All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
When I shop, it feels like the only good fashion pieces nowadays have a 3-D frog sewn on them or cost a thousand bucks. Am I doomed, or is there an easily findable store I'm overlooking—a place where I'll want everything on the rack?
I went to a mall in L.A. a few weeks back to find a simple white button-down for a party, and it turned into some kind of fashion odyssey. Everything had pick stitching or bejeweled buttons or embroidered amphibians. I felt like I was shopping at the Rainforest Cafe gift shop. So I agree: In this maximalist, put-an-animal-on-it sartorial era that we're currently shopping in, it's damn near impossible to find a foundational anything. Which warps our perception of what makes a great brand. We're too focused on pieces and not collections. Just because you like a jacket you saw on Ryan Gosling doesn't mean the whole line is strong.
The way I grade a brand is by something I call the pass-to-grab ratio. If out of every ten items I would only grab two, then that brand isn't really my thing—even if two of those items are the “must-have,” celebrity-craze items of the season. It's like our grandparents complaining when pop stars pad out their albums with filler songs. (Looking at you, Beebz.) And the brand that has the highest ratio (I'll put it at eight out of ten) is the French go-to Sandro. It doesn't just make hit singles. Each collection is a balanced four-disc rock opera. Almost everything there is marked by a Parisian touch—a baked-in nonchalance that makes you look like you know what you're doing.
It's easy for a brand—lazy, even—to make a great sweater that costs 800 euros. But Sandro's pricing is a fraction of that. And they often have sales. And the clothes don't fall apart when you accidentally wash 'em on “sanitize.” Plus you can find Sandro in Bloomingdale's or at an outlet center just past the Ruby Tuesday. Which really comes in handy when you're traveling. I often find myself buying clothes when I bounce from city to city. I'll need a dark pair of pants for an unexpected dinner, a lighter jacket because, despite my much wiser girlfriend's pleas, I won't look at the weather forecast before I board the flight. And I can always find something at Sandro that I can wear long after my specific style emergency—and this style era—passes. Isn't that the whole point of shopping? To find things that, no matter what Gosling is wearing, you'll always come back to? Clothes with value. And with as few frogs as possible.
This story originally appeared in the September 2018 issue with the title "You Just Haven't Found Your Chain Store."