You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts.
So it's all acting like safe haven.
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their
currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
W, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me.
Thanks for having me.
I would be lying if I said you haven't been an incredibly positive influence on my life,
particularly in the last year or two.
I've been following you on X, necktie salvage,
and you've even influenced me to buy more Oxfords,
one of which I'm wearing today.
fantastic I'm glad to hear that I'm always glad to hear that
we have a mutual friend
in Michael Goldstein
as he's famously known as
in the Bitcoin space
he's been
sharing your content with me
telling me for years to follow you
and really dig into what you're doing
and I think the two of you
and Michael and I have a shared appreciation
for bringing back better aesthetics
in the world and your focus is on
making sure that men particularly
dress well? Why is this so important to you? Well, you know, aesthetics matter, you know,
so there's a couple of things here. First, I'm going to preempt the critique about aesthetics
mattering. The critique is, well, listen, if you focus so much on aesthetics, you miss the moral
concern, you miss the values, all that sort of stuff. And I understand where that's coming from.
But what we need to understand is that when we focus on aesthetics, whether it's clothing
or houses or whether it's design or anything, we aren't focusing on this in a materialistic way.
We're not focusing on this in a flippant way. It's not a shallow way. It's about a deeper thing.
It's about that which makes our lives better. It's about that which makes our lives more
enjoyable to live. It's about that which reflects our values. It's about that which makes men and
women, boys and girls, greater. And for clothing, all men wear clothing. We are not animals. We
don't walk around naked. So every guy wears clothing, doesn't matter if you're rich, poor,
somewhere in the middle, whatever, whatever you are doing, whatever job you're doing,
you are wearing clothes, I guess, unless you're a lifeguard, they're not wearing clothes,
but not many people are lifeguards. So you are wearing clothes. They have an impact on your life
and you wear them 24 seven, you wear them all the time, unless you're taking a shower,
you're wearing clothes, or sleeping, I guess, you're wearing clothes. And so these things are
with you all the time, they impact us even more consistently than say architecture. Because if you
don't like the way a building looks, you leave the building. Or you move from building to building,
but your clothes follow you wherever you go. And so why I focus on clothes so much is that it is
completely scalable. Essentially, every guy makes these choices every morning. Every guy is impacted
by his clothes, whether he realizes it or not. And those clothes say something to himself and the
world at the same time and it feels like particularly i would say so i'm a 90s child
born in 91 34 right now so i feel like late 90s early 2000s you sort of had this transition
to like pajama pants and walmart became normalized and slovenly looks became more normalized over
the last two and a half three decades what do you think drove this and why why do you think
people feel comfortable dressing poorly?
That's a really good question.
I mean, this is a really, really good question.
It's really related to so much because think about this like a chicken and the egg scenario.
You know, think about clothes.
They impact the culture and then they're a reflection of the culture as well.
They impact either an ascent or a descent in society and in one's life.
And they also create it as well.
So I think it's like a snowball falling down the hill.
So why would it be in the past couple decades, and it's really increased recently, I mean, five years, past five, 10 years, it's gotten exceedingly bad, even in more formal jobs and occupations.
Why would that be?
I think we've seen just a broad degeneration culturally.
We've seen a confusion culturally.
We've seen a loss of clear mission and purpose civilizationally.
and I think we see that reflected in our clothing.
You know, the clothes make the state of man
and they reflect the state of man.
So as man, both as human and as man,
the man versus the woman,
have been degraded and downgraded in society and culture.
So have clothes been degraded and downgraded
in culture as well.
And going back to chicken and egg descent,
decent is it your belief that by picking the low-hanging fruit of simply dressing better
you can begin to present better yourself and then create like a social awareness that creates a
positive feedback loop to get us out of this negative one absolutely 100 i mean we all know
something think about it with your think about your space if your space is super super messy
if your room is a total hellhole if it looks just absolutely awful you're gonna kind of be
scattered and he doesn't feel that good. You really don't. Nobody really feels better in a
crazy messy place. Everybody feels a little better when it's clean.
Every single guy I've met, I have never met a single guy ever
who started putting on decent clothes and who said I didn't notice any
difference in my mindset shift in how I approach my work and how I approach
my day and how I thought about myself.
Think about that. When you care about something, you prepare for it. Whether it's
a test, whether it's a holiday, whether it's seeing family, whether it's a date, you know,
if you're dating, whatever it is, you when you care about something, you prepare for it.
If you're not preparing for your day, you're just rolling out of bed in pajama pants on
a t shirt.
You don't really care about your day.
You don't really care about yourself.
You don't really care about how things are going.
And so without a doubt, when people make an active choice in cultivating, wearing something
that makes them feel, it's a very simple language, feel good, feel better. And I mean good. I don't
mean good. Like, yeah, it'd feel nice to lay in the hot tub all day and not work. That'd feel
pretty good too. But it's not actually good. That's just being lazy. When people wear something
that make them feel strong, competent, and confident, that trickles upward. They are strong,
confident, and competent, and they act in that way. And it's, like I said, it's a choice that
we make every day and every guy can make it there are what 400 million people in america it's
people in america if everybody started dressing a little better that it rises things it really does
there's this it not only in the appearance but also in the spirit and how you feel about what
you're doing yeah and just thinking it does seem like the who knows if it's internet culture the
combination of things but the reflection of what people are wearing on society what's reflecting
what probably really doesn't matter but you've seen this sort of degradation and civility yeah
oh yeah big time as well yeah this is this is such a good point i mean civility and manners are
related to dressing absolutely you know i mean what are i mean think about this you see and this
is tragic this is sad but nowadays it's people don't even dress up for funerals i know that
sounds crazy and i know that maybe if you're listening to this you've been to a funeral people
dressed up but i hear stories and people talk to me about stuff you know i do this for a living
people tell me i went to a funeral and people were wearing crocs you know like like like really i
mean so if you're not dressing up for that paying your respects literally i mean that's what you say
i'm paying my respects if you're not even dressing for that what are you doing when you're just going
anywhere going to the post office working going out to eat anywhere what does that say when you go
to someone's house and you look like you were just sleeping don't really respect them and so
we've seen that in the entire society every it's this lowering of respect this lowering of dignity
and decency and civility without a doubt clothing is a form of manners it's like a physical form of
manners without a doubt without a doubt yeah no my uh i guess my relationship to civility manners
clothing. It's been a bit of a meandering past throughout my life. I'm from Philadelphia
originally, but we moved to Charleston, South Carolina when I was younger, when I was about
nine. We lived there for four years and a Northeast Philly kid getting dropped in Charleston,
South Carolina with a weird accent and totally foreign and uncouth dialect.
was for my mother made the wise decision of sending me to Cotillion
right when we moved down there to learn basic manners
and how to pronounce water correctly.
