ITT: We recommend... if you like brand X, you might try brand Y. - Page 5

Very nice call on the Numero 10.

If you like Banal Chic Bizarre, there is a good chance that you'll like Guts Dynamite Cabaret.

If you like Dries van Noten, you will like Kolor.

If you like knits, and are somewhere between Margiela and Borrelli, you will like Inoue Brothers.

Yeah. I was trying to talk about the formality... sorta missed the mark, I guess.

If you like Non-native, you'll probably like Fullcount.

Tradeshows, showrooms, traveling essentially to windowshop, and making meticulous mental notes the entire time. have a very good memory for collections, brands, etc... It's important and useful for retailers, other designers, and in marketing and advertising. If you know people who need this type of information, contact info, marketing info, etc... I am available for consultations.

If you want to learn about this stuff from print, I would suggest that you get copies of GAP Press Men, which is a Japanese publication that does synopsis of runway shows and installations - 2 editions per season - 1 for Milan/Paris, the other for NYC/Tokyo, which I think is a pretty good delineation. Paris and Milan are more concerned with designer and high fashion and Tokyo and NYC have a more streetwear/casualwear bent. I look at Men's Non-no occasionally, and I'll pick up a copy when I am in Seattle or in San Francisco, but I find that these magazines cater to very specific audiences.

Some stores carry the stuff. Blue in Green carries some Fullcount, some Somet basics, etc... A few stores used to carry Dope & Drakkar.

If you like Woolrich Woolen Mills and Gilded Age, but wear it in a more urbane way, you may like Dope&Drakkar.

If you muted, washed fabrics and like the styling at LN-CC, you may like Kiminori Morishita and HALB - I think that Morishita is still the creative director there.

Which brands haven't you heard about? Maybe I spelled them wrong

Well, you've probably been to Pitti Uomo and Bread&Butter, right? I mean, it's like a designer version of Capsule on the scale of Project. There are literally thousands of brands. I have spent entire days walking through these. And then there are the endless runways shows (never want to go to one, ever again) and installations (a merciful innovation, since you can go, walk through it faster than you can a tourist visiting Church number 38 in Florence, and be on your way.) It's inevitable that stuff doesn't show up on your radar. Unless you need to, you probably don't have linelists for the past decade archived.

Statistically, no 2 stores should have more than say, a 20% overlap in brands, and yet, every "goth ninja store" carries Rick Owens and Julius (even though both were virtually unknown in 2000), every mid-market store carries Wings+Horns (even though I met about 95% blank looks when I mention the brand to retailers as late as 2006) and Margiela suddenly became the unknown brand everyone knew about in 2002. I've said this before, it's because showrooms like The News, PR firms like Totem, and representatives like Rob Lo (Wings+Horns) do their job extraordinarily well, perhaps too well, while some dumbo can't get a single sale sitting at his little table at Pool.