What’s Working for Independent Menswear Retailers

Eugene Lardy, who writes the popular menswear Substack “Street Night Live,” is exactly the kind of shopper independent menswear retailers are competing for today.

While he originally began discussing men’s fashion online a decade ago because of his love for brands such as Supreme, the 33-year-old is now just as interested in quieter, elevated menswear, such as baggy hemp-cotton pants from Lemaire or a button-up shirt from A.Presse with a shrunken collar and relaxed silhouette.

“All clothes, even streetwear, is expensive now, so as a consumer, I’m trying to be more conscious,” said Lardy. “If I’m going to buy something, it has to be more elevated, last me a long time, and resell for more or less the same value down the line.”

Independent menswear retailers have had to navigate a seismic shift in the trends dominating how customers like Lardy dress over the past decade. Those shoppers are increasingly spending a premium on clothes that announce themselves through subtle details like fabrics or silhouette rather than overt branding and recognisable logos, creating a tailwind for labels from Japan’s Auralee to small upstarts such as Evan Kinori reimagining men’s staples like tailoring and workwear.

The change may be welcome for retailers such as Los Angeles’ Departamento that have long stocked these types of brands, as well as others that have adapted more recently to the demands of today’s menswear customers, but it also comes with a few new points of friction for these retailers.

Contemporary menswear is highly fragmented, with no single designer or aesthetic shaping the category like Virgil Abloh and streetwear did a decade ago. At the same time, menswear’s current obsession with developing “personal style” means retailers need to offer a broad range of products, ranging from streetwear to tailoring, that isn’t defined by any overarching aesthetic. Securing a sale now also requires more legwork, as men increasingly prioritise tangible craftsmanship over brand recognition — nuances that are difficult to convey until the garment is actually worn.

“When things cost what they cost, it’s important to help people understand why,” said Felix Gladstone, a head buyer for the London indie menswear retailer Garbstore. “We always try to educate the customer, not from a patronising perspective, but to be clear that this is what we believe in and why we are selling it.”

What that means for retailers vying to capture menswear shoppers today is learning how to communicate the appeal of these understated garments online and in-store. That’s done by understanding what savvy menswear consumers value the most about products and then building human rapport with them through personalised retail that often involves educating shoppers on what makes a garment worth the money.

“A menswear consumer has always been open to spending on something they deem special,” said Justin Berkowitz, a strategic partner for NN.07 who formerly served as the men’s fashion director at Bloomingdale’s. “What has changed is what is special to them.”

How Retailers Communicate What Makes Clothing “Special”

In the past, “special” often meant store-exclusive collaborations or limited-edition collections, but today, even though menswear enthusiasts are still attracted to perceived scarcity, they are now more invested in a product’s unique traits.

Sometimes what makes a garment unique is something that has to be felt to be understood.

“If someone can touch something and go, ‘OK, this isn’t like something I’ve touched at another store, it feels like it’s worth what it is,’ that helps immensely,” said Saager Dilawri, founder of Vancouver’s Neighbour.

The way clothing feels in person has always guided how Dilawri buys for his 15-year-old store, he said, but those attributes can be difficult to communicate when so many consumers first experience products online or through social media. A mud-dyed shirt by Man-Tle has a tactile quality that Dilawri said resonates with customers once they feel, wear and wash it, but at first glance it may just register as a brown top.

How retailers communicate a fabric’s inimitable tactility or how a garment’s silhouette distinctly drapes over the body through photos, product descriptions or good in-store merchandising becomes imperative.

“They are interested to see how that [fabric] affects the way the garment lays on the body,” said Berkowitz. “If it is right, men are more willing to pay a premium. And if you go beyond that and talk about provenance, sustainability or functional properties not inherently visible, men are interested, because they get nerdy about the products they consume.”

Departamento co-founder Andrew Dryden said one thing he looks for to make his buys stand out is a “sense of place” and that everything isn’t coming from the same factories in Portugal or Italy.

“Whether this brand is from Finland, Austria or Spain, a real difference comes through in the manufacturing and available materials,” he said.

To help convey what makes every brand different, he shoots product photos with natural light and buys complete looks from brands that he styles himself to illustrate their proposition as best as possible.

Garbstore’s Gladstone similarly said good close-up photos and everyday styling on a model are important when spotlighting a garment’s fabric or a brand’s distinct look. For consumers such as Lardy, strong product photography and styling can help make the sale when shopping online.

“A lot of customers, especially if they’re new, have a hard time envisioning how clothes look without seeing them,” said Lardy. “Styling that makes you think ‘this is something I could wear’ goes a long way.”

How Menswear Retailers Build Rapport With Customers

Keeping shoppers engaged requires more than just selling the brands of the moment. Men are inundated with fashion knowledge from sources ranging from traditional magazines to Substack essays and TikToks. Stores aren’t just a transactional middleman on their style journey but a place where their passion for clothing is validated and contextualised.

“Knowledge about fabrics, construction and the designer’s background is important, but so is being able to talk about how the garment feels, how it wears and what makes it interesting from a personal perspective,” Shinya Makino, director of Tokyo’s Maidens Shop, which has been selling independent menswear brands since 1997, wrote in an email. “We believe that sharing genuine enthusiasm is much more powerful than simply giving customers product information.”

That personal touch is also important to Dilawri, who said he’s retained the same staff for several years and has also integrated them into the buying process so that they’re personally invested in the product Neighbour sells. He also encourages them to really wear and try-on the clothing Neighbour offers to really familiarise themselves with the store inventory — whether it’s for in-store sales or penning a product description online.

To make Garbstore feel approachable to customers, Gladstone said the store tries to offer a “casual and not intense” shopping experience, which he believes is more important when clothes have become more expensive and online shopping has become deeply impersonal. People want good customer service when they’re spending a substantial sum of money.

Prices of certain items may be on the higher side, but at least one advantage of this shift in menswear for retailers is that it’s easier communicating to shoppers why an item is worth it compared to the days when an otherwise unremarkable hoodie might cost a few hundred dollars.

“It’s definitely easier to explain to people the reason why this is priced this way is because of the fabric, the dyeing process, who’s making it, or how big or small the company is,” said Dilawri. “People seem to get that more than they used to.”