Serious About Style
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Men’s fashion forums — online discussion groups where lovers of bespoke suits and premium denim alike gather to discuss what and where to buy — are growing in popularity and influence. Groups that started just a few years ago with a handful of users now boast tens of thousands of members, industry credibility, retail links, and signature products.
Among the most popular such sites are a virtual village that covers a range of men’s fashion, from formal to cutting-edge. At Ask Andy (askandyaboutclothes.com) and Film Noir Buff (filmnoirbuff.com), traditional tailored clothing is front and center; London Lounge (thelondonlounge.net) draws those with a taste for high-end, sometimes obscure custom tailors, shoemakers, and shirtmakers. Superfuture (superfuture.com) focuses primarily on denim and streetwear, and Style Forum (styleforum.net) covers it all.
Those who frequent style forums range from high school students seeking out hard-to-find sneakers that are all the rage with their classmates, to middle-aged professionals looking to refine their work wardrobes. The communities are especially popular in fashion capitals such as New York; Superfuture, which boasts 21,000 members, actually provides detailed retail maps of 13 city neighborhoods.
All of the communities are for men who take fashion very seriously, which can sometimes lead to strange incidents of fashion brinksmanship. Case in point: Last July, one of Style Forum’s 18,000 registered members posted photographs of a $4,500 Kiton cashmere sport coat that had been torn apart, seam by seam, in an effort to prove much of the garment was hand-sewn. Others posting on the site reacted as if they had witnessed a massacre. One man compared the rending to a scene from the 2006 war movie “Letters from Iwo Jima.” Others responded by tearing their own favorite garments, in order to examine the craftsmanship, leading to a debate about the criteria for a mark of quality.
The fashion director of Esquire magazine, Nick Sullivan, who also edits that magazine’s style manual, the “Big Black Book,” discovered the site Ask Andy while doing research about men’s style throughout history. In an interview with The New York Sun, he called the site, which boasts 14,000 members, “a source of information no amount of books could replace.”
“It’s the details and the knowledge and the provenance that makes men’s clothing interesting,” Mr. Sullivan said.
But not all opinions are equal, he said. He estimated that on Ask Andy, “when 20 people post a reply, five are facetious, 10 are vague, and five are correct.” And one of the founders of Style Forum, Jeremy Jackson, said many of the latest self-proclaimed fashion experts who post on the site are more passionate than knowledgeable.
Still, fashion industry professionals can’t ignore the chatter, according to the founder of Ask Andy, Andrew Gilchrist. “With 14,000 members, a complaint about a store or company can have serious consequences,” he said.
While representatives from major fashion labels are said to lurk on these men’s fashion forums, some artisans and smaller designers openly post and even collaborate with members to create apparel sought by site users and members.
The founder of the 3-year-old denim brand 5EP, which sells at Bergdorf Goodman, Christine Rucci, said she first visited Style Forum last September to respond to a site member who had some unkind words for a pair of jeans she had designed. “I didn’t know men talked about fashion the way they do,” she said.
Ms. Rucci started talking with site members and ultimately agreed to design a pair of jeans especially for those who frequent Style Forum. The result: a limited-edition $260 pair of jeans that has a lower rise and a slimmer cut than other 5EP models. That style sells at only a few of 5EP’s retailers, including Oak in Brooklyn.
London Lounge offers a style of Gaziano & Girling spectator shoes by subscription to its registered users, and an Ask Andy striped pocket square is available to all at the Web site for Sam Hober.
Some men casually join a fashioncentric site and find their tastes expanding — even as their bank balances shrink. An architect who lives on the Upper West Side, Andrew Wong, said since joining Style Forum his taste in shoes has shifted from all-American Aldens to European brands, such as Crockett & Jones, Grenson, and Vass. He also said his college-age son frequents sites about denim.
“From my point of view, it’s a community resource,” Mr. Wong said. “It either confirmed what I was spending money on, or it allowed me to create new aspirations.”