In the early days of KmikeyM I was known for wearing only Brooks Brothers because, as I said in an interview,
“It seems like a publicly traded person would wear Brooks Brothers.”
Many are surprised to learn this was never a shareholder vote, and was only ever ratified by the shareholders through the approval of the former relationship contracts. Brooks Brothers was a choice I made to enhance the image of KmikeyM.
That image became a problem in 2013 when I co-founded a startup with Marcus Estes. As a tech co-founder it was a little weird to dress in all Brooks Brothers when the uniform at the time was jeans and a hoodie made famous by Mark Zuckerberg. Lucky for me Brooks Brothers was in an expansion mode and I was able to find a kind of “banker on the weekend” look that worked out for us.
After Chroma I worked a number of gigs where the Brooks edge was slowly dulled, and then I moved to Los Angeles where the climate and a new role made much of my Brooks wardrobe impractical.
As time went on I gave up my suits for just a dress shirt and pants, and then the dress shirts became t-shirts, and I kind of resisted shorts and jeans for a while making a kind of new more casual LA uniform.
The final push of my abandonment of Brooks was when I started dating Kathryn. Her idea of formal is a t-shirt that she hasn’t cut the sleeves of off. With her occasional clothing gifts infiltrating my closet the Brooks Brothers days were numbered.
And then during covid Brooks Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Sartorially lost, I went full Psychedelic Professor, ready to give my talk on “Altered States of Capitalism.”
As civilization started back up I realized I was feeling conceptually naked. I felt like I had no persona to build around. I ended up developing a new style I called “Regular Guy” with the goal being to wear clothes that blended me into the background. This look was augmented a bit with the launch of Hamburger Business Review and Jona helped me customize my grey polo.
This era coincided with the season 2 adventure of working at McDonald’s, which of course included a return to a real uniform.
Post-McDonald’s I kept wearing my company issued jeans for a while until Kathryn bought me a pair of vintage Levi’s, found me a dirty pair of worn out carharrt pants in the back of the wood shop she took over, and started to find old t-shirts with the perfect fit. It’s a return to the days of my “casual LA” look, but now with intention.
One of the lines in the opening of that interview I gave about wearing all Brooks Brothers was:
“Some people are just jeans, t-shirt, no thought. But jeans and t-shirt can look good if it’s done intentionally. When it’s intentional, it’s actually powerful.”
This look matches up with the recent vote for the aviator sunglasses and my post-McDonald’s mustache for a kind of LA Tactical Dad energy. It’s about utility, community, and function while being a bit more disciplined and less playful.
The aesthetics of KmikeyM have always been a signal. The initial design of the website was based on a bank, and the original wardrobe was what bankers wear. Fashion is a form of cultural soft power, but it reflects back on me as much I project it outward.
This current look is a response to shareholder votes, local climate, personal gifts, and my social environment. Like my share price, it represents a trend responding to those forces over time. In some ways it still feels like a publicly traded person should still wear Brooks Brothers. On the other hand, responding to the actual influences on my life makes this combination of clothing feel like this is what I should wear.
Just for fun, here are some various “fit pics” of me throughout the years:
And some random pics from childhood to basic training…
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