Our Own Little Golden Era

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I had somebody ask, recently, why the “golden era” of any given interest is always in the past.

And I thought… is it? Does it have to be?

"Golden Era Tailoring"

This term commonly refers to the tailoring of the 1930s and 40s, essentially because the wide consensus among people into tailoring is: that era had the best tailoring. Men wore tailoring day to day. Double breasted suits (which, fun fact, are better than single breasted suits) were much more common then. Full cut trousers, structure... Everything just looked great.

"Esquire Man," is the name used for the characters in old Apparel Arts illustrations of Golden Era suits, from back when photography was prohibitively expensive. Some people are obsessed with dressing like Esquire Man. In 1958, Apparel Arts, then owned by Esquire, Inc., was rebranded as Gentleman's Quarterly.<br>It didn't end because people got bored of it. It did not "fall out of fashion" in any typical sense. Rather, it was forced out of fashion by war. Fabric rationing made clothing worse.

In case you didn't know, during World War II, many governments, including the UK and the US, decided that the war effort required some country-wide belt-tightening. Specifically of interest here, they issued various clothing policies that I'm just going to lump together under that name: "fabric rationing." Everything got slimmer. Everything got shorter. Waistcoats disappeared, because they weren't really necessary. Double breasted jackets gave way to single breasted (curse you!) because the latter used a little less fabric. Rises got a little lower, and pleats less common. None of these choices were driven by art or by anybody's taste.

These restrictins applied to newly made clothing, so they really only began to manifest in the late 40s; we associate them with the 50s and 60s. Mind you, 50s and 60s slim and short tailoring was not nearly as bad as 2010s mass-market slim and short tailoring. Indochino's standard cut is unjustifiable. But still, it was shorter and slimmer than anybody wanted it to be; it wasn't style, it was patriotic duty. But we don't have that duty anymore.

Is this Golden Era Tailoring? No. Is it any less excellent?How about now?

Great fabric is expensive. But it's not really that scarce. It's not scarce in the nation's-at-war sense where it doesn't matter what you want. You can get what you want, fabric availability doesn't need to drive your aesthetic choices.

What's more... thrifting is easy. You can thrift whatever style of suit you want. Yeah, you can thrift a J. Crew Ludlow. But you can also thrift vintage Armani or vintage Ralph or even vintage Saville Row with some luck and/or patience and/or money. You have options. You can do whatever you want.

We don't have the standards of the 30s and 40s in place. But nobody's stopping you from dressing like that. Nobody is going to fault you for wearing a structured DB with full cut trousers and fully horizontal peaks (sometimes called "Tautz lapels").

What we lost in that standard, we gained ten times over in freedom. You can wear that 40s DB. You can wear a DB with jeans. You can wear a DB with swim shorts, there are no rules.

This is a different kind of golden era. Maybe it's a golden era of freedom. Maybe it's a golden era of... I hate to say it now that it's been turned into such a buzzword... personal style.

If every one of these is a valid way to dress in 2026, then... what do you do?<br>Alright, so it's a golden era. How do we enjoy it?

The key feature here is freedom. Freedom can be terrible if you're focused on what other people are doing; some people suck. The worst-dressed men in the 30's and 40's still dressed fine. If you look for them now, you're going to hate what you find—believe me, I know as well as anybody.

Amid billions of men and... perhaps millions of subcultures, the first key is to find your own. Find aesthetics that work for you. Find communities that work for you. For me, Alfargo's Marketplace was a big revalation. It was the... second time I had met real menswear dudes in person (the first time was one friend and it was much less exciting). It gave me a chance to make friendships in the community (yay for repeated, unplanned interactions). It's known for tailoring, prep, ivy, and similar "classic" aesthetics, but I've met people there who expanded my horizons beyond those norms.

If you're into tailoring, be into tailoring. If you're into gorpcore, be into gorpcore. If you're a denim head, be a denim head. If you like both golf and clothes... first off, I'm sorry, but second, hey, are you following my buddy Damien?

So, yeah, style is personal. That fact got weirdly cliche and confused on social media in recent years. Mina Le did a deep dive on that perspective. But as somebody who appealed to the topic before the social media trend: style is personal. That's not a trend. Personal style is not a recent concept, it is not a moment, it's just a basic...