“Culture is no longer organized primarily by human editors, critics, teachers, or institutions—but by algorithms deciding relevance and visibility.” — Ted Striphas

Before I begin, take a moment and look around.

What do you see?

There is no single answer. Some of you may see an empty room filled with objects, like mine. Others may see people passing by if you’re sitting in a café somewhere in the city.

But let me change the question:

When you pick up your phone—or any connected device—what do you see?

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the reality we are now living in. Not merely physical time and space, but a constant loop—an endless stream of information, a steady bombardment of stimuli, and continuous exposure to the curated lives of individuals across the globe.

This is what we might call algorithmic culture—a landscape where your attention is continuously shaped by machines.

Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are not neutral windows into reality. They are systems engineered to decide what deserves your attention next.

Every swipe, pause, like, and second of watch time becomes data. The system studies your behavior and feeds you more of what keeps you engaged. So while it feels like casual scrolling, what is actually happening is far more precise: a machine is learning how to hold your attention.

Over time, that process begins to influence what you notice, what you care about, and eventually, what you become interested in.

If you step back, three forces quietly shape this entire experience:

• Constant exposure

• Comparison

• Casual consumption

First, there is constant exposure—the stream that never ends.

In older forms of media—books, television, radio, even newspapers—there were natural stopping points. You finished the page. The episode ended. The broadcast stopped.

Today, there is no such boundary.

You scroll, and something appears. Then something else. Then something else again. You never quite know what comes next—it might be dull, or it might be captivating. That uncertainty is precisely what keeps you engaged.

As a result, attention stops being something you deliberately direct and becomes something that reacts to whatever appears in front of you.

Then there is comparison, far more powerful than most people realize.

Humans have always compared themselves to others—it is part of how we understand our place in the social world. But historically, that comparison was limited: friends, family, colleagues.

Now, your mind is exposed to the most successful, attractive, wealthy, and productive individuals across the entire planet. And algorithms amplify these extremes because they capture attention.

On platforms like Instagram, what rises to the surface is rarely ordinary life—it is the highlight reel of human existence.

When you consume that repeatedly, your mind begins measuring your life against those exaggerated standards. This creates emotional responses—envy, admiration, ambition, insecurity—and those emotions keep you engaged.

Which, in turn, gives the system exactly what it needs to continue.

Finally, there is casual consumption.

Modern content requires almost no effort. No preparation. No patience. No commitment. You glance at something for a few seconds and move on.

Historically, developing a genuine interest required effort—reading deeply, practicing consistently, studying over time. Now, within minutes, you can encounter dozens of topics: psychology, business, philosophy, fitness.

This accessibility is, in some ways, progress.

But it produces a subtle side effect: people develop many shallow curiosities, but very few deep interests.

Put these three forces together—constant exposure, comparison, and casual consumption—and you create one of the most powerful feedback loops the human mind has ever encountered.

• The stream keeps your attention moving.

• Comparison injects emotion.

• Ease removes resistance.

Meanwhile, the algorithm observes every reaction and refines what it shows you next.

And here is the uncomfortable part:

Most people believe their interests are entirely their own—that they independently discovered what they like, what they care about, what they want to pursue.

But in a world shaped by algorithmic feeds, interests often emerge from repetition.

You see something again and again.

It becomes familiar.

Familiarity becomes curiosity.

Curiosity becomes identity.

Now, none of this means you have lost your freedom. You can still choose what to focus on. But it does mean that the environment surrounding your attention has fundamentally changed.

You are living inside a system designed to present stimuli, trigger comparison, and make engagement effortless.

So the real question is not whether algorithmic culture exists.

It clearly does.

The real question is much harder:

That is the question worth examining.

“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does.” — Michel Foucault

At first glance, that line may seem to contradict the humanist spirit we value at Renaissance Flâneur.

But it points to something difficult—and true.

From the very beginning of life, we learn by imitation. We observe, we repeat, we adjust. We learn what is right or wrong through feedback. We understand our abilities through the responses we receive from the world around us.

In other words, we are shaped before we are self-directed.

• A language you did not invent

• A culture you did not choose

• Values you did not design

• Information you did not discover independently

Even your ability to think is built upon inherited structures—a frame you did not choose.

Yet, there was once a quiet advantage built into this condition.

Before the internet, there was still space to think.

Not because people were more conscious—they were not. Most were just as passive, just as shaped by their environment as people are today.

But the environment itself made something possible:

depth existed by default.

Information was limited. Slower. And most importantly, incomplete.

There were gaps.

• Long stretches where nothing new arrived

• No feed, no constant updates, no endless scroll

• You encountered something—and then, there was silence

And in that silence, whether one intended it or not, the mind had to process. To reflect. To sit with what it had absorbed.

Now, try to imagine that same process under constant informational pressure.

It does not happen naturally anymore.

And yet, even as noise increased throughout the past century—with radio, television, and mass media—there were still individuals who preserved depth.

Figures like Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla did not think deeply because their era was quiet.

They thought deeply because they structured their lives to allow depth.

They created distance. They protected attention. They practiced, whether consciously or not, a form of resistance to distraction.

That distinction matters.

Because it means the problem is not exposure itself—but the absence of boundaries.

And so, while you cannot remove the influence of the external world—you never could—the responsibility shifts elsewhere.

Your mind is still yours.

Your discernment still matters.

The task is no longer to avoid influence, but to decide which influences are allowed to remain.

This is not easy. And it is no longer automatic.

In earlier centuries, focus and depth were often the byproducts of one’s environment. Today, the environment works against them.

Platforms are designed to fragment your attention—to keep you moving, reacting, consuming. If you want clarity, if you want depth, you cannot passively arrive there.

You have to choose it.

That means deciding what you pay attention to.

Designing how you live.

And, at times, moving against the direction of the crowd.

And yes—there is discomfort in that.

You are, in effect, stepping outside a system built to entertain and stimulate you without pause.

But this is not a call to austerity.

It is not a rejection of beauty, or sociability, or the pleasures of modern life.

Nor is it the hollow discipline promoted by hustle culture, where life is reduced to output and performance.

What this requires is something quieter, more deliberate, more refined:

• A way of living that preserves elegance while resisting excess.

• A form of discipline that does not strip life of its texture, but restores its depth.

In the classical sense, it is nothing less than an art de vivre—practiced not loudly, but precisely.

First, it begins with a shift in posture: From participant to observer.

Let me offer something personal.

Before I spent an extended period in Milan, I had a particular relationship with my hometown—Bangkok.

I rejected it.

From where I stood then, Bangkok felt chaotic, status-driven, lacking in cultural depth or refinement. It operated on a frequency that felt misaligned with my own—and I wanted distance from it.

But distance, as it turns out, changes perception.

In Milan, I became a stranger.

I could not fully understand the language. I did not share the same cultural instincts. Even in places like Porta Venezia, I moved through the city without the ease of belonging.

And that was a gift.

Because I was no longer automatically involved, I began to observe.

I noticed how people dressed—not just what they wore, but how it aligned with context.

I saw how architecture shaped the rhythm of daily life.

I paid attention to how luxury functioned—not as display, but as integration into the environment.

For the first time, I was not reacting to a place.

I was studying it.

And that shift—from reaction to observation—changed something fundamental.

When I returned to Bangkok, the city itself had not changed.

But my way of seeing had.

It was still fast. Still status-driven. Still saturated with comparison and noise.

But I no longer resisted it.

I understood it.

There was no frustration, no impulse to reject—only a clearer recognition:

Every city expresses a certain logic.

And the role of a thoughtful person is not to escape that logic entirely, but to ask:

Why does it function this way?

And how do I remain intact within it?

This, perhaps, is the first real step in reclaiming control within modernity.

Not entirely withdrawal.

But intentive observation.

From there, a second quality begins to emerge: The cultivation of taste.

If algorithms show you what captures mass attention, then stepping away from that cycle creates space for something else—something quieter, more deliberate.

You begin to develop preferences that are not dictated by immediacy.

And yes, this often takes form in certain images:

• A quiet morning in a café with a book.

• Clothing that reflects both context and personal restraint.

• An evening conversation that unfolds slowly, without urgency.

But these are not the substance.

They are only expressions.

What lies beneath is more demanding.

It is the discipline to choose what you consume, rather than passively receiving it.

The ability to sit with boredom, without immediately escaping it.

The willingness to think—slowly, deliberately—rather than constantly reacting.

