Por Homme – Men's Lifestyle, Fashion, Footwear and Culture Magazine

By now, you may have heard that J.Crew has invaded Madison Avenue with their latest men’s store, one that transforms a space once housed by a bank into the go-to shop for Upper East Siders. There are plenty of exclusive items found only at the 1040 Madison location which you won’t find at the other locations, including the Ludlow suit in Vitale Barberis Canonico cashmere or a Thomas Mason spread collar button down made exclusively for the shop. The two-story shop will house plenty of other fine collaborations as well, but none more appealing to us than that with Brooklyn-based Hickoree’s Hard Goods.

The folks have actually set up shop with some of their finest offerings right in the center of the former bank’s vault. Hickoree’s tells us this new venture will house an array of fine items from handmade bags and aprons by Stanley & Sons, to Hart’s Heritage seed packs, to Japanese pencils, to vintage chore coats, to Astronaut Ice Cream.

Look for them to periodically switch up the goods for freshen it up and keep you coming back quite often.

Hypebeast turns us to the opening of Folk/Shofolk’s flagship store on Lambs Conduit Street in London. “The retail space includes two floors spread out over 1,000 sq feet with a nicely lit interior. A handful of other brands will also share the racks with Folk and Shofolk including Feiyue footwear and Hill-side ties.”

Full detail and images after the jump.  (more…)

Cool Hunting turns us to Soho’s latest edition, a temporary pop-up from Nau. Balancing beauty, performance and sustainability is no easy task, but the clothing outlet seems to effortless achieve this by developing better, more environmentally friendly fabrics and raising the bar for functional, elegant designs in the process. The pop-up embodies all Nau stands for, and it shows as it uses upcycled materials as the primary building blocks to outfit the space. “Sculptor-turned-architect Jean-Pierre Veillet (who also designed their Portland store) scoured Brooklyn streets for cardboard, beams, pipe fittings, branches and other supplies from what he calls the “waste stream” to construct most everything from tables to clothing racks and shelves.”

For more details, we suggest you head over to Cool Hunting.

Image courtesy of Gizmodo

In hopes of rebuilding their slightly dwindling empire, Microsoft is taking new steps to take back control of a market they never really lost. They named David Porter as VP of Retail Stores, confirming rumors that they were even doing such a thing. Porter comes from Dreamworks and before that spent 25 years at Wal-Mart.

The new VP has a full plate coming in as he’ll have to figure out locations for the stores and when they will be launching. There have been concepts for a Microsoft retail store, but we’re hoping they’ll have something similar to Apple’s Genius Bar and just as friendly and generous.

Microsoft

This weekend, NYC’s West Village welcomed the first freestanding Black Fleece store. Picture Thom Browne-designed Brooks Brothers pieces including paisley pants, plaid shirts, and suits in a few different varieties. (more…)

Uniqlo is pushing out collaborations faster than Geno’s pushes out cheesesteaks. They’ve announced the Designer Invitation Campaign which lets us know about the upcoming collaborations on Uniqlo’s calendar. We already knew about Steven Alan and Opening Ceremony but the campaign gives April 13th release dates for Shipley&Hamos as well as Gilded Age.

hypebeast

English clothing brand Fred Perry’s Soho shop is now open for business. It’s not too far from another Brit label’s store and although both Ben Sherman and Fred Perry tend to follow similar trends in style and aesthetics, Fred Perry is appealing to us more at the moment. Why, you ask? Well for starters, the shop’s got very few items over $100, making us feel a bit more comfortable in this ravishing economy. We also thing that the price is just right, whereas Ben Sherman’s prices are a bit inflated for what you’re getting in return. (more…)

Vertu, a British-based manufacturer and retailer of luxury mobile phones, is set to open a new store in Ginza, Japan on February 19th. From the shots we saw over at engadget, it seems Vertu has taken the more subtle route than enriching the entire store with gold like you’d expect. The beautiful thing about the new location is that there is an entire floor dedicated to each handset line it carries (including Ferrari, Ascent and Signature).

More images after the jump.  (more…)

And there you have it, people. Circuit City’s shutting down its remaining 567 stores and putting roughly 30,000 people out of a job. This happens just a two months after they shutdown 155 stores. No word yet on the fate of outstanding warranties, its Firedog repair service, and Canadian stores. The retailer had posted several huge losses late 2007 and early 2008, but the onslaught of bank failures in September and October really hit them hard. Remember their incident with Sony delivery trucks?

WWD has put out the following piece of raw data: The top ten U.S. metro areas, ranked by average household spending on men’s apparel. Austin’s on top with the Northern New Jersey-New York-Pennsylvania-Long Island area placing in 10th. I’m a bit surprised but I guess there are so many damn women shopping in NYC that all that money spent on luxe suits just can’t compete.  (more…)