Leave to Brooks Broth­ers to bring the good­ies.  Once thought of as the older gentleman’s attire, boxy shirts, pleated pants…Brooks Broth­ers has intro­duced a slim­mer fit in most of their items, skinny ties, Peal & Co shoes — and we approve!

See the rest of the Fall Pre­view here.

As every man knows, or should know, you’ve got to have a few go-to fra­grances for all sorts of occa­sions.  The first date fra­grance, the busi­ness lunch, the happy hour, the day-to-day…the list goes on.  When I caught a whiff of the new CREED fra­grance, aptly named Aven­tus (an archaic word mean­ing suc­cess), I had to add it to my cologne cabinet.

All the top notes are fruits; black­cur­rant, berg­amot, Calville Blanc apples, Royal pineapple…whatever that means. How­ever, it doesn’t give off a sum­mery, day­time scent.  Its def­i­nitely going into my smell like a king and get laid, ehh, have a great evening out reper­toire. Base note is oak moss, amber­gris, and Gour­mand vanilla.  Oak is one of the most mas­cu­line base notes you can have in a scent — always gets my approval.

Its exclu­sively at Neiman Mar­cus in stores & online, and, of course, the CREED bou­tique on Madi­son.  So go and grab a sam­ple, wear it around — you will…I repeat…YOU WILL fall for it.  Mark. My. Word.

In Novem­ber it’ll go national at Saks, select Nordstrom’s, Bloomingdale’s, Von Maur, and Halls…but why wait, really?

Just wanted to share a really cool blog I came across today. It’s called Street­Peeper, catch­ing fash­ion on the streets worldwide…like Frank Muyt­jens, my hero.

Enjoy.

Michael Kors began his career at age 19, as a designer and mer­chan­diser for a ladies-who-lunch bou­tique in Man­hat­tan. Since then, he has been defin­ing Amer­i­can fash­ion, in all its jet-set glory ever since.

Since launch­ing his own label in 1981, Kors has stayed true to his mis­sion of cre­at­ing a native fash­ion with clas­sic, sporty pieces that are chic and easy to wear.

In 2002, he launched his menswear line, which con­tin­ues his vision of lux­u­ri­ous sports­wear. With con­tin­u­ally fresh takes on famil­iar items, Kors’ line goes beyond the realm of mere sta­ples. Trousers have a smart fit, light­weight jack­ets bring to mind sum­mers on the Cape, and button-down shirts can be worn with a blazer or untucked in a rum­pled casual manner.

As one fash­ion writer put it, “His clothes have never lost that clar­ity, that ver­sa­til­ity, that Amer­i­can, self-possessed, no-brainer chic.”

Sale on Gilt in a few minutes…here’s a preview.

Spe­cial invite code: SUMMER2010

Keep­ing in line with this being a guys blog and all — I had to post this amaz­ing edi­to­r­ial in Elle Italia of TX girl, Erin Was­son. She just keeps get­ting hot­ter. Enjoy.

Some pho­tos NSFW.

Erin Was­son makes a return to her home state of Texas for the August cover shoot of Elle Italia. Styled by Alberto Zanoletti and lensed by David Mushe­gain once again, Erin pals around with the locals in the twenty plus page Texas Story which fea­tures the work of Stella McCart­ney, Sis­ley, Freesoul and others.

TOPMAN just dropped some new items — and this one I love love love. Yeah, I know its still a scorcher out there but its time to start stock­ing up for fall.

A nod to the East Lon­don and Scan­di­na­vian music scenes, brushed flan­nel checks are worn along­side fine vin­tage knits and slim fit chi­nos. The look is com­pleted with fine detail prints, fair-isle acces­sories and hik­ing boot inspired footwear. Get your piece of Urban Folk now…

Grab it.
Get it.
Go.

($80 via Topman.com)

Ever since I can remem­ber, any­thing involv­ing the red-blooded, all-American lifestyle and the fash­ion that sur­rounds it has always inter­ested me.

And now, sud­denly, a list of Old School must-haves have hit the scene; Ray-Bans, Red Wing boots, Alden loafers, wool vests from Fil­son, Sperry Top-Siders, and every­thing from the J.Crew catalog.

Design­ers like Thom Browne, Billy Reid, Scott Stern­berg of Band of Out­siders, and, of course, good ol’ Frank Muyt­jens have taken on the con­ser­v­a­tive clas­sics and made their mark with them.  Michael Bas­t­ian was quoted in the Times “The whole preppy machine requires a recal­i­bra­tion.” And it couldn’t be more true.

