It’s that time of year when I post a spat of seasonal sales. The third big one started this morning: No Man Walks Alone, where you can find select items discounted by as much as 40% off. Their sale is one of my favorites for two reasons. The first is that I get to post a photo of the shop’s founder, Greg Lellouche, and note that he is, in fact, walking alone. The second is the shop’s selection. While No Man Walks Alone is a sponsor on this site, they’re also one of my favorite online retailers. Along with some excellent tailoring, they also carry Japanese workwear, contemporary casual, and a bit of the avant-garde.
The selection here is big, but not massive. It’s reasonably easy to scroll through the entire sale selection to see if there’s anything you want, but No Man Walks Alone also has filters on their site so you can narrow in on sizes, colors, and brands. Some of my favorite makers here include Sartoria Formosa, Drake’s, and Kaptain Sunshine. If you’re looking for highlights, here are ten things that I think are notable.
Valstar’s Plaid Wool-Alpaca Topcoat
Valstar is mostly known for their Valstarino, which is a citified take on the American A-1 bomber. The style is popular with guys who usually wear suits and sport coats because it’s a little dressy and can be paired with tailored trousers. Those jackets are genuinely great, but I’ve been mostly impressed with this wool-alpaca topcoat. The scale of the plaid, while bold, helps add visual interest to plain-colored ensembles. Greg can be seen above wearing it with a tan flannel suit. I think the style would work equally well with blue jeans, a textured sweater, and some brown suede chukkas. You can see other outfit combinations on NMWA’s site if you scroll down on the product page.
Everything from Sartoria Formosa
Sartoria Formosa is a small, bespoke tailoring workshop in Naples, located in a gated courtyard and just a stone’s throw away from E.G. Cappelli. They’re famous for having dressed some of Italy’s most stylish leading actors during the 1950s and ‘60s. The workshop still mostly does bespoke, but they also make a small ready-to-wear line for NMWA (all made to bespoke standards, but with ready-to-wear patterns). The cut is distinctively Neapolitan. It has a soft shoulder line, soft chest, and quarters that sweep back towards the hips. Unlike many ready-to-wear Italian brands, however, the chest is a fuller and the shoulder line extended, which I think looks more flattering on most men (the cut gives the illusion of a V-shaped figure). This season, I love their olive cotton suit and olive checked sport coat. NMWA also has one size left for the “summer tweed” I ran a couple of years ago.
Blurhms “Girl in Glasses” Graphic Tee
Even on sale, it’s hard to justify a t-shirt that costs over $100. That said, I bought one of Blurhms’ graphic tees this season and was impressed with the combed cotton and high-gauge knit. It’s soft and comfy, noticeably higher-end than your average tee, and the photographic prints pair well with contemporary casualwear. I’ve been wearing mine with a black Margiela five-zip. This version, which features a woman looking off into the sunset, has warmer colors that I think suits summer. Wear it with contemporary casualwear, denim trucker jackets, or olive green milsurp jackets.
Everything Eidos
Antonio Ciongoli is no longer designing for Eidos, but a small selection of his patterns, cuts, and styles are available at No Man Walks Alone for one last season. I really like the two tonal seersucker suits this spring, which are available in olive green and a narrower striped tan. Traditional seersucker, in its blue-and-white color combination, can conjure up old-time-y ideas of Southern gentility — men chomping on fat cigars and cucumber sandwiches, swilling their mint juleps while attending lawn parties. I think the style has a certain charm, but if it feels too traditional for you, these have all the cool-wearing effect of seersucker in more modern form. I also love the tan linen suit, pictured above. The suit jacket can be worn on its own as a sport coat with blue jeans or tailored trousers, while the pants can be worn with navy, tropical wool sport coats. Casual suits such as this one are great because it feels like you’re getting a three-for-one.
