Why you don’t need to shop at Aimé Leon Dore
“We get dumber and less independent the more we rely on pre-packaged style.”
This is a Buy, Bitch guest post by Andrew Matson. I think its a nice chaser to the “menswear is bad now” chatter this week. I’ll be back in your inbox this weekend with my recent buys and tabs I bravely closed.
Thanks Veronica for having me on Buy Bitch!
Pardon the hard pivot here but I came to discuss men’s wear. Which can and imo should be worn by the whole gender spectrum, so I hope I don’t alienate any Buy Bitch readers.
Specifically I want to discuss one brand, which some might say is channeling the American men’s style zeitgeist. That brand is Aimé Leon Dore, “The future of men’s wear” according to the NYTimes, whose Manhattan flagship has a permanent line out the door.
Started in NYC in 2014 by designer Teddy Santis, ALD came into the game basically answering the question “what if Ralph Lauren acknowledged and celebrated hip-hop?” In doing so, Santis filled a hole in the market so big that ALD is now partly owned by luxury conglomerate LVMH, with a second store location opened in 2022 in London. Along the way, Santis elevated his design game, but pretty much stuck to the same script since day one, inspired by growing up in Queens listening to local legends like Nas and Mobb Deep, and copying what they wore.
The ALD script takes baggy East Coast hip-hop style from the 90s and puts it through a more fitted urbane lens, making a broadly socially acceptable luxury brand that you can wear to work or anywhere. This has been a recipe for success, as hella people (mostly millennials, I think) want to dress vaguely like 90s rappers and also have jobs.
Like most fashion brands, ALD sells a ready-made look. But it’s worth noting that 90s hip-hop style, similar to 90s hip-hop DJ sets and sample-based production, was originally composed of stuff that already existed. It was specifically an amalgam of military/workwear clothing, sports gear, and Ivy League preppy fashion. The combination came from musicians and fans who got their wares at Army/Navy surplus stores, athletics shops, outdoor outfitters, and Brooks Brothers or Ralph Lauren. And while the original architects of this style ingeniously put pieces together that were not meant to go with each other, they nonetheless fused them into something coherent that has stood the test of time going on 30 years. Trends come and go, but at least for my generation (I’m 42 — geriatric millennial), the workwear/athletic gear/preppy mixture is a rock solid template.
Some of the hallmarks of this style are ripstop fatigues or cargo pants, hiking boots, rugby shirts, button ups (refers to the placket), button downs (refers to the collar), tactical or fishing vests, bucket or boonie hats, nylon side bags, GORE-TEX anything, Yankees or Mets gear, baseball jackets, weatherproof parkas, sneakers, basketball shorts, and of course, hoodies, tees, and sweats. ALD sells all that, mostly in shades of navy blue, olive green, and burgundy, with occasional pops of brighter hues, although the brand also trades in the pastels and muted tones that have been prominent in so much recent fashion.
“Cut out the middleman, go back to the essence, and get good at eBay.”
If that sounds like how you want to dress—and I do think it’s a cool way to dress—ALD has got you covered. But I recommend that rather than blowing your check on their expensive styles, you cut out the middleman, go back to the essence, and get good at eBay. I’m advocating for increasing your fashion intelligence, saving money, and even saving the environment (new clothes are mostly landfill fodder), by doing the necessary legwork and putting together those types of fits for yourself.