It has become “a ref­er­ence to a ref­er­ence,” Mr. Bas­t­ian added.  But a ref­er­ence to what, exactly?

Take Ivy, a slen­der vol­ume of pho­tographs com­mis­sioned by Ken­suke Ishizu, the founder of an Ivy League-inspired cloth­ing line called Van Jacket.  It was first pub­lished in 1965 and went on to become, in the decades since pub­li­ca­tion, the nearly unat­tain­able cen­ter of a pas­sion­ate cult.

Peo­ple spent years hunt­ing down rare copies. They traded them online for prices that reached into the thou­sands. They pho­to­copied and dis­trib­uted them in design stu­dios like fash­ion samizdat.

Take Ivy, with its guile­less snap­shots of hand­some, fit and pre­sum­ably bright young lugs dis­port­ing them­selves in din­ing halls, on the Col­lege Green at Dart­mouth, along Nas­sau Street in Prince­ton and in Har­vard Yard.

So — to the point — the book is being reprinted (pow­er­House Books) with an Eng­lish lan­guage text. Not sur­pris­ingly that text, inde­ci­pher­able to any reader except the Japan­ese read­ers all these years, is equally awed and bemused by the folk­ways of ide­al­ized Ivy Lea­guers with “their sound minds and bod­ies,” their letter-clad sweaters and their leafy cam­puses still dom­i­nated in those chummy sex-segregated days by men.

The book is teem­ing with hand­some young Ivy League men in slim-fitting flat front khakis, madras Bermuda shorts, anoraks, blue button-down Oxford cloth shirts and — well — essen­tially all the stuff you’d see in a cur­rent J. Crew catalog…which is alright by me.

Pre-order your copy on Ama­zon — it’s almost $9 off the cover price. ($24.95 nor­mally, but $16.47 on pre-order).

Still work­ing on build­ing the sta­ples up in your wardrobe?  I found some slick Jump Footwear loafers that go great with khaki shorts or even, if you dare, denim shorts for the summer.

They’re on sale with lim­ited stock at Beyond the Rack.

Use invite code CASUALGENT07 to access the sale.  ($35 at Beyond the Rack).

Perus­ing the aisles of peri­od­i­cals at Bor­ders today — the new Menswear mag­a­zine caught my eye. I thought my eyes were play­ing tricks on me as I recall Menswear mag­a­zine went out of print a cou­ple of years ago. Regard­less, I dropped 6 bones on this trea­sure — I’ve spent $6 on worse…

The dos and don’ts of dress­ing for dudes are laid OUT in the Fall 2010/Spring 2011 inau­gural issue of Menswear mag­a­zine, fea­tur­ing cover guy Jeremy Ren­ner look­ing like a dap­per “do” in a gray Dior Homme wool suit, an Armani cot­ton shirt, and a Thom Browne pocket square.

Dis­tri­b­u­tion will be newsstand-only at $6 an issue. As with the old for­mat, menswear is a quar­terly pub­li­ca­tion, so that trans­lates to four issues per year. The inau­gural issue is on sale right now and the fall issue is sched­uled to drop on Octo­ber 18. In 2011 the stan­dard quar­terly cycle kicks in to full production.

Have any of you seen it? Do you like it?

Ever since my last trip to Lon­don, I’ve been madly in love with hip British chain, All­Saints.  Perus­ing around their Covent Gar­den store, I wanted to buy one of every­thing and their recently-opened New York loca­tion is flagship-amazing!

Sit­ting at 512 Broad­way between Spring and Broome, the store boasts wood pan­eled and steel beamed floors, exposed brick walls, ram skulls (the brands logo), search­light fix­tures recov­ered from the Suez Canal, a loom from a mill in Sheffield, and Singer sewing machines from Chatham Dockyard…ya know, the stan­dards, right?

As you know, I’m a sucker for a good bag and All­Saints never dis­ap­points.  Their designs, bags included, are dark and decon­structed but…wearable.  Their Men’s Dig­ger Bag retails at $185 but seems well worth it from the detail and crafts­man­ship thats been put into it.  Its a killer day­time city bag — enough room for your gear, lap­top, lunch…maybe not your gym clothes, but every­thing else fits with­out being stuffed like a garbage bag.

You’ll be stream­lined but won’t look stuffy.

That’s the secret, my friends.

photo cred­its: top via garryknight/Flickr, bot­tom via All­Saints website