TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #645: The Lost Art of Dressing Like a Man with O.W. Root

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Marty sits down with O.W. Root to discuss the importance of men's style, how clothing reflects and shapes culture and character, and why dressing well is a scalable way to improve both personal confidence and societal civility. O.W. Root's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/necktiesalvage STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/VJ2dABShBz Opportunity Cost Extension: https://www.opportunitycost.app/ Shoutout to our sponsors: Coinkite https://coinkite.com Unchained https://unchained.com/tftc/ Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/

you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all all the central banks going nuts so it's all acting like safe haven i believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency bitcoin wins in the world of fiat currencies bitcoin is the victor i mean that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. OW, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me. I would be lying if I said you haven't been an incredibly positive influence on my life, particularly in the last year or two. I've been following you on X, necktie salvage, and you've even influenced

me to buy more Oxfords, one of which I'm wearing today. Fantastic. I'm glad to hear that. I'm always glad to hear that yeah we have a mutual friend in uh michael goldstein bitstein as he's famously known as in the bitcoin space and he's been sharing your content with me telling me for years to follow you and really dig into what you're doing and i think uh the two of you and michael and i have a shared appreciation for bringing back better aesthetics in the world And your focus is on making sure that men particularly dress well. Why is this so important to you? Well, you know, aesthetics matter.

So there's a couple of things here. First, I'm going to preempt the critique about aesthetics mattering. The critique is, well, listen, if you focus so much on aesthetics, you miss the moral concern. You miss the values, all that sort of stuff. And I understand where that's coming from. But what we need to understand is that when we focus on aesthetics, whether it's clothing or houses or whether it's design or anything, we aren't focusing on this in a materialistic way. We're not focusing on this in a flippant way. It's not a shallow way.

It's about a deeper thing. It's about that which makes our lives better. It's about that which makes our lives more enjoyable to live. It's about that which reflects our values. It's about that which makes men and women, boys and girls, greater. and for clothing all men wear clothing we are not animals we don't walk around naked so every guy wears clothing doesn't matter if you are rich poor somewhere in the middle whatever whatever you are doing whatever job you're doing you are wearing clothes i guess unless you're a

lifeguard they're not wearing clothes but not many people are lifeguards so you are wearing clothes they have an impact on your life and you wear them 24 7 you wear them all the time unless you're taking a shower you're wearing clothes or sleeping i guess you're wearing clothes and so these things are with you all the time, they impact us even more consistently than say architecture. Because if you don't like the way a building looks, you leave the building or you move from building to building, but your clothes follow you wherever you go. And so why I focus on clothes so much is that it is completely scalable. Essentially, every guy makes these choices every morning. Every guy is impacted by his clothes, whether he realizes it or not. And those clothes say something to himself

and the world at the same time and it feels like particularly i would say so i'm a 90s child i was born in 91 34 right now so i feel like late 90s early 2000 you sort of have this transition to like pajama pants and walmart became normalized and slovenly looks became more normalized over the last two and a half three decades what do you think drove this and why why do you think people feel comfortable dressing poorly a really good question i mean this is a really really good question it's it's really related to so much because think about this like a chicken and the egg scenario you know think about clothes they impact the culture then their reflection of the culture as well they impact either an ascent or a descent in society and in one's life

and they also create it as well so i think it's like a snowball falling down the hill so why would it be in the past couple decades and it's really increased recently i mean five years past five ten years it's gotten exceedingly bad even in more formal uh jobs and occupations why would that be i think we've seen a just a broad degeneration culturally we've seen a confusion culturally we've seen a loss of clear mission and purpose civilizationally and i think we see that reflected in our clothing you know it the state of the clothes make the state of man and they reflect the state of man so as man um both as uh as human and as man the man versus as the woman have been degraded and downgraded in society and culture so have clothes been degraded

and downgraded in culture as well and going back to chicken and egg ascent descent is it your belief that by picking the low-hanging fruit of simply dressing better you can begin to present better yourself and then create like a social awareness that creates a positive feedback loop to get us out of this negative one absolutely 100 i mean we all know this i mean think about it with your think about your space if your space is super super messy if your room is just a total hellhole it looks just absolutely awful you're gonna kind of be scattered and you don't feel that good you really don't nobody really feels better in a crazy messy place everybody feels a little better when it's clean every single guy i've met i have never met a single guy ever who

started putting on decent clothes and who said i didn't notice any difference in my mindset shift in how i approached my work and how i approached my day and how i thought about myself you know i mean when you i mean i mean think about that when you care about something you prepare for it right whether it's a test whether it's a holiday whether it's seeing family whether it's a date you know if you're dating whatever it is you when you care about something you prepare for it if you're not preparing for your day you're just rolling out of bed in pajama pants on a t-shirt you don't really care about your day you don't really care about yourself you don't really care about how things are going and so without a doubt when people make an active choice in cultivating

wearing something that makes them feel it's a very simple language feel good feel better and i mean good i don't mean good like yeah it'd feel nice to lay in the hot tub all day and then work that feel pretty good too but it's not actually good that's just being lazy when people wear something to make them feel strong competent and confident that trickles upward they are strong confident and competent and they act in that way and it's like i said it's a choice that we make every day and every guy can make it there are what 400 million people in america it's you know people in america if everybody started dressing a little better that it rises things it really does there's this it not only in the appearance but also in the spirit and how you feel about