It's something that I honestly still, even though it was Jesus
24, 25 years ago now, at this point,
I think I did two years at Cotillion, and the lessons I learned there about manners
and how to act in public still reflect, I like to think, on what I do to this day.
And I think I've become more passionate about this particular topic as I've gotten older,
more particularly since I've had children.
I've got two young boys, a third child on the way.
Wonderful. Congratulations.
Thank you.
And looking at the boys and thinking about what type of example I'm trying to set for them,
I think clothing is something that is becoming more obvious to me
as my boys try to reflect what I'm doing.
In terms of what they wear.
And I think it's very important.
Absolutely.
I mean, yeah, this is all connected.
This is all connected.
And so many people that I work with and so many guys that follow me, read me, talk to me, they start thinking about this when they start having kids often.
They start realizing, oh, my kids are going to look up to someone.
You know, your kids, your boys and girls will learn from their mother and your boys will learn from you what a dad looks like.
You know, I always think I remember my dad wearing my dad wasn't a clothes hound.
You know, he wasn't buying tons of super expensive stuff.
But he was just I mean, he was from a certain era where I mean, he would wear chinos, an Oxford shirt, maybe blazer, that kind of stuff to work.
And when I remember being a kid, I had to simply have this memory.
I remember thinking, well, that's how a dad looks.
A dad looks like that.
That's how a dad looks.
Because that's what my dad wore.
And now we're moving to this era where the dads don't even wear that.
Because us, our dads are a little older.
And they tend to dress a little bit better.
But now we're moving to this era where a lot of guys aren't picking up that mantle.
They're not showing their children or their boys how to dress like that.
Or how to have manners.
Or how to behave like little men who grow into big men.
And we're seeing a real, it's connected to manners, just like you said, it's connecting to how to be a good man.
It's connected to all this sort of stuff.
And we're seeing a lot of problems there, to be honest with you.
Yeah.
In terms of like fixing it, you mentioned your dad wasn't a clothes snob, but not dressed well.
I think that's something that is, how would I describe it?
It's a lazy excuse for dressing better.
It's too expensive.
You need a wide variety in the closet to do it well and to do it correctly.
Is this true?
No, not one bit.
Okay, let me see.
I'm going to pull up my watch here just to make a little demonstration.
Let's see.
Take my watch here.
So this watch is a very nice watch.
It looks very, very, it's this beautiful 1990s Timex.
When you wear this, you feel like Harrison Ford and the Fugitive.
It's very, very cool.
It's extremely classic.
I mean, it's just, this is classic style right here.
This was $19 on eBay.
$19.
It's from like 1994 or something before they did Indiglo.
It still works.
So that's not really expensive.
It looks pretty nice.
And same thing goes for, you know, I talked about, you can build a wardrobe.
That's a super extreme example, but you can build a wardrobe from thrift.
you can build a wardrobe just not from thrift but buying new pieces that are on sale a lot of people
that build wardrobes from thrift i mean it's so possible when i say thrift i mean thrift store
goodwill and ebay as well ebay is an insane source any guy who's into classic style actually i mean
we're talking as cheap as you want even guys who have money will buy stuff on ebay because there
are a lot of jackets that they don't make anymore you just cannot get them you know the meme that
we don't know how to make it anymore that we don't know how to do it so you can buy brooks
brothers jackets that i mean there are a few places make them but they're a thousand dollars
new versus 75 on ebay and so that's being that's going used but even if you don't go used even if
you go new you can there are places you can source shirts that are 50 bucks a little bit more that
are going to last you a decade or a little less same thing for pants same thing for shoes that
are 90 bucks that that is no no more expensive than whatever slop people are wearing but it's a
it's a conscious choice.
You make this conscious choice.
If you have,
if you have 50 K to spend on a wardrobe,
you can spend that.
If you've got one K to spend on a wardrobe,
you can spend that too.
And you can still look great.
I guarantee.
Let's,
that's such an issue.
This topic of quality,
because that's something that does perturb me as well.
Like I went to high school between 2005 and 2009.
I went to a prep school.
So I had to wear a jacket,
blazer,
shirt,
tie,
belt,
shoes,
all that.
And,
even since then, like 16 years since I graduated high school, it feels like you can't get the same
quality jackets specifically. Like I've, I've been, I've gotten a couple of suits and jackets
from suit supply. They look good, but the, the quality isn't that great. I mean, they degrade
pretty quickly. That's exactly right. Like, like with the Brooks thing, you buy a, I have Brooks
jackets that are from the sixties. I mean, that's, that's like 60 years old at this point. Yeah. I
I have jackets that are 60 to 75 years old.
65 years old, these jackets.
