Hello. This is Antonio with Real Men Real Style and today I'm going to be talking about
Mr. Porter, which right over here on the Wall Street Journal they talked about how the
launch of this website is the biggest ever launch of a men's luxury good website, so
that's the reason I'm talking about it here over at Real Men Real Style. About a month
ago, I signed up for their prelist which I guess I received this invitation this morning
and it said your exclusive access to Mr. Porter is now available. Apparently I was a founding
member but I can tell you that it wasn't that exclusive. I just had to give them my
email and a little bit of information but this is the note I received. It was pretty
nice and I followed the link over so I go ahead and close that out and the link took
me right here to Mr. Porter but just to give you a little background on this:
So the Wall Street Journal covered this launch back in February 10th and there was a little
bit of controversy because apparently an email went out and it was from a Mr. Tom Ford but
not the Tom Ford that we know about in men's fashion but a Tom Ford over at Mr. Porter
and apparently he wanted to be very clear that, "Hey, Tom Ford. The Tom Ford has nothing
to do with Mr. Porter," so I thought that was an interesting little bit of tidbit but
the Wall Street Journal talked about this back in earlier this month and they were really
excited to see what was going on. What really excited me about this launch is that supposedly
they were going to be bringing real men to talk about how style affected their lives
and as at my website; Real Men Real Style is all about this. I thought that this would
be a very interesting thing for me to get it on and to find out about.
This is the homepage that I went to and it picks out what country I'm in and a very
clean layout. I've seen very good use of image. They've got even a little bit of video
here and this will take you - I'm just going to go straight across and give you an overview
of the website. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the designers or the clothing
or the shoes or the accessories because to me, a lot of other websites have this. What
I'm going to focus on is the journal, the style directory and the wardrobe manager which
I think makes Mr. Porter unique.
Now my first impressions of the site are that it has a very nice easy to manage layout.
I didn't realize how big the site was until I dove into it and that's a good thing. So
here I had clicked on "What's New." Now at this point, I don't think this is a very
important link because right now everything is new. It just launched so eventually if
you're someone that frequents the site often, this would be a page you'd probably go to
but right now, it's not that important.
Designers, we can see all of the designers that they carry. Obviously Paul Smith is being
featured here. I don't know if that's - I'll try refreshing this page and see if he pops
up again. It looks like this banner rotates and we're going to get different designers
every time. We'll try that again but you can see we've got Alexander McQueen. We've
got Ralph Lauren of course but you'll notice Tom Ford is not here. We've got John Law
being featured so seems like their trying to just rotate through the designers. I'm
sure that somebody paid a little bit extra to be right here.
Alright moving on, we went over to clothing and again this is one of their general categories.
Jeans, trousers, shirts, suits, jackets, coats, neck wear, and looks like they've got a wide
rang of sizes. I'm not going to get into this too much. It looks like you could click
there and it would take you to more information about it. We've got the price in US dollars
because it has my location. If I was somewhere, it does change to whatever currency of the
country that you're looking at. They do a good job. It looks like not only giving you
information about the item. It looks like we're going to have the fit style facts description
but we also have some really good - looks like what to wear with which I know for a
lot of men is always an issue. So far this is very well put together site.
Now shoes, I like how they've got their own section for shoes because shoes are the foundation
in which a man should build his wardrobe and they really, so when you mouse over, it turns
and I'm sure it's going to be similar layout.
Yup, so we've got what to wear it with, very similar to the clothing.
Moving on to accessories, I take accessories is going to be the same. Now if you've seen
some of these prices, yes they're high. These are designer clothing and none of this is
on sale. Now this is what I'm really interested in. The information that is going to keep
you on this site and why you'd want to stay here so the journal, this was actually, in
my opinion, the most impressive part of the website. I liked this Men of the Moment although
I did feel it was also a weakness and I'll get into that in a second.
They've got this bit about Robert Plant. This was a great article Man and Boy and then
they go into a few other details so let me go ahead and go over to - this button down
shirts. Here they give you 5 ways to wear a button-down shirt but I didn't think
it was that great of the information. It was really light so I'm going to skip past that.
