Hello my friends, rare middle-of-the-week post for me, but I realize that I have to be a bit contemporaneous with this before the lookbooks become old news (I’m already late to the scene as-is!).
We are once again discussing Drake’s. If you’re unfamiliar, Drake’s is a London-based tailoring company who has gained a ton of popularity in recent years due to their excellent lookbooks.
They highlight a certain elevated casual look — something that looks and feels like you could wear it without looking to affected. This is a very thin line in menswear, especially in an age where many people feel threatened by one’s wearing of a collared shirt.
Drake’s under Michael Hill’s creative direction is largely considered best-in-show, and continue to prove every year just how good they are at curating a vibe. This year is no different — they recently released two separate lookbooks, one called “A Postcard from Maine“, highlighting their recent collaboration with Sebago, and the other being their Winter 2023 lookbook.
Although opinions seem to differ online about these two editorials, I really like both. I can’t afford Drake’s prices, so I can’t comment directly on the quality of the garments they produce, but again, their curation is absolutely top-tier. It’s also really easy to recreate their looks for like 1/10th the cost, making these lookbooks great for outfit inspiration.
A Postcard From Maine
You can find the editorials here and here.
Sebago is a cool, pretty underrated brand — I wrote about them a while back (you should check it out!). Although a Maine-based moccasin-style construction shoe brand like Quoddy or Rancourt, Sebago was purchased by an international conglomerate some years ago and now makes their product overseas.
This isn’t something you can really fault them for btw, the number of Americans capable of making high-quality moc-style shoes is dwindling and may be fully gone in the next couple decades. Still, they make high-quality shoes and tend to experiment much more with design compared to the other Maine brands.
At any rate, the collaboration and editorial manage to capture the vibe of Maine, and the outfits reflect a more American prep attitude than is typical of Drake’s, while still retaining everything that makes Drake’s what it is.
A few favorites:
Normally not a fan of liner vests but it looks very tidy here
This is basically my uniform in the autumn. The camp mocs with the lug soles looks way better than I’d have thought.
They kitted out this shell fisherman too. pretty cool.
The New England coast is such a special, beautiful place. If you’re not from the area and want to take a trip some day, I highly recommend coming in the autumn, doing some leaf-peeping, and then driving along the coast in northshore Mass and Southern Maine (Cape Ann and Cape Elizabeth).
The Winter Lookbook
You can find the winter lookbook here
Another chapter in the “Drake’s is very good at this“ book. Nothing too flashy in this lookbook, expect maybe the color-blocked fleeces, but everything just works. Also, the model is what I imagine one of my favorite Twitter poasters, @coldhealing would look like.
An aside, but my black chelseas have been getting a LOT of use so far this year. Mine are from Barney’s in-house brand that I bought on mega-sale when the department store went under a few years back. It was an impulse decision as they didn’t really fit into my wardrobe (they’re visually similar to the ones above — dressier than say a blundstone boot), and they’ve been hiding in the back of my closet for a few years now. I’ve found that I like the Barbour-jeans-chelseas look now and have been breaking it out pretty frequently.
Nothing notable about this whatsoever, except that everything fits perfectly and he’s wearing FUSCHIA socks (yeah your boy knows his colors)
Fun fact: you can get these boots from astorflex for less than half the price that Drake’s offers
The pics I included above were not at all an exhaustive list of what was included in the respective editorials/lookbooks — these are just a few of my favorites. I definitely recommend going back and looking through them in their entirety (especially the Maine one).
Also, if you’re rich enough to shop at Drake’s, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to my newsletter ($5/month) 😎🥂
I love Drakes lookbooks and editorials. And if I made more money I would do a lot of shopping there. But to me the Maine editorial was so cringe. Primarily because I vacation in that area often, so the absurdity of their outfits in that setting was so apparent. The British countryside dressing clashes so hard with classic americana (LL Bean) aesthetic. They look like they are wearing costumes.
Conversely when J.Crew dressed up models at a historic boat shop in Amesbury, I ate that shit up. So I can see my own hypocrisy.
***the fisherman looked awesome