Latest / TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast / #645: The Lost Art of Dressing Like a Man with O.W. Root
Transcript
- 0:00You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
- 0:10If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts.
- 0:16So it's all acting like safe haven.
- 0:18I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their
- 0:23currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
- 0:28I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
- 0:31If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
- 0:37W, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me.
- 0:40Thanks for having me.
- 0:41I would be lying if I said you haven't been an incredibly positive influence on my life,
- 0:45particularly in the last year or two.
- 0:48I've been following you on X, necktie salvage,
- 0:52and you've even influenced me to buy more Oxfords,
- 0:55one of which I'm wearing today.
- 0:56fantastic I'm glad to hear that I'm always glad to hear that
- 0:59we have a mutual friend
- 1:02in Michael Goldstein
- 1:04as he's famously known as
- 1:06in the Bitcoin space
- 1:07he's been
- 1:09sharing your content with me
- 1:12telling me for years to follow you
- 1:14and really dig into what you're doing
- 1:15and I think the two of you
- 1:18and Michael and I have a shared appreciation
- 1:20for bringing back better aesthetics
- 1:22in the world and your focus is on
- 1:24making sure that men particularly
- 1:26dress well? Why is this so important to you? Well, you know, aesthetics matter, you know,
- 1:34so there's a couple of things here. First, I'm going to preempt the critique about aesthetics
- 1:39mattering. The critique is, well, listen, if you focus so much on aesthetics, you miss the moral
- 1:43concern, you miss the values, all that sort of stuff. And I understand where that's coming from.
- 1:48But what we need to understand is that when we focus on aesthetics, whether it's clothing
- 1:52or houses or whether it's design or anything, we aren't focusing on this in a materialistic way.
- 1:59We're not focusing on this in a flippant way. It's not a shallow way. It's about a deeper thing.
- 2:03It's about that which makes our lives better. It's about that which makes our lives more
- 2:08enjoyable to live. It's about that which reflects our values. It's about that which makes men and
- 2:13women, boys and girls, greater. And for clothing, all men wear clothing. We are not animals. We
- 2:21don't walk around naked. So every guy wears clothing, doesn't matter if you're rich, poor,
- 2:25somewhere in the middle, whatever, whatever you are doing, whatever job you're doing,
- 2:29you are wearing clothes, I guess, unless you're a lifeguard, they're not wearing clothes,
- 2:32but not many people are lifeguards. So you are wearing clothes. They have an impact on your life
- 2:36and you wear them 24 seven, you wear them all the time, unless you're taking a shower,
- 2:40you're wearing clothes, or sleeping, I guess, you're wearing clothes. And so these things are
- 2:45with you all the time, they impact us even more consistently than say architecture. Because if you
- 2:53don't like the way a building looks, you leave the building. Or you move from building to building,
- 2:57but your clothes follow you wherever you go. And so why I focus on clothes so much is that it is
- 3:02completely scalable. Essentially, every guy makes these choices every morning. Every guy is impacted
- 3:08by his clothes, whether he realizes it or not. And those clothes say something to himself and the
- 3:14world at the same time and it feels like particularly i would say so i'm a 90s child
- 3:21born in 91 34 right now so i feel like late 90s early 2000s you sort of had this transition
- 3:28to like pajama pants and walmart became normalized and slovenly looks became more normalized over
- 3:37the last two and a half three decades what do you think drove this and why why do you think
- 3:44people feel comfortable dressing poorly?
- 3:48That's a really good question.
- 3:50I mean, this is a really, really good question.
- 3:52It's really related to so much because think about this like a chicken and the egg scenario.
- 3:58You know, think about clothes.
- 3:59They impact the culture and then they're a reflection of the culture as well.
- 4:02They impact either an ascent or a descent in society and in one's life.
- 4:08And they also create it as well.
- 4:11So I think it's like a snowball falling down the hill.
- 4:12So why would it be in the past couple decades, and it's really increased recently, I mean, five years, past five, 10 years, it's gotten exceedingly bad, even in more formal jobs and occupations.
- 4:27Why would that be?
- 4:29I think we've seen just a broad degeneration culturally.
- 4:34We've seen a confusion culturally.
- 4:36We've seen a loss of clear mission and purpose civilizationally.
- 4:41and I think we see that reflected in our clothing.
- 4:45You know, the clothes make the state of man
- 4:48and they reflect the state of man.
- 4:50So as man, both as human and as man,
- 4:54the man versus the woman,
- 4:55have been degraded and downgraded in society and culture.
- 4:59So have clothes been degraded and downgraded
- 5:02in culture as well.
- 5:05And going back to chicken and egg descent,
- 5:08decent is it your belief that by picking the low-hanging fruit of simply dressing better
- 5:14you can begin to present better yourself and then create like a social awareness that creates a
- 5:22positive feedback loop to get us out of this negative one absolutely 100 i mean we all know
- 5:27something think about it with your think about your space if your space is super super messy
- 5:31if your room is a total hellhole if it looks just absolutely awful you're gonna kind of be
- 5:37scattered and he doesn't feel that good. You really don't. Nobody really feels better in a
- 5:41crazy messy place. Everybody feels a little better when it's clean.
- 5:45Every single guy I've met, I have never met a single guy ever
- 5:49who started putting on decent clothes and who said I didn't notice any
- 5:53difference in my mindset shift in how I approach my work and how I approach
- 5:57my day and how I thought about myself.
- 6:00Think about that. When you care about something, you prepare for it. Whether it's
- 6:05a test, whether it's a holiday, whether it's seeing family, whether it's a date, you know,
- 6:09if you're dating, whatever it is, you when you care about something, you prepare for it.
- 6:13If you're not preparing for your day, you're just rolling out of bed in pajama pants on
- 6:17a t shirt.
- 6:19You don't really care about your day.
- 6:20You don't really care about yourself.
- 6:21You don't really care about how things are going.
- 6:24And so without a doubt, when people make an active choice in cultivating, wearing something
- 6:32that makes them feel, it's a very simple language, feel good, feel better. And I mean good. I don't
- 6:37mean good. Like, yeah, it'd feel nice to lay in the hot tub all day and not work. That'd feel
- 6:42pretty good too. But it's not actually good. That's just being lazy. When people wear something
- 6:48that make them feel strong, competent, and confident, that trickles upward. They are strong,
- 6:53confident, and competent, and they act in that way. And it's, like I said, it's a choice that
- 6:58we make every day and every guy can make it there are what 400 million people in america it's
- 7:03people in america if everybody started dressing a little better that it rises things it really does
- 7:11there's this it not only in the appearance but also in the spirit and how you feel about what
- 7:15you're doing yeah and just thinking it does seem like the who knows if it's internet culture the
- 7:23combination of things but the reflection of what people are wearing on society what's reflecting
- 7:30what probably really doesn't matter but you've seen this sort of degradation and civility yeah
- 7:35oh yeah big time as well yeah this is this is such a good point i mean civility and manners are
- 7:40related to dressing absolutely you know i mean what are i mean think about this you see and this
- 7:45is tragic this is sad but nowadays it's people don't even dress up for funerals i know that
- 7:49sounds crazy and i know that maybe if you're listening to this you've been to a funeral people
- 7:54dressed up but i hear stories and people talk to me about stuff you know i do this for a living
- 7:58people tell me i went to a funeral and people were wearing crocs you know like like like really i
- 8:04mean so if you're not dressing up for that paying your respects literally i mean that's what you say
- 8:09i'm paying my respects if you're not even dressing for that what are you doing when you're just going
- 8:14anywhere going to the post office working going out to eat anywhere what does that say when you go
- 8:19to someone's house and you look like you were just sleeping don't really respect them and so
- 8:23we've seen that in the entire society every it's this lowering of respect this lowering of dignity
- 8:31and decency and civility without a doubt clothing is a form of manners it's like a physical form of
- 8:36manners without a doubt without a doubt yeah no my uh i guess my relationship to civility manners
- 8:46clothing. It's been a bit of a meandering past throughout my life. I'm from Philadelphia
- 8:51originally, but we moved to Charleston, South Carolina when I was younger, when I was about
- 8:56nine. We lived there for four years and a Northeast Philly kid getting dropped in Charleston,
- 9:03South Carolina with a weird accent and totally foreign and uncouth dialect.
