Menswear is having a relatively quiet moment. And that’s not so much quiet luxury, but a wider shift towards garments and accessories that are well-crafted and simple to style, in subtly twisted silhouettes and colours that are, for want of a better word, unchallenging. The good news about this is that, across the board, from smart tailoring to casual daily pieces, it’s never been easier to build a wardrobe around longevity rather than hype.

Once the preserve of weekend warriors in faded club T-shirts and old marathon bibs, running has evolved into a pursuit of precision, both in motion and in style. The modern runner chooses kit as carefully as his route, dressing with intention, whether chasing a sunrise tempo or strolling to a post-run espresso.

Almost all men’s clothing can be separated into two categories: things you want and things you need. Underwear, you need. Crew-neck T-shirts and jeans, you need. But a bright red cable-knit Shetland wool sweater from Drake’s or a brushed cotton workwear set from mfpen? Those you want. And that counts, too. The trick is to build a wardrobe of pieces that somehow sits in the middle of the two camps – clothes that cover the basics but offer that little something extra. Here are 10 elite pieces we think every man should have.

Jeans are so ingrained in the sartorial fabric of our lives that it’s difficult to imagine a time when they didn’t exist. The origin of this influential wardrobe staple is the stuff of folklore. The oft-told story takes us back to Nîmes, in Southern France, in the 1670s, when a dyer by the name of David André developed a durable indigo-blue cloth, the precursor to cotton denim, called serge de Nîmes. This was eventually changed to “denim” by the English-speaking world.

Menswear is having a relatively quiet moment. And that’s not so much quiet luxury, but a wider shift towards garments and accessories that are well-crafted and simple to style, in subtly twisted silhouettes and colours that are, for want of a better word, unchallenging. The good news about this is that, across the board, from smart tailoring to casual daily pieces, it’s never been easier to build a wardrobe around longevity rather than hype.

Once the preserve of weekend warriors in faded club T-shirts and old marathon bibs, running has evolved into a pursuit of precision, both in motion and in style. The modern runner chooses kit as carefully as his route, dressing with intention, whether chasing a sunrise tempo or strolling to a post-run espresso.