Holiday Haul

Got some fun items for Christmas this year. Starting in the top left: Poler's Holiday Rolltop pack, Gap's Chunky Fair Isle scarf, neff's Daily Beanie, Field Notes' County Fair collection: Utah, Palomino's Blackwing Pearl pencil, and J.Crew + Nike Waffle Racer sneakers. So yeah, I'm a happy camper.

Castle Greyscale Moodboard

A couple of these images ended up right next to each other in my feeds recently and I thought that a groovy grey moodboard was definitely in order. Not too full of holiday cheer per se, but hope you enjoy anyway!

Suits and Sneakers: 5 Rules of the Road

I recently moved to NYC and see an almost daily trend of guys wearing sneakers with suits!?! From time to time, it actually looks kinda cool. But more often than not, it's a billowy business suit with goofy, technical-looking cross trainers that I wouldn't even wear with jeans let alone slacks.

Here are five basic rules of the road I've observed for pairing sneakers with suits in a way that actually works.

1) Tailored Suit
You gotta start off with the right sorta suit. A suit and sneakers doesn't just work with any cut. From what I can tell, it really has to be a very tailored jacket with form-fitting, cuffed pants. It also can't just be a standard dark, flat-colored business suit. Kicks go best with lighter, textured fabrics.

Men's Style Pro nails the look.

2) Classic Sneakers
Your grubby gym shoes are not gonna cut it. The best way to pull this look off is to stick to the classics. Vintage, retro, or reissued running shoes are the safest bet. Classic skate sneaks or indoor soccer shoes work too.

The Bespoke Dudes get it right.

3) Cool Socks or No Socks at All
Pair your sneakers with some fancy, colorful socks or better yet, just go sockless. (Wear hide-a-socks if you must.) Do not pull out your white tubes or black dress socks… even if they have gold toes.

4) Additional Accessories
Adding sneaks to a suit brings an overall sportiness to your look. Compliment that sporty vibe with the right kind of accessories, whether it’s a hat, scarf, or matching iPad sleeve (above)—let people know you’re on the go.

And of course J.Crew and Nick Wooster both know what's up.

5) Own It
By wearing sneakers with your suit, you’re entering into a brave new world of men’s fashion where relatively few have trodden. Follow these rules but most importantly, be confident. Wear them with a sly smile and jet around in some serious street style.

There’s a dude on my train platform who wears a checkered pair of classic Vans slip-ons almost every morning. And thanks to his heather grey tailored suits, the right accouterments, and that just-gonna-own-it attitude... he pulls the whole look off flawlessly.

So give a suit and sneaks a shot, just stick to the rules so you don’t end up lookin’ like these guys.

State Bicycle Offroad Division

Excited about State Bicycle's new Offroad Division. I'm thinking about one of these beasts. We'll see.

The Life Aquatic Moodboard

So last week, I strolled into work sporting my classic Steve Zissou Halloween costume. It wasn't the first time I rocked it and it won't be the last. It's my all-time favorite movie and its style is timeless. In fact, it got me thinking. Since Wes Anderson is the definitive OH (original hipster)... does The Life Aquatic's aesthetic still work today?

I combed through Pinterest and Tumblr and stumbled on this handful of images. And in my opinion, not only does its look work along with today's vibes... this movie very well may have inspired the tone that's permeating plenty of people's pins.

Tighter Than Tight

I stumbled on this immaculately renovated, tighter than tight example of a BMW 3.0 and seriously can't stop looking at it. I'm just blown away by the hot chocolate paint job, updated deep-dish radial spoke rims from an E39 5-series, and gorgeous photography by Davey G. Johnson. Enjoy!

Danner = Awesome + Authentic

Man, Danner is a brand that just gets it and does it right. I was super stoked to be wearing their boots today when I saw a piece of branded content like this. Their commitment to replicating the magic of a classic product and then capturing that process just inspires me.

The reissue of their Mountain Light Cascade for Reese Witherspoon in her upcoming flick Wild is dead-on cool. Here's to wishing other brands had just as much get-it factor as Danner does. Thanks for the heads Upto12.

PS: Also watch for the #SockAndSandals appearance!

World Series Moodboard

Thanks to a challenge from Upto12 and Mrs. Kyality's hometown love for the SF Giants, I'm commemorating their World Series run with a new moodboard. Enjoy!

More Socks, More Sandals

Teva continues to crank out some great branded content around the thing haters love to hate on... #SocksAndSandals. And according to their lead stylist, Kira Sheppard, this combo isn't just for the granola types anymore. She makes a definite point to drop the term "urban" more that once.

Autumn Moodboard

I've been toying with the idea of curating more specific little moodboards lately and was inspired to create one that feels a little autumn-themed. So here are a few images I've recently sprinkled through my Pinterest and Tumblr feeds... all brought together in one place. Just click the image to enlarge. Hopefully you dig!

