Put This On

MyHabit Comes Into Its Own

In the wake of the quick growth of the flash sale site Gilt, many competitors sprang up. Gilt had secured relationships with many great companies, and generally had a good sense of what brands to align themselves with, so the first year or so was rough for these other guys. There was a lot of Nautica sales, in other words.

Recently, though, I’ve noticed that Amazon’s offering, MyHabit, has started to offer some great discounts on great brands. Today, for example, they’re offering E. Tautz, Luciano Barbera, Pringle and Jil Sander. Of course, they’re also (literally) offering Nautica, so the range of quality is broad, but it’s absolutely worth taking note. In the same time period, Gilt’s strength has weakened - their discounts feel smaller, their brand quality less consistent, the proportion of their offerings that are re-listings increased dramatically.

Many of the items on MyHabit are on significant discount - in a sale called “The Gentleman’s Essentials,” they’ve got Incotex trousers for $49, and many of the Luciano Barbera items were as much as 80 or 90% off. Nothing to sneeze at.

If you haven’t tried MyHabit, it might be worth signing up to get their sale announcements. I’ve been grateful to The Silentist and This Fits for their posts about good sales, but I think I’ll pay more attention to my inbox going forward. Do the same, and you might catch a great brand at great prices.

(A quick note: when we link to these sites, we usually use referral links when we remember because hey, why not, but frankly the benefit for us is pretty marginal and doesn’t affect our editorial decisions.)

$165 suit doesn’t get much better than this. Good work, Aliotsy!

thisfits:

Trust me to ruin the most amazing and otherworldy lighting I’ve ever seen in my backyard with a robot pose and a funny expression.*

Suit is a Lands’ End Tailored Fit Cotton-Linen Blend (jacket, trousers). I’ve kinda waffled on keeping it—it’s got an excellent open weave and perfect off-the-rack shoulder fit and jacket length, but the armholes seem rather low.

A string of 100+° F days convinced me that it’s a handy thing to have around for Sundays when I wear suits. And it’s hard to argue with the price ($165 shipped, with promo code DEVOTION, PIN 5580). So I’m keeping it.

* No Photoshop here, other than a bit of curve adjustment around my torso to bring out the jacket’s details.

thisfits:

Would you guys be willing to gut check me on something?

This is the jacket from a suit I recently purchased. Thoughts on fit? You can disregard the sleeves, as they’re unfinished.

For what it’s worth, the camera is at a low angle, about belly button level.

I think this jacket is a good lesson on fit. I am hardly the world’s top expert on the subject, and certainly it is a matter of taste, but I think there is some valuable information I can offer.

The sleeves look like they’re about the right length. Your jacket sleeves should end at your wrist joint, and your shirt about a quarter to a half inch below that.

The shoulders are tough to see from this angle. They may be slightly wide, as you can see a little bit of buckling around the armpits, but they look about right.

The length of this coat is short. There are two basic shortcuts to arrive at the “proper” length for a coat. The first is that the jacket should cover your rear. The second is that your relaxed hands should roughly be able to “cup” the end of the coat. In other words, with your arms relaxed it should reach around the second knuckle. The current fashion is for a slightly short coat, but unless you’re very thin, this can throw the proportions off and make you look heavier than you are. I see heavier (not even actually heavy, just not very skinny) guys on blogs wearing short coats and looking less than good all the time - the guys who pull it off well tend to have very straight, flat bodies.

The greatest problem with this coat, though, is the buttoning point. The buttoning point of a jacket anchors it, and it should be just a bit above the waist. Imagine the front of the jacket as an “X” converging on the center button - that should be right around the belly button, or perhaps an inch or two above.  The buttoning point on this jacket is around the sternum, nearly to the armpit, which makes for a very unusual profile.

This profile is of course relatively fashionable at the moment - it reflects the influence of Thom Browne, whose coats are often even more exaggerated than this. I’m not against it on principle, but as we see here, it can be tough for a man who isn’t very thin to pull off. I’d imagine that with a little tailoring and after losing the negative effects of a low camera angle, our friend from This Fits (who, it should be noted, looks like a perfectly fit guy) will be fine, but it will never be a flattering suit.

Step two isn’t necessary, but the rest will change your life.  Check out our eBay Shopping Guide for more.

thisfits:

How to make eBay RSS Feeds

I saw this question asked over at HTTGAP, so I figured I’d whip up a quick tutorial. This assumes you already know what RSS is … if you don’t, this video is a good introduction.

Step 1

Do an eBay search as you normally would.

Step 2

On the results page, set “Sort by:” to “Time: newly listed”. This may not matter, but I think it ensures your RSS feed is updated the instant someone lists what you want on eBay.

Step 3

Scroll to the bottom of the results page, and look for the orange “RSS” button.

Step 4

Click the button to add the feed to your reader. Now, whenever what you’re interested in is listed on eBay, you’ll get an RSS update.

That’s it. Hope this helps.