The 15 Best Brands For Broke Ass College Kids

Image via Complex Original

15. Kamakura Shirts

For: college bros with 9 copies of Take Ivy and a 6 pack of Natty Ice

While the majority of the world’s retailers continue to skimp on quality in favor of ever cornier advertising and lame attempts at trendiness, Japan stays killing the game with brands like Kamakura. Founded in 1991, Kamakura is driven by the simplest of mottos: “Quality shirts at an affordable price”. It would appear that they have made good on their promise with sledgehammer force because most of their mainline shirts (in 4 different fits) are under $80. Made with imported 2 ply cotton, shell buttons and a ridiculous attention to detail likened to the preparation of fresh ingredients, Kamakura shirts are a rare brand for the struggling student type that does not skimp on quality in order to be price competitive.

They have also nailed the classic Brooks Brothers oxford collar roll – sadly MIA from actual Brooks Brothers since the 1950’s - giving college bros the opportunity to ditch big pony polos in lieu of an actually not entirely awful sport shirt.

14. The Knottery

For: sprezz unicorn who buys espresso for the free Wi-Fi

Straight outta New York, the dudes over at The Knottery have been holding it down for 500 million internet years. We’ve co-signed them on the Pins time and time again, and that’s chiefly because they are champions of the people, lifting “well dressed but penniless and starving” (their words not mine) guys out of financial ruin. With the exception of their seven fold and grenadine ties, most of The Knottery’s product is well under the $40 mark, making it possible to buy not 2 but 3, nay even 4 ties for the price of a single Drake’s. Manufactured locally, the Knottery provides young men with a range of varied (but always essential) options, from interview-friendly knits to YOLO-screaming camo numbers appropriate for Capsule and a host of other trade shows I’m never cool enough to get invited to.

13. Superga

For: the dude who insists he isn’t a ‘hypebeast’ but also hates Converses

Superga has been around for over a century, so naturally it would be acceptable to assume they’d have a flagship product. While they’re much adored in Italy (and by proxy in the #menswear community) they remain something of a rarity on the feet of young college men, a minority amid a sea of Chucks, Nikes, Vans and Adidas.

While Superga eschews many of the qualities desired by college type hypebeasts, it is a brand nonetheless worthy of recognition. Most of their models, including the classic 2750 Cotu, clock in at under $100. As a general rule, a Superga shoe is simple, timeless and frankly goes with everything. Rock them sockless, with your thrifted sportcoat or as part of your latest WIWT banger, chances are they’ll complement it all. Their versatility is a quality that should be appreciated, particularly by a demographic of young men who can’t really afford to have more than 2 -3 pairs of footwear at any one time.

12. Asos

For: the guy who loves free shit/double checks that the bill is divided correctly

Before y’all come at me with the limited release pitchforks and deadstock torches, allow me to defend the decision to put a fast fashion retailer on this list by simply saying that price is key. ASOS are by no means going to win any awards for quality or ingenuity. Their in-house label isn’t anything to boast about and the brand’s painfully obvious need to be trendy (summer beanie alert, my guy) hampers any attempt at taking them seriously.

Despite all that dickfuckery, ASOS has become infamous for their ‘free shipping on everything all the time’ mantra, a flexible return policy and their ability to quickly bite incoming runway trends. ASOS represents a solid jumping off point for young men looking to find their personal style; missteps won’t result in non-refundable $900 transactions to Sweden, and once you’re confident with amateur hour you can take the next step and starting buying more expensive more permanent gear elsewhere (like the aforementioned place known as Sweden).

11. Vans

For: everybody, from the skate enthusiast to casually good looking assholes

Despite heavy roots in skate park culture, it’s a testament to their universal appeal that Vans are as popular as they are worldwide. With a slew of high-profile collaborations and innovative designs including the Sk8 Hi, the #44 slip on and iconic Authentic, Vans represents a benchmark in cool that is often mimicked but seldom duplicated. With models starting as low as $40 a piece, available through almost every 3rd party chain retailer imaginable Vans is the quintessential item for young college hell raisers looking to hustle on small money.

10. Boggi

For: Agnelli ankle biters, the blazer and chinos guy, the university socialite

Boggi is often touted as the Italian Brooks Brothers, which is an apt comparison considering the brand is available at a similar price point while varying in stylistic tendencies. For the young guy totally unimpressed by the conservative Anglo-centric leanings of BB, Boggi is an appropriate substitute. The brand offers everything from desert boots to dinner jackets, and their house silhouette is usually slim, cut close to the body. For thinner guys mired in a swamp of ballooning shirts, pooling trouser hems and antiquated power shoulders, Boggi is a no-brainer providing relatively simple Italian styles upon which you can add your own spin.