A Pair of British Beauts

Wow. The past two films from the folks at Petrolicious have been fantastic. They've each featured a vehicle I've spent a ton of time studying, dreaming about and even drawing... like ever since high school.



Both classics, Minis and Land Rovers share some inherent traits that go far beyond their common British roots. Both were born from the concept of function over form, yet are inexplicably attractive—attractive in the sense that you're just drawn to them... to their pure simplicity.

This singular, purpose-driven approach to both vehicles makes them each fairly limited in what they're capable of, but almost infinitely unlimited in the adventures you can achieve within that one area they're for which they're built.

You can't watch these guys either power through a corner or crawl up a dune and not want to be behind those wheels. Both are incredibly intoxicating in their own way. I would scramble at the chance to own either of these British beauts in an instant. Watch these shorts and enjoy the rides.

Red, White and Brumos

Looks like the folks at the classic race team/Porsche tuner Brumos invited the Urban Outlaw himself to run around in their nicely modded 2012 911. The car is decades newer than anything he owns personally, but due to its stellar red, white and blue color scheme... for me Magnus Walker seems right at home with this one. 

Man, that thing is just a stunning piece of machinery. It's just interesting to me how this paint job turns what's normally your run-of-the-mill looking 911 into a total classic. Seriously, just look at it!

Jaguar F-TYPE Coupé Chase Car

I've always had a soft spot for European chase cars from the pro cycling world, especially the hot little sports wagons that often get fitted with numerous framesets and wheels. But the already stunning Jaguar F-TYPE Coupé has just been turned into even more of a rare beauty for the Team Sky racers.


And the sound of this thing... amazing.

DENNY: The Ultimate Urban Utility Bike

I'm very inspired by this, yes I'm gonna say it, innovative bicycle design. DENNY is one of those rare whips that feels fresh and not compromised really in any way. Enjoy!

Socks + Sandals = Fun Fashion

A few months ago, I got ambitious one day and whipped out a solid combo of Teva Originals and some rag wool socks. Despite it not being nearly as egregious as oh say white tube socks and Birkenstocks, it nevertheless has had an extremely polarizing effect on both friends and family. Some have mocked me endlessly for perpetrating such an appalling fashion faux pas. While others have full-on told me that they're also going the way of the Teva.

I decided to trace back the route that led me to believe that the sandal and the sock can live together in fashion harmony. As far as I can tell, this current look got its start when retro Oregon- and Colorado-based campvibes brands like Poler and Topo started making gear about two years ago, specifically bags with that classic early ‘90s motif.

I noticed that not long after these brands started doing their thing, the styles I wore in high school began making their way back into my closet. It’s this combo of denim/chambray, hiking boots and fleece/rag wool sweaters, with random pops of color mixed in. 

I started a Pinboard called campvibes not long after that, dedicated to this look and stumbled on a Tumblr curated by a Japanese blogger called Miatagod. It was packed full of these amazingly colorful, East-meets-West images of camping-inspired clothes including sandals with socks. I love scrolling through this cleverly curated collection cuz all of the sudden, it made fashion feel fun.

At just about this same, Teva reintroduced their line of Originals with colors and patterns that’d feel right at home along side this fun look and feel I’ve been geeking out on. Here’s a peek at their lookbook vid that rounds out this vibe.



It certainly doesn’t feel to me like this is just a fad. I see a longer term trend that continues to blend comfort and style, as do others. It’s a trend that infuses fun into fashion and celebrates a form that falls out of function.

When the image of me sporting my Teva Originals plus socks was originally posted, it got its fair share of both flack and fandom. One fan in particular was the social media team @Smartwool. They also instantly recognized the long term trend at play here and decided they were in.

Our own Mr. @kyality stepping up his shoe game with a @teva wool sock combo. What do you think folks? #tevaoriginals pic.twitter.com/CoYZkMTNJF

— Struck (@struck) April 4, 2014

@struck @kyality @teva Think you need to step up your #sock game if you're going to blast your toes. That's just me though.

— Smartwool (@Smartwool) April 4, 2014

@smartwool Hook a brother up! CC: @struck @teva

— Kyle Snarr (@kyality) April 5, 2014

@kyality @struck @Teva direct me your email and we can connect, aka, hook it up.

— Smartwool (@Smartwool) April 5, 2014

Then this happened...

@kyality @teva Now we got the sock game where it needs to be. #socks #fanlove
— Smartwool (@Smartwool) May 1, 2014

VSCO vs. OMFGCO

Time for a stroll down inspiration alley. Loving this video interview by Visual Supply Co. with the creative directors at Official Mfg. Co.

