Gear Patrol Magazine, Issue Seventeen: The Winter Preview

The Winter Gear Awards: Our Guide to the Best Products 138

New Essentials: 26 Ways to Refresh Your Daily Wardrobe 102

This Silicon Valley Startup Could Change How Everything Is Made 128

The Indestructible Puffer The puffer jacket is traditionally one of the weakest and most delicate pieces of clothing you can buy. So we’ve rebuilt it from the strongest fibre ever made. Weight for weight, every fibre on the outside of the jacket is up to 15x stronger than steel. The material we’ve used is so tough you’ll also find it in body armour, anti-ballistic vehicle armour, mooring systems for giant container ships, and ropes used to tie down oil rigs in violent seas. Built to see you down to -40°C the jacket comes in one colour, black. And one mode, tough.

VOLLEBAK.COM

The Solar Charged Puffer The Solar Charged Puffer stores sunlight, glows in the dark, and keeps you warm down to -40°C. The jacket can be instantly charged and made to glow in the dark by any light source you can find. Whether you’re writing on it with your iPhone torch, drawing on it with a flashlight, or wearing it out in the sun, as soon as you take it somewhere dark it glows like kryptonite. Built for the coldest, darkest places on Earth, it’s engineered with a 3 layer waterproof fabric, ultra-durable detailing, and insulation built from mechanically-recycled plastic bottles.

VOLLEBAK.COM

Contents The Guide

ISSUE SEVENTEEN

TECH 20 A Bold New Speaker Goes Beyond Stereo 24 Forgotten Gadgets That Rocked the World 28 B ose’s Revolutionary $850 Hearing Aids

OUTDOORS 32 M eet Snowboarding’s Unlikely New Star

30 Galaxy Z Flip 3 40 U ncharted Supply Co. Park Pack

36 U ltralight Gear, Straight Outta the Bronx

50 O n Cloudboom Echo 58 Dyson Humdinger 68 B enchmade Chef’s Knife 78 J uly Carry On Trunk 88 A irain Type 20 Re-Edition 100 2022 Jeep Grand Wagoneer

8

FITNESS

HOME

44 The Truth About Recovery Boots

52 Ikea Hits the Aftermarket

48 Why You Don’t Need a Smart Home Gym

56 Notes on a 51-Year-Old Chair

GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

CONTENTS

The Guide

FOOD & DRINK 60 The Cult of Charbay 64 W hich Coffee Brewing Method Is Right for You? 66 The Case for Winter Grilling

STYLE

WATCHES

70 The Leather and Down Brands Going Vegan

80 The Bund Strap Is Back

74 The Rise of Cannabis-Inspired Clothing

82 The Year of the Green Dial

76 A Fragrance Brand Blooms in Stockholm

86 Controversial Chronograph Revivals

MOTORING 90 L ucid Motors Dreams Big 94 T he Return of the Tiny Pickup Truck

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GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

FREE SPIRIT The 1988 Danner original is back – reimagined with modern comfort and performance from the ground up. Featuring waterproof GORE-TEX liners and Vibram® Megagrip technology, these boots are built to roam.

DANNER.COM/FREESPIRIT

CONTENTS

Features

102

The New Essentials In the WFH era, dressing “rules” are more relaxed than ever. But that doesn’t mean your clothes have to be boring. Freshen up your look with this comprehensive guide to the modern wardrobe.

128

Modern Heritage At 124 years old, Filson continues to evolve, recently expanding into denim, down and moto garb. Tireless chief creative officer Alex Carleton explains how the brand moves forward without losing touch with its past.

138

Future Matter

Winter Gear Awards

Behind the scenes at Carbon, a $2.4 billion Silicon Valley company that’s 3D printing components for brands such as Ford, Specialized, Adidas and Osprey — and proving the technology can be so much more than a novelty.

From space heaters and soundbars to boots and beard trimmers, skis and snowboards to dumbbells and duffel bags — and everything in between — we celebrate 60 of the best products of the season.

160

Detour Situated in Pittsburgh’s burgeoning Lawrenceville neighborhood, Mello & Sons is a treasure trove of time-tested Levi’s, French work jackets and all manner of vintage gems you can’t find anywhere else.

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GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

On the Cover: Winning Home, Outdoors, Fitness, Style and Travel products from the 2021 Winter Gear Awards, photographed in California by Cam Oden.

MASTHEAD

founder , chief executive officer

ERIC YANG cofounder , chief content officer

BEN BOWERS

deputy editor

senior staff writer

platforms editor

creative director

JACK SEEMER

TUCKER BOWE

J.D. DIGIOVANNI

JOE TORNATZKY

senior editors

staff writers

coordinating producer

art director

WILL SABEL COURTNEY

HAYLEY HELMS

NICK CARUSO

SHERRY WANG

ERIC LIMER

ZEN LOVE

platforms producer

associate director , production design

SCOTT ULRICH

HENRY PHILLIPS

STEVE MAZZUCCHI

associate staff writer

TYLER CHIN

editors

production designer

OREN HARTOV

EMILY CHANG

JOHN ZIENTEK WILL PRICE

creative project manager

TAYLOR MORABITO

associate editor

TYLER DUFFY assistant editor

EVAN MALACHOSKY

chief commercial officer

pacific northwest advertising director

associate director , gear patrol studios

ZACH MADER

SCOT BONDLOW

AJ POWELL

partnerships director , east

southwest advertising director

MIKE BAILEY

JUSTIN PARKHURST

associate content producer , gear patrol studios

account executives

associate director , revenue operations

TIM MURRAY

GENEVA AUDUONG

BETH CHROBAK-MARCHESE business development manager

MATTHEW PASTORIUS

manager , client services

DOMINIQUE GAGEANT senior sales planner

NGHI HO

NANCY O’CONNOR associate editor , gear patrol studios

GREG BABCOCK associate director , product and marketing

CAITLYN SHAW sales marketing coordinator

JAYNE DEPONTES

Where aspiration meets inspiration.

Gear Patrol Studios is the creative parternship arm of Gear Patrol. We are enthusiasts of design, utility and adventure. Connecting brands with audiences in the valuable mode of product discovery – through creativity, content marketing, branded events and more.

Gear Patrol Studios is the creative partnership arm of Gear Patrol. Select advertising in this magazine has been crafted by Gear Patrol Studios on behalf of brands to help tailor their message specifically for Gear Patrol readers. These sections are demarcated with GEAR PATROL STUDIOS. To learn more visit: studios.gearpatrol.com or reach out to us at: advertising@gearpatrol.com

sales campaign coordinator

ANGELA HAY

cfo

head of commerce

BRANDON FRANK

BRIAN LOUIE

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commerce editor

CUSTOMER CARE

CORRECTIONS & REPRINTS

RYAN BROWER

support@gearpatrol.com

sayhello@gearpatrol.com

commerce writer

CAREERS

WHOLESALE REQUESTS

WILL PORTER

gearpatrol.com/jobs

wholesale@gearpatrol.com

TANNER BOWDEN @danger_bowden

WILL DELEON @willdeleon

MICHAEL FRANK @mfwords

CAM ODEN @cam_oden_photo

CAYCE CLIFFORD @cayceclifford

ALEXA EDGERTON @alexa_letters

AARON GOLDFARB @aarongoldfarb

LAWRENCE ULRICH @lawrenceulrich

ELENI DEBO @eleni.debo

GARRETT FOX @garrettfox

STEPHEN KRCMAR @stephenkrcmar

ZACK ZEIGLER @zraz

issue 17 contributors

INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISHED IN NEW YORK © 2021 GEAR PATROL, LLC ISSN 2381-4241 PUBLISHED BIANNUALLY PRINTED in USA by TANNER PRINT CO. on SUSTAINABLE PAPER

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GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

LETTER FROM THE FOUNDER

Gradually, then Suddenly While I was reading through Issue Seventeen, a quote from The Sun Also Rises came to mind. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

At Gear Patrol, we chronicle change and innovation in the form of product news and reviews.

Most of the things we cover iterate on an idea that came before — and when you do it every day, the passage of products seems to exist on a long, gradual continuum.

But when you have a vantage point to see many of those things collectively and thematically, as we do in the pages of our magazines, you get brighter glimpses into the suddenly. In a flash, things that once seemed to exist only in the concept are being used every day by people around the world.

The pages of this issue demonstrate some of the larger, bigger changes afoot. Some fresh, some odd, some clever.

In a heartwarming story, we meet Zeb Powell, a 20-year old Black snowboarder from North Carolina whose turning heads and winning gold by … falling over. You can’t miss him in his incredible heartshaped glasses (page 32).

Electric cars are finally ascending upon drivers in what seems like a total eclipse on internal combustion (page 90). Also in “cars,” tiny trucks that echo Chevy’s El Camino are back in force (page 94).

Elsewhere, leather goes vegan, and mainstream (page 70). Bose released a set of hearing aids and they make total sense (page 28). An ex-Apple engineer could kill stereo with the world’s first triphonic speaker — look it up (page 22). A new 3D printing

method from Silicon Valley could change how everything is made (page 128). And as if California didn’t breed enough innovation already, it may also be home to one of the world’s best — not to mention weirdest — whiskey makers (page 53).

If you’re just here for the gear, however, I’ll simply point you to the Winter Gear Awards. Our picks range from a backyard fire pit to an adjustable dumbbell set to the best damn socks on the planet.

They’re premium, accessible and useful. The good stuff starts on page 140.

When it comes to gear, I’m afforded the occasional opportunity to spot a throughline emerging between products and users. Looking beyond performance and price, I sense an urgency now among makers and users to reckon with how products impact people, and ultimately, an opportunity to think anew about what we use to pursue our lives to the fullest — be it an electric vehicle, 3D-printed backpack or pair of vegan work boots.

When Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises, an entire generation was recovering from World War I. Being on the other side of our own generational crisis (COVID-19), perhaps we too are realizing that we’re ready for change, more suddenly than we expected.

Eric Yang FOUNDER, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER @hashtagyang | eyang@gearpatrol.com

Kind of Obsessed Vaonis Hyperia, $45,000 This isn’t the telescope in your parent’s garage. Nor is it just a 61-megapixel camera with a custom 1,050mm lens, even if it is designed to take pictures of space. When open, the Hyperia is a monolith of optical technology that stands six feet, nine inches tall, weighs 165 pounds and looks like a million bucks. The manufacturer, Vaonis, calls it the “most advanced astronomical instrument ever developed,” and while the imminent launch of NASA’s James Webb Telescope might have something to say about that, I can’t help but find myself toying with some out-of-this-world ideas to justify getting one. It might just be the most unique product I’ve ever encountered.

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GEAR PATROL SUMMER PREVIEW 2021

The evolution of Hi-Fi Evo is everything you’ve always loved about hi-fi, evolved to suit your needs. An elegantly crafted amplifier and streamer, offering compact simplicity and exceptional performance. All from a single box, designed and engineered in London. Just add speakers.

Discover more at: cambridgeaudio.com/gearpatrol

The Guide

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GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

Rise and shine. It’s what our parents shouted to rouse us from bed on dark, chilly fall and winter school days — and what we may still mutter to rally as the sun climbs. To make doing so easier, this Guide is packed with pieces embodying both imperatives. Get up and moving with a perfectly brewed cup of coffee (p. 64) and fresh legs (p.

44), donning some high fashion (p. 74) and a green dial watch (p. 82) to start your day. Need more inspiration? Find it in the bright minds reinventing everything from hearing aids (p. 28) and home decor (p. 54) to electric cars (p. 90) and snowboarding (p. 32). Rise and shine indeed.

GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

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the guide

Technology

Triple Threat With the Cell Alpha, a wireless speaker designed by Apple’s former lead designer, there is no sweet spot. That’s the point.

text by

Tucker Bowe

photos by

Will Deleon

“I failed at retirement,” Christopher Stringer admits. After a more-than-two-decade run as Apple’s lead designer — where he worked on everything from the first iPhone to the HomePod — he left Cupertino in 2017. In his post-Apple travels, he found himself in a London design museum that dragged him back into the game. “I always thought of my work at Apple as one continuous project building on the next,” Stringer says. “Once you’ve trained those muscles and you start to relax them, you get that itch.”

Four years ago, Stringer teamed up with Damon Way, the cofounder of DC Shoes and a mutual friend in the design community, to build “a sound company to make sense of sound.” Finally, the Cell

Alpha, the first product from their company, Syng, is here.

In layman’s terms, the Cell Alpha is a high-end wireless speaker. It can stream hi-res audio or connect to your TV. But what sets the Cell Alpha apart is something audiophiles refer to as “triphonics.”

The stereo revolution set audio’s magic number at two. String says that’s one short of the actual ideal, which is why the Cell Alpha has three beam-forming drivers placed around its equator, 120-degrees apart, to evenly disperse midrange and high frequencies around the room. Then there are two force-canceling woofers, one on the top and one on the bottom of the speaker to evenly distribute bass. There is no one sweet spot — pre-

GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

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the guide

Technology

“A sound should sound like it comes from the object that makes it. It should have placement in space.” cisely the point: the Cell Alpha produces an even sound no matter where you stand around the speaker.

The Cell Alpha is more than just 360-degree sound. Syng decked it out with advanced digital-signal processing and spatial-audio tech — which Apple has pioneered with its AirPods Pro and AirPods Max. This not only allows the speaker to optimize its sound for the room it’s in, but it also enables the Cell Alpha to virtualize any speaker array and even allows the listener to adjust specific sounds in 3D space. This gives listeners the flexibility to place the Cell Alpha wherever they want in their home and listen to what they want, no matter the source or digital format.

“A sound should sound like it comes from the object that makes it,” says Stringer. “It should have placement in space.”

Traditional immersive audio, like a 5.1 or 7.1 home theater system, requires the listener to stay in a fixed position and face in one direction (at a TV, typically) to get the best experience. With spatial-audio tech, an optimal experience is possible from a variety of positions and angles. There is no one first class seat, so to speak.

But the best place to be is in view of the stunning speaker itself. Its spherical, see-through, Death Star–like aesthetic is absolutely striking, but Stringer insists its sound will make it melt into your home. “When you have it in a home, you’re way more likely to be engrossed by the reflection of the space you’re in, the exposure of the sound elements, the triphon, the heart that projects the sound,” says Stringer.

Of course none of this comes cheap. The Cell Alpha runs $1,800 per speaker. Since its release this summer, Way and Stringer say that the majority of Cell Alpha speakers have been purchased by artists, musicians, designers and early adopters who live on the bleeding edge of hi-fi and tech.

And the speaker they’ve invested in is far from set in stone. “We’re excited about innovating across hardware and software alike,” Stringer says. “Cell Alpha is designed to grow with you. New features and capabilities are always on the horizon.”

Just don’t expect a fourth driver.

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GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

THE BASICS OF TRIPHONIC SOUND WHAT IS TRIPHONIC SOUND?

WH Y IS TRIPHONIC BE T TER THAN S TEREO?

“Triphonic,” a word coined by the two founders of Syng, Chris Stringer and Damon Way, describes the circular design of their Cell Alpha speaker.

The “tri” is for the number of midrange-and-tweeter pairs around the speaker’s diameter which evenly fire sound in all directions.

Two-channel stereo was innovative because it added a layer of realism over the preceding “mono” sound by delivering different sound to each ear. Triphonic sound, with the help of advanced digital signal processing, delivers room-filling sound while also giving the illusion that specific sounds are coming from particular areas of the room.

the guide

Technology

text by

Eric Limer

i l l u s t r at i o n s b y

Eleni Debo

Forgotten Gadgets That Changed the World Every foundational tech feature had to be introduced somewhere, but not every pioneering product gets the respect it deserves. These unsung innovators helped shape the tech world we know today.

1998

MPMan F10 The hefty hard-drive MP3 players of the aughts put thousands of songs in your pocket, but the tech had slightly more modest beginnings. The first commercially released MP3 player, a device called the MPMan F10 produced by Korean company Saehan Information Systems, carried the capacity for about a half-dozen songs on its paltry 32MB of onboard storage. Released in the United States with an initial price of $250 (over $400 in today’s dollars), the MPMan was ultimately overshadowed by Diamond Multimedia’s Rio PMP300. That product was the subject of an infamous lawsuit by the Recording Industry Association of America, which attempted to prevent the sale of MP3 players by casting them as devices purely for piracy. It didn’t work.

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GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

2012

Pebble Smartwatch What seems like eons ago, in 2012, Pebble had all the makings of an industry-shattering success. When the record-breaking $10.1 million Kickstarter campaign for the ill-fated e-ink smartwatch exceeded its goal by two orders of magnitude, it not only took the crown for most successful crowdfunding campaign to date but demonstrated the demand in the burgeoning smartwatch market. By 2015, the plucky upstart was facing competition from the likes of Apple, Google and Samsung, whose offerings sported slicker screens but a fraction of the battery life. Within five years of its historic campaign, Fitbit had swallowed the brand whole in a $23 million acquisition, with support for the device ending in 2018.

1994

Macintosh PowerBook 500 Today, the track pad is an integral part of a laptop computer.

Even rigs that sport a touchscreen can’t get away without an additional touch pad for cursor control. But its roots go all the way back to the ’90s, when the Macintosh PowerBook 500 helped bring this feature fully into the mainstream. In a departure from the physical trackball of earlier PowerBooks, the 500’s track pad used “capacitive” touch technology called GlidePoint, which allowed for more sensitive and precise control compared to the “resistive” technologies that required a firmer touch. It was only a matter of time before the built-in trackball — and the pencil-eraser nub pointer — were all but things of the past.

1994

IBM Simon Long before anyone had ever pinched-to-zoom on an iPhone, IBM’s “Simon Personal Communicator” paired a touchscreen and a telephone for the very first time.

Launched in 1994 after software problems caused a production delay, the device produced by Mitsubishi Electronics was available for a cool $899 with a two-year service contract or $1,099 without. (That’s about $1,650 and $2,025 in today’s dollars.) With a liquid-crystal display and nickel cadmium battery, the Simon could make calls, send and receive emails and also, of course, faxes. Texting, meanwhile, was only just taking off.

1989

Motorola MicroTAC Flat-slab smartphones have been in vogue for the better part of a decade, but folding-screen tech may be poised to bring back the classic clamshell. While Motoralo’s streamlined Razr is a touchstone for a whole generation, the older Motorola MicroTAC is arguably the phone that established the trend. First produced as an analog mobile phone in 1989, the MicroTAC sported a unique folding keypad cover that doubled as a mouthpiece. Eventually, the design would evolve into its reverse for Motorola’s also-iconic StarTAC, which would put an earpiece on the top and the buttons on the bottom. Cell phones would never be the same again.

GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

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the guide

Technology

1985

Minolta Maxxum 7000 Today, most cameras not only focus automatically, but they can even recognize faces or lock onto eyes of their own accord. In the ’80s, it wasn’t quite the same. By the time of the Maxxum’s release, companies like Nikon and Pentax had already released single-lens reflex cameras with autofocus capabilities but with an awkward catch: these implementations required motors in the lenses themselves to make the magic happen. Minolta’s offering, by contrast, was the first SLR to integrate its autofocus sensors and motors into the camera’s body, allowing for smaller and cheaper lenses, an approach that would ultimately become common. Minolta didn’t have much time to revel in its success. The Maxxum’s autofocus tech was ultimately found to infringe on a patent held by Honeywell, and in 1991, Minolta was ordered to pay a $127 million settlement.

1972

Magnavox Odyssey

1974

Kodak’s Digital Camera It’s tempting to think of Kodak as a fallen giant of analog photography, in part because it’s true. But the Rochester, New York, company was also a pioneer of digital photography; it just didn’t make a business out of it. Prototyped by Steven Sasson in 1974, the brand’s nearly eight-pound monstrosity ate AA batteries for breakfast and captured a 100x100 pixel image, which it recorded on an audio cassette. The design was patented, but Kodak abandoned the project, assuming analog photography would remain superior in the coming decades. And in the company’s defense, it was right — up to a point, anyway.

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GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

Atari’s 2600 tends to leap to mind as the iconic game console that brought the arcade into the living room, but the sleek, stunning, and strange Maganvox Odyssey technically holds the title of first commercial home video-game console.

With a swooping black-and-white body that just screams ’70s, and controllers that sport a single button but two knobs, the Odyssey’s design has been all but completely lost in the ensuing lineage of thumbsticks and triggers. Equally uncanny were the Odyssey’s TV-screen overlays — physical sheets of plastic printed with “graphics” that the console itself could not produce, as it was limited to dots and lines of white. Modern gamers might not see much of their hobby in the Odyssey’s primitive pixels, but as a physical console, it’s still one of the most handsome.

the guide

Technology

text by

photos by

Eric Limer

Henry Phillips

Can You Hear Me Now? These $850 headphones aren’t just life-changing.

Believe it or not, they’re cheap.

It took me the better part of 20 years to do anything about my hearing loss. When an audiologist suggested amplification after I failed a school hearing test in sixth grade, I basically laughed her out of the room. My parents didn’t force the issue. I got by just fine.

In college, incessant ringing developed and worsened — I now understand this to be my brain’s futile attempt to fabricate what my ears can’t provide. It wasn’t until 2020, struggling to hear people through masks and plexiglass, that I went crawling back to the doctor’s office for professional help — and I ultimately paid an alarmingly large sum of money for a pair of traditional hearing aids that quite literally changed my life.

