There exists a grouping of men that are hors categorie - beyond categorization. Seriously, what would you file this guy under? Streetwear? Prophet? Urban shaman? Maybe just a man trying to make his way through the world.*

I don’t know what you need to have in order to have hors categorie but it usually it’s a combination of hard experience and age. My grandfather regularly wears a suit from the 80s topped with festive party hat he got from his nursing home and yet he looks tough. Probably from the years of living in a worn torn nation? Nothing goes with formal attire than a thousand yard stare across the valley of death. Hey, my daily commute of 25 minutes is my version of building character, right?

Whatever it is, young men typically are not hors categorie. It’s the difference we owe for being youthful and generally more slender. I don’t know if my and subsequent generations will ever get beyond category, or if we’ve automatically doomed ourselves with our incessant “reblogging” and sending shirtless pics as a way to impress females.

Stay classy, prophet.

*This is a subcategory of “preppy”.

And the last thing you want to do to your subject, be it a deer or a hipster wearing a John Deere hat, is spook him. I have to trash a lot of pics because people look spooked. They’re tense. Constipated. Or overly self-aware.

Not Taka. The Japanese in NY are absolutely “killing it.” If I had to describe what he was wearing to you without a picture to illustrate, you would have think I had a stroke. Floppy Ivy hat worn a la Leonardo Da Vinci. Tweet blazer and matching vest. Yellow scarf. Long Coat with purple facing. The dude was like the Japanese Renaissance version of Harry Potter.

*I said cock. Heh. Edgy bastard.

Also, the people who shop there, even just in passing, look awesome. They explode the typical style archetypes with fists of dynamite and mouths of cotton. I cornered a group of young people (who know doubt were on their way from a music video shoot inside a pho restaurant, as young people nowadays tend to be).

There’s something about standing around with smoldering ember in your hands that make you look badass. I’m thinking this is how cave men used to feel. “Dude, have you seen Oggdor’s new Flaming Wooden Stick? It’s awesome. I think he got it at Best Buy.”

Flash forward like 50,000 years (or three hundred in Bible Time) and go from a savannah in Nigeria to Alphabet City…

But there was a few goodies in there. Take this gent below. Remember that all around him were lowered Civics, raised monster trucks, and tons of grown men dressed like 15-year-old boys.

**NO ONE calls “Orange County” “The OC”, I merely did it to annoy myself. Mission accomplished. Asshole.

Further to the other day’s posts on shoes of dubious heritage, Leffot has birthed yet another elegant “collab” of sweet agony.

Jesus Christ look at them. Should I wear them or begin lobbying Massachusetts for the right for a man and shoe to be married in the eyes of the law.

I would name my kid “Alden” if I wasn’t sure it would automatically turn him into a neoliberal boutique investment banker with a penchant for sailing.

Oh come the fuck on.

Leffot, you guys are such assholes.

I should really just try to get a job at Leffot. Shoes appreciate in value over time, just like stock, right?

Was recently directed to these Tres Bien x Mark McNairy shoes, the type of which seem to be all the raging boner nowadays.

I’m not going to say shoe design is easy, because it is not. It is hemmed in on all sides by so much tradition and convention it’s surprising we’ve seen any revamping lately. What can you really do? More eyelets? More holes in the broguing? I know what we need: more brown.

So when there is some room for rewriting the shoe script, you best bet designers are there with their thesaurus in hand. Whch is why we’re getting shoes like the above, as well as the below, and the even below-er.

Oy. I don’t know. They’re all business on top, and work on the bottom. They’re the shoe mullets of menswear, and there’s no equivalent irony ripped from a blue collar alcoholic beverage to complement.

I see you like my razor yo-yo thing...I got it from Rick Owens

I grabbed this bow tie from the Rag and Bone “sample sale”. It was the only thing under $100 and looked the least like something Balki from “Perfect Strangers” would wear.

My Bow Tie and Flower style is better than your Crane and Eagle

Add to that the carnation. Gentleman, buy a bunch of carnations every Monday and keep it in the office. Clip one off each day to put into your lapel. Give out a few every now and then. Instant style karma.

LET’S FIGHT!

Listen.

Being a member of English aristocracy isn’t what it used to be. It used to be all “good day, m’lady” and “no more crepe suzette for me, Jeeves”. You were respected. Your subordinates worshipped you. But no longer. It doesn’t matter if you can trace your heritage back to Henry V, or that you wear a tie representing Oxford because you and four generations of ancestors went there. Nope. Now you’re a bloody nobody unless you’ve got a Twitter handle.

Look at this shit. You see these shoes? I got them as a present from the Countess of Wessex on my 20th birthday. I should be strutting all up and down Prince Street in them, talking with my cute clipped accent and getting all those American panties wet. But I can’t. Why? Because instead I’m trying to connect to a damn free Starbucks/At&T wi-fi hotspot so I can upload this fucking picture of my brunch.

Maybe there’s a Barnes and Noble nearby.

Do you realize how rich my family is? Have you heard of Highclere Castle? It’s my family’s summer home. A castle is my summer home. Let that sink in.

But nowadays being of noble blood isn’t enough. Now I have to compete with some old skanks in New Jersey who have a show on Bravo. Now the only way to get a piece of the public eye is to tweet what I think about Kim Kardashian’s divorce. I only have 500 followers. I’M THE GODDAMN EARL OF PEMBROKE. I have the same Klout score as this blogger that only posts pictures of three-legged dogs.

Fuck this.

Anyways, follow me on @DukeofPemBrizoke

Image “courtesy” of StreetFSN.

I was fortunate enough to attend the thom browne sample sale that went down a week or so back.

First, may I say it was a true blue honest American sample sale. None of this communist “big-sale-pretending-to-be-a-sample-sale” nonsense. This was straight capitalism at it’s finest and worst. Managed to grab some swag, but before I could, I had to wait in an interminable line with the other riffraff. But while whiling away the time, I did manage to do some honest to God hatin’, and this is the fruit therein. Here are the four types of folks you’ll meet standing in a Thom Browne sample sale.

The Asian American. There were a lot of dudes of Asian decent. Hey, we’re small-boned, fuck you if you can’t handle it.  This category could be broken into sub-categories:

• The well-heeled Asian American: This subtype looks and is rich, and can probably afford to Thom Browne at full price, but hey he’s Asian and we know our deals. To balance it, he is probably a lawyer or something and took his one personal day for the entire year to attend the sale.
• The showroom Asian American: This is the dude who just graduated from college, and works part-time as a showroom worker and part-time in PR or some other industry that adds no value to the economy. He can be a bit pretentious, but man does he look dope.