That will take some effort in deconstructing an outfit that ALD serves in a lookbook, into constituent parts. Then you’ll search by color, size, item type, and/or potentially brand if you know some good brands that make that type of product. For example if you are looking for military pants, like cargos, you might want to educate yourself on who makes good ones (using Google, or by asking someone who is into fashion that you trust). That may lead you to search for “Rothco M-65 pants,” which so many other pants are based off. If you’re looking for a large-fitting, preppy, and patterned short sleeve shirt, you might search for “Gitman XXL.” If you don’t know which brand you’re looking for, just link as many descriptors together as you can and see what turns up. If you’re looking for a nylon button up shirt, it might take you some time to know that the type of item you are looking for is a fishing shirt, and even more time to know that Columbia PFG makes them and they are readily available on eBay. If you’re looking for pants with a built in belt, you’ll need to learn those are called hiking pants, and then the more you come to know about brands and maybe even fashion history of specific products, you can start searching for relatively well-known classics like “Patagonia stand up pants.” As you search, you might notice a sleeper brand like Kavu, which makes excellent versions that a lot of people aren’t checking for. The more you search on eBay, and the more you do your googles, the more you’ll learn, and the better you’ll get at navigating fashion SEO and finding what you’re after. The thing to keep in mind is you’re not looking for one brand to solve your fashion issues, or some intangible “cool” to align yourself with, you’re looking for good versions of specific pieces that fit into your vision of what you want to wear. And that’s a vision that may be blurry now, but will come into better focus the more you extend yourself and get your knowledge up.
“We get dumber and less independent the more we rely on pre-packaged style”
Doing it yourself is also important because, while ALD does look cool, we get dumber and less independent the more we rely on pre-packaged style that was once cobbled together from disparate places and tinkered with until it clicked. What is lost is the practice of digging, an act which is connected to the dual consciousness of being both aware of the marketplace and its trends, and also curious about overlooked gems. ALD is betting that you either don’t have the smarts, vision, or taste to dig, or that you appreciate the convenience of letting the brand do it for you, and are OK with paying out the ass in order not to do the legwork. A lot of capitalism works this way, creating high prices and excess waste.
I worry the digging mindset is dwindling. Legwork is out of fashion because we are marketed to like it’s such a terrible inconvenience. And we can extrapolate here, because there are now many ALD clone brands. Multi-brand retailers are inspired by what ALD is doing, too. It’s all starting to create a starter pack mentality amongst consumers that I think is really uncreative and sheep-like.
ALD is not unique in this selling of the starter pack. This Deez Links piece outlines a few other ones from the current men’s wear world. My impression is that most fashion brands are built off some kind of combo that everyday fashionistas were already putting together themselves, and which the brand is synthesizing. Almost the whole fashion industry, if you look at it this way, is a tax on ignorance or laziness. The same way spending $20 on a sandwich is a tax on those who neglected to make their lunch at home before heading off to work. That’s especially true if the brand is selling products that don’t differ too much from what other more specific companies are selling and maybe have sold for a lot of years. That is to say, if the brand is mainly reconfiguring classics.
Of course some brands innovate and do their own thing, to degrees, and sell a product that is distinctly theirs in a way that you can’t find elsewhere. Those are rare pieces, which you might want to buy brand new. But even then, I think it’s worth searching eBay for that specific item and seeing if someone is selling it used. For instance I love the pants-focused brand 18 East.They don’t necessarily reinvent the wheel, but I buy their stuff new because they use unordinary fabrics, washes, and incorporate details other brands don’t (like screen printed patterns on corduroy, or reversible outerwear with nylon on one side, and sweatshirt material used inside-out on purpose on the other). But I also am constantly searching “18 East xxl” to see what’s available on eBay or the luxury second hand site Grailed. (Ed Note: Gem is a great “search engine” app that shows results from vintage stores and larger resale sites like Grailed and eBay). For ALD, those more unique pieces are few and far between, and most of what they sell is a lightly tweaked version of something you can find used, much cheaper.
With that said, here are some of the better ALD looks from their Spring 24 lookbook (even more navy this season, and a preponderance of jorts) and how I would suggest recreating them from stuff being sold on eBay. These links will die (most of them for used products, some of them for new) but the photos will remain, and you get the point, hopefully, which is not that I’m necessarily shitting on ALD but rather saying that, and this goes for a ton of brands, it’s worth it on multiple levels to work backward and shop for second hand or cheaper pieces that inspired what you see at retail. Don’t get caught up in the hype (waiting in line outside a shop is embarrassing) and don’t get fooled into thinking you can’t do this yourself. You can do it!
Thank you for recommending our sister app Gem!