In some ways my story is extreme. According to the Hearing Loss Association of America, people with hearing loss wait an average of seven years before seeking help, not 20. But of the 48 million Americans who

28

suffer from some degree of hearing loss, millions never seek help at all. Ultimately, nearly four in five who could benefit from a hearing aid never get one.

These are the people Bose wants to reach with SoundControl Hearing Aids. Billed as the first self-fitting hearing aids cleared by the FDA for direct-to-consumer sale, they are a fusion of tried-and-true, behind-theear hearing aids paired with a stunningly simple app for configuring them to your preferences. It’s an approach that Bose hopes will bring better hearing to the millions who haven’t yet, or would otherwise never, take the leap.

A whole host of barriers keep people from seeking out hearing amplification, and one of the chief ones is, well, uncoolness. “There’s a stigma that has surrounded hearing aids for many, many years,” explains Brian Maguire, global head of Bose Hear and Health.

“Because they’re viewed more as a medical device and less of a consumer electronics object, or something that’s desirable.”

It’s a sentiment that rings especially true for me. Now, in my 30s, I’m dad-ishly willing to brag about having “bionic ears.” But in my teens and 20s, I much preferred to embrace “what?!” as a primary feature of my vocabulary. Bose hopes that its brand, with clout from pioneering the noise-canceling headphone, will serve as a battering ram for breaking down that barrier to a crowd that’s under retirement age.

But Bose isn’t the only company banging on the door. Other tech companies, including Apple, have taken to building hearing amplification directly into their consumer buds.

The AirPods Pro, in conjunction with iOS 14, have the ability to process an audiogram — a frequency-specific map of a person’s hearing capabilities — and translate it into a unique

GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

amplification regime through the very same hip hardware it uses to play music.

The more traditional hearing-aid form factor of SoundControl may seem stuffier at first glance, but there’s a reason it’s the standard: it boasts a series of features that earbud-like options just can’t beat. Disposable zinc-air “button” batteries give SoundControl truly all-day battery life, like other hearing aids, with the option to instantly refill with no delay for recharging. “There might be a lot of cases where episodic hearing assistance is valuable,” says Maguire.

“But there’s also going to be a very different person who needs all-day hearing assistance for the purpose of getting through their life.”

Of the 48 million Americans who suffer from some degree of hearing loss, millions never seek help at all.

SoundControl’s behind-the-ear design may not be especially chic, but it is, much more crucially, incredibly discrete. Visible earbuds are, after all, generally a good indication that you aren’t listening. The virtually invisible SoundControl design spares you the trouble of having to explain to each new person that actually, you are.

Even once you get past the stigma, more barriers traditionally await. For my hearing

aids, I made three trips to the audiologist, and they were not in quick succession.

And then there’s the price. After my insurance chipped in a healthy chunk, I ended up spending about $1,150 — per ear. In hindsight, I think I got upsold on a needlessly premium option (yes, there are feature tiers), but who’s going to skimp on buying back one of the five senses? Despite the cost, it’s still the best purchase of my life.

Bose’s direct-to-consumer approach circumvents that arduous process with something simpler, but not worse — and much, much cheaper at $850 a pair. SoundControl’s unique FDA clearance stems from a clinical study showing that Bose’s “self-fitting” solution, a process of tuning SoundControl’s amplification settings using two dials on an app, provides satisfaction on par with an audiologist’s tuning (for people over the age of 18 with mild to moderate hearing loss).

The self-fitting process is certainly simple. When I tried a pair, I found the app to be incredibly straightforward: one dial for total volume and one to skew towards “bass” or

“treble.” App control itself isn’t novel; it’s a common feature for recent FDA-regulated hearing aids including the ones I got from my audiologist. But those apps, while sometimes more sophisticated, are also more complicated and less user-friendly — a potentially terrible combination, especially for anyone not technologically inclined.

“The [Bose] app takes hundreds of possible parameters that you might set at an audiologist and distills them to two simple wheels,” Maguire says. “Everybody is going to be different.”

Simplicity does come with some minor downsides. My genetic hearing loss, which unusually affects midrange frequencies most aggressively, means I had to crank SoundControl a bit louder overall than my audiologist-tuned aids, resulting in a little extra white noise. Was it enough that, given the option of a do-over, I’d still choose to pay over two grand for the aids I already have instead of $850 for SoundControl?

Suffice it to say, I’m making a significant effort to not think about it.

While many other hearing aids also include

Bluetooth streaming features and effectively double as true wireless earbuds with the ability to beam TV sound directly into your ears, SoundControl pointedly does not. It is focused “squarely on face-to-face interaction and conversation in noisy environments” according to Maguire. However, I do suspect that it’s also because when hearing-aid speakers play music, it tends to sound, charitably, like shit. That’s an easy value-add if you’re just Some Hearing Aid company, but less so if you’re Bose.

Ultimately, speech amplification is the only feature that really matters, and SoundControl will hopefully make it available to people who would otherwise never experience the joy of becoming absorbed in conversation simply because you can effortlessly hear it. “We’re in this because there’s a huge unserved population that has persisted for many, many years,” Maguire says. “This is not a test or experiment from Bose. We’re committed to this marketplace, we’re committed to hearing aids.”

I’d like to think I speak for lots of folks when I say, I’m glad to hear it.

the guide

Technology

text by

photo by

Tucker Bowe

Henry Phillips

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 The Galaxy Z Flip3 is the most affordable foldable smartphone that Samsung has ever made. $999+

The Galaxy Z Flip3 has the same foldable design as its 2020 predecessor, the Galaxy Z Flip, but it’s better in almost every way: Samsung made it waterproof; improved the display and camera; and thanks to a bigger cover screen, it’s more usable when folded. The kicker, of course, is that it’s $500 cheaper.

At the end of the day, the signature folding function is one big trick. The Galaxy Z Flip3 works just like any of Samsung’s other flagship smartphones, only you can see a crease in the middle of the screen.

“The Galaxy Z Flip3 brings all the nostalgia of the classic flip phone back and then some. But it’s still an Android smartphone, so it’s not likely to tempt the iPhone crowd — not yet, anyway.”

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GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

the guide

Outdoors

text by

Stephen Krcmar

Snow Cat

Meet Zeb Powell, the unprecedented future of snowboarding who hardly needs traditional gear to always land on his feet.

Zeb Powell is about to drop in. His first X Games. His fourth run. The nascent Knuckle Huck contest, just about to blow up.

It’s late January 2020, a couple months before the world will shut down, and the Aspen crowd waits to watch competitors launch off the knuckle — the tabletop hump beside the Big Air jump. It’s more fun — and less predictable — than a halfpipe or slopestyle event, where the bazillion rotations are impressive but ... repetitive.

Powell stands out in a big way. A Black rider in the snowflake-white snowboarding world, he is known to ride unconventional boards — fish sticks in the park, freeriding on a 210-centimeter deck! — and eschew beanies, helmets and goggles.

Tonight is a bit different. With a required brain bucket pushing his dreadlocks against his head, Powell peers through a pair of heart-shaped shades that belong on the cover of a Lolita paperback.

Then things get weird. Seconds into his descent, Powell’s on his back. What just happened? Did he slip? Or was it another wild trick, like the Coffin Slide — an intentional backslide on the snow — that kick-started his first run?

Unfazed, Powell is back on his feet. He doubles down, completing a sequence that momentarily silences both commentators.

This ain’t dead air.

It’s the sublime surprise of bearing witness to the future of snowboarding — and being helpless to clearly articulate what you just saw.

Having watched the clip several times, I’d call it a nose press on the drop to an ollie off

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clockwise f rom le f t

Powell has made a name for himself by treating his board like an extension of his body, shredding and soaring in ways never before imagined. And unlike many boarders, he prefers a simple Red Bull visor to a beanie or helmet, whether he is grinding rails or boosting off kickers. Never a huge fan of goggles, he blew everyone away at the X-Games Knuckle Huck contest last year while rocking a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses.

the nose, a sweet recovery the 21-year-old Powell has dubbed a “fall and save at the same time.” He then goes off the knuckle backwards (aka switch), launching into a strange, semi-inverted, spinning, body-contorting airborne shuffle — and of course sticking the landing.

No wonder his family and friends sometimes call him Cat. With feline swagger, Powell makes even missteps appear intentional. To this day, the trick has no name — transcendence is like that sometimes.

Powell grew up in Waynesville, North Carolina, with three siblings. Like Zeb, they’re adopted. From day one, he was in perpetual motion, incapable of walking a straight line.

“There was always a zig or zag or a jump or a flip,” says Zeb’s mom, Val, in an X-Games-produced profile video.

GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

As many East Coast riders do, Powell first hit the slopes at night — a time when visibility is tough through tinted lenses, which may explain his distaste for goggles. Despite an instructor setting up the goofy-footed rider with a regular stance, the then-seven-yearold hit one box and was all in.

North Carolina’s minuscule Cataloochee Ski Area — 740 vertical feet, 50 acres, tiny terrain park — became his second home, even when the weather sucked.

“I was always trying to get as much air as possible,” he recalls. “That forced my mind to look for all the jumps I could find. That still rings true today.”

Like Rhode Island’s Yawgoons and New Hampshire’s Bode Miller, Powell embodies how crappy conditions and small hills can cultivate alpine game-changers. Check his Instagram, where nearly 200,000 followers

photos courtesy of red bull content p ool

monitor his mind-boggling spins, flips and slides from Stowe, Vermont, to Mount Hood, Oregon, and you’ll get the picture.

But how good is he? Legendary X Games commentator Selema “Sal” Masekela puts him in the class of icons Shaun White, Travis Rice and Chloe Kim. “Zeb Powell is the type of snowboarder who comes along once or twice in a generation,” he raves. “His style is unique and feels new. It’s a definitive self expression — you’re watching the creativity and the potential of the sport be recalibrated in real time.”

As his star rises, Powell is aware of the opportunity he has to get young people with diverse backgrounds excited about snowboarding. When we spoke, he was coming off a few days at Big Snow American Dream, an indoor slope in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

There, he rode with a crew from a non-profit called Hoods To Woods that introduces city kids, many of them Black, to snow sports.

“I want to come up with a cool event that caters to my type of riding and upbringing,” he says. “A fun event that everyone would love around the East Coast and maybe even take it nationwide or worldwide.” Fortunately, his main sponsor is a brand with a rep for making such things happen: Red Bull.

“I was always trying to get as much air as possible, [looking] for all the jumps I could find. That still rings true today.”

Still, we wonder, what’s with those heartshaped sunnies?

Legend has it Powell’s sister Scout was wearing a pair when she took her little bro out for breakfast the morning of the contest.

Later that day, she lost them at the venue.

He then found a similar if not identical pair.

“I was walking out for practice before the event,” Powell remembers. “I realized I didn’t have any shades or any goggles or anything.

I looked down, and they were just by my feet.

She might be the reason why I’m known for them now.”

But Powell’s goggle-free days might be coming to a close. He’s working with Smith Optics on a collaboration.

Skullcandy is another new sponsor, joining Thirtytwo, Burton Snowboards, Etnies and North Carolina’s Recess Skate and Snow shop. So he’s been listening to music while riding more often than he has in the past. But it’s complicated.

“I like looking at my surroundings, so I don’t like having music playing,” he explains.

“I do love music, so it’s kind of crazy that I don’t like having earbuds in. I’ll sometimes play music out of my pocket.”

Powell’s taste is broad. He likes rap, especially Mac Miller and Travis Scott, but his favorite artist is Mariah Carey.

And he credits tunes with helping him get in the zone: “I put on a Jessie J song [“Domino”] and pretty much figured out my whole run for the Knuckle Huck. That song made me fall into my groove and my flow state.”

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the guide

Outdoors Another key? Looking at a run more like a skate park — and envisioning lines and tricks that have never been tried before. Conceptually, they might seem insane. But watching Powell, they appear paradoxically impossible and obvious.

That’s a big reason he’s so fun to watch.

Even inverted (which happens often), he’s got incredible awareness and proprioception, often dragging his trailing hand on the snow as though he’s gently petting a puppy.

And of course he has style for days, no matter the circumstances.

Which brings us back to that fourth X Games run. After some unintelligible giggling and gasping, commentator Craig McMorris, a pro himself, finally breaks the silence: “At no point did Zeb Powell look like he was in control of his body during the entirety of that run.”

And yet, you get the sense watching him — on Instagram, YouTube or, if you’re lucky, in real life — that Zeb Powell is still somehow in total control. And that no matter which way his body contorts, he’ll stomp the landing and ride it out.

So what will the 2020 Knuckle Huck champ — who missed the 2021 contest due to injury — bring to the tabletop next? Even he couldn’t tell you. But when you view the world through heart-shaped glasses, anything is possible.

Powell’s inimitable style has caught the attention of numerous gear sponsors, including Burton Snowboards, Thirtytwo, Smith Optics, Etnies and Skullcandy.

Check out some of his favorite slope-shredding products below.

POWELL’S PICKS

SMITH ATTACK MAG SUNGLASSES

“They’re just easy. I can take them off easily if my eyes are watering or I need to clean them. They provide a nice field of vision. And honestly, they just look really styley.” $259

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THIRTYTWO ZEB PIT JACKET

“I hate snowboard jackets, but I found this NASCAR jacket in a thrift shop and liked it so much I turned it into my outerwear line. It was the first true creation of my own signature gear, and I love the way it turned out with all the embroidery and style.” $146

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BURTON BLOSSOM SNOWBOARD

“It just fits my style of riding. As far as hitting rails and jumps go, it’s made for doing both of those. It’s a Slopestyle mix board — not too stiff but not too sloppy, the perfect middle. I love that thing.” $580

product photos courtesy of respective brands

Like the rider himself, his favorite gear has plenty of pop.

© 2021 Seiko Watch of America. SRPH57, SRPH59, SRPH55

SEIKO U.S. SPECIAL EDITION Oceanic Society

Seiko Prospex is an official sponsor of Oceanic Society, America’s first ocean conservation non-profit, and its global work to study and protect endangered sea turtles. The alliance continues Seiko’s long commitment to supporting the conservation and exploration of the world’s marine environment.

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT SEIKOUSA.COM

the guide

Outdoors

text by

Tanner Bowden

Ultralight for All

photos by

Garrett Fox

Based in the Bronx, ultralight pack maker Allmansright embraces a bold approach to making the outdoors more accessible.

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S TRE AMLINED FINDS

These ethereal offerings exemplify Allmansright’s efficient approach to adventure gear.

product photos courtesy of allmansright

L IT EN L IT E X COR DUR A Weighing just under a pound, this pack features two forms of tough Cordura fabric, plus attachments for trekking poles or ice axes, water bottle slots and 35 liters of space for hiking and camping essentials. $220

B JÖR N F OOD BAG This waterproof sack boasts room for half a week of food, carabiner attachment points and a reflective strip so it’s easy to find in the dark. Ultralight Dyneema composite fabric keeps the weight under 1.3 ounces. $39

There is an edict in Sweden, granted by the country’s constitution, called allemansrätten. Translated, it means “everyman’s right,” but Swedes know it as the Right of Public Access, a rule that grants individuals and groups the right to roam the countryside freely — to camp, forage, swim and climb, all without needing permission to cross private land.

Finland, Norway, Scotland, Iceland and a few other countries uphold a similar creed of access, but it’s nigh unthinkable in the United States, where brightly hued NO TRESPASSING signs adorn trees and fence posts, even where other traces of civilization are absent.

Nevertheless, it’s this foreign term that Livio Melo adopted as the namesake and ethos of his burgeoning brand, Allmansright.

For Melo, the term represents not only an opening of the land, but an opportunity for people of all shapes, sizes and colors to experience it — a perspective he comes by honestly. After all, Melo didn’t grow up in Scandinavia or exploring the outdoors. He is a man of many (other) places: the Dominican Republic, Miami, New Jersey and the Bronx, where he now lives with his wife and Allmansright’s cofounder, Jennifer Jacobsson, who is Swedish. In fact, it wasn’t until his late 20s that Melo took his first overnight hiking trip — “I had no idea there were even trails,” he says — making Allmansright’s origin story even more improbable.

Melo is a student of robotics and industrial design and a graduate of Parsons School of Design, where he dabbled in everything from fine art to furniture. But

X K R OS S You don’t need to camp to appreciate this 2.3-ounce satchel.

Made of Xpac VX21, a durable polyester sailcloth fabric, it has an integrated card wallet and key hook, plus space for your phone and removable straps. $67

these days, his focus is on ultralight camping equipment, an interest he developed after backpacking with some secondhand gear (and nearly freezing to death) in New York’s Harriman State Park.

At first, Melo made gear for himself. “But I’ve always wanted to design and sell stuff,” he says. So after a couple years of experimenting (it should come as no surprise that he’d never sewn before, let alone stitched together a pack — or that such hang-ups wouldn’t stop him), he and Jacobsson founded Allmansright in 2020.

Allmansright HQ is their apartment and its foyer their workshop: the roughly 7.5- by 10-foot space holds two Japanese-made Juki sewing machines and a cutting table that only fits once other furniture is out of the way. Rolls of fabric line the hallway. From

“Our brand is about reintroduction into nature. Bringing it to more people and living a more natural life.”

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Outdoors

Think you can’t craft top-notch ultralight hiking and camping gear in the Bronx? Think again. With the help of two Japanese-made Juki sewing machines and a cutting table squeezed into a 7.5- by 10-foot workshop, Melo and Jacobsson create beautiful, functional backpacks, stuff sacks and accessories out of such premium materials as Dyneema, Cordura and X-Pac.

here, Melo deals in Dyneema and drawcords, X-Pac and other ultralight materials, crafting them into elegant, utilitarian stuff sacks, food bags, cross-body bags and backpacks.

While many experienced outdoorists view ultralight hiking as an esoteric approach that only the most hardcore backpackers can appreciate, Melo insists the opposite is true.

“It’s a lie,” he asserts. “For many reasons, ultralight philosophies make the outdoors more accessible.”

Because it involves carrying not only lighter gear, but less gear, there’s less to buy, which makes ultralight inherently cheaper, Melo argues. There’s a DIY aspect too, even if it simply means carrying a SmartWater bottle instead of a heavy Hydro Flask or reusing containers. The ultralight approach also removes part of the physical fitness barrier. “Since the gear is lighter, more body types and abilities can join in,” explains Melo, recalling how tired and dehydrated he was shouldering his 60-liter secondhand pack.

Forging deeper into his ultralight evangelism, Melo suggests that bringing less actually allows one to come closer to nature, too: “You realize that people are going these

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distances and withstanding these conditions with such minimal gear ... it really demystifies the outdoors.”

While he doesn’t expect every place to adopt the code of collective stewardship embodied by allemansrätten, Melo believes we can approach its ideal simply by opening up the outdoors through advocacy — and through gear. Toward that end, Allmansright donates two percent of its profits to access and environmental groups. And its equipment is fairly priced: the most expensive pack, the Eco Liten 35, costs $240 and weighs just a pound, whereas Hyperlite Mountain Gear’s slightly bigger 2400 Junction costs $320 and weighs nearly two.

“Our brand is about reintroduction into nature,” Melo concludes. “Bringing it to more people and living a more natural life.”

“For many reasons, ultralight philosophies make the outdoors more accessible.”

GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

the guide

Outdoors

text by

Steve Mazzucchi

photo by

Henry Phillips

Uncharted Supply Co. Park Pack The Park City–based survival gear maker tackles a new challenge: designing an adventure-ready hip pack that even hip-pack haters will love. $159

This pack’s “flop-free” structure and foam back panel make it one of the comfiest we’ve ever worn for running and biking. The zippered pocket on top nicely accommodates larger phones, the built-in Triage Kit offers efficient first aid and gear repair, and the water bottle holders are detachable: ditch and hitch anything you want to the MOLLE-compatible webbing on the sides.

While handy for stashing an extra layer, the little straps on the outside must be diligently hooked into place, or they can slip off. And though we love the tough, water-resistant welded 600D Tarpaulin shell, it won’t really stretch to fit, say, awkwardly shaped groceries one might pick up after a long day on the trails.

“With a novel, solutions-oriented approach to the category, Uncharted has turned this lifelong hip-pack skeptic into a believer.”

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i n pa r t n e r s h i p w i t h

G-SHOCK

produced by

Gear Patrol Studios

Trail-Ready G-SHOCK’s New Forged Carbon MUDMASTER, GWG2000 is tailor-made for outdoor pursuits.

G-SHOCK is known for durable watches trusted by military personnel, law enforcement and outdoor enthusiasts around the world. Now, the brand has evolved its high-end MUDMASTER through the use of new materials. The G-SHOCK MUDMASTER GWG2000 is truly an outdoor watch, consisting of durable materials and features built to last — no matter the conditions.

This G-SHOCK retains the dust and mud resistance of the rest of the MUDMASTER series while adding a forged carbon and stainless steel bezel and implementing G-SHOCK’s Carbon Core Guard structure to make the watch smaller and approximately ten percent lighter than its predecessor. With advanced features including solar power, Multi-Band 6 radio-controlled timekeeping and triple sensor technology, the watch supports land missions in the harshest environments you can think of.

The slimmer and more compact profile of the GWG2000 allows it to offer the same powerful G-SHOCK performance with an even better fit on your wrist. The watch’s all-new Mud Resist button structure is made with a combination of stainless-steel button pipe and a silicone buffer which together create an even more durable construction and provide increased long-term reliability. These

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buttons will stay intact after countless days outdoors enduring mother nature’s worst.

