Rising Stars: Meet Mitchell Moss of Rural Robertson County

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mitchell Moss.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started getting interested in dressing better my last year of college. I stumbled on this wild and wacky Internet forum called, naturally, Styleforum, which had tons of useful information about menswear as well as a bizarro group dynamic (as all Internet forums do). I began lurking, then joined and started posting. Much of my interest was in the thread where dudes posted photos of what they were wearing (OOTD), and I even posted my own cringe-worthy pics.

After about five years of being interested in menswear, exploring my own style, buying what I could afford, making terrible fashion mistakes, and learning a lot on the forum, I was at a turning point. I’d assumed up to then that my interest in menswear was just a phase that would’ve tapered off. But it hadn’t, and in fact, at that time, it was the absolute peak of #menswear—a wave of interest in tailored clothing primarily shared on Tumblr that introduced tons of guys to clothing, cemented Pitti Uomo as the street style mainstay it is today, catapulted J.Crew’s men’s collection into the limelight and transformed Alden from a frumpy old man’s shoemaker into a sought-after statement of permanent style.

So I wanted to turn my interest from something that was primarily just a money-spending hobby into a productive hobby. I started putting more time and energy into my nascent blog (which was then on Tumblr like everybody’s was) and began writing reviews about clothing, shops and general thoughts.

About four years after that, I started putting actual money into it, moving from Tumblr to my own self-hosted WordPress site. In the intervening years, my own style really came into its own, and I began to have a little notoriety in the small nerdy corner of the menswear Internet I’d inhabited since the beginning. I’d been tapped to do some freelance writing on menswear, was on first-name speaking terms with my favorite designer, and I’d even dipped my toe in the water of affiliate marketing as a way of generating income from my blog.

At this point, I’ve built the site into a repository of information in the form of recommended shops (including local Nashville menswear shops), sale alerts, advice columns, general musings and even an eBook for beginners, that I hope is helpful to a guy who’s just starting out, trying to find his own style and build a relatively timeless wardrobe. I focus mostly on tailored clothing because it makes me feel cool, it’s flattering, and it expresses my style. At the end of the day, that’s what everyone’s searching for in their clothing choices, and I’m here to help the guy who—like me ten years ago—digs tailoring and wants to figure out his own take on it.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I’ve grown it at a very slow pace, building it only as I’ve been able in my free time (which is rarer now that I’m a father of two boys). The only struggle I really have is making the time to do the bigger, more strategic things I want to do with the site. But in terms of growth, since I’ve never had specific targets, and the business I’ve made out of it is entirely just a side hustle, it hasn’t been challenging in that way at all.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In the menswear sphere, I think I’m most known for being the guy with a deep knowledge of a now-defunct menswear brand called Eidos Napoli. It had only a 5-year run but in that time made pretty big waves in how it interpreted Neapolitan tailoring and tailoring-adjacent menswear in a youthful way without any gimmicks. It resonated deeply with me and spoke to my style, so I wrote much of the content on my site about it. It still brings my site a good amount of people who are searching for info on the brand. I think the other thing I’m known for is for wearing white jeans all the time, LOL.

I’d say I’m most proud of my ongoing series of tailoring reviews. After Eidos’ original creative director left, and the brand changed directions (then eventually was closed altogether by parent company Isaia), it left a hole for me personally, so I went searching for viable alternatives. I started reaching out to the people I’d met over the years who work for some of these great tailoring brands—Anglo-Italian, Ring Jacket, Sartoria Carrara x No Man Walks Alone, Proper Cloth, The Anthology Hong Kong—and asking if I could borrow a jacket or suit for a week, try it on, photograph it, ask some interview questions, then send it back. So far, they’ve all said yes and it’s become this great source of information on that middle tier of full-canvas tailoring for the guy who wants high-quality stuff in that general price range.

By day, I work in the creative field for a religious non-profit as a writer, editor, photographer, and designer. I’m most proud of my work on a quarterly niche print magazine I helped launch six years ago that’s targeted specifically at a teen audience. I helped shape the editorial tone and voice from the beginning as well as create its visual branding from the ground up. It’s still one of my favorite recurring work projects, and we’ve really dialed in the art direction the last couple years in particular.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I have no idea, LOL. My whole schtick is that I like clothes invented and more or less standardized in their shape and form 250 years ago, so watching the trends and being smart about that kind of thing really isn’t my forte. My hope is that tailoring continues to be worn and appreciated enough for all the great makers I know to keep producing, selling, and training the next generation of craftspeople. I think a tailored jacket is the most flattering thing a guy can wear, and it can be worn in a very down-to-earth way without all the baggage of “suits” the way it’s use pejoratively for stuffy old men. My hope is that post-pandemic, there’s a resurgence of interest in dressing up and that tailoring is part of that.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.menswearmusings.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/menswearmusings

Image Credits
Mitchell & Dana Moss