Over the past weekend I had the pleasure of hosting a good friend from Sweden. With him he brought a few fellow Swedes who I am now also pleased to now call my friends. The purpose of their trip was to shoot a music video for one of the guys, Niello, who is a Swedish rapper (if you are interested, he has a few other singles out; Legenden and Svett). I know what your thinking, and no, I didn’t know that Sweden had rappers either. But I know how some of you #menswear nerds have a thing for hip-hop so maybe you’ll dig it (whether you can understand what hes saying in Swedish or not). But anyway, the single that they were here shooting a music video for is all about one night stands; so I’m sure we can all at least jive with that.
But onto the style. My friend Carl (aka Nilzmoke, if you went to Villanova you may know his as Swedish Carl) is his hypeman/dj of sorts, when he left America a few months ago he was still wearing his ‘college bro’ clothes, but my, how that’s changed.
One of the first things I asked the guys was ‘What the hell are you wearing? This is some Kayne West/Justin Bieber shit?’ They responded that it was some Swedish brand called Army Of Me. Naturally, I had never heard of this brand as it so clearly represents pretty much everything this blog is against. After a quick debate as to whether or not to ban the Swedes from my residence until they learned to dress like grown men, I decided that I could in fact help them. Absolve them of their sartorial sins, you could say.
I managed to get them into some quality OCBDs for Saturday brunch, which was a marked improvement. Niello said it was the first time he had ever worn a pink shirt, and a better man he now is for doing so. Although admittedly, the shirts did not go so well with the black drop crotch leather pants they were wearing. But at least when your sitting other people see mostly your shirt and not your pants.
In the end they left wearing the same thing they came in, literally (which is what you see them in here). But I know that my efforts were not for nothing. I was able to show them there is light at the end of the tunnel and sometimes that light is in the form of pink and yellow oxford cloth button downs…
PS – This is all said in jest, well mostly. Both Niello and Nilzmoke consented in being the subjects of this post. But really, we need to do away with drop crotch pants.