The arrival of the GWG2000 brings with it the brand’s very first forged carbon bezel. The bezel makes use of forged carbon fiber, a composite material used in aircraft fuselages and world-class racing cars, at the six and 12 o’clock positions and also layers in 360 degrees of stainless steel underneath.

The case, which also counts carbon fiber among its materials, is made with carbon-fiber-reinforced resin.The new case yields a decrease in thickness of 1.9mm and width of 1.7mm compared to the previous version, which in turn allowed G-SHOCK to shave 13g of weight, tapering down the watch’s overall size. In other words, you get the same durability and toughness but with less bulk on your wrist. The blend of carbon fiber and resin offers a high strength-to-weight ratio and weather resistance, and paired with the watch’s sapphire crystal with non-reflective coating, means you can brave the elements without worrying about the durability of your watch when you do.

The GWG2000 was developed specifically to be your partner in outdoor pursuits in the most demanding environments — and it does just that.

G-SHOCK GWG2000-1A3 Case: Carbon Core Guard Bezel: Forged carbon/stainless steel Water Resistance: 200M Functions: Altimeter/barometer, compass, thermometer Connectivity: Multi-Band 6 $800

the guide

Fitness

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text by

Jack Seemer

GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

Boot Camp

Pros swear by recovery boots, the latest trend in sports medicine for the masses. But the price of entry remains steep.

For years now, pneumatic compression sleeves — aka “recovery boots” — have been used by professional athletes in an effort to speed up recovery and enhance performance. NBA stars such as LeBron James and Kevin Durant swear by them, as does half the NFL. But their lofty price tags beg the question, do recovery boots make sense for everyday athletes? Hell, do they even work? Here’s what you need to know.

First off, what are recovery boots?

Recovery boots use a technique called intermittent pneumatic compression originally designed to treat patients suffering from lymphedema, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or pulmonary embolism (PE).

They’ve become a fixture at gyms and physical therapy offices for the purpose of helping athletes flush metabolic waste from their bodies after grueling workouts. Recently, major brands have begun offering consumer versions for home use.

How do they work?

photo courtesy of therabody

While designs vary from brand to brand, the general premise is the same: a pump fills a pair of inflatable boots with air, starting at your feet and squeezing up your legs like a tube of toothpaste.

Theoretically, this type of dynamic compression increases blood flow to tired muscles, flushing out unwanted toxins that naturally result from working out and reducing inflammation from small muscle tears.

Are there any other benefits?

Improved circulation, reduced inflammation and reduced recovery time are the main reasons both pro and amateur athletes reach for recovery boots. According to some physicians, as well as the brands that sell the boots, they offer other benefits, too: increased flexibility, lower levels of muscle soreness and better injury prevention.

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the guide

Fitness

Here’s where things get weird. Pneumatic compression’s efficacy is well-studied in the medical field, with experts mostly agreeing that recovery boots help patients suffering from lymphedema or DVT (in other words, people with compromised circulation). But what about healthy individuals — like, say, elite athletes at the top of their game? Depends whom you ask.

One 2018 study, published in the International Journal of Exercise Science, found that daily use of recovery boots “significantly decreased” muscular swelling and other consequences of working out. But another study, published in the same journal just last year, found that pneumatic compression “offered little to no benefit in recovery” when used by healthy subjects.

Has Gear Patrol tested them?

Yes, we’ve tested various recovery boots from leading manufacturers. Generally, they’re easy to use, easy to store and feel really, really good. Though the jury’s still out on the physiological benefits, there’s something to be said for their passive approach to recovery, especially for athletes who tend to cut corners on stretching or self-massaging with a foam roller. These boots do the work for you, while you catch up on your Netflix queue.

brand name Normatec. Basic boots start at $899 and quickly escalate from there. Therabody, which makes the Theragun, came out with its own line of recovery boots earlier this year. The RecoveryAir costs $699 and comes in three sizes — small, medium and large — while a Pro version, with more control settings, will set you back $1,299.

Are there cheaper alternatives?

If you fantasize about the possibility of sitting in front of your TV for hours while getting a leg massage, be prepared to shell out.

However, recovery is a growing category, with new products launching seemingly every day.

Both Hyperice and Therabody offer massage guns, which retail for just a couple hundred bucks (though far cheaper options abound).

Massage guns are more active in their approach, employing percussive therapy to break up lactic acid and increase blood flow; of course, they require you to be more active in using them, too. If you find yourself on the road a lot, they’re also far more portable.

You could also just buy yourself a foam roller, which will set you back anywhere from $10 to $40. Though less impressive than a pair of state-of-the-art recovery boots, foam rollers are pretty effective at targeting sore muscles. And you can still use one in front of the TV.

Any downsides or risks?

So, what’s the verdict?

Numbness in your legs may occur if the pressure setting is too high. However, there are no major downsides to using recovery boots, even if the science doesn’t necessarily check out. The biggest risk is spending a bunch of money on a tool that certainly feels good but doesn’t actually work as advertised. Speaking of money ...

An exciting product with a lot of promise, recovery boots are anything but a straightforward buy — especially for everyday athletes.

There just haven’t been enough studies to justify the current price of entry. But like with some supplements, if you’re a hardcore athlete who likes to stay on the bleeding edge of sports science, the cost may be an easier pill to swallow.

How much do they cost?

Recovery boots don’t come cheap. Hyperice, the leader in the space, offers several different packages — including additional items for your hips and upper body — under the

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We’ve tested various recovery boots from leading manufacturers.

Generally, they’re easy to use, easy to store and feel really, really good.

Recovery boots are among a number of pneumatic compression products on the market. Hyperice’s Normatec, for example, also makes attachments for the hips and for the arms.

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p h o t o s c o u r t e s y o f n o r m at e c

What does the science say?

Knives Done Right.®

GIANTMOUSE.COM

the guide

Fitness

text by

Zack Zeigler

Getting Wise About Smart Home Gyms Can a $3,000 interactive screen turn you into an Adonis? Maybe, but it’s probably not the best place to start.

photo by pixdeluxe/istock

When gyms shut down because of COVID-19, consumers scrambled to find new ways to maintain a fitness regimen.

Home gym equipment sales surged, with internet-connected at-home fitness-gear maker Peloton reporting a 66 percent boost in business in May and a whopping 176 percent increase by September.

NordicTrack, Tempo, Tonal, Technogym and many other brands joined in on the fun.

Since the pandemic began, it seems like every fitness brand on the planet has pushed some version of the smartest, hardest-working, AI-powered, on-demand personal trainer, rep counter and new best friend in the shape of a bike, rowing machine, vertical climber or … mirror.

When you look in the mirror — even if it’s a Mirror — you have to be disciplined to do the work yourself.

Day after day.

In theory, with everything shuttered, the pandemic was the perfect time to hunker down, focus, and get into the best shape ever. But according to a survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, we spent less time with our new fitness purchases and more time doomscrolling online, packing on the pounds in the process (hello, Quarantine 15).

There are ample benefits to training at home: cleaner showers, fewer idiots leaving gum in the water fountain. Plus, there’s always parking. But only a dummy would stock up on the most expensive smart athome fitness equipment without thinking it through first.

Research published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health suggests that technology (apps and trackers) can promote increased exercise during free time. But the study was conducted in 2017, well before the flood of smart gyms and the pandemic. Also, the long-term benefits and retention rates were unclear, and the study’s authors found that the tech didn’t adequately engage those who need it most — inactive adults.

In other words, if you had a gym membership pre-pandemic and opted not to use it, shelling out for a pricey set of Bluetooth-enabled dumbbells that count reps for you won’t magically give you massive biceps.

The bottom line is what it has always been: when you look in the mirror — even if it’s a Mirror — you have to be motivated and dis-

ciplined to do the work yourself. Day after godforsaken day.

Toward that end, a truly “smart” home gym features equipment you’ll actually use and that works within your budget. If that includes the shiny new gadget with the bells and whistles, so be it. If it doesn’t, figure out what you’re inclined to remain consistent with and invest in it. With the right mindset and info, you can rock your whole body with nothing more than an adjustable kettlebell, a pull-up bar and some resistance bands, after all.

Whatever you choose, there’s no shortage of quality digital services for those who don’t want to go to or return to a gym. Many of these programs — including Peloton, Chris Hemsworth’s Centr and Apple Fitness+ — offer up to a month free before charging your credit card. (Heck, the award-winning Nike Training Club doesn’t charge a dime, ever.)

Trying out these options is a stress-free — and free-free! — way to explore multiple modalities and personalities to find content that suits you and your interests instead of chaining you to whatever your smart gym’s library serves up. They are also super convenient. You can access workouts from anywhere via multiple devices: smartphone, tablet, TV or computer.

And should you want to move on to another activity or service, you can cancel and not be stuck with a hulking dust collector disguised as an exercise bike. Now that’s smart.

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the guide

Fitness

text by

Jack Seemer

photo by

Henry Phillips

On Cloudboom Echo Just in time for fall marathon season, this sleek shoe is the follow-up to On’s first long-distance road racer from last year. This time, however, there’s more competition at the front of the pack. $270

Weighing less than eight ounces (size 8), the Cloudboom Echo is light and feels like it, with a slimmer profile than maximalist marathon shoes from the likes of Nike, Adidas and Hoka One One. The best part about them is the upper: a recycled polyester engineered mesh that’s so airy, it effectively disappears around the foot.

The price is on the higher end, though it’s not totally out of line for an elite race-day shoe. The brand says it’s designed for marathons, but many runners will want something softer after threeplus hours on their feet; the firmer ride here seems ideal for 10K races and half-marathons.

“With its lean-and-mean profile, the Cloudboom Echo stands out as one of the few carbon-plated running shoes that’s a bona-fide alternative to Nike Vaporfly rather than a direct copy — but cushion lovers will want to steer clear.”

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text by

the guide

Jack Seemer

Home

Hacker’s Delight No budget, no problem. A growing cadre of companies like Semihandmade are helping homeowners remodel kitchens and bathrooms, one Ikea project at a time.

Plykea offers built-in handle styles, including the semi-recessed grab (this page). Meanwhile, Semihandmade (opposite page) works directly with Rejuvenation and Lewis Dolin on a range of contemporary hardware options you can buy à la carte.

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Though it’s known for many things — long lines, meatballs, a wonderfully utilitarian tote bag — Ikea built its big, blue empire on flat-pack furniture, the kind of stuff that comes in a box and takes half a Sunday to assemble. For millions of customers around the world, that’s more than enough. How many hours are you really willing to spend assembling your daughter’s nightstand?

But while some Ikea shoppers feel a migraine coming on when staring at one of Ikea’s thousands of instruction books, others see a blank canvas — a piece of furniture that is fundamentally sound but boring. One such

GEAR PATROL WINTER PREVIEW 2021

person is John McDonald, the founder and CEO of a company called Semihandmade.

“The most basic description is that we make doors to fit Ikea cabinets,” McDonald says. His company, founded in 2011, offers fronts and panels that cheaply convert Ikea’s mass-market cabinets into one-of-a-kind creations that look like they cost $50,000 to commission from a local woodworker.

Semihandmade fronts, offered in various styles and colors, cost about a tenth that much for a medium-sized kitchen.

Semihandmade isn’t the only company hacking Ikea furniture. Today, there’s an

While Ikea doesn’t flat-out endorse its customers hacking its products, it doesn’t stop them either.

entire industry built around helping homeowners, contractors and designers upgrade Ikea cabinets to keep prices low on a remodel. Brands like Kokeena, Superfront, Modern Twig and Plykea all offer similar products with a similar promise: the look of a custom kitchen or bathroom, for less.

As long as you start with Ikea.

The reason, McDonald says, has to do with quality. “They’re well-built. They have great interior hardware,” he says of Ikea’s cabinet systems Sektion, Akurum, Godmorgon and Besta. They’re also readily available.

“Up until COVID, you could walk into an Ikea

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the guide

Home

3 QUICK IK E A H ACKS YOU CAN K NOCK OU T IN A WEEK END OR LE S S

REPLACE CABINET KNOBS Give new life to your existing cabinets with contemporary hardware from the likes of Rejuvenation. Crafted from solid brass, its Patton Cabinet Knob ($22) comes with a backplate that hides the previous hardware installation.

SWAP FURNITURE LEGS Available in several different finishes, including teak and walnut, Prettypegs Estelle Slim 300 tapered table legs ($84) stay true to Ikea’s Scandivian aesthetic. Use them to elevate any table, sofa or bed.

SLIP ON A NEW COVER Swap out that stained sofa cover with one from Bemz — the Stockholm-based company offers hundreds of different covers for Ikea sofas, armchairs and pillows starting at $9.

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and walk out with a kitchen,” McDonald adds. “Each store carrying inventory is just an extraordinary thing.”

And while Ikea doesn’t flat-out endorse its customers hacking its products, it doesn’t stop them either. “It’s an à la carte system,” McDonald notes. That means that you can buy Sektion cabinets without the doors or panels, avoiding the hassle — and waste — of tossing unwanted materials after a remodel.

According to McDonald, Semihandmade has sold more than 25,000 projects in the past decade, with business on the rise since the onset of COVID. Pandemic-induced delays have increased the lead time, currently about 12 weeks, but customers keep coming.

“Ikea, like everybody else, had some serious supply chain shortages and delays,” McDonald says. “But it didn’t impact at all our sale of doors. We’ve grown thirty-five percent in the last year.”

Perhaps there is a ceiling, though. Like with any piece of flat-pack furniture, hacking Ikea’s catalog still costs something — if not money, then time and effort.

“There’s a culture of people that are heavy DIYers, but ninety percent-plus don’t want to put a cabinet together or touch an Allen wrench,” McDonald says. “Fifty percent of our customers do assemble and install their own projects. It does take a pretty crafty person.”

Different strokes. Semihandmade’s Shaker style (above) is a popular choice for its clean and traditional aesthetic. Superfront appeals to a different kind of clientele with unique and expressive patterns like Fields (bottom).

Tangente neomatik 41 Update midnight blue. The unique NOMOS ring date with superluminova is patented and easy to set—in both directions.

This is made possible by the in-house automatic caliber DUW 6101 within, which is highly precise and also features a patented date mechanism.

Available at select retailers, such as Arizona: Hyde Park Jewelers; California: Bhindi, CJ Charles, CH Premier, Chatel, Feldmar, Shreve & Co.; Cincinnati: Richter & Philips; Colorado: Oster Jewelers; Connecticut: Shreve, Crump & Low; Georgia: Brown & Co.; Illinois: Swiss Fine Timing; Indiana: Brinker’s, Reis-Nichols; Massachusetts: Long’s Jewelers, Shreve, Crump & Low; Minnesota: JB Hudson; Nebraska: Borsheims; Nevada: Harland; New Jersey: Hamilton; New York: London Jewelers, Wempe; North Carolina: Windsor Jewelers; Louisiana: Adler’s; Ohio: Diamond Cellar; Pennsylvania: Henne; South Carolina: M. P. Demetre; Tennessee: Diamond Cellar; Texas: L. Majors, Lewis, Timeless Luxury Watches; Virginia: Schwarzschild; Washington: Fox’s; Washington DC: Tiny Jewel Box. And at Tourneau / Bucherer, as well as here: nomos-glashuette.com

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Hot Chair Time Machine How a dusty old chair in my grandmother’s attic forced me to reckon with my own mortality.

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One of the great double-edged swords of pandemic life — early, middle and latter stages included — is the amount of time that needs filling. Over the past 18 months, I taught myself how to play the harmonica, tried to read Dune, made pasta from scratch and binged more Survivor seasons than I care to disclose. Mostly, though, I sat in a chair, staring at my phone, while existential dread cooked me from the inside. And though I found it all too easy to whine about the general and specific states of things, there was one specific thing that managed to escape my ire: the chair I was sitting in, an Eames Lounge Chair & Ottoman made and purchased in 1970.

I know the chair is that old because the manufacturer, Herman Miller (now MillerKnoll after the company acquired its equally iconic nemesis), keeps an incredible archive; plus, websites like Eames.com and MyEamesLoungeChairandOttoman.com exist and say so. Also, it once belonged to my grandfather.

I knew Charles Lathem, the son of a railroad blacksmith in Birmingham, Alabama, for the last 17 years of his life. My sister dubbed him Big Daddy, not in reference to the 1999 Adam Sandler film, but because he — like his father before him — was big. Before he lost a large percentage of his stomach fending off esophageal cancer, he was a 6-foot-3, 200-plus-pound grandpa with a gleaming bald head and bushy white beard.

He was a hunter, a fisherman, a carpenter and really every other cliché of that kind of do-it-all masculinity. His skin was leathery and dark brown on account of his being outside so much. When I knew him, he was enamored with cowboy lore and had the full collection of leather-bound Louis L’Amour novellas to prove it.

I discovered the Eames lounger shortly after graduating college. It was hidden away in a studio above the garage at my grandparent’s place, which is tucked away about a mile up a gravel round in Dawsonville, Georgia. It’s not a big house, but the slow drive through the woods makes it feel important.

I knew the provenance of the chair, or at least the basics — Charles and Ray Eames, mid-century modern, weirdly expensive nowadays. I did not, however, know why it was there. My grandparents’ house was

more rustic Southern chalet than anything.

The Eames’ slightly askew lounger, despite being one of the most famous pieces of furniture in the world, simply did not belong.

I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that stubbing my toe on an old leather chair triggered my own mortal reckoning. Asinine as it sounds, the chair served as a kind of link between then and now — proof that things happened before I gained sentience.

In the years following my discovery of the chair, I got to know about the before. It’s clear my grandparents did not fit the Alabaman caricature, a myth based on lazy thinking: my grandfather was a photographer, artist and architect; and my grandmother was a postop nutritionist as well as the first woman in her family to earn a college degree. The pair met at Alabama Polytech (renamed to Auburn University while they were in school).

Before they lived in the chalet in the woods (which my grandfather blueprinted himself), they lived in Vinings, Georgia, a hip Atlanta neighborhood that’s very much a part of the city’s creative milieu. I know now that their first house was modern and full of Eames pieces and other mid-century icons, like George Nelson’s Bubble Lamps and Florence Knoll’s tufted sofa. There were Cubist and Fauvist paintings on the walls and massive palm plants on the floor. If they weren’t lost to time, grainy photos of their home would make for excellent Instagram fodder.

My grandfather was an intense person.

As a kid, I’d watch him measure, remeasure, draw on and cut lumber for an hour in his basement woodshop without making a noise, and if I shuffled across the concrete floor too quickly or sneezed mid-cut, I’d start to sweat. His voice, gravelly and deep from cigar smoking and the toughening life events that come with growing up in harder circumstances, reverberated around the house like a football coach’s barking orders. As his lone grandson, I was very rarely in trouble, but as a kid, I found his intensity no less frightening.

It’s one of the reasons it took finding a dusty chair in his old painting studio above the garage for me to get to know him.

When I was in high school, my grandfather and I talked football. Especially in 2010, the year of Cam Newton and Auburn’s undefeated run through the SEC (including a Saban-led Alabama with Julio Jones and Mark Ingram in their pomp). He became ill toward the end of the season. He lost weight and strength and eventually spent most days in a white and blue hospital bed parked by the windows overlooking the woods outside, which are beautiful that time of year. No one looks natural in that position, but him least of all — a commanding figure who I’d learned was more Hemingway than Marlboro Man. My dad and I had planned to go to Jordan-Hare to watch Auburn put their

The chair served as a kind of link between then and now — proof that things happened before I gained sentience. undefeated record on the line against Georgia, but we thought to cancel on account of his health. He and my grandmother asked — told us, really — to go. He passed away a day and a half after the game.

After I found the chair, I expressed interest in having it. Years later, my grandmother had it freighted unceremoniously to my Brooklyn apartment; since most of my family’s design sensibilities lean traditional, she was just happy to get the thing out of the house.

It’s funny how some objects take on a life

of their own. I never once saw my grandfather sit in the chair, though today, sitting catty-cornered in my office, it has come to represent him and help me understand the man he was. I endured much of the pandemic curled up in it, refreshing the AP news app, eyes glazed over. But eventually, that didn’t seem right. That kind of submission to the moment would not do. Today, walking by the chair every day urges me to keep moving; or, at the very least, serves as a reminder to ring home.

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Dyson Humdinger Dyson’s first handheld vacuum in years is more powerful than it looks. But is it something you even need? $300

Weighing just 2.1 pounds, the Humdinger is Dyson’s lightest vacuum to date, but it retains the powerful suction Dyson vacuums are known for.

It also swaps out the typical trigger with a pushto-start button, addressing customer complaints of finger fatigue.

The Humdinger is only a handheld vacuum cleaner. Sure, it’s great for getting into nooks and crannies — and for getting up into upholstered furniture — but have fun crawling on your hands and knees to clean the floors with a $300 vacuum.

“I never thought I’d find it fun to vacuum, but here I am, a 25-year-old man finding joy in sucking up dirt from my couch. If only it could do something about my floors.”

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Aaron Goldfarb

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Henry Phillips

The Cult of Charbay How a 13th-generation distiller became America’s first, and maybe best, craft whiskey maker.

One of the most unique whiskeys in the world, Charbay’s Pilsner Whiskey was distilled with bottle-ready pilsner beer and aged 14 years (6 years in oak, 8 in stainless steel). The result is piney, slightly bitter, citrusy and rich. Distilled in 1999, it’s unlike any other whiskey out there.