Yes, lotsa super Portlandia branding and graphic design going on in this piece, but man... it gets me excited to go eat at Olympic Provisions and Clyde Common again... or at least their Brooklyn equivalents.

Magnus Walker's Outlaw Fever

Holy moly. The Urban Outlaw, Magnus Walker, just keeps the hits coming with his latest flick: Outlaw Fever. He's now designing his own custom rims and testing them in downtown LA in the middle of the night and it's simply exhilarating.

So I'm going to go ahead and make a little prediction. Obviously rims have been dramatically increased in size over the last decade or so. 18+ inch monsters with ultra low profile tires have certainly been en vogue. Well, I think thanks to Magnus we're going to start seeing this trend go the other direction. His rims start as small as 15 inches, wrapped in some serious meat.

Mark. My. Words.

BMW E28 M5 in Cry Havoc Cry

In a short film drafting heavily off of BMW's original branded content masterpiece The Hire—this short features a beautiful E28 ///M5 identical to the one my dad drove in my youth. 



Bottom line: I had no idea this car had that kind of effect on women!

The Sound of Senna

This is an interesting and pretty cool take on an experimental tribute to classic F1 racer Ayrton Senna by Honda.

Benton Badness

Yes. I know. More Porsche stuff. What gives?? Stumbled on this vid via a new site I'm really digging called SILVRARROWS. Give it a gander, some beautiful footage in here.

The RWB Porsches

Spend just a few minutes searching Porsches on either Tumblr or Pinterest, and you'll quickly come across some aggressive, wide-body examples with the letters RWB emblazoned on them. My first thought was that these were some kind of all-wheel drive mods with a "rear wheel bias" hence the RWB. But I've come to learn these are actually the products of the amazing Porsche tuner RAUH-Welt Begriff of Japan.

Their gorgeous builds are known for their serious stance, distinctive wide-body kits and massive rear wings and apparently are fixtures on the streets of several Asian countries. They've just recently launched their operations in the United States as well.

Here are some of my fave examples, as well as a great little vid on RWB that I recently stumbled on about their operation in Thailand. Enjoy!



One more for the road...

Wes Anderson: Symmetry Snobbery

As if we didn't already know this already, Wes Anderson is a complete symmetry snob and I'm totally okay with it. Enjoy!

Will CarPlay Play Nice?

Thanks to the good old Geneva Car Show, Apple did something this week that it rarely ever does. It gave us all a sneak peek at product that's still a bit of a work in progress: the automotive onboard iOS system called CarPlay. (Ya know, kinda like AirPlay for your car... but you'll probably have to plug it in and no, you can't watch movies.)

Ever since the first iPod came out, I (and probably all of us) have wanted better integration with my vehicles. CarPlay seems to be the answer to that... finally. But I've got a small handful of concerns that hopefully won't derail the promise of real in-car integration.

Apple Maps?

Uh, not a bonus folks! I've been lead astray far too many times by Apple's cheap knockoff of the real deal. Gimme Google.

Plugged in?

I feel like they're showing the iPhone plugged in for a very specific reason... CarPlay better work just as well via Bluetooth. (UPDATE: Uh, sounds like this is a plug-in only deal, bleh.)

Knobs?

Who needs knobs? Or a touchscreen for that matter? The promise of Her has made me much more of Siri superfan. Why even reference those old inputs? Just give Siri Scarlett's gravelly sarcasm and trust me, we are good to go.

But if you insist on in-car multitouch... do it this way for sure:

Not this way:

Getting Stoked for the Oscars?

Who will win the Oscar fight for Best Original Score? John Williams or Arcade Fire? I never thought that contest could possibly exist. Enjoy this clip from the scoring of Spike Jonze's in-the-not-too-distant-future film Her.

Volkswagen Bio Runner Concept

Back in 2008 I stumbled on this cool concept sketch of a futuristic VW Baja-style racer called Bio Runner. I saved some pics of it on my hard drive and stumbled on them the other day wondering why the crap I never posted them anywhere. The Bio Runner was one of the award-winning designs to come out of that year's LA Design Challenge and I just can't get enough of the spectacular image of the Syd Mead-ish future it paints.

The concept features an athletic vehicle with limbs that can respond to various terrain types and basically lean into turns. It's supposedly powered by dual-turbine engines that can rev up to 500,000 rpm's and drinks bio-synthetic jet fuel. So apparently it's not a hybrid?

I love that the creator went to as far as to envision things like the support chopper delivery system, a Speed Racer-esque spy drone and even a Red Bull sponsorship. This kind of creativity reminds me so much of building crazy LEGO vehicles as kid! Speaking of LEGO... man, I gotta go see that flick already...

Here are some additional images to geek out on: