Styling
I’m pairing the Polo Country denim shirt with Boncoura chinos. Wearing a denim shirt with other bottoms is interesting in its own right, and I’d like to cover that elsewhere when the chance comes.
Underneath is a Tom Ford undershirt — a plain white tee. On the feet, Visvim sneakers.
I’m showing two looks: front buttoned, and worn open and loose.
For reference, I’ve also included the Dior button-down shirt — a contemporary read on American Trad — and two Western shirts, which use the same denim base but land somewhere very different.
The Wrangler and Visvim Western shirts read as American casual rather than American Trad, even though the base fabric is shared.
The Dior pairing is a contemporary, urban take on American Trad. The New Air Vintage Western shirt has a paternal, more rugged feel. The Visvim Western shirt is a contemporary vintage style. The contrasts come out clearly.
Set against those, the Polo Country shirt with Boncoura chinos comes through as the pairing with the most ease — a universal combination, well suited to everyday wear.
1. Front Buttoned
Nothing dressed up about it, but the denim shirt’s character and the universality of the chinos hold the look together — casual without coming undone.
Worn as an outer layer over chinos, the denim shirt brings a measured youthfulness to the look.
It’s a shirt at base, but the weight of the denim lets it work worn open, more like an outer layer.
Other
The denim shirt and chinos here read as 1990s American Trad, worn easy. Other pairings, or a different denim shirt, send the look somewhere else.
Dior Button-Down Shirt
The button-down shirt and chinos from Jonathan Anderson’s first season as designer — both pieces drawn from American Trad. When Dior reaches for American Trad, the American largeness recedes and an urban tension comes through.
The boyish naivety that has been a Dior theme since Hedi Slimane is in there as well.
[ The Dior Button-Down piece ]
Wrangler Western Shirt
A Wrangler Western shirt reworked by New Air Vintage, a well-known used-clothing shop in Osaka. Same faded denim, but the mood shifts entirely. There’s something interesting in how a Wrangler Western shirt reads like the father in an American family sitcom.
[ The Wrangler Western Shirt piece ]
Visvim Western Shirt
The Visvim Western shirt carries a carefully studied vintage finish — a contemporary reading of vintage. The fade is restrained, so the indigo still holds, which changes the feel. The silhouette is contemporary and shaped — a more polished denim shirt.
[ The Visvim Western Shirt piece ]
Detail
Denim Shirt
- Polo Country, 1990s vintage
- Faded denim, around 8 oz
- Asymmetric breast pockets
- Metal buttons
Pairings
- Denim shirt: Polo Country
- Chinos: Boncoura
- White tee: Tom Ford undershirt
- Belt: Real McCoy’s
- Hat: Borsalino
- Sneakers: Visvim
- Watch: Richard Lange, A. Lange & Söhne
Reference pieces shown:
- Dior Button-Down Shirt
- Dior Chinos
- Wrangler Western Shirt (New Air Vintage)
- Visvim Western Shirt
- Visvim Slim-Fit Denim
In Closing
Picking up the Dior button-down and chinos this season, I’ve been enjoying American Trad-adjacent dressing again after a long stretch away from it. It was exactly the style I wore as a young man — the mix of familiarity and revival is a strange thing to sit with. Approaching sixty, I never imagined I’d be dressing the way I did in my twenties.
Dior sits at the top of the Paris collections, at the leading edge of mode, and is using American Trad as a design motif. The Dior pieces are something quite separate from how the style was worn at the time.
The Polo Country denim shirt I found used. Around the same time, I also picked up a deadstock Ralph Lauren madras shirt from the same period.
It had never occurred to me to ask, back when I was in my twenties wearing American Trad and American casual side by side, what the difference between them actually was.
Wearing the Ralph Lauren denim shirt and the Wrangler Western shirt and setting them against each other this time, I find myself returning to a clearer view: American Trad has its roots in clothing made for dressing, American casual in workwear.
The line isn’t drawn sharply. These are categories rooted in how people sort fashion, and the categories themselves rest on the kind of image their reference points produce — and on the way those references shift over time.
Universality
Putting on a 1990s denim shirt with chinos cut close to what we wore then, I notice a universality that keeps the look from reading as dated. That universality is what lets someone middle-aged like me wear it without looking like he’s dressing young — it lands as natural, unforced.
The pieces come out of the practical logic of American clothing history, so they’re easy to live with and easy to pair. As clothes from an older America, they carry the right amount of room and looseness, and they wear well.
Pulled on loosely, the look reads casual without coming undone, and the cut doesn’t constrain the body — which is what makes these pieces worth recommending to people in my generation and a little older.
That measured casual, the kind that doesn’t fall apart, may be what draws me to American Trad in the first place.
Shop
The Polo Country denim shirt covered here came from Post78.
Post78 is run by an owner whose tastes I share — he stocks refined pieces meant to be worn for a long time, and I buy from him often. Talking about clothes with him during a visit is part of the pleasure.