To capture his curated collection, for the first time ever, we traveled to the United States, visiting his current and former homes in the Midwest: Cincinnati and Nashville. They served as the perfect backdrop for his looks that follow a philosophy of flexible dressing, featuring certain beautiful pieces that offer a lot of wear as they can be worn in different ensembles. All with Mitchell’s perfect marriage of American aesthetics based on Neapolitan refinement and tailoring traditions.

While speaking during our days on the road, traveling from Cincinnati to Nashville, we learn about Mitchell’s sartorial journey. From the malls of Indiana, deep into the world of Neapolitan sartorialism by proxy of the internet. Exploring how his love for tailoring became the subject-matter in his profession as a writer and which, against the odds one might say, brought him to Pitti Uomo working for the message board that had sparked his interest in Italian tailoring in the first place.

We discuss how Mitchell is slowly but certainly establishing his voice in menswear writing, knowing the cultural fabric of America while also appreciating every stitch on a handmade garment from Naples – still approaching everything he does with the intention to share his insights that might be helpful to others. The same way it encouraged him and eventually brought him to where he is today.

What is your earliest memory of clothing?

I have no earliest memory. But it was more in high school when I really started thinking about clothing. Or maybe in middle school, already. At that time, I started wearing engineer boots that I thought were cool. I remember I first bought a pair of Kangaroos sneakers. Remember those? I saw them in a television commercial in German class and I really wanted to have them. And I got them when they finally came out in America.

I did make fun of my brother though, at that time. He was really into clothes already, wearing buttoned-up shirts. And I really would make fun of him for it.

What was it like growing up in Indiana?

Where I grew up in northern Indiana really feels a little like the series Stranger Things. But without the Upside-Down world, of course. It is quite conservative, agricultural, and religious. I grew up in a small tight-knit community in a town named Berne, which is a wholesome, family-oriented place. There are a lot of cornfields, basically all around the house where I lived with my parents. It is a great place for a kid to grow up.

My father always worked in marketing, and he did dress up for work. He had this philosophy that whenever he was working, he needed to be ready for a client at any time. So, he always wore a tie, and despite taking the jacket off while working — he would always just have to put the jacket on to be ready to receive any potential or existing client. I’m sure that must have had an influence.

What other influences were there on the way you wanted to dress when you were younger.

As you start molding your identity as a teenager based on, but also in contrast to others, when I was younger it might very well have been the case that I was not really into clothes because my brother was really into it already. I wore mostly plain t-shirts. They weren’t even band t-shirts or anything, which were quite trendy at the time, even where I grew up.

What happened when you went to college?

The inflection point would be, somewhere two years in, I took a trip by myself overseas. It was with a group, and there were some other young people in the group that I hung out with a lot. Before that trip I was quite shy and reserved. And that trip kind of marked a change, both socially because of the new friends I had made, but also as I started to pay more attention to what I wore. So, when I came back and returned to college, I changed my hairstyle based on the hairstyle of Robert Redford that I had seen in a GQ Magazine I bought on the trip. And then I started buying shirts. I was interested in clothes a little before that trip, but it really helped me to find the confidence to dive in. That was in 2007.

In 2008, I discovered the message board Styleforum and then I really got into it. I was a lurker for a while and eventually I started posting on there. I trace a lot of my life back to that trip. Everyone who knows me is pretty surprised to hear that I used to be shy and reserved.

Message boards signify a very specific period when the internet really lived up to its potential as a community builder.

Oh yes, social media was already around, but didn’t really have the impact to form communities around it, yet. Styleforum did offer this, and it was amazing to strike upon such a digital destination. At that time there were so many incredible people posting, sharing their knowledge. It really was a different time. For those who don’t really know, a message board is literally a place where people leave messages and interact with each other. The thread with the highest engagement was usually the ‘What are you wearing today?’-thread. That was a really cool place where you could post photos of your outfits. And you always have a bedrock of really experienced posters, knowledgeable people who were happy to share their knowledge.