what you're doing yeah and just thinking it does seem like the who knows if it's internet culture the combination of things but the reflection of what people are wearing on society what's reflecting what probably really doesn't matter but you've seen this sort of degradation and civility yeah oh yeah big time as well yeah this is this is such a good point i mean civility and manners are related to dressing absolutely you know i mean what are i mean think about this you see and this is tragic this is sad but nowadays it's people don't even dress up for funerals i know that sounds crazy and i know that maybe if you're listening to this you've been to a funeral people dressed up but i hear stories and people talk to me with stuff you know

i do this for a living people tell me i went to a funeral and people were wearing crocs you know like like really i mean so if you're not dressing up for that paying your respects literally i mean that's what you say i'm paying my respects if you're not even dressing up for that what are you doing when you're just going anywhere going to the post office working going out to eat anywhere what does that say when you go to someone's house and you look like you were just sleeping don't really respect them and so we've seen that in the entire society every it's this lowering of respect this lowering of dignity and decency and civility without a doubt clothing is a form of manners it's like a physical form of manners without a doubt without a doubt yeah

no my uh i guess my relationship to civility manners clothing has been a bit of a meandering past throughout my life i'm from philadelphia originally yeah but we moved to charleston south carolina uh when i was younger when i was about nine we lived there for four years and a northeast philly kid getting dropped in charleston south carolina with a weird accent and totally foreign and uncouth dialect was for my mother made the wise decision of sending me to cotillion right when we moved down there to learn basic manners and how to pronounce water correctly and it's something that i honestly still even though it was jesus 20 24 25 years ago now

At this point, it's like I think I did two years at Cotillion, and the lessons I learned there about manners and how to act in public still reflect, I like to think, on what I do to this day. And I think I've become more passionate about this particular topic as I've gotten older, more particularly since I've had children. I've got two young boys, a third child on the way. Wonderful. Congratulations. Thank you. And looking at the boys and thinking about what type of example I'm trying to set for them, I think clothing is something that is becoming more obvious to me. My boys try to reflect what I'm doing in terms of what they wear. And I think it's very important.

Absolutely. I mean, yeah, this is all connected. This is all connected. And so many people that I work with and so many guys that follow me, read me, talk to me, they start thinking about this when they start having kids often. They start realizing, oh, my kids are going to look up to someone. You know, your kids, your boys and girls will learn from their mother and your boys will learn from you what a dad looks like. You know, I always think I remember my dad wearing my dad wasn't a clothes hound. you know he wasn't buying tons of super expensive stuff but he was just i mean he was from a certain era where i mean he would wear chinos an oxford shirt maybe blazer that kind of stuff to work

and uh when i remember being a kid i had to simply have this memory i remember thinking well that's how a dad looks a dad looks like that that's how a dad looks because that's my dad wore and now we're moving to this era where the dads don't even wear that because us we were our dads are a little older and they tend to dress a little bit better you know but now we're moving to this era where a lot of guys aren't picking up that mantle that they're not showing their children or their boys how to dress like that or how to have manners or how to behave like little men who grow into big men and we're seeing a real it's connected to manners just like you said it's connecting to how to be a good man it's connected to all this sort of stuff and we're

seeing a lot of problems there to be honest with him yeah in terms of like fixing it you mentioned your dad wasn't a clothes snob but not dressed well i think that's something that is how would i describe it's that it's a lazy excuse for dressing better as it's too expensive uh you need a wide variety in the closet to to do it well and to do it correctly is this is this true no not one bit okay let me see i'm gonna pull up my watch here just to make a little demonstration let's see let's see take my watch here so this watch it's a very nice watch it looks very very it's this beautiful 1990s timex when you wear this you feel like harrison ford and the fugitive um it's very very cool it's extremely classic i mean it's just this is classic style right here

this was 19 on ebay 19 it's from like 1994 or something before they did indigo it still works so that's not really expensive it looks pretty nice and same thing goes for you know i talked you can build a wardrobe that's a super extreme example but you can build a wardrobe from thrift you can build a wardrobe just not from thrift but buying new pieces that are on sale a lot of people that build wardrobes from thrift i mean it's so possible when i say thrift i mean thrift store goodwill and ebay as well ebay is an insane source any guy who's into classic style actually i mean we're talking as cheap as you want even guys who have money will buy stuff on ebay because there are a lot of jackets that they don't make anymore you just cannot get them

the meme that we don't know how to make it anymore that we don't know how to do it so you can buy brooks brothers jackets that i mean there are a few places make them but they're a thousand dollars new versus 75 on ebay and so that's being you that's going used but even if you don't go use even if you go new you can there are places you can source shirts that are 50 bucks a little bit more that are going to last you a decade or a little less same thing for pants same thing for shoes that are 90 bucks that that is no no more expensive than whatever slop people are wearing but it's a it's a conscious choice you make this conscious choice if you have if you have 50k to spend on a wardrobe you can spend that if you've got 1k to spend on a wardrobe you can spend that

too and you can still look great i guarantee you well it's that's such an this topic of quality yeah because that's something that does perturb me as well like i went to high school between 2005 and 2009 i went to a prep school so i had to wear a jacket blazer shirt tie belt shoes all that and even since then like 16 years since i graduated high school it feels like you can't get the same quality jackets specifically yeah like i've been i've gotten a couple of suits and jackets from suit supply they look good but the the quality isn't that great they degrade pretty quickly that's exactly right like like with the brooks thing you buy a brook i have brooks jackets that are from the 60s i mean that's that's like 60 years old this point yeah i mean

we're getting i have jackets that are all 60 to 75 years old 65 years old these jackets um and they they're they hold up just great they look basically brand now you know and they don't make them like they used to there is a big degradation of quality you know for polo shirts when guys wear polo shirts i always recommend honestly if someone's like i'm gonna buy i want to buy like a fleet of polo shirts playing tennis or something like that um i honestly recommend going on ebay and buying an old polo shirt from like 1995 or like 2001 rather than a new one because it seriously is it's a better weave the fabric is literally better it's sewn better and will last longer and so a big reason why people buy thrift is actually to remedy this problem of

