The hardest workers in my wardrobe

buy good clothes, wear them a lot

I wrote The World Is On Fire But We’re Still Buying Shoes in 2021. At the time, my wardrobe was in a bit of a weird place. I’d spent five years covering fashion non-stop in my old job at Highsnobiety, but I was just straight-up bad at shopping. I bought tons of stuff I hardly wore, and spent most of my time wearing the same stuff that never really did anything for me.

That was four years ago now, and my relationship with clothing is much, much better (kinda has to be when you write a book about it). A big part of that process was going through my wardrobe, doing a bunch of clearouts, and being a bit Mary Kondo about it all — asking myself what had gone wrong, why I only wore those Needles track pants or Gucci loafers a couple of times even though I’d spent so much money on them. At the beginning of last year, I wrote about why I still do a wardrobe audit once a year, figuring out if there's anything I’m not wearing and then selling or donating it.

One year later and I’m not sure I need to do one at all. I just moved into a much bigger apartment with my girlfriend. We have one of those huge Ikea wardrobes in our new place and…..I have so much space. I don’t even take up half of it. I never considered myself a minimalist but for someone who had a shitty relationship to shopping in the past, this is very good. I wear basically everything here, and I don’t want to get rid of any of it. I either love it or wear it often because it’s practical. The only things I don’t wear are the things I wanted to sell last year but didn’t.

So instead of revisiting the audit story, I’m gonna shout out the clothes that I’ve worn the most since I wrote my book — and the brands who made them. Honestly, I’m not sure if I’ll write another one of these next year — I am very much a BIFL kind of guy and I don’t think it’ll be so interesting reading about how I’m still wearing the same motorbike boots in 2026.

Disclaimer: I’ve worked in fashion for ten years and built a decent-ish sized platform around what I do, so I get a good amount of hookups and/or discounts. I’m not going to say which pieces here were gifted and which I paid for because they’re all great and if I’d paid full price on them it still would have been money well spent. Also, I don’t accept hookups for anything that’s a) not very good and b) I don’t truly want. I’m pretty religious about not bringing anything into my life unless I really need it. That’s especially true for clothes.

Cannot recommend vintage Carhartt enough. This is one of the pieces I mentioned in the book, and by a long way the hardest working piece in my wardrobe. Seriously, these things are built like tanks. I paid something like €70 for it on eBay. Obviously, someone wore it a lot before I did. Compared to the newer WIP stuff, the fit is much boxier, which I like much more. 10/10, best piece I’ve ever owned.

Vintage True Religion leather blazer. Pretty much every date night/dinner/event/party I go to, I’ve got this on. I got it on American eBay and a friend in NY brought it over with him when he visited Berlin. I’ve only had it a couple of years and already had to get the lining replaced, which somehow cost €120, but I guess that’s what fixing good clothes costs these days.

I ended up buying two of these Diesel jackets because the fit is just so good. Boxy with long sleeves is a theme I will be revisiting here. The model is D-Barcy. The quality is not spectacular, the black one even has a button hole stitched into one of the pocket flaps, lol.

Oh and this Grammici down liner. It is absolutely not sexy, total dad energy, but a life saver in winter. It’s pretty compact and doesn’t have a collar ruining the rest of your silhouette like most of the liners out there.

There’s a lot of interesting denim out there, but most of it is too short for me. There’s not that many brands that do not-boring jeans in a loose fit *and* do them in a 34 leg. So I’ve worn these three a lot. From left, the Sunflower Loose are in an overdyed black/indigo, so as they’re worn in the blue becomes more and more visible. Love them. In the middle is the Vega from Jeanerica. They’re modeled on a really old pair of washed out black jeans, with the crease lines and everything. And the light blue pair is from Livid, a Norwegian denim brand. The fabric is excellent and the fit is super nice and loose. Brands from Scandinavia occupy like 80% of my wardrobe at this point.

Shirts are a bit of a funny category for me. Most of them are Our Legacy, and the blue denim shirt I mentioned in last year’s story is still very dear to me (I own a lot of Our Legacy). The weather in Berlin swings pretty brutally from cold to hot, so most of the time I’m only wearing shirts when I’m doing something fancy and honestly…that doesn’t happen so much atm. This second book ain’t writing itself.