It was a place where you could post your outfits and receive helpful criticism. Sometimes not helpful. But it did help me in finding my style. Another thing that happened was group buys of fabric runs. People would even travel to certain tailors, in Naples for instance, and just share the whole experience. People would share insights on certain brands. It basically touched on all of the different aspects of menswear. That was all exciting stuff to see as a young twenty-year-old. Also, the fact that it was just a community of enthusiasts. Almost everything I have learned about menswear comes from Styleforum.

Is that how you would describe the impact of Styleforum, your foundation?

I was just a kid in Indiana shopping at the mall where you had a Brooks Brothers, a GAP, a J. Crew and some old-timey menswear store that had old-timey tailoring brands. Pop culture wasn’t filtered through the lens of social media, television was still dominant, and the internet offered a lot, but you still had to find your niche. Forums were a place where you already had access to tremendous amounts of information and people who would actively share it.

The forum had two sides: the more streetwear, workwear type side, and there was the more tailoring-oriented side. So, there were a lot of influences to be found. People all over the world were posting on it. Amongst many others, for instance Mark Cho, the co-founder of The Armoury, posted on Styleforum before he started that business. And it became very clear to me that the tailoring side really appealed to me. Before I learned about Styleforum I had started to spend more money on clothes, but I was just wandering in the desert. The message board gave me direction.

I also remember the influence of Mad Men, that had just come out in 2007, I believe. I watched that show and was thoroughly impressed by the aesthetic and overall vibe. I re-watched it during the pandemic, and I concluded I hadn’t picked up on much of the plot. But I do remember how great the influence was. That was the time lapels became smaller again, partly also influenced by the growing popularity of Thom Browne. So, with the mid-century influence that was happening, Styleforum added a whole world of European traditions to that.

Almost like pandora’s box, it seems.

Definitions like ‘spalla camicia’ – that we use for all the looks in our collaboration – or ‘sprezzatura’ were not words one would ever hear in a place like Indiana. That didn’t exist. It was just through these forums that I could learn about it or even see it, period. GQ Magazine didn’t really speak about it at that time. Back then, it was in the realm of bespoke tailors. It became more known in the time that “#menswear” became more popular via Tumblr, when all these street style photographs from, for instance, Pitti Uomo first became a lot more visible in the zeitgeist. I feel that Styleforum was the seedbed for that more widespread interest in tailored menswear.

Did your growing interest in clothing also have an effect on your professional dressing at that time?

When I was finished studying, I did get to use my new interest. At my employer, there was a local television show that was being broadcast. And at one point I convinced everyone that we needed a wardrobe for that. On a shoestring budget, I got some suits, shirts, and ties from Brooks Brothers. It was pretty cool to use my hobby in a little segment of my work as well, although it wasn’t much.

Around the same time, I also had a conversation with my brother that I still remember quite vividly. In it I had explained to him that I assumed my interest in clothing was a phase, but at that time, after quite some years, I really wanted to pursue something with it, and I started my first little exercises with writing on menswear. On Tumblr at that time, so nothing too special, but it did eventually lead into my blog: Menswear Musings.

How would you describe your journey in finding your own style with all of these new influences?

This was a process of trial and error. I was still working with a limited budget, so I used eBay, things that were on sale, outlet stores. At that time, I was still wearing a standard ‘ivy’ look. Mostly chinos, a shirt, and a blazer, which at the beginning were still strong shouldered, but I eventually realized I like soft shoulders and I ordered my first jacket on the internet. Eventually I came to the conclusion, that there is a certain shapelessness to the ivy look, so I really wanted to get closer to all the things and silhouettes I saw on Styleforum and in those streetwear photographs.

Basically, I wanted a bespoke-like aesthetic, but with refined, understated fabrics. That was hard to find within my budget. And then I found the brand Eidos, who had the American Antonio Ciongoli as its creative director. That was a new important inflection point for me. I had seen photographs of Ciongoli on Tumblr before, because of his style. And at a certain moment there was also an Eidos thread on Styleforum, which he posted on as well. That was fantastic.

Why did that particular Neapolitan style speak to you?

It was exactly what I was looking for. Having a Neapolitan silhouette, made from fabrics that had a little more ruggedness to them. Obviously, there are louder fabrics being used in the Neapolitan tradition, but Ciongoli approached it with a lot of subtlety, almost on a tactile level of the fabrics that were being used. Fabrics that you could live in. Ciongoli basically took the ivy aesthetic that he grew up in and married it with distinct elements of the Italian Neapolitan tradition. In a way, that was the embodiment of the style that I was looking for. The fact that it existed put my sartorial journey on easy mode. It was the fully formed version of the style that I was searching for since I had gotten into tailored menswear.

