When he’s not plundering doubloons, whittling peg legs, or teaching parrots to sing sea shanties, Chris Balmer teaches pre-school in the Spring Lake Park School District in Minnesota. He also mentors at the school district’s teen center, using theater to foster the kids’ creativity while delivering anti-drug, nonviolence, and diversity tolerance messages. Once he completes a Master’s degree in public policy he’ll pursue a career in law enforcement. (Though we suspect he’s missed his calling as a swashbuckler.)
Thanks for your support and for all you do for the youth of Spring Lake Park, Chris!
Customer service is a state of mind. Let me explain:
I’ve been a New Yorker for six weeks, exactly as long as I’ve been on the Bonobos team. But it took me over a month to find an apartment (I played “musical couches” in the meantime), so even though I’ve settled into certain very New York behaviors—jaywalking with impunity, etc.—I’m still more or less unpacking. I’m still, more or less, a total newbie.
So, last week, when my dearest friend in the whole world (and a beacon of style in her own right) asked if I would accompany her to La Gioconda at the Metropolitan Opera in 48 hours, my mind began to race faster and louder than the cabs shooting up Sixth Avenue at 8:58 in the morning. Most of my clothes are still sequestered in boxes—I think I’ve only got jeans and my capertons—can I wear Doc Martens to the Met?—of course I can’t, what the hell am I thinking?WHAT AM I GOING WEAR?
Eventually it became clear to me that even if I managed to unpack and organize my closet in time, I would come up short. I’m not in college anymore. Jeans and a hoodie can no longer be my go-to look, the outfit du jour. (Nor should it be for anyone whose daily schedule doesn’t include a round of ultimate frisbee in the quad or a kegger in the dorms.) That awkward, rumpled, I’m-swimming-in-my-button-down-and-this-tie-used-to-be-my-dad’s approach to formal wear would be, thenceforth, unacceptable. It was time to up my game.
I marched into Bonobos HQ the next day (T-minus 36 hours from my debut at the Met), approached Brian Spaly at his desk, and asked him for help. He’s awesome at putting together a look and often helps the team (and our customers) rock their bonobos as hard as they can. “Invest in a few versatile staples,” he advised—like dark brown loafers and a navy blazer. Look for a good value but don’t skimp on quality. For the most part, labels are unimportant. How much you pay for an item takes a backseat to the fit–you will always look good in clothes that fit, regardless of “who” you are wearing, so let that be your guide. For the Met, he told me not to feel obligated to wear a jacket and tie–a clean and elegant dress shirt or sweater would be fine. It may have a black-tie reputation, but the opera is meant, fundamentally, to be entertainment. Comfort’s got to play a role in the theatergoer’s attire (not to mention that La Gioconda is four hours long).
Back at my desk, I considered the gorgeous black trousers Kevin Kelleher had just picked up from our manufacturer in the garment district, twenty blocks north of our HQ. Kevin’s a Production and Operations ninja here at Bonobos, a former D1 footballer, and the trousers in question–jet black, with a slender, graceful drape–were named in part after his favorite adjective: savage.
Two realizations came at once: 1) I was over-thinking this opera outfit. Brian was right: I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel, just take a clean look and make sure everything fit well; and 2) I was way overdue in using my employee discount. A look began coming together in my head. I made one of the inaugural purchases of the savage, and later that evening I made two more strategic upgrades to my wardrobe: sleek, side-zip dress boots and a crisp, well-fitted dress shirt white as the leblons. I figured I’d top the outfit off with my pinstripe Banana Republic blazer, take it to the next level with a gray silk pocket square, and off I’d go.
The Bonobos team had other plans.
I arrived at HQ the next day, garment bag slung over my arm and pep in my step, to find a luxurious velvet blazer from Theory draped over my chair. It was Spaly’s, and after a quick try-on to confirm that it fit nicely, he offered to lend it to me for the night. It was all I could do to say thanks without drooling on that gorgeous garment.
As afternoon sidled up to evening, I made the transformation: Jeans into savage. Sneakers into sleek laceless boots. T-shirt into snow-white Calvin Klein poplin. My tired-but-workable blazer into a velvet number that blew it out of the water. The only problem: the ensemble had a new weak link. My pale gray pocket square, while sufficient, lacked that certain Bonobos panache. Kevin Kelleher to the rescue–he snatched a swatch of silk from our cutting table, yellow swirled with ecru and gray. Although previously accustomed to leveling running backs trying to find a breakaway, Kevin deftly folded the silk into a bright crescent that would peek out from the velvety depths of the jacket (Insider’s tip: Look for this same silk to line the g6, a charcoal-hued successor to the g5 reminiscent of the g4!)
