There isn’t a ton of innovation in the L.A. menswear game.
You’ve got jeans. You’ve got T-shirts. You’ve got button-downs. You’ve got light jackets.
Best way to avoid it all bleeding together into an endless cycle of the same damn outfit? Buy from folks who operate on a much smaller scale than a name brand.
Today, we’ve got three local men’s ateliers that recently launched in-house lines sourced from deadstock fabrics and embellished with subtle details that’ll have your friends asking, “Say, man, where’d you get that?”
You decide whether to tell them.
North Menswear
Laguna Beach
Laguna is ground zero for the California Heritage look of cuffed raw denim, white T-shirts, CPO jackets and denim jackets. North curates this look like a KCRW DJ curates a playlist, and they just started making cotton twill chinos with a higher rise and nice taper in the leg that’s good for the casual officer workers and Saturday socializers alike. Their vintage denim jacket is made with Cone Mills Denim from North Carolina, a mill that’s been making denim since before any of us were born. The CPO shirt is made with elephant twill dead stock fabric perfect for those chilly winter nights.
General Quarters
Hancock Park
I recently bought a General Quarters chambray shirt made from Japanese chambray. The fit is perfect and people always ask me where I got it. The best part: they can’t buy it, because the owner of General Quarters buys and sews only limited runs. He’s got a line of flannel shirts coming in next week, along with Japanese twill chinos that’ll have a little room in them for you adventurers. It’s exclusively available in store starting next week.
Fred Segal
Santa Monica and West Hollywood
Boutique department store Fred Segal just launched its own denim line, Fred by Fred. Their look is definitely more fashion forward, with dark colored denim with a degree of stretch. You won’t have to break these in. Fred Segal also just did a collaboration with Schott, the leather jacket company famous for its line of belted motorcycle jackets Marlon Brando made famous in The Wild One. This you will have to break in, but it’ll be worth it.
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