They hold up
just great They look basically brand new They don make them like they used to There is a big degradation in quality you know for polo shirts and guys wear polo shirts i always recommend honestly if someone like i gonna buy
i want to buy like a fleet of polo shirts playing tennis or something like that um i honestly
recommend going on ebay and buying an old pop a polaro floor and polo shirt from like 1995 or like
2001 rather than a new one because it seriously is it's a better weave the fabric is literally
better it's sewn better and it will last longer and so a big reason why people buy thrift is
actually to remedy this problem of uh quality and if you do want to get good quality there are
places to make good quality but the problem is that it's a premium now you know it's a real
premium there are some places that thread the needle that do real good stuff i'm really happy
with proper cloth i get a lot of stuff from them i have a partnership with them but again it's not
super cheap i mean you're getting a custom shirt and it's 150 bucks so i mean that's not super
cheap. But it's a problem. This quality is a problem. And this is why a lot of people do
thrift. This is why I do thrift for a lot of stuff. It's because you can get better quality.
Do you see the potential for that to reverse
it all? Because there obviously has to be a spot in the market for more quality.
It is frustrating. Absolutely. It's not like we forgot the technology.
I mean, you can do it. You can build better stuff. You can make better stuff.
There are good makers. You see people leading the way. You have to lead the way.
Jack Donnelly, I love Jack Donnelly's pants.
He makes these amazing, made in the USA, high-rise chinos.
They're unbelievable.
They're just hardcore, old-school, great.
A little pricier, but you have to have people leading the front, leading the charge.
You have to incentivize better quality that's not made in a cheap factory in China or wherever and make it in the USA is ideally better, I think.
Yeah.
yeah it's a how much does fast fashion and economic incentives have to do with this
oh big time big time big time if you're only gonna if you're only gonna wear if something
is only going to be in style for four months you build it for four months you make it last
four months and you stitch it together with garbage thread and that's it but classic style
timeless style traditional style you're supposed to wear it forever i mean you can wear it your
entire life a navy blazer you get a nice navy blazer you can wear it for a decade really decades
same thing for oxford shirts so they're designed to last a long time and so this reflects a different
cultural sentiment different values you know people have crunched the numbers on this and
seen how much people spent on clothes in the old days 30s or something like that they spent more
per shirt and they had fewer shirts but they lasted longer i mean this is odd we all know this
but people have really done the numbers on it, that that's just what it was.
I've been told that taste is subjective, though.
How could fashion be timeless?
Right.
The way I put it is this.
So let's think about it this way.
There are different style worlds.
So because I run into this a lot.
For example, there's an Italian style.
There's different schools.
If we talk about classic style, when I say classic style, let's break it all.
Let's go all the way back down.
classic style in an american sense and in a western sense in the most broad terms imaginable
are it's a pair of shoes with a pair of pants a shirt and a jacket over it and possibly something
around your neck that is something that's a formula that has been in the western canon for
centuries really that that is a very now it's changed you know at different times it was more
it was loose around here. You know, it was bigger on here at different times. It was smaller
in a very micro sense. We saw there, there were errors where ties got skinny, you know,
like the mid century, then they got wider, then they got skinnier again, they go back and forth.
And when it comes to that stuff, if you stay around, this is a little insider baseball,
but if you keep your, uh, tie at the widest point, if you buy ties that are around 3.25 inches at the
widest point, you'll be right in the middle and you'll basically never be super cool or super out
style you'll be right up the gut right in the middle but this general thing shoes pants a shirt
jacket and maybe something on your neck this is the formula that has been in the western canon for
centuries and so what i focus on and what i deal with in sorry i should say one other thing there
are various schools like the italian school french school english school these have different
styles they have different little details that are different in terms of their neckwear their shirts
It's what you do and you do not do.
But what I focus on is American style and classic American style, modern American style, meaning in the 20th century.
Since, you know, after we're getting into the early 1900s and moving forward to today.
And that is Ivy style and preppy style is basically the heart and core of that.
And that has essentially a set of not necessarily rules, but a presumption of how man looks best.
And so that timeless style taps into those centuries old format that I described within its own niche of American rules and guidelines and sensibilities.
Yeah.
Makes sense.
Yeah, it does. And it's funny, you mentioned architecture earlier, and that's part of the reason, not part of the reason, but again, being from Philly, we recently moved back to the Philadelphia area from Texas.
And no matter where I went, I lived in South Carolina, beautiful architecture, Chicago, beautiful architecture, New York, beautiful architecture.
But there's something about the stone builds in the Philadelphia area that really beckon to me.
And that is timeless.
Like these are centuries old houses.
And they're authentically American too.
You feel that American sensibility, you know, they're timeless.
There is this Americanness.
A very American thing is the button down collar is a very American thing.
British will do it too.
And other places will do it too.
But it is a distinctly, it really has come to embody something about American style, the
Oxford cloth button down, the OCBD and specifically a tie with this.
You know, a lot of times the Europeans, they don't do that.
They say you don't wear a tie with a button-down collar.
But in America, that's like a hot dog on the 4th of July, you know, wearing a tie with a button-down collar.
And this is an interesting thing where it is classic in the American sense and is authentically American.
What do you say to people who try to besmirch the comfortableness of dressing well?
It's not comfortable.
It's a lie.
It's a total lie.
This is the problem.
I understand where they're coming from with that.
this is largely born from the slim fit era.
So most of the guys,
so I'll address two things.
I assume this is coming from guys first.
So I'll address it coming from guys.
They are a legitimate gripe that they may be having.
And I'll tell you about the illegitimate gripe second,
but legitimate gripe is the slim fit era did stink for comfortability.
It really did stink.
You know,
you had the something that was kind of a little in the early to that,
maybe 2008 ish,
seven ish.
I mean, people can like quibble back and forth about the exact times, but it started dying out maybe two years ago.
And so we are on the downswing of it.
Some people are still doing it because they aren't aware of where we're moving, but we're dying away from it.
And the slim fit area, you had shirts that were just super tight.
The pants were super tight.
The suits were really undersized.
You know, people could barely even button their jacket.
I mean, barely button their jacket.