In a world designed to fragment attention, this becomes a form of quiet resistance.

Not loud. Not performative.

But precise.

And while it may appear subtle from the outside, it is, in truth, a radical shift:

From being shaped by your environment—to beginning, carefully, to shape yourself within it.

“For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude…” — Charles Baudelaire

The flâneur, as Baudelaire described him, moved through a rapidly modernizing world without being consumed by it.

• He was not wandering for appearance.

• He was not performing distance.

• He was present—fully aware—yet internally composed.

• He saw everything: the crowd, the movement, the stimulation.

But he did not surrender to it.

That distinction matters more now than ever.

Because your environment today—through platforms like Instagram and TikTok—is not entirely different in nature, only in intensity.

Where the 19th-century city overwhelmed the senses, the modern feed does so continuously.

But the real difference is this:

Most people no longer observe.

They are absorbed.

They scroll, react, compare, and internalize—often without noticing it happening.

The flâneur represents the opposite stance.

Not withdrawal.

Not superiority.

But distance with awareness.

Or more precisely: Detachment without alienation.

Across cities—Milan, Rimini, Vienna, and Bangkok—I began to understand something quietly consistent: To live as a flâneur is not to escape modernity. It is to remain intact within it.

Once you stop resisting the modern world as if it were an error—and begin to see it as an environment—you can finally engage it with clarity.

You observe its patterns.

You understand its incentives.

And, most importantly, you stop reacting to it automatically.

That is where control begins.

So if there is one thing to leave you with, it is this:

But that does not remove the responsibility.

If anything, it makes it more necessary.

To live well—to approach anything resembling an art de vivre—requires a simple but demanding shift:

• To stop reacting to noise, and to begin thinking in your own voice again.

• To decide, deliberately, what is worth your attention.

• To shape, rather than inherit, your way of living.

That is the work.

And that is why the flâneur—the figure who neither withdraws from modernity nor dissolves into it—is not outdated, but essential.

In that piece, I spent time deeply crystallizing the true meaning of ‘craftsmanship’ and the value behind a sartorial piece — that ‘artistry and design’ are also a great part of what makes a garment ‘meaningful’. And that has led to the current issue you’re going to discover.

Suits — tailoring as a whole — are a form of clothing that has stayed with civilization for many centuries by now. Timelessness is the term usually brought up to describe the allure of this type of garment — that it can stand through the test of time, transcend borders across multiple cultures, and always have a place in a gentleman’s wardrobe.

Well, I couldn’t disagree with that.

From the experience of traveling and living in multiple cities — not many, but several significant capitals — I can guarantee that ‘sartorial garments’ always have a place everywhere (though you might need to learn the social cues and language of each city — which I once articulated about Milan in this editorial).

However, to say that it’s ‘permanent’ in form, that it is always stable in silhouette — is far from the truth. What gentlemen wore sartorially in the 19th century was unlike what appeared in the early 20th century; such as when the coat had been displaced by just an inner coat or the jacket. Or the early 20th century, when the ‘structure’ of a full suit or jacket carried a full drape — compare that to the mid-century, when it had been tapered, with shifts in details such as jacket lapel size and slimmer trousers.

Let alone the 70s, 80s, and 90s (the last decades of tailoring as a norm) — each with a distinct silhouette of its own — due to the emergence of numerous fashion designers who influenced even the so-called ‘permanent style’ that men had held onto for centuries.

So what I would like to convey is that ‘classic menswear’, in the format of tailoring garments, has always been changing — since its emergence as attire for the modern world during the 19th century, to its peak during the 20th, and… unfortunately, its decadence in the 21st — in which it remains a niche for a very small portion of discerning few.

The big question is:

Certainly, there is the natural human inclination toward casualness — in which, when there is no rule or societal norm expecting one to wear tailoring anymore, there is no reason to carry more burden on the body than necessary. Or the rise of mainstream styles such as streetwear, the minimal ‘Silicon Valley’ style as the new status symbol, or athleisure — influences that now dominate the real scene in mainstream media.

But if ‘clothes’ are a medium of non-verbal communication in their own right — always reflecting the identity, virtue, and beliefs of the individual — then what are those ‘qualities’ that modern mainstream styles actually contain? And what has ‘tailoring’ failed to achieve in comparison?

That — is what we’re going to investigate.

It has been three centuries since the birth of ‘modern menswear’ that we see men wearing on the street today. It all started with the iconic dandy — George Bryan “Beau” Brummell. An aspiring member of the middle class from London, he shifted the whole ‘approach’ of putting clothes onto the body — beginning with the upper class, and then gradually influencing the middle one.

By adhering to ‘simplicity’ rather than ‘extravagance’, Beau Brummell created the blueprint for classic menswear we are familiar with today — the idea of wearing an outer layer with matching trousers, an inner shirt, and decorative neckwear. The ‘gentleman’s attire’ seen throughout the 20th century was, in many ways, the by-product of his ‘invention’.

Moreover, the idea of the ‘gentleman’ — a term once reserved for a specific bloodline and obtained only by birth — became democratized for the aspiring middle class. It transformed into a set of virtues: a sense of chivalry and character that society came to admire. That is why, during the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s–50s, the leading men of that era almost always embodied their own version of the ‘gentleman’ in their characters. Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, David Niven, Gregory Peck… and many others. Their attire — well-cut suits with fuller silhouettes that enhanced their masculine frame, side-parted hairstyles, and polished leather footwear — became visual symbols reflecting their character (or at least the character the industry wanted audiences to look up to).

The thing is, as society progressed, its landscape of norms, paradigms, and values began to shift — challenged by new generations along the way.

In the early to mid-20th century, Western society still carried strong remnants of Victorian-era norms. Men commonly wore suits in public, speech and behavior were restrained, and social life followed clear rules of etiquette. Hollywood films such as North by Northwest projected the ideal of the composed, disciplined gentleman — someone elegant, emotionally controlled, and socially polished. Even the less polished continental cinema of the 1960s still portrayed that idea and style, though with more rawness and grit born from post-war anxiety and existential crisis.

However, the first major rupture arrived with the counterculture of the 1960s. Fueled partly by opposition to the Vietnam War and energized by the ideals of the Civil Rights Movement, young people rejected the cultural codes of their parents. This rejection was reflected in hippie culture, which openly dismissed suits, short hair, and rigid etiquette, replacing them with jeans, long hair, and a philosophy centered on personal freedom and authenticity.

Another break came in the 1990s with the rise of Silicon Valley and the technology sector. Tech culture deliberately rejected traditional corporate formality, embracing casual clothing and an anti-establishment aesthetic. Figures like Steve Jobs made minimalist casual attire — such as the now-famous black turtleneck and jeans — acceptable even at the highest levels of business leadership. For the first time, elite status was no longer signaled by polished presentation but by indifference to it. Wealth and influence no longer required looking refined; intellectual ability and innovation became the new markers of status.

The final stage arrived with the internet and social media in the 2000s and 2010s. Platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok rewarded immediacy, emotional openness, and casual expression. Public figures began interacting with audiences in ways that would have been unthinkably informal in earlier decades. (As seen in how Hollywood icons of the New Millennium present themselves, compared to those of the Golden Age.)

So, one could say that in the mid-century world, the ideal virtue was to behave with composure and refinement regardless of personal feelings. By contrast, modern culture prizes self-expression and relatability — even when they come at the expense of formality or restraint.

Thus, the disappearance of the ‘suit’ as a daily fundamental garment becomes logically justified.

Again, clothes are never just clothes. They are symbols that broadcast alignment with a value system. When the values change, the symbol loses its signal.

The suit once worked because it communicated three things that society respected:

In the mid-20th century, institutions dominated life—corporations, governments, banks, and universities. A suit signaled membership within those systems. Someone dressed like Cary Grant represented competence, discipline, and trustworthiness. Society placed enormous value on appearing controlled and dignified.

Dressing formally showed that you understood social rules and respected them. We can think of it as conforming to a shared standard of adulthood.

But in the 2020s, the cultural ground beneath those meanings shifted.

Institutions lost prestige. Corporations, banks, governments, and media organizations have steadily lost public trust over the past few decades. When institutions stop commanding admiration, their uniforms stop carrying prestige. Wearing a suit can begin to feel like dressing as part of a system people distrust.

