Chris Black on His New Clothing Line, Hanover: “I’m Just Trying to Make Something That You Like and Wear”
This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free.
According to Chris Black, the problem with menswear right now is that “everything is either too expensive, or too weird, or too cheap.” As you might know, Black dishes out wry takes by the bucketload on his podcast How Long Gone, as well as in his weekly GQ column, Pulling Weeds. But he is especially passionate about the subject of clothes.
On a recent episode of How Long Gone, he and co-host Jason Stewart pivoted a riff about the corniness of dudes taking selfies in retail store dressing rooms—“This ain’t Rent the Runway out here,” Black quipped—into an extended lamentation about the fussiness of designer tuxedos. His disdain for clothes that are too serious (and the people who take fashion too seriously) is a core part of his personal brand, an ethos mirrored in his uniform of vintage 501s and rare band tees he’s been collecting since high school.
Recently, Black actually decided to do something about it. Enter Hanover, his new clothing line that is launching tonight with a VIP cocktail party at Tiwa Select in Tribeca. The brand is as forthright as his podcast persona, with simple menswear staples like pique polo shirts, Oxford cloth button-ups, faded jeans, and vintage-y graphic tees.
Courtesy of Jeff Henrikson/Hanover
Courtesy of Jeff Henrikson/Hanover
Black helped establish such preppy staples into something of a bicoastal creative uniform, but he would be the first to admit he’s not a clothing designer. What he knows is what he likes, and he sees a gap in the market for lived-in clothes that are more accessible than vintage, and higher-quality than what you get from mass menswear brands. The collection, which will be available at Tiwa Select on Saturday and is currently for sale online, is all made in the USA and priced under $300.
“I’m going to wear it, and I’m trying to make something that you like and wear,” he says. “That’s really it.”
Nobody is more surprised than Chris Black—who wears his status as a cultural insider and tastemaker with a mix of pride and chagrin—that Chris Black decided to launch his own menswear brand. He’s long had one foot in the fashion world as a consultant for brands like J.Crew and Thom Browne, but the idea to go all-in came when he was approached by friends of his with backgrounds in marketing and fashion, Paul Shaked and Vinod Kasturi, who pitched him on raising money for a CB-fronted clothing line. “I was like, sure,” Black recalls with a laugh. “I didn’t really think much of it. I get a lot of inbound that doesn’t turn into anything, you know what I mean?”
