Episode 26: When to Splurge

As a frugal consumer and creator of content that advocates living well and looking good without being a millionaire, I got called out by a follower on Instagram when I posted a picture of a new pair of Alden Chukka Boots. With a price tag of nearly $700, Alden Chukka boots aren’t cheap, and my follower had a point… to a point.

In this episode, I make the argument for when a splurge is justified. It’s all about value and what a particular item means to you. As my friend Glenn Gissler eloquently put it: value is quality over time.

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Charles Tyrwhitt’s Return to Real Cotton White Dress Shirts

Non-iron cotton is the death of dress shirts. Any semi-serious sartorialist who appreciates real soft cotton that breathes would have nothing to do with these formaldehyde-soaked (and potentially toxic) Frankenshirts. The wash/dry/wear convenience of non-iron shirts has made them extremely popular and very profitable for shirt makers. These days, it seems you have to go on a black-ops covert mission to find a handsome, affordable and well-made white dress shirt made with real cotton. Even trusted brands like our stalwart Brooks Brothers have gone as far as making regular cotton shirts unavailable entirely, at least for any reasonable cost.

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The Kenmoor: A Smart Long Wingtip from Florsheim’s Imperial Line

I know… “Florsheim.” But hear me out…

When I hear the name Florsheim, I think of shoes my dad would wear. “Old man-ish,” “conservative,” or “uncool” are some descriptives that come to mind. I wouldn’t consider Florsheim an edgy brand on the “get” list for most hipsters.

But when someone makes a smart and well-crafted long wingtip shoe with a quality leather upper, a leather lining, and a Goodyear Welted double leather sole with nice English “heft” to the thickness and width, I don’t care what the perception of the brand is.

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Three Days of the Condor

Three Days of the Condor (1975) is a stand-out thriller among the great crop of movies made in the “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” era of filmmaking in the late 1960s and the 1970s. It stars Robert Redford as a CIA operative (codename “Condor”) working in a branch of the agency that researches foreign books that might contain hidden codes and messages.

After Redford steps out to get lunch, he returns to the office to find all of his coworkers murdered. The movie unfolds over three days as Redford tries to find safety and to get the truth about why his department was wiped out. He can trust no one, especially his bosses at the CIA.

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Shopping a Sale at J.Crew

I’m on the email list of a lot of brands and companies. The reasons I subscribe include getting updates on what’s going on with these brands, educating my eye and learning about sales. Most of these emails end up in the trash without any actions or clicks on my part, but depending on the season, on the brand and on the sale – in light of my particular needs at a given time – I’ll do some careful clicking.

Such careful clicking happened in the wake of a recent email I received from J.Crew, advertising a rather substantial sale on winter items. A few days and a few dollars later, some nice new gear arrived at my door. In this episode of the podcast, I talk about how I navigate big sales online.

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The Best-Dressed Men at the 2015 Oscars

The men’s sartorial turnout at this year’s Academy Awards was notably better than recent years. Thankfully, there were less pallbearer and chauffeur looks produced by neckties, and there were fewer notch lapels, which is another pet peeve of mine. It was almost as if stars and their stylists started paying attention to what is actually most flattering on a man and not the capricious whimsy of the latest designs. And the overall attention to tailoring was pretty good.

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