And that was what looked good was this really ultra slim thing.
it's very uncomfortable it's extremely uncomfortable i mean on the thighs you sit
down it's just rip on your skin you know it's not it's not comfortable and so that is a legitimate
gripe that is not comfortable stuff to wear and so if you're wearing clothes that are too small
it's not uncomfortable the illegitimate gripe is that a lot of guys just sort of have like a fetish
with comfort they're just sort of whiners to you know they're just whining about anything that is
that is not a pair of fleece pajama pants or whatever they're made of in a hoodie.
And I'm not going to argue with them and tell you that,
tell them that a five-year-old pair of tacky chinos and a 10-year-old Oxford shirt
that's been worn in that feels super soft is more comfortable than what they're wearing.
Because that might be a subjective argument.
But I would say comfort is not what you should worship.
And there is this sort of turning comfort into an idol.
Yeah, it can become gluttonous at a point, right?
For sure.
Exactly.
Absolutely.
It's like sitting in the hot tub.
I would love to sit in the hot tub all day and just respond on my phone to work.
But what is that?
Yeah.
I succumb to it, too.
In the mid-2010s, living in New York, trying to work in tech.
I think tech really drove that leisurely look at the workplace.
For sure.
praise that's taken over and i don't know i feel better now that i'm beginning to and it's simple
the small acts i've taken is like try to wear a shirt with a collar or or an oxford just
especially during the summer down here like even on the beach it's like my beach shirts are either
like an oxford or a golf shirt yeah these days it's just simple thing so simple so easy it's no
more difficult it's no more difficult to do that and what would you say to people like i'm saying
that in the back of my head i'm thinking i got i hope i don't sound like a snob to people and i
think that's another sort of factor in this acceptance of leisure wear becoming normalized
is i think partly driven by woke culture which had this northeast prep aesthetic in squarely
in the bullseye of the target that that is culturally for for many decades and i think
there's just this um attempt to the avoid that aesthetic because you don't want to be put in
in the middle of the boys a bullseye of the target of the social sort of ire that will culture has
really really been driving absolutely 100 this is that the style i focus on is literally that exact
style you know ivy prep i'm that is american style you know that is you know i always say
what is it um the the 20th century american man was made in the image of brooks brothers
and then for florin ralph florin worked at brooks brothers so all this flows down from there
um and from the prep schools as well jay price is another one but really brooks brothers was
20th century man was made in the image of brooks brothers and so this woke culture absolutely
targets, I mean, that is right in the heart of it, because it is American style, it is authentic
American style. And it is this, it has a decided history in America, a clear history, it's not just
a commercial phenomenon. And it is also beyond just the historical stuff, what does and beyond
it just being American, and being Western, it's also makes men strong. You know, what culture
wants us all to be extremely weak, ultimately, you know, it's a victim thing. It's a weak thing.
It wants to make everyone blend together. You know, athleisure is androgynous clothing,
really, you know, a man wearing a tie and a woman wearing heels. I mean, those are the thing I love
about the tie and the heels, or the jacket and the dress is that they are these extreme things
that really embody or are a reflection of their being a man or being a man or being a woman.
And so when you take those things away, you flatten everyone into Crocs like idiocracy and then everybody into the pajama pants.
It is instead of exacerbating the forms of man and woman, it tries to form them together.
And so you see this lessening of the forms of man and woman.
And that is also a really deep problem of woke culture.
That's what they go after.
They really want to destroy all those forms.
yeah well let's dive into the necktie specifically i mean it's part of your
your handle on x salvaged why why is the necktie worth salvaging so it's really funny so the name
necktie salvage actually came from when i first started talking about all this and everything
originally what i would do with a lot of guys is i would tailor their neckties so they'd have
these old neckties that are like at four inches at width the widest point down there and they
would want to bring them in a little bit they don't bring them to 3.5 inches 3.25 inches and so
i would tailor them because i do a lot of my own alterations of tailoring as well so that's actually
where the original name necktie salvage came from was literally salvaging these old neckties
but why is the necktie worth um yeah like it's a good idea i've got a tie right here okay so why
i'm not wearing a tie right now because it is very hot in summer and summer is more casual season
for me. I wear a tie basically probably in the winter, fall and spring, maybe 75, 80% of work
days. But in the summer, I live in right on Lake Michigan, the town where I live. So it's kind of
resorty. It's holiday. It's fun. So I'm a little more informal. But why is the necktie worth saving?
First of all, it's something women don't wear. It is a male exclusive garment, really.
And someone can say, I've seen a picture of a woman wearing it as a waitress in 1980.
Yeah, I don't care.
I'm not talking about that.
It is a male garment.
So it is a garment that is only ours.
And a removal of that means the removal of something that is distinctly male.
Another thing is, you know, the necktie is about personality.
I mean, it's not only the fabric or the design.
This is a 1990s Polaroid Florin.
And I love these geometrics.
They're just so 90s.
It's hard to describe why that's so 90s, but it is.
It's so good.
And I love these.
And beautiful silk, too.
But what the necktie is also is it's a personal flair that isn't only based on the fabrics.
It's not only based on the patterns.
It's based on the fact that, you know, you tie it around.
It is, in a certain sense, not utilitarian.
You're not using it for anything.
It doesn't serve a purpose.
It's just to look like something.
It's just for the aesthetic itself.
And there's a joy in that.
You know, there's a joy in I'm cultivating a personal style.
I am looking a certain way and it doesn't have a purpose.
And it's a domain of expression, even in how you tie it.
You know guys like me who are kind of more into this sort of stuff will tie it all sorts of weird ways We tie it a little messy We tie the skinny end longer than the fat end And if you never like encountered that stuff you like what the heck
That's wrong.
But it has to do with this thing, Sprezzatura, where you're sort of intentionally doing things that are a little wrong, but not in such an obvious way.
It's a whole thing to sort of, it's like a elegant sort of nonchalance.
the point is the necktie is an aspect of personal style and fun and experience and our clothes have
become very dour almost i mean if you look at it like the black or gray athleisure is very dour
compared to someone wearing a tie with a striped shirt and a jacket yeah i must admit i've uh i've
gotten away from the necktie outside of formal events in recent years and it's it is uh because
another, going back to like routine, which you mentioned
earlier, like being intentional to set your day.