“Was anyone else distilling beer?”

Marko Karakasevic repeats the question, thinking about it, before responding.

“Commercially, no. I’m sure somebody in Germany or Japan might have been doing it. But there were no other hop-flavored whiskeys out there. We were the first.”

Being that craft whiskey really only started getting any sort of notoriety in America in the mid-aughts, it’s easy to think that big names like Stranahan’s (Denver, CO; 2005), Tuthilltown (Gardiner, NY; 2005) and Balcones (Waco, TX; 2008) were the first on the scene. But a few distilleries were so far ahead of the game that they’ve evaded widespread attention.

One such place is Charbay, which Karakasevic owns and operates in Ukiah, CA, with his wife, Jenni. Though largely unknown to mainstream bourbon drinkers, Charbay has developed a rabid cult following over the last two decades thanks to its reputation as America’s first craft whiskey maker and its one-of-a-kind distillates, which share as much in common with new-school IPAs as they do traditional whiskey. “[It’s] the single most legendary American craft whiskey ever created,” claims David Othenin-Girard, the spirits buyer for K&L Wine Merchants in Los Angeles. “The quality of the spirit is paramount, and we still don’t know exactly how Marko did it.”

Karakasevic’s story starts with an immigrant, Milorad “Miles” Karakasevic, from Novi Sad, in what was once Yugoslavia. He bounced around North America starting in the 1960s, making wine in Michigan and the Napa Valley, before landing

in Mendocino County in the early 1980s. By 1983, he had opened his own winery and distillery, Domaine Karakash, focused on Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and cognac-style brandies. It was well regarded in the area, but largely unknown outside Mendocino County, let alone California.

When Miles’s son Marko, who would be the family’s thirteenth-generation distiller, officially joined what was now known as Charbay in 1995, he was itching to make his family’s first whiskey.

But he didn’t want it to taste like what was coming out of Kentucky and Tennessee at the time.

To him, a mass-produced spirit made in a factory was akin to a flavorless lager from St. Louis or Milwaukee.

“I took inspiration from all the local microbreweries that were in the midst of revolutionizing the once-bland beer industry,” Karakasevic recalls. “You have to use beer to make whiskey, so why not use the most delicious beer possible for Chrissakes?”

Karakasevic contract-brewed 20,000 gallons of bottle-ready pilsner at Benziger Family Winery’s microbrewery, Sonoma Mountain Brewing Co., and then spent three-and-half weeks, twenty-four hours a day, double-distilling the beer on his copper alembic pot still. Being that it was already carbonated, it was a challenge to safely eliminate all the CO2. After he had made his cuts, he had 1,000 gallons that went into 22 new charred-oak barrels. Not a fan of overaged whiskey — “liquid lumber,” he calls it — he aged it for just two years and bottled his two best-tasting barrels at a full-proof 64.7 percent ABV for what he called Charbay Double Barrel Whiskey.

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half-barrel of 12-year-old distillate in 2011.

Othenin-Girard, meanwhile, thought Charbay Whiskey to be the “work of mad genius,” calling it “massive, over the top, intense and awe inspiring.”

Yet, if it slowly was gaining a reputation among the whiskey cognoscenti in the Los Angeles area, it was not exactly flying off shelves.

“My whiskey sold slowly and that was fine,” Karakasevic recalls, noting how then, as now, Charbay is a family operation with no marketing or advertising budget. “We didn’t have much to sell. And we didn’t need to sell it to survive.”

When Sonoma Mountain Brewing went out of business, Karakasevic next decided to distill his absolute favorite beer, Bear Republic’s Racer 5 IPA, sourcing a 6,000-gallon, 16-wheel tanker truck full of it. The resultant Charbay R5, first released in 2010, would expand the brand’s cult reach with its mix of fruity, floral, dank and spicy notes. He also eventually produced Whiskey S — distilled from Bear Republic’s Big Bear Stout and aged in used French oak barrels — while, every few years, releasing older and older bottlings of that original pilsner distillate — including a 13-and-a-half-year-old Release IV in 2013 and a 16-year-old Release V in the fall of 2016, the final 72 bottles of which sold for $675 each.

“To me, it’s way more valuable than cult bourbon,” says Ury, who once claimed his Charbay was the one whiskey he would save

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Marko and Jenni Karakasevic have run Charbay Distillery since it spun off into a separate business in 2017, but the Karakasevic family has been making booze since the 18th century, when it was making brandies and wine in central Europe.

p o r t r a i t c o u r t e s y o f c h a r b ay

“I was quite happy with what occurred,” Karakasevic says, claiming the flavors of the pilsner were ten times more concentrated, with aromas of pine and citrus (yet no lingering bitterness) coming from the beer’s Czech Saaz hops and a palate both bready and a bit spicy. “There was no other whiskey on the market tasting like that. Period.”

Though Karakasevic had inadvertently created a new style of whiskey — “hop-flavored whiskey” according to TTB labeling standards — the 840 gold-painted bottles of $350 whiskey were a tough sell. Craft whiskey wasn’t what it is today, and drinkers of the era were reticent enough to buy, say, $45 bottles of Blanton’s Bourbon back in 2001. This was an era when flavored vodka was still red-hot, and Karakasevic also had a good one — a Meyer lemon number made from 100 percent fresh fruit. When he’d travel the country flogging his vodka, however, he’d also test receptive audiences with his oddball whiskey. Eventually, he started reeling in some early adopters.

“I got turned on to Charbay by L.A. Whisk(e)y Society back when there was just one bottling of the whiskey, maybe two,” says Steve Ury, an attorney well known for his whiskey blogging. Ury loved how Charbay had both a funkiness and maturity that made it taste like “liquid weed,” and the esteemed private tasting group he was a part of worshipped Charbay so much they would eventually buy an entire

“George T. Stagg, Weller and Pappy [Van Winkle] are great, but there’s tons of other bourbons that have similar flavor profiles. There is simply nothing like Charbay, especially those original pilsner bottles.”

The beer base of Charbay R5 is Karakasevic’s favorite beer, Bear Republic’s Racer 5 IPA. It’s dank and fruity like an IPA but sweet and spicy like a whiskey. Whiskey S started as the same brewery’s Big Bear Stout. Each can be found in select markets from about $75 to $125 a bottle.

if a natural disaster struck. “George T. Stagg, Weller and Pappy [Van Winkle] are great, but there’s tons of other bourbons that have similar flavor profiles.

There is simply nothing like Charbay, especially those original pilsner bottles.”

In this wild era where bourbon obsessives will eagerly pay $600 for one of 50,000 or so yearly bottles of the aforementioned Stagg, you would think the fact Charbay remains extremely limited and very expensive would be a positive. Those two attributes are typically catnip to American whiskey collectors, but maybe the atypical flavor profile continues to scare many off. It shouldn’t.

“Marko not only created a completely idiosyncratic style, but also it’s wildly delicious, intense and bombastic,” Othenin-Girard says. According to him, new R5 releases “do pretty well” at K&L these days.

Some of the biggest fans of Charbay are the creative forces behind Wolves Whiskey, an ultra-hip, Hollywood-based label launched by fashion mavens Jon Buscemi and James Bond in 2019. Wanting to dip their toes into the whiskey industry, they could

have done what everyone else does and sourced the same bourbon that is made in a big factory in Indiana called MGP. Being that Wolves Whiskey comes in lavish, Italian-sheepskin-labeled bottles and is released online like a sneaker drop, it would have made perfect sense to consider the liquid secondary. But, after being introduced to the “wacky shit” — which Buscemi uses endearingly to describe Karakasevic’s whiskeys — they knew they had no choice but to source some Charbay and let him blend it into what would become their initial release, First Run. “A lot of what MGP makes is excellent juice,” says Jeremy Joseph, CEO of Wolves Whiskey. “That said, there’s nothing like what Marko does.”

Maybe this flashy association with Wolves will be what finally nudges Charbay into the whiskey mainstream. Or perhaps Karakasevic’s creations will always appeal, somewhat exclusively, to purists that value flavor over flair.

“So many craft distillers are trying to do something ‘different,’” Othenin-Girard says. “But they forget to make it delicious.”

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Alexa Edgerton

Start Here

Which CoffeeBrewing Method Is Right for You? There’s more than one way to brew coffee, but they’re not brewing coffee equally. Here’s a cheat sheet for finding the perfect coffee-brewing method for you.

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The Choices: We asked Chi Sum Ngai and Kaleena Teoh, founders of Coffee Project NY, to break down the pros and cons of five popular coffee-brewing methods.

01.

Drip Coffee Maker

A drip coffee maker can be a godsend if you’re looking for your fix with as little work as possible. But what you gain in efficiency, you lose in customization.

Pros: Easy to use, no skills required Cons: Little control over settings

02.

French Press

French presses offer minimal control over coffee extraction.

They work by letting coffee and water mingle together before the coffee grounds are plunged away.

Pros: Easy to use, affordable Cons: Cleanup is a pain, brews heavier profile coffee

03.

Chemex

A Chemex is essentially a pour-over dripper combined with a carafe, making it perfect for getting high-quality coffee ready for more than one person.

Pros: Full control over coffee extraction Cons: Fragile, hard to transport

04.

Aeropress

The AeroPress combines immersion brewing with a paper filter to produce clean and flavorful cups of coffee.

Pros: Portable, easy to use and affordable Cons: Low volume brewing

05.

Pour-Over Dripper

Pour-over drippers are for coffee nerds who care about every little thing, from agitation to water temperature.

Pros: You can brew a specific profile that you enjoy Cons: Time consuming

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Will Price

Seasonal Grilling Is a Betrayal of Human History If you hang up the barbecue tongs after Labor Day, you’re missing the point.

Cooks are all romantics, none more so than grillers.

Be it some deep-seated ancient energy released by the mere sight of a live flame — humans have been using fire to cook food for some 125,000 years — or the burnt edges it produces, grilling outdoors inspires gastronomical mysticism.

So it makes sense that the ritual itself is rife with paradoxical thinking (mistakenly soaking wood chips in water before trying to burn them), dramatic overestimation of one’s abilities (doing the finger test to measure meat doneness) and excruciatingly dull gatekeeping (charcoal zealots). Yet the weirdest take of all is that grilling is a summer activity, something that must be ceased once Labor Day has come and gone.

I would have fallen into this trap myself if I didn’t grow up in the Deep South, where the summers are sweltering and the last thing the body wants is to be stationed next to fire. But no matter where you live, confining your grilling experience to one season makes little sense. Just ask the experts.

“A warm, sunny late afternoon should not be the only time you cook out of doors. Cold days, windy days, snowy days, rainy days, dark and cloudy days all have their charms and challenges to the builder of fires and the griller of food.

Many chefs take pride and pleasure in making a meal with whatever ingredients are at hand.

I am that way with fire and weather. Whatever weather the gods hurl my way, as long as I have wood or charcoal, a place to kindle a flame and some way to expose ingredients to the heat of the fire, I know I can make a fine meal.”

So sayeth the Church of Grilling’s hedonistic Argentine high priest Francis Mallmann, whose devotion to live-fire cuisine has made him the most recognizable Latin American chef in the world. The above passage, excerpted from a 2014 Barbecue Bible essay, neatly summarizes his stance on “seasonal” grilling. Considering his living conditions — a remote island in Patagonia — cold weather is no excuse to stay indoors.

If Mallmann’s impassioned challenge isn’t convincing enough, perhaps the science will be.

Nothing about lower outdoor temperatures condemns a grill to a bench role.

“The big changes I make are that I dress warmer, and I don’t sit by the grill sipping beer,” says Meathead, publisher of AmazingRibs.com and author of the eponymous cookbook on grilling and barbecue.

Likely the most prolific grill tester in the world, Meathead fires up year-round from the Chicago suburbs, which don’t feature the mildest of winters.

His advice is often simple, but grounded in experience. The most significant considerations when grilling in cold weather are timing and fuel use.

Because the grill itself and the grates are cold, you’ll need to lengthen your preheating time accordingly. Grills with thinner, less-insulating metal (like a Weber Kettle) will get hot more quickly, while thicker grills made with heavier materials (like a Big Green Egg) may take longer to heat up. But, as is the case in warm weather, beefier grills hold steady, high temperatures more effectively than their trim counterparts do.

The second part of the equation is the outside

“The big changes I make are that I dress warmer, and I don’t sit by the grill sipping beer.” air itself. Fire feeds on oxygen, but cool air getting into a grill will lower the temperature inside.

According to Meathead, the solution is simple: just use more fuel (coals or wood) than you might on a mild day. More fuel means more heat and less temperature flux; in other words, steaks can come off at the right time. For gas grillers, simply let the grill chamber preheat thoroughly and ensure your tank is topped off. If there’s blistering wind at play, roll your grill behind a wall or other barrier. Problems solved.

Oh, and one more thing: All the cool kids are grilling in the winter. According to surveys conducted by marketing firm Acosta, 61 percent of Gen Z and Millennials who grill are doing so yearround, leading 46 percent of all grillers with the same mentality. So the next time you consider hanging the tongs up for the “off-season,” remember that Mallmann, Meathead, your kids — hell, most of humankind — will look down upon you.

5 TIPS FOR WINTER TIME GRILLING

photo by maskot/getty

THE GRILL EARLIER 1. START It’s not rocket science:

Cold temps mean cold grills and grates. You need to allot more time to preheating your grill so it can come up to temperature.

AMPLE LIGHTING 2. ENSURE During the winter, the

sun can start setting around 5 p.m. Make sure you have ample lighting, because you don’t want to be grilling in the dark.

UP 3. BUNDLE The grill is not a space

heater. Be smart, and dress warm. Save the shorts, tank top and flip flops for the summer.

UP YOUR GRILL, TOO 4. BUNDLE Invest in a grill cover

so that your grill isn’t exposed to the elements whether it’s snow, sleet or hail.

5.

S TOCK UP ON FUEL The cold will quickly eat up your grill’s fuel, so use more than you would on a warm day.

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Henry Phillips

Benchmade Chef’s Knife Benchmade makes some of the world’s best pocket knives. Its new knife might not fit in your pocket, but it can help prep dinner. $270+

The base of the blade and full tang running through the handle are somewhat thick, lending a satisfying weight, and the handle and heel work together to form a handy, ergonomic pinchgrip zone. The blade is sharpened nicely out of the box and takes to at-home sharpening without much fuss.

Holes in the handles of pocket knives are relatively common; they can cut out excess weight or allow you to attach the knife to a carabiner or even a belt loop. The feature isn’t as useful on kitchen knives, however, as they collect water, grease and other liquids in the kitchen.

“With its short, thick blade (like a Japanese deba) and ergonomic handle, Benchmade’s first chef’s knife is weird to look at but fun to use.”

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Evan Malachosky

Going Vegan

There are plenty of good reasons to go vegan. It’s healthy. It’s ethical. It’s generally better for the environment. But it can be a difficult, often costly, transition — one that not only limits what you put in your body but on it. That leaves as many holes in wardrobes as it does refrigerators. And not a lot of quality options to fill them.

Just ask Blundstone CEO Adam Blake, who says his brand’s vegan debut — two styles of Chelsea boots called #2115 and #2116 that became available in October — didn’t just address a gap in the market but in Blundstone’s own product line.

“Ever since we were founded in 1870, we’ve prided ourselves on a very simple mission: to make the boots people need and want,” Blake says. “We want our brand to be open for everyone to feel a part of and engaged with. And, I think, from a very simple perspective, we decided we couldn’t truly stand by that unless we moved into

developing [vegan] Blundstone boots.”

Blundstone boots are traditionally made from leather with the brand’s “fit for purpose” mission front of mind. They’re designed to endure whatever the wearer puts them through. This universality proves reminiscent of another brand, the venerable Dr. Martens, which first introduced vegan boots in 2011.

Since then, the vegan market has grown exponentially. It’s set to reach a valuation of $31.6 billion by 2026 — and that’s just food. As alternatives penetrate countless new product categories, it’s a mere matter of time until consumers come to expect vegan choices in every facet of their lives — from the cosmetics they use to the clothes they wear.

Other notable footwear and apparel brands are taking note: Clarks introduced vegan versions of its Desert Boots and Wallabees in August, and Canada Goose

“We want our brand to be open for everyone to feel a part of and engaged with.”

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o p p osite pa g e

Blundstone’s vegan Chelsea boots ($190) come in two colors, black (#2115) and brown (#2116). this pa g e

Canada Goose will abandon its famous fur-lined hood by the end of 2022.

photos courtesy of canada goose, blundstone

Brands historically known for leather and fur are distancing themselves from animalderived materials.

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f rom to p

Three leaves on Clarks’ traditional hang tag, and the heel, signal this is vegan-friendly footwear; the brand reimagined two of its most popular styles, the Desert Boot and the Wallabee, for its first-ever animal-free collection.

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photos courtesy of clarks

announced plans to pivot away from fur (and goose down, PETA hopes) by the end of 2022.

Clarks and Canada Goose, along with Blundstone, create products heralded for comfort, functionality and durability, so this shift toward vegan materials represents more than virtue signaling or cashing in on a growing consumer base. It’s an endorsement of a number of new, alternative animal-free materials.

Vegan iterations used to be inferior. Now they’re nearly indistinguishable — though not without a lot of work.

“It has taken us some time. I’ll be really honest,” Blake says. “Our boots were designed for people to work and live and play in the environment of Tasmania. Every product we make should be able to live up to that, so durability of material was really important for us.”

Certifications also add another layer of complexity. “We were not going to come to market at all unless we could stand by that it was one hundred percent tested and verified as vegan,” Blake adds. “That sounds very obvious, but, trust me, that’s not the approach all brands take.”

Blundstone is transparent about the alternatives it employs: Grupo Morón’s onMicro, a microfiber thinner than silk, and onSteam, a microfiber known for being moisture-wicking. It’s also upfront about the certifications it’s been awarded: vegan by third-party verifier Eurofins.

Eurofins tests materials down to the molecular level, where they can uncover even the tiniest trace of animal biomaterial. These tests not only inform how brands can market their products, but they set a standard for other industry members to follow. For consumers, it’s a way of knowing what goes into them, explicitly what doesn’t, and how they should perform — and most often it’s to the same level or higher as their animal-product counterparts.

Now let’s see if consumers can tell the difference between these core products and their vegan counterparts. Chances are, they can’t.

Artisan handcrafted jewelry designed for wear-everywhere comfort and longevity.

Available online at johnhardy.com or in boutique at 1.212.343.9000

the guide

Style

text by

Evan Malachosky

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Henry Phillips

Body High

Bye, T-shirts printed in a haze of skunky smoke. Cannabis merch is now considered high design.

Only five states haven’t yet passed laws to legalize cannabis for medicinal or recreational use. The early adopters, Colorado and Washington, only did so in 2012. Relatively speaking, we’re still in the wee beginnings of what will be a $91.5 billion dollar industry by 2028, according to Grand View Research, Inc. Brands that grow and pack, distribute, sell, advertise, deliver, educate about and advocate for criminal justice reform around cannabis are forging the legal landscape. But despite the rapid growth, these companies remain punk in spirit, creating merch for a new generation of stoners. Is it high fashion?

Depends who you ask.

BlackbirdGo

Not One Person Tee $30 BlackbirdGo serves as an intermediary between dispensaries and cannabis consumers. TLDR: they deliver you your weed. But they also make a clothing line called Be Good People. Which, as you might guess, advocates for the end of cannabis prohibition and donates proceeds to The Last Prisoner Project.

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Pure Beauty DM S/S $55

Doodle Collage Crewneck $100

Pure Beauty

Sundae School

Top-shelf weed fashioned into slim, cigarette-like sticks, that’s Pure Beauty’s shtick. (Oh, and a 100mg cocktail.) But T-shirts, bucket hats, beach towels and art prints — many of which feature their little side-eye logo or artistic shots of weed — fill out the L.A. label’s online store.

Pre-rolled joints in two sizes — Bullet (0.3g) and Party (1.0g) — make up Sundae School’s smokeables catalog. Filled with premium flower, they’re an obvious extension of Sundae School’s fashion-forward smokewear line of the same name.

Old Pal

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Work Together Long Sleeve Shirt $58 Old Pal sells pre-ground “shareable” cannabis packaged with rolling papers and filters. The brand’s clothing, sold as Old Pal Provisions, peddles positivity and unity, and proceeds are regularly donated to organizations like Our Academy.

Docs Family Farms Crew Pants $160

Docs Family Farms is, as the name suggests, a 10-acre, family-owned cannabis farm in Northern California. With a model-turned-farmer at the helm, the family’s apparel line has seen similar success. It spans tie-dyed pants and bucket hats, straightforward logo tees and crewneck sweatshirts.

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Style

Fresh Takes Ben Gorham, the Stockholm-based visionary behind fragrance brand Byredo, opens up about his unlikely rise, unique inspirations and expanding into everything from jeans and sneakers to home goods and adventure gear.

No one expected Ben Gorham to bottle magic when he launched the fragrance brand Byredo 15 years ago. The pro-basketball-player-turned-art-school-student had no experience in an industry dominated by luxury conglomerates with centuries of history, so he enlisted respected perfumer Jérôme Epinette to craft his vision.

For Gorham, Byredo’s fragrances are deeply personal and nostalgic: His first scent conjured memories of his absent father with notes of sage, jasmine, violet and musk, and his second, a blend of temple incense, amber, ginger and bergamot, was inspired by the Mumbai suburb where his mother was born. Through the veil of memory, Gorham created something immediately relevant and unlike anything put out by legacy fashion houses.

