Quick piece on Nigel Cabourn in this past week’s TMagazine talking about his new line:

For this fall, inspiration came courtesy of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, who tackled Everest in 1924 wearing a ragtag assortment of customized military togs, heavy knits and Scottish mountaineering wools. ‘‘Mallory and Irvine are supposedly the first people who got to Everest, in 1924,’’ Cabourn explains with childlike enthusiasm. ‘‘Apparently they got to the top but then fell about 800 feet.’’ Irvine was never found, but in 1999 an expedition tracked down Mallory, completely frozen with all his clothes on, and brought some of his belongings down the mountain. A few years later, Cabourn was invited to the Royal Geographic Society to examine the canvas and tweed garments, which he then tried to reproduce as faithfully as possible.

Cabourn’s outerwear archive contains over 4000 pieces.

“Alongside the familiar L. L. Bean duck boots, Brooks Brothers shirts and Ray-Ban Wayfarers, there are Filson duffel bags, Gokey boots, Alden dress shoes, Gitman oxford shirts, Quoddy Trail moccasins, Wm. J. Mills canvas totes — to name but a few.”

Apparently, it takes a about 18 months to go from “criminally slept on”to “byword for Americana style in the NYT Styles section.

This is the best part of the article, though:

“What makes today’s prepidemic so fascinating is how it is, surprisingly enough, so Japanese. The look has its roots in the United States, to be sure. But the spirit, rigor and execution of today’s prep moment is as Japanese as Sony.”

This is totally true. Consequently (and with an american-made straw boater tip to Nina), I think rather than referring to this style as “made-in-the-usa/americana/workwear/classic”, we should borrow from the Japanese and just shorten it to amekaji. Here are some sample usages:

“Hey, have you been to the J. Crew Liquor Store?” “Yeah, man, that place is totally amekaji.”

“Have you noticed The Sartorialist has been posting an awful lot of amekaji photos lately?”.