Moreover, the cultural value system has moved toward authenticity and individuality. Modern identity is expected to be personal and expressive. The suit does the opposite—it standardizes appearance. Everyone in a suit looks like they belong to the same tribe. For a culture obsessed with uniqueness, that can feel restrictive.

Another factor is that new power no longer requires suits. Technology culture reshaped professional aesthetics. Leaders like Steve Jobs made simple, repetitive clothing—jeans and a black turtleneck—into a symbol of intellectual focus rather than corporate conformity. If the richest and most innovative people in the world do not wear suits, the aspirational signal weakens.

A final factor is that the internet shifted status toward creativity and visibility rather than formality. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram reward distinctive aesthetics and personality. A suit, in its traditional sense, is designed to suppress individuality rather than amplify it, so it performs poorly in an attention-driven culture.

The suit didn’t fail aesthetically—it failed symbolically.

It communicates alignment with hierarchy, discipline, and institutional authority. The dominant culture of the 2020s instead values flexibility, individuality, and personal branding.

The deeper irony is that the suit still works perfectly well in environments where hierarchy and power remain central—high finance, diplomacy, and certain cities (such as Milan). It hasn’t vanished; it has simply retreated into the places where the old values still operate. But those are now among the only places where ‘classic menswear’ staples—such as a jacket and trousers in the same fabric—retain their natural context.

In daily life, the suit is rarely recognized as a fundamental garment, and is instead reserved for specific functions. Which means tailoring garments today—suits included—must transcend the idea of the ‘old-world perception’: formality, rigidity, strictness. Not to say that these virtues of a bygone era are not admirable—but for tailoring to survive and be carried into the new era, the form must adapt.

Attempts can already be seen—with evident success—through new-generation sartorial brands such as The Anthology, Rubato, and Saman Amel. Still, these remain names largely familiar only within the circle of classic menswear enthusiasts.

For the idea of tailoring to break through and survive among people of the 2020s and beyond, it must lean toward the idea of being fashionable—no matter how fleeting, shallow, or contradictory that term may sound against the very idea of tailoring in the first place.

“Style is very different from fashion. Once you find something that works for you, that becomes your uniform.” - Tom Ford

Recently, I’ve become obsessed with Mr. Tom Ford — not because I own a whole collection of his fragrances or a sartorial garment from his label — but because of the way he was able to retain tailoring as the core element of his menswear, from his Gucci days to his own brand before he retired. When you think of Tom Ford, the image that comes to mind is always that of a well-groomed man in a black suit, wide peak lapels, and strong shoulders. Whether paired with a crisp white poplin shirt or even a western denim shirt — it’s always that look.

Now, what makes it interesting is this: Tom Ford managed to make tailoring feel relevant — even within the high-fashion world of the 21st century. This came from his idea of transforming the suit from a symbol of corporate conformity into one of power, sensuality, and cinematic glamour.

At a time when fashion was drifting toward casualness in the late 1990s, he reintroduced sharply sculpted silhouettes — broad shoulders, strong peak lapels, and a pronounced waist — combined with luxurious fabrics and a decadent, jet-set aesthetic that evoked classic Hollywood masculinity. By placing impeccably crafted tailoring back at the center of runway fashion, celebrity culture, and iconic imagery (from Gucci in the 1990s to James Bond in the 2010s), the man reframed the suit not as a relic of business dress but as an aspirational expression of confidence, seduction, and modern luxury.

And that reframing is the core essence of keeping tailoring alive in the future.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to look at these brands:

Husbands: A tailoring house that channels the sensual, hedonistic elegance of 1970s Paris — sharp shoulders, flared trousers, and confident silhouettes — reframing tailoring as expressive and charismatic menswear, wrapped in the cinematic atmosphere of 1970s pop culture and its existential tension.

Auralee: A vision from designer Ryota Iwai, who approaches tailoring through Japanese material innovation and softness, creating relaxed tailoring in extraordinary fabrics that feel effortless and modern — making it wearable on a daily basis for the modern man without rigid rules.

Lemaire: A global maison that integrates tailoring into a quiet, intellectual wardrobe — favoring fluid construction, muted palettes, and garments designed for everyday movement. It blurs gender boundaries and turns the idea of sartorial flair into something fluid within garments that exist beyond rigid categories.

Retori: Even this very new-born atelier on Via della Spiga brings the idea of sartorial excellence into a fresh narrative — crafting contemporary art that can be worn. The atelier integrates sophistication for the wearer in a quiet, intellectual way — whether through fabric composition or subtly unconventional silhouettes.

These names demonstrate that tailoring survives not through nostalgia or rigid tradition, but by adapting silhouette, fabric, and attitude to the rhythms of modern life — allowing it to resonate far beyond the niche circle of sartorial enthusiasts.

And that — in my humble opinion — is the only way to restore justice to the tailoring scene itself and allow style to flourish again.

Style is the way of doing something. If you add ‘personal’ into the context, then it becomes your way of doing things — one that is unmistakably yours.

Ironically, the tailoring world has somewhat diluted the idea of style into a format — a set of universal rules within a niche that forces anyone who wants to adopt the sophistication of wearing garments such as jackets or leather footwear into a strict set of practices (ones that cannot be broken — or, if they are, the community is often willing to pass judgment).

• Black = reserved for evening formal wear

• Brown cannot be paired with black

• A double-breasted jacket must always be buttoned

…and many more rules that gradually turn the idea of sartorial dress into a uniform rather than a form of personal expression.

The thing is, the brands I mentioned earlier as examples of bringing tailoring into a new realm are precisely those attempting to return tailoring to the idea of personal style — something that can once again be enjoyed in one’s own interpretation. No rigid rules, no cardinal sins.

We are entering what could be called a post-tailoring period, where classic menswear transforms into silhouettes that align with modern values — whether connoisseurs like it or not. One that erases the rigid contexts once associated with wearing a jacket, and one that no longer automatically signals hierarchy or a specific social archetype.

Which means you can wear a black jacket with brown shoes, white jeans with a navy blazer, or integrate wide contemporary silhouettes with impeccable tailoring details — all without feeling out of touch with the era, the city, or the people around you.

My time in Milan taught me a great deal about the language of style across different cities. Not every metropolis carries the same voice of ‘elegance as normal’ that the capital of Lombardy possesses. With that in mind — and with the idea that tailoring today knows no borders — achieving true elegance in the new millennium is finally possible.

Because elegance, when you look at its definition through the words of figures like Armani, Tom Ford, or Ralph Lauren, always leans toward the idea of ease and impression without neediness — the ability to be remembered without shouting to be noticed.

And what could be easier than making your clothes attuned to the people around you, without sacrificing your own identity and character?

The real idea is to understand the culture of the place you live in and the people around you — while also understanding yourself at the deepest level. When you possess that awareness, you will know what you truly want in life. And if you remain honest with it every day, pursuing it as your anchor, you will have nothing to worry about and nothing to prove to anyone.

That is when ease naturally becomes yours. And when that ease combines with tailoring adapted to the language of the city and the era — elegance becomes inevitable.

Which, perhaps, is exactly what our current society needs most.

“When you bought a designer suit — you were buying ‘luxury as status’, not pure craftsmanship.”

That’s a quote I once read from one of the most famous menswear blogs a very long time ago, when I had fully adopted tailoring as part of my everyday wardrobe. In that early period, the idea stuck with me like a cardinal rule that must never be broken. Always look for full canvas. Always look for a high armhole. Always seek the signs of “hand-finished” work or “stitch density” detailed on the garment…

Now, those things matter less — probably less than the feeling the garment itself gives me.

The one thing I still deeply believe in is craftsmanship — that a garment must not be fabricated purely from the mindset of consumption and compromise. I still favor bespoke pieces from ateliers like Cifonelli, Rubinacci, or Anderson & Sheppard. Even RTW sartorial brands that stand as the pinnacle of tailoring, like Cesare Attolini…

However, the other thing I now consider — and add to the equation — is artistic design injected into the garment. Something that influences the silhouette and the emotion of the wearer in the way that the designer as an individual has envisioned.

This can be seen in this editorial piece — in my love for a black jacket from Prada from the early 2000s.

On paper, it rejects almost everything that should make a jacket great: black, half-canvassed, low armholes, fine worsted fabric worn as an odd jacket rather than part of a full suit.

But all of that was intentional.

They are the byproduct of how Miuccia Prada envisioned a man — how he should look and feel. A man who knows how to navigate elite social spaces with emotional detachment, wearing tailoring that reflects discipline, austerity, and quiet authority. Someone associated with 1960s European modernism.