I had planned to go without a belt–my bonobos fit like a glove, so I certainly didn’t need one to keep them from falling down, and I liked the idea of showing off our custom-made, Italian nickel hardware. But the guys chimed in, recommending a simple black belt to round out the ensemble. Problem: the only one I had with me was an old, wide thing that lived exclusively in the loops of my favorite broken-in jeans. Our offerings, in Italian tie silk, are beautiful, but not necessarily formal wear. Adam Sidney, indie music connossieur and our Director of Operations, frowned beneath his beard. In a single whip-like motion, he removed his shiny black belt and held it out to me. Best of all, before I could get out a single sentimentalized sentence, Sidney sent me on my way with his own style of encouragement: “Go kick some ass!”
I was dressed more properly and maturely than perhaps ever before in my life, and it changed my outlook on the evening. I noticed a new and exciting strength in my stride and comfort in my conversation. Being thoughtfully dressed, I realized, isn’t about looking fly to stroke your ego. It’s about feeling confident and at ease, freeing you to be attentive to the experiences and individuals that shape your daily (and nightly) experience. In a way (and here I go again, sentimentalizing), working in fashion means we’re in the business of affecting human dignity, and that is a responsibility we cannot take lightly. Which brings me back, finally, to customer service.
As I’ve ruminated on that night at the opera, I’ve concluded that the generosity and enthusiasm I experienced from the whole team would be unlikely to exist for me if I worked at a different company. Turns out, when you commit to making customer satisfaction and service your number one priority, you weave into the fabric of your business model an unequivocal tendency for empathy and helpfulness–and that, for its ability to transcend the buyer/seller dynamic, is something special.
Whether you’re a potential first-time customer or our biggest spender, know that we approach your customer service needs with the mindset that it’s our job to worry about you looking good, not yours. We want you to don your bonobos and venture onward, in pursuit and enjoyment of all the world has to offer.
After all the fun of our previous competitions (name the navy shorts, describe the dark and stormys, and name the stone twills), we’ve decided to lay down another challenge to our awesomely creative customers (and would-be customers alike): name one of our newest styles, to be launched later this week: a new dress trouser in jet-black. Please make your submission as a comment on this post, and please only submit once. Give it some thought, and give it your one best shot.
We were way too helpful in describing the dark and stormys, so here’s all you’ve got to work with this time: the new trousers are black, with a herringbone weave. They are lined in the same black and red tiger-stripe silk as the tiger sharks. Like the mccains, there is no contrasting back-pocket liner. Oh, and the material? I’ve saved the best detail for last: It’s 100% cashmere. We’re going to put them at $275, but rest assured they’d be about three times that at Barney’s or Bloomingdale’s.
To win, you don’t have to submit a name and a description, but know that it can’t hurt your chances (and that after the extreme lengths of writerly restraint I just went through to bring you the above paragraph in simple, declarative sentences, I, for one, look forward to seeing these new and groundbreaking bonobos get a world-class wordsmithing from one of you out there!).
Wondering if it’s worth a shot? Marcus Coe doesn’t appear to have any regrets as he sports his gratis dark and stormys and sips their namesake cocktail.
That’s right, to the winner goes a pair of these pants on the house–our priciest giveaway to date.
Gents, consider the ante upped. Bring your A game.
The fearless and spirited obamas are outselling the stylish but prim mccains by a factor of nearly two-to-one! After a competitive first few days, the obamas took a strong lead and never looked back.
Haven’t yet decided which pair is for you? Go with your gut, but feel free to lean toward the trouser-right to bolster the mccains’ showing–pretty soon you won’t have a choice, since our stock of limited-run obamas is falling faster than the Dow, and like our Congress, Bonobos is flipping a thumbs-down to a bailout. When they’re gone, they’re gone for good.
(Have I forgotten to mention that our flagship navies are soon to be reincarnated once again, in the same super-soft organic twill as the obamas and mccains, but with a bright floral lining? How Alberto Gonzales of me.)
No recount, not this time. No confounded Floridians or cross-eyed chad-counters or Supreme Court justices of conflicted interest who ultimately green-light a panty raid at the electoral college. In the closely watched and hotly debated 2008 trouser race, we’ve just recorded a landslide the likes of which hasn’t occurred in three generations, since Warren G. Harding and the soon-to-be-known-as “Silent Cal” Coolidge laid an electoral smack-down on the democratic Cox-Roosevelt ticket in 1920. (Whatever happened to that FDR kid, anyway?)