- 9:09was for my mother made the wise decision of sending me to Cotillion
- 9:14right when we moved down there to learn basic manners
- 9:18and how to pronounce water correctly.
- 9:22It's something that I honestly still, even though it was Jesus
- 9:2724, 25 years ago now, at this point,
- 9:31I think I did two years at Cotillion, and the lessons I learned there about manners
- 9:36and how to act in public still reflect, I like to think, on what I do to this day.
- 9:44And I think I've become more passionate about this particular topic as I've gotten older,
- 9:48more particularly since I've had children.
- 9:50I've got two young boys, a third child on the way.
- 9:52Wonderful. Congratulations.
- 9:54Thank you.
- 9:54And looking at the boys and thinking about what type of example I'm trying to set for them,
- 9:59I think clothing is something that is becoming more obvious to me
- 10:03as my boys try to reflect what I'm doing.
- 10:06In terms of what they wear.
- 10:08And I think it's very important.
- 10:10Absolutely.
- 10:11I mean, yeah, this is all connected.
- 10:14This is all connected.
- 10:15And so many people that I work with and so many guys that follow me, read me, talk to me, they start thinking about this when they start having kids often.
- 10:26They start realizing, oh, my kids are going to look up to someone.
- 10:30You know, your kids, your boys and girls will learn from their mother and your boys will learn from you what a dad looks like.
- 10:40You know, I always think I remember my dad wearing my dad wasn't a clothes hound.
- 10:43You know, he wasn't buying tons of super expensive stuff.
- 10:46But he was just I mean, he was from a certain era where I mean, he would wear chinos, an Oxford shirt, maybe blazer, that kind of stuff to work.
- 10:56And when I remember being a kid, I had to simply have this memory.
- 10:59I remember thinking, well, that's how a dad looks.
- 11:02A dad looks like that.
- 11:03That's how a dad looks.
- 11:04Because that's what my dad wore.
- 11:06And now we're moving to this era where the dads don't even wear that.
- 11:11Because us, our dads are a little older.
- 11:14And they tend to dress a little bit better.
- 11:16But now we're moving to this era where a lot of guys aren't picking up that mantle.
- 11:22They're not showing their children or their boys how to dress like that.
- 11:25Or how to have manners.
- 11:26Or how to behave like little men who grow into big men.
- 11:29And we're seeing a real, it's connected to manners, just like you said, it's connecting to how to be a good man.
- 11:38It's connected to all this sort of stuff.
- 11:39And we're seeing a lot of problems there, to be honest with you.
- 11:44Yeah.
- 11:45In terms of like fixing it, you mentioned your dad wasn't a clothes snob, but not dressed well.
- 11:49I think that's something that is, how would I describe it?
- 11:55It's a lazy excuse for dressing better.
- 12:00It's too expensive.
- 12:01You need a wide variety in the closet to do it well and to do it correctly.
- 12:08Is this true?
- 12:10No, not one bit.
- 12:11Okay, let me see.
- 12:12I'm going to pull up my watch here just to make a little demonstration.
- 12:14Let's see.
- 12:15Let's see.
- 12:15Take my watch here.
- 12:16So this watch is a very nice watch.
- 12:18It looks very, very, it's this beautiful 1990s Timex.
- 12:23When you wear this, you feel like Harrison Ford and the Fugitive.
- 12:25It's very, very cool.
- 12:26It's extremely classic.
- 12:28I mean, it's just, this is classic style right here.
- 12:30This was $19 on eBay.
- 12:32$19.
- 12:32It's from like 1994 or something before they did Indiglo.
- 12:35It still works.
- 12:36So that's not really expensive.
- 12:38It looks pretty nice.
- 12:40And same thing goes for, you know, I talked about, you can build a wardrobe.
- 12:44That's a super extreme example, but you can build a wardrobe from thrift.
- 12:47you can build a wardrobe just not from thrift but buying new pieces that are on sale a lot of people
- 12:54that build wardrobes from thrift i mean it's so possible when i say thrift i mean thrift store
- 13:00goodwill and ebay as well ebay is an insane source any guy who's into classic style actually i mean
- 13:05we're talking as cheap as you want even guys who have money will buy stuff on ebay because there
- 13:10are a lot of jackets that they don't make anymore you just cannot get them you know the meme that
- 13:13we don't know how to make it anymore that we don't know how to do it so you can buy brooks
- 13:17brothers jackets that i mean there are a few places make them but they're a thousand dollars
- 13:22new versus 75 on ebay and so that's being that's going used but even if you don't go used even if
- 13:28you go new you can there are places you can source shirts that are 50 bucks a little bit more that
- 13:35are going to last you a decade or a little less same thing for pants same thing for shoes that
- 13:41are 90 bucks that that is no no more expensive than whatever slop people are wearing but it's a
- 13:47it's a conscious choice.
- 13:48You make this conscious choice.
- 13:49If you have,
- 13:50if you have 50 K to spend on a wardrobe,
- 13:52you can spend that.
- 13:53If you've got one K to spend on a wardrobe,
- 13:55you can spend that too.
- 13:56And you can still look great.
- 13:56I guarantee.
- 13:58Let's,
- 13:59that's such an issue.
- 13:59This topic of quality,
- 14:01because that's something that does perturb me as well.
- 14:05Like I went to high school between 2005 and 2009.
- 14:10I went to a prep school.
- 14:11So I had to wear a jacket,
- 14:12blazer,
- 14:13shirt,
- 14:13tie,
- 14:14belt,
- 14:14shoes,
- 14:15all that.
- 14:16And,
- 14:16even since then, like 16 years since I graduated high school, it feels like you can't get the same
- 14:22quality jackets specifically. Like I've, I've been, I've gotten a couple of suits and jackets
- 14:28from suit supply. They look good, but the, the quality isn't that great. I mean, they degrade
- 14:34pretty quickly. That's exactly right. Like, like with the Brooks thing, you buy a, I have Brooks
- 14:38jackets that are from the sixties. I mean, that's, that's like 60 years old at this point. Yeah. I
- 14:44I have jackets that are 60 to 75 years old.
- 14:4665 years old, these jackets.