Not surprisingly, Byredo grew from a cult brand to an industry darling, even collaborating on scents with the likes of Virgil Abloh’s Off-White and Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack in recent years. As his brand has gained respect in the fashion world, Gorham has ventured out into other categories: first, leather goods and purses, then jewelry, makeup and grooming products.

In 2019, Gorham launched a new line, ByProduct, to house his non-olfactory creations. The line has produced suits, sneakers, eyewear, wallets, jeans and home goods, among other things.

Additionally, Gorham has recently collaborated with a wide range of brands on non-Byredo products, including a line of affordable candles with Ikea, adventure gear with Peak Performance, a table with La Manufacture and a collection of surf-inspired clothing with Stockholm (Surfboard) Club.

While fragrance is still the core of Byredo’s business, Gorham’s unique perspective is making waves in an array of other seemingly untouchable categories. Reflecting on a decade and a half of helming Byredo, Gorham shares how he approaches these new products and the lessons learned along the way. f rom to p

Ben Gorham, the Swedish founder of fragrance brand Byredo; according to Gorham, the brand’s latest fragrance, Mumbai Noise, explores the “relationship between my childhood trips to my grandmother’s house in Mumbai and the juxtaposition of the very same city 20 years later.”

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text by

John Zientek

You started Byredo with little experience in the fragrance world and created a range of unique scents — how has your relationship to creating new fragrances changed with 15 years of experience?

It’s funny when I think about it as my approach hasn’t dramatically changed. What has changed is what I know about the fabrication of a fragrance, the technical details. Not knowing what to begin with was an asset, one of the many joys of being an outsider. I had no framework, which also meant I had no constraints. I wanted to create moments in time linked to memory or emotion, which may not have been possible if I had years of experience in an industry that often starts from a marketing approach to developing new products.

Did your experience in art school inform your approach to fragrance?

Art school was kind of a time of rebirth in my life.

I knew I wasn’t conventionally academic from my schoolboy days, and my basketball journey had abruptly ended because of bureaucracy. Everything I thought I would do with my life drastically changed when I was in my twenties. Going to art school allowed me to recalibrate that experience, and what came out of it was a chance encounter with a perfumer [Epinette] I still work with to this day — and the opportunity to express myself in a way that would have never occurred to me if it wasn’t for that part of my journey.

How does fragrance allow you to express memories and emotions better than other products?

Smell is obviously not the only sense that will somewhat unwittingly bring a memory or emotion into someone’s consciousness, but it is undeniably potent. For the most part, people can’t remember where they put their keys or parked their car, yet a whiff of jasmine or coffee or rose will transport them immediately to a moment filed deep in their subconscious. The fact that scent is intangible and subjective is so attractive to me. I am creating fragrances from my own memories that will ultimately reveal memories in the minds of others, which is where I find the most joy in Byredo.

photos courtesy of byredo

As the brand has grown, have the inspirations for fragrances changed from personal memories to a wider vision, or is it still a singular perspective?

Byredo has allowed me to visit so many countries and collaborate with some of the world’s most creative people. It’s definitely diversified my approach to fragrance and enriched the experiences that I can draw from. So has the times we are living through, the good and the bad.

Mixed Emotions was inspired by the idea that it’s okay to not be okay. Open Sky was born from

a longing to experience that trepidation and excitement between departure and destination, when I took the longest break from travel that I have had in years. The perspective is ever- evolving but never lacking inspiration.

KE Y S T YLES

When did you have the impulse to expand into other product categories — was it a challenge to apply the same perspective to cosmetics or grooming products?

From the beginning, my approach to the fragrance game was different to anything else on the market. Byredo began as a journey around scent, but memories and emotions are really the heart of the brand. And inevitably that often led me to want to create products that weren’t fragrances or candles or body care, which is how our leather goods and footwear and collaborations with Off-White and Craig McDean came about.

Cosmetics was something more deliberate. I had always felt that there could be a visual manifestation of Byredo and that it should be disruptive. And looking at the industry as an outsider, it was ripe for disruption. Beauty is ultimately subjective, yet the makeup industry is built around dictating what is beautiful and what you should look like. Byredo makeup had to totally reject that notion, which is why we created a tool box of colors and textures for people to express themselves.

BYREDO X OUR LEGACY WORK SHOP DENIM Working with Stockholm brand Our Legacy, Byredo repurposed leftover Italian denim to create these wide-cut jeans. Details include copper rivets and a screen-printed logo. $410

How do you decide which products to approach in the ByProduct line?

Without sounding too esoteric, the products come to me quite organically. Our creative ambition is really to connect with people — and I have never wanted to limit what those could be.

ByProduct is a physical exploration of this belief, from eyewear to beach towels to vases to picnic baskets. It’s about constantly discovering what Byredo can be.

How does your design approach change when collaborating with outdoors brands like Peak Performance or Stockholm (Surfboard) Club?

BYREDO X COURTNEY MC LE MONSTRE SNEAKERS Paris-based artist Courtney MC’s work is printed onto lambskin and hand-stitched to the sides of these basketball-inspired sneakers. $330

I am working with very different teams on these projects, and there are very different roles for the products we create. What is always the same is that I love to be surrounded by people who know more than me about the topic — I learn the rules from them so I can break them a bit.

What inspires you?

We will launch 12 ByProducts in total this year, which inspires me greatly. To have the freedom to constantly apply my creativity to new mediums is extremely satisfying. And to see makeup being launched across the globe in such a radical way and being embraced so thoroughly, it’s the best possible fuel to keep creating.

BYREDO ISONO SOLAIRES Made in Japan, these sunglasses bring disco into the modern era with pure titanium frames and industry-leading CR-39 lenses. $380

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Style

text by

John Zientek

photo by

Henry Phillips

July Carry On Trunk So often in the luggage world, functionality equals drab design. July’s sleek carry-on tries to buck the trend, melding first-class materials with looks to match. $345

The crush-proof German polycarbonate shell protects 46 liters of storage including a hidden laundry bag, waterproof nylon lining and ejectable FastCharge USB-C battery. With two latch locks, the suitcase is a breeze to get into. And it can move easily from airport to sidewalk thanks to smooth double wheels and a multi-height telescopic handle.

The accessible price and lightweight build — it’s 8.4 pounds when empty — make this suitcase from a startup Australian brand quite desirable.

So much so that certain colors are sometimes backordered during peak travel months.

“It’s common for luggage companies to offer customization. But while most brands stick to monograms, July gives you the option of whole words or phrases — albeit, short ones.”

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Watches

text by

Zen Love

Leather Weather Once a staple among Hollywood’s elite, the Bund strap is again ready for the limelight.

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photos by

Henry Phillips

In the watch world, cool weather means it’s time for leather watch straps. They can be classic or rugged, but seldom both. Unless, of course, we’re talking about the Bund strap — a standard two-piece leather strap but with an additional layer of leather sitting beneath the watch. The result is a band that looks like a full-leather cuff.

Though once a favorite of larger-than-life stars like Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, the Bund strap came from pragmatic origins: it takes its colloquial name from its issue to military pilots of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, or Federal Republic of Germany, in the mid-20th century. It was designed to protect the wrist from the watch’s metal case, which could become either too cold in a freezing aircraft or scalding in the case of cockpit fires.

With the cool factor that comes from military origins and the resurgence of ‘70s watch styles, there’s every reason for the Bund strap to make a comeback this season.

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Panerai Luminor Marina 42mm PAM01392 $7,900 on Hodinkee Heaton Bund Dark Brown Calfskin $170 this pa g e

Hodinkee Heaton Bund Cooper Black $170

HOW TO WE AR ONE Wear a larger tool watch on a Bund, or use it to help a small watch wear more prominently.

PILOT’S WATCH: LACO PILOT WATCH PADERBORN Bund straps look especially appropriate on Flieger watches, which were originally made for German pilots. $1,190

wat c h p h o t o s c o u r t e s y o f r e s p e c t i v e b r a n d s

DIVE WATCH: SEIKO PROSPEX SPB237 “WILLARD” You don’t take a Bund in the water, but dive watches look great on them, especially those with ‘70s vibes like Seiko’s classic “Willard.” $1,300

RACING CHRONOGRAPH: YEMA SPEEDGRAF Some of the most famous Bund wearers chose racing chronographs like the Yema Speedgraf, which fits the bill to a T. $1,499

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Watches

Green Lit The unofficial dial color of 2021 proves to be surprisingly versatile.

First came blue, but watchmakers have a new muse: green dials, now found on dressy vintage reissues, modern sport watches and every timepiece in between. There is no single green, of course, but whether khaki, olive, forest or that hue apparently specific to British race cars, it’s a color that effortlessly lends watches a feeling of natural, calming elegance. Here are six fresh — but not flashy — options worthy of your wrist.

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text by

Zen Love

photos by

Henry Phillips

Waldan Heritage Professional

Seiko Presage Sharp Edge Series SPB169

Powered by an American-made quartz movement, Waldan’s throwback design features a green inner dial that lends it a special automotive character.

The faceted texture of Seiko’s automatic Sharp Edge Series’ dials reveals different hues of green simultaneously.

Specs Diameter: 40mm Movement: Ameriquartz $300

Specs Diameter: 39.3mm Movement: Seiko 6R35 automatic $1,000

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Watches

TAG Heuer Carrera Green

H. Moser & Cie. Streamliner

Sporty and modern? Yeah, green can do that too, and TAG Heuer’s Carrera chronograph proves it with panache.

High-end independent watchmaker H. Moser & Cie. is known for its dial executions as much as its impressive horology — here, its sporty Streamliner shows off both.

Specs

Specs

Diameter: 39mm Movement: TAG Heuer Heuer 02 automatic $5,750

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Diameter: 40mm Movement: H. Moser & Cie HMC 200 automatic $21,900

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Rolex Datejust 36 126200 An unexpected move from notoriously conservative Rolex, this gorgeous Datejust features not only a leafy green dial but one with an exquisite palm frond motif.

Specs Diameter: 36mm Movement: Rolex ​​3235 automatic $7,050

Tudor Black Bay Fifty-Eight 18k The unusual combination of 18k gold with a green dial and bezel results in a surprisingly unique version of Tudor’s Black Bay Fifty-Eight dive watch.

Specs Diameter: 39mm Movement: Tudor MT5400 automatic $16,800

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Watches

Clone Wars William Massena reimagined a vintage watch for modern consumers. But is he doing them a favor — or committing sacrilege?

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Some vintage watches are so rare — and so expensive — that even the most committed collectors will never own them. Such is the case with a particular chronograph from Universal Genève called the Uni-Compax “Big Eye.” Produced for just two years in the mid-1960s, it was so named for its oversized 45-minute chronograph counter positioned at three o’clock. Available with either a black or white dial, this striking timepiece has become one of the most elusive watches in the world, in no small part because only 20 or so have ever surfaced. These days, they can fetch somewhere in the ballpark of $40,000.

William Massena, a watch industry veteran, sought one for some time, but he couldn’t justify the price.

That’s when he hit upon an idea: Why not craft a modern version that someone could buy? Massena was already set up to make this happen. His company, Massena LAB, produces special-edition timepieces. But the “Big Eye” was different. It’s an established design from another brand with a long history, and remaking it would raise lots of questions. For starters, is it even legal to do so?

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William Massena designed the Uni-Racer Holiday Collection watches to build upon the original Uni-Compax’s legacy with exotic dial color combinations. facin g pa g e , clockwise

William Massena; an original Universal Geneve Uni-Compax “Big Eye” black dial (“reverse panda”) sold by Analog/Shift; the black-dial Uni-Racer

text by

Oren Hartov

p h otos cou rt esy o f m ass e n a l a b , a n a lo g / s h i f t . p o rt ra i t by jac k fo rst e r

“It opens a door to the past that may not be explored otherwise.”

The short answer is yes: there is no design patent on the original “Big Eye,” which itself took inspiration from the dial of the Type 20 chronograph for the French military. But is it right to do so? What would watch collectors think? Would it live up to the original … or garner as much respect on the street as a Testarossa replica kit car? These are tougher questions to answer.

Direct rip-offs of watches currently in production — if they are complete with fake logos — are illegal and frowned upon, while watches that pay subtle homage to an era, like the Baltic Aquascaphe or the Brew Metric, are often very well received. Watches that copy designs long since defunct, however, reside in sort of a gray area.

Nevertheless, Massena got to work with a multi-pronged approach. Three years later, in 2020, he released two versions of his “Big Eye” that mirrored the original black and white models almost note for note — with the exceptions of a larger, 39mm case size (the original was 36.5mm); Massena LAB’s branding; and a new name, Uni-Racer. He outfitted the watches with hand-wound Swiss movements and offered them for sale at a price of $3,495.

Some folks loved Massena’s recreations — including the judges at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (the Oscars of the watch world). Others … did not. “Plagiarism at its

finest,” commented one reader of Hodinkee, the prominent watch website.

Why the vitriol? Ultimately, some purists believe that producing something remotely recalling another model — let alone largely copying it — is horological sacrilege, and it shouldn’t be done. Others take a more pragmatic stance: If the original watch is out of production, why shouldn’t it be remastered for the modern consumer?

“In my view, this is a far more honest approach to making a homage than buying the rights to a dead name and printing it on a watch with no pedigree,” reasoned another Hodinkee reader.

But Massena didn’t stop there. Next, he released the “Holiday” collection, a trio of Uni-Racer watches with bright, colorful dials, ones that never existed within the original model line. It’s much tougher to pin down what these watches are — slightly modified copies?

Artful tributes?

Consumers must ultimately decide for themselves, but Massena is certainly right about one thing: “It’s really similar to making remakes in the film industry — some are good and others are terrible. Some help you get interested in the original movie …

It opens a door to the past that may not be explored otherwise.”

We tend to think it’s a door worth opening.

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Zen Love

photo by

Henry Phillips

Airain Type 20 Re-Edition Produced in the 1950s for French military pilots, the Type 20 is one of the most compelling chronograph watches ever made. Can a modern remake do it justice? $2,920

Vintage Type 20 watches have it all — history, purpose, an arresting look — but they’re rare. Airain, one of the original producers of the Type 20, has made a special Type 20 Re-Edition that even features the original’s complicated flyback function, meaning you can restart the chronograph with a single press of a button (instead of three).

As a recently resurrected brand, Airain doesn’t feel directly connected to the company that made these watches decades ago. The Re-Edition veers from the original specifications in several subtle ways: most notably, it’s upsized by 1.5mm in diameter — though at 39.5mm it remains on the small side for modern watches.

“Would an actual, military-issued Type 20 be even cooler? Sure. But it’s hard to complain about a watch so lovingly executed and satisfying to wear.”

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Motoring

text by

Lawrence Ulrich

The Lucid Air’s sleek design doesn’t just look elegant, its low coefficient of drag helps the car achieve its exceptionally long driving range. The interior takes advantage of the flexibility of electric vehicle packaging — no bulky combustion engine or multi-gear transmission — to create an open, expansive space for passengers.

Lucid Dreaming To paraphrase Walt Whitman, the Lucid Air contains multitudes. This new electric car represents billion-dollar startup dreams, climate-change nightmares, the prospect of a healthier, sustainable form of American car manufacturing — and, of course, a true alternative to the 800-pound gorilla that is Tesla, the like-it-or-not template for any electric newcomer.

Yet for a few electron-firing seconds — the few moments in which the 800-horsepower Air I’m riding in can drop the hammer on Manhattan’s West Side Highway — I’m determined to unload that social, environmental and financial baggage and just appreciate the Lucid for what it is: a creamy, cavernous luxury sedan that can whomp from 0 to 60 mph in as little as 2.5 seconds.

It’s the longest-range EV in history, with enough stamina to travel an EPA-rated 520 miles (in top-shelf Dream Edition R form) — more than 100 miles beyond Tesla’s best. It packs an industry-leading 900-volt electri-

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cal architecture that enables it to add up to 20 miles of driving range in just 60 seconds of plug-in time or 300 miles in 20 minutes flat. Consider the Lucid a 5,000-pound Xanax for banishing range anxiety.

The quarter-mile takes 9.9 seconds at 144 mph. In New York terms, that’s a dead stop to 2.4 miles a minute in two crosstown blocks.

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But getting this car to the streets hasn’t been easy. Lucid’s eight-year odyssey to production has involved the rocky paths and pitfalls familiar to any startup — even before a fateful pandemic that continues to batter supply chains for every automaker, forcing further delays for the Air. The first cars are now scheduled to reach customers in late 2021, a year later than the original plan. And Lucid remains firmly in “show me” mode: setting aside Chinese-market startups, Tesla is the only company that has successfully managed to make a go of it in the EV business.

Yet Lucid appears to hold one of the strongest hands among the latest EV hopefuls, thanks to ace technology, rich backers and the “story stock” aura that’s catnip to today’s investors. The proof? In July 2021, Lucid dragged itself over the finish line to go public via a blank-check merger, netting $4.4 billion in fresh, tasty capital — seed money for the Air and its planned successors. All before even a single car has reached its owner’s hands.

photos courtesy of lucid

Electric car startup Lucid Motors doesn’t just want to take on Tesla but Mercedes-Benz and BMW, too. It just might pull it off.

the guide

Motoring

My ride-along in a pre-production Air — one of about 110 to emerge so far from the company’s spanking-new factory in Casa Grande, Arizona — is all too brief, but it’s enough to reveal the Lucid’s rib-crushing acceleration, planted handling and easeful ways. Passersby cast approving glances at the car while we’re parked outside Lucid’s new studio-style showroom in Manhattan’s fashionable Meatpacking District.

It’s among the roughly 25 stores that Lucid hopes to open by the end of 2022, each to be equipped with simulator-style VR car configurators or naked displays of the Air’s skateboard platform.

Derek Jenkins, the bespectacled, sleekdomed former Mazda stylist who’s Lucid’s vice president of design and brand, shows me around the Air. Every detail of the car is meant to lure free-spending buyers away from their existing cars — not from Teslas, as you might expect, but from gas-drinking flagships like the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and BMW 7 Series.

“Tesla makes a great electric car, but it’s one flavor of electric,” Jenkins says. “They are not moving toward the luxury market, but more toward the mainstream market.”

Pricing for the Air puts those targets into focus: the inaugural Dream Editions, with a choice of 933 or 1,111 horsepower from dual-motor AWD powertrains and 113-kWh batteries, cost a Maybach-worthy $170,500. More affordable Airs should follow in 2022; the dual-motor Grand Touring I rode in will start at $139,000, while the single-motor, rear-drive Air Pure with 480 horses and a roughly 408-mile range should start at $77,400.

But no gas-powered luxury sedan can touch the Dream Edition’s electrified crackle. Lucid says the quarter-mile drag race is dispatched in a ridiculous 9.9 seconds at 144 mph. In New York terms, that’s a dead stop to 2.4 miles a minute in the space of two crosstown blocks — though it requires dialing up the Sprint Mode launch control, which unleashes a Bugatti-esque 1,025 pound-feet of torque.

Sensory temptations extend to an airy

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“Speed is a drug that still captures the imagination.” interior that maximizes space via miniaturized electrical components. An underhood storage “frunk,” the industry’s largest, could swallow a limber adult. For the California-based Lucid, four available cabin themes evoke the state’s natural landscapes (minus the apocalyptic wildfire smoke), offering carbon-free leather, synthetic hide or a natty wool blend of sustainable Alpaca and

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recycled yarn. Tasteful wood trims include silvery eucalyptus with driftwood-style markings. The posh quarters definitely shame Tesla and its Tupperware-grade plastics. A floating 34-inch 5K display called the Glass Cockpit curls before the driver, flashing a crisp UI; a secondary, motorized Pilot Panel unfurls from the dashboard. Manual door pulls and physical switches for climate controls and audio volume avoid digital overload — a literal old-school touch that Jenkins demanded. The topper is a dramatic Glass Canopy roof that creates a nearly unbroken vista from the windshield to the rear deck.

The aircraft-inspired body ditches the automotive-design cues that once symbolized power, prestige and performance, Jenkins says. Phallic hoods, haughty grilles and gaping body openings — all necessitated by

space-wasting, heat-soaking internal combustion engines — give way to an unblemished sedan shape whose simplicity proclaims its electric power but not so jarringly as to alienate traditional buyers.

“We’re turning the page on the automobile, from one form of propulsion to a new form, and that should absolutely influence the aesthetic, the aspiration, the statement of technology,” Jenkins says.

Jenkins cites streamlined classics like the Citroen DS and Porsche 911 as other inspirational guides, however subliminal. But the real marching orders came from pure, efficient functionality — a company-wide obsession that was rewarded with that record 520-mile range rating. Obsessors include Peter Rawlinson, Lucid’s chief executive and chief technology officer. You may know him as the chief engineer of Tesla’s game-changing Model S; you’re less likely to know him for his expertise that saw Lucid, originally named Atieva, become the exclusive battery-pack supplier to Formula E racing.

The company’s electric drive unit is roughly as power dense as a dwarf star, with a claimed ceiling of 670 horsepower. (AWD models get one for each axle.) Yet the unit’s motor, transmission, inverter and differential weigh just 165 pounds and can fit inside a roller bag. The Air’s slippery 0.21 coefficient of drag, if independently confirmed, would mark another record for a luxury sedan.

