Autumn Style: Jeans

An unserious guide to seriously great pieces.

Having just spent the past couple of days in Vermont I’ve felt the first crisp air that previews the arrival of Autumn and It. Was. Wonderful. All those years of living in LA conditioned me to not allow myself to get even remotely excited about the greatest of the four seasons until at least October 1st. Eventually I lost my enthusiasm for October and Autumn in general. I did my best to put up a good fight through the first 4-5 years of living in LA, breaking out my flannels, fleeces and shackets at what’s typically a reasonable time(late September), however LA is anything but reasonable and eventually the culture and the weather wears you down. One day you just wake up and you’re too tired to keep fighting, so you give up, which is how “athleisure” happens to good people. I’ve always gotten a kick out of the fact that the absolute laziest way to dress is to appear as though you have been, or are on your way to do, some sort of physical activity.

In my final years of living in LA I truly dreaded the hot, dusty days that dragged on through September, well into October and often into November. The increasingly persistent heat ended up being one of the major motivating factors behind our move away from Southern California as neither my wife or I wanted to be in LA during Autumn, or Winter, or Summer for that matter. Spring in SoCal is great, but living somewhere and enjoying 1 out of 4 seasons is no way to live at all. In Nashville we’ve got 3 out of 4. This past summer was pretty damn oppressive, but we hope to be able to mitigate our exposure to the worst of it in the future as we did this year by escaping to the northeast to see family for the month of July and returning to Northern California for Monterey Car Week each August. As for Autumn, Winter and Spring in the mid-South, bring it on, I’m here for all of it.

Apart from a return to the natural rhythms that come with having 4 distinct seasons, one of the aspects of life that I’ve enjoyed the most since leaving LA is getting to dress in a way that feels much more natural to me on a daily basis. It took me many years to find my lane in LA fashion wise and while I picked up a few sartorial affectations that stuck, for the most part I stayed true to my Northeast roots. It certainly helped that I moved to LA in 2008, just in time for the dawn of the “Mad Men slim-suiting” era on the more formal side of things and “Workwear/Lumbersexual/Americana” for day-to-day menswear. For the most part I got to keep buying from the brands I already loved, while getting an education in fit and pairing pieces for a put together look. I’ve by no means mastered either, but when I look at photos of myself from the past 16 years I don’t see someone who’s wildly off base(for the most part), but rather someone whose style evolved through trial and error. Of course I had some helpful guidance from peers along the way and I still rely heavily on the impeccable taste of my(very patient) wife to help build an outfit for important occasions.

For the most part I have my go to pieces from brands I trust and they’re all flexible enough that it’s hard to grab something at random from my closet and not come out feeling confident. At the end of the day isn’t that what clothes should do? Instill confidence and perhaps even a sense of pride? We may not recognize it when we’re younger, I know I certainly didn’t, but dressing for anyone other than yourself is real waste of time and money. I’m not saying that dress codes(perceived, suggested or mandatory) should be ignored, in fact I quite like operating within a set of rules and finding a way to put my own spin on them. What I will say is that dressing in a certain way to make anyone other than yourself comfortable or attract the attention of a specific group is to fight a pointless battle.

Style comes from within, being fashionable is a skill to be learned.

I either heard or read that somewhere, it’s not even a remotely original thought, but I really do think it’s true. With that in mind I’ve planned a series of posts for the next couple of weeks in which I’ll dive into how to build an Autumnal wardrobe that not only supports a variety of outfits in a style that works for just about anyone, but will also last for years to come. I don’t care what’s “in” this year and neither should you. Trends are for children, adults should aspire to timelessness. Buy well and you’ll be set for decades, not a year or two.

On that note I thought it appropriate to kick things off with something really straightforward, yet somehow still so easy to fuck up if you don’t know better. We’re talking an underhand-toss-right-down-the-middle softball that so many people still manage to whiff on. Today, I’m talking about jeans. Blue, black, brown and yes, white too. Jeans do come in other colors, but quite frankly they shouldn’t. Denim dyed red, green, orange or even yellow can work for a trucker jacket if you’re the really adventurous sort who can pull off such a piece, but when it comes to pants, those colors are best expressed in other fabrics, if at all.

For the purposes of keeping this piece concise I’ll be sticking to one option per style, however there’s a very high likelihood of a post dedicated to raw denim and selvedge denim given that I’ll be visiting a number of denim focused shops in Tokyo next month. Furthermore I plan to make all of these “Autumn Style” pieces more useful to everyone by only sharing pieces widely available online. I do urge you to shop brick + mortar whenever possible, especially with jeans given how case-by-case fit can be. I realize that not everyone has well curated retail right down the street so a handy list of my favorite shops in the U.S. is forthcoming, but until then hit the links below to shop these pieces or pop the styles into your preferred search engine to choose your purchase portal. These are all pieces I’ve spent my own money on and would happily do so again. No freebies or affiliate link funny business here.

Enjoy!

-Andrew