The Aloha Shirt by Dale Hope. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.
Unless that cover looks like this book’s cover. Because right off the bat this thing looks equal parts
textbook and art book. Like the sort of book that would look stately on your coffee table but also like the
sort of book that would chronicle the intriguing history of a garment that has come to define a culture. The
sort of book you could just as easily pick up to idly flip through hundreds of eye-catching photos of
colorful textiles and island life as you could to spend hours reading the deeply researched stories of the
sartorio-cultural phenomenon as told by those who lived it. And we have the fine folks at Patagonia to
thank, because they just rereleased this tellingly covered tome to coincide with their 30th year of
Pataloha—which of course you can read about in the book.”
—Najib Benouar
Let’s Hear It for White Seersucker Trousers, Shall We? “If a better option
for a dockside summer wedding comes along, I simply don’t want to know about it. Light, breathable, soft
to the touch, and perfectly smashing with a navy linen sport coat, this pair of pants has earned my undying
gratitude and respect. Or at least my gratitude and respect until Labor Day.”
—Chris
LaMorte
An Actual Alarm Clock. “Just because you can (use your phone for everything)
doesn’t mean you should (use your phone for everything). The snooze capabilities are just too tempting on
my phone these days. Touch me, it says. Lie back down. Relax. I’ll be back to comfort you with a quick hit
of dopamine in seven minutes. And then, hell, maybe seven minutes after that. We could do this all day. This
needs to stop, and I’m a fan of this brass clock by Menu. You set the alarm. It goes off. To shut it the
hell up, you flip it facedown. Then you get up, you move toward coffee beans, and you start your day. Then
you check your phone every seven minutes.”
—Lonny Pugh
No More Socks at Parties in LA. “I recently went to an opening event at a nice
new men’s suit store in Venice. Unfortunately, I found myself way overdressed when I arrived. I wasn’t
wearing a suit like a lot of the fellows there, no. But I was wearing socks. And no other man in the house
was wearing socks. Every single guy had on fancy leather loafers with their bare ankles immodestly revealed
for the whole world to lay their judgment upon. I guess it’s some kind of big statement on individuality
or something. But I don’t know if I’ll try it anytime soon. It looks sweaty. And smelly. But at least
you’ve been warned, wearing socks is apparently blasphemous in the West Los Angeles of 2016.”
—Hadley Tomicki
Home Hair-Care Lab Experimentation. “Not long ago,
I was happy with my hair product,
which is great, because that never happens. Fast-forward two months and no haircuts later, I’d decided to
switch from Hanz de Fuko’s Quicksand to Claymation, an even harder clay with an even harder finish. Well,
as it turns out, I flew too close to the sun. You gain a new perspective on male grooming when you’ve gone
so far as to buy a product so extreme that it actually hurts to put on. So, I went back to Quicksand. No
problem, right? Wrong. Remember how I didn’t get a haircut in those two months? I guess that gave me just
enough hair to render Quicksand powerless to control my increasingly unstable coif. So what the hell was I
supposed to do, give up and get a haircut? Fuck no. No retreat, no surrender. All of which leads to this: I
went to an event for
Sexy Hair a couple weeks ago,
where they told me ‘You have a lot of hair,’ and then gave me two things to take with me they thought
would work. Excellent timing. Both of them were high hold, but one had a shine, and the other was matte.
Usually I’m a matte guy, but in the mornings, with the amount I’ve been needing to use, it’s made my
hair, in a word, crispy. By evening, it’s looking nice and worn in, but morning crispiness isn’t ideal.
So I decided to get weird. I decided to use a little of each and see what happened. The results:
inconclusive. Damn it. But every morning I alter the ratio a little bit, and get a little bit closer. The
formula is coming together. I’m going to get there. For science.”
—Geoff Rynex