- 14:50They hold up
- 14:52just great They look basically brand new They don make them like they used to There is a big degradation in quality you know for polo shirts and guys wear polo shirts i always recommend honestly if someone like i gonna buy
- 15:04i want to buy like a fleet of polo shirts playing tennis or something like that um i honestly
- 15:10recommend going on ebay and buying an old pop a polaro floor and polo shirt from like 1995 or like
- 15:152001 rather than a new one because it seriously is it's a better weave the fabric is literally
- 15:22better it's sewn better and it will last longer and so a big reason why people buy thrift is
- 15:27actually to remedy this problem of uh quality and if you do want to get good quality there are
- 15:34places to make good quality but the problem is that it's a premium now you know it's a real
- 15:38premium there are some places that thread the needle that do real good stuff i'm really happy
- 15:41with proper cloth i get a lot of stuff from them i have a partnership with them but again it's not
- 15:46super cheap i mean you're getting a custom shirt and it's 150 bucks so i mean that's not super
- 15:52cheap. But it's a problem. This quality is a problem. And this is why a lot of people do
- 15:56thrift. This is why I do thrift for a lot of stuff. It's because you can get better quality.
- 16:00Do you see the potential for that to reverse
- 16:04it all? Because there obviously has to be a spot in the market for more quality.
- 16:08It is frustrating. Absolutely. It's not like we forgot the technology.
- 16:12I mean, you can do it. You can build better stuff. You can make better stuff.
- 16:16There are good makers. You see people leading the way. You have to lead the way.
- 16:20Jack Donnelly, I love Jack Donnelly's pants.
- 16:23He makes these amazing, made in the USA, high-rise chinos.
- 16:26They're unbelievable.
- 16:28They're just hardcore, old-school, great.
- 16:31A little pricier, but you have to have people leading the front, leading the charge.
- 16:37You have to incentivize better quality that's not made in a cheap factory in China or wherever and make it in the USA is ideally better, I think.
- 16:46Yeah.
- 16:47yeah it's a how much does fast fashion and economic incentives have to do with this
- 16:54oh big time big time big time if you're only gonna if you're only gonna wear if something
- 16:59is only going to be in style for four months you build it for four months you make it last
- 17:04four months and you stitch it together with garbage thread and that's it but classic style
- 17:10timeless style traditional style you're supposed to wear it forever i mean you can wear it your
- 17:14entire life a navy blazer you get a nice navy blazer you can wear it for a decade really decades
- 17:18same thing for oxford shirts so they're designed to last a long time and so this reflects a different
- 17:24cultural sentiment different values you know people have crunched the numbers on this and
- 17:28seen how much people spent on clothes in the old days 30s or something like that they spent more
- 17:33per shirt and they had fewer shirts but they lasted longer i mean this is odd we all know this
- 17:41but people have really done the numbers on it, that that's just what it was.
- 17:45I've been told that taste is subjective, though.
- 17:47How could fashion be timeless?
- 17:50Right.
- 17:53The way I put it is this.
- 17:54So let's think about it this way.
- 17:55There are different style worlds.
- 17:58So because I run into this a lot.
- 18:00For example, there's an Italian style.
- 18:03There's different schools.
- 18:04If we talk about classic style, when I say classic style, let's break it all.
- 18:07Let's go all the way back down.
- 18:08classic style in an american sense and in a western sense in the most broad terms imaginable
- 18:16are it's a pair of shoes with a pair of pants a shirt and a jacket over it and possibly something
- 18:24around your neck that is something that's a formula that has been in the western canon for
- 18:30centuries really that that is a very now it's changed you know at different times it was more
- 18:35it was loose around here. You know, it was bigger on here at different times. It was smaller
- 18:38in a very micro sense. We saw there, there were errors where ties got skinny, you know,
- 18:44like the mid century, then they got wider, then they got skinnier again, they go back and forth.
- 18:49And when it comes to that stuff, if you stay around, this is a little insider baseball,
- 18:52but if you keep your, uh, tie at the widest point, if you buy ties that are around 3.25 inches at the
- 18:59widest point, you'll be right in the middle and you'll basically never be super cool or super out
- 19:04style you'll be right up the gut right in the middle but this general thing shoes pants a shirt
- 19:10jacket and maybe something on your neck this is the formula that has been in the western canon for
- 19:14centuries and so what i focus on and what i deal with in sorry i should say one other thing there
- 19:22are various schools like the italian school french school english school these have different
- 19:25styles they have different little details that are different in terms of their neckwear their shirts
- 19:30It's what you do and you do not do.
- 19:33But what I focus on is American style and classic American style, modern American style, meaning in the 20th century.
- 19:40Since, you know, after we're getting into the early 1900s and moving forward to today.
- 19:45And that is Ivy style and preppy style is basically the heart and core of that.
- 19:51And that has essentially a set of not necessarily rules, but a presumption of how man looks best.
- 20:01And so that timeless style taps into those centuries old format that I described within its own niche of American rules and guidelines and sensibilities.
- 20:20Yeah.
- 20:20Makes sense.
- 20:21Yeah, it does. And it's funny, you mentioned architecture earlier, and that's part of the reason, not part of the reason, but again, being from Philly, we recently moved back to the Philadelphia area from Texas.
- 20:37And no matter where I went, I lived in South Carolina, beautiful architecture, Chicago, beautiful architecture, New York, beautiful architecture.
- 20:43But there's something about the stone builds in the Philadelphia area that really beckon to me.
- 20:49And that is timeless.
- 20:50Like these are centuries old houses.
- 20:52And they're authentically American too.
- 20:54You feel that American sensibility, you know, they're timeless.
- 20:57There is this Americanness.
- 20:58A very American thing is the button down collar is a very American thing.
- 21:02British will do it too.
- 21:03And other places will do it too.
- 21:04But it is a distinctly, it really has come to embody something about American style, the
- 21:10Oxford cloth button down, the OCBD and specifically a tie with this.
- 21:15You know, a lot of times the Europeans, they don't do that.
- 21:17They say you don't wear a tie with a button-down collar.
- 21:20But in America, that's like a hot dog on the 4th of July, you know, wearing a tie with a button-down collar.
- 21:26And this is an interesting thing where it is classic in the American sense and is authentically American.
- 21:33What do you say to people who try to besmirch the comfortableness of dressing well?
- 21:40It's not comfortable.
- 21:41It's a lie.
- 21:42It's a total lie.
- 21:43This is the problem.
- 21:44This is the problem.
- 21:46I understand where they're coming from with that.
- 21:47this is largely born from the slim fit era.
- 21:51So most of the guys,
- 21:52so I'll address two things.
- 21:54I assume this is coming from guys first.
- 21:56So I'll address it coming from guys.
- 21:57They are a legitimate gripe that they may be having.
- 22:02And I'll tell you about the illegitimate gripe second,
- 22:05but legitimate gripe is the slim fit era did stink for comfortability.
- 22:09It really did stink.
- 22:10You know,
- 22:10you had the something that was kind of a little in the early to that,
- 22:14maybe 2008 ish,
- 22:16seven ish.
- 22:17I mean, people can like quibble back and forth about the exact times, but it started dying out maybe two years ago.
- 22:23And so we are on the downswing of it.
- 22:24Some people are still doing it because they aren't aware of where we're moving, but we're dying away from it.
- 22:30And the slim fit area, you had shirts that were just super tight.
- 22:33The pants were super tight.
- 22:35The suits were really undersized.
- 22:36You know, people could barely even button their jacket.
- 22:40I mean, barely button their jacket.
- 22:42And that was what looked good was this really ultra slim thing.
- 22:46it's very uncomfortable it's extremely uncomfortable i mean on the thighs you sit
- 22:50down it's just rip on your skin you know it's not it's not comfortable and so that is a legitimate
- 22:56gripe that is not comfortable stuff to wear and so if you're wearing clothes that are too small
- 23:01it's not uncomfortable the illegitimate gripe is that a lot of guys just sort of have like a fetish
- 23:08with comfort they're just sort of whiners to you know they're just whining about anything that is
- 23:14that is not a pair of fleece pajama pants or whatever they're made of in a hoodie.
