Casual Browns @ Alphamale

April 14th, 2008 at 09:17am Mr. Oh

Thing is, sometimes you just want simple. Simple and comfortable. Simple and comfortable and quality. It’s the last one that’s often the difficulty. Understandably, great designers tend to tackle difficult things — complex pieces with many layers and brocades and stripes and often prim add-ons. And, yeah, we love ‘em. But sometimes, you just want simple.

So here’s a set. Alphamale is an up-and-coming shop, maybe even an up-market-and-coming-on-strong shop. Yelmer Pfeffer is the main alphamale and his partner, Mariska Simons, runs Blacklace next door. They’ve been up and running for months, but when I stopped in this week, they were going through an impressive and extensive remodelling and an expansion that included culling older pieces with which Yelmer was no longer satisfied. He was wearing some excellent blue jeans with a blue t-shirt. I turned immediately to the vendors but bought this colour instead. It’s a set they call, simply enough, Brown Jeans with Two Tees. And the contents are exactly as stated.

And as if to emphasise the earthiness and basic nature of the set, the shirt colours are named ‘Wood’ (the lighter one) and ‘Dirt’ (the darker). They’re both jacket-layer only, because they’re long long long. They’re soft without being feminine; look at those folds and shadows. The v-necks are well-defined and cut, as are the sleeves.

The jeans are simply called ‘brown’ and the colour itself is, if anything, even more understated than the name. Again, they whisper rather than shout the quality of their fabric and composition. The belt buckle falls underneath the t-shirt, but Alphamale thoughfully provides a prim belt buckle which you can wear over the shirt if you want (I’m wearing the prim in the first photo, not in the second).

One note of caution, though: the waist line is cut just a bit higher than tall boots. The trousers and your actual waist are barely within ‘chat’ range of each other. Hence the long long t-shirts. This has a couple of implications: first, you can only wear these trousers with jacket-layer tops or tops extended by matching ‘underpants.’ This is a pity, as the jeans’ understated quality would enhance many more shirts than their cut allows. The second is that because the excellent t-shirts provided are only on the jacket layer, you cannot wear a jacket over them (unless you have something that’s all prims).

But, hey, a jacket would complicate things. And if, like me, you sometimes want simple and comfortable and quality, you’ll be hard pressed to do better than this set, as is.

These photos were taken at Alphamale & Blacklace. You’ll find the shop at Ruby (160, 64, 26). The Brown Jeans and Two Tees set costs L$285.

Disclosure: Seen in World: Yes | Review Copy: No | Friends List: No

Notes: On Mr. Oh: Nora Entice - Hunter Almond by Sezmra Svarog (Nora BodySkins & Fashion). Keith (brown hat, nocturn hair) by Starley Thereian (Moderno). Scratch shoes in Sand by Eponymous Trenchmouth (JCS). Hawke glasses by Nibb Tardis (primOptic).

Entry Filed under: Alphamale, Casual, Jeans, Outfits, Pants, Shirts, Urban