chore coats or even tailoring.
Ralph Lauren Preston Cords (~$30)
Search eBay for Ralph Lauren Preston corduroy pants. It's a slightly fuller leg, higher rise cut. If you find it too baggy, you can have a tailor taper them from the knee down. Wear with Western shirts and loafers. Or oxford button-downs.
Vintage Fatigues and Cargo Pants ($50)
Available on eBay and at military surplus stores. I like German Army pants (they are post-war). Made from moleskin, but not the plush English kind (kind of rough like canvas). Size up. If you normally wear a 30, take a 32.
Crescent Down Works (~$125)
Made in Washington, super well-built, and comes with leather backed buttons. Rocky Mountain Featherbed is also good (more Westernwear flavor). Wear with chunky Arans during the fall season. Both are plentiful on eBay.
French Chore Coat ($75)
Just an easy layering piece. Buy ones that fit slightly loose (very fitted chore coats look bad). Wear with jeans, fatigues, or workwear-styled chinos. Lots of designer versions nowadays, but vintage is super affordable and easy to find on eBay and Etsy.
Suede Totes (~$100)
You can find vintage LL Bean ones on eBay, but they're kinda expensive. However, lots of good no-name vintage stuff for cheap. Vanson also sells new ones for like $170 on their site. Suede takes a patina quickly, so best with rugged workwear.
Wrangler Western Shirt ($30)
A little more rugged than your basic oxford cloth button-downs. Nice with jeans, fatigues, and workwear-styled chinos. Can even be worn underneath tweed sport coats in the fall. Like $30 on eBay and $50 new. Get the "Lake Wash" if you buy new.
Vintage Fishing Jackets ($150)
For people who are into quirky, offbeat workwear and OK with experimenting. Vintage fishing jackets run super short and wide. Cool with LVC 1947 501s, grey sweatshirts, and black Blundstone boots. I like the ones from the now defunct brand Ideal
Remember that if you buy on eBay, there's going to be a lot of hits and misses. You might get stuck with stuff that you don't like or doesn't fit. Double check measurements and return policies. Be cool about the process. What you save in money, you'll spend in time.
If you find this sort of thing useful, I do two eBay roundups every week for Put This On. The list is mostly focused on classic menswear, tailoring, workwear, Americana, offbeat Japanese brands, and the like.
Sometimes I think about the closure of G. Lorenzi, a Milanese gentleman's shop that had been around for almost 100 years until their closure in 2014. The shop was special because it carried so many one-of-a-kind items from artisans — total handmade craft production, not factory.
At the time of their closure, they still carried over 20,000 items of 3,000 models, including speciality knives, picnic sets, and nutcrackers. They had over 100 styles of nail clippers and 300 different hairbrushes alone. Proprietor Aldo Lorenzi scoured the world for artisans.
There's nothing wrong with factory production. But as more of our lives get taken over by machines — including art and writing — this sort of production feels special.
Trailer for "A Knife Life," a documentary about the store by my friend Gianluca Migliarotti, available on Vimeo
I spent 15 yrs on a menswear forum. The longest argument I had was over a tiny detail that can be seen in this photo. For 6 months, I argued with the same five guys non-stop every day. The argument got so heated the forum owner banned one guy for life.
As I've mentioned before, there's a lot of coded language in menswear. Navy suits can be worn with black oxfords because this was the uniform of London businessmen. Brown tweeds go with brogues because these clothes were worn in the country. In this way, we get formal vs. casual.
The same is true for shoes. Tiny details come together to communicate something, much like how words form a sentence. Black is more formal than brown; calfskin more formal than suede or pebble grain; plain design is more formal than broguing. All of this stems from history.
The year is 2024 and you're browsing for a new shirt online. You come across a store selling shirts from Portuguese Flannel. You do your research and find they make quality garments: clean single-needle stitching, flat felled seams, quality fabrics, MOP buttons, classic designs
So you go ahead and purchase one. The shop charges 139 Euros and throws in free shipping. Given the exchange rate in 2024, that means you paid $163.19.
First, let's do an experiment. Here are two relatively similar outfits: a blue shirt with a pair of dark blue jeans.
Which do you like better? Reply to this tweet with your answer. This way, people can see how the majority of people "voted."
If you said the right, then we have the same taste. This is despite the outfit on the left following this exact guide — and the outfit on the right not appearing in the guide at all.
I both agree and disagree that it's subjective. Like with anything, my views on tailoring stems from a "first principle." That principle is that men wore tailored clothing better in the past (specifically the period from about the 1930s through 80s). 🧵
If we agree on this, then there are certain ideas that naturally flow from this principle, partly because men's dress during this period was governed by time, place, and occasion. As stated before, one such idea was city vs country clothing.
Another such idea was resort or evening wear. Or summer vs winter wear. And so forth.
One can carry these ideas forward into today's age without it look like historical cosplay. Just like how we are currently using words to communicate, some from the early 1900s.
Twitter has a character limit, so I assume (intelligent) people will read context and know I'm talking about interior design and fashion, which today are coded as "gay interests" for men. Not painting or architecture, which carry no such stigma.
IMO, it's absolutely true that American Protestants were uniquely against certain forms of ornamentation, including fashion. For instance, the Quakers deliberately shunned adornment and extravagance in dress, stressing the importance of simplicity.
In his book "The Suit," Christopher Breward writes about how Quakers would talk about "troubling lapses into self-fashionableness by wayward members" during meetings. However, the Quakers were small in number and often seen as unusual by their fellow non-Quaker community members