That's one thing, because the necktie
like pop your collar, throw it
around and you're looking in the mirror doing
it and oftentimes
before your jacket, the last thing you put on
you step out and you're like having a conversation
with yourself and visualizing
manifesting potentially
if you will, like part of that process
and routine, I think
is just good for
developing that confidence and
more importantly
like having a conversation with yourself.
I don't know if that's coming off weird, but.
No, it isn't.
It is not coming off weird at all.
I mean, that routine in a way, getting ready,
getting dressed as a man in that necktie,
put it in the last thing you'd put on for your jacket.
It's like a secular morning ritual.
There's like a modern male secular, secular morning, morning ritual.
And when I say modern, I'm not saying modern 2025.
I'm saying modern and the modernist era, you know?
So it's like, it is almost a secular morning ritual
and you're preparing for your day.
and there is something about the tighter it's tight there and then it explodes out essentially
you know it's this tight knot and then it's loose and there's there's a certain element of strong
preparation with it yeah what do you suggest people should read if they're interested about
this outside of your sub stack but their books is there yeah sort of jumping off points for people
who may listen to this be like i want to dig into this obviously read the sub stack necktie salvage
and but are there books about this these topics yeah there is so there's a couple things so i'm
actually working on two books right now gosh i have so much i'm doing and it's like i have all
these books i'm i need to just do get one out but one of them is um essentially why do clothes matter
you know just like why does this matter why does this matter the other one is basically like a very
beginner's guide the idiot's guide kind of in a certain sense step one i'm building from the base
up you know when we build our order we build like a pyramid and so i'm writing this book that it's
just getting guys started this is what you need boom boom this is how you build it up but apart
from that which will be coming out there for me in my my work apart from that there's something
that would be good would be something like bruce boyer's true style um bruce boyer has a book true
out and he it's very good it's american you know because a lot of these something that can be
difficult with some of these books is they're either european which is totally okay but we it's
like a different language you know french is a different language than english you know so
they're just different languages and and or they're often a little formal just a little more
formal which is cool but a lot of guys don't wear formal clothes every day and so what you really
need or what we need, most guys need, is how do you start dressing with intention without
wearing a suit every day?
And so Bruce Boyer does err a little bit on the more formal side.
So you're going to have that.
And I'm trying to fill that gap when I come out with something.
It'll fill that gap.
But that's who I would recommend for an American is check out Bruce Boyer's true style.
All right.
I got to pick that up.
It's good.
What are your thoughts on Gen Z?
Do you have hope for Gen Z in terms of increasing civility?
And to be fair, I run another show.
We had a Gen Z month where we noticed that our demographics of our audience trended.
It's like 35 to 40.
Our core demo is like 35 to 65-year-old males, and we have no Gen Zs watching us.
And so we reached out to some in the Bitcoin space.
We're like, come on, we need the Gen Z perspective.
And it certainly did change my perspective.
You obviously can't lump one generation and think that all of them act the same way,
though they do have certain cultural sort of similarities to the era they grew up in.
But to me, before that series and the good Gen Zers that we had on the show,
the whole culture is just driven by the high-velocity trash economy,
a streaming culture sort of supreme style street wear.
Yeah.
And not even, like a lot of them just wear sweatpants
and sit at the computer and talk.
And they have insane amounts of influence on their
and other Gen Z individuals.
And it's like, how do we turn the tide there?
Is there a way?
Really good question.
It's a really, really good question.
this is, I know the zoomers, I can't get a handle on the zoomers.
You know, I hope for the zoomers. I want the zoomers.
Cause the zoomers are the future. We've got the zoomers.
We've got them a living, you know, they're the future.
I know a couple of good zoomers, a couple of good zoomers and they're great.
They're super, super great, but I know they're unique.
I know they're very unique for the mass,
mass amount of zoomers.
the only way i don't know how to change them with this because they do they look like slop
i i think that there is a certain disconnect with the way that they understand the world
emotionally because they grew up with interacting with the technology technological world different
than us so i think that they do have a certain sort of different emotional calibration um because
of their interaction with the tech world. And we didn't have that. I'm 38. And so I didn't have a
cell phone until I went to college. And I was T9. And I was T9. And so we grew up with dial-out.
And my friends had dial-out until I left. Their internet is still really bad because they live in
the middle of nowhere. So I think that there is this different emotional thing. Their emotions
are calibrated differently in this way. And I'm not saying better or worse, but just differently.
and in a certain sense I don't know if they respond to incentives in the same way older
generations do and so what that means is I don't know how the hell to change a lot of them um
now granted I don't know how to change a lot of millennials either um but what I would say is that
so I'm not only dumping on the zoomers um I think that the ones there are zoomers who are searching
and wanting for more and I think that they do not like what they see I think they're very self-aware
and I think and again I know some of them follow me and I think that though I think that we're
going to see maybe a separation of the zoomers and well we might see it's not gonna be 50 50 it's
I'm going to be $1.99.
It's more like $0.199.
But I think that you will see, or we do have a, there's a very good element.
There's a very good clan of Zoomers, but they're pretty far and few between.
And I think that those people, though, resonate.
Do we need to bring back public shaming?
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, this is the thing.
I mean, if you really want to get real about it, you can't actually change this stuff voluntarily
because people will always choose the easier route.
This is just kind of like a nature of human.
This is like a thing of human nature.
People don't want to be better.
You can't have to make them be better.
You have to kind of punish them in a way,
make it worse to look bad.
I mean, that's what people dressed well back in the old days.
It wasn't because they were like,
oh my gosh, I'm reading all this style stuff.
No, they just like, if I look like crap,
I'm not getting a job.
If I look really bad, I'm not getting a girl.
If I look really, really bad,
my dad's going to kick me out of the house or something.
You know, just like you were like ostracized.
You look bad.