The Wales-born Rawlinson insists he never set out to create a sedan that can outgun most gasoline-powered supercars. “Ninety-nine percent of the words I speak are about efficiency, and one percent performance,” Rawlinson tells me. “But it seems speed is a drug that still captures the imagination.”

Lucid’s corporate imagination predicts 20,000 sales in 2022. A forthcoming Air Gravity SUV, penciled in for 2023, is critical to plans for 200 percent annual growth, roughly $23 billion in revenue by 2026 and up to 500,000 annual sales by 2030. Those are ambitious forecasts, especially with legacy automakers and startups alike cranking up their own electric vehicle plans. Yet Jenkins insists Lucid’s time is now.

“We’re at a pivotal moment in this industry,” Jenkins says. “Things are changing so fundamentally. We see it as an advantage to be a new player with a clean sheet.”

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Storage abounds, including both a trunk in back, a frunk up front and a secret area behind the driver’s lower touchscreen; while the Air hit 235 mph in testing, production cars are limited to 168; production cars began rolling off the line at the end of September 2021; Lucid’s Arizona factory grounds cover almost one million square feet, but they will grow even more as the company ramps up plans to produce up to 400,000 cars per year.

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Motoring

text by

Tyler Duffy

Manufacturers have attempted small car-based pickups before. This time, they might actually stick.

The term “small truck” used to be an oxymoron. If you walked into a Ford or Chevy dealership circa 2013 asking for one, a salesperson would have pointed you to a single-cab F-150 or Silverado. Even those few midsize trucks still on sale were much bigger than their predecessors; the Toyota Tacoma of the early 2010s, for example, was two whole feet longer than the model on sale in the 1990s.

But it’s not 2013. It’s 2021, and the truck market has shifted dramatically. Full-size pickups have become aspirational vehicles, in many cases offering space, refinement and performance on par with luxury cars — and with an average purchase price hovering around $50,000, they often have price tags to match. Midsize trucks are thriving, as the overlanding and off-roading craze drives buyers to more maneuverable, more affordable pickups. And now two new vehicles, the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz, are poised to stretch the definition of truck even further by opening up a new — or at least long-dormant — segment: the compact pickup truck.

Hyundai’s Santa Cruz (top) and Ford’s Maverick (bottom) were developed completely separately, but their missions are similar: reel in new buyers who find traditional pickup trucks less than appealing due to size and price.

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photos courtesy of their respective brands

Not-So-Monster Trucks

The Subaru Baja of the early 2000s never sold in big numbers — the company only moved around 30,000 over the model’s five-year run. But its outdoorsy attitude, excellent cargo-hauling capability and car-like ride and handling made it extremely popular among those buyers who did take one home. The Baja won J.D. Power’s APEAL award, which rates owners’ impressions after 90 days with the vehicle, two years in a row.

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Motoring

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Previous small trucks were quirky anomalies, but the Maverick and Santa Cruz feel very much of the moment. facin g pa g e

The Ford Maverick can tow up to 4,000 pounds, enough to handle small watercraft or camping trailers; the Maverick’s small size belies its versatility, with storage areas and payload capacity to rival larger trucks this pa g e

The Hyundai Santa Cruz’s resemblance to the Tucson crossover hints at their closeness beneath the skin.

Granted, “compact pickup” is a bit of a misnomer.

Neither the Maverick nor the Santa Cruz is compact per se; the Santa Cruz, for example, weighs in at more than 4,000 pounds fully loaded. And while both the Maverick and Santa Cruz boast a pickup bed, neither vehicle is technically a truck. The Maverick uses the same unibody car platform as the Ford Escape and Bronco Sport, while the Santa Cruz borrows heavily from the Hyundai Tucson. In other words, America’s hottest new trucks are essentially crossover SUVs. Contrary to what some might say, that’s not a bad thing. Trucks and SUVs are no longer niche rides; nowadays they’re the default vehicles most American buyers choose. These new hybrid trucks combine the best features of both into a compelling package. Previous small-truck attempts were quirky anomalies with funny names and funky features.

But the Maverick and Santa Cruz feel very much of the moment.

With the Maverick, Ford replaced the staid sedan or sexless econobox that would usually sit at the bottom of a carmaker’s lineup with what budget buyers want: a truck. The Maverick looks like a little F-150, but with a starting price of just over

$20,000, it retails for about half as much. It packs two compelling engine options — a 40-mpg hybrid or a potent 2.0-liter turbo four with 250 horsepower — and boasts nimble, crossover-like handling. More city-friendly than a Ranger and more country-cool than a Honda Civic, the Maverick should appeal to a wide range of buyers.

While Ford is leaning into the baby-truck angle, Hyundai’s Santa Cruz approaches buyers from the opposite direction. You won’t see Hyundai call their vehicle “a truck”; rather, the carmaker is framing it as a “segment-shattering sport adventure vehicle” — in other words, it’s a new kind of crossover. The Santa Cruz is a fun, perky vehicle for young urbanities that just so happens to have a versatile bed in back for carrying bikes or other gear. And if you have your eye on a cool new teardrop camping trailer or a Ski-Doo, well, the Santa Cruz — rated for up to 5,000 pounds — can tow it.

Ultimately, whether the Maverick, Santa Cruz and the like are called pickup trucks or crossovers is a matter of semantics. So long as these new segment-straddling four-door vehicles are fun, affordable and suitable for all manner of adventures, buyers seem likely to snap them up in droves.

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SMALL TRUCKS, THROUGH THE Y E ARS Carmakers have always been down to get weird with fusion trucks, but America has never been quite ready for them.

SUBARU BRAT (1978-87) Subaru wanted a small truck to compete with Toyota’s pickup in America. So it released the BRAT — a 4x4 Leone wagon with a truck bed cut out of the back. Distinctive features included an optional T-top and alarmingly unsafe bed-mounted jump seats to avoid the U.S. Chicken Tax, which levied a 25 percent tariff on foreign pickups. Fun fact: Ronald Reagan owned one.

VOLKSWAGEN RABBIT PICKUP (1979-84) VW sold a two-door pickup version of the Mk1 Golf in the U.S., which was later known as the Caddy when it arrived in Europe.

It wasn’t quite as popular stateside as other body-style variants, like the sedan (Jetta) and the Cabriolet, and went out of production in 1984.

DODGE RAMPAGE (1982-84) Chrysler entered the car/truck fray in 1982 with the subcompact Dodge Rampage, which was based on the Omni coupe. If you found the “Rampage” name too aggro for a pint-size coupe truck, Chrysler also badged it as the more adorable Plymouth Scamp in 1983.

SUBARU BAJA (2003-06) Subaru revisited the BRAT idea with the Outback-based Baja in 2003, branding it as “the world’s first multiple choice vehicle.” It had a weird bed extender and a lot of plastic cladding, but at least the rear seats were inside the cabin. The Baja’s biggest flaw may simply have been that it was ahead of its time.

PONTIAC G8 ST (2008) Pontiac unveiled the G8 ST at the 2008 New York Auto Show.

It was going to be a two-seater sport truck based on the G8 sedan, with a 6.0-liter V8 putting out more than 300 horsepower. Then the Great Recession happened. GM canceled the yet-to-enter-production G8 ST in January 2009 … and, less than a year later, the Pontiac brand itself. facin g pa g e

Cars with cargo beds like the Chevrolet El Camino seen here weren’t really trucks, but they helped pave the way for compact pickups in the decades to come.

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the guide

Motoring

text by

Will Sabel Courtney

2022 Jeep Grand Wagoneer With its first full-size sport-utility vehicle in decades, Jeep charges grille-first into the competitive giant-luxury-SUV segment. $88,995+

Acres of supple leather; flowing wood trim; enough screens to fill out an Apple store; and the choice of not one but two McIntosh stereos — the Grand Wagoneer oozes elegance. It’s also incredibly capacious. With every seat in use, there’s still enough room for half a dozen carry-on bags.

This is an old-school SUV — it’s built on a truckbased platform, powered by a giant V8 and weighs in at well over three tons — so it’s thirsty as hell, and it’s not as quick as its 471 horses might lead you to believe. It’s also pricey for a Jeep, with fully loaded models pushing $110,000.

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photo courtesy of jeep

“The Grand Wagoneer is big, bold and — well, maybe not beautiful. But it’s certainly eye-catching. If you need tons of room and want an SUV with an impressive interior, this Jeep deserves a close look.”

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text by

Evan Malachosky i l l u s t r at i o n s b y

Alexa Edgerton

I

f you’re like most guys, your wardrobe consists of everyday basics with a mix of seasonal stand-ins — things you wear for a few months only to replace them with items better suited to a particular time of year. Beanies in winter, shorts in summer.

So on and so forth. You know the drill.

But what if dressing nowadays no longer meant the cyclical rotation of similar outfits but rather the careful composition of trending styles and mainstays? Dad shoes next to work boots. Vintage tees and performance underwear. A pair of $900 sweatpants …

With the pandemic waning and dressing rules more relaxed, if not forgotten completely, there’s never been a better opportunity to revisit the products inside your closet. Get weird. Let the mundane act of getting ready transform into sartorial mixology. And, most of all, have fun with it.

These are the new essentials.

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Footwear

01.

Statement Loafers above

BLACKSTOCK & WEBER The Ellis Penny Loafer, Canary Grain $320

Sneakerheads have realized that $300 can be used towards better shoes than one-off Jordans, and thus, they are turning to a new type of footwear: loafers.

There’s a new cohort of brands crafting loafers out of materials classic labels never felt compelled to touch — colorful pebble-grain leather, mohair, hairy suede, denim and more. These iterations represent the streetwearification of slip-on dress shoes but also

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a shift in what consumers value. As cool as sneakers may be, the obvious concerns remain: How will they hold up with regular wear and will they make the right impression?

Free yourself from Nike’s release calendar, quit checking what your recently ruined New Balances are running for on StockX. A pair of well-made loafers will hold up better over time.

02.

Dad Shoes Once considered a sartorial snafu, wearing New Balance sneakers is suddenly a very cool thing to do. Thanks in part to a long list of collaborations lending them street cred, the Boston-born company’s having one of its best years on record. They’ve clearly figured out the formula for success; while New Balance sneakers are everywhere, they’re almost impossible to buy.

Getting a pair in several shades of classic gray suede is a surefire way of making a splash. (Sounds backwards, right?) The colorful collabs are another safe bet, but new models surface from time to time, too. They aren’t as “in,” yet, but you could get ahead of the curve and be the envy of sneakerheads in the future.

03.

Pearly Whites

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Let white sneakers become so embedded in your wardrobe that you lace them up on autopilot every morning. You won’t have to worry about working to make them match — they go well with everything, from suits and wool trousers to mesh shorts and sweatpants. You can even choose one pair for dressing up, one for casual occasions and another for sportier settings if you’re so inclined.

NEW BALANCE Made in US 993 $185 above

photos courtesy of their respective brands

opening photo courtesy of john lofgren, other

KOIO Capri Triple White $268

04.

Three-Season Sandals There’s no sensible way to wear Birkenstocks in a snowy winter.

Hence, they’re a three-season sandal: fine for fall, super in spring and the star of the show in summer. There are leather, suede, rubber and even vegan options nowadays.

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BIRKENSTOCK Arizona Suede Leather $135

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Footwear

05.

Investment Boots Boots are the tires on your daily driver (you).

They can trudge through snow, traverse tough terrain and top off a tonal fall outfit. Markers of good-quality boots are rebuildable, welted constructions like Goodyear and stitchdown, and full-grain leather like Horween Chromexcel. If you base your buy off these benchmarks, you’re bound to end up with a boot that’s comfortable, hard-wearing and long-lasting. They’ll earn a patina while promising longevity. If you ever planned on emptying your savings on something you wear, this is the category to do it in. ri g ht

JOHN LOFGREN Moc Toe Boot $820

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Import Socks Why not wear socks you can show off? Stop stockpiling your top drawer with six-packs by Fruit of the Loom and Gildan and get a few pairs from this trio of all-star Japanese brands: Kapital, Anonymous Ism and Rototo. They last longer, look better and subtly signal you know fashion — well, at least enough to know good socks when you see and feel them.

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ANONYMOUS LSM Color Bleached Crew $28

Bottoms 07.

Antibacterial Underwear Buying underwear meant to last may seem like a backward sentiment — doesn’t it all get dingy after a while?

But longer-lasting, fresher smelling base layers are out there. Opt for underwear made from superior materials such as lyocell, tencel, hemp or bamboo.

These prove naturally antibacterial — meaning less B.O. — and emphasize comfort and eco-consciousness over cost-cutting and cheap construction.

Finding them is just a matter of mastering which materials to look for. le f t

CDLP Boxer Brief $33

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Washed Jeans We’re fans of washed denim and will proudly champion it when others call it a lazy shortcut. Breaking in raw denim, and washing everything its dye bleeds into, isn’t fun.

Actually, it can kind of hurt, and wearing them to the point where they’re soft and faded takes a long time. There’s no cheating in baseball or billiards, but in blue jeans? Buy the washed ones and save yourself eight months of pain. ri g ht

LEVI’S 501 Original Fit Jeans $60

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Bottoms 09.

Wide-Fit Chinos

Long gone is the era of skinny pants. Designers are countering the skin-tight aesthetic with looser, wider-fit trousers, and some have taken it to an extreme: They’ve crafted bottoms that billow out at the hip, widen ever so slightly at the knee and run straight down toward the hem. But milder iterations prove more manageable for most men and should be an immediate add to your wardrobe.

However, the trend isn’t a sudden development. A year in sweatpants and other supple bottoms made us used to, arguably addicted to, comfortable clothes. How could we all go back to shuffling into skintight pants? We couldn’t. And shouldn’t.

Switching from skinny to even straight-fit feels like quite the step, but it’s worth the effort to go a bit wider.

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ALEX MILL Flat Front Chino Pant $125

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Luxury Sweatpants If nothing else, this past year proved sweatpants’ staying power. But a year spent in sweatpants ordered from Amazon would make anyone yearn for pants a little more plush, so go ahead — treat yourself to an expensive pair. How about cashmere lounge pants that were hand-knit in Italy? Like the good butter or the nice bread you splurged on at the grocery store, this is luxury you keep at home. above

LES TIEN Heavy Gauge Cashmere Lounge Pant $946

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11.

Utility Pants Here’s the lightning-fast lowdown on utility pants: there are carpenter pants, painter pants, double-knee pants and fatigues, and although the differences between them may seem subtle, these trouser styles actually vary quite a bit. What each one says about your personal style can, too: The first two are synonymous with workwear; the third maybe too much so; and the last is unmistakably military issue.

Carpenter pants come with at least one side loop and several flush side pockets for tools; painter pants are typically the same, except for their color (they’re

12.

Mesh Shorts

white so they can be bleached clean); double-knee pants, as one might guess, are reinforced at the knees (and several other spots); fatigues take cues from military issue trousers and are typically olive green with two large front patch pockets and two rear patch pockets with button flaps.

above

CARHARTT WIP Double Knee Pant $148

Why wear any of these over, say, a pair of jeans?

Well, it’s about the optics. They add interest to otherwise flat outfits and signal (at least some) fashion sensibility. Plus, who’s ever complained about having more pockets?

The right mesh shorts mix streetwear and sportswear, modern and vintage, fatherhood and first-grade gym class. With the right top — say a T-shirt from your favorite streetwear brand — they’re elevated from bottoms you’d bring to a game of pickup basketball to something you wouldn’t mind having on if you bump into your partner’s parents. Finding the right pair, however, hinges on a particular formula: not baggy but definitely not skinny, no garish logos across the crotch and an inseam shorter than seven inches. le f t

TRACKSMITH Van Cortlandt Grand Shorts $65

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Tops

13.

Rugby Shirts above

ROWING BLAZERS Mossley Rugby $195

Prep is popular again, but there are less Nantucket Red chinos and long-sleeve Vineyard Vines T-shirts this time around: They’ve faded in favor of rugby shirts. These are less son-of-a-banker and a bit more punk — like a school uniform with a rebellious twist.

Fittingly, the style originated at a school literally called Rugby School. (Located in Warwickshire, England, it’s also the birthplace of rugby.)

Worn initially as sportswear, early woolen editions were white and had tiny, stiff collars. Soon cotton came to replace wool, and the collars grew. Then,

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as the sport gained steam, rugby shirts featured colors unique to particular teams. Whenever two smaller teams merged, their hues would be equally represented on the new rugby: Cue contrast collars, patch logos, stripes and vertical color blocking — aka all of the fun parts.

New preppy designs riff on these origins while making tweaks for the modern wearer. Collars have become more practical and color combinations more fashionable, transforming the rugby into something you can wear everyday.

14.

Vintage T-Shirts to p to bottom

Vintage t-Shirts from NO MAITENANCE, TOYOJIS, AND OLD CLOTHES ARE COOL $48-$88

Graphic T-shirts are a great way to develop personal style. But modern ones emboldened with sports teams or cartoon characters aren’t the coolest. Want a tip? Track down an obscure (or recognizable — who cares) vintage T-shirt with a graphic you can get behind. Merch from the 2011 Murraysville Marathon? Amazing.

An old mayoral campaign cap? Sure, but check their platform first. (Or risk getting schooled.)

15.

Casual Polo In the world of polo shirts, rigid pique and performance fabrics once reigned supreme.

However, they’ve since been surmounted by sunfaded terry and slubby cotton. There was no official overthrow of either Lacoste or Ralph Lauren by any means, but polo shirts once seen as stylish are now considered stiff and too “back nine” to go with most bottoms. Loosen up a little, and leave pique and performance fabrics in the past. ri g ht

RHYTHM Vintage Terry Toweling Polo $40

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Tops 16.

Heirloom Sweater It’s difficult to pin down what will be popular 20 or 30 years from now. As such, purchasing something you’re determined to one day let your kids (or your friends’ kids, or another collector) inherit is hard. But what about something so classic it could never go out of style? Try Ghiaia’s generational raglan crewneck, a sweatshirt-style sweater knit from 100 percent cashmere. Sure, it costs the better part of a paycheck, but cashmere only softens with wear. Plus, Ghiaia’s garments boast the structure to withstand regular wear long enough for another generation to enjoy them, too. le f t

GHAIA Cashmere Crewneck $695

above

BUCK MASON Felted Chore Coat $225

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Chore Coat 112

A dozen months without worrying about how we dressed deteriorated even the oldest of style codes. For example, blazers aren’t the be-all endall of semi-formal or business casual anymore. In their place now are chore coats and other softshouldered workwear silhouettes. See: a blazerlike top resembling a baker’s overshirt made from

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medium-weight twill, a charcoal-colored chore coat knit from twice-boiled merino wool, or a knit jacket constructed from supple, organic cotton. Put any of these over a shirt and tie for a casual take on traditional suiting. Embrace their cardigan-like qualities and riff on something Mr. Rogers would’ve worn — it all works.

18.

Cult Sweats Add Camber to the list of trade-oriented clothing companies — which already includes Carhartt, Gildan, Dickies and Cat — now coveted by the fashionable crowd. The tiny company, which is based in Norristown, Pennsylvania, takes larger orders via catalog or sells privately through wholesalers. Overseas, the brand’s sweatshirts — specifically the soft, sturdy 12-ounce #232 Hoodie — are sold by a select few menswear shops savvy enough to acquire stock.

And what makes their wares so covetable, exactly?

Word of mouth. Heralded as the best sweatshirt ever made by menswear bloggers, Japanese YouTubers and London shop owners alike, Camber’s made-toorder products have been feverishly hunted by the style conscious ever since. above

CAMBER Cross-Knit Pullover Hooded Sweatshirt $76

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Tops

19.

Full Canvas Suit Cop a full canvas suit. In the long run, even though you’re handing over quite a wad of cash up front, it’ll save you money. Not only will it form to your body in a more flattering way, but full canvas suits withstand dry cleaning better, are more durable and are less likely to rip at a suit’s stress points (the elbows and shoulders).

Plus, think about the drape: ones with canvas on the upper half only don’t hang the same way. above

ARC’TERYX Alpha AR Jacket $599

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RALPH LAUREN Gregory Wool Serge Suit $2,495

20.

GORP Jacket We’ll spare you a long-winded lowdown of the tech embedded in Arc’teryx’s Alpha AR jacket. Just trust us. Get aboard the gorpcore train! Utilitarian, waterproof jackets have always been commonplace in the closets of hikers and campers, but only as of late — say the past five years — have they entered the realm of high fashion. You see models sporting them in runway shows, celebs rocking Arc’teryx on stage and

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the hypebeasts you’ve pledged to ignore wearing them in every single Instagram post. Consider the coast clear: get your own. You won’t be a poseur if you really put it to the test. Trudge to the coffee shop around the corner in a torrential downpour; trek rugged terrain in the height of summer storm season; scale Mount Everest. (Or maybe don’t.) No matter the task, Arc’teryx jackets remain up for the challenge.

Accessories

21.

Basic Bucket Hat The best solution for bedhead? A hat. But not just any hat — toss your tousled locks into the deep recesses of a bucket hat. They aren’t bottomless, but they’ll do for days when your hair feels truly untameable. Also, the bucket hat is one hell of a statement piece (albeit one oft considered best left in the past), so be bold. Buy one with interesting texture, an engaging pattern or stunning simplicity. ri g ht

WALID Patchwork Bucket Hat $391

22.

