Cool is a cut and a cloth, not a logo. Eight labels that prove it, scored like everything else in this magazine.
Checked and updated October 2026
The short version: buy Auralee if you want the best design language in menswear right now (92/100). Buy Norse Projects if the budget is real (90/100 at a third of the entry price). Buy Sunspel for the basics everything else stands on. And skip the famous logo brands at full price: fine clothes, taxed for the name, scored below with the maths shown. Every score follows our published methodology: design language 40, cloth and construction 30, value 30.
Ask the internet for cool brands for men and you get two useless answers: the luxury houses, priced like jewellery, and the hype labels, priced like tickets. Both are selling recognition. The brands below sell something else: a silhouette you can spot across a street, fabrics with a point of view, and logos so quiet you have to already know. This is the aesthete end of menswear, the clothing aesthetics for guys who dress for themselves. It is also, not coincidentally, the exact centre of this magazine: New York energy, Japanese restraint, Scandinavian calm.
In this guide
The four tests: what cool means here
Our data team scores every label against four tests before a single number is assigned. Cut: could you name the brand from the silhouette alone, label hidden? Cloth: does the fabric have a reason to exist beyond the season's colour chart? Palette: is the colour story disciplined enough to build a wardrobe on? Logo discipline: does the brand trust the garment, or does it shout? Pass all four and a brand is cool in the only sense that survives a trend cycle. Fail one and no amount of campaign budget fixes it.
The eight, scored
| Brand | Base | Start here | Typical price at last check | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auralee | Tokyo | Fine-gauge knit or washed tee | Tees around $150, knits $400+ | 92 |
| Norse Projects | Copenhagen | Aros chinos, lambswool knit | Tees around $95, knits around $275 | 90 |
| Our Legacy | Stockholm | The Borrowed Shirt | Shirts around $345 | 89 |
| Lemaire | Paris | Soft shirt, belted trousers | Shirts around $500 | 88 |
| Studio Nicholson | London | Volume trousers | Trousers around $450 | 87 |
| Sunspel | Long Eaton, England | The Classic T-shirt | Tee $98, checked on the maker's US store | 86 |
| Margaret Howell | London | Mainline shirt, MHL tee | Shirts around $400, MHL tees around $120 | 84 |
| mfpen | Copenhagen | Generous-cut shirt | Shirts around $280 | 82 |
Prices are typical US list prices at last check, October 2026, and they move with seasons and exchange rates; the byline date is the authority. Scores do not move with prices. A brand earns its number on the four tests, and the number only changes when the clothes do.
The brands, one by one
1. Auralee: the current answer
Best for: the one piece a year that upgrades everything else you own. Price tier: premium.
Ryota Iwai's Tokyo label does the hardest thing in fashion: it makes plain clothes that are unmistakably its own. The fabrics are developed in-house, washed and finished until a cotton tee has the hand of something twice the price, and the palette runs to colours you cannot name but immediately want. No logos. No noise. Verdict: the coolest brand in menswear right now, and it is not close.
2. Norse Projects: the attainable benchmark
Best for: building the base wardrobe properly, first try. Price tier: attainable.
Copenhagen's quiet workhorse: chinos with the right taper, lambswool knits that hold their shape, tees with actual weight. Nothing here begs for attention and everything here lasts. It scores within two points of Auralee at roughly a third of the entry price, which is why it sits second and why our first-office-job readers should start here. Verdict: the best value in this ranking.
3. Our Legacy: the borrowed-clothes poets
Best for: shirts and trousers with a lived-in intelligence. Price tier: premium.
Stockholm's finest export after the flat-pack: washed silks, shrunken knits, and the Borrowed Shirt, an oversized cut that has been copied by half the high street and equalled by none of it. The brand treats vintage like a material rather than a mood. Verdict: buy the Borrowed Shirt once and understand the whole label.
4. Lemaire: Paris, softened
Best for: drape, volume and the long game. Price tier: designer.
Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran make the case that luxury can whisper: twisted seams, belted trousers, shirts that move like water. The prices are the highest in this ranking and the cost per wear still defends them, because a Lemaire piece from five years ago looks like a Lemaire piece from this year. Timelessness is the discount. Verdict: aspirational, and honest about it.
5. Studio Nicholson: architecture you can wear
Best for: trousers and volume, the foundation of the soft silhouette. Price tier: premium.
Nick Wakeman designs from volume first: trousers with real drape, shirts with engineered room, a palette of stone, ink and bone. If the soft NY × Japan look has a London chapter, this is it. Sizing runs generous by design; check the garment measurements, as our data team insists on everything. Verdict: the trouser brand of this ranking.
6. Sunspel: the basics, perfected since 1860
Best for: the plain tee and the loopback sweatshirt, done properly. Price tier: attainable-premium.
Sunspel has made underwear and tees in England since before most brands' founding myths begin, and its Classic T-shirt, long-staple Supima cotton made in its own Long Eaton factory, remains the benchmark plain tee at $98 on the maker's US store. OPUMO's own white-tee roundup keeps Sunspel in the frame; our scoring puts its basics above brands charging double. Verdict: start here if your wardrobe has no foundation yet.
7. Margaret Howell: the gardener's tailoring
Best for: shirts and workwear shapes with a British accent. Price tier: premium, with the MHL diffusion line below it.
Howell has dressed her own idea of useful beauty for five decades: boxy shirts, chore shapes, cloth sourced like an archivist. The MHL line brings the same eye to tee-and-trouser money. Nothing chases a trend, which is why nothing dates. Verdict: the connoisseur's pick, priced like it knows.
8. mfpen: Copenhagen's second wave
Best for: generous cuts and deadstock fabrics at honest prices. Price tier: mid.
The younger Danish label builds roomy shirts and trousers from surplus and organic fabrics, cut with the same calm as its older countrymen and priced a step friendlier. The design language is still forming, which costs it points against the top five, but the trajectory is the steepest in this ranking. Verdict: buy now, before the prices notice the quality.
What to Skip at Full Price
Two honest warnings. The logo-tax tier (you know the names; the giant monograms gave them away) makes perfectly good clothes and prices them for the signalling, not the sewing: at list price they score in the low 70s on our rubric, and on sale they jump a full class. Buy them discounted or not at all. The fast-fashion "quiet luxury" copies score 38: they photograph the palette and delete the cloth, so the drape that makes the look work is gone by the third wash. A copy of quiet is just quiet failure. One real piece from the eight above beats a rail of imitations, on cost per wear and on sight.
FAQ
What is the coolest clothing brand for men right now?
Auralee, by our scoring: the strongest design language in menswear at prices below the Paris houses. On a budget, Norse Projects scores within two points at a third of the entry price.
What brands are quiet luxury for men?
The attainable end is Auralee, Lemaire, Studio Nicholson, Margaret Howell and Sunspel: muted palettes, no visible branding, money spent on fabric and cut.
Are expensive clothing brands worth it?
Some are. Cost per wear is the test: a $345 shirt worn twice a week for four years costs about $1.65 a wear, less than a disposable shirt replaced every season. Our scores weight value at 30 of 100 for this reason.
What makes a brand cool instead of just hyped?
A recognisable cut, fabrics with a point of view, a disciplined palette and restraint with logos. Hype is rented attention. A design language is owned.
Next
The Seoul chapter of this same map is already live: Korean clothing brands for men, the 12 that matter, written by our Senior Editor. Then see the scoring system do its work on a single garment in the Oxford shirt ranking.