quality and if you do want to get good quality there are places that make good quality but the problem is that it's a premium now you know it's a real premium there are some places that thread the needle that do real good stuff i'm really happy with proper cloth i get a lot of stuff from them i have a partnership with them but again it's not super cheap i mean you're getting a custom shirt and it's 150 bucks something that's not super cheap but it's a problem this quality is a problem and this is why a lot of people do thrift this is why i do thrift for a lot of stuff it's because you can get better quality do you see the potential for that to reverse at all because there's there obviously has to be a spot in the market for for more quality it is frustrating

absolutely it's not like we forgot the technology you know i mean you can do it you can build better stuff you can make better stuff there are good makers you know i mean you see people leading the way you have to lead the way jack donnelly i love jack donnelly's pants he makes these amazing made in the usa high-rise chinos they're unbelievable they're just hardcore old school great a little pricier but you you have to have people leading the front leading the charge you have to incentivize better quality that's not made in a cheap factory in china and or wherever and uh make it in the usa is ideally better i think yeah yeah how much does fast fashion and economic incentives have to do with this oh big time big time big time if you're only gonna if you're only gonna wear if

something is only going to be in style for four months you build it for four months you make it last four months and you stitch it together with garbage thread and that's it but classic style timeless style traditional style you're supposed to wear it forever i mean you can wear it your entire life a navy blazer you get a nice navy blazer you can wear it for a decade really decades same thing for oxford shirts so they're designed to last a long time and so this reflects a different cultural sentiment different values you know people have crunched the numbers on this and seen how much people spent on clothes in the old days 30s or something like that they spent more per shirt and they had fewer shirts but they lasted longer i mean this is we all know this

but people have really done the numbers on it that that's just what it was i've been told that taste is subjective though how could how could fashion be timeless right um the way i put it is this so let's think about it this way there are different style worlds so because i run into this a lot for example there's a there's an italian style there's different schools if we if we talk about classic style when i say classic style let's break it all let's go all the way back down classic style in an american sense and in a western sense in the most broad terms imaginable are it's a pair of shoes with a pair of pants a shirt and a jacket over it and possibly something around your neck that is something that's a formula that has been in the western canon for

centuries really it that that is a very now it's changed you know at different times it was more it was loose around here you know it was bigger around here at different times it was smaller in a very micro sense we saw there there were eras where ties got skinny you know like the mid-century then they got wider then they got skinnier again they go back and forth and when it comes to that stuff if you stay around this is a little insider baseball but if you keep your uh tie at the widest point if you buy ties that are around 3.25 inches at the widest point you'll be right in the middle and you'll basically never be super cool or super out of style you'll be right up the gut right in the middle but this general thing shoes pants uh shirt

jacket and maybe something on your neck this is the formula that has been in the western canon for centuries and so what i focus on and what i deal with in sorry i should say one other thing There are various schools like the Italian school, French school, English school. These have different styles. They have different little details that are different in terms of their neckwear, their shirts, what you do and you do not do. But what I focus on is American style and classic American style, modern American style, meaning in the 20th century sense. You know, after we're getting into the early 1900s and moving forward to today. And that is Ivy style and preppy styles is basically the heart and core of that.

And that has essentially a set of not necessarily rules, but a presumption of how man looks best. And so that timeless style taps into those that sent those centuries old format that I described within a within its own niche of American rules and guidelines and sensibilities. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah, it does. And it's funny, you mentioned architecture earlier, and that's part of the reason, not part of the reason, but again, being from Philly, we recently moved back to the Philadelphia area from Texas. And no matter where I went, I lived in South Carolina, beautiful architecture, Chicago, beautiful architecture, New York, beautiful architecture. But there's something about the stone builds in the Philadelphia area that never really beckoned to me.

And that is timeless. These are centuries old houses. and they're authentically american too you feel that american sensibility you know they're timeless there is this americanness a very american thing is the button-down collar is a very american thing british will do it too and other places will do it too but it is a distinctly it really has come to embody something about american style the oxford cloth button down the ocbd and specifically a tie with this you know a lot of times the europeans they don't do that they say you don't wear a tie with a button-down collar but in america that's like a

hot dog on the 4th of July, wearing a tie with a button-down collar. It is an interesting thing where it is classic in the American sense, and it is authentically American. Sup, freaks? This rep of TFTC was brought to you by our good friends at CoinKite. They make the cold card queue, my favorite hardware wallet, the most secure hardware wallet on the market. As you can see, it's got the BlackBerry form factor, full keyboard. It's got two secure enclaves you create your private public keys offline the device never has to go online never does go online so you keep your bitcoin secure if you have your bitcoin on exchanges and you're looking to get it off secure it in the best way possible pick up a cold card

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It's not comfortable. that's a lie it's a total lie this is the problem this is this is the problem i understand where they're coming from with that this is largely born from the slim fit era so most of the guys so i'll address two things i assume this is coming from guys first so i'll address it coming from guys they are a legitimate gripe that they may be having and i'll tell you about the illegitimate gripe second but legitimate gripe is the slim fit era did stink for comfortability it really did stink you know you had the slim fit era was kind of a little in the early 2000 maybe 2008-ish seven-ish i mean people we people can like quibble back and forth about the exact times

but it started dying out maybe two years ago and so we are on the downswing of it some people are still doing it because they aren't aware of our moving but we're dying away from it and the slim fit era you had shirts that were just super tight the pants were super tight the suits were really undersized you know you people could barely even button their jacket i mean barely mother jacket and that was what looked good was this really ultra slim thing it's very uncomfortable it's extremely uncomfortable i mean on the thighs you sit down it's just right on your skin you know it's not it's not comfortable and so that is a legitimate gripe that is not comfortable stuff to wear and so if you're wearing clothes that are too small it's not comfortable the illegitimate

gripe is that a lot of guys just sort of have like a fetish with comfort they're just sort of whiners to you know they're just whining about anything that is that is not a pair of fleece pajama pants or whatever they're made of in a hoodie and i'm not going to argue with them and tell you that uh tell them that a five-year-old pair of tacky chinos and a 10-year-old oxford shirt that's been worn in that feels super soft is more comfortable than what they're wearing because that it's a that is that might be a subjective argument but i would say comfort is not the comfort is not what you should worship and there is this sort of turning comfort into an idol yeah it can become gluttonous at a point right for sure exactly absolutely it's like

sitting in the hot tub i would love to sit in the hot tub all day and just respond on my phone to but what is that yeah yeah the uh and it's i i succumb to it too like in the mid 2010s living in new york trying to work in tech i think tech really drove that leisure leisurely look at the the workplace sort of craze that's taken over and i don't know i feel better now that i'm beginning to and it's simple the small acts i've taken is like trying to wear a shirt with a collar that's it or or an oxford just especially during the summer down here like even on the beach it's like my beach shirts are either like an oxford or a golf shirt yeah these days it's just simple thing so simple so easy it's no more difficult it's no more difficult to do that and what would

you say to people like i'm saying that in the back of my head i'm thinking i hope i don't sound like a snob to people and i think that's another sort of factor in this acceptance of leisure wear becoming normalized is i think partly driven by woke culture which had this northeast prep aesthetic in squarely in the bullseye of the target that you know that is culturally for for many decades and i think there's just this um attempt to the avoid that aesthetic because you don't want to be put in in the middle of the boys a bullseye the target of the social sort of ire that world culture has really really been driving absolutely 100 this is that the style i focus on is literally that exact style you know ivy prep i'm that is american style you know that

is you know i always say what is it um the the 20th century american man was made in the image of brooks brothers and then for florin ralph florin worked at brooks brothers so all this flows down from there um and from the prep schools as well jay press is another one but really brooks brothers was 20th century man was made in the image of brooks brothers and so this woke culture absolutely targets i mean that is right in the heart of it because it is american style it is authentic american style and it is this it has a decided history in america a clear history it's not just a commercial phenomenon and it is also beyond just the historical stuff what does and beyond it just being american and being western it's also makes men strong you know what culture

wants us all to be extremely weak ultimately you know it's a victim thing it's a weak thing it wants to make everyone blend together you know athleisure is androgynous clothing really you know a man wearing a tie and a woman wearing heels i mean those are the thing i love about the tie and the heels or the jacket in the dress is that they are these extreme things that really embody or are a reflection of their being a man or being a man or being a woman and so when you take those things away you flatten everyone into crocs like idiocracy and then everybody into the um the pajama pants it is in it is instead of exacerbating the forms of man and woman it tries to form them together you know and so you see this lessening of the forms of man and

woman and that is also a really deep uh problem of woke culture that's what they go after you know they really want to destroy all those forms yeah well let's dive into the necktie specifically i mean it's part of your your handle on x necktie salvaged why why is the necktie worth salvaging so it's really funny so the name necktie salvage actually came from when i first started talking about all this and everything originally what i would do with a lot of guys is i would tailor their neckties so they'd have these old neckties that were like at four inches at width the widest point down there and they would want to bring them in a little bit they don't bring them to 3.5 inches 3.25 inches and so i would tailor them because i do a lot of my own alterations

of tailoring as well so that's actually where the original name neckties i was came from was literally salvaging these old neckties but why is the necktie worth um yeah like it's you got a tie right here okay so why i'm not wearing a tie right now because it is very hot in summer and summer is a more casual season for me i wear a tie basically probably in the winter fall and spring maybe 75 80 percent of work days but the summer i live in a right on lake michigan the town where i live so it's kind of resorty it's kind of it's holiday it's fun so i'm a little more informal but why is the necktie worth saving so first of all it's it's something that women don't wear it is a male exclusive garment really and someone say i've seen a picture of a woman

wearing it as a as a waitress in 1980 yeah i don't care i'm not talking about that it is a male garment so it is a garment that is only ours and a removal of that means the removal of something that is distinctly male another thing is you know the necktie is about personality i mean it's not only the fabric or the um design this is a 1990s polaroid floor and i love these geometrics they're just so 90s it's hard to describe why that's so 90s but it is it's so good um and i love these but in beautiful silk too but what the necktie is also is it is this it's a personal flair that isn't only based on the fabrics it's not only based on the patterns it's based on the fact that you know you tie it around it is in a certain sense not utilitarian you're not using it for

anything it doesn't serve a purpose it's just to look like something it's just for the aesthetic itself and there's a joy in that you know there's a joy and i'm cultivating a personal style i am looking a certain way and it doesn't have a purpose and it's a a domain of expression even in how you tie it you know guys like me who are kind of more into this sort of stuff will tie it all sorts of weird ways we'll tie it a little messy we'll tie the skinny end longer than the fat end and if you've never like encountered that stuff you're like what the heck that's wrong but it has to do with this thing sprezzatura where you're sort of intentionally doing things that are a little wrong but not in such an obvious way it's a whole thing to sort of

