Spring Shoes May20

Spring Shoes

There’s a scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep gives Anne Hathaway a very cool and refined dressing down for her ignorance of how fashion cycles work. It’s pretty much all the average person needs to know about High Fashion, and it’s a lesson that we’d all do well not to forget. She says in part “and then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers, and then it filtered through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance bin” We’re including a clip of it here, and we hope...

How to Wear White Pa...

As much as we like shopping for clothes and talking about style, we have to admit that like most men we kind of hate shopping for pants. Unlike shoes which fit consistently by size or shirts and jackets which are easy to pop on at the rack, trying on pants involves going into a dressing room...

Confirmed Stock @ 26...

If you live in Maryland, and happen to be a gentleman of discerning taste and consummate style, then this Saturday is your Black Friday, your Fashion Week, and your Record Store Day all rolled into one. Confirmed Stock makes its debut at 2640 on Saturday, and we couldn’t be more excited...

How to Buy Jeans

This isn’t really a post on how to buy jeans. You’re a grown man, right? You know how to buy jeans already. At least you should. It’s not that hard; you just go to the store and try them on and pay for them. The only way you can really fuck it up too badly is to just have...

Turtleneck Sweaters

If you’ve got a turtleneck in your closet, Autumn is certainly the perfect time of year to break it out. Cool enough for a chill to be in the air, but not quite cold enough for coats and mittens, a turtleneck is practical if nothing else. There may be no single item of clothing in...

Highwaters and Sanda...

The Summer has officially begun in Baltimore. Memorial Day weekend marked its official start, and the holiday brought the stifling Summer heat right along with it. It breaks our Choppy little heart to think that for the next 3 months, most people in our fair city are going to forgo fashion...

Chop Style: The 10 Second Shoeshine Apr23

Chop Style: The 10 S...

Maybe you’re the type that doesn’t dress up a lot. Perhaps you’re a lot more comfortable in a pair of Adidas or Converse than brogues or boots. Style is a matter of taste and lifestyle, and at the end of the day it’s to each his own. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, and for a...

The Best Mens Watche...

When the Chop turned 30 recently, we decided it would be thoroughly appropriate to mark the passage of time with the purchase of our first decent watch. There’s no small amount of metaphorical allusion involved in such a purchase, but for the Chop it was as much a practical acquisition...

2011 Men’s Swi...

The Chop’s not a great one for swimming. We might be tempted to sit poolside if there’s a bar cart involved, but dangling our ankles is about as wet as we’ll get. We’re also not too keen on staring at mostly naked men and comparing them side by side. That’s a job...

Katt Williams: The W...

Well, you may think we’re picking at some pretty low-hanging fruit here. We definitely are, but it has to be said. You can Google it for pages and pages and no one in the entire blogosphere has come out and said it yet… Katt Williams is the worst dressed man in America. And we...

A Conditional Approv...

Please understand: we are very wary about endorsing hats as a point of style. Very few people can pull them off in the modern era without affectation, and where you see a fedora or trilby anywhere in the media, you can bet one of America’s biggest douchebags is under it. However, as...

Baton-Type Umbrellas...

Well, when it rains it pours, and it’s certainly been pouring here in Baltimore lately. This being only the second week in March, there’s going to be plenty more rain yet to fall this Spring. We don’t care what Marty Bass or Tom Tasselmyer has to say about it, it’s...

Messenger Bags: The ...

It recently occurred to us than since we now own a laptop, we’re going to be in need of a bag in which to carry it if we want to take it with us next time we go a-traveling. After all, the TSA is good for more than just groping your grandma and stealing your souvenirs… they also...

Interview With Sixte...

As you may already know, the Chop is no stranger to matters of style. Classic American fashion is one of the cornerstones of this blog. So when we heard word of a new men’s shop opening in Hampden, you can believe it raised our eyebrows pretty high. For too many years quality menswear...

Wool for Winter Part...

Now that we’ve thoroughly covered the ins and outs of the classic pea coat, you might be saying to yourself “Yeah, that’s all well and good Chop, but sometimes I just want to run out and buy groceries.” We understand this perfectly well. While a pea coat or a proper...

Fill Your Boots With...

We told you recently about the best boots you can buy under $200. Whether you’ve already hit the shops and picked them up, or you’re polishing up a pair of old favorites for winter service, you’re going to need the socks to fill them. Those casual, everyday Gold Toes are a...

Five Things You Need...

We caught you Baltimore. Red Handed. You’ve just been busted by the fashion police. We caught you slipping, and you’re going to have to step up your game wardrobe-wise, or risk being mocked mercilessly out in public for looking like a complete heel. This weekend was full of...

How to Wear a Tie Ca...

Baltimore is a great city for neckwear. It’s a town that loves its scarves, and they seem to increase in popularity every year. At the same time, the men of Baltimore are not so precious, effete and pretentious that we ever fell for the keffiyeh (shown here, on the left), or, God forbid,...

The Perfect Fathers Day Gifts at the Quinntessential Gentleman Jun19

The Perfect Fathers ...

In the heated, noisy, and sometimes treacherous downtown streets, the Quinntessential Gentleman is nothing less than an oasis. The shock of comfort and relief a man feels when crossing their threshold is much the same as what the desert wayfarer feels encountering the shady stream or the...

Socks Are Not Optional May31

Socks Are Not Option...

This image came from The Sartorialist, and it’s the perfect illustration of some of the shite that flies in NYC and Boston (and hell, maybe Atlanta, we don’t know) but will never, ever, ever be acceptable in Baltimore. It’s also one of the many reasons why we stopped paying...

Men’s Guide to...

If there’s one thing the Chop can not endorse, it’s preppy style. We give thanks every day that we were lucky enough to be born in Baltimore and not in New England or Long Island or some equally pretentious, WASP-y place. We wouldn’t be caught dead in madras, ribbon belts,...

Five Good Reasons to...

Yeah Baltimore, we know how it is. A lot of you like to drape that jacket over the back of your chair as soon as you get into the office. Still more of you have one old standby jacket (possibly handed down from dear old Dad) that doesn’t fit well and that you only break out for weddings,...