The Rebel’s Wardrobe

An entertaining exploration of trend-immune fashion classics and the surprising origins of your everyday clothing items.

How did the plain white T-shirt become an everyday hero? Which movie star helped turn the leather jacket into a global icon? And were chinos really created for military purposes? The origin stories of these casual men’s fashion staples will surprise you, and can often be traced to subversive countercultures.

The Rebel’s Wardrobe unpacks the modern menswear lexicon and reveals, for example, why the Carhartt jacket designed for railroad workers became synonymous with skaters and graffiti artists, and how polo shirts made the leap from middle-class tennis clubs to British Mods. Traversing genres and styles, this book goes back to the gestation period of iconic pieces and shows how they became timeless classics that transcended fashion.