Like if you looked bad, people weren't going, your life was worse if you looked bad.
And so if we make it so your life is worse, if you look bad, people will dress better.
It's just incentives, you know?
So now is it possible to do that?
I don't know.
I don't have a lot of hope.
I mean, how are we going to do that?
I mean, you know.
Are country clubs the last bass in the last line to hold?
And from what I understand, they're even getting lax in some of their dress codes as well.
some of them yeah you know i think that it is and i've also i think within law you see the same
thing i i have a lot of lawyer friends and they say it's really um declined in law it used to be
pretty formal but around maybe i'll have to check these dates but some of these guys yeah back in
the 2000s early 2000s even into like 2008 2010 guys were wearing suits you know that was the thing
but then it's really declined and yeah for court if you're going to trial and stuff or if you're
in court you have to wear a suit still but everyone i know who's a lawyer says it's gotten a lot worse
even though it's still the last bastion is still holding a little bit and it makes sense because
it's a very formal profession but since covid they've really accelerated downward too i do think
that there is a future where people do start basically requiring things in their restaurants.
Not a lot. They're not saying a jacket, but know this, you know, know this kind of like I've seen
stores saying no dogs. We don't allow dogs in here, you know, because they're just sick of the
dog thing. You could see people saying, I mean, it's a long way off, maybe 20 years or something,
but you might see nice places saying you have to wear a shirt with a collar.
and eventually that could you know kids hate what their parents did so maybe you could see
kids hating their slot parents you never know you know you know that is uh i don't know it
docks my exact location this may do it to anybody who uh knows the area well but there is a bar
in the little island towns that i live on in the summer that if you try to walk in there without a
collar shirt they kick you out no hats love that that's awesome i mean i mean if this could change
it could change on the private level like that where we're not i don't think because this is the
thing and i'm not blaming anybody for this because i'm not going to be walking up to people saying
hey put on a collar shirt like on the street i'm not going to be going up to people criticizing
them on the street from what they're wearing but if you have establishments that have rules posted
on the door where then the only people the people serving say i'm just enforcing the rules
if you did see a move toward that you would see an inching toward people dressing a little better
but that does involve some sort of compulsion you know it involves and you cannot go here
unless you wear that yeah and it doesn't people no if you if a group of us i mean i don't do it
that much anymore though i've got children but back in the day when before kids if we knew we
were going to that bar it's like all right take off the hat put on the college shirt yeah and
get like even if you're going to another spot before that if you know you want to ultimately
end up there it's like i gotta look good you gotta look good and that's people only respond to that
they're not going to do it voluntarily now the people who follow me do it voluntarily but
it's a very i mean this is just a small percentage of people i mean most people and i'm not i'm not
even saying this in some sort of cruel way but i think human nature a lot of our human nature is
to choose the easiest route you know that's just who we are you know we need guide you know we need
guides to tell us what to do kind of and so um we'll choose the easiest way unless you're an
extremely high spirit person who will choose the you know a better way and so yeah i mean
slow movements like that if we were to see that that would change stuff and coupled with other
stuff yeah and yeah that could change the culture but as for gen z how to target them specifically
i don't know they they respond to incentives in weird ways and i'm not sure how to understand them
yeah no actually yeah sure you're aware of zuby on on x he posted uh a newsletter this morning
about 10 uh or 10 lessons or 12 lessons um for for generation z men specifically and i read it
and it's really good and i think one thing that is missing from our culture also that contributes
to this is like the lack of mentorship um i was just gonna say that i knew where you were going
I could tell where you were going with this.
A lot of these guys grew up with no fathers.
They grew up with fathers, not showing them the way.
And they don't know what the hell to do.
They don't know what the hell to do.
A lot of guys, because I do think some of the best Gen Z, they just want someone to tell them what to do.
Some of them.
Some of the best Gen Z realize, wow, we are cooked as a generation.
We didn't learn anything.
Tell me what to do.
There is a group of that where they're like, is this what I do?
Okay, that's what I do.
And I think some of them didn't have dads showing them this sort of stuff.
and that's a failure of mentorship.
Yeah.
Now I'm thinking like,
I obviously have my children,
I am their father mentor,
if you will,
but like how to do it.
Like we,
we have a lot of young people
that work for us here.
I'm the oldest at the company
and there's,
we've got a couple of new contractors
that we've done a lot of work with
and they're,
I think 19 and 17.
It's been fun.
sort of like interacting with with them yeah and uh not not calling myself a mentor for them it's
something intentionally when we're going into meetings like how do i present myself and sometimes
i forget like i'm like to think of myself as a kid at heart like i think of who i was a high school
and college student like late years i like to think i still have that youthful spirit but more
recently is particularly interacting with these individuals in a professional setting it's like
well, I'm like an older gentleman to them.
I had to present like that.
Yeah.
Like you're the giga chat in the boardroom meme.
I just sent that out last night.
I said, this is how I feel.
These guys, and yeah, like 17.
I mean, you're twice as old.
Like I'm twice as old as a guy who's 17.
Like I could, like that, he could be my son.
Like if I had kids, like I'm 38.
If I had kids at the right time, that's old enough.
I could be my son And so it interesting taking that on And I think a lot of something that like you said you feel like a kid at heart often and you feel like yeah I still feel like I learning so
much because we always learn so much in our lives. But then we also, I think sometimes don't realize
our skills compared to others, especially young people. And like, holy cow, they don't know this
stuff. I'm sure you run into this all the time. I'm talking to someone and I assume they know what
I'm talking about. I assume that they're already starting there. Like, I don't know the first five
steps of what you're talking about. You know, and you're like, oh my gosh, wow. Like they don't,
they've never heard someone say you,
it is good to wear a shirt with a collar.
It is better to dress nice.
They've never heard that simple statement.
They've never heard that.
And so sometimes I think in almost understanding our old head status,
it's almost realizing that they don't know everything we know and not in a
patronizing way, but in a,
maybe it's our job to kind of show them more or something.