And that narrative is tied to an identity — or fantasy — I would love to step into. Even though, on the traditional sartorial “checklist,” it is far from the best garment I own. (If you wonder why that’s the case, this editorial will clarify everything.)

At first, I believed the appreciation mainly came from the fact that I acquired these vintage pieces from 90s–2000s designer labels like Prada, Giorgio Armani, and Gucci (pre-Tom Ford era) for less than $30.

And I thought I would never buy a piece where artistry and silhouette led the design more than craftsmanship — at least not at full retail price.

Again, I was wrong.

Because the main acquisition on my wardrobe list this year will be a suit from Husbands — now widely recognized in both the classic menswear world and the fashion-forward scene.

What impressed me is that many sartorial connoisseurs — people who obsess over terminology and hail craftsmanship as the ultimate virtue — have completely surrendered to the alluring sexual tension and cinematic aesthetic of Husbands. They became customers of the atelier, even though what they receive is a machine-finished suit for $2,500.

Now, here comes the interesting part…

When you learn to look at garments through this lens — one that doesn’t entirely reject the quality and substance of making, while also allowing artistic design into the equation — you begin to see clothes as a form of dream, life, and art.

Except this form of art can actually be equipped into the physical realm — worn on your body, every single day.

And that… is what makes life so much more interesting to live.

Because it makes you understand the strange creature called human a little more.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to bring in the story of a man — Ralph Lipshitz, or the one you’re more familiar with as Ralph Lauren.

Even people who aren’t particularly into clothes, fashion, or personal style have likely heard his name — and perhaps even own a polo shirt with his iconic pony logo on it.

What makes him interesting is that, from a very young age, clothes were always a bridge to fantasy — to a life he never had the chance to live. When you are born in the Bronx, while surrounding yourself with media like Golden Age Hollywood films and occasional glimpses of the finer things in life — things that are just within eyesight, yet impossibly far to grasp — the easiest way to experience those fantasies is simply to dress like the people who live them.

And since then, the Preppy / Ivy League look, the WASP culture of the Hamptons, and the mythology of the American frontier have all become characters within his universe. These worlds were gradually expanded into the collective imagination of people globally — all of them condensed into the small pony logo placed on a piqué polo shirt, an Oxford button-down, or the crest on a club blazer.

Now, one critique that classic menswear purists often raise is this:

A garment that carries a high price purely because of a logo is not worth the money.

And I still agree with that — mostly.

However, I would add one important condition: a high price due to a logo that contains no designed substance.

Because even though Ralph Lauren — including its Polo Ralph Lauren line — is now produced at a lower standard and at a far larger scale than during its prime years in the 1980s, the design language itself has remained remarkably consistent.

It is still classic menswear — interpreted through Ralph Lauren’s lens.

From the polo shirt to the double forward-pleated chinos, to the double-breasted blazer — of course, the silhouette shifts slightly with time and trend. But the core essence remains unchanged: garments designed to feel timeless.

As for the pony logo itself — it is perhaps the simplest symbol of his entire world.

His childhood fantasy.

His dream of a life far beyond everyday mundanity.

It became the mechanism through which he scaled that imagination to the masses.

You might be drawn to that world — or you might not.

But one thing is undeniable: it proves that clothes, symbols, and design can transcend their physical function and become a gateway to something larger.

That said, the logo is not the only format I want to talk about — in fact, it is merely the most obvious and empirical one.

The true meaning, the real sophistication, lies in the designer themselves.

And unfortunately for Ralph Lauren — no matter how much I adore the world he created and the campaigns that present it — when it comes to artistry and design within the garments themselves, they rarely push beyond the established norm while still maintaining elegance.

Because at the end of the day, most of his pieces are still classic garments, simply elevated with the emotional appeal of how high society might wear them.

My true realization that the sartorial world could exist outside its traditional scope came through American media — though the man designing the clothes was from the European continent.

Richard Gere in American Gigolo, wearing a variety of ensembles by Giorgio Armani, completely blew my mind and shifted my worldview of what tailoring could be.

Soft.

Relaxed.

Effortless.

For both for the man wearing it and for the people around him.

When the film introduces his character, with Call Me by Blondie playing in the background, we see him driving a Mercedes‑Benz SL R107 through Los Angeles. He moves through the city in jackets and trousers that feel miles away from the rigidity of traditional tailoring.

• The fabrics flow with every movement.

• The structure is soft — but never careless.

• A louche silhouette that perfectly suits the character.

Across nearly two hours of the film, we are given something close to a masterclass in styling: tone-on-tone dressing, seamless movement between casual and formal attire, and a wardrobe entirely shaped by Armani’s vision.

And surprisingly, years later, I had the chance to see that vision in the flesh.

It was pure luck that I decided to visit the Pinacoteca di Brera during the exhibition Giorgio Armani: Milano, per amore.

(The exhibition runs until May 3rd, 2026 — in case you want to experience it with your own eyes.)

The concept of the exhibition is simple but powerful: iconic designs from Armani’s career — from the 1980s through his later collections — placed alongside the museum’s historic masterpieces.

And I must confess something slightly heretical.

It captivated me more than the Caravaggios and other Renaissance masters surrounding them.

I walked through the exhibition again and again, studying each ensemble — both menswear and womenswear — from every possible angle. Observing the fabric choices, the silhouettes, the intentions behind the designs from different eras.

The piece I spent the most time with — the one I photographed repeatedly and felt almost tempted to touch — was a suede, single-breasted unconstructed jacket.

The very one worn by Richard Gere during the quiet disclosure scene after a rough day of work with his business associate in American Gigolo.

After hours of absorbing Armani’s artistry, a question slowly emerged in my mind:

What is craftsmanship, actually?

Is it purely the use of natural materials and traditional garment construction?

Or can craftsmanship also be achieved through the discipline of vision — through the act of creating garments that remain absolutely faithful to that vision?

Because many of Armani’s pieces, even from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, were not made exclusively from pure wool or other traditionally “noble” materials. Many contained blends — viscose, rayon, or other fibers combined with wool, linen, or silk.

But the purpose was never simply to reduce production cost or increase margins.

The goal was to achieve a specific drape — that soft, sophisticated fluidity that defined Armani’s golden era during the 1980s and 1990s.

The result became something modern and iconic:

Portraits of men moving through the world with elegance, restraint, and quiet sensuality.

All of it created from the singular vision of Armani’s mind.

Ladies and gentlemen, the idea of treating clothes as a form of expression — whether of personal aspiration or individual artistry — becomes clearer the deeper you look.

Not only among fashion-forward designer labels, but even within the world-famous ateliers of the sartorial tradition itself.

Behind the impeccable craftsmanship that many people believe they are buying, there is often something else at work. Craft is certainly present — essential, even — but perhaps it is not the only reason, and arguably not the main reason, people are drawn to these houses.

• Liverano & Liverano sells a sculptural silhouette that gives the wearer access to the lineage of Florentine tradition.

• Rubinacci sells the spirit of La Dolce Vita — the nonchalant elegance of Italian life expressed through their original Neapolitan style. A tailoring that is light not only in structure, but in the lifestyle it represents.

• Cifonelli sells the pinnacle of Parisian high life, reflected through the grandeur of the Marbeuf pagoda shoulder, the suppressed waist, and the bold lapel line.

They are all, in their own way, narrative-driven.

And that realization confirms something important:

The things that cover our bodies are far more than simple regulators of temperature.

The narrative behind clothes reflects the ideas, desires, dreams, and visions of their creators. And when you wear them — whether consciously or not — those narratives begin to integrate with your own identity.

In that sense, dressing well is not simply about technical perfection. It is about alignment.

An awareness of who you want to be, and the ability to recognize garments that reflect that identity — both through their craftsmanship and through their design language — while also understanding the context in which you move through the world.

Because elegance is never isolated from circumstance.

It adapts to the city you live in, the people around you, the rooms you enter, and the stories you wish to inhabit.

When those elements come together — craft, design, narrative, and self-awareness — clothing becomes something far greater than fabric and construction.

It becomes a medium through which a person expresses their place in the world.

And perhaps that is the true purpose of tailoring:

Not simply to make a man look well-dressed…

but to help him become the person he imagines himself to be.

“Substantial?”

“Yes, yes — that’s the word.”

