THE JOURNAL

Outerwear that’s more outgoing than most.
Sometimes, men’s fashion can be a little bit boring. Especially compared to what the women get to wear, anyway. Men’s fashion repeats itself. Exhibit A: the MR PORTER-endorsed spring trends list, which you can see here. Suede and workwear? They’ve have been popular for quite a while, haven’t they? Roughly: centuries. Indeed, on the whole, we are not wonderfully imaginative, us men, when it comes to clothes. But, pleasingly, that has changed a little bit of late. Men’s style has gone, well, rather silly. High fashion brands are aping cheap knock-offs. Football has found its way onto the runway in the form of oversized scarves and nylon kits. And irony is king whether you’re wearing a DHL T-shirt, sneakers that look orthopaedic, or dressing in thousands of pounds worth of clothes that make you look like you are of no fixed abode. And long may the madness continue. This week, several new items on MR PORTER seem to reflect all this fun that we’re having. Below, we picked out three examples that we particularly like and considered how we might wear them. Enjoy!
CAMOUFLAGE
Camouflage often has rather serious connotations. We associate it with the military, of course. But it can also come across as a bit aggressive even when worn in a casual manner. Not in 2018, though. Oh no. Valentino, who is famous for working with this pattern, has slapped a pink and silver hood on this camouflage coat just to remind you how insincere we’re all being at the moment. To temper the enthusiasm, we’d go for something a little more serious elsewhere in your outfit. Like these chinos, by Officine Generale.
FRUITY
West Coast streetwear brand Golden Bear have been making coats for San Francisco longshoremen since 1922, so they know a thing or two about the task in hand. And, thankfully, they’ve moved with the times along the way – as is evidenced by the pineapple print on this loose-fit and fun blue bomber. Slip a simple white T-shirt on beneath and you have yourself an easy spring look that’ll take you well into summer.
EPIC
Now, where to start with this thing? We can’t work out if it is some kind of imagined futuristic military garb, or it’s something you’d wear before throwing yourself out of plane on a parachute jump. Whatever it is, we like it. Satin, Velcro, neoprene – this is casual streetwear 2.0 combined with, perhaps, a trench coat. As such, it is not for the fainthearted. If you’re a fan of this sort of thing, and man enough to pull it off, you’ll probably want to keep the theme going with some Off-White sneakers. Go hard or go home, as they say.