Is this when you started standing out more?

In terms of identity, when I was a kid, I went through some meaningful experiences where my identity was formed that I have this sort of need to be different from everyone else. To be different is part of my identity. And my interest in tailored clothing in an increasingly casual world is totally part of who I am.

After finding your ideal combination of an American aesthetic with the refinement of the Neapolitan tailoring tradition, how did you evolve into writing about all that?

I started hosting my own website for my writing in 2017. At that point I also tried to approach it more from a professional point of view. I was dreaming about going to an event like Pitti Uomo, but it still felt very unrealistic and impossible to actually happen. I had also started writing freelance for Styleforum, as they had started a blog to drive more traffic to the message boards. I did write a fair amount of things for them, although I could have written more. As they were actually paying me, that made it real that I was actually writing about what I love the most. So, I wanted to find ways to do more of it.

While I had been writing on my blog predominantly in the period after, in 2019 a great thing happened. Photographer Peter Zottolo — who was also among the guests we hosted during our shared Atelier Munro dinner at Pitti Uomo in June 2023 — needed some help with the street style photography he agreed to take for Styleforum at the Pitti in January 2020. I offered myself, and to my complete surprise the owner of Styleforum agreed. So, in 2020 it actually happened. I was able to travel to Pitti for the first time and it was even for work. We went with a small group of people that were doing things for Styleforum. And the fact that I wasn’t alone was also super helpful to learn about the event, to meet people, and introduce myself. That was really amazing. And the ultimate acknowledgement of what I had been doing on my own.

In your writing you have specifically focused on creating a sense of flexibility within a tailored wardrobe, sharing your vision on how you get the most looks out of different pieces. Creating that flexibility and functionality in your made-to-measure is something we, as a brand, feel very strongly about too.

Your insightful style of writing seems very similar to the optimistic approach found on message boards. It offers people to learn more about the potential of their wardrobe.

With my writing I try to add value. As much as this sounds like a cliché. I have a little hesitance to self-promote, which is funny to say, as I post photos of myself on Instagram. Nevertheless, I feel like if I share anything, I want it to be valuable one way or another. It feels a little too self-congratulatory to just post on my blog about a certain shirt I have just bought. Who cares, right!?

So, I try to write from an angle of what I have learned about in buying a particular shirt, that might help someone else too. How a certain pattern doesn’t pair well with a lot of other things or how a certain collar just doesn’t really work with a tie. Things like that.

That is also what you did in your e-book, bundle certain rules of thumb that will help people in creating a wardrobe that will work for them.

A lot of people that do what I do are totally happy to just point at certain things they feel people should buy, because they feel they are the best options. I do that too, but I try to talk more in archetypes. Not just my specific personal perspective, but how certain fabrics have different effects in different looks that one can aspire too. I try to empower people in their choices, that’s the key. Similarly to how you have spoken about the way Atelier Munro works with their clients.

That also seems to be the most important element in my personal style journey. At a certain point I realized I wanted to find the sweet spot between certain American characteristics combined with the refinement of the Italian tailoring tradition. I didn’t find what I felt was best for me in those two different cultures specifically, but by combining certain elements I found what I was looking for when it comes to the way I want to dress and how that makes me feel.

Is that how you would describe the looks you have created with us?

The looks that we have created are constructed with beautiful Italian details, while still having a certain American feeling. I think we captured that in a fitting way by photographing it with my current home Cincinnati and former home Nashville as the backdrop. To be able to create it exactly as I envisioned, it is the power of made-to-measure and the result of all those years being engaged with and writing about tailored fashion.

In that sense, I also see our collaboration as another opportunity for me to show more people how to find their own style. I have been inspired by so many interesting people on my journey that started on an online forum while living in Indiana and eventually brought me all the way to a place like Pitti Uomo in Florence, the beating heart of it all. The internet really has erased most boundaries to find what really speaks to you, I just would love to offer more people what it offered me in finding my own way.