It is a way of dressing built like so: something old, something new, a trucker hat and bluejeans too.
This sensibility, defined by aged Levi’s, cowboy boots and mustaches, has roots in workwear and Americana. The aim is to look masculine and uncomplicated, like Brad Pitt in “Thelma & Louise,” or one of the ’80s baseball players in the movie “Everybody Wants Some!!”
Actors like Jacob Elordi and Austin Butler are the poster boys of this new sterile Americana — let’s call it “James Clean.”
It’s a look that evokes James Dean in his unbuttoned chambray shirt in “Giant.” It could have been called “the Redford,” in the ’70s, with that actor’s inclination toward rugged suede jackets. On ’90s TV, it was typified by gooey-centered bad boys like Dylan McKay (played by Luke Perry) on “Beverly Hills 90210.”
Today it’s popular from Pittsburgh to the Palisades, where Mr. Butler has been photographed in hint-of-a-heel cowboy boots and holey jeans.
“It’s in the South, it’s in New York, it’s in L.A.,” said Chris Black, a podcast host in New York, who claims to have spotted Elordi look-alikes in mesh-backed trucker caps as far away as Berlin.
“Everybody’s seeing the same stuff,” Mr. Black said. “It’s all on Instagram.”
For that we can credit guys like Albert Muzquiz, 30, in Los Angeles, who since around 2021 has posted style videos under the name @EdgyAlbert.
Mr. Muzquiz wears picnic-plaid flannel shirts and cropped jean jackets. He smiles a lot. He brandishes a push-broom mustache, which makes him look (as many of his 394,000 followers have noted) like Tom Selleck’s body double.
If Mr. Elordi and Mr. Butler are the tip of the pyramid, men like Mr. Muzquiz are the propagators.
As often as four times a week he uploads videos dispensing advice on buying vintage Levi’s on eBay (501s preferred, so that the back pocket sits “right on the butt cheek”) or which trucker hats to search for online. (He suggests the King Louie brand.)
Sometimes it doesn’t even seem as if his followers bother watching the clips. They just want an answer to know where his shirts are from. “Most male shoppers,” Mr. Muzquiz said, “are trying to optimize their wardrobe.”
A Big Shift
It was not long ago that millennial men could be lulled into credit card debt with a feel-good story of suits hand-stitched by Italian nonnas in Tuscany. Brands marketed denim that would wear just like it did back in the 1880s.
“Detail fetishism” was how Luke Harris, 40, a creative director and filmmaker in Santa Barbara, Calif. described the way he and many men he knows shopped for years. That obsessive, narrative-driven shopping may be unfamiliar, even ludicrous, to 20-somethings now who just see something on online and expect to replicate it quickly.
“It’s not about the garments so much — it’s about how you’re wearing it,” said Jon Alan, 34, a community manager at the high-street heritage label Buck Mason, who, like Mr. Muzquiz, has amassed an impressive Instagram audience, won over by his wardrobe of cropped mechanics jackets and trucker hats. He, too, has a mustache that makes him look as if he’s backing up Magnum, P.I.
“I don’t want, like, such a crazy rare, heady wardrobe,” he said. “I just want some classic silhouettes and pieces.”
Indeed, this image — one might call it basic, though not as a pejorative — is extremely easy to replicate. What could be simpler than a cotton T-shirt and chinos?
“You’re honoring conventions of shape and style,” said Loren Fizer, 28, a graphic designer and content creator, with a follower count of 41,500, eager to know where his jeans are from.
His is an unruffled wardrobe full of clay-colored chinos (from a Japanese brand that is called Ordinary Fits) and two-pocket work shirts. He prefers colors no more intrepid than olive green. He could be out of 2025 or 1975.
“We’re referencing clothing that is historically American,” said Cameron Golshani, 30, an energy efficiency consultant in Oklahoma City, who is very Sundance Kid in his pale bluejeans and yoked Western shirts from Buck Mason.
This “good old days” turn to men’s wear with a capital M comes after years of a trend toward more androgynous clothing, at least within high fashion. While the actors most associated with this look are white, it isn’t exclusive to them.
“I’m very well aware of the way me as a Black man, exists in this fashion space, wearing the clothes that I wear, and that’s part of the charm,” said Mr. Fizer, who takes pleasure in scrambling the notion that this style is siloed to a particular demographic. “Anybody can be in it. Anybody can wear it.”
Perhaps though, this is one fashion fad can be explained more plainly.
“What we’re really talking about is trying to get a piece of a guy that the internet is swooning over,” Mr. Black said, alluding to Mr. Elordi and Mr. Butler. This is the alluring transitive theory of style: If Mr. Elordi is considered attractive, then dressing like him will make you attractive as well.
“Guys want to be sexy and they want to look cool,” Mr. Muzquiz said. “Those are all really vulnerable and kind of dorky things to say out loud.”
But they are, in his experience, valid.
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
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