That’s a little part of a conversation I had with my Italian friend after we had a glass of Negroni at the Four Seasons Milano… and I must say, it’s more than just a talk on the taste of individual tribe as a sartorial connoisseur…

Ladies and gentlemen, if you have ever walked along Via Montenapoleone — or if you haven’t had the chance, I want you to picture that district of your current capital that’s full of brands from LVMH and Kering — also known as “global luxury brands” — which have multiple branches and recognition all across the world. Compared to Via Della Spiga — which carries a much more “craftsman artisanal” character, while still luxury at the price point; it’s full of niche brands that emerged from a singular creative vision. Or Via Gesù — which is basically… similar to the equivalent of Savile Row in London; a street where sartorial heritage like Brioni, Rubinacci, Kiton, Cesare Attolini, Barba Napoli, Tincati and many others have been “living” on the street.

When you look into the idea of luxury — it can be interpreted in many paradigms, so one would say it’s the idea of spending a huge amount of monetary capital on an entity that goes beyond necessary — from expensive clothes, first-class tickets, exotic cars, five-star hotels… basically, the act of indulging in excessiveness.

But is that really the definition of luxury?

Because I want you to imagine… these two things that have the same price, same functional purpose — but somewhat different — a t-shirt.

One is from brands within LVMH — either the logo of “CD,” “LV,” or “Givenchy” screened on an “OK” material such as combed Supima cotton.

The other, let’s say from Gran Sasso of Italy, made by the highest industrial-standard knit procedure, with Suvin cotton (and the brand coined this term half a century ago) — a crossbreed of Sujata and Saint Vincent 35 — the combination of the two finest cottons from Indian and Sea Island origins — the best in its class…

Both cost around $200 (though I take that the one from LVMH might be higher) — but in terms of the “meaning behind the price” — the counterargument from the fashion-forward house would be, “but the high price is due to creative design and vision”… but tell me, is the idea of putting a logo on an “OK” t-shirt considered as that creative?

Compared to the other side — it’s full of real heritage, either from the manufacturer, the material, and the “true high quality” that directly justifies the price of why a single t-shirt could cost $200.

While I once wrote on the meaning of clothes that goes beyond rationale in this editorial — that clothes can play a pivotal role in giving identity and meaning to the wearer — and when it comes to that part, emotional attachment is much more at play in deciding whether one will buy it or not, and who he or she will become after getting it and wearing it.

The LVMH group mastered this. And that’s why if you travel to Asia — especially in capitals like Bangkok or Shanghai — people there, especially the aspiring middle class, love wearing the logo to symbolize who they are, more than letting artistry of design and substance of material speak…

The way of presentation that is so — excuse the assertiveness — but very shallow in a sense… and in a way that so contradicts the noble ideology of self-awareness and elegance of oneself — through substance… one that I discovered through my style journey and my own definition of luxury itself.

Luxury comes from the Latin root “Luxus” = extravagance.

Once empirically used in ancient Rome in the term of luxuria to describe the act of excessiveness — wasteful consumption. For traditionalists like government senators and philosophers of the era, luxuria meant the corruption of Roman virtue through excess. Causing soft living, foreign imports, elaborate banquets, ornate clothing — everything that weakened discipline, masculinity, and civic duty; a symptom of decline brought by imperial success, one might say. Yet as you may guess, for emperors like the notorious Nero, luxury was a performance of power: golden palaces, theatrical feasts, artistic extravagance — excess as domination.

Then, the term evolved into the doctrine of Christianity later during the Middle Ages.

When Christianity spread through the ancient Roman world, it inherited the language. Latin became the Church’s intellectual vehicle, and words like luxuria were already loaded with moral suspicion. It turned out to mean disordered desire — especially associated with sexual desire — opposing divine order. And then it became formalized within the schema of the Seven Deadly Sins under Pope Gregory I.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, if the idea of luxury is heavily associated with an “undesirable” character a human can embody — why do many of us, or perhaps all of us, lean toward it in some way or another?

The answer always goes back to human nature — the very biological thing that made us human.

In the end, our brains evolved in scarcity, wired to pursue surplus… more food, more comfort, more status. Since the Stone Age (a part of our brain that hasn’t changed), the idea of having “more” increased survival and power.

But now, it has changed form into:

• Penthouse instead of cave.

• Private jet instead of faster horse.

• Designer piece instead of exotic animal skins.

We are wired to seek surplus because surplus once meant survival and reproductive advantage.

And luxury is simply surplus amplified into signal: it advertises security, dominance, and distinction. Yet societies label it morally suspect because unchecked appetite destabilizes order, widens inequality, and erodes discipline. So the tension is structural: “biology pushes us toward accumulation and heightened pleasure, while religion and philosophy attempt to regulate that drive for the sake of stability and meaning.”

Basically, luxury is evolution’s reward system colliding with civilization’s need for stability.

And that collision will never disappear.

However, what I want to propose is another perspective — to see luxury as it is. Though it is the contradictory force between our raw, biologically based desire and the morality of the higher intellectual part of us, there is a way to approach it while keeping integrity within.

Humans naturally associate luxury with status and amplification, but most people pursue it reflexively — buying symbols that tell them who to be rather than choosing objects that genuinely reflect their values.

When a purchase becomes a two-way dialogue between object and self, rather than passive absorption of a brand’s marketing power alone, luxury stops being costume and becomes coherence. The rarest form of luxury, then, is not the logo or even the finest cashmere — it is the independence to choose based on substance instead of insecurity.

Having spent years observing how founder-led houses negotiate this tension between substance and signal, one thing becomes clear: most brands don’t lack craftsmanship — they lack articulation.

Now, the dilemma is that every great brand you’ve familair with (even though you’re not into fashion that much) seem to know too well how to “manipulate” or bend perception toward the aspirational class — on who they are going to become when you wear our brand — without giving them a real “reason” behind it. An empirical case is certainly the LVMH of the world. Yet it also includes brands that position themselves as “quiet luxury.”

This term has spread widely into a global trend in the past years — aligned with the virality of the Old Money Aesthetic on TikTok and YouTube (though in 2026, I do believe it will decrease in magnitude and relevance).

The idea is simple: use subtle palettes, minimal design, sometimes leaning toward classic garments — then present them on a WASP model, an educated high-society appearance, countryside residence in the background, classic Mercedes SL, leisure lifestyle that few can ever experience — and then “tag” the collection, or even the brand, as “quiet luxury”… “a luxury without demanding to shout.”

The thing is, they also turned the idea of “quiet” into another marketing buzzword.

Ladies and gentlemen, if we use the idea of Authentic Luxury as the baseline:

“The precision in understanding the material, the craftsmanship, the heritage — and knowing your own motives.”

Then the quiet luxury brands, most of the time, also fail to bring their customers into the substance behind why their brand is quiet.

Take Loro Piana for example.

Before the acquisition by LVMH, the brand was well known as a top-tier Italian fabric manufacturer — famous for its cashmere and sophisticated blending of materials. When the Arnault family took over the brand and turned it into a viral name associated with “quiet luxury,” tell me — how many people actually see Loro Piana as it is? As the name that symbolizes one of the most delicate and exceptional crafts?

Now, it has turned into just a brand you can use to equip the idea of “wearing quiet luxury” — but without a gateway to understand why it is quiet in the first place.

And so do these cases happen to plenty of brands — either those that truly contain heritage, or even the copycats on Instagram that replicate the design of cable knits or quarter-zip sweaters, but instead of using high-quality cotton or merino wool, reduce them to mere polyester (yes — the case of fast fashion brands).

With all these reasons — the fallacy of both luxury and fashion brands that fail to captivate the higher meaning behind the term — this is why sartorial elegance, the idea of embracing classic menswear, remains so timeless, deep, and meaningful to the wearer. Basically, it is closer to the term “quiet luxury” than what most brands represent themselves to be.

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Based on the Italian term sarto — which means tailor. This niche word has become associated with a specific type of style, which you can see on Google when you search the word; one that cannot be far from a tailored jacket with lapels, trousers that have been well calculated to shape the leg structure, and shoes made of leather. And there’s a reason for it.

Either by the fact that these garments represent the proven timelessness that has stood the test of time across centuries, or the image associated with noble titles like gentleman — they always have a place in a man’s wardrobe in his lifetime. Even though plenty of these pieces are costly to obtain.

• $1,250 for a jacket made of decent Italian fabric from Biella.

• $650 for leather shoes made of fine French calfskin with century know-how from Northampton.