it's like a elegant sort of nonchalance the point is the necktie is an aspect of personal style and fun and experience and our clothes have become very dour almost i mean if you look at it like the black or gray athleisure is very dour compared to someone wearing a tie with a striped shirt and jacket yeah i must admit i've uh i've gotten away from the necktie outside of formal events in recent years and it's it is uh because another come back to like routine which you mentioned earlier like being intentional set your day that's one thing because the necktie like pop your collar throw it throw it around and you're looking in the mirror doing it and oftentimes before your jacket the last thing you put on yeah you step out and you're like having a conversation with

yourself and visualizing manifesting potentially if you will and like part of that process and routine i think is just good for developing that confidence and more importantly like having a conversation with yourself i don't know if that's coming off weird but no it isn't i it is not coming off weird at all i mean that routine in a way getting ready getting dressed as a man in that necktie put in the last thing you put on for your jacket it's like a secular morning ritual it's like a modern male secular secular morning morning ritual and when i say modern i'm not saying modern 2025 i'm saying modern in the modernist era you know so it's like it is almost a secular morning ritual and you're preparing for your day and there is something about the tighter

it's tight there and then it explodes out essentially you know it's a tight knot and then it's loose and there's there's a certain element of strong preparation with it serious about your Bitcoin? Start acting like it. Unchained just launched the Financial Freedom Bundle, a curated pack that includes a premium Bitcoin book, a new hardware wallet guide, and access to a private macro event with Tur Demeester. Legend. It's time to take control of your generational wealth. Go to unchained.com slash TFTC to request yours. That's unchained.com slash TFTC. Pretty hot package, freaks. Go pick it up. What do you suggest people should read they're interested about this it's not in your sub stack but their books is there

yeah sort of jumping off points for people who may listen to this be like i want to dig into this obviously read the sub stack necktie salvage and but are there books about this these topics yeah there is so there's a couple things so i'm actually working on two books right now gosh i have so much something doing and it's like i have all these books i'm you just do get one out but one of them is um essentially why do clothes matter you know just like why does this matter why does this matter the other one is basically like a very beginner's guide the idiot's guide kind of in a certain sense step one i'm building from the base up you know when we build our wardrobe we build like a pyramid and so i'm writing this book that it's just getting guys started this is what

you need boom boom this is how you build it up but apart from that which will be coming out what they are for me in my my work apart from that there's something that would be good would be something like bruce boyer's true style um bruce boyer has a book true style and he it's very good it's american you know because a lot of these something that can be difficult with some of these books is they're either european which is totally okay but we it's like a different language you know french is a different language than english you know so they're just different languages and and or they're often a little formal just a little more formal which is cool but a lot of guys don't wear formal clothes every day and so what you really need or what we need

most guys need is how do you start dressing with intention without wearing a suit every day and so bruce boyer does err a little bit on the more formal side so you're going to have that and i'm trying to fill that gap when i come out with something it's gonna it'll fill that gap but that's who i would recommend for an american is check out bruce boyer's true style all right i gotta pick that up it's good the um what are your thoughts on gen z like the uh do you have hope for gen z uh in terms of you know increasing civilians and to be fair we've i've run another show we had a uh a gen z months where we noticed that our demographics of our audience trended it's like 35 to 40

our core demo is like 35 to 65 year old males and we have no gen z's and so we reached out to some in the bitcoin space we're like come on we need the gen z perspective and it certainly did change my perspective you can't obviously can't lump one generation and and think that all of them act the same way though they do have certain cultural sort of similarities to the the era they grew up in but to me before that series and the the good gen zers that we had on the show the whole culture is just driven by the high velocity trash economy streaming culture sort of uh supreme style uh street wear yeah not even like a lot of them just wear sweatpants and sit at the computer and talk and they have insane amounts

of influence on on their uh and other gen z individuals and yeah it's like how do how do we turn the tide there is there a way it's a really good question it's a really really good question this is i know the zoomers i can't get a handle on the zoomers you know i hope for the zoomers i want because the zoomers are the future we've got the zoomers we've got them a living you know they're the future i know a couple good zoomers a couple good zoomers and they're great they're super super great but i know they're unique i know they're very unique for the mass mass amount of zoomers the only way i don't know how to change them with this because they do they look like slop i i think that there is a certain disconnect with the way that they understand the

world emotionally because they grew up with interacting with the technology technological world different than us so i think that they do have a certain sort of different emotional calibration um because of their interaction with the tech world and we didn't have that i'm 38 and so like i didn't have a cell phone until i went to college and i was t9 and i was t9 and so we grew up with dial-up and my friends had to have to like so i left they like their internet is still really bad because they live in the middle of nowhere so i think that there is this different emotional thing their emotions are calibrated differently in this way and i'm not saying better or worse but just differently and in a certain sense i don't know if they respond

to incentives in the same way older generations do and so what that means is i don't know how the hell to change a lot of them um now granted i don't know how to change a lot of millennials either um but what i would say is that so i'm not only dumping on the zoomers um i think that the ones there are zoomers who are searching and wanting for more and i think that they do not like what they see i think they're very self-aware and i think and again i know some of them follow me and i think that though i think that we're going to see maybe a separation of the zoomers And we might see – it's not going to be 50-50. It's not even going to be 199.

