My Favorite Emerging Brands Pt. 12: MAN-TLE
Small, sustainable and built to last
MAN-TLE
No brand defines the menswear mantra “if-you-know-you-know” better than MAN-TLE, an Australian brand that offers heavy weight, durable clothing and accessories inspired by Australia’s tactile, rugged landscape. Run by husband and wife Larz Harry and Aida Kim, two Commes des Garçons alumni, the brand decided to open its first retail store back in April of 2019 after successfully launching their e-commerce business just 3 short years prior, which has seen success in some of the world’s best boutique stores across the globe. The brand’s mission is to create industrialized utility that can be scaled to everyday life, a catch all phrase for saying that the brand cares just as much about the material quality of its clothes as it does the wearer and their intended purpose/use of the garment. The brand offers a wide range of thoughtful products which highlight these aforementioned values, from exposed seamed thermal (waffle) shirts to the market’s greatest denim jacket (see later), focused on reliability and utility, designing and creating proprietary fabrics when necessary to carry out MAN-TLE’s vision. In addition to its own line MAN-TLE carries home goods, cookware, small furniture and other items that serve as functional inspiration within which the brand’s utilitarian garments fit effortlessly. MAN-TLE’s look books seem to further the brand’s connection with and inspiration from nature by integrating their clothing into the Australian outdoors, creating “product shots” that could be sold as single photographs.
MAN-TLE’s clothes represent both form and function, reimagining say, the oxford shirt, in order to handle continuous wear, even in extreme, turbulent climates, maintaining comfort and an oversized Scandinavian/Japanese aesthetic. Not only are MAN-TLE garments meant to withstand significant wear and tear, most of their products are specifically designed to take on new forms, molding to and adapting with the wearer; quite a return on investment given the brand’s price points. The garment truly changes over time, increasing in comfort and personality making each wear more significant than the last. MAN-TLE products integrate this relationship the wearer has with their clothes, by developing original fabric and hardware in Japan to start their design process at the very root of the garment. Heavily influenced by Japanese textile development, the brand utilizes production techniques and finishing treatments to create the most unique, durable clothes on the market today, which only begin to reach their potential upon continuous wear. While I can speak forever about the brand, to best get an understanding of how thoroughly MAN-TLE designs each of its offerings lets jump right into the clothes.
Product Highlights
As we finally start entering the colder months that lie ahead, it seems appropriate to begin this section with my favorite MAN-TLE piece (get it?), the R12S3 in Natural Indigo, aka the Boat Shirt. This jacket is a do it all, dress it up or down, take it anywhere type of garment, maintaining MAN-TLE’s core principles by seamlessly blending form and function. Cut from a 15oz 100% organic cotton selvedge denim, dyed with natural indigo and treated with a one-wash finishing, this sturdy denim jacket is set to replace all of your fall favorites. Designed with raglan sleeves for added mobility and comfort in the top block, this denim jacket is more comfortable and somehow hard wearing than 90% of the clothes I own. I tried this jacket on a little while ago at NYC’s favorite hidden gem, C’H’C’M, which has carried the brand for a little while now, and was immediately overwhelmed and stupefied by just how soft, and noticeably durable the garment’s construction was. It features sleek, minimalist hand-drawn Hole Pockets in front, unique to MAN-TLE’s recurring boat shirt which the brand continues to offer in each collection in different fabrics. A staple on most MAN-TLE button ups, this jacket features 20mm army buttons, threaded onto 10mm wide car seatbelt tape, that are bar-tacked to the front-placket for durability. The jacket’s denim exterior has an incredibly eye catching rough, bumpy texture, with a contrasting soft, supple hand feel that will further soften and patina with wear.
Diving right into the next piece of outerwear, MAN-TLE’s R13D3 is an oversized, cropped, down blouson that features down filling from ethically farmed European silver goose down. Pictured here in “Lake Wax”, this teal tinted down jacket is constructed from high-density 100% cotton chambray woven for MAN-TLE in Shizuoka, Japan, finished with a paraffin wax coating that gives the exterior cloth added protection from the elements with the ability to develop character over time. Over time, with washing and wear, the color will fade and the garment’s texture and appearance will soften, characteristics common when using natural fibers finished without color-fasting chemicals. My favorite part about this recurring MAN-TLE silhouette is the jacket’s transparent lining, made from 100% nylon micro-ripstop, that showcases the product’s unbleached, mottled down, with a fill-power rating of 850, rivaling, and in my opinion, besting the timeless North Face Nuptse Jacket with 10x the flare and character (Available in Black, Lake, Red, Stone, and Riberry).
A personal favorite from MAN-TLE’s most recent collection is the R12S1 in Dust. This loose fitting button-up shirt is constructed from a signature chambray fabric with a slub weft-yarn, adorned with MAN-TLE’s army buttons threaded onto 8mm wide car seatbelt. This shirt is stiff before wear and like most products the brand offers, has its own shape retaining memory that will develop character unique to the wearer.
MAN-TLE offers almost all of its signature durable fabrics across various product categories, due to the high cost of developing proprietary fabric from the best mills in the world. One that doesn’t break the bank, and allows new customers to enjoy MAN-TLE products nonetheless are the brand’s various hats, all featuring a tonal army button/car seatbelt fastening system. Following this logic, the three hats pictured below use the same three fabrics as the above shirt and jackets, in reverse order.
I wanted to highlight one more product that I spoke about earlier in this article, MAN-TLE’s take on the classic oxford shirt, its R12S1 in Shell. Featuring a similar fit to the Dust shirt above, this shirt also features the same tonal army buttons threaded onto an 8mm wide car seatbelt, but is constructed from MAN-TLE's ongoing High Twist Voile using a 60/40 cotton to linen blend. This shirt has a hard hand feel reminiscent of nylon, without any finishing treatments or coatings used, while maintaining comfort and breathability. As always, this product will soften with washing and wear, creating a different experience each time the garment is worn. MAN-TLE products don’t just age well, they take on new forms, molding and fading uniquely to the wearer over the time; the best fit is the next fit.