Now here's what I was really excited about and I wish - I feel like they just touched
the tip of - they could have gone into so much more detail with this so here's Kevin
and he's, I love this, here's a guy that busts his ass and is working a real job and
they really didn't give him, I thought enough, they should have spent more time on this guy.
I was really disappointed with the video. It was only 38 seconds long and the time doesn't
pop appear but I've already ran through the video and gosh they could have done - they
should have given Kevin at least 3 or 4 minutes and I wanted to hear more about this man and
what style means to him because this is a man that deals with hundreds of people daily
and I'm sure knows style and I can relate more to this gentleman than a lot of the other
people that they talk about. They had 8 other men. This was a pretty good article.
Now jumping to this write up, Man and Boy, I appreciate this. I've got a son about the
same age although I'm not dressing him apparently how Mr. John Brody is but I appreciate what
John is trying to offer and bring in with his son. I like it when somebody gets personal.
I mean here's a guy, he's in, I believe, New York City so this makes a bit of sense
but it was an interesting read and it was solid. Here you can see the content was deep.
I liked it.
Now we get into the style directory in which they try to give tips and advise. So we've
left the journal. We're now in the style directory and we got the style council which
you could click on this and get a bit more information. Now here is where they're giving
actually the advice and this is probably another area where I had an issue. Most of the advice
is solid but I did find some of the advice that I feel is completely wrong. They did
talk in the formal wear section. They talked about the cummerbund and the waist jacket
or the waist coat and they actually say it's not even necessary now. I just feel that hearing
things like that makes me think that these guys are more fashion than they are classic
style and they are trying to, I think, put on an air of classic style and if you're
going to do that, you need to go all the way. And you can't - I just feel some of the stances
they take just don't - they don't go with the teachings of Bernerd or of Alan
Flusser, of some of the great men out there.
They pull in these icons but then they put out some information which I feel just doesn't
go with it but I'm getting picky here. You've got to understand, I live and breathe
this stuff 80 to 90% of the information here is solid. It's not very deep as you can see.
We'll talk about it. Basically it's setup, a question and then they give a quick answer
but it's not an in depth answer because really where they want to drive you is to buy and
let me be very clear, this is a sales site. They want to get you back over here. They
want to sell you shoes. They want to sell you a suit. I mean that's how the site makes
money, the relationships with these designers.
Now I don't think that's wrong, but you just need to be aware that that is the goal of
these manuals, of this information. So the video manuals, these are pretty good as well.
Actually this is where they gave on video, I think, Men Enough Time.
So they'll give Paul Smith 3 minutes to talk about small and interesting touches so that
was pretty good. This is a good section and it's well worth actually signing up simply
to watch these videos.
Style icons, again we have some very nice photos but it doesn't get very deep. Again
this is more of a - and it was harder for me to relate any of these style icons. I mean
his imperial majesty, when they bring in kings, I mean, this gentleman, I can't even pronounce
his name. Haile Selassie. I've heard a bit about him and I know when he went to Jamaica,
I mean, this guy was viewed as a god and no one's ever viewed me as a god and I'm sorry.
I just can't relate with any of these icons so this part I didn't find super useful.
Now the wardrobe manager, last part, you have to be signed in to use a lot of it but it's
very basically a wish list, allows you to recommend and share with your friends, to
keep inventory of what you've purchased and the one part you didn't have to sign up for,
they show you what they consider to be the essentials. Again, they're just trying to
sell you on this because I agree that they should show you some essentials but I think
they have 32 essentials of which 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - they've got 5 pairs of shoes that
are essential and this is just for spring. It's just a little bit too much. It almost
defeats, how can it be essential if you try to recommend me everything? So again, I'm
getting picky.
I want to come back here to the homepage and just say overall, a very impressive website.
They have pulled a lot of information and they've put it, it's well organized. You
could easily spend a day in this website. There's a lot to learn here. I think they've
done a great job but you just have to understand it is a sales site. There is some bad information.
I would say 10 to 15% of the information, I disagree with and they're too light in
a lot of key areas. They really could have gone deeper. I think on the Real Men and it's
something hopefully they will improve and if you're going to buy anything here, be
prepared to pay.
Alright well this has been a review by Antonio over at Real Men Real Style and go check out
Mr. Porter. I think you can learn a lot and it's worth your time. Bye.