It's more like 0.199. But I think that you will see – or we do have a – there's a very good element. There's a very good clan of Zoomers, but they're pretty far and few between. And I think that those people, though, resonate with this. Do we need to bring back public shaming? Yes. Absolutely. I mean, this is the thing.

i mean if you really want to get real about it you could you can't actually change this stuff voluntarily because people will always choose the easier route this is just kind of like a nature of this is like a thing of human nature people don't want to be better you can't have to make them be better you have to kind of punish them in a way make it worse to look bad i mean that's what people dressed well back in the old days it wasn't because they were like oh my gosh i'm reading all this style stuff no they just like if i look like crap i'm not getting a job if i look really bad i'm not getting the girl if i look really really bad my dad's gonna kick me out of the house or something you know like just like you were like ostracized you look bad like if you

looked bad people weren't going your life was worse if you looked bad and so if you if we make it so your life is worse if you look bad people will dress better it's just incentives you know so now is it possible to do that i don't know i don't have a lot of hope i mean how are we can do that i mean you know our country club's the last uh the last bastion the last line to hold and from what i understand they're even getting lax and some of their dress codes as well some of them yeah you know i think that it is and i've also i think within law you see the same thing i have a lot of lawyer friends and they say it's really um declined in law it used to be pretty formal but around maybe i'll check these dates but some of these guys yeah back in the 2000s

early 2000s even into like 2008 2010 guys were wearing suits you know that was the thing but then it's really declined and yeah for court if you're going to trial and stuff or if you're in court you have to wear a suit still but everyone i know who's a lawyer says it's gotten a lot worse even though it's still the like the last bastion is still holding a little bit and it makes sense because it's a very formal profession but since covid they've really accelerated downward too i do think that there is a future where people do start basically requiring things in their restaurants not a lot they're not saying a jacket but know this you know know this kind of like i've seen stores saying no dogs we don't allow dogs in here you know because they're just sick of the dog

thing you could see people saying i mean it's a long way off maybe 20 years or something but you might see nice places saying you have to wear a shirt with a collar and eventually that could you know kids hate what their parents did so maybe you could see kids hating their slot parents you never know you know you know that is uh i don't know it docks my exact location this may do it to anybody who uh knows the area well but there is a bar in the little island towns that i live on in the summer that if you try to walk in there without a collar shirt they kick you out no hats that's awesome i mean i mean if this could change it could change on the private level like that where we're not i don't think because this is the thing and i'm not blaming anybody for this

because i'm not going to be walking up to people saying hey put on a collar shirt like on the street i'm not going to be going up to people criticizing them on the street from what they're wearing but if you have establishments that have rules posted on the door where then the only people the people serving say i'm just enforcing the rules if you did see a move toward that you would see an inching toward people dressing a little better but that does involve some sort of compulsion you know it involves and you cannot go here unless you wear that yeah and it doesn't people no if you if a group of us i mean i don't do it that much anymore and i've got children but back in the day when before kids if we knew we were going to that bar it's like all right take

off the hat put on a college shirt yeah and get like even if you're going to another spot before that if you know you want to ultimately end up there it's like i gotta look good you gotta look good and that's people only respond to that they're not going to do it voluntarily now the people who follow me do it voluntarily but it's a very i mean this is just a small percentage of people i mean most people and i'm not i'm not even saying this in some sort of cruel way but i think human nature a lot of our human nature is to choose the easiest route you know that's just we are you know we need guide you know we need guides to tell us what to do kind of and so um we'll choose the easiest way unless you're an extremely high spirit person who will choose the

you know a better way and so yeah i mean slow movements like that if we were to see that that would change stuff and coupled with other stuff yeah and yeah that could change the culture But as for Gen Z, how to target them specifically, I don't know. They respond to incentives in weird ways, and I'm not sure how to understand them. Yeah. No, actually, I'm sure you're aware of Zuby on X. He posted a newsletter this morning about 10 lessons or 12 lessons for Generation Z men specifically, and I read it, and it's really good. And I think one thing that is missing from our culture also that contributes to this is like the lack of mentorship.

I was just going to say that I knew where you were going. I could tell where you were going with this. A lot of these guys grew up with no fathers. They grew up with fathers not showing them the way and they don't know what the hell to do. You know, they don't know what the hell to do. A lot of guys, because I do think some of the best Gen Z, they just want someone to tell them what to do. Some of them, you know, some of the best Gen Z realize like, wow, we are like cooked as a generation. We didn't learn anything.

tell me what to do like there is a group of that you know where they're like is this what i do okay that's what i do and and i think some of them didn't have dads showing them this sort of stuff and that's a failure of mentorship yeah yeah now i'm thinking like obviously i have my children i am their father mentor if you will but like how to do it like we um we have a lot of young people that work for us here at the i'm the oldest at the at the company and there's we've got a couple new contractors that we've done a lot of work with and they're i think 19 and 17 and it's been fun sort of like interacting with with them yeah and uh not not calling myself a mentor for them but something intentionally when we're going in the meetings like how do i present

myself and sometimes i forget like i'm like to think of myself as a kid at heart like i think of who i was a high school and college student like late years i like to think i still have that youthful spirit but more recently is particularly interacting with these individuals in a professional setting it's like well i'm like an older gentleman to them i had to present like that and yeah like you are the you're the giga chad in the boardroom um meme i just sent that out last night i said this is how i feel you know um these guys and yeah like 17 i mean you're twice as old like I'm twice as old as a 17 like I could like that he could be my son like if I had kids like I'm 38 if I had kids at the right time that's old enough so I could be my

son and so it's interesting taking that on and I think a lot of something that like you said you feel like a kid at heart often and you feel like yeah I still feel like I'm somewhat learning so much because we always learn so much in our lives but then we also I think sometimes don't realize our skills compared to others especially young people and like holy cow they don't know this stuff I'm sure you run into this all the time I'm talking to someone I assume they know what I'm talking about they I assume that they're already starting they're like I don't know the first five steps of what you're talking about you know and like oh my gosh wow like they don't they've never heard someone say you it is good to wear a shirt with a collar it is better to dress nice they've