For most sartorial enthusiasts, each garment requires commitment — and that usually comes with thought behind the purchase.

One needs to know the symbolic meaning of a jacket, understand the construction and quality inspection of footwear, recognize the importance of material; all of which lead to fluency and self-awareness in one’s personal style. The good news is — this philosophical application is not strictly limited to the Classic Menswear Cult.

For instance, those names associated with the LVMH group — Dior, Givenchy — if a man or woman truly studied the heritage of each maison, knowing the individual behind the logo — Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy — then going deep into their design philosophy: either the divine feminine beauty of “The New Look” by Dior that dominated the whole decade of the ’50s, or the simple elegance of Givenchy that lets the wearer’s physique shine through the garment, not the other way around.

Then even if a lady acquired a blouse by Dior that carries the strong shoulder silhouette paying homage to the New Look in 1947, or a vintage Givenchy black dress made of cotton or silk that is reminiscent of the same elegance Audrey Hepburn wore in the 1960s — all with full awareness of her own taste — then even if it’s from a brand within LVMH, this is the “true” luxury experience: the independent choice made by the substance of the object, synthesized with self-awareness.

Luxury, when looked at carefully, is another form directly intertwined with human nature by default — It is the word that plays with inner desire; but those who can control it, be aware of it, then embrace and cultivate that sense of joy of living — it is not evil.

In today’s landscape of a consumption-based society, there are plenty of channels that do their work to ingrain the perceptive seed in your mind, captivate your attention, and in the end, wish that you will become one of their customers. It’s how capitalism works — which is not necessarily bad. What makes it look bad is when the “allure of luxury” stays at the surface level — the idea of obtaining status for superiority without knowing how much it will cost, monetarily and spiritually.

Authentic luxury — either in the format of clothing, enriched experience, or otherwise — is a different approach to this biological force of desire, by integrating intellect through self-awareness, by placing substantial thought behind action.

So to say that luxury is not inherently corrupting. Nor inherently noble. It is diagnostic.

It exposes whether desire is directed by awareness or by appetite.

And that truth applies far beyond clothing.

“The only great director we’ve got right now is Paolo Sorrentino…or perhaps Luca Guadagnino.”

That’s the line that my Italian friend in Milan told me about their current cinema scene.

Amusing, for sure, when I first heard it — since before I arrived in Milan, the idea of Italian cinema is one that’s full of passion, complexity, artistry, and very deeply “human” — one that shows both the good, bad, and ugly sides of humanity. Names like Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti, De Sica of the bygone era, or even modern-day figures like Sorrentino, made me believe that in this land, cinema is still cinema, and that taste as a whole still favors “depth” in film.

But when my Italian friend told me that the top five grossing films in the national box office — half of them — are made and starred by Checco Zalone, a name I wasn’t familiar with until I discovered that he’s essentially a national comedy celebrity in Italy, I then realized that even here, the culture the masses consume is far from Marcello Mastroianni having an existential crisis in Rome.

After that exposure to the harsh truth, I wondered:

“How has the film industry, from the West to the East, evolved into the current situation?”

While I once articulated the big picture of “cinema” in this editorial piece — with a slight tap into the behavior of modern audiences — I do believe there’s much more to the decadence of attention span and expectations in consumption, and to the actual patterns that can be seen across cultures.

Considering music: it has gone through thousands of years of evolution alongside human civilization. First beginning as simple rhythms and vocal sounds used for ritual and social bonding, it later became more structured and tied to religion, culture, and education during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, when written notation, harmony, and complex compositions developed, turning music into a refined art form.

Then the names of Amadeus Wolfgang Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven came in and introduced what modern society considers “classical music.” This genre nowadays has become somewhat “high culture” to the masses, with its complex structures and long-form compositions that require training to perform and understand (which we have to admit, the house-trap style or hip-hop/EDM of modern Spotify is much easier for the human ear to “groove” with).

Thus, over time, this music became closely tied to elite institutions — royal courts, churches, conservatories, universities, and concert halls. Combined with the fact that learning, performing, and accessing this music demanded education, money, and leisure, it gradually became associated with status and intellect, rather than everyday life.

This framed “classical” as high culture: serious…prestigious…and symbolic of refinement.

The same thing happened to theater, which once belonged to public festivals and popular entertainment, but later became refined, formalized, and preserved for educated audiences in places like Teatro alla Scala; or literature, where stories that were originally oral or widely read became “classic literature” once universities and scholars canonized certain authors, framing their work as intellectually superior and worthy of study rather than casual enjoyment.

Ladies and gentlemen, what is currently happening to cinema is about to be the same as those cultures of the bygone era — especially the kind that is still made through the lens of “auteurs.”

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An auteur is a director whose films feel authored, not manufactured; they reflect a distinct, personal creative vision, to the point where the director is considered the primary author of the film — even though filmmaking is collaborative. First properly coined by Cahiers du Cinéma, a French film magazine in the 1950s, the term argued that some directors leave such consistent fingerprints on their work that you can recognize their films the way you recognize a novelist’s flair or a painter’s style. All of this can take the form of recurring ideas across their films, or a signature presentation style through storytelling and cinematography.

Now, I would like you to look at these names…

• Quentin Tarantino

• Wes Anderson

• Denis Villeneuve

• Christopher Nolan

These names are considered directors (usually also writers in many of their films) who are arguably at the forefront of auteur cinema — those who balance current demands of taste in consumption with a “distinct” personal view directly injected into the films they direct (especially Nolan, who somewhat perfectly walks the line between blockbuster and auteur flair with grace).

But let’s look at other names…

• Apichatpong Weerasethakul

• Ryusuke Hamaguchi

• Jim Jarmusch

• (and many from Cannes, Venice, or Berlin that only cause confused faces when people hearing their names)

These auteurs are getting less and less “spotlight” from the cinema industry sphere — and the consequence is the decadence of films that do more than deliver instant gratification. While it’s not a law or a wrongdoing for a man or a woman to consume cinema for pure joy and let go of thinking or thought, it reflects a shift in the role of film itself. The clearest analogy is the distance between Paolo Sorrentino’s films — which made a name on an international level, like La Grande Bellezza — and the far greater domestic recognition received by comedies made by Zalone. Nothing wrong in that sense, but it’s a sign that’s not so bright for the future of cinema.

If we travel back to the last century, the industry — even in Hollywood (whether during the Golden Age or New Hollywood) — was full of films made with vision, purpose, and depth.

Behind recognizable genres, artistry was always hiding. And with New Wave cinema, or Italian cinema in the 60s — oh…ladies and gentlemen — it revolutionized this medium…and became the pure embodiment of auteur theory.

In France, filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut broke away from polished studio filmmaking and treated film like a living language. Handheld cameras, jump cuts (which were anomalies at the time), natural light, direct sound, ambiguous endings.

In Italy, figures such as Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini pushed cinema inward. Instead of plot-driven spectacle, films explored alienation, memory, desire, boredom — the inner life of modern people. Stories slowed down. Silence mattered. Meaning came from mood, framing, and absence as much as from action.

And many more — Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, etc. — made films a medium for telling their own thoughts and stories, which people, though not on a mass scale, appreciated and were willing to “sit down” with.

However, auteur cinema is now slowly moving into the same cultural lane as classical music, fine art, and literary fiction. Film schools teach it, festivals curate it, critics defend it, and museums archive it. Once that happens, the audience narrows — not because the films get worse, but because they demand time, literacy, and patience in a culture optimized for speed.

Today’s mass cinema is driven by franchises, algorithms, and spectacle — instantly legible, globally marketable, low-risk…guaranteed return on investment (which must be judged immediately, since the end goal of film is now to end up on streaming — often very soon after its premiere). Auteur films, meanwhile, circulate through festivals, retrospectives, boutique theaters, and streaming “prestige” sections. They’re framed less as entertainment and more as art to be interpreted. That framing alone turns them into “high culture” — something most people immediately scroll past or walk away from when seeing the poster or teaser.

The root of the current issue also lies in the nature of modern filmmaking and how it has shifted in the past decade. Big studios no longer need directors as selling points; they need IP. Franchises, sequels, and cinematic universes are safer bets than individual vision. This leads to the collapse of the mid-budget film space — where auteur cinema used to live, with $10–40M films that could take risks but still reach theaters widely. Now, that tier has mostly vanished. What’s left is either giant blockbusters or small prestige films that circulate through festivals, critics, and niche streaming sections — basically pre-filtered for cinephiles.