Yeah, no, it's funny.
I got a,
as we're discussing this,
I'm getting notifications on my phone and I'm in a group chat with a bunch of
old head surfers and they're just talking about the swell.
It's like little things like that,
like growing up on this Island and surfing with old heads and they're
teaching you not only how to surf,
but where to look and stuff like that.
We're like,
and now they were my mentor in the surfing world.
And now we're in group chat talking about where we're going to go surf a
week from the swell comes.
And that's how it works.
That's how it's supposed to work.
You know?
Yeah.
That's fun.
we need to bring we really need to bring how did you get into this that's what i'm like how did
this become your your focus and your passion and your life you know i started writing about style
really primarily um when i had kids i i had kids and i just thought to myself i was like
i realized how bad the world looked you know i wrote how bad everything looked and i and i
I kind of want to make a difference basically. And I thought like,
I can do something. I feel useless if I'm not trying to impact a better,
make a better world for him in a certain sense. You know,
and I want to have a son first. I have a daughter as well.
But I had a son first and I'm like,
I'm not doing anything to make his world better. I can try to teach him,
but like I want to make some sort of change almost, you know?
And so then I started talking about this and writing about this and,
and I talk about other stuff too, you know? And I,
And all of the things I write about often I write about are,
I try to only say things that I would want my kids encountering when they were 20.
You know, because I think about what all these other guys are encountering online.
They're 20, 21, 22.
You know what I mean?
All the stuff that is not so great.
And I think like, what would I want my kids to encounter
if they were sort of not knowing what to do in their 20s, you know?
Yeah.
You're just exciting more thoughts about Chen Z.
My dating call.
Like, do you think the style of Gen Z has anything to do with this problem in dating culture that exists now?
Yeah.
I mean, nobody looks good.
My wife and I walk around the store and we're seeing these like, we see these kids.
When I walk around the store, we see these kids, they're like obviously in college.
The guys and girls look like absolute crap.
They look so bad.
And we're like, this is when you are supposed to be looking your best.
You should be looking your best.
You have the most to work with in your entire life at this point.
And you are looking like guys and girls alike.
You're looking absolutely terrible.
You're, you are not looking attractive to the opposite sex.
You're not sexually enticing to them.
And that's how it works.
I don't want to tell you, you know, and if you're just looking like you don't care.
Well, that like, I think one of the, and who knows if this is wide ranging, I assume it is,
but he knows how you're being manipulated by videos you see on X.
But the girl is saying like,
nobody's walking up to me.
I don't think men have confidence to do that.
Like it's a partly because they look like shit.
Yeah,
dude.
Yes.
If you look like shit,
you're not going to approach a girl.
And that gets back to just what we said at the very beginning of this.
It sets your day on this confident.
It's a,
when you get ready,
you are more confident.
You're more competent.
You feel stronger.
All this sort of stuff.
When you feel like crap,
You're not going to have the stones to go approach some girl, to go talk to some girl because you feel like crap.
And who knows?
I've heard someone else say this.
I don't know who it was.
But it's like you never know when you might meet the girl who could be your wife.
You know?
And so if you're dressed like a dress for – if you are single, you should be dressing good, looking good because any girl that you might – that might be the one.
You know?
And the other thing about the dress – about clothes too is that there's all these ways you can look at it.
You can look at it in a very moral, religious way.
You can look at it in a very sort of like just let's get going way, a very professional way.
And you can look at it in a very just brass tacks.
How do I approach a girl so I can meet a girl?
Or how can I look attractive to a girl?
You can look for it for romance too.
I need to meet girls.
I need to meet a girl.
I need to get married.
You can look at it in a really brass tacks way.
And what I try often with my message of clothing is I try to spread those messages out because we're all at different stages in life.
Us, we have kids.
We're talking about how to show our boys how to dress or our kids how to dress.
The guy who's 23 is trying to meet girls.
He needs to dress decent so the girl doesn't say, you look like an idiot.
It's the same thing for the girl, by the way.
She used to be looking good and sound like an idiot.
Yeah.
this is uh why do you think there's not enough discussion around this topic too because it seems
like you said it's it's how you look it's how you perceive it's very primal almost to a sense but
something that has been neglected yes i don't why is there a lot of not not discussion about this i
think that there's two things there's one side of things where people are there's some people who
very, very traditional. And they're already on a very traditional track. You know, there's people
who are very, very conservative and very religious and very traditional. And if they're in that world,
like really in that world, they're not comfortable talking about sexual attraction in the same way.
So they're talking in these more like biblical sort of ways. Then the other people are so
degenerated and they don't want anybody to tell them to do anything or try. And they're too lazy.
They just want to complain about the woman just wants to complain about men suck. Men just want
complain about the fact that women suck no one wants to try to actually get anything done that
they don't want to talk about it you know but then you do have the sliver of guys who are not like
that and i assume a sliver of girls who are not like that as well though i don't know because i
don't talk to girls about this it's i'm talking about guys but uh i think that that's kind of why
there's like this one group that they think you should focus on other things you know
the other group they're too lazy yeah well i'm happy you're focusing on it because i do think
you and many others, I'm sure you've noticed that there's been this resurgence
of aesthetic accounts on
Twitter in recent years, often associated
with conservative individuals, but I don't
think dressing well is a political thing.
For some reason, the aesthetic
accounts are more associated with conservative ideals, which
It makes sense because people want to return to traditionalist mindset.
There's nothing inherently horse race political about dressing decently.
It's civilizational.
I think you make an argument.
Like I said, you can talk about this all these different ways.
You make an argument that the tribe in the far-flung island wears loincloths because they're not civilized.
