We all know sale season kicks into high gear at Black Friday and doesn’t really wind down until February.
On Black Friday, I shared on my Instagram the purchases I’d made (a couple of which were for my wife). I thought I’d share them again today because most of them are still on sale, some at a deeper discount than on Black Friday. And in the past month of having them in my possession, I’ve been very pleased. As sale season continues after the holidays, consider these recommendations.
My Stuff
- Proper Cloth Oxford Cloth Cutaway Shirt [PC did their only type of promotion, free shipping and handling, so I pounced on a shirt I’d wanted for a while. Unfortunately I still haven’t received it. It shipped from the factory less than 10 business days after my order, but has been stuck in customs hell because I put mother of pearl buttons on it, which put it into some endangered animals enforcement bureaucratic system, so every day for 20 days, DHL has updated the tracking with the statement, “clearance event.” No clue when I’ll receive this; but I know it’ll be good when I do.]
- J.Crew 770 Straight-Fit Stretch Japanese Selvedge Jeans [I like a slim-straight silhouette, and one of my all-time favorite pairs of jeans are from J.Crew in their 770 fit. I have wanted a great go-to pair of rinse selvedge jeans, but just haven’t found a pair I love the fit of, and kind of have an aversion to paying more than $150-ish for jeans. I used to be against stretch jeans, but now I consider it preferable. These jeans dropped down to $75 during the BF bonanza, and I love them. They start out feeling a little coarse/stiff, but after just a couple hours of wear begin to feel a little softer. I don’t know if they’ll drop in price again, but if they do, I highly recommend them for that price.]
- Pajama pants that aren’t joggers from Abercrombie [I don’t love joggers. I needed new pajama/lounge pants, and took a shot on these. They’re perfect. They’re very soft, the fabric is a nice mid-weight woven twill that’s dense, but hasn’t been brushed to give it a flannel feel. I paid $35 but see they’ve gone down in price from that. I 100% recommend them.]
- Spier & Mackay Off-White Heavy Canvas Chinos [These weren’t technically a BF deal, but I ordered them as soon as they were out. They’re outstanding, super heavy canvas. I would prefer them to be the high-rise model, but as they are they work well with chunky knitwear. The fabric is heavy, but has a good amount of give to it, meaning they stretch a bit with wear, which is a good thing. Note: The color is called ‘stone’ but they’re warmer in tone than a true stone would suggest; I’d call them off-white or ‘natural.’]
- Spier & Mackay Calf Leather Dress Belt [Ordered at the same time as the chinos above. I haven’t owned a calf leather dress belt in a while because I wear suede shoes almost exclusively. But I recently started wearing some more often and decided to jump for this. It’s only 1-inch wide, which I prefer to, say, Meermin’s 1.25-inch wide belt. It’s a great belt for $48.]
- Danner Panorama 6-Inch Hiking Boots [I have had and wear the Eddie Bauer K-6 vintage-style hiker for a few years. And while they look great and serve adequately as a hiking boot, they’re heavy and could be more comfortable. Since my wife got her own pair of Danner boots (see below), I figured it was time to get my own lightweight pair made from modern materials. My dad generously offered to buy us both the pairs we picked out.]
My Wife’s Stuff
- Madewell Zip-Top Cross-body Leather Bag [This was a huge win. She loves this bag. It’s big if you think of it as a purse, but small if you think of it like a diaper bag. She uses it sort of as a combo of the two for running errands when she doesn’t feel the need to bring the whole nine yards of stuff for our boys]
- Danner Adrika Hiking Boots [Most Sunday’s we get out on a hiking trail as a family somewhere, and she didn’t have any proper boots for doing so. She’s aesthetically picky and at first wasn’t sure these looked like she wanted them to (I think she wanted more like a classic waffle-stomper like the OG Danner Mountain Light), but once she put them on she liked them right away.]
The Tech Thing I Got That I’m Now A Huge Advocate For
It’s a cliché that you don’t appreciate your backups until you lose data, and even though I worked in IT for years, I fell prey to the oldest avoidable-tragedy ever: the failure of a critical drive with irreplaceable digital treasures. My external drive on which I host the Lightroom library of the RAW images of all my #menswear photos going back a decade+, as well as family gatherings, adventures and trips overseas, plus the births of our children failed.
And I had no backup of it.
What’s frustrating is that I had realized it wasn’t backed up, so I plugged it in and initiated a Time Machine backup that included the drive—and it was during that backup that the drive failed. None of the backup-in-progress up to the point of failure was retrievable because of how Time Machine works.
No data recovery software was able to do any good. My friend and coworker in IT at my office recommended Secure Data Recovery. I sent them the drive and they were thankfully able to successfully recover everything on the drive.
It cost $2,120.
Never again.
So, on Black Friday I signed up for BackBlaze. It’s an online backup tool that’s only $70/year for one computer and any number of external drives you plug into that computer (with no limit on cloud storage space). The basic plan includes 30-day history of backups, but you can upgrade to get a year’s worth.
I’ll also keep a local backup of my drive (maybe via Time Machine but boy was that first event scarring), so that it’s backed up in two locations. That’s called redundancy in IT circles, and is what you should be doing with anything you don’t want to be lost forever.
(Help support this site! If you buy stuff through my links, your clicks and purchases earn me a commission from many of the retailers I feature, and it helps me sustain this site—as well as my menswear habit ;-) Thanks!)
Shop my clothing from this post and every other post on the Shop My Closet page. If you’re just getting into tailored menswear and want a single helpful guide to building a trend-proof wardrobe, buy my eBook. It doesn’t cost that much and covers wardrobe essentials for any guy who wants to look cool, feel cool and make a good impression. Formatted for your phone or computer/iPad so it’s not annoying to read, and it’s full of pretty pictures, not just boring prose. Buy it here.