never heard that simple statement they've never heard that and so sometimes I think in almost understanding our old head status it's almost realizing that they don't know everything we know not in a patronizing way but in a maybe it's our job to kind of show them more something yeah no it's funny i got uh as we're discussing this i'm getting notifications on my phone and i'm in a group chat with a bunch of old head surfers and they're just talking about the swell it's like little things like that like growing up on this island and surfing with old heads and they're teaching you not only how to surf but where to look and stuff like that we like chance and now they were my mentor in the surfing world and now we're in group chat talking about where

we're gonna go surf but this welcomes and that's how it works that's how it's supposed to work you know yeah that's fun that we need to bring we really need to bring that how did you get into this that's what i'm like how did this become your your focus and your passion and your life you know i started writing about style really primarily um when i had kids i i had kids and i thought to myself i was like i realized how bad the world looked you know i wrote how about everything looked and i and i i kind of want to make a difference basically and i thought like i need to do something i i feel useless if i'm not trying to impact a better make a better world for him in a certain sense you know and i want to have a son first um i have

a daughter as well um but i had a son first and like i i'm not doing anything to make his world but i can try to teach him but like i want to make some sort of change almost you know and so then i started talking about this and writing about this and and i talk about other stuff too you know and i in all of the things i write about often i write about are um i try to only say things that i would want my kids encountering when they were 20 you know because i think about what all these other guys are encountering online they're 20 21 22 you know stuff that's not so great and i think like what would i want my kids to encounter if they were sort of not knowing what to do the 20 in their 20s you know yeah yeah you're just inciting more thoughts about gen z by my like dating

culture like do you think the the style of gen z has anything to do with this uh problem in dating culture that exists now yeah yeah i mean nobody looks good my wife and i walk around the store and we're seeing these like we see these kids walk around the store you see these kids they're like obviously in college the guys and girls look like absolute crap they look so bad and we're like this is when you are supposed to be looking your best you should be looking your best you have the most to work with entire life at this point and you are looking like guys and girls alike you're looking absolutely terrible you're you are not looking attractive to the opposite sex you're not sexually enticing to them and that's how it works i don't tell you you know and if you're just

looking like you don't care well that like i think one of the uh and who knows if this is wide-ranging i assume it is but he knows how you've been manipulated by videos you see on x but the girl's saying like nobody's walking up to me i don't think men have confidence to do that like it's a partly because they look like shit yeah dude yes if you look like shit you're not gonna approach a girl and that gets back to just what we said at the very beginning of this it sets your day on this confident it's a when you get ready you're more confident you're more competent you feel stronger all this sort of stuff when you feel like crap you're not gonna have the stones to go approach some girl to go talk to some girl because you feel like

crap and who knows i've heard someone else says i don't know who it was but it's like you never know when you might meet the girl who could be your wife you know and so if you're dressed like dressed for if you if you are single you should be dressing good looking good because any girl that you might might that might be the one you know and oh the other thing about the dress about clothes too is that there's all these ways you can look at it you can look at it in a very uh moral religious way you can look at it in a very sort of like just let's get going way a very professional way and you can look at it in a very just brass tacks how how do i approach a girl so i can meet a girl or like how can i look attractive to a girl how can i like you can look for it for

romance too i need to meet girls i need to meet a girl i need to get married you know you can look at it a really brass tacks way and what i try often with my message of clothing is i try to spread those messages out because we're all at different stages in life us we have kids we're talking about how to show our boys how to dress or our kids how to dress the guy who's 23 is trying to meet girls he needs to dress decent so the girl doesn't say you look like an idiot you know it's anything for the girl by the way she used to be looking good like an idiot you know yeah yeah this is uh why do you think there's not enough discussion around this topic too because it seems like like you said it's it's how you look it's how you present it's very

primal almost to a sense but something that has been neglected ways i don't why is there a lot of not not discussion about this i think that there's two things there's one side of things where people are there's some people who are very very traditional and they're already on a very traditional track you know there's people who are very very conservative and very religious and very traditional and if they're in that world like really in that world they're not comfortable talking about sexual attraction the same way so they're talking in these more like biblical sort of ways then the other people are so degenerated and they don't want anybody to tell them to do anything or try and they're too lazy they just want to complain about the woman just wants to

complain about men suck men just want to complain about the fact that women suck no one wants to try to actually get anything done that they don't want to talk about it you know but then you do have the sliver of guys who are not like that and i assume a sliver of girls who are not like that as well although i don't know because i don't talk to girls about this it's i'm talking about guys but uh i think that that's kind of why there's like this one group that they think you should focus on other things you know the other group they're too lazy yeah well i'm happy you're focusing on it because i do think you and many others are there i'm sure you've noticed that there's been this resurgence of uh aesthetic accounts on on twitter in recent

years often associated with um conservative individuals but i don't think um dressing well is a political thing right for some reason the the aesthetic accounts are more associated with conservative ideals which is part of which makes sense because these people want to return to yeah traditionalist mindset but it's not there's nothing inherently horse race political about dressing decently it's civilizational you know i think you make an argument like i said you can talk about there's all these different ways you make an argument that i mean yeah the the tribe in the far-flung island wears loincloths because they're not civilized you know i mean that's not i'm not saying to be like cruel but that's just like they're not a civilized thing we have

