I had somebody ask, recently, why the “golden era” of any given interest is always in the past.

And I thought… is it? Does it have to be?

"Golden Era Tailoring"

This term commonly refers to the tailoring of the 1930s and 40s, essentially because the wide consensus among people into tailoring is: that era had the best tailoring. Men wore tailoring day to day. Double breasted suits (which, fun fact, are better than single breasted suits) were much more common then. Full cut trousers, structure... Everything just looked great.

It didn't end because people got bored of it. It did not "fall out of fashion" in any typical sense. Rather, it was forced out of fashion by war. Fabric rationing made clothing worse.

In case you didn't know, during World War II, many governments, including the UK and the US, decided that the war effort required some country-wide belt-tightening. Specifically of interest here, they issued various clothing policies that I'm just going to lump together under that name: "fabric rationing." Everything got slimmer. Everything got shorter. Waistcoats disappeared, because they weren't really necessary. Double breasted jackets gave way to single breasted (curse you!) because the latter used a little less fabric. Rises got a little lower, and pleats less common. None of these choices were driven by art or by anybody's taste.

These restrictins applied to newly made clothing, so they really only began to manifest in the late 40s; we associate them with the 50s and 60s. Mind you, 50s and 60s slim and short tailoring was not nearly as bad as 2010s mass-market slim and short tailoring. Indochino's standard cut is unjustifiable. But still, it was shorter and slimmer than anybody wanted it to be; it wasn't style, it was patriotic duty. But we don't have that duty anymore.

How about now?

Great fabric is expensive. But it's not really that scarce. It's not scarce in the nation's-at-war sense where it doesn't matter what you want. You can get what you want, fabric availability doesn't need to drive your aesthetic choices.

What's more... thrifting is easy. You can thrift whatever style of suit you want. Yeah, you can thrift a J. Crew Ludlow. But you can also thrift vintage Armani or vintage Ralph or even vintage Saville Row with some luck and/or patience and/or money. You have options. You can do whatever you want.

We don't have the standards of the 30s and 40s in place. But nobody's stopping you from dressing like that. Nobody is going to fault you for wearing a structured DB with full cut trousers and fully horizontal peaks (sometimes called "Tautz lapels").

What we lost in that standard, we gained ten times over in freedom. You can wear that 40s DB. You can wear a DB with jeans. You can wear a DB with swim shorts, there are no rules.

This is a different kind of golden era. Maybe it's a golden era of freedom. Maybe it's a golden era of... I hate to say it now that it's been turned into such a buzzword... personal style.

Alright, so it's a golden era. How do we enjoy it?

The key feature here is freedom. Freedom can be terrible if you're focused on what other people are doing; some people suck. The worst-dressed men in the 30's and 40's still dressed fine. If you look for them now, you're going to hate what you find—believe me, I know as well as anybody.

Amid billions of men and... perhaps millions of subcultures, the first key is to find your own. Find aesthetics that work for you. Find communities that work for you. For me, Alfargo's Marketplace was a big revalation. It was the... second time I had met real menswear dudes in person (the first time was one friend and it was much less exciting). It gave me a chance to make friendships in the community (yay for repeated, unplanned interactions). It's known for tailoring, prep, ivy, and similar "classic" aesthetics, but I've met people there who expanded my horizons beyond those norms.

If you're into tailoring, be into tailoring. If you're into gorpcore, be into gorpcore. If you're a denim head, be a denim head. If you like both golf and clothes... first off, I'm sorry, but second, hey, are you following my buddy Damien?

So, yeah, style is personal. That fact got weirdly cliche and confused on social media in recent years. Mina Le did a deep dive on that perspective. But as somebody who appealed to the topic before the social media trend: style is personal. That's not a trend. Personal style is not a recent concept, it is not a moment, it's just a basic thing about style, style is personal.

At some point, repeating the words "personal style" got so popular that people ran with the term, defined an era of people dressing in wacky ways, trying to be entirely unique, as the era of personal style. This era, ostensibly, was supplanted by the current era of performativity (or, rather, of repeating the words "performative male" until we all die a little inside.

But that's not what personal style is about. Personal style is just you deciding how you dress for your own damn self. It can be loud and unique. It can be small signatures, like Gianni Agnelli's watch move or Yasuto Kamoshita buttoning the bottom button. If you just love wearing charcoal and navy blue all the time, it doesn't matter that those colors are common as hell. If you want to be boring, then your personal style is boring, and that's okay.

I wouldn't recommend forcing a signature just so you can have one. I wouldn't recommend making your style wackier just for the sake of being wacky. My goal is to help you figure out what you really love, and then help you dress like that. And whatever it is... that's possible in 2026.

There are tailors who cut 1940s-inspired styles. There are still 1940s suits to be thrifted in this world. Dirk hasn't bought all of them yet.

Or you could get a soft neapolitan cut. Or a classic British Drape cut. Or a dramatic Tommy Nutter-inspired cut. Or a more modern invention like this, partly 30s-inspired, partly modern-soft. Or a hunting jacket with bellows pockets and a throat latch. That's not half the unique styles I wanted to throw in here, but the list has to end eventually.

There's plenty of milsurp, there's plenty of gorp. There's Ralph Lauren and there's ALD, which is "what if we made a brand around the way people in NYC wore Ralph Lauren in the 90s, and also there's some Greece in there." There's high fashion; strange references to some old french film you've never heard of, shows with models holding facsimiles of their own heads, the sky is the limit.

And hey, if you don't want any of that, you can go to Fred Nieddu and have him make you just about anything, he's equal parts bespoke tailor and costumer.

How, then, are we not living in a Golden Age?

The problem today is that style is a challenge. You can't just walk into any random tailor and get an incredible suit. You are generally expected to not wear a suit everywhere. You have to actually put some effort in to develop an aesthetic and dress well.

Fine. You are reading a men's style blog right now. You're putting some effort into finding your preferred aesthetic. You're developing your taste. If you are into tailoring, I've given you a list of bespoke tailors to process by house style. I've named several casual aesthetics, and pointed to some avant-garde designs.

Whatever style works for you, it works for you in 2026. You can find a community of people, online or in person, who will pick up whatever it is you put down. The internet has proven this time and time again, not just with tailoring, not just with the shit I wear, but with just about everything: vegan leather men's leggings, this "starboy" nonsense, whatever the fuck it is Dimitry does (he really has that many accounts). If these con men can find their people, you can too. (Please don't dress like them).

This is the golden era, if you want it to be.