Rare it is indeed, my friends, to pull acoelacanthfrom the deep, in direct defiance of extinction, ancient fins a-flapping. Rarer still that said coelacanth should be made of lightweight corduroy. You can imagine my surprise when, while perusing the Bonobos homepage, I stumbled upon my old retired friend. That soft, bosky green swiped from Monet’s lily pads… those winking diamonds stripped off one of Picasso’s jaunty harlequins. How could it be? The mint julep was retired ages ago, never to be loomed, sewn, or hemmed again. It had been placed, had it not, on a pedestal with the pantheon of other legendary, retired trousers from Bonobos’ earliest, most incipient days? The f. scott, the black swan, the whistler… the styles one wept for when pulled from circulation, and pined for once cold reality set in. For as the humpback will tell you in whale song, extinction is forever, and forever is a long, long time.
But alas. Like the coelacanth, the ivory-billed woodpecker, and John Travolta, it seems the trousersmiths at Bonobos have a Lazarus species of their own. The mint julep has returned, to strut and rut and wink again. As it turns out, our old friend mint julep did not go gently into that good night, into the dusty annals of history alongside the hula hoop and the dodo bird. He is alive and well, flopping on deck, gasping for breath with primordial lungs, aching to be worn once more. The mint julep lives! The mint julep lives!
From the great continuum of human feuds (Capulets vs. Montagues, Whigs vs. Tories, Lindsay vs. Paris) emerges an historic slug-fest: Bam vs. Mac. Bonobos is proud to enter the fray.
In the late eighteenth century the working class of France, with fire in their eyes, gumption in their blood, and dirt under their fingernails, began a stirring that would eventually deliver the nation from monarchism to democracy. The aristocrats—in their fashionable, frilly silk breeches—looked down upon these free thinkers and their full-length, utilitarian trousers. They mockingly dubbed the revolutionaries sans-culottes, or “without knee-breeches.” In the end, all the dandily appointed silk in the world couldn’t halt the guillotine’s dispassionate dispatchment.
Which is to say: the launch of our newest trousers, the obamas and the mccains, is not the first time politics has crossed paths with pants.
We set out to craft a worthy successor to our awesome midnight blues—a John Quincy Adams of trousers, if you will. We acquired super-soft cotton twill from our favorite mill in Belgium (one of the finest in the world), and the fabric’s deep, presidential navy spoke to us.
Channeling Republican candidate John McCain’s unshakeable individualism, our designer, Brian Spaly—triathlete, heartthrob, and nautical accessories guru—lined one batch of these beautiful twills with an indigo pinstripe (the same fabric we use on the outside of our super soakers). There is no contrast stitching on the belt loops of the mccains, and no flashy fabric in the back pockets. It’s the most conservative trouser we could bring ourselves to construct, but it’s still a pair of bonobos, through and through, made with care and pride right here in New York City.
But what of democrat Barack Obama? He is charismatic and distinctive, yet his cynosure does not disabuse us of the faith we have in our own greatness. He dwarfs doubt, heightens hope. Lined in a daring mosaic of blue, brown, and orange, the obamas strive to accomplish the same—to be a beacon of encouragement, a leader by example.
(Don’t worry if your trouser preference doesn’t coincide with your vote. It doesn’t make you a flip-flopper. We advise taking a bipartisan approach and ordering both.)
The battle lines are drawn deep. The pundits are sharpening their hyperbole, Joe Biden is cracking his knuckles, Sarah Palin is checking her makeup, and Bonobos has made some really gorgeous pants. Which pair will serve as executive trouser? That’s for you to determine.
When you’ve got a good thing going, why stop there? (Case in point: the snapdragons 1 and snapdragons 2… not to mention our recent revival of the mint juleps). We’ll be in downtown Boston for a trunk show this weekend, so we decided to swing by Harvard Business School and show the gentlemen scholars there a few of our top-tier trousers.
We’ll be in the private room of the Grille Spangler on Sunday from 1-6 pm with a ton of inventory in tow for new customers to see and feel in person, ask questions about, try on, and potentially walk away with. Interested? Shoot an e-mail to ninjas at bonobos.com and let us know.
If anyone’s got his finger on the pulse of what’s new and awesome in trousers, it’s a tailor. We were thrilled to hear this anecdote from one of our most stellar customers, Grady Snyder in Boston:
…stopped by my tailor’s shop [Bostonian Tailoring] last week. Richard was on the phone when I walked in, but he waved me over to his storage room. In his rack of to-do clothes, he pulled out four hangers, holding: touchstones, dark and stormys, shoguns, and capertons. Got off the phone and in his thick Armenian accent said, “My friend, your pants–they are the new hit in Boston!”