civilization and so dressing decent is a form of civilization and a participation in civilization and so if there's this sensibility that left woke whatever is trying to tear down civilization then conservative conservative traditionalist will be the sort of trying to push the aesthetic realm uh something i like about clothes and i do like about clothes so much is that it requires action daily you know a lot of people will it's one thing to post a picture of a beautiful building and not be an architect but just like it it's another to put on your clothes and walk out into the world and it really influenced the world make the world more beautiful on your own you know when you do that you are making the world more beautiful you are taking action to do that and that is a

fulfilling thing an important thing and that's what i really like about because it requires that action every day it's not just one thing it's constantly doing it and you're all always participating in the beautification of the world in entrance and other guys yeah is that action start the night before like do you know what you're going to wear when you wake up or is it uh an explorative uh sort of practice in the mornings for me um it's all in the morning i don't do anything like before i and you know it takes me like two minutes to get ready in the morning it takes i mean once you have your wardrobe set i just know exactly i was like boom boom boom i got it you know i i just know what i'm wearing people imagine that i'm spending

like a lot of time thinking about it but it's really everything locks into place because i know what i'm doing um but for me it's in the morning i i i dress for how i feel in the morning for what the weather is not just the temperature but also if it's gray i'm gonna wear darker colors you know i'm gonna wear and even if it's summer it's like a sort of gray rainy day i'll wear a darker mod dress you know a mod dress is a sort of a plaid on a set on a very very thin cotton i'll wear a really dark madras i'm not going to wear say a pink uh like a pink stripe like a pink university stripe short sleeve oxford shirt on a rainy day but i might on a sunny day and i run on a sunny day and so i'll wear what i i'll change what i wear based on the weather and

so i do in the morning yeah all right i need to hand up accountability i need to fix my morning routine it's not uh not as intentional as maybe it should be feels good for me i mean listen it makes me feel i i there's so much chaos you got kids how old are your kids five and three okay yeah same for me okay so great so i know where you're coming from it's a lot of chaos uh it keeps keeps you keeps me uh it's a 30 minutes of order that gets it going on the day right Yeah, I saw your tweet the other day about having the morning coffee before the family woke up. That's the state I would like. When I do have those mornings, it is incredibly impactful on the rest of the day.

Yes. It's the hour of the father. The hour of the father of war. Yeah. Well, thank you for doing what you're doing, honestly. I'm not trying to blow smoke up your butt. But honestly, I think just simply by posting on Hex, you've had a positive influence, not only myself, but many others to really appreciate trying to look better, to to raise a higher, higher bar for civilization. I really appreciate that.

I mean, it really means a lot for you to say. I'm serious. Like, to me, that's what it's about. To make a positive difference, you know, and in a real way, in a way that is scalable. And when I hear about guys who say, wow, like this really, I get it now. And when I see that positive growth, it just, the world can feel like we can't control a lot of it. And there is a lot that we can't control. And maybe we're dissatisfied with something that's going on or whatever.

But we have to realize what we can control. What's our sphere of influence? And a lot of that starts with what's on our body. You know, it starts right here. It's really close, you know. So let's start there. And then we can make other impacts. and that's the way i because you know i tweet about style and then i treat all this other

stuff that is somewhat related it's about modern life and all sorts of all of this and we have to start where we are and we can make a difference in that way and make a difference for ourselves and others because something we don't realize is you know if you dress nice you wearing this shirt the socks are truly wearing a collar shirt you don't know because think about it you could walk into the store and a guy who's 15 16 19 csa looks really nice i never really see people wear that as much anymore i want to wear that he's never going to tell you you're never going to know he's not going to say that to you but you influenced him in a positive way and when i realized that i realized people don't always tell you that you influence them and this is where

dressing decently can not only benefit your life but even others who don't even talk to you and you'll never know it but that's how influencer fans out in a positive way i think completely agree think about it anybody listening to the stress better uh to set a positive influence out there but i'll be working uh anybody listening to this find out more about what you're doing schedule a consultation potentially absolutely oh yeah i love doing competitions i love working with guys working with guys individually is such a it's so awesome because you see i love getting guys started on their style journey and then seeing them develop their personal style teaching them the fundamentals and seeing them grow and then circle back after two years see where they

are and it's just wow what a difference it's just amazing so where you can find me is first of all on x necktie salvage is my username you can find me on instagram necktie salvage as well there's a link tree in my bio on x with a link to a bunch of stuff to the fitting room which is my sub stack um without which is my sub stack where i write about style and a link to everything else my dms are open for consultation my the real place where you can find me for everything is on substack instagram and twitter and on twitter there'll be a link in the link tree with a link to everything where you can find me and contact me and read what i have to say about style and i send out a morning memo every single day or every single weekday uh short little bits to get you

going to give you ideas to get you to guide you slowly over time because it's a long process i mean you can't understand everything you need to know about style in two days you know but drawing it out helps so that's where you can find me x next i salvage instagram link tree the bio there they'll give you a link to everything else go check it out thank you for doing this thank you for uh thank you for engaging me as i'm sweating profusely in front of you it's uh what temperature is it there man what what it's 90 degrees oh my god actually like the heat though yeah the thing is it's actually warm here let me see what it is right here oh man northern michigan it's like you're pretty divine it's 77 i'm gonna go to

the beach like right after this i'm going to the beach uh so no i it's a nice day here yeah well enjoy the beach thank you so much for your time and what you're doing hopefully we can do this again at some point thank you for having me it was such a pleasure such a joy such an awesome conversation and i would love to do it again all right that's all today freaks peace and love freaks thank you for listening to the show i hope you liked it if you did like it please make sure you subscribe rate review the show it helps us out a lot and also if you like these conversations i've come to realize that many people listen to the podcast they don't know we have another sort of layer of this media company we have the newsletter the bitcoin brief go to tftc.io

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