- 23:21And I'm not going to argue with them and tell you that,
- 23:25tell them that a five-year-old pair of tacky chinos and a 10-year-old Oxford shirt
- 23:30that's been worn in that feels super soft is more comfortable than what they're wearing.
- 23:34Because that might be a subjective argument.
- 23:37But I would say comfort is not what you should worship.
- 23:42And there is this sort of turning comfort into an idol.
- 23:44Yeah, it can become gluttonous at a point, right?
- 23:47For sure.
- 23:47Exactly.
- 23:48Absolutely.
- 23:49It's like sitting in the hot tub.
- 23:50I would love to sit in the hot tub all day and just respond on my phone to work.
- 23:54But what is that?
- 23:56Yeah.
- 23:57Yeah.
- 23:59I succumb to it, too.
- 24:02In the mid-2010s, living in New York, trying to work in tech.
- 24:07I think tech really drove that leisurely look at the workplace.
- 24:13For sure.
- 24:13praise that's taken over and i don't know i feel better now that i'm beginning to and it's simple
- 24:19the small acts i've taken is like try to wear a shirt with a collar or or an oxford just
- 24:27especially during the summer down here like even on the beach it's like my beach shirts are either
- 24:33like an oxford or a golf shirt yeah these days it's just simple thing so simple so easy it's no
- 24:41more difficult it's no more difficult to do that and what would you say to people like i'm saying
- 24:47that in the back of my head i'm thinking i got i hope i don't sound like a snob to people and i
- 24:51think that's another sort of factor in this acceptance of leisure wear becoming normalized
- 24:58is i think partly driven by woke culture which had this northeast prep aesthetic in squarely
- 25:08in the bullseye of the target that that is culturally for for many decades and i think
- 25:14there's just this um attempt to the avoid that aesthetic because you don't want to be put in
- 25:23in the middle of the boys a bullseye of the target of the social sort of ire that will culture has
- 25:29really really been driving absolutely 100 this is that the style i focus on is literally that exact
- 25:37style you know ivy prep i'm that is american style you know that is you know i always say
- 25:43what is it um the the 20th century american man was made in the image of brooks brothers
- 25:49and then for florin ralph florin worked at brooks brothers so all this flows down from there
- 25:53um and from the prep schools as well jay price is another one but really brooks brothers was
- 25:5720th century man was made in the image of brooks brothers and so this woke culture absolutely
- 26:03targets, I mean, that is right in the heart of it, because it is American style, it is authentic
- 26:09American style. And it is this, it has a decided history in America, a clear history, it's not just
- 26:16a commercial phenomenon. And it is also beyond just the historical stuff, what does and beyond
- 26:23it just being American, and being Western, it's also makes men strong. You know, what culture
- 26:30wants us all to be extremely weak, ultimately, you know, it's a victim thing. It's a weak thing.
- 26:35It wants to make everyone blend together. You know, athleisure is androgynous clothing,
- 26:41really, you know, a man wearing a tie and a woman wearing heels. I mean, those are the thing I love
- 26:47about the tie and the heels, or the jacket and the dress is that they are these extreme things
- 26:52that really embody or are a reflection of their being a man or being a man or being a woman.
- 26:58And so when you take those things away, you flatten everyone into Crocs like idiocracy and then everybody into the pajama pants.
- 27:08It is instead of exacerbating the forms of man and woman, it tries to form them together.
- 27:14And so you see this lessening of the forms of man and woman.
- 27:19And that is also a really deep problem of woke culture.
- 27:22That's what they go after.
- 27:23They really want to destroy all those forms.
- 27:26yeah well let's dive into the necktie specifically i mean it's part of your
- 27:33your handle on x salvaged why why is the necktie worth salvaging so it's really funny so the name
- 27:41necktie salvage actually came from when i first started talking about all this and everything
- 27:46originally what i would do with a lot of guys is i would tailor their neckties so they'd have
- 27:52these old neckties that are like at four inches at width the widest point down there and they
- 27:56would want to bring them in a little bit they don't bring them to 3.5 inches 3.25 inches and so
- 28:00i would tailor them because i do a lot of my own alterations of tailoring as well so that's actually
- 28:04where the original name necktie salvage came from was literally salvaging these old neckties
- 28:08but why is the necktie worth um yeah like it's a good idea i've got a tie right here okay so why
- 28:15i'm not wearing a tie right now because it is very hot in summer and summer is more casual season
- 28:20for me. I wear a tie basically probably in the winter, fall and spring, maybe 75, 80% of work
- 28:27days. But in the summer, I live in right on Lake Michigan, the town where I live. So it's kind of
- 28:33resorty. It's holiday. It's fun. So I'm a little more informal. But why is the necktie worth saving?
- 28:39First of all, it's something women don't wear. It is a male exclusive garment, really.
- 28:46And someone can say, I've seen a picture of a woman wearing it as a waitress in 1980.
- 28:50Yeah, I don't care.
- 28:51I'm not talking about that.
- 28:52It is a male garment.
- 28:55So it is a garment that is only ours.
- 28:57And a removal of that means the removal of something that is distinctly male.
- 29:01Another thing is, you know, the necktie is about personality.
- 29:06I mean, it's not only the fabric or the design.
- 29:08This is a 1990s Polaroid Florin.
- 29:10And I love these geometrics.
- 29:11They're just so 90s.
- 29:13It's hard to describe why that's so 90s, but it is.
- 29:15It's so good.
- 29:16And I love these.
- 29:17And beautiful silk, too.
- 29:19But what the necktie is also is it's a personal flair that isn't only based on the fabrics.
- 29:24It's not only based on the patterns.
- 29:26It's based on the fact that, you know, you tie it around.
- 29:29It is, in a certain sense, not utilitarian.
- 29:31You're not using it for anything.
- 29:32It doesn't serve a purpose.
- 29:33It's just to look like something.
- 29:36It's just for the aesthetic itself.
- 29:38And there's a joy in that.
- 29:40You know, there's a joy in I'm cultivating a personal style.
- 29:44I am looking a certain way and it doesn't have a purpose.
- 29:49And it's a domain of expression, even in how you tie it.
- 29:53You know guys like me who are kind of more into this sort of stuff will tie it all sorts of weird ways We tie it a little messy We tie the skinny end longer than the fat end And if you never like encountered that stuff you like what the heck
- 30:03That's wrong.
- 30:04But it has to do with this thing, Sprezzatura, where you're sort of intentionally doing things that are a little wrong, but not in such an obvious way.
- 30:12It's a whole thing to sort of, it's like a elegant sort of nonchalance.
- 30:16the point is the necktie is an aspect of personal style and fun and experience and our clothes have
- 30:25become very dour almost i mean if you look at it like the black or gray athleisure is very dour
- 30:29compared to someone wearing a tie with a striped shirt and a jacket yeah i must admit i've uh i've
- 30:37gotten away from the necktie outside of formal events in recent years and it's it is uh because
- 30:43another, going back to like routine, which you mentioned
- 30:45earlier, like being intentional to set your day.
- 30:47That's one thing, because the necktie
- 30:49like pop your collar, throw it
- 30:51around and you're looking in the mirror doing
- 30:53it and oftentimes
- 30:55before your jacket, the last thing you put on
- 30:57you step out and you're like having a conversation
- 30:59with yourself and visualizing
- 31:01manifesting potentially
- 31:02if you will, like part of that process
- 31:05and routine, I think
- 31:07is just good for
- 31:09developing that confidence and
- 31:11more importantly
- 31:13like having a conversation with yourself.