Woven Belt You don’t need the thick leather belt you think you do. Sure, they’re a statement slipped through your trouser’s loops, capable of keeping both a tucked-in shirt in place and your pants up, but other belts can do that, too, with half the weight and for less than half the price. Pick up a woven belt instead. Whether it’s made from leather or canvas doesn’t quite matter, but remember this: the softer the material, the more casual it’ll seem. le f t

RRL Woven Leather Belt $225

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Accessories

23.

Watch Rotation Diehard watch lovers would croak at the thought of condensing their collections down to just two or three models. But we’re here to tell you that’s all you really need: one for everyday activities, another for dressier affairs and, lastly, an affordable option you won’t worry about damaging (because you will — it happens).

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Q TIMEX This is the watch you gift someone who’s just getting into watches — or, honesty, to yourself. It’s dripping with cool, from the bi-color 12-hour bezel to the funky integrated bracelet to the easy-access battery hatch. It also comes in tons of different colors. $179

CARTIER TANK MUST The Cartier Tank is perhaps the world’s most famous dress watch, full-stop. Now, with the re-release of the Must line, you can get a relatively affordable version with solar charging. Honestly — what’s not to love? $2,610-$2,740

TUDOR BLACK BAY FIFTY-EIGHT Tudor struck gold with the Black Bay Fifty-Eight: well-sized, and available in multiple configurations and metals, it’s a throwback to classic 1960s dive watches without being an outright reissue or homage. $3,375+

Accessories

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Simple Jewelry Invest in a piece of jewelry you’ll wear religiously — through meetings and mundane errands, fancy dinners and Friday-night concerts. You’ll feel less like you’re cosplaying as someone cool this way. Plus, the more a part of you your accessories become, the less likely you are to be shaken by someone staring at your rings, sneaking a glance at your necklace or double-taking at your dangly earring. to p

MIANSAI 14-Karat Gold Chain Bracelet $595 bottom

DEAR LETTERMAN Ayman Ring $139

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25.

Standout Shades Ray-Bans are the bare minimum — C+ if we’re giving out grades. You can do better. Seek out eyewear with eclectic influences such as art or architecture.

The sameness of standard sunglasses may lend themselves to a longer list of faces, but they don’t fuel personal style. ri g ht

JACQUES MARIE MAGE Yellowstone Forever Collection (left to right): Hatfield Brush $690, Zephirin Storm $650, Fellini Sage $710

26.

Fine Fragrance Brands play a disproportionate role in which items we ultimately decide to buy. A word of advice as regards fragrance? Ignore brands and find base notes — which are easier to forge an alliance with — that work for you year-round (or at least seasonally). Sure, some scents scream summer, like Vacation’s eau de toilette (which smells like sunscreen), but rarely should you wear something so overt.

Fragrances should unfurl, not swing with a clenched fist. le f t

MAISON FRANCIS KURKDJIAN Oud Satin Mood $250

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MODERN HERITAGE

BY MICHAEL FRANK

FILSON HAS BEEN THE GO-TO BRAND FOR OUTDOORSMEN SINCE THE 1800S. TODAY, THEY’RE VEERING INTO UNKNOWN TERRITORY WITH EXPLORATIONS IN DENIM, DOWN AND MOTORCYCLE GEAR — AND BETTING THAT BOTH BRAND DEVOTEES AND CONVERTS WILL COME ALONG FOR THE RIDE.

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Alex Carleton, Filson’s Chief Creative Officer

I

m agin e a c a r m a n u fact u r er defining performance based on how a motor looks rather than how it runs. That’s how most of the world’s clothing is made.

Of course, a jacket may not have to perform the same way an engine does, but if you’re Clinton C. Filson setting up shop during the Alaska gold rush in the late 1890s, you darn well make sure your wares work.

Today, what started as Filson’s Pioneer Alaska and Blanket Manufacturers is the C.C. Filson Company. Like it did 124 years ago, Filson still thinks about performance first, and it still manufactures its wares locally, just south of Seattle.

The turn of the 20th century saw an astonishing boom in Seattle, with immigrants (especially from Nordic countries) forming its industrial backbone. The city blew up, growing an astonishing 6,600 percent in just 20 years. One failed gold-miner-turned-entrepreneur was John W. Nordstrom — a name you might recognize.

More than 120 years later, Alex Carleton, Filson’s Chief Creative Officer, is another transplant. He hails from Maine and carries a background in design at brands like Timberland and L.L. Bean. Carleton’s patterns of speech and visceral Marlboro-man graveled voice is so non-brotastic Seattle chill, you wonder what the baristas think taking his order when he asks for a latte with actual cow’s milk — not oat or coconut.

Not that he’s scary. He’s just sharply, directly, intensely focused on Filson’s heritage, like a history professor lecturing on company archeology. Carelton loves to use the Cruiser jacket as a template when discussing all things past and present about the brand. This particular garment has been produced in various iterations since 1914, and even as Filson endeavors in new directions — like selvedge denim, motorcycle garb and goose down for this fall — Carleton holds up the Cruiser as a beacon.

“It’s not that we think of a ‘look’ and wonder where we should put a pocket. It’s not ‘an idea of a pocket,’” Carleton says, making air quotes with his voice. “We’re actually thinking about the guy’s hands; about the fact that he might be wearing gloves. That he might shove sharp tools into there, or he might have an Otterbox on his phone so he’s got a big-ass bulky phone.”

Filson, under Carleton’s direction since 2016, studies use cases constantly, looking at ranchers and farmers or anyone who works outdoors or hunts. “Outdoorsmen realize that space is really important; yield is really important.

Being adaptable, to shed or add layers is really the keystone of survival.” He adds that the styling of Filson is appealing because you can look at anything the company makes and see it almost as a tool, with coherent pragmatism bleeding through.

photos courtesy of filson

“BEING ADAPTABLE, TO SHED OR ADD LAYERS IS REALLY THE KEYSTONE OF SURVIVAL.”

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accor ding to c a r leton, Clinton C. Filson wasn’t afraid of new technology, and down was hardly foreign to outfitters of the era (right across town, Seattle-born Eddie Bauer and REI were using goose feathers from WWII onward). Down is a material that was somehow left out of the company’s lineup, like an oversight on the part of Clinton C. Filson, but denim is the medium that’s even harder to fathom Filson having neglected during its history. Carleton explains that while “woodworkers or bush pilots” often wear a Filson jacket or shirt, “they’re also wearing jeans. And it was glaringly obvious that our fans, our users, were missing a really core element in their wardrobe,” Carleton says. Even in their archival research, “you’d see someone climbing Mt. Hood in the 1930s wearing a Cruiser jacket but then wearing denim.” Filson designers are constantly studying a library of previous styles they retain as well as thousands of photos going back over a century.

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Jeans debuted softly for the company about a year ago, and that line is slowly expanding. You can get the Rail Splitter five-pocket jean, sewn in the US but using Japanese denim from the famed Nihon Menpu mill. (They supply US labels like Taylor Stitch and also denim-head indie brands like Edwin, too). Or the Mule Splitter in a slim straight, which is by no means skinny but is slimmer in the thigh. As with everything Filson, there’s a purpose to its denim innovation. “Next year we’re going to be introducing a husky fit,” says Carleton. “We’re kind of covering off on a variety of body types. That’s the democracy of Filson.”

And as you’d expect, given Cruiser-as-Excalibur for Filson, they’re debuting the Lined Denim Cruiser this fall.

It’s cut longer, like a work coat rather than a short-waisted Levi’s Trucker jacket, and the lining has its own backstory, which is drawn from the late 1940s when canteens and the original Thermos brand containers had their own

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Linen Denim Cruiser Jacket $475 above

Linen Denim Short Cruiser Jacket $350

cozies — a classier precursor to the current cruddy neoprene beer-can-chilling equivalent. The pattern on Thermoses was typically striped, and some companies like Lee even made chore coats lined with it like Filson’s version.

But Filson’s interpretation is typically Cruiser-esque, with slots for pens on the breast, a small EDC outer pocket in the lower left, oversized, lined hand-warmer pockets at the waist, and of course snaps rather than something that’ll quit on you (like hook-and-loop closures).

Canteen patterns aren’t the only ones Filson is resurrecting. The supplier is also revisiting plaids; after all, Filson began life as a blanket company (prospectors needed to stay warm and sleeping bags hadn’t been invented yet).

Today, as part of their research, designers at their Seattle HQ happened upon patterns used in the early 1900s by a Cleveland firm called Northern Ohio Blanket Mills.

While Filson traditionally didn’t stitch as much cotton as wool, a double-cotton-fronted coat like the new Beartooth Camp Jacket is a modern interpretation of the kind of piece Filson might have made contemporaneously with the popularity of these plaids. With something as casually comfortable as the Camp Jacket, Carlton explains, it’s important that such a new product never look like a commodity.

“It has to seem obviously Filson,” which is why the company goes to such lengths to research blanket patterns from a company that went belly-up in 1932 before reinterpreting it on a coat for sale in the fall of 2021.

“IT’S IMPORTANT THAT A NEW PRODUCT NEVER LOOKS LIKE A COMMODITY.”

above an d ri g ht

Bullbuck Double-Front Jeans $195

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“C. C. FILSON DIDN’T SHY AWAY FROM INNOVATION. IT JUST GETS BALANCED WITH OUR TRADITION.”

if a n y thing is a stretch for Filson, it’s the Alcan motorcycle clothing and gear capsule collection. It was launched this past summer with a focus on outfitting riders of Washington State’s Backcountry Discovery Route, a 575-mile ride that hugs the eastern shoulder of the Cascades and is considered a burly test by most serious ADV riders.

Just like with denim, hitting the right note for brand-obsessed motorheads could be hazardous. On the Alcan Double Front Pants, for example, Filson combines its classic Tin Cloth with Cordura ballistic nylon, which the brand has used on luggage for decades but not much in clothing.

The decision to use a synthetic wasn’t made lightly.

“We certainly did our market research.” Carleton says.

“We looked at what we do for tree fellers, but moto is also a high-endurance, hostile kind of environment.” At the end of the day, the company had to ensure slide protection and abrasion resistance.

As for the larger question of why outfit riders at all, Carelton leans on Filson’s history of adapting with the times. “We’re principled, but we’re entrepreneurs. C. C. Filson didn’t shy away from innovation. It just gets balanced with our tradition,” he says. clockwise f rom to p le f t

Alcan Canvas Vest $275 Alcan Tin Cloth Tool Backpack $245 Alcan Tin Cloth Tool Roll $125

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“FILSON IS A TACTILE BRAND. THERE’S QUALITY TO THE FABRICS. IT HAS A SMELL.” filson’s don e w ell for itself. Over the last 124 years, the company has expanded — it now operates 10 stores in the USA and three abroad (two in Canada and one in Japan) — but it still calls its flagship in downtown Seattle “home.”

Venture there and you might wonder if you took a wrong turn. Just inside the entrance, you pass by some display cases showcasing vintage patches. And then, on the second story, you find yourself inside what was once an old 1920s machine shop. Underneath your feet is a rolled steel floor that feels as solid as stone, and above, a giant, exposed A-frame that opens to skylights.

Deeper inside there’s a wood-burning fireplace with some overstuffed leather chairs and a sofa. Walking around, the experience feels as if you’ve stumbled into a Northwest

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lodge built by the Civilian Conservation Corps rather than a retailer. Humming one floor beneath your boots, they’re making the stuff you can reach out and grab.

The sheer heft of anything you might touch, the actual weight, and yes, even the stiffness that requires breaking in, is why Filson believes retail is so important to the brand.

“Humans are social creatures. And Filson is a tactile brand,” Carleton says. “There’s quality to the fabrics. It has a smell.”

Carelton says that unlike anywhere else he’s worked, “everything has a dotted line, from a WPA lodge to the experience of our architecture, to our heritage. Filson is not a concept. It’s experiential. That’s why, when you walk in the door, or wear something, it’s honest. It’s all about coming from the premise of use and utility.”

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A Silicon Valley unicorn’s unique 3D printing method is delivering a new class of innovative gear — and could text by

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change the future of how everything is made.

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ou don’t h av e to be able to follow the intricately complex plot threads of HBO’s hit sci-fi series Westworld — who can? — to see the hypothetical picture in its fabric: by the early 2050s, theme park robots will be so lifelike that it’ll be impossible to tell the difference between them and us. Though not inherently a problem, their verisimilitude will complicate matters when a few become sentient and decide to take over.

As all good sci-fi stories do, Westworld’s hinges on our acceptance that the reality it presents is possible in this dimension or another. The show lays the foundation of its premise in a moody intro sequence set to an ominous piano soundtrack as it depicts the manufacturing of these futuristic automatons. Blink (or press the “Skip Intro” button) and you’ll miss a robotic arm drawing a synthetic tendon onto a horse, bison or human, depending on which season you’re watching. Of course, these robots are 3D printed.

Thirty years before Westworld’s present timeline, 3D printing still inhabits a somewhat boring reality.

Take, for example, one of 3D printing’s most impressive recent outputs: a nasal swab. These innocuous medical implements revealed the lag and fragility of the global manufacturing supply chain in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when, as testing ramped up, supplies ran low.

It turned out that only two companies in the world made flexible six-inch-long brain ticklers, one in Maine and one in Italy. Neither had the capacity to meet demand.

But in Silicon Valley, top executives at 3D printing startup Carbon deployed its in-house team of designers and strategized with a medical manufacturing company in Minnesota, an assistant professor of pathology at Harvard and laboratory and nursing staff at Stanford to create a new, printable swab and fill the gap. It took four days to create an FDA-approved design and less than three weeks to get it into high production.

Surely, it’s hard to compare a nasal swab to an animatronic bison tendon. Nevertheless, Fast Company singled out Carbon’s invention as a “design marvel” among its

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2020 Innovation by Design awards. And it is striking — if you’re picturing a wad of cotton at the end of a long stick, think again; the applicator tip is a complex lattice array that looks like an organic chemistry diagram made real, its hollow structure flexible and adept at collecting mucus.

Witnessing a batch of Lattice Swabs emerging from one of Carbon’s unique 3D printers is even more impressive.

An inverted stage hovers over a puddle of liquid material; slowly, the stage rises, pulling the swabs from the pool as if they’d been there all along. They haven’t, and yet here they are, like so many geometric stalactites. This is not the slow, bottom-up, layer-by-layer version of 3D printing that came to fore in the early 2000s.

That’s because back then, this technology didn’t exist.

The technology powering Carbon’s printers was invented in 2013 by a team of scientists helmed by Joseph DeSimone at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. DeSimone is a materials scientist, a chemist and an inventor with more than 200 issued patents. He’s one of only 25 people

to have been elected to each of the US’s trifecta of National Academies of Sciences, Medicine and Engineering. In 2016, President Obama honored him with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest award for such achievements.

Still, for a long time, 3D printing wasn’t on his radar. “I think somebody walked into his office one day and was like, ‘look at this cool thing,’” says Phil DeSimone, Joe’s son and Carbon’s chief product and business development officer. The “cool thing” was a MakerBot, one of the desktop-scale 3D printers that helped bring the technology to its media-fueled height in the early 2010s. According to Phil, Joe’s reaction was tempered: “‘Looks like a bunch of mechanical engineers trying to solve a materials cience problem.’”

So the elder DeSimone, the materials scientist, got to work.

He and his collaborators came up with CLIP (Continuous Liquid Interface Production). Working with the idea that in UV-curable chemistry, light can cause a liquid to turn into

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Carbon’s in-house fleet of 3D printers; print samples reveal the complexity of various lattice structures. this pa g e

A technician operates one of Carbon’s 3D printers with the push of a button; custom helmet pads emerge from the dead zone.

It isn’t hard to imagine that Carbon’s printers aren’t printers at all, but portals to another product world.

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A technician prepares a recent print for curing; Carbon’s printers can create thousands of lattice variations. facin g pa g e

Carbon’s density-controlled lattice replaces traditional foam in a CCM hockey helmet; Specialized used Carbon printers to perfect the padding in its S-Works Power with Mirror saddle.

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a solid and oxygen can prevent that transformation from taking place, they designed a system that simultaneously harnesses both. In CLIP, a projector beams UV images up through a window into a pool of material. The material that gets hit by the light cures. But oxygen can also get through that window, making a dead zone just above it where the material cannot harden. It’s only a third as thick as a human hair — that’s about 23 microns, give or take — but it’s enough for the liquid material to backfill as the hardened object above the dead zone ascends, allowing for the continuous creation of a 3D object.

Joe DeSimone debuted CLIP to the world onstage in a 2015 TED talk, which is now free to view online. Clean shaven with a business-appropriate haircut and wearing professorial tweed and a blue Oxford (sans the expected if not obligatory bow tie), DeSimone is perhaps not the vision of a revolutionary scientific mind; more Ford than Einstein, and certainly dissimilar from Musk, Dorsey and Zuckerberg.

In his hand is a red ball about the size of a golf ball; it looks like an atomic model, or a toy. “It is not manufacturable by traditional manufacturing techniques,” he says. “It has a symmetry such that you can’t injection-mold it, you can’t even manufacture it through milling.” As DeSimone explains that such an object can only be made by a 3D printer — one inspired by Terminator 2’s liquid metal T-1000 android no less — the inverted stage of a Carbon machine descends into a puddle of red goo. This is the moment when many members of the audience likely stop paying attention to DeSimone to focus instead on the object emerging from the soup. It’s done in about six minutes.

At the time, a typical 3D printer would’ve required as long as 10 hours to produce the same small ball. Speed is a major advantage CLIP has over 3D printing as we’ve previously known it, but it’s not the only one. DeSimone says that the traditional approach is really 2D printing over and over again, one layer on top of another. The final objects have striations where they’re structurally weak, which is why 3D printing is okay for prototyping but not creating final products. (Plus, they look 3D printed.) These are the reasons why the technology hasn’t taken off.

The TED video fits into a certain genre of optimistic scientific content that proliferated on social media news feeds before they became political battlegrounds. While most inventions have yet to materialize in our lives, Carbon is a very real company — real to the tune of $680 million in publicly disclosed funding and a valuation of $2.4 billion.

You wouldn’t readily surmise the company’s unicorn status from a trip to its Redwood City, California, headquarters. Its office is a cavernous, open-format space but lacks the stereotypical Silicon Valley flair; there’s not a Ping-Pong table or beanbag chair in sight. There is a vault though — the office was previously home to, ironically, a 2D printing company that made billboards and, before that, Masterlock. The vault safeguarded the original combos for locks in case people forgot theirs, and it was more expensive to remove it than leave it, according to Phil DeSimone. Now it’s a museum of sorts, curated with past iterations of Carbon’s 3D printers. The first looks like some instrument you’d find at an optometrist’s office, the second, a countertop coffee dripper or perhaps a sleek humidifier.

The current generation of printers are compact, cylindrical, head-high and satisfyingly futuristic. Unlike MakerBot, these are not for at-home tinkering, they’re for real

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manufacturing. And they start at $25,000. Per year. Like many new tech ventures, Carbon uses a subscription model, but for that annual fee, Carbon’s partners get routine software upgrades that can make printing faster or create compatibility with a new resin. It also provides access to the Carbon Design Engine, which makes creating those previously unmakeable lattice objects a snap, despite the fact that there are 1,500 geometries to choose from. “If you like it on day one, you’re going to love it in six months,” DeSimone says. Compared to the piston-pumping cacophony of the machines that inhabit a typical manufacturing floor, Carbon’s printers work in relative quiet. On any given day they might be cranking out parts for a Ford Mustang, bike saddles for Specialized, midsoles for Adidas, custom helmet inserts for professional football and hockey players or ... dentures. “We power about fifty percent of the largest providers of dentures,” says DeSimone.

Recently, Carbon was printing lumbar supports for an upcoming backpack line from Osprey called UNLTD, due out in early 2022. Mike Pfotenhauer, Osprey’s founder, had a notion a few years ago that backpack design had stagnated, that a low price ceiling had prevented designers from creating something premium and truly innovative. While scouring Vietnam factories for new advanced materials, he and his team came across one that was producing soles for Adidas’s Futurecraft running shoe using Carbon printers.

“The thing that attracted me most was the ability to do lattice engineering,” Pfotenhauer says. To have precise

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Adidas was an early adopter of Carbon’s tech. In its most recent lattice-soled shoe, the 4DFWD, designers created a print that provides adequate cushioning and collapses forward to create momentum and lead a runner from one stride to the next.

zonal control of compression in a material that’s simultaneously lightweight and breathable made a Carbon-printed product ideal for a backpack.

Pfotenhauer did have doubts — whether what came out of the printer was sewable, whether it could handle UV exposure, whether it could take on the weather conditions that a multiday hike through the Tetons or Grand Canyon might present. But these were allayed through the hand-in-hand development process Carbon employs when partnering with a new brand; getting a component onto Osprey’s most innovative pack to date is equally important to Carbon, particularly given that most of the products it produces are unseen — electrical connectors or components inside medical devices — and especially after three decades of forecasters proselytizing 3D printing as the future of manufacturing without it actually happening.

Also, Pfotenhauer is convinced the Carbon-made lumbar support is better than any Osprey has previously used on a pack. It’s more breathable than foam ones yet supportive, comfortable and even grippy. The same is true of Specialized’s bike saddle, Adidas’s 4DFWD running shoe and Riddell and CCM’s sports helmets; all of these products are better than their predecessors. Carbon isn’t just concerned with making 3D printing faster, it wants to make better stuff.