G. Inglese Bold Striped Shirt
I mostly rely on light-blue dress shirts for simplicity, but over the last year, I’ve started to appreciate how good a bolder striped shirt can look underneath a plainer suit or sport coat. A bold shirt adds visual interest; it’s cheery and fun; it can substitute for a tie. There are a ton of places to buy one this season, but I’ve been particularly impressed with this one from G. Inglese. Along with the amount of handwork (e.g., hand-attached collar and sleeves, and well as handsewn details), the one-piece collar allows the back of the placket to show all the stripes pointing in one direction. The combination of blue, white, and green stripes would look terrific under almost any kind of summer tailoring.
Everything Drake’s
It’s hard to go wrong with any of Drake’s pocket squares. They typically come in distinctive, playful patterns, which makes them look better than cheaper pocket squares produced from necktie silks or cotton shirtings. This one comes in a bold, geometric design in rust and mustard. I have a similar pocket square that I often wear without a necktie. The colors add a touch of summer to plain, navy sport coats. They also go great with casual tailoring, such as suits in olive cotton, tan gabardine, and tobacco linen. The cotton-modal blend here feels a little silky and delicate — perfect for the season.
Fujito Wide Slacks
Fujito’s wide slacks aren’t flattering by traditional standards, but they’re very cool. They’re essentially an upgraded version of Dickies without the cheap, poly-blend sheen. They have a wide, carrot cut with a roomy top-block that gently tapers down. I think of them as 1990s skate pants. They have a rugged feel that pairs well with Americana and workwear, but also an interesting silhouette that pushes them closer to streetwear. Additionally, the metal snap-buttons along the fly make these feel extra sturdy. I like how this charcoal cotton version looks with blue denim trucker jackets.
Kaptain Sunshine Gurkha Trousers
Gurkha trousers come from when the British occupied North Africa and India – a time that left a terrible political legacy, but nevertheless continues to inspire in terms of style. They’re typically high waisted, made from heavy drill cotton, and defined by their unique belting system. That weird rigging once allowed British officers to cinch their trousers as they lost weight. I love how they draw to mind all those beautiful safari images in old Banana Republic catalogs, before Banana Republic was bought out by The Gap. Kaptain Sunshine’s version comes with a slightly more relaxed leg line, which I think suits the belting system, and can be worn with Breton pullovers, chambray work shirts, or chunky fisherman knits (as shown on penanceroyaltea above). For a bit of added style, you can let the elongated belt hang down a little, as shown the product photos.
Tony Shirtmakers Fern Shirt
I love the backstory of this hand-printed shirt. It was designed in collaboration with graphic designer Bang Tran, an avid gardener and outdoors enthusiast. “I worked briefly for an herbarium, preserving plants through pressing, and I thought prints of real pressed plants would be the ideal medium to infuse the shirt with the Aloha spirit,” he wrote. “Flowers are a little too delicate to use in this way, and I wanted to avoid cliched florals anyway. Ultimately, I decided on a theme of ancient plants that have been around longer than humans: ferns, magnolias, and ginkgos. With that in mind, I ended up hiking around two state parks to collect specimens for the design.”
After gathering a sampling of different leaves, Bang covered them with India ink using a sponge, then pressed them against cardstock. He then digitally rendered them and made mock-ups of what they might look like on a shirt. Tony at Tony Shirtmakers ultimately went with the netted chain fern design, which he then hand-printed onto taupe linen using silk screens. I mostly like the shirt because it feels topical without being literal, and has a gardening vibe that goes well with workwear.
Rota Mid-Gray Trousers
Grey trousers are the first pants you should buy, and probably the second and third, as well. Virtually every sport coat can be paired with gray trousers, and if you come across one that can’t, you might want to reconsider buying it. They’re the trouser equivalent of navy sport coats and light blue dress shirts – the go-to you can reach for again and again. Rota’s are particularly nice. They’re more expensive than trousers made by Hertling, such as the ones sold through Dapper Classics, but they come with a slightly higher rise. No Man Walks Alone stocks them in every fabric imaginable, but the mid-gray, tropical wool pair pictured above is a summer staple, if there ever was one.
