The Heritage Post has Handed Us the Reins: The Result Is This Special ‘Rebel Outfit’ Issue
We’ve long been fans of The Heritage Post. Like so many of the magazine’s readers, we have found the magazine an indispensable sartorial resource. We’ve discovered countless new brands, and we’ve broadened our style horizons with each new issue.
So, to say the very least, we were pleasantly surprised when the Heritage Post team reached out to us and asked us to contribute to a very special issue focusing on rebel style.
We met with them to outline the project, and we asked them how many articles they wanted us to contribute. Their answer absolutely floored us.
They didn’t want a Rebel Outfit feature; they wanted to give us the entire issue. They would be sounding boards for content and images, but they were comfortable being passengers in the process. They were handing us the reins—a tremendous honour.
Of course we accepted their offer. It represented an unmissable opportunity to scratch a years-old itch—to do something we’d wanted to do for a very long time.
When we first approached the publishers of our book, The Rebel’s Wardrobe, we told them we wanted to take a close look at the rugged and rebellious style with selvedge denim at its core. As practitioners of this style, we pitched a kind of modern casual style bible.
As we workshopped this idea with the publishers, we found ourselves being drawn deeper and deeper into the past. The stories behind the emergence of casual menswear pieces and of the cultural touchstones and icons that made them iconic were simply irresistible.
The resulting book (which we are, of course, intensely proud of), says very little about our present moment. Our original idea has remained on the shelf every since, and we planned to return to it when the time was right.
That time is now. This very special issue of The Heritage Post allows us to finally move our lens out of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first—to look at what we are calling Modern Rebel Style, at some of the brands that outfit modern rebels, and at some of the most noteworthy practitioners of this style.
We look at 20 different garments. Half of them were featured in the book, but they are getting a fresh look in the magazine. The other half of them are entirely brand new. We look, for instance, at the origins of chambray shirts, button-down oxfords, bandanas, cowboy boots and hats, and penny loafers—all of them absolutely essential pieces that we didn’t have space for in the book.
Our book is crammed from cover to cover with pictures of stylish menswear icons like Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Marlon Brando, but we’ve used the opportunity that The Heritage Post have given us to look at today’s modern rebels—the style icons of our own age.
Rather than digging into the photographic archives, we reached out to a combination of retailers, brands, and stylish modern rebels and asked them to provide us with their favourite photographs showcasing how the pieces we cover in the magazine should be worn. You don’t have to be a vintage hound to add these pieces to your own collection. Most of them are available from our (and your) favourite rebel retailers.
We’ve also included, for the first time, some style advice for practitioners of Modern Rebel style. Of course, rebels and rules aren’t natural bedfellows, but we’ve found that some guidelines and pointers are often appreciated by those who might be trying to find their way in unfamiliar territory. Bend or break these rules as you see fit.
We hope you enjoy reading the special Rebel Outfit issue as much as we’ve enjoyed both writing it and sourcing the images. We feel this issue draws a circle around a style that we all love, and we feel that defining this style is an important project—one that is far from finished.
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