- 31:15I don't know if that's coming off weird, but.
- 31:17No, it isn't.
- 31:18It is not coming off weird at all.
- 31:20I mean, that routine in a way, getting ready,
- 31:23getting dressed as a man in that necktie,
- 31:25put it in the last thing you'd put on for your jacket.
- 31:27It's like a secular morning ritual.
- 31:30There's like a modern male secular, secular morning, morning ritual.
- 31:33And when I say modern, I'm not saying modern 2025.
- 31:35I'm saying modern and the modernist era, you know?
- 31:37So it's like, it is almost a secular morning ritual
- 31:40and you're preparing for your day.
- 31:43and there is something about the tighter it's tight there and then it explodes out essentially
- 31:49you know it's this tight knot and then it's loose and there's there's a certain element of strong
- 31:55preparation with it yeah what do you suggest people should read if they're interested about
- 32:01this outside of your sub stack but their books is there yeah sort of jumping off points for people
- 32:10who may listen to this be like i want to dig into this obviously read the sub stack necktie salvage
- 32:16and but are there books about this these topics yeah there is so there's a couple things so i'm
- 32:22actually working on two books right now gosh i have so much i'm doing and it's like i have all
- 32:27these books i'm i need to just do get one out but one of them is um essentially why do clothes matter
- 32:34you know just like why does this matter why does this matter the other one is basically like a very
- 32:39beginner's guide the idiot's guide kind of in a certain sense step one i'm building from the base
- 32:43up you know when we build our order we build like a pyramid and so i'm writing this book that it's
- 32:48just getting guys started this is what you need boom boom this is how you build it up but apart
- 32:52from that which will be coming out there for me in my my work apart from that there's something
- 32:59that would be good would be something like bruce boyer's true style um bruce boyer has a book true
- 33:04out and he it's very good it's american you know because a lot of these something that can be
- 33:09difficult with some of these books is they're either european which is totally okay but we it's
- 33:14like a different language you know french is a different language than english you know so
- 33:17they're just different languages and and or they're often a little formal just a little more
- 33:24formal which is cool but a lot of guys don't wear formal clothes every day and so what you really
- 33:31need or what we need, most guys need, is how do you start dressing with intention without
- 33:37wearing a suit every day?
- 33:39And so Bruce Boyer does err a little bit on the more formal side.
- 33:42So you're going to have that.
- 33:43And I'm trying to fill that gap when I come out with something.
- 33:47It'll fill that gap.
- 33:48But that's who I would recommend for an American is check out Bruce Boyer's true style.
- 33:53All right.
- 33:54I got to pick that up.
- 33:55It's good.
- 33:59What are your thoughts on Gen Z?
- 34:00Do you have hope for Gen Z in terms of increasing civility?
- 34:08And to be fair, I run another show.
- 34:11We had a Gen Z month where we noticed that our demographics of our audience trended.
- 34:17It's like 35 to 40.
- 34:19Our core demo is like 35 to 65-year-old males, and we have no Gen Zs watching us.
- 34:25And so we reached out to some in the Bitcoin space.
- 34:28We're like, come on, we need the Gen Z perspective.
- 34:31And it certainly did change my perspective.
- 34:33You obviously can't lump one generation and think that all of them act the same way,
- 34:39though they do have certain cultural sort of similarities to the era they grew up in.
- 34:45But to me, before that series and the good Gen Zers that we had on the show,
- 34:51the whole culture is just driven by the high-velocity trash economy,
- 34:55a streaming culture sort of supreme style street wear.
- 35:02Yeah.
- 35:03And not even, like a lot of them just wear sweatpants
- 35:06and sit at the computer and talk.
- 35:07And they have insane amounts of influence on their
- 35:12and other Gen Z individuals.
- 35:17And it's like, how do we turn the tide there?
- 35:20Is there a way?
- 35:22Really good question.
- 35:23It's a really, really good question.
- 35:25this is, I know the zoomers, I can't get a handle on the zoomers.
- 35:30You know, I hope for the zoomers. I want the zoomers.
- 35:33Cause the zoomers are the future. We've got the zoomers.
- 35:35We've got them a living, you know, they're the future.
- 35:38I know a couple of good zoomers, a couple of good zoomers and they're great.
- 35:41They're super, super great, but I know they're unique.
- 35:44I know they're very unique for the mass,
- 35:47mass amount of zoomers.
- 35:50the only way i don't know how to change them with this because they do they look like slop
- 35:58i i think that there is a certain disconnect with the way that they understand the world
- 36:03emotionally because they grew up with interacting with the technology technological world different
- 36:08than us so i think that they do have a certain sort of different emotional calibration um because
- 36:14of their interaction with the tech world. And we didn't have that. I'm 38. And so I didn't have a
- 36:21cell phone until I went to college. And I was T9. And I was T9. And so we grew up with dial-out.
- 36:27And my friends had dial-out until I left. Their internet is still really bad because they live in
- 36:32the middle of nowhere. So I think that there is this different emotional thing. Their emotions
- 36:37are calibrated differently in this way. And I'm not saying better or worse, but just differently.
- 36:43and in a certain sense I don't know if they respond to incentives in the same way older
- 36:49generations do and so what that means is I don't know how the hell to change a lot of them um
- 36:57now granted I don't know how to change a lot of millennials either um but what I would say is that
- 37:04so I'm not only dumping on the zoomers um I think that the ones there are zoomers who are searching
- 37:14and wanting for more and I think that they do not like what they see I think they're very self-aware
- 37:21and I think and again I know some of them follow me and I think that though I think that we're
- 37:27going to see maybe a separation of the zoomers and well we might see it's not gonna be 50 50 it's
- 37:33I'm going to be $1.99.
- 37:34It's more like $0.199.
- 37:37But I think that you will see, or we do have a, there's a very good element.
- 37:43There's a very good clan of Zoomers, but they're pretty far and few between.
- 37:48And I think that those people, though, resonate.
- 37:50Do we need to bring back public shaming?
- 37:52Yes, absolutely.
- 37:54I mean, this is the thing.
- 37:55I mean, if you really want to get real about it, you can't actually change this stuff voluntarily
- 38:01because people will always choose the easier route.
- 38:05This is just kind of like a nature of human.
- 38:07This is like a thing of human nature.
- 38:08People don't want to be better.
- 38:09You can't have to make them be better.
- 38:11You have to kind of punish them in a way,
- 38:12make it worse to look bad.
- 38:14I mean, that's what people dressed well back in the old days.
- 38:16It wasn't because they were like,
- 38:17oh my gosh, I'm reading all this style stuff.
- 38:20No, they just like, if I look like crap,
- 38:21I'm not getting a job.
- 38:22If I look really bad, I'm not getting a girl.
- 38:25If I look really, really bad,
- 38:26my dad's going to kick me out of the house or something.
- 38:29You know, just like you were like ostracized.
- 38:31You look bad.
- 38:33Like if you looked bad, people weren't going, your life was worse if you looked bad.
- 38:37And so if we make it so your life is worse, if you look bad, people will dress better.
- 38:42It's just incentives, you know?
- 38:44So now is it possible to do that?
- 38:47I don't know.
- 38:48I don't have a lot of hope.
- 38:49I mean, how are we going to do that?