It’s not all that surprising that the trouser revolution is taking root in Boston, given that city’s rich history of telling the status quo to buzz off, we’ve got a better thing brewing, and it ain’t just a shipload of tea in the harbor.
In fact, while Bonobos is in town this weekend at the Nine Zero Hotel, we may have to orchestrate a ninja mission, something of an homage to the revolutionaries who’ve come before us. Crates of poorly-fitting, mass-produced, and heinously marked-up khakis bobbing helplessly in the icy harbor… the very thought of it makes me want to put on a Sox cap, crack open a Sam Adams, and curl up with Johnny Tremain.
Just because you’re wearing a more traditional trouser doesn’t mean you can’t inject a little Bonobos-brand flirtatiousness and fun into your ensemble. Deciding what to pair with your trousers was a tough enough task before Bonobos came to town and mixed things up with red, orange, green, mint, cerulean, turquoise, pink, and… these.
What about that good old-fashioned staple of youthful sophistication: dark jeans? Brian Spaly (designer; co-founder of Bonobos; and equal parts guerilla fashionisto, fabric ninja, and impossibly eligible bachelor) recently tackled this question for one Bonobos man. He asked Brian about the best shirt and shoe combination for a night on the town in dark jeans, and Brian responded as only he can:
Let’s start with easiest to expert.
Easy: Slim, sleek black loafers (no lace-ups, those are way too Y2K) and a light-colored button-down, untucked, preferably slim-fitting. This is surefire and hip enough to fit in. You can also rock dark brown (espresso) shoes with the same shirt. Just make sure the belt and shoes work well together.
Intermediate: Add a great black blazer–shirt untucked or tucked–just see what looks better in the mirror, as long as the untucked shirt doesn’t show under the blazer you are fine.
Advanced Intermediate: Instead of a button-down, a v-neck lightweight sweater can be great here. Pink, red, lime green, lavender, yellow… any lighter shade–you don’t want to wear black, navy, or other dark colors on top of a dark-wash denim. Shoes to match–but when you go with funky colors you could also add in something clever here like a high-end sneaker that reeks of cool and not of the gym. I’m thinking the canvas John Varvatos Converse-type shoe is hip enough. Add a white/tan/stone-colored blazer (think Trovata) with smooth accents and details and you are set. Things don’t have to match perfectly, but don’t look like a finger painting. Color themes should be consistent; e.g., canvas sneakers look great with a light colored blazer/jacket, but if you are wearing a black blazer I would stick with black loafers.
Advanced: Go funky on the blazer–white with a purple silk pocket square, or zebra/animal print, or shogun-style Japanese satin silk. Pair with velvet tuxedo slippers and red and black striped cashmere socks (maybe available at Paul Smith); the shirt in this case needs to be neutral–think white Theory v-neck or black Armani Eurotrash minimalist. A v-neck is always better with a blazer, but not essential.
Expert: Solid shiny finish gold Pumas and a gold silk Valentino blazer (those are articles in the wardrobes of some of our team members) with a green and gold silk Bonobos belt (to be released soon).
Ninja: Add vintage accessories–WWII officer’s pocket watch plus aviator goggles.
Gameover, Everyone Else Goes Home: Show up with an old fashioned globe scuba helmet (with the portico face window) under one arm and put it on when the seaweed salad arrives. Or smoke a cigarette through the open face window while standing on the banquette of your table at Boucarou.
At the end of last season Brett Favre bade his beloved game in Green Bay farewell–supposedly for good. But now he spends Sundays aiming his cannon-arm at Laveranues Coles and Jerricho Cotchery of the New York Jets.
Activist and super-athlete Lance Armstrong bowed out of professional cycling three years ago after changing the sport forever. Turns out he was only catching his breath; he announced last week that he’s training to tackle the tour again in 2009.
Which brings us to the mint juleps, our beloved lightweight cords in soft green. They haven’t been available since April and are back by popular demand! Our juleps may not be able to fire a pigskin missile like Brett or inspire the world like Lance, but with our signature fit and a gentle stretch, these guys are perfect for any feat of urban athleticism. Paired with a white Oxford and navy blazer, the juleps take business casual into stunning new territory. Or dress ‘em down, with a t-shirt and sandals. Like their namesake cocktail, our mint juleps fit in perfectly anywhere class and comfort commingle.
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This man needs a pair of black flags.