Considering the nature of how modern audiences consume culture now, algorithms push what’s familiar, fast, and already popular. Auteur films, on the other hand, ask for attention, patience, and context — things modern platforms actively discard.

While auteurs aren’t gone (since Nolan, Villeneuve, and a few others in Hollywood still stand tall as the last grail), most of them are now hidden. Their films still exist, but the pathways that once carried them into mainstream culture — theaters, critics, shared media moments — are almost gone.

The twist?

This invisibility is exactly how high culture forms. When art stops competing for mass attention and instead survives through institutions, archives, festivals, and schools, it becomes prestigious — but distant…and somehow, still matters.

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls” — Pablo Picasso

While culture, in the form of cinema, is far from mandatory for physical survival, in terms of spirit and soul, it’s undeniably crucial. Humans are not driven merely by instinct or biology. What makes us human is our ability to construct symbolic realities — narratives, myths, values, dreams.

Cinema is one of the most potent tools we’ve ever created to encode and transmit this symbolic software. Through it, we see ourselves — reinterpreted, idealized, deconstructed. It is not optional if one truly cares about having a mind that does more than eat, breed, and die.

Take away meaning, and you don’t get civilized humans. Instead, you get hollow ones — numb, violent, compliant, or self-destructive. What I’m calling “soul” here is not a mystical entity — it’s the interior architecture of symbols and values. And cinema is one of its master builders.

Ladies and gentlemen, the thing is, no one really wants to live just to exist. We all, in some way, desire to live for something.

And the vision of that something?

Often comes to us flickering in the dark of a theater, or on a screen late at night.

From Kubrick to Kurosawa, cinema has always been a philosophical scalpel, peeling back the lies we live under. It makes us look, even when it hurts. It awakens reflection — and sometimes revolution.

Now, the heart of the matter: how do we actually see, feel, and enjoy auteur cinema — screens that serve as the integrity of a man or a woman willing to say what they really think, no matter how studios or production teams believe it won’t survive on a streaming platform?

The brutal truth is — most people want escape, not confrontation. But truth is not always pretty, and genuine art is not anesthesia — it’s a mirror, a scalpel, a torch. It doesn’t numb pain; it names it, reflects it, and sometimes even transcends it.

This is the main objection modern audiences usually raise when it comes to certain kinds of films.

Well, auteur cinema, when you look at it for what it is, is not stress. It’s confrontation with buried emotion. The grief one never processed. The questions one never asked. The beauty one sometimes forgot existed. It doesn’t offer escape like a blockbuster — but it surely offers resonance.

Humans don’t grow by watching what confirms their comfort zones. They grow by being moved, disturbed, reassembled.

• You watch La Dolce Vita and question the purpose of the “sweet life” within higher social echelons.

• You see Hiroshima mon Amour and wonder how far a scar from war can travel, down to the most fragmented, intimate level.

This is not “stress.” This is depth.

People avoid difficult art for the same reason they avoid silence: it reveals too much. The fear isn’t really about stress — it’s about being seen too clearly, about not having the emotional tools to process what surfaces.

To enjoy it is not to “have fun” in the traditional sense. It’s to feel met, challenged, and seen.

If I have to leave this editorial with a revelation that allows me to sit still in front of either my laptop screen or a niche cinema in town, it is this:

• Let go of passive pleasure

• Approach it as dialogue, not product

• Expect discomfort

• Don’t watch to escape life

• Let the film challenge you

The right film — seen with open eyes and a willing heart — can burn through the numbness and remind you that you’re still human.

In the end, keeping auteur cinema alive isn’t about saving “high culture.”

It’s about keeping cinema from forgetting that it can think, doubt, and speak in a human voice — not just entertain.

So if modern cinema ever becomes only what performs well, then auteur cinema will be the last screen where the medium still remembers why it exists at all.

The image I had, even before stepping into the heart of Lombardy, was the idea of a black overcoat, a navy suit, and footwear with a buckle. And I was right. That’s the visual of Milan’s sartorial scene.

• Dark monotone color palette

• Leather footwear with a buckle

• Cuffed trousers (no matter the silhouette or break length)

• Sunglasses even on a cloudy day

• Elegance as the expected standard

Here, everything I used to perceive as an extra mile suddenly turned into the ordinary language of how people dress on just another Wednesday. This made me wonder about a bigger question: “What makes Milan have this exact sartorial aspect that seems ingrained into the soul?”

Even in 2026, Milan is a city where tailoring has gone out of the mainstream norm and is worn mostly for specific occasions — yet when one chooses to embrace it and walk within the city centre, whether among tourists around the Duomo or in local districts like Corso Indipendenza, he won’t feel out of place.

The investigation probably starts best when we look at the root of the issue: “Who defined how we should dress?” Because one way or another, style and way of life — they’re always connected.

Since very ancient times, the purpose of clothes has been much more than merely to regulate body temperature. The shaman and his wolf skin, the Roman emperor and his grandeur attire, the aristocracy and their way of showing distinction in social class. Behind every garment, there has always been a symbol of meaning, reflecting the human side of life. In the case of Milan, I want you to look at a brief historical narrative of the city.

Back in the 15th and 16th centuries — the Renaissance period — fashion became a reflection of courtly power. Italian city-states like Florence, Venice, and Milan were epicenters of taste. What one wore was dictated by laws: legal restrictions on garments based on class and income. In other words, clothing was literally policed.

And who defined how people dressed then? The aristocracy — and their tailors.

These craftsmen were not mere artisans crafting for craft’s sake, but artists who understood social codes. They laid the groundwork for the modern tailor’s role: not just to fit a garment, but to sculpt identity.

By the 19th century, with the Industrial Revolution and the final unification of Italy in 1861, Milan became a symbol of modernity. Tailoring moved from the courts to the bourgeois class on the streets. Of course, with British influence giving the world the template of the modern suit — but Italians refined it, injecting softness, sprezzatura (a philosophical term coined by courtier Baldassare Castiglione), and flair into the garment.

Since then, Milan became central: a hub where business, industry, and subtle elegance converged. And unlike the more flamboyant Neapolitans or Roman exhibitionists, Milanese style evolved into a uniform of quiet confidence — navy suits, grey flannels, black overcoats. All signaling understatement, control, and purpose.

After WWII, Milan became the capital of Italian prêt-à-porter — ready-to-wear fashion. The city no longer just followed style; it set the tone and then produced it. From Giorgio Armani’s unstructured suits of the 1980s, which turned the Milanese businessman into a global archetype of power and cool, to Brioni (originating from Rome, but gaining prominence in Milan), which gave Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond his silhouette, to Zegna, which refined the textile narrative of the industry.

So even as designers and industrial magnates began shaping how the world dressed, in Milan, that sartorial essence remained constant. Tailoring here was never abandoned; it evolved without discarding its roots.

That said, in 2026, while tailoring is no longer a mainstream uniform for men, in Milan, it never needed to be. Because here, style is cultural muscle memory. The citizens have absorbed generations of proportion, restraint, and refinement. It isn’t about rules anymore, but rather a language — a shared dialect of dress.

With all this narrative, the way one dresses, we can assume, has always been defined by:

• The ruling class of the era (nobility, bourgeoisie, business elite)

• The local climate — both literal and cultural

• The craftsmen/designers who interpreted aspiration into cloth

• And most importantly, the city’s collective memory

That’s why in Milan, with its centuries-old heritage — even if only considered Italy’s modern “capital” from the mid-19th century — the language of style has always leaned toward discretion, craft, and elegance in detail, without the loudness of the individual.

Now the matter of interest is this: “Why can some cities simply not achieve the same sartorial fluency?”

As mentioned earlier, a city’s collective memory plays a huge role in dictating this — one accumulated over centuries through social norms and culture. With that in mind, I’d like you to consider these places:

Los Angeles

Hollywood. Glamour. Yet also a place of performance ingrained into every aspect of life — rooted in youth, physicality, celebrity, and creative nonchalance — where tailored garments suggest aspiration rather than legitimacy. The climate reinforces this psychology: an exterior, sun-drenched city that favors immediacy over layering, comfort over structure. Sartorial expression exists as costume, red-carpet armor, or niche connoisseurship, but never as a civic language. And without a social moment where a man must learn how tailoring works, fluency cannot form.

