The Case for Coordinating Your Outfit With Your Boys

By Jason Diamond

On one of the first comfortable spring nights this year, I sat outside of Upside Pizza on Prince Street in Manhattan. It's one of my favorite newer places in the city to get a plain slice, but its location also makes it genuinely one of the finest spots to engage in the time-honored urban tradition of people-watching. You get old-school Little Italy guys walking around, tourists looking for the Ice Cream Museum, 20-somethings from Long Island who came into the city so they could wait outside of the Aimé Leon Dore flagship a block away. You’ll likely hear "Dimes Square" said out loud like it's an incantation at least half a dozen times.

On this particular night, I was transfixed with a small crew of guys that walked past me. They looked great. Each of them had a different personal style, but they gelled together perfectly: Tailored suits with baseball caps, a letterman jacket opened to show off a couple of gold chains, great neckwear, just a perfect blend of preppy and more downtown-influenced takes on traditional menswear. I joked to my friend that it looked like Big Menswear had created a natural fiber Justice League in a lab, but then I made a mental note that I wanted to track them down.

A month later I found myself sitting in almost the exact same spot at Upside Pizza talking with the guys I’d seen just a month earlier. I’d found Team Cozy Boys. Elias, Reggie, Sora, and Stephon. My first question was one I’d been thinking about since I found their Instagram page and saw a comment calling them a boy band. Is this like a Beatles thing where they all have assigned personalities—the quiet one, the cute one?

"Something like that," