I think if I ever have my own clothing line it would look a lot like Frost Birgens. Basic items with fun accents and colors. And, very young fogey. And, an appearance of being artfully disheveled. And, an attitude of west coast preppy. I think that covers it.

One of my favorite blogs is An Affordable Wardrobe because it shows that style doesn’t have to be purchased at some fancy boutique. It doesn’t hurt to have coin to drop like that, but it’s not necessary either. Anyway, here’s a very thoughtful guest post Giueseppe wrote describing why he shops at thrift stores. I’m not sure there could be a better, more well-thought out rationale.

While I spent the month of December in San Francisco, I was able to carve out a bit of time to see Tom Ford’s A Single Man (along with Fantastic Mr. Fox – both just ooze with style). I loved it (both). Not really a whole lot to say (Roger Ebert has a nice review). My main point to the whole post here is to show the poster which I think is brilliant.

A couple other reference(s) on Tom Ford. Charlie Rose has a great interview with him about the movie. And, lastly, the dude is cool. Just check out the soap on a rope by Tom Ford. And, if you’re the type who likes to read the book before you see the movie (trailer), it’s based on the book, A Single Man!

Can’t a guy just wear nice clothes cause he likes to look nice?

“If I wear anything at all besides jeans, people are like, ‘Where you going? Got a big night out?’” Brennan said. “Or they say, ‘Ooh, look who’s all dressed up. You have some kind of job interview or something?’ I mean, Christ, come on. It’s just a shirt with buttons.”

We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.

I think this is good news. As people become increasingly comfortable with drawing their culture from a rich range of sources—cherry-picking whatever makes sense to them—it becomes more natural to do the same thing with their social, political and other cultural ideas.

Brian Eno, The Death of Uncool.