Customize Your Clothes

What’s the secret to looking great? It's the same secret to making a great meal or restoring a vintage motorcycle: Putting in the effort. Nothing just comes together. And while it's easy to think that some guys just have effortless drip, the truth is most look cool because they put in the work. The venerable menswear journalist Bruce Boyer addressed this decades ago in his book Eminently Suitable, “You hear it all the time, the idea that some men simply look better because their bodies 'wear' clothes better,” he wrote. “It's the kind of non-explanation we give when we feel we're dealing with some unfathomable mystery.”

But the not-so-secret sauce is that stylish guys aren't simply taking something off the rack and putting it on. They're switching things up. Having a tailor take in the waist a little, or shortening the sleeves just a bit. They're shopping from the women's section to find an understated cropped sweater. Or maybe they're going all out: rebuilding and re-stitching an item or even dying it a different color. Just ask Paolo Cui, founder of Idle Worship, the San Francisco-based brand that has quickly amassed a following for its modern take on traditional craftsmanship.

I was fist introduced to Cui's work when fellow menswear writer Jake Woolf employed Idle Worship to repair his favorite vintage Levi's 501s. But this was no ordinary darning repair: It was a full sashiko repair with patches and the intricate stitches that are the hallmark of the Japanese-style mending technique that enhances a piece of clothing, both functionally and aesthetically.

“My favorite pattern translates to The Seven Treasures that consists of interlocking circles. If I'm working with a pair of raw denim that's been worn in, I like to have the circles fit neatly into the fades on the sides of the knee,” he tells me. “If I'm going to be completely honest here, I started off with that pattern because it looks so much like the compass logo on the Stone Island badge, my favorite brand of all time, a huge inspiration for what I do.”

What I really appreciate about Cui's work is that it extends the life of a loved garment. So many times people toss a great piece because of a small problem. But a creative solution can not only restore a garment, but possibly make it even better. Cui is in the camp of really wearing your clothing. “Well made clothes will look better over time, don't they?” He says that if your sweater has a little moth hole in it, darn it up. Little repairs don't take long and it's always better to fix something that you love than it is to buy a new one. “If your white tees get chili oil stains, overdye them with an indigo kit—you'll learn a new skill and these are all things you can do at your house.”

The dying remark reminded me of a past project Cui shared on social media last year: Dyeing some cargo pants with fermented persimmon juice. The pants were a beautiful shade of brown and are legit the only ones like that in the world. Now that's how you develop personal style. “Dyeing will always be my first love. Idle Worship started off as a tie-dye brand, but really I wanted to be able to display a knowledge of textile manipulation and how to make things as I see fit.” Three years into the project Cui says he's still finding ways to upcycle old pieces to make them make sense for today. Let that be a lesson that the coolest clothes aren't merely bought, they're built over time.