- 38:50I mean, you know.
- 38:52Are country clubs the last bass in the last line to hold?
- 38:56And from what I understand, they're even getting lax in some of their dress codes as well.
- 39:01some of them yeah you know i think that it is and i've also i think within law you see the same
- 39:06thing i i have a lot of lawyer friends and they say it's really um declined in law it used to be
- 39:12pretty formal but around maybe i'll have to check these dates but some of these guys yeah back in
- 39:19the 2000s early 2000s even into like 2008 2010 guys were wearing suits you know that was the thing
- 39:26but then it's really declined and yeah for court if you're going to trial and stuff or if you're
- 39:32in court you have to wear a suit still but everyone i know who's a lawyer says it's gotten a lot worse
- 39:37even though it's still the last bastion is still holding a little bit and it makes sense because
- 39:42it's a very formal profession but since covid they've really accelerated downward too i do think
- 39:48that there is a future where people do start basically requiring things in their restaurants.
- 39:57Not a lot. They're not saying a jacket, but know this, you know, know this kind of like I've seen
- 40:01stores saying no dogs. We don't allow dogs in here, you know, because they're just sick of the
- 40:04dog thing. You could see people saying, I mean, it's a long way off, maybe 20 years or something,
- 40:10but you might see nice places saying you have to wear a shirt with a collar.
- 40:14and eventually that could you know kids hate what their parents did so maybe you could see
- 40:20kids hating their slot parents you never know you know you know that is uh i don't know it
- 40:27docks my exact location this may do it to anybody who uh knows the area well but there is a bar
- 40:34in the little island towns that i live on in the summer that if you try to walk in there without a
- 40:39collar shirt they kick you out no hats love that that's awesome i mean i mean if this could change
- 40:47it could change on the private level like that where we're not i don't think because this is the
- 40:51thing and i'm not blaming anybody for this because i'm not going to be walking up to people saying
- 40:54hey put on a collar shirt like on the street i'm not going to be going up to people criticizing
- 40:57them on the street from what they're wearing but if you have establishments that have rules posted
- 41:02on the door where then the only people the people serving say i'm just enforcing the rules
- 41:06if you did see a move toward that you would see an inching toward people dressing a little better
- 41:15but that does involve some sort of compulsion you know it involves and you cannot go here
- 41:19unless you wear that yeah and it doesn't people no if you if a group of us i mean i don't do it
- 41:26that much anymore though i've got children but back in the day when before kids if we knew we
- 41:31were going to that bar it's like all right take off the hat put on the college shirt yeah and
- 41:35get like even if you're going to another spot before that if you know you want to ultimately
- 41:39end up there it's like i gotta look good you gotta look good and that's people only respond to that
- 41:44they're not going to do it voluntarily now the people who follow me do it voluntarily but
- 41:47it's a very i mean this is just a small percentage of people i mean most people and i'm not i'm not
- 41:53even saying this in some sort of cruel way but i think human nature a lot of our human nature is
- 41:57to choose the easiest route you know that's just who we are you know we need guide you know we need
- 42:02guides to tell us what to do kind of and so um we'll choose the easiest way unless you're an
- 42:08extremely high spirit person who will choose the you know a better way and so yeah i mean
- 42:15slow movements like that if we were to see that that would change stuff and coupled with other
- 42:20stuff yeah and yeah that could change the culture but as for gen z how to target them specifically
- 42:26i don't know they they respond to incentives in weird ways and i'm not sure how to understand them
- 42:31yeah no actually yeah sure you're aware of zuby on on x he posted uh a newsletter this morning
- 42:41about 10 uh or 10 lessons or 12 lessons um for for generation z men specifically and i read it
- 42:50and it's really good and i think one thing that is missing from our culture also that contributes
- 42:56to this is like the lack of mentorship um i was just gonna say that i knew where you were going
- 43:00I could tell where you were going with this.
- 43:03A lot of these guys grew up with no fathers.
- 43:05They grew up with fathers, not showing them the way.
- 43:07And they don't know what the hell to do.
- 43:08They don't know what the hell to do.
- 43:10A lot of guys, because I do think some of the best Gen Z, they just want someone to tell them what to do.
- 43:14Some of them.
- 43:15Some of the best Gen Z realize, wow, we are cooked as a generation.
- 43:20We didn't learn anything.
- 43:21Tell me what to do.
- 43:22There is a group of that where they're like, is this what I do?
- 43:25Okay, that's what I do.
- 43:26And I think some of them didn't have dads showing them this sort of stuff.
- 43:29and that's a failure of mentorship.
- 43:34Yeah.
- 43:35Yeah.
- 43:37Now I'm thinking like,
- 43:38I obviously have my children,
- 43:39I am their father mentor,
- 43:41if you will,
- 43:42but like how to do it.
- 43:42Like we,
- 43:43we have a lot of young people
- 43:46that work for us here.
- 43:47I'm the oldest at the company
- 43:49and there's,
- 43:50we've got a couple of new contractors
- 43:52that we've done a lot of work with
- 43:53and they're,
- 43:54I think 19 and 17.
- 43:57It's been fun.
- 43:57sort of like interacting with with them yeah and uh not not calling myself a mentor for them it's
- 44:04something intentionally when we're going into meetings like how do i present myself and sometimes
- 44:07i forget like i'm like to think of myself as a kid at heart like i think of who i was a high school
- 44:14and college student like late years i like to think i still have that youthful spirit but more
- 44:18recently is particularly interacting with these individuals in a professional setting it's like
- 44:23well, I'm like an older gentleman to them.
- 44:25I had to present like that.
- 44:28Yeah.
- 44:29Like you're the giga chat in the boardroom meme.
- 44:32I just sent that out last night.
- 44:33I said, this is how I feel.
- 44:37These guys, and yeah, like 17.
- 44:39I mean, you're twice as old.
- 44:40Like I'm twice as old as a guy who's 17.
- 44:42Like I could, like that, he could be my son.
- 44:46Like if I had kids, like I'm 38.
- 44:49If I had kids at the right time, that's old enough.
- 44:51I could be my son And so it interesting taking that on And I think a lot of something that like you said you feel like a kid at heart often and you feel like yeah I still feel like I learning so
- 45:03much because we always learn so much in our lives. But then we also, I think sometimes don't realize
- 45:07our skills compared to others, especially young people. And like, holy cow, they don't know this
- 45:11stuff. I'm sure you run into this all the time. I'm talking to someone and I assume they know what
- 45:14I'm talking about. I assume that they're already starting there. Like, I don't know the first five
- 45:17steps of what you're talking about. You know, and you're like, oh my gosh, wow. Like they don't,
- 45:22they've never heard someone say you,
- 45:25it is good to wear a shirt with a collar.
- 45:28It is better to dress nice.
- 45:30They've never heard that simple statement.
- 45:31They've never heard that.
- 45:33And so sometimes I think in almost understanding our old head status,
- 45:38it's almost realizing that they don't know everything we know and not in a
- 45:43patronizing way, but in a,
- 45:45maybe it's our job to kind of show them more or something.
- 45:47Yeah, no, it's funny.
- 45:48I got a,
- 45:50as we're discussing this,
- 45:51I'm getting notifications on my phone and I'm in a group chat with a bunch of
- 45:54old head surfers and they're just talking about the swell.
- 45:57It's like little things like that,
- 45:58like growing up on this Island and surfing with old heads and they're
- 46:01teaching you not only how to surf,
- 46:03but where to look and stuff like that.
