Broke and Bespoke

Hucklebury Pop-Up Shop at San Francisco’s Westfield Shopping Center

Kiyoshi posted the other day about Hucklebury’s Pop-Up event going on through tomorrow at San Francisco’s Westfield Shopping Center, and since I live in the neighborhood I thought I’d swing by and check it out today. I got a chance to chat with Parag (who co-founded Hucklebury with friend Dhawal) and we had a nice chat in the store and over coffee. He’s a great guy, and I think there’ll be some exciting things in store for Hucklebury in 2013.

I had a chance to try on some of their shirtings, and I can say they’re quite nice. The fabrics all come from Tessitura Monti, one of Italy’s finest cotton mills, and they’re produced in Jordan in a factory that also produces shirts for Zegna and Armani. The workers are experienced, and the quality control—from what I could tell by looking at the shirts—is top-notch.

Hucklebury shirts come in two cuts, Classic and Slim. The Slim is indeed quite slim (much slimmer than Brooks Brothers Slim Fit), so much so that a week of eating Bojangles’ and other excessively fattening Southern delights made it a bit too snug on me. A couple of guys who tried them on while I was hanging around in the shop looked great in them though.The Classic Fit is still quite flattering however, and is what I would have gone with if I’d purchased a shirt. It was not at all blousey like I was afraid it might be. In fact, I’d say the Classic Fit shirt I tried on was similar in cut to a normal OTR slim fit shirt from the likes of Brooks Brothers, Polo, etc.

What stood out to me most about the Hucklebury shirts though was their collars. The button-down has an amazing roll to it, and the spread has a nice 3” length to it and is, like the button-down, of a soft construction. Following a Savile Row tradition (the idea for Hucklebury was, in fact, born out of a conversation with a tailor on the Row), Hucklebury’s shirt collars are fused from the outside in, making for collars that stand robustly throughout a long day of wear without having to have a stiff and uncomfortable interlining.

If you live in the Bay Area and are in the market for some new shirts, definitely try to swing by the Hucklebury Pop-Up before it closes tomorrow. If not, I still recommend checking out the company’s website. Though not inexpensive, I think if you’re looking for a nice slim fitting shirt that is designed and crafted with fine attention to detail and uses some of the finest cotton shirting fabric in the world, Hucklebury offers a solid value.