Louis Cheslaw's Wardrobe
How he thinks, what he wears & how he thinks about what he wears
I’m a big fan of Louis Cheslaw, both for what he does and who he is. Anyone who’s spent more than a few minutes with him will understand why. He’s got that enviously perfect combination of curiosity and wit, and too much kindness to ever make others feel envious about it.
I mean, who else do you know who’s a contributing editor at GQ, has written for major publications like The New York Times, New York Magazine and the Financial Times, knows the inner workings of popular culture as well as he knows your summer wardrobe, and still takes the time to sit down and have a proper conversation? Who else in fashion media can claim the level of authority he has and still feels like a bloke you’d meet in a London pub at 11:15pm?
Exactly.
I may be biased. Louis was one of the first to ever reach out to me to ask for my opinion about a trend he’d spotted long before anyone else was talking about it. That was back in November 2024, when he’d just started his menswear column for Laura Reilly’s Magasin. Not long after, he suggested we grab a coffee in Paris — at Dreamin Man’, mind you — just before my first fashion week there. “Mentor” wouldn’t be the right word, but those gestures mattered, because they encouraged me, kindly and quietly, to keep going.
I reached out to Louis a couple of weeks ago, around the launch of his very own newsletter, Wardrobe. He had contacted me about it beforehand, asking questions about the increasingly crowded Substack landscape, none of which I could answer, but all of which I enjoyed thinking about.
They made me realize how much this landscape has changed already since early 2024. While I don’t buy the common criticism that everybody has a Substack nowadays; after all, registering one is very different from keeping one alive. Still, there are a lot of them now, from BBSP to Wimpy, Duchump and Big Pants Waste Precious Fabric. I admitted to Louis that this growth has made me anxious at times, and not just because many of these newsletters are growing much faster than Present Forever. Louis, of course, comforted me. (In a rather different way to the person who once tried to do the same by saying, “Yours is just very European.”) At the same time, it was obvious from the get-go that Wardrobe would become another gravitational force in this online menswear universe.
For one thing, Louis has a plan (which he’ll lay out below). He knows it fills a real gap and, given his years of editorial and writing experience, he also knows how to execute it well. Case in point: in the months leading up to Wardrobe’s launch, he traveled across the globe to prepare a series of in-depth interviews, some of which have been published — with the likes of Christoffer Lundman, Chris Kontos and Luke Derrick — and others to appear over the coming months.
Lukas Mauve: You’ve been on the road a lot lately, Louis. How’s it been?
Louis Cheslaw: Yes, I went to the U.S. twice, and also visited Paris and Stockholm, where I saw Christoffer from Salon C. Lundman and Hampus from Nitty Gritty. Some of it was for family reasons, some to make sure I could get a strong start on the project.
Lukas Mauve: You surely have!
Louis Cheslaw: Thanks. I’m still coming to terms with the frequency and understanding what people actually want to read. But I’m also giving myself the first year just to do a bunch and see what feels right.
Lukas Mauve: Why did you take the leap and start Wardrobe?
Louis Cheslaw: One part of it was just a love of the world I’d begun to know so well. I’ve been lucky over two or three years of writing about the industry and traveling a lot to have made real relationships with some designers and their teams. And those relationships lead to ideas and a sense of what’s happening behind the scenes.
But also, my background is in journalism, not in textiles and crafts. And without that formal training, there’s a limit to how much you can actually know about the clothing you’re recommending. People are spending real money on these clothes, so I felt that I needed to introduce more of an educational component to my reporting for myself as well as for the reader. The idea with Wardrobe is to continue to cover the designers that are relevant, that are interesting, but to ask them slightly more thorough questions, digging a little deeper into what they do.
Lukas Mauve: You don’t just want to recommend good clothes to people, but also make them understand why it’s good.
Louis Cheslaw: I didn’t start Wardrobe to do recommendations — it was more to slow things down a bit and make more room for stories beyond product round-ups. That said, finding great items is always going to be part of the aim, it’s just about those recommendations coming up naturally, rather than forcing them.
Lukas Mauve: You recommend different things in different roles. How do you combine those while staying true to yourself?
Louis Cheslaw: Of course, the different roles I have come with different considerations to think about. It’s what sets my role as a contributing shopping editor for American GQ apart from Wardrobe, which I’d say is my personal project. There’s a kind of profit-minded structure to GQ Recommends, though I really appreciate how the editorial staff there have never pushed me to include a brand that I’m not particularly into.
Some people might think that starting Wardrobe is a sign of me ultimately wanting to move away from that work. Actually,