I mean, that's not, I'm not saying to be like cruel, but that's just like, they're not a civilized thing. We have civilization. And so dressing decent is a form of civilization and a participation in civilization. And so if there's this sensibility that left woke, whatever is trying to tear down civilization, then conservative, conservative traditionalist will be the sort of trying to push the aesthetic around.
something I like about clothes and I do like about clothes so much is that it requires action
daily you know a lot of people will it's one thing to post a picture of a beautiful building
and not be an architect but just like it it's another to put on your clothes and walk out into
the world and it really influenced the world make the world more beautiful on your own you know when
you do that you are making the world more beautiful you are taking action to do that
and that is a fulfilling thing an important thing and that's what i really like about clothes it
requires that action every day it's not just one thing it's constantly doing it and you're all
always participating in the beautification of the world and influencing other guys yeah
is that action start the night before like do you know what you're going to wear when you wake up or
is it uh an explorative uh sort of practice in the mornings for me um it's all in the morning i don't
do anything the night before i and you know it takes me like two minutes to get ready in the
morning. I mean, once you have your wardrobe set, I just know exactly. I was like, boom, boom, boom.
I got it. You know, I just know what I'm wearing. People imagine that I'm spending like a lot of
time thinking about it, but it's really everything locks into place because I know what I'm doing.
But for me, it's in the morning. I dress for how I feel in the morning for what the weather is,
not just the temperature, but also if it's gray, I'm going to wear darker colors. You know,
I'm going to wear it. Even if it's summer, if it's like a sort of gray, rainy day,
I'll wear a darker madras
you know a madras is a sort of a plaid
set on a very very thin cotton
I'll wear a really dark madras
I'm not going to wear
say a pink
like a pink stripe like a pink university stripe
short sleeve oxford shirt on a rainy day
but I might on a sunny day
and I'll wear on a sunny day
and so I'll wear what I'll change what I wear based on the weather
and so I do it in the morning
alright I need to
hand up accountability
I need to fix my morning routine.
It's not as intentional as maybe it should be.
It feels good for me.
I mean, listen, it makes me feel.
There's so much chaos.
You got kids.
How old are your kids?
Five and three.
Okay.
Same for me.
Okay.
So I know where you're coming from.
It's a lot of chaos.
It keeps me.
It keeps me, it's 30 minutes of order that gets it going on the day.
Right.
Yeah.
I saw your tweet the other day about having the morning coffee before the family woke up.
That's the state I would like.
When I do have those mornings, it is incredibly impactful on the rest of the day.
Yes.
It's the hour of the father.
The hour of the father of the bar.
Yeah.
this is uh well thank you for doing what you're doing honestly and i'm not trying to blow smoke
up your butt but honestly i think just simply by posting on x you've had a positive influence not
only myself but many others um to really appreciate trying to look better to to raise
a higher higher bar for civilization i i really appreciate that i mean that really means a lot
for you to say i'm serious like to me that's what it's about to make a positive difference you know
and in a real way, in a way that is scalable.
And when I hear about guys who say, wow, like this really, I get it now.
And when I see that positive growth, it just,
the world can feel like we can't control a lot of it.
And there is a lot that we can't control.
And maybe we're dissatisfied with something that's going on or whatever.
Well, we have to realize what we can control.
What's our sphere of influence?
And a lot of that starts with what's on our body.
It starts right here.
It's really close.
So let's start there and then we can make other impacts.
And that's the way – because you know I tweet about style and then I tweet about other stuff that is somewhat related.
It's about modern life and all sorts of all of this.
And we have to start where we are.
And we can make a difference in that way and make a difference for ourselves and others.
Because something that we don't realize is if you dress nice, you wearing this shirt, this Oxford shirt, you're wearing a collar shirt.
You don't know.
Because think about it.
You could walk into the store and a guy who's 15, 16, 19, see and say, that looks really nice.
I never really see people wear that as much anymore.
I want to wear that.
And he's never going to tell you.
You're never going to know.
He's never going to say that to you.
But you influenced him.
You influenced him in a positive way.
And when I realized that, I realized people don't always tell you that you influence them.
And this is where dressing decently can not only benefit your life, but even others who don't even talk to you.
And you'll never know it.
but that's how influence sort of fans out in a positive way.
I think completely agree.
Think about it.
Anybody listening to the stress better,
uh,
to set a positive influence out there,
but I'll be working.
Uh,
anybody listening to this,
find out more about what you're doing,
schedule a consultation potentially.
Absolutely.
Oh yeah.
I love doing competitions.
I love working with guys,
working with guys individually is such a,
it's so awesome because you see,
I love getting guys started on their style journey and then seeing them develop
their personal style, teaching them the fundamentals and seeing them grow and then circle back after
two years, see where they are. And it's just, wow, what a difference. It's just amazing.
So where you can find me is first of all on X, Necktie Salvage is my username. You can find me
on Instagram, Necktie Salvage as well. There's a link tree in my bio on X with a link to a bunch
of stuff to the fitting room, which is my sub stack, which is my sub stack where I write about
style and a link to everything else my dms are open for consultation my the real place where you
can find me for everything is on substack instagram and twitter and on twitter there'll be a link in
the link tree with a link to everything where you can find me and contact me and read what i have to
say about style and i send out a morning memo every single day or every single weekday uh short
little bits to get you going to give you ideas to get you to guide you slowly over time because it's
a long process i mean you can't understand everything you need to know about style in
two days you know but drawing it out helps so that's where you can find me x next i salvage
instagram link tree the bio there that'll give you a link to everything else
go check it out thank you for doing this and thank you for uh thank you for engaging me as
i'm sweating profusely in front of you it's uh what temperatures are there man what it's 90 degrees
I like the heat though
the thing is
it's actually pretty warm here
let me see what it is right here
oh man, Northern Michigan
it's pretty divine
it's 77
I'm going to go to the beach
like right after this
I'm going to the beach
so no, it's a nice day here
yeah, well
enjoy the beach
thank you so much
for your time
and what you're doing
hopefully we can do this again
at some point in the future
thank you for having me
it was such a pleasure
such a joy
such an awesome conversation
and I would love to do it again
alright
That's all today's freaks.
Peace and love.