9. Uniqlo

For: the seriously Wapanese, study abroad kids in Japan

Uniqlo, much like a really great strip mall buffet, has something for everybody. Nobody has any grand illusions about the brand, it won’t be winning any CFDA awards and honestly, you might bump into your parents while shopping there. None of that detracts from the fact that the Japanese clothing giant remains one of the least offensive of the fast fashion retailers. Unlike many of its brethren, the Qlo’ are well known for their selective and restrained process when it comes to design and pricing. For the price of a 6 pack, you can basically sort your shirt game out for the next 6 – 12 months and hell, you might even have some change left over for public transportation. Offering tough and reliable year-round basics, Uniqlo provides the blueprint upon which young guys can build their own unique sartorial experience. Much has also been made about their accessories, in all seriousness Uniqlo produce some of the best genital warmers and socks in recent memory, and at an unbeatable price point it also means you can buy enough undergarments to never ever do laundry again.

To the uninitiated, Uniqlo is an affordable, eminently wearable name that can be trusted to deliver the essentials. To the savvier, it is a deceptively influential brand, taking care to preserve its good name by doing a select few always on point collaborations with industry insider labels like Michael Bastian, Jil Sander and Undercover.

8. Rains

For: people who go to stormy gothic Scandinavian universities, cyclists/hiking enthusiasts

Rains, as their name would suggest, excel at doing one thing: making highly durable raincoats at an acceptable price. Most of the young Danish brand’s offerings are between $100 - $150, and the company has focused on creating raincoats of varying shapes and proportions. While a number of reasonable people would bemoan aloud why anyone would pay $100 for a waterproofed poncho, the Rains product is a genuinely beautiful piece of technical outerwear. Useable for much more than just inclement weather, it’s a great item to layer with and is ridiculously easy to employ with most subsets of menswear (black for Goth Ninja, army green for suiting, and yellow for the streetwear set). Think of it as a really thin jacket that also happens to be waterproofed. What’s that saying about 2 birds and 1 stone?

7. Meermin

For: shoe snobs who want the most affordable range of customisations, young guys looking to transition out of the sneaker game

Up until just over a year ago, getting an affordable pair of Goodyear welted shoes seemed damn near impossible. With few brands to plug the gap between ‘fuck you’ impoverished (Jos A Bank) and ‘fuck you’ wealthy (John Lobb) it wasn’t until 2012 that Meermin quietly made its way onto the scene. They then proceeded to fortify their position and build a Manson like following by offering handmade shoes at a variety of price points with an insane amount of customization. The mainline Meermin collection starts at just over $200: like Suitsupply, a bulk of manufacturing is undertaken in China, allowing labour costs to be controlled and improved materials to be used.

Even at the lowest price point, Meermin mean business. Utilizing the best suede and calf leather possible, all their shoes are Goodyear welted, so that when you inevitably wear them out the soles can be replaced without sacrificing the beautifully aged uppers. This fierce dedication for quality, tempered by patient and informative customer service mean that dudes looking to up their shoe game will have all the tools they need to do so.

6. Nike Sportswear

For: gym junkies, hypebeasts and the college athlete

No listicle is complete without Nike, plain and simple. You can ramble all you want about its competitors (i.e. imitators), but no company has straddled the razor’s edge when it comes to athletic technology quite like Nike. With the emergence of ever more technical iterations of its track & field approved gear, Nike is one of the few brands on this list that will receive instant recognition from just about anybody you meet on campus.

Then again when you come swooshing into the room with Flyknit Frees and Inneva Wovens it’s hard to argue with such a well thought out amalgamation of comfort and durability. While Nike’s offerings are available at a range of prices (many of them dirt cheap), it is the continuing excellence in the field of sportswear that guarantees its place on this list. The average college campus has what we would call a ‘relaxed’ dress code meaning that there’s seldom a time when Nikes wouldn’t be appropriate, hell you could even wear them up to your graduation if you were so inclined. Arch support is crucial while waiting for an arbitrarily approved piece of paper from your tertiary educational institution.

5. Ami

For: skinny fashion looking dudes who take Art History/Korean Cinema, next level European exchange students

While ‘student friendly’ price points are a fairly restrictive concept, AMI is one of the few Parisian brands that tears down the snob perimeter to offer relatively affordable luxe clothing. When Alexandre Mattiussi (who incidentally, AMI is named for) embarked on the task of establishing himself as one of France’s most talented new designers he did so by embracing the antithesis of the French atelier. By his own admission, Mattiussi set out to create a collection that was not about fantasy, but sophisticated and affordable garments.

