The Best Of The Best

You’ll reach a jaded part in your life when, clothes-wise, you’ll have seen it all, bought it all and worn every conceivable variation of the same t-shirt. Your wardrobe will, probably, be bursting at the hinges and contain enough to keep you going for the foreseeable future, so what will compel you to buy more?

The Holy Grail of menswear is ‘The Best of its Type’. Whether that’s a hoodie, pair of chinos or plain white shirt, it’s what keeps us looking, testing and buying.

Menswear doesn’t go through extreme changes like womenswear; it merely evolves over time. So, once you’ve got a selection of white shirts, for example, it needs to be pretty special to buy yet another one.

These trusted and reliable basics set the foundation of any successful capsule wardrobe and, if they’re good, will continue to be worn regularly for many years. They’re the items you don’t think about – but that’s what makes them so special.

Of course this is subjective, but if you go to a brand or maker with many years’ experience, there’s a reason why they are still in business. In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers book, he states that the key to success in any field, be it carpentry or music, is a matter of practising a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.

The same principle can easily be applied to the textiles industry. These 10,000 hours give these master craftspeople the knowledge and confidence to produce their product in the best possible way, for you to enjoy and fully experience the difference.

With this in mind, from my humble experience, here are the current best of their type: wardrobe basics edition…

Knitwear – John Smedley

Founded in 1784 at Lea Mills, in Matlock, Derbyshire – and still there! – founders John Smedley and his associate Peter Nightingale were inspired by Richard Arkwright, who had pioneered the factory system thirteen years earlier, to build a spinning mill. The brook that runs through the village provided the motive power and a constant source of clean running water.