Rowing Blazers
Curious to hear the thoughts and experience of the server on Rowing Blazers - especially with the upcoming Target collab.
Many of the reviews say that the quality is good; but the brand often draws the ire of diehard traditionalists, and discussion of their actual garments are otherwise sparse.
5 Replies
I’ve seen many critiques of their branding, design choices, etc that I agree with. But when they hit on a design or collab, their bread and butter rugby shirts (the only product I have from them) are really nice. I happily recommend those unless you simply don’t want to be seen wearing the brand.
I have a few things from them, and they're about on par with PRL (the nicer stuff that still uses the box label) or BB-- nice but not exceptionally so. I think their style and design ethos is great even as somebody that embraces a more narrow-minded idea of trad dress: making trad and prep aesthetics more accessible by drawing them together with a more contemporary look is a good thing, its basically the same thing ALD is doing. I think also that they draw on more interesting trad/prep looks (i.e. athletic wear) which gives insight into the overall look and aesthetic as it would have been in period more than what the groypers and hardliners on SF and IS promote. I mean their founder, Jack Carlson(?), is a PhD holder in anthropology who specifically studied trad and prep styles of dress, so I think that he has a pretty good handle on what he's doing and what "rules" he's breaking. Also worth noting that a lot of trad/prep dress didn't even have any "rules" to break, but rather was just informed by class group-think and traditions and what was available at the time-- ivy-leaguers and old money new englanders would buy and wear Addidas, Nike, New Balance, etc. and wear that, so you can still find examples of them wearing the 80/90's tech fabrics and such and wearing the sort of styles that you see in RB stuff
Have one rugby from them. I paid full price for it. Honestly paying full price might have been a bit dumb, but I loved the piece so much I just did it. It's very heavyweight and warm. I tried using it as single layer in the summer, but it's too hot. On sale I would probably say it's worth it. Haven't seen anyone else make a similar pattern.
@pumaturtle your take please
I'm definitely getting an "ALD on a budget" vibe from the Target stuff... And I like that. I think I'm going to have a look next time I'm in Target.