It truly is astonishing and somewhat bewildering that the same machine that spits out personalized dentures can produce a high-tech lumbar support for a hiking backpack,

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This is not the slow, bottom-up, layer-bylayer version of 3D printing that came to fore in the early 2000s.

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particularly given the degree to which hyper-specialized machines designed to make one thing have defined manufacturing for so long. Loosen the bounds that constrain your conception of reality, and it isn’t hard to imagine that Carbon’s printers aren’t printers at all, but portals to another product world.

In reality, that’s precisely what’s happening. You may have recently heard the term metaverse bandied about in relation to NFTs, cryptocurrency or the video game Fortnite. It’s still ill-defined, but the word generally refers to the version of the internet we can inhabit and spend time and money in. It’s a version where the real-life musician Travis Scott can hold a virtual concert and more than 12 million people show up to watch together, virtually. It’s another world, one we’ve been creating for the past few decades.

A core attribute of the metaverse is that its inhabitants can build things, buy things. (Recently, a digital version of Gucci’s Dionysus handbag sold for thousands more than the real thing.) These digital goods are simulacra of real-world objects, copies brought to the metaverse in lines of code. Carbon is pulling things out of the virtual space and into this physical one, only they’re new, they couldn’t have come from anywhere but the digital realm.

Phil DeSimone calls it “the digital manufacturing future.” Here, a designer can turn an idea into a physical object that, until it comes out of the printer, never existed before, never could exist before. Better car parts and safer football helmets and more comfortable backpacks come from here. It’s from here — a place where some outer edge of the metaverse that’s still filled with CAD drawings instead of smiley animal avatars overlaps with our tangible world — that Carbon believes the future might emerge.

Like a small ball from a pool of goo.

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Osprey’s UNLTD packs will be the first to carry Carbon branding; the lattice lumbar support stands out visually in Osprey’s most innovative hiking pack to date; product designers can use Carbon’s Design Engine to create virtually any imaginable shape; Carbon works with roughly 50 percent of the largest suppliers of dentures.

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WHEN THE MERCURY DROPS, LIFE DOESN’T STOP. THERE ARE STILL PLENTY OF MEETINGS, CHORES AND GETAWAYS TO GET THROUGH IN THE WINTER, WITH A SLEW OF GEAR AND GADGETS TO HELP YOU ALONG THE WAY. BRANDS ARE CONSTANTLY UPGRADING SUBZERO GARB, INNOVATING SMART-HOME TECH AND REFINING EQUIPMENT TO HELP YOU PERFORM BETTER. AND WE HAVE OUR FINGER ON THE PULSE. WHETHER YOU’RE SNOWED IN AT HOME, TRAVELING FOR THE HOLIDAYS OR HITTING THE SLOPES, WE BELIEVE YOU DESERVE THE BEST PRODUCTS. SO HERE ARE 60 OF THEM — THOROUGHLY RESEARCHED AND TESTED BY OUR TEAM OF EDITORS — TO BEST SERVE YOUR COLD-WEATHER PURSUITS.

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BEST WHISKE Y G L ASS

Denver & Liely Bourbon Glass The materials and weight feel excellent, but it’s the shape of the glass that sets it apart. Denver & Liely’s whiskey glass is a hybrid of other popular whiskey glasses and merges a wide base, useful for swirling, with a narrower opening for nosing and tasting. $45

B EST WO O L BL AN KET

Woolrich Buffalo Check Wool Blanket

Woolrich and its iconic buffalo check plaid fit in just about anywhere from beside the campfire to the foot of your bed. $155

BEST EL ECTRIC KETTLE

Fellow Stagg EKG The Fellow Stagg EKG will heat up to the exact temperature you want, maintain it for up to an hour and look good doing it. It’s the only kettle you need if you’re trying to brew the perfect pour-over coffee or tea. $149

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BEST S MART TH ERMOSTAT

Ecobee SmartThermostat Compatible with Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, the Ecobee SmartThermostat has a large intuitive touchscreen display and a smart sensor to control the temperature of rooms even if they aren’t near the thermostat. $249

B EST SM ART L IG HTS FO R M OST PEO PL E

Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance Philips Hue is the biggest name in smart lights and its White and Color Ambiance line is arguably its most popular. They’re easy to use, highly customizable and work with most major smart-home ecosystems. $45/each

B EST HUM IDIFIE R B EST S PACE H EAT ER

Vornado AVH10 Vortex Heater

This quiet space heater works quickly, and unlike most other space heaters on the market, the AVH10 allows you to select a desired temperature. $100

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Levoit LV600HH Hybrid Humidifier

Keep your home from reaching Sahara Desert-like dryness with this humidifier that keeps a healthy and comfortable humidity level without constant trips to fill up the water tank. $90

B EST FL ANNE L SHE E TS

L.L. Bean Ultrasoft Comfort Flannel Sheets

BEST I N T EGRAT E D T U R N TAB L E FO R M OST P EO P L E

Pro-Ject T1 Phono SB

This turntable combines a striking design (thanks to a glass platter) high-quality components, like an integrated phono preamp and an Ortofon OM 5E cartridge, all for under $500. It’s the perfect partner for a powered speaker (like a Sonos Five) and a new vinyl collection.

L.L. Bean’s made-inPortugal flannel sheets are supremely soft and warming, and they’ll only get better the more you use them. $119 (Queen)

$449

BEST FIRE PIT

BEST D RI P CO F F E E M AK E R

Solo Stove Bonfire

Oxo Brew 8-Cup Coffee Maker

The stainless steel build provides a nice aesthetic and ensures longevity, but the creative vent system, which keeps fires healthier and cuts back on smoke and ash in the air, is the star of the show.

The Oxo 8-Cup is a sleek, small coffee maker that brews a carafe (or just a single cup) of Specialty Coffee Association-approved joe in a flash. $178

$350

B EST AFFO R DAB L E DO L BY ATM OS SOUNDBAR

Sonos Beam 2

It’s still rare to find a Dolby Atmos that costs less than $1,000, much less one for $500, and yet that’s exactly what Sonos has done. If you want a good soundbar for a good price, it’s the best choice. $449

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Blundstone 558 Boots Technically part of the Australian bush-boot lineage, Blundstone’s 558 style is a top choice for people in every industry thanks to the tough leather upper, shock-absorption and classic design. $200

B EST OV E RSHIRT

Outerknown Blanket Shirt Made from organic-cotton heavyweight twill, this shirt is sturdy, soft and breathable. It has two button-flap chest pockets and natural nut buttons.

Plus, if heather gray doesn’t hit the spot, this style comes in over a dozen colors. It’s a classic silhouette Outerknown will never stop making. $148

B EST HO O DIE

Flint & Tinder 10 Year Pullover This hoodie utilizes a hefty 23-ounce fleece from South Carolina. The soft cotton-poly blend looks and feels like your favorite vintage sweatshirt, and it features a double-lined hood and a reinforced kangaroo pocket. What’s more, it’s got a 10-year guarantee so if it rips or wears out in a decade, the brand will repair it. $98

B EST L IP BAL M

Baxter of California Hydro Salve Lip Balm Your daily lip balm doesn’t need to taste like a mojito, but it’s an invigorating bonus if it does. The flavor of Baxter’s Hydro Salve balm mimics the buzz of the famous cocktail, but the real draw is its base of grapeseed, jojoba and coconut oils. These ingredients work in concert to revitalize and hydrate your lips and keep re-application to a minimum.

BEST SCA RF

Polo Ralph Lauren Scarf Ralph has had this scarf in the collection for years because, well, it’s a great scarf. Made in Italy using a perfect mix of luscious wool and nylon for strength, it’s double-sided so you’re really getting two scarves in one. There’s a ton of colorways to choose from every season, too, so you’re not limited to this handsome windowpane version. $65

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Neutrogena Norwegian Hand Cream Is winter hard on your hands? Get some gloves! Too stubborn to put them on? Grab some hand cream — specifically, Neutrogena’s Norwegian Hand Cream. It’s an across-the-pond formula (with a mild fragrance) for chapped, crusty and cracked hands. $24

B EST GLOVES

Hestra Torgil Gloves Hestra’s been in the business since 1936, and its Torgil gloves balance function and form, combining soft sueded goat leather, adjustable cuffs, pre-curved fingers and half-pique backhands for flexibility. $170

BEST JEA NS

Levi’s 501 Jeans No other garment has aged nearly as well as the historic Levi’s 501. The quintessential blue jean comes in all manner of shades, washes and distressing. No matter where you start, it’ll get better with every wear and every wash, which is really what a blue jean is all about. And while $60 for the classic of all classics is a deal in itself, they’re often on sale, too. $60

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BEST WO O L SO CKS

Bombas Merino Wool Calf Socks Bombas offers some of the most detailed socks for the price. These feature a unique honeycomb arch support, cushioned foot bed, seamless toe and y-stitched heel, all wrapped in a merino wool fabric that’s great for yearround wear. $18

B EST PAR KA

Battenwear Northfield Parka Made in the USA, Battenwear’s vintage-inspired parka features a water-repellent 60/40 cotton-nylon shell with a faux shearling lining. It comes with flap pockets, Polartec-lined hand-warming pockets and a brimmed hood. It isn’t the cheapest, but for all the features you get, it’s pumped full of value. $645

B EST B E AR D TR IM MER

Wahl 9864

Made in America, this beard trimmer is encased in a durable stainless steel housing and utilizes rechargeable Lithium Ion 2.0 technology that can provide hours of trimming on one charge. The Model 9864 comes with four attachments and 12 T-Blade guide combs to achieve different trim lengths. The self-sharpening blades stay sharp over years of use, and the warranty is one of the longest you’ll find in the world of beard trimmers.

The best feature, though? A one-minute charge will give you three minutes of trimming time — perfect for procrastinators everywhere. $69

BEST B E AN I E

Colorful Standard Merino Wool Beanie Colorful Standard’s beanie is the best way to top off your fit. It’s perfectly proportioned, made in Portugal with Italian superfine merino wool for a silky touch and comes in every color you could conceivably want. Oh, and it’s just $35. $35

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Smith 4D Mag

A creased ChromaPop lens paired with an exaggerated curvature of the frame boosts your field of vision by 25 percent. A fail-safe lens-swap system that’s easy enough to deploy whilst riding the chair is the cherry on top of this high-visibility victor. $320

B EST A L L-MOU N TA IN S KIS

Black Crows Nocta

A wider ski that still delivers power and precision, the Nocta is an off-piste beast that can handle hardpack, too. Full reverse camber and straight edges will have you floating over powder all day long.

B EST SNOW G LOV ES

Hestra Leather Fall Line When the going gets cold, reach for quality. The soft cowhide aniline on these five-fingered beauties will keep frosty temps at bay, while thoughtfully placed outseams enhance dexterity without sacrificing warmth.

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B EST H I K I N G BOOTS

Salomon X Ultra 3 Mid GTX These kicks are a consistent winner for Salomon thanks to premium features such as the Contagrip rubber sole and Gore-Tex-lined synthetic upper.

Sharp albeit technical looks let you pull them off away from the trail. $165

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The North Face The One Bag

Stanley Classic Vacuum Insulated Wide Mouth Bottle Any outdoors person recognizes Stanley’s classic thermos, and there’s a reason why. The trailblazer of the vacuum-insulated universe continues to offer good looks, durable construction and superior BPA-free insulation without any unnecessary frills.

There are no commitment issues with The One. This 800-fill ProDown sleeping bag is three bags in one due to the modular zipper system that gives it a range from five degrees Fahrenheit up to 40. At less than $300, it’s well worth the investment.

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B EST P O CKE T KNIFE

CRKT Pilar III

Danish designer Jesper Voxnaes mixed materials, form and history into one sleek folder. The three-inch blade’s D2 steel minimizes the need for frequent resharpening, a thumb slot allows one-handed opening and a frame lock ensures safety. $60

BEST BAS E L AYER

Smartwool Intraknit 200 Crew Base Layer Top Smartwool’s IntraKnit base layers employ 3D knit technology, weaving innovation, comfort and zero-waste sensibilities into one highly technical garment. Mesh ventilation and moisture-wicking ensure you stay high and dry. $120

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B EST ADV E NTUR E BACKPACK

The masterminds at Patagonia took the brand’s R1 fleece (cousin to the iconic Synchilla) and gave it an upgrade — an innovative weave that enhances breathability and coziness. Throw it on; never take it off.

Developed by ex-Special Forces soldier Jason McCarthy, this backpack blends civilian-friendly features like the padded laptop sleeve and tactical details such as the false bottom for extra protection. Silent zippers on the waterproof exterior round out its tough-as-nails character.

Patagonia R1 Air Full-Zip Hoody

$159

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Jones Stratos Snowboard

Iconic is a fitting description for Jeremy Jones, and his eponymous brand’s most innovative board lives up to his legacy. Mixing the directional shape of a freerider with the soul of a freestyler never looked or felt so good. $580

GoRuck GR1

$325

B EST DOW N JACKE T

Mountain Hardwear Super/DS Stretchdown Hooded Jacket Flex and move while enjoying classic down jacket features: waterproof shell, convenient pockets, incredible warmth. This 6.7-ounce, 700-fill RDS-certified winner’s unique baffle design will have passersby and friends alike pausing for a closer look. $275

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BEST A DJUSTA BL E DUM BBEL L SET

Bowflex SelectTech 552 The best home gym equipment packs versatility into a minimal package, ensuring maximum output and efficiency. Save space and money with 15 sturdy, reliable dumbbells (five to 52.5 pounds) in one. $399

B EST R ESISTANCE BANDS

TRX Bandit Kit

BEST GYM SHOES

Reebok Nano X1 The newest iteration of the “official shoe of fitness” boasts a number of upgrades including a breathable flexweave knit upper and Floatride Energy Foam in the forefoot to keep you on your toes. $130

This convenient new resistance-training kit’s ergonomic, universal-fit handle attaches to one (or multiple) bands, providing enhanced control and performance. Eliminate “hand to band” pinching and gain more command over your at-home sweat sesh. $50

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Fitbit Inspire 2

Here’s an excellent no-nonsense fitness tracker at an even more no-nonsense price. Track your steps, distance, heart rate, hourly activity and calories burned effectively, without the distracting notifications of a smartwatch. $99

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Aer Gym Duffel 3 This duffel is versatile and set up for meticulous organization (check out that shoe slot). A bomb-proof, water-resistant 1680-denier Cordura ballisticnylon exterior and stylish commuter aesthetic allow it to transition from gym bag to carry-on at a moment’s notice. $169

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BEST HOM E GY M

Bowflex Xtreme 2 SE Featuring the Power Rod system to produce 210 pounds of resistance (upgrades available), this machine is compact, easy to use and capable of providing a full-body workout, all from the comfort of your domicile.

Rogue P-4 Pull-Up System This commercial-grade pull-up -bar system can be found in gyms across the country. It’s simple, solid and has the width and depth (52in x 30in) for loads of moves including muscle-ups, widegrip pulls and leg raises. $170

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BEST FOA M ROL L ER

TriggerPoint GRID Soothe sore muscles post-workout with this foam roller, one of the OG self-massage tools. Engineered to alleviate muscle aches and increase range of motion, this lo-fi option is the perfect addition to your recovery arsenal. $40

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B EST STATIO N ARY B IKE

NordicTrack S15i Studio Cycle Peloton-level perks for $900 less. Uphill and downhill training, a 14-inch, 360-degree swivel screen, a built-in speaker system and NordicTrack’s proprietary iFit training program all come together in one streamlined package. $1,499

B EST PROTE IN P OWDER

Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard 100% Whey Replenish and recover from intense workouts with this macronutrient-dense powder.

Packing in 24 grams of whey protein per serving at a relatively low price, it should be your first choice for a post-pump shake. $83

BEST W I N T E R RU N N I N G S H O ES

The North Face Flight Vectiv Guard Futurelight

Lightweight yet rugged, this winterized trail- running shoe features a zippered, protective upper imbued with the revolutionary breathable-waterproof FutureLight membrane, plus a propulsive Vectiv sole — ensuring your feet stay not only dry, but fast. $250

B EST PR E WO R KOUT

Performix SST Pre Performix boosted its formula with patent-pending Molecular Hydrogen Matrix, which produces wholebody alkalinity, lactic-acid buffering and mitochondrial production. Translation?

Powered-up cells and less fatigue as you blast tough workouts. $35

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B EST DO PP KIT

Billykirk No.258 Billykirk’s Toiletry Bag is constructed from a waterresistant waxed-canvas exterior, a water-resistant nylon lining and a durable, full-grain leather bottom. Not only practical, it’s a polished take on a mundane must-have.

BEST SMA L L CAM E RA

Fujifilm X100v

An iPhone is fine for documenting daily life, but the Fujifilm X100v is a fantastic upgrade for serious shooters. With a 26.1MP APS-C sensor and an f/2.0 lens, this tidy package can capture better photos than any smartphone, especially in low light.

$85

B EST INSTANT CO FFE E

Voilà Coffee

Simply the freshest, most consistently high-quality airplane coffee there is. The company’s production process, focus on quality beans and its variety of roasts have kept it one step ahead of an increasingly competitive category.

$1,400

$15

BEST MOBIL E HOTSP OT

ZTE Max Connect

If you need Wi-Fi, the ZTE Max Connect can provide it at a great value. Capable of turning a mobile data signal from AT&T or T-Mobile into a Wi-Fi signal for as many as 10 devices, the Max is limited to 4G speeds but benefits from ubiquitous 4G coverage. $60

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B EST TRAV E L BACKPACK

Bellroy Laptop Daypack

BEST P O RTAB L E P OW E R BAN K

RAVPower AC Power Bank 30000mAh An excellent combo of value and power, the RAVPower 30,000mAh AC has enough juice to charge a phone, tablet or laptop. With a USB-C, USB-A and 100-watt AC outlet, it can resurrect anything you need charged. $150

This 20L zip-top pack strikes a chord between minimalist design and maximalist features. Though it comes in a variety of durable fabrics, this all-black version is made with Bellroy’s Dura nylon material. It features a slew of compartments cleverly hidden throughout including a water-resistant top pocket for your phone and other small electronics. $139

B EST T RAV E L B L AZ E R

Taylor Stitch Gibson Jacket Taylor Stitch’s Gibson Jacket gives you the practicality of a blazer without the stuffiness of a suit. It represents the right middle ground between dressed up and comfortable courtesy of its 97 percent cotton/ 3 percent spandex construction. It’s lightweight, has pockets for important EDC and will retain its shape even after being folded. $141

BEST PET CA MERA

Wyze Cam V2

Pay hundreds of dollars or pay $25 for the same or better quality. Wyze’s affordable smart camera is the best cheap security camera and, by extension, a perfectly suitable option for pet owners who aren’t fussed with confusing their pets with a treat-shooting monolith. $25

B EST CAR RY- O N LUG GAGE

Arlo Skye Zipper Carry-On Max

Take to the sky towing a bag with built-in functionality. Arlo Skye’s Zipper Carry-On Max comes with an easy-access, hard-shell front pocket for laptops, extra layers and all of the documentation you need to board nowadays. Plus, there’s an antimicrobial liner and an integrated (and removable) USB-C charger. $350

BEST DUF F EL BAG

Filson Medium Rugged Twill Duffle Bag Are you adverse to roller bags? Annoyed by the convenience? (Looking at you, David Coggins.) Filson’s Duffle Bag is for you, then. It’s rain- and scuff-resistant, easy to carry with either the handles or shoulder strap and sized to the TSA’s exact maximum carry-on specs. $395

B EST N EC K P I L LOW

Travelrest Memory Foam Pillow There’s nothing worse than tweaking your neck while sleeping on a plane — whether you’re in the aisle seat or by the window.

Correct your nap posture with Travelrest’s Memory Foam Pillow, a wraparound style that cradles without choking you. $40

B EST ANC HE ADPHONES FO R TRAVEL

Bose QuietComfort 45

These noise-canceling headphones have basically the same lightweight (and extremely comfy) design as the company’s QuietComfort 35 II (last updated in 2017), but Bose drastically improved their active noise-cancellation and transparency skills, as well as their call clarity. $330

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DETOUR

text and photos by

Evan Malachosky

MELLO AND SONS

4405 Butler St Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15201 Hours vary.

Appointments suggested.

THIS PIT T SBURGH S TOR E ’S A TR E ASUR E TROV E OF GEMS FOR VINTAGE DENIM FANS .

Neal Mello has an eye for the good stuff. Stop by his ultracool outpost in Pittsburgh’s budding Lawrenceville neighborhood for vintage Levi’s (both deadstock and distressed), French work jackets, classic collegiate sweatshirts and other coveted clothing. You’ll probably also find Mello spinning vinyl or shuffling through old Levi’s catalogs — even if one of his kids greets you first. Mello & Sons is a true family affair.

“IN BROOKLYN, I HAD SO MUCH OF EVERYTHING… BUT IN PITTSBURGH, I DECIDED TO GET A LITTLE MORE SPECIFIC. LET ME JUST CONCENTRATE ON DENIM.” — NEAL MELLO

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Behind every product is a new story. That story could be rooted in the values that drove its creation, or its materials, or origin. Those hidden details are why we’ve launched the Gear Patrol Podcast, a weekly discussion of not just products, but the ideas and culture that surround them and bring them to life.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, our website, or wherever else you get your podcasts. podcast.gearpatrol.com