Tokyo

While the city absolutely possesses extraordinary technical mastery of tailoring, it remains constrained by its position as a student rather than an author of the tradition — seen through the many Japanese tailors who flew to Italy in the late 20th century, whether to Florence or Naples. The suit entered Japan as a tool of modernization, not as an organic expression of a native bourgeois elite, which made tailoring an act of reverence, precision, and study. Japanese sartorial excellence is often archival and referential — British, Italian, Ivy — executed with almost moral seriousness.

What is missing is unconscious authority. In Milan, tailoring is worn because it is normal; in Tokyo, because it is correct. That subtle difference keeps tailoring elevated, admired, and immaculate — but never fully absorbed into everyday social instinct.

Bangkok

Now comes a tropical paradise. Yes, the weather is unforgiving — but there’s a deeper reason: interrupted continuity and the absence of a long-standing civilian tailoring culture. Historically, power in Thailand expressed itself through royal, military, and traditional dress rather than Western tailoring, which arrived later as bureaucratic necessity and a global business uniform. Combined with a climate that presents a genuine physical objection to daily tailoring, its ability to become habitual was limited. Meanwhile, the city’s modern identity is fast, forward-facing, and visually exuberant rather than cumulative and ritualistic.

That’s why fashion truly thrives in Bangkok — including luxury — but tailoring, which requires slowness, repetition, and generational memory, never had the time nor the conditions to become a shared sartorial dialect.

That said, I would not say that you cannot wear tailoring in these cities or beyond with elegance. Because if the core idea of elegance is about ease — both within oneself and toward others — then all you need is to decode the nature, the language of style of each city and attune yourself to it, without compromising the virtues you hold onto.

Let’s make this practical. Take Tokyo.

If you’re familiar with the city, you know that dynamic is a key defining characteristic. People are always moving, always doing something — whether moving forward, staying in place, or feeling nostalgic about the past. It is always an act of motion. That’s why it’s no coincidence that when you search “Tokyo fashion” today, you’ll see a vast range of styles: streetwear, avant-garde design, pure sartorial, Ivy throwback, or “best” — all combined into one.

Which means tailoring can certainly be in touch with Tokyo, as long as it isn’t strict to tradition, but instead embraces movement, dynamism, and combination within a single ensemble. That’s why the visual of a baseball cap with an OCBD and chinos, topped with a vintage military jacket from the ’60s and finished with chunky fashion loafers — while it might be “too much” for London, Milan, or even Kyoto (Japan’s traditional cultural city) — feels perfectly aligned with Tokyo.

The same applies to Bangkok, Los Angeles, or anywhere else. As long as you’re aware of the tone, the language, and how people live — the collective memory of each city — then integrating your sartorial flair, or style as a whole, can absolutely achieve elegance.

It might sound like a hardened abstract idea to crystallize the essence of a city into a definition and directly inject it into style consideration. But if I had to give you my exact “know-how,” gathered here in Milan, it would be this: walk into the city, look at how people dress, and feel the atmosphere. It’s the combination of people, buildings, city colors, and weather.

All of this leads to one thing: the need to slow life down. To be aware of the world circling around you and to ask yourself, “How can I attune to this city without losing who I am?”

When that balance is achieved, elegance follows — quietly and effortlessly.

For most people, when they think of travel, words like holiday, leisure, and escape immediately come to mind. These ideas dictate the tone and experience — all of which, I’m sure you can imagine, fall neatly under the banner of the tourist.

I never liked that idea.

Traveling, to me, is something different — something far more than spending enormous capital on so-called “luxury experiences,” or hopping from one tourist attraction to another for a week, calling it a trip, then returning to life as if nothing had happened.

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” — A Moveable Feast

I’ve been reading a lot of Hemingway recently, and somehow his work allowed me to crystallize my own definition of traveling as a journey to be in a place far from home. If there was a specific moment that triggered this idea, it was last winter, when I had the chance to visit Paris and London for the first time.

By then, my inner cultural paradigm had already taken shape — informed, educated, and well-read. But I discovered that actually experiencing culture, breathing in the same air as the things I admired — tailoring, cinema, craftsmanship, British humor, the French language — was far more fulfilling and deeply ingrained than consuming them through media. These experiences are what allow us to grow as individuals, to become fuller in character, and more fluent in the idea of being human.

The more I read Hemingway — whether his debut The Sun Also Rises or the memoir A Moveable Feast — and the more I saw his early life as a wandering journalist moving between France and Spain, discovering life through people, places, and moments, the more convinced I became that I had to take that leap too.

I’ve spent a long time anchored in a metropolis like Bangkok, and it feels like the right moment to step away from it. And the place I’ve chosen for this pilgrimage — this season of travel, for a month or two — is the heart of Lombardy: Milano.

“The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes today.” — Seneca

If you’ve read my recent writing, you’ll know how Bangkok is not a city that opts for elegance. It’s a city that advocates casualness and convenience as its holy grails. That contrast made me imagine a place that might finally match my frequency — somewhere that treats elegance not as ostentation, but as a quiet expectation.

Only one name surfaced: Milan.

And after nearly a week of living here, I’m convinced that my assumption was right — though reality, as always, is harsher than imagination.

The first moment I sat in a Mercedes, watching the city pass by in winter — people wrapped in overcoats, cashmere scarves, black everywhere — I thought, This is it. Finally, a place where I could be myself without feeling alienated.

But after I dropped my luggage at my residence on Via Pasquale Sottocorno and decided to walk the city alone, I realized something else entirely: the distance between proximity and connection is profound. And it was then that I began to see Milan for what it truly is.

From the outside, through carefully curated Instagram feeds, Milan appears to be a city where every street is a runway and every corner hides a form of glamour. I agree — but to access it, to truly belong to it, you must earn that right.

Behind every wall, every façade, every gate, there is something concealed — a discreet society, a private community. These are things you’ll never experience if you remain an outsider, or if you’re perceived as a tourist who comes and goes.

And it’s this reality — that every city has its own code and cultural norms — that makes travel meaningful. If you treat traveling as a way to navigate those codes, not perfectly, but gradually, through exposure and lived experience, then it becomes one of the highest-return investments you can make in yourself.

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Possibilities in life depend on perception — on whether you’re able to see enough, and believe in what you see with real conviction. The way we expand perception is by exposing ourselves to new information and new narratives through all five senses.

The moment you step outside your comfort zone — into a new place, among new people, within a new culture — you are inevitably shaped. You gain new perspectives, cultivate new habits, and begin adopting new codes of living. When this multidimensional character development is paired with a purpose-driven life — one that exists to serve and fulfill something beyond the self — the experience is magically intensified. It opens pathways that simply cannot be reached by staying in the same place, or by trying to buy transformation instantly.

That said, this doesn’t mean you must abandon leisure or joy when packing a bag and boarding a plane. It all depends on the objective behind the move. If travel exists purely as an escape from the mundane, or as a pause from the hustle modernity demands, then spending generously at a Hyatt or sitting by the sea in a coastal city is perfectly understandable.

But wherever you go — regardless of where you choose to stay — look beyond mere hedonism. Observe humanity at a deeper layer: how locals walk, talk, eat, and live; how the tempo of the city operates as a whole; and how one might blend into it with restraint and elegance.

I believe you’re familiar with certain groups of people — those who empirically signal that they are not from here, often in the worst way. They disrupt the tempo and atmosphere of the place they occupy.

To be clear, I have no intention of talking down on tourists. I am one myself. Sitting in a Milanese café, surrounded by Italian conversations I barely understand, I am undeniably a visitor. Yet the principle I hold onto is simple: observe your surroundings and do whatever it takes to attune yourself to them — quietly.

Without loudness. Without imposing energy.

It’s the opposite of what I often witness back in Bangkok. From the way one dresses — blending into Milanese monochrome and winter-dark palettes — to gestures and posture, everything here points toward restraint. The way one carries oneself matters.

This city stands as a testament to elegance in action — not something merely admired, but something expected to be embodied. Fail to do so, and the loudness reveals itself immediately.

Elegance is a quality many places seem to have forgotten. Few still preserve it intact, and Milan in winter is a clear example. It isn’t about the glamour of buckle loafers or crocodile skin bags you’ll find along Via Montenapoleone. Elegance lives elsewhere — in how you compose yourself, how you present with grace, and how you practice containment.

It is a virtuous quality that never goes out of time — and one that feels increasingly necessary in the present moment.

Especially when you choose to journey far from home.