A few years ago, a couple years into my minimalist journey, my girlfriend took me up to Vermont to visit her family. Her dad showed up for breakfast wearing a worn-in Filson jacket, rugged wool trousers, and durable work boots. I, on the other hand, was rocking a self-assembled “heritage workwear” uniform I had meticulously put together after weeks of research.
Raw denim jeans, Red Wing boots, waxed jacket. I looked so shiny and new in comparison to her dad’s worn clothing – jackets weren’t supposed to look new! Her dad gave me a thumbs up, but there was barely a smile hiding in his eyes.
At that moment, I knew I looked like the caricature of what I was trying to appear: an office tech bro who purchased his entire outfit from Amazon. I remember feeling similarly dumbfounded in my early attempts at building my minimalist wardrobe.
I had learned all about these heritage clothing brands, these “classic” styles that generations of English noblemen had worn for centuries.
But what did that actually look like IRL? How was I supposed to wear it? Trying to break into British country attire was by far the worst.
You could spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on authentic clothing and still look like you were about to attend a Ralph Lauren catalogue shoot, rather than live your actual life in San Francisco. Country clothes were clothes meant to be worn. Clothes for outdoorsmen that had to stand up to unpredictable weather and decades of wear and tear.
Clothes I should have been all over. But wearing it wrong was hilariously, embarrassingly obvious. Around year two of developing my wardrobe was when I really got into “heritage” style pieces.
Reading about Barbour jackets, Harris tweed, classic English footwear was great, but it wasn’t until I joined English county style forums that my obsession really took off. Forums full of guys who waxed poetic about no less than nine different brands of waxed cotton jackets, and could talk at length about which particular brush you should use to maintain yours. I purchased my now favourite Barbour Bedale jacket in olive during this time, fully intending to finally have solved the great outerwear dilemma of my capsule wardrobe.
So I wore it to work one day. Three separate people asked me if I was going hunting after work. San Francisco.
The most dangerous animal within fifty miles of my office was probably a runaway startup entrepreneur. But that jacket… it was fantastic. It waterproof yet breathable, well-constructed, timeless, and would last me years, if not decades of wear.
It just so happened to have been born in the wrong country. And therein lies the issue with going full-on country. Unless you actually grew up wearing it, there’s a lot of baggage that comes with the full ensemble.
Wear a waxed jacket, jumper vest, chinos, boat shoes, and a tweed cap and you’re basically wearing a uniform. A uniform that tells everyone you’re probably a Tory with delusions of grandeur. What I eventually discovered, however, was you can cherry pick from country attire.
You can take what’s useful about the clothing and ignore the rest. The waxed jacket situation took me months to figure out how to style properly. Rather than trying to fill out some imagined country gentleman checklist, I started pairing it with normal dark denim jeans, plain merino jumpers.
I stopped treating it like a costume piece, and started treating it like another piece of utilitarian outerwear. It was only when I did that I truly started getting the most out of it. A few months later we drove up to Sonoma to go wine tasting (don’t judge me, it was COVID) and I wore that Barbour jacket with some plain Outlier trousers and white leather trainers.
My girlfriend laughed and told me it was the first time she’d seen me wear that jacket and I didn’t look like I was “trying to be someone.” Oh man. She was right. I had been so caught up in the fantasy of dressing like a British lord that I forgot the jacket could just be a really well made jacket I looked good wearing.
One of my biggest slip-ups was going all in on English country boots. Tricker’s. Church’s.
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These guys have been making boots since like 1829. How could I go wrong? I purchased a pair of Tricker’s Stow boots in brown leather, and fell in love with the craftsmanship.
They were incredibly well made. They looked like they could take a punch. Wear them for a year and they’ll still look new.
These boots were made for grandchildren. Wore them once to work with my normal slacks. Too dressy.
Wore them with jeans on the weekend. They looked weird with jeans. It took me MONTHS to realise that English country boots worked best with wool trousers, worn with a loose fit.
Not my slim Eddie Bauer chinos, but something roomier that didn’t clash with the bulky nature of the boots themselves. Had I realised this sooner it would have saved me a lot of frustration. What ended up helping me better understand how to wear these types of shoes was meeting people who grew up around it.
Friends of my girlfriend knew people who actually lived these clothes. They were what you wore when it was cold and rainy, not a fashion choice. Waxed jacket over whatever jumper you owned.
Wool fisherman’s jumper over a t-shirt. Vintage Levi’s with modern trainers. They weren’t worried about an outfit looking “complete.” If it felt comfortable and looked good to them, they wore it.
One guy in particular (who’s responsible for me finally mastering how to wear hoodie jumpers) had the waxed jacket with plain jeans and trainers look down pact. He was an environmental consultant who spent a lot of time in the field. Practical guy who wore country clothes because they were practical, not because they gave him purpose in life or anything weird like that.
It was conversations like these that helped me realise I wasn’t wrong to be interested in these clothes. I was merely approaching them from the completely wrong angle. By trying to dress the full part I got distracted by details and tried to force my entire wardrobe around a single aesthetic.
Approach it like I normally would with any other aspect of my capsule wardrobe and things clicked. So now maybe 3-4 pieces in my wardrobe could maybe maybe be considered “country inspired”? The Barbour jacket I mentioned above I probably wear now more than anything else in my wardrobe.
With jeans, plain jumpers, Nike Trainers, normal boots. Jumpers are similar – I picked up this awesome oatmeal coloured Shetland wool jumper that goes with everything else I own but still has that country feel/texture to it without screaming “LOOK AT ME I’M WOOL!!!11”. The flat cap I got was less because I wanted to wear one and more because it looked awesome with everything I own.
Jeans, shorts, hoodie, button up. Pair it with modern clothes rather than trying to find vintage clothes to match it with.
I’ll be the first to admit that one of the selling points of these “heritage inspired” clothes is the craftsmanship that go into them.
Country clothes have to withstand decades of wear – and trips to the local pub. Garments weren’t replaced every couple years, they were repaired, worn longer, and passed down. As someone building a minimalist wardrobe that’s what you’re striving for.
One perfect jacket that you get enough use out of it lasts you 20+ years instead of five barely used jackets. Vintage is another route I’ve started delving into for this same reason. Scored this awesome 1980’s Barbour jacket off eBay that retailed for less than a third of the new price.
It has a beautiful patina that would have taken me years to achieve on my own, and yet somehow fits better than the modern version. Older cuts also tend to be more generous, which helps when layering under modern clothes. Lesson of the day: learn from my mistakes and don’t let yourself get sucked too far down the rabbit hole of “what pieces make a look authentic.” Mix and match.
See what actually works for you and what doesn’t. Feel free to steal from others’ aesthetics – every now and then I throw on a pair of Carrot Top chinos – but weave those elements into your current wardrobe instead of trying to match coffers to caps.
