It happened again last month. I was milling around a showroom in Milan when an Italian designer I’d just met arched a brow at my outfit and asked with that signature-European mix of curiosity and judgment: “So this is American style, yes?” I looked down at myself feeling defensive. Selvedge denim from an upstart workshop in Detroit.
A gently wrinkled oxford cloth button-down. Unlined loafers. Soft-shouldered navy blazer.
Classic American prep somehow with workwear mixed in? Sure.
American style?
Was it actually American though? Was anything I was wearing particularly American in 2024? Hell if I know at this point.
American style used to be easy to define. Preppy collegiate styles from the Northeast. Western from Texas and Colorado.
Workwear and denim from the Midwest and California. Sure, there were subdivisions and grey areas, but you could look to catalogue kings like Ralph Lauren selling his WASP-y incarnations of those trends, or Levi’s selling blue jeans, or L.L.Bean selling duck boots and know there were rules, traditions, regional differences that made sense. Not so much anymore.
I’ll admit that even after spending the last decade visiting menswear factories and designers from coast to coast, poring over native photography and artisan crafts people tucked away in every corner of this country, I can’t say I have a firm grasp on what qualifies something as “American” nowadays. Anyone who tells you they do is either willfully ignorant or doesn’t spend enough time outside the cities to see how varied American style has become. The line between Californians and New Englanders used to be clear.
Now my nephew in rural Nebraska probably wears the same Japanese denim brand as my graphic designer friend in Brooklyn. My banker friends in Charlotte dress just as faded and worn as the tech bros in San Francisco – and they’re probably wearing Italian tailored clothes just as often as the folks here in New York. Globalization and the internet broke up all our quaint regional sects.
And honestly? If anything that’s the most American thing about American style in 2024. Our style has become a chaotic, democratic, mash-up of everything.
Nothing means what it used to anymore. “My customer wears English inspired stuff, Japanese inspired stuff, Italian inspired stuff,” Marco, who owns a small independent menswear store in Chicago told me over beers last week. We were sprawled in his storefront together after he closed up shop that evening, talking about exactly this. “None of it’s American made honestly,” he continued, waving around at the racks of selvedge denim, English-style tweeds, Japanese work jackets, and Italian knits that filled his store. “But the way they wear it is.” Damn he’s right. If there’s one thing that’s more American than anything we wear these days it’s how we wear it.
Our overall attitude toward getting dressed. That confidence. That not giving a fuck about what’s “proper.” That comfort over everything else mentality.
That willingness to mix high and low. To take old ideas and upset the status quo with them. American workwear being bastardized by Japanese brands, then Brooklyn makers, then big ol’ box brands across America only to be flattened out and “reinterpreted” by luxury European brands charging $2000 for a chore coat.
American workwear isn’t even American anymore at this point. It’s full weird circle. Back when I interviewed the third generation owner of a family canvas goods business outside of Michigan he laughed with me about how his grandfathers ranch-inspired jackets were now being sold in Tokyo and Paris for ten times what they cost. “My grandpa would think everybody lost their fucking minds,” he said chuckled as he gave me a tour of his shop.
He also knew enough to collaborate with those foreign designers over the years, even as he continued to produce quality workwear that was actually meant to be worked in. That ability to adapt might just be as American as it gets. So is that spirit of entrepreneurship that’s led to so many small guys popping up in recent years.
My friend Chris making leather goods out of his garage in Portland after getting laid off during the pandemic. Learning how to tan leather from YouTube, for Christ’s sake. Now he can’t keep bags and belts in stock.
Sarah in Nashville learning how to make cowboy boots from scratch so she could start her own cowboy boot brand. I could go on and on. Mastercraftsmen everywhere who are keeping old Americana styles alive, but aren’t afraid to switch things up here and there.
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Hell, obsessing over an idealized version of American style history is probably as American as it gets. We love to romanticize and fabricate the past. Which I’m as guilty of as the next writer.
Tell me you haven’t seen me sitting around in Brooklyn writing articles about boot makers in Maine or distillery workers jackets in Kentucky while wearing clothes made in Japan. Oh wait you have? That’s another bit of Americana for you right there.
This idea that everything was somehow better in the past. Like I said, we love to romanticize. Speaking of the past…this weird nonexistence of it is also feeling incredibly American these days.
The way clothing technology has allowed vintage styles to bleed into modern and vice versa. I was at a trade show in Vegas last month and within the span of an hour I walked into booths showing hand sewn moccasins made using patterns from the 1920s, guys showing computer-designed performance outerwear made with brand new fabrics, and other guys showing exact reissues of clothing from the 1950s. America in 2024 isn’t really going about linear style movements anymore.
We’re cannibalizing our own history and reinterpreting it. And I’m not just talking about styles bleeding together. Where I used to be able to spot a dude from New York or Texas or Maine from a mile away based on how he dressed there aren’t nearly as many regional styles as there used to be.
I met my college roommate in Austin last autumn and the entire group of groomsmen were wearing Italian cut suits that you’d find anywhere in Manhattan. My roommate laughed when I told him this. “We found all our suits on the same menswear forum online” he said. Which brings me to my next point… The internet has absolutely changed how American men think about style.
There’s no paternal generational styles being passed down from fathers to sons like there might have been 20 years ago. Kids these days aren’t just dressing how their dads dress. My buddy in Cincinnati is obsessed with Japanese denim brands I’ve never even heard of just because he got obsessed with them on Reddit.
I love what the internet has done to menswear in that sense. Literally every style pocket in the world is at our fingertips. What kid growing up in suburban Ohio fifteen years ago had access to the same amount of style information as your average teenage Redditor today? (Me trying to explain selvage denim to some chucklehead at a party who just got into it five minutes ago.) There’s a downside to every thing of course.
But overall I think American style these days is defined by this tension between our rich history of heritage brands and how we’re constantly trying to reinvent them. We celebrate Brooks Brothers nearly two centuries old existence while also bugging them monthly to freshen up their styles. We’re hoarding vintage military jackets while buying drip dry technical fabrics that our parents couldn’t have imagined 20 years ago.
Look at how we’ve changed American tailoring over the last decade. The age-old American sack suit has been irreversibly altered. Younger American designers have taken those classic Ivy influences and streamlined them.
Made them leaner and more casual. More you. Maybe that’s what American style is in 2024.
Less about how we look and more about attitude towards dressing. Individualistic. Practical.
Lazy.
But not lazy as it pertains to caring about how our clothes look. Special.
Unconcerned with formal rules but hyper aware of what works and what doesn’t. Taking lots of inspiration from around the globe but still coming at it all from a uniquely American perspective. The next time someone from across the pond asks me if I’m wearing “American style” clothes I might actually say yes.
I might tell them that yeah this navy blazer, green shirt, and jeans actually is American style. Not because my blazer was made in America or my jeans were engineered in some stuffy closet society uses to define “real denim.” But because of the way I’ve put it all together. That effortless dude-bros vibe we can’t help but wear.
That blending of high and low. That prioritization of comfort over stiff rules. Yeah that’s American as fuck in 2024.
Though now that I think about I may just tell that guy from Milan next time he asks me the same question exactly what I told you….“Who the hell knows anymore?”