- 46:05We're like,
- 46:05and now they were my mentor in the surfing world.
- 46:09And now we're in group chat talking about where we're going to go surf a
- 46:11week from the swell comes.
- 46:13And that's how it works.
- 46:14That's how it's supposed to work.
- 46:15You know?
- 46:17Yeah.
- 46:18That's fun.
- 46:18we need to bring we really need to bring how did you get into this that's what i'm like how did
- 46:23this become your your focus and your passion and your life you know i started writing about style
- 46:31really primarily um when i had kids i i had kids and i just thought to myself i was like
- 46:40i realized how bad the world looked you know i wrote how bad everything looked and i and i
- 46:45I kind of want to make a difference basically. And I thought like,
- 46:50I can do something. I feel useless if I'm not trying to impact a better,
- 46:54make a better world for him in a certain sense. You know,
- 46:57and I want to have a son first. I have a daughter as well.
- 47:00But I had a son first and I'm like,
- 47:02I'm not doing anything to make his world better. I can try to teach him,
- 47:05but like I want to make some sort of change almost, you know?
- 47:09And so then I started talking about this and writing about this and,
- 47:13and I talk about other stuff too, you know? And I,
- 47:15And all of the things I write about often I write about are,
- 47:18I try to only say things that I would want my kids encountering when they were 20.
- 47:23You know, because I think about what all these other guys are encountering online.
- 47:26They're 20, 21, 22.
- 47:28You know what I mean?
- 47:28All the stuff that is not so great.
- 47:30And I think like, what would I want my kids to encounter
- 47:32if they were sort of not knowing what to do in their 20s, you know?
- 47:36Yeah.
- 47:38Yeah.
- 47:38You're just exciting more thoughts about Chen Z.
- 47:41My dating call.
- 47:42Like, do you think the style of Gen Z has anything to do with this problem in dating culture that exists now?
- 47:51Yeah.
- 47:52I mean, nobody looks good.
- 47:53My wife and I walk around the store and we're seeing these like, we see these kids.
- 47:57When I walk around the store, we see these kids, they're like obviously in college.
- 48:00The guys and girls look like absolute crap.
- 48:03They look so bad.
- 48:04And we're like, this is when you are supposed to be looking your best.
- 48:08You should be looking your best.
- 48:09You have the most to work with in your entire life at this point.
- 48:13And you are looking like guys and girls alike.
- 48:15You're looking absolutely terrible.
- 48:16You're, you are not looking attractive to the opposite sex.
- 48:20You're not sexually enticing to them.
- 48:22And that's how it works.
- 48:23I don't want to tell you, you know, and if you're just looking like you don't care.
- 48:28Well, that like, I think one of the, and who knows if this is wide ranging, I assume it is,
- 48:35but he knows how you're being manipulated by videos you see on X.
- 48:40But the girl is saying like,
- 48:41nobody's walking up to me.
- 48:42I don't think men have confidence to do that.
- 48:44Like it's a partly because they look like shit.
- 48:47Yeah,
- 48:47dude.
- 48:48Yes.
- 48:49If you look like shit,
- 48:50you're not going to approach a girl.
- 48:52And that gets back to just what we said at the very beginning of this.
- 48:54It sets your day on this confident.
- 48:57It's a,
- 48:58when you get ready,
- 48:59you are more confident.
- 49:00You're more competent.
- 49:01You feel stronger.
- 49:02All this sort of stuff.
- 49:03When you feel like crap,
- 49:04You're not going to have the stones to go approach some girl, to go talk to some girl because you feel like crap.
- 49:10And who knows?
- 49:11I've heard someone else say this.
- 49:12I don't know who it was.
- 49:13But it's like you never know when you might meet the girl who could be your wife.
- 49:19You know?
- 49:19And so if you're dressed like a dress for – if you are single, you should be dressing good, looking good because any girl that you might – that might be the one.
- 49:28You know?
- 49:29And the other thing about the dress – about clothes too is that there's all these ways you can look at it.
- 49:33You can look at it in a very moral, religious way.
- 49:37You can look at it in a very sort of like just let's get going way, a very professional way.
- 49:42And you can look at it in a very just brass tacks.
- 49:44How do I approach a girl so I can meet a girl?
- 49:48Or how can I look attractive to a girl?
- 49:50You can look for it for romance too.
- 49:52I need to meet girls.
- 49:53I need to meet a girl.
- 49:54I need to get married.
- 49:56You can look at it in a really brass tacks way.
- 49:58And what I try often with my message of clothing is I try to spread those messages out because we're all at different stages in life.
- 50:05Us, we have kids.
- 50:06We're talking about how to show our boys how to dress or our kids how to dress.
- 50:13The guy who's 23 is trying to meet girls.
- 50:15He needs to dress decent so the girl doesn't say, you look like an idiot.
- 50:18It's the same thing for the girl, by the way.
- 50:20She used to be looking good and sound like an idiot.
- 50:24Yeah.
- 50:24Yeah.
- 50:25this is uh why do you think there's not enough discussion around this topic too because it seems
- 50:31like you said it's it's how you look it's how you perceive it's very primal almost to a sense but
- 50:38something that has been neglected yes i don't why is there a lot of not not discussion about this i
- 50:45think that there's two things there's one side of things where people are there's some people who
- 50:50very, very traditional. And they're already on a very traditional track. You know, there's people
- 50:55who are very, very conservative and very religious and very traditional. And if they're in that world,
- 51:00like really in that world, they're not comfortable talking about sexual attraction in the same way.
- 51:05So they're talking in these more like biblical sort of ways. Then the other people are so
- 51:10degenerated and they don't want anybody to tell them to do anything or try. And they're too lazy.
- 51:15They just want to complain about the woman just wants to complain about men suck. Men just want
- 51:19complain about the fact that women suck no one wants to try to actually get anything done that
- 51:24they don't want to talk about it you know but then you do have the sliver of guys who are not like
- 51:29that and i assume a sliver of girls who are not like that as well though i don't know because i
- 51:33don't talk to girls about this it's i'm talking about guys but uh i think that that's kind of why
- 51:37there's like this one group that they think you should focus on other things you know
- 51:42the other group they're too lazy yeah well i'm happy you're focusing on it because i do think
- 51:47you and many others, I'm sure you've noticed that there's been this resurgence
- 51:52of aesthetic accounts on
- 51:55Twitter in recent years, often associated
- 52:00with conservative individuals, but I don't
- 52:04think dressing well is a political thing.
- 52:08For some reason, the aesthetic
- 52:12accounts are more associated with conservative ideals, which
- 52:15It makes sense because people want to return to traditionalist mindset.
- 52:25There's nothing inherently horse race political about dressing decently.
- 52:30It's civilizational.
- 52:31I think you make an argument.
- 52:32Like I said, you can talk about this all these different ways.
- 52:34You make an argument that the tribe in the far-flung island wears loincloths because they're not civilized.
- 52:42I mean, that's not, I'm not saying to be like cruel, but that's just like, they're not a civilized thing. We have civilization. And so dressing decent is a form of civilization and a participation in civilization. And so if there's this sensibility that left woke, whatever is trying to tear down civilization, then conservative, conservative traditionalist will be the sort of trying to push the aesthetic around.