Knitwear is a) hard to make b) often boring and/or delicate and c) expensive. If I’m to give you a lesson here, it’s that if you find a good knit that looks cool, can be worn a lot, and won’t bankrupt you, then just pull the trigger. Winter in Berlin is much more fun now that I have some great knits.

The winning combination for me is a cropped-ish fit, dropped shoulders and long sleeves. The brown one is from Berner Kuhl, a small-ish brand from Copenhagen who does Jil Sander-ish stuff but at a much more realistic price. Excellent quality, great fit and I love the funky lil thumb hole. The cardigan is from Mfpen, who I wrote about before. The fit is perfect and Sigurd’s up for an LVMH prize!

Tees are the most abused garment in the world. Literally everyone makes them and…IDK, it’s not up for me to say who should and should not make clothes, but does absolutely everything need merch these days?

I’d love to support bands I’m into but the quality of merch these days is so bad that I just buy weird vintage ones off British Depop instead. Trawling for single stitch tees is so much fun. What is Maudite? Momix? No idea. The Sunflower one is from a bike shop, I think. Not the guys whose jeans I love. Who’s 1996 tour am I representing? IDK.

The Modern Life Is War one I wrote about in my first book is still going strong, after years of damage. Doesn’t even have any holes in it. If only band merch was still this good. Not pictured are the longsleeves from Asket that I wear 80% of the time in winter. Best value for money basics on planet earth. They come in different lengths and I get the shorter versions cos I like things boxy.

This will be the sixth year of my black Our Legacy Camion boots. I’ve had them resoled once and they still look kinda brand new, somehow? The brown ones are in a lacquered leather and are starting to look pretty tired even though they’re so much newer. You see a lot of these perfect looking leathers with a mirror shine on them in shops and trust me, they won’t look that way forever (more info on that here). It's regular un-treated leather only from now on for me.

The biker boots are from Sancho, a brand from Spain nobody has ever heard of. There’s a ton of Spanish brands doing similar stuff — Sendra, Mezcalero, Mayura etc. — and the only real difference most of the time is the fit. Honestly, I’d spend the rest of my life in cowboy boots if I could, but they’re always too narrow for me, so it’s square-toed biker boots instead. I guess some things are meant to be admired from a distance.

[The closest I’ve come to a regret purchase since I did the book was a pair of Our Legacy mules, and that’s not because they’re bad, it’s just that they’re pretty impractical for someone who walks and bikes a lot.]

Fashion’s huge environmental footprint has created some pretty interesting ideas of how we could shop. There’s the capsule wardrobe, which is a great idea but feels a bit oppressive if you’re someone who really loves clothes. There’s the pledge to only buy x amount of pieces per year, which is a really nice way of looking at it once you get to the point where you’ve got all the basics covered. I always looked at it like furniture: only buy it if you really want to own it. Buy the right piece and it will still be making you feel good years and years later.

One of the biggest traps people fall into is letting their phones have too much influence over what they wear. You end up buying stuff that only looks good on a screen, or in one specific situation. This piece will look great when I wear it with this. Total waste of time and money, don’t even bother, IMO. The same goes for uncomfortable shoes. Life is not a runway show, and the real reason for shopping is to spend money on things that make you feel good when you wear them, and then wear them a lot. It’s not hard, you just need to spend a bit of time figuring out which tiny slice of the clothes out there work for you and then avoid the rest of them.

Oh and one more tip, be brutal about stuff fitting you. And don’t be scared of showrooming. I return stuff all the time if it doesn’t fit right. Life is too short for less-than-excellent fitting clothes!

So much of the fashion industry revolves around making us feel inadequate, which is how people end up with such huge amounts of shit they don’t want or need. The big thing I learned early on in this process is that shopping properly means being laser-focused on what you want and basically just ignoring everything else. As you can tell from all the stuff I’ve posted here, I like washed out fabrics, dark denim, dark colours, leather and boxy knits. That’s kinda it. I don’t have a magic rule to any of it. There’s plenty of things I’d still like, sure. But in general, I’m good. The main thing I want to do this year is work out and eat better. I’m happy with my clothes.

TLDR: buy good clothes, wear them a lot, enjoy your life.