AMI’s strength lies in its relaxed wardrobe staples, everything from the under appreciated jean jacket to the suede sneaker is included in the collection’s offerings. The more luxurious pieces a cotton gabardine sport coat – touch somewhere just under the $500 price point, but when you’re copping a garment made by someone who has pulled triple duty at Marc Jacobs, Givenchy and Dior you’ll be hard pressed to find a better bargain. Once again, price is a relative concept, but for the young guy trying to go HAM in the menswear department this is an advisable first step on the road to greatness.

4. Gant Rugger

For: the young Tumblr set, dudes looking for a modern twist on prep

While Rugger’s parent brand has a long and storied association with university students (think the Yale Gant Co-Op and next level live in the Hamptons white people problems), it is Gant Rugger that is most likely to resonate with the college going men of today. Since its revitalization, Rugger has provided classics with a twist, paying homage to its East Coast preppy roots while adding a new flavor to this foundation.

Under the auspices of Christopher Bastin (now Creative Director for the Gant family), Rugger has become synonymous with #menswear, epitomizing the humour and quality in what is rapidly becoming a movement that needs to take the stick out its arse. Falling well within the Suitsupply and J. Crew price bracket, Rugger is another of those brands that excels in giving young men just the right number of choices. And while the brand does cater to the dudes who know every tongue in cheek #menswear reference back to front, people who couldn’t give a single flying fuck about Team Americano can still recognize that these clothes look fresh as hell.

3. Muji

For: insufferable student couples, chronic travellers, the seriously Wapanese

One of Japan’s biggest consumer goods retailers, Muji’s commitment is to offer ‘no brand quality goods’. Like most cultural conventions employed by Japanese companies, this is a polite way of telling unreasonable prices to go fuck themselves. The company offers everything from home furnishings, to luggage and skincare but their menswear isn’t half bad either.

Manufactured with an ethos of sustainability across all areas, Muji’s menswear inhabits the same street as that other Japanese clothing kaiju known as Uniqlo. The means by which Muji differentiates itself are its durable and yet somehow totally affordable accessories, the Muji soft case has achieved grail status with many young travellers and on occasion the brand has been featured by publications in the mainstream such as GQ. Did we mention its Japanese? You can always flex on simps with your insider knowledge of sophisticated foreign goods if all else fails.

2. Suitsupply

For: fledgling yuppie scum, students looking to buy their ‘first suit’, dudes with inspiration boards featuring Lord Disick

Once described as the IKEA of suiting, Suitsupply represents a fusion of value, quality and that elusive cliché known as style. The comparison to IKEA is by no means a derogatory one, intended instead to highlight the brand’s value for money and its continuing innovations when it comes to introducing a new generation of men to the joys of getting fixed up to the nines.

The brand’s acclaimed ‘Purple’ line starts at $499, and while many would argue this is an outrage – the same sort of guys who think buying 5 suits for $500 is something you should tell everyone – most of you intrepid Four Pins readers would know that ain’t shit when it comes to tailoring. Suitsupply’s decision to centre manufacturing in China has been a maligned one, but it is this strategy that has allowed them to focus on the bigger picture. Super fabrics from Biella, bells and whistles associated with bespoke and handmade details are all par for the course on their Purple line offerings and when a young dude considers how much wear he’d get out of one or two of his Suitsupply kits, the price comes crashing back into perspective. The brand are even stepping up their editorial game, offering advice on how to get the most use out of your suit, care tips, how to wear a pocket square and any number of other topics that 5 years ago you’d have to buy a subscription to even consider. While most of you yung steez kings will be scoffing derisively it all these features, for somebody new to this whole fustercluck called #menswear, there are few better places to start.

1. Club Monaco

For: Canadian sympathizers, proponents of progressive North American menswear, dudes who actually shop at the mall, the post J.Crew bro

A number of you will no doubt find it hard to fathom why Club Monaco cropped up on this list, without so much as a cameo from their much older, fatter brother J. Crew. The truth is that J. Crew is so much a part of the fabric of #menswear that even unpaid asshole ‘writers’ in Australia have heard of it. While Club Monaco maintains similar brand recognition, people do not approach it with the exhaustion many do when the J.Crew sound effect is dropped. Ludlow suits and chambray shirts aside, CM’s American counterpart has not been able to shake up the sports and casual wear game to quite as devastating effect.

While young men can get the cliffnotes to dressing well at any mall bound Club Monaco location, the brand’s overall shift in tone since Aaron Levine took the reins as Creative Director has established it as a beacon for cool amongst the general public. The store’s 3rd party selection is a little more niche, while the CM collection takes more risks than your average run of the mall menswear shop. It is for this reason that Club Monaco is an essential brand for young men, not because it teaches them the basic joys of dressing but because it encourages them to expand on this for something a little more progressive. By the time you’ve bought your fifth CM drop, you’ll be sufficiently prepared for the WTF insanity of Dick Ovens moon boots.