- 53:04something I like about clothes and I do like about clothes so much is that it requires action
- 53:12daily you know a lot of people will it's one thing to post a picture of a beautiful building
- 53:18and not be an architect but just like it it's another to put on your clothes and walk out into
- 53:23the world and it really influenced the world make the world more beautiful on your own you know when
- 53:29you do that you are making the world more beautiful you are taking action to do that
- 53:33and that is a fulfilling thing an important thing and that's what i really like about clothes it
- 53:36requires that action every day it's not just one thing it's constantly doing it and you're all
- 53:40always participating in the beautification of the world and influencing other guys yeah
- 53:45is that action start the night before like do you know what you're going to wear when you wake up or
- 53:49is it uh an explorative uh sort of practice in the mornings for me um it's all in the morning i don't
- 53:57do anything the night before i and you know it takes me like two minutes to get ready in the
- 54:01morning. I mean, once you have your wardrobe set, I just know exactly. I was like, boom, boom, boom.
- 54:05I got it. You know, I just know what I'm wearing. People imagine that I'm spending like a lot of
- 54:09time thinking about it, but it's really everything locks into place because I know what I'm doing.
- 54:13But for me, it's in the morning. I dress for how I feel in the morning for what the weather is,
- 54:19not just the temperature, but also if it's gray, I'm going to wear darker colors. You know,
- 54:25I'm going to wear it. Even if it's summer, if it's like a sort of gray, rainy day,
- 54:27I'll wear a darker madras
- 54:30you know a madras is a sort of a plaid
- 54:32set on a very very thin cotton
- 54:34I'll wear a really dark madras
- 54:36I'm not going to wear
- 54:37say a pink
- 54:39like a pink stripe like a pink university stripe
- 54:41short sleeve oxford shirt on a rainy day
- 54:43but I might on a sunny day
- 54:45and I'll wear on a sunny day
- 54:46and so I'll wear what I'll change what I wear based on the weather
- 54:49and so I do it in the morning
- 54:50alright I need to
- 54:53hand up accountability
- 54:56I need to fix my morning routine.
- 54:58It's not as intentional as maybe it should be.
- 55:02It feels good for me.
- 55:03I mean, listen, it makes me feel.
- 55:06There's so much chaos.
- 55:07You got kids.
- 55:07How old are your kids?
- 55:09Five and three.
- 55:10Okay.
- 55:11Same for me.
- 55:12Okay.
- 55:12So I know where you're coming from.
- 55:14It's a lot of chaos.
- 55:17It keeps me.
- 55:18It keeps me, it's 30 minutes of order that gets it going on the day.
- 55:27Right.
- 55:27Yeah.
- 55:28I saw your tweet the other day about having the morning coffee before the family woke up.
- 55:33That's the state I would like.
- 55:35When I do have those mornings, it is incredibly impactful on the rest of the day.
- 55:40Yes.
- 55:42It's the hour of the father.
- 55:44The hour of the father of the bar.
- 55:46Yeah.
- 55:46this is uh well thank you for doing what you're doing honestly and i'm not trying to blow smoke
- 55:52up your butt but honestly i think just simply by posting on x you've had a positive influence not
- 55:57only myself but many others um to really appreciate trying to look better to to raise
- 56:03a higher higher bar for civilization i i really appreciate that i mean that really means a lot
- 56:10for you to say i'm serious like to me that's what it's about to make a positive difference you know
- 56:15and in a real way, in a way that is scalable.
- 56:20And when I hear about guys who say, wow, like this really, I get it now.
- 56:24And when I see that positive growth, it just,
- 56:27the world can feel like we can't control a lot of it.
- 56:30And there is a lot that we can't control.
- 56:32And maybe we're dissatisfied with something that's going on or whatever.
- 56:36Well, we have to realize what we can control.
- 56:37What's our sphere of influence?
- 56:39And a lot of that starts with what's on our body.
- 56:41It starts right here.
- 56:42It's really close.
- 56:43So let's start there and then we can make other impacts.
- 56:47And that's the way – because you know I tweet about style and then I tweet about other stuff that is somewhat related.
- 56:54It's about modern life and all sorts of all of this.
- 56:57And we have to start where we are.
- 57:00And we can make a difference in that way and make a difference for ourselves and others.
- 57:03Because something that we don't realize is if you dress nice, you wearing this shirt, this Oxford shirt, you're wearing a collar shirt.
- 57:09You don't know.
- 57:10Because think about it.
- 57:11You could walk into the store and a guy who's 15, 16, 19, see and say, that looks really nice.
- 57:16I never really see people wear that as much anymore.
- 57:19I want to wear that.
- 57:20And he's never going to tell you.
- 57:21You're never going to know.
- 57:22He's never going to say that to you.
- 57:24But you influenced him.
- 57:25You influenced him in a positive way.
- 57:27And when I realized that, I realized people don't always tell you that you influence them.
- 57:33And this is where dressing decently can not only benefit your life, but even others who don't even talk to you.
- 57:37And you'll never know it.
- 57:38but that's how influence sort of fans out in a positive way.
- 57:41I think completely agree.
- 57:44Think about it.
- 57:45Anybody listening to the stress better,
- 57:46uh,
- 57:47to set a positive influence out there,
- 57:49but I'll be working.
- 57:51Uh,
- 57:51anybody listening to this,
- 57:52find out more about what you're doing,
- 57:54schedule a consultation potentially.
- 57:57Absolutely.
- 57:57Oh yeah.
- 57:58I love doing competitions.
- 57:59I love working with guys,
- 58:00working with guys individually is such a,
- 58:02it's so awesome because you see,
- 58:04I love getting guys started on their style journey and then seeing them develop
- 58:08their personal style, teaching them the fundamentals and seeing them grow and then circle back after
- 58:13two years, see where they are. And it's just, wow, what a difference. It's just amazing.
- 58:17So where you can find me is first of all on X, Necktie Salvage is my username. You can find me
- 58:22on Instagram, Necktie Salvage as well. There's a link tree in my bio on X with a link to a bunch
- 58:28of stuff to the fitting room, which is my sub stack, which is my sub stack where I write about
- 58:33style and a link to everything else my dms are open for consultation my the real place where you
- 58:40can find me for everything is on substack instagram and twitter and on twitter there'll be a link in
- 58:44the link tree with a link to everything where you can find me and contact me and read what i have to
- 58:49say about style and i send out a morning memo every single day or every single weekday uh short
- 58:55little bits to get you going to give you ideas to get you to guide you slowly over time because it's
- 59:00a long process i mean you can't understand everything you need to know about style in
- 59:03two days you know but drawing it out helps so that's where you can find me x next i salvage
- 59:08instagram link tree the bio there that'll give you a link to everything else
- 59:12go check it out thank you for doing this and thank you for uh thank you for engaging me as
- 59:19i'm sweating profusely in front of you it's uh what temperatures are there man what it's 90 degrees
- 59:24I like the heat though
- 59:29the thing is
- 59:31it's actually pretty warm here
- 59:32let me see what it is right here
- 59:32oh man, Northern Michigan
- 59:34it's pretty divine
- 59:35it's 77
- 59:36I'm going to go to the beach
- 59:37like right after this
- 59:38I'm going to the beach
- 59:39so no, it's a nice day here
- 59:41yeah, well
- 59:42enjoy the beach
- 59:43thank you so much
- 59:44for your time
- 59:45and what you're doing
- 59:46hopefully we can do this again
- 59:47at some point in the future
- 59:48thank you for having me
- 59:49it was such a pleasure
- 59:50such a joy
- 59:51such an awesome conversation
- 59:52and I would love to do it again
- 59:53alright
- 59:54That's all today's freaks.
- 59:55Peace and love.