Big Wardrobe
THE RADAR // Issue #28
Welcome back to THE RADAR, The Prep Club’s fortnightly mini-magazine keeping you in the loop of what’s hip in the sphere of collegiate threads. You can attend last week’s meeting here for thoughts on why some cats just have “it”.
Here’s what’s on the radar this week:
— How to reconcile owning a sh*t tonne of clothes
— The best sneaker, a hill I’ll die on
— The trucker jacket, and the only two worth having
— Why clothes are about to get dirtier
Big Wardrobe
I have to admit it was hardly the sturdiest clothes rail even when I first bought it, some three years ago now. Though, that doesn’t do much to reconcile the slight pang of embarrassment that comes with looking at it sagging under the weight of more than one-too-many jackets.
I’m slowly coming to terms with owning a lot of clothes, of shedding my sensibilities which compel me to refine, to eliminate redundancy. I think the nail in that coffin was my second plain grey hoodie.
I do not need a second grey hoodie because I wear the first so frequently that I need to rotate, I do not need a second grey hoodie because one is for summer and one for winter, or because they a noticeably different shades of grey. I got it because it came as a part of a tracksuit, and I’d though it’d be confined to the gym alongside it’s compatriot pants, but it’s seen a lot more than that. They are different weights, and that makes a lot of difference in how they look, more than if they were different colours, and thus I keep both.
Knitwear and outerwear are my weaknesses I would say, I think a lot of folks would say similar, shoes too, f*ck maybe it’s just all of it.
I’ll quite often refer to wardrobes as “collections”, I think the reasoning there is two-fold. Thinking about one’s wardrobe as if it were a brand collection is fairly valuable in terms of maximising the number of pieces which go with one another, but also in enthusiast circles like ours, we are perhaps collectors far more than we are wearers.
My most stylish friends are relentless outfit repeaters, you’d be forgiven for thinking they have completely refined their wardrobes, completely honed in on one thing they like, this is somewhat true, but I can guarantee you that they go home to stuffed closets and a line of shoes by the door and one in the bedroom. I think something about that speaks to a removal of the self from the love of clothes. There’s a certain amount of mental gymnastics here, I’ll grant you that, but in a way it’s only an extension of how we think about clothes already. None of this is necessary, that’s besides the point, superfluousness is more the net result rather than the goal. I don’t think any of us set out with a desire for stuffed closets but we find ourselves embroiled in the thrill of the hunt, suddenly discovering there are a far greater number of interesting and exciting clothes thank we originally thought.
I have a lot of time for the idea that one does not need to own everything, but for those things which are within our reach, and for which their acquisition marks an engagement with this hobby which brings about joy, I say let it fly. That is the origin of the big wardrobe, the sagging clothes rail, the stack of shoes, it’s the best justification I can offer, and there’s no way it’ll suffice for all critics, but it does help me sleep at night.
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The best of em all
As I’m from the side of the Atlantic without a fascist government (for now, I know, it’s bloody terrifying), when I use the word “sneakers”, I’m referring to a subset of training shoes, rather than the collective. I say this because I need to narrow down onto a particular category if I am to exclude certain shoes in the case I am about to make. That is to say, I do not think an Onitsuka Tiger Mexico 66, New Balance 992, and HOKA Mafate Speed cannot reasonably be lumped under one umbrella, though they are all what we might call “lifestyle sneakers”. To me, the Onitsuka is a “gum shoe”, the Mafate is a “trail-runner”, and the 992 is a “sneaker”, to go further, a Reebok Club 85 would be a “tennis trainer”, whilst a K-SWISS would be a “tennis shoe”, and a Jack Purcell is a “canvas sneaker”. This is perhaps overcomplicated, but I think to refer to all of these shoes in one category is entirely unhelpful when they all have noticeably different aesthetics and functions.
Of all of those, it’s the 992 which I wanted to present to you today, a shoe which manages to sit clean above any other in its sector. Grey, by the way, don’t really worry about any of the others.
It’s not a hype shoe, but it’s not a sleeper pick either, hell Jobs wore them. That’s my first reason for my love of them though, since their release back in oh-six— which means we’re coming up on twenty years— they’ve sort of sat outside trends, whilst fitting pretty tidily in with just about anything. I can posit various theories as to why they’ve been so enduring: I think they’re the perfect size, for one, big but not excessively massive. They’re also the perfect bridge between young and old for me, they’ve got a nice balance of street and dad. The 99x series has always been the thinking person’s pick over other NB lines, especially because of the far superior quality that comes with the Made in USA stuff, and the 992 is sort of the magnum opus of that design philosophy, with the cushioning of both the 90 and 91, without pushing too fat and sacrificing style like the 93 does a little bit.
The 992’s biggest virtue though, I think, is that it has been left pretty much unmolested since it’s introduction, it hasn’t been the subject of hundreds of collaborations, the colour-ways have remained fairly tame, and it’s only ever been available Made in the USA. It has a premium status, and I don’t think the value of that can be overstated.
Twenty years in, and these things are looking like they might, just might, be timeless, if such a thing exists. For that reason, I just feel like they have to be the best of the best.
A tale of two truckers
The trucker is especially important: it is, as far as I know, the only casual jacket which can be reliably layered underneath another piece of outerwear, without appearing contrived. This is true for any material you might think to construct one in, even leathers and suedes I think, though the latter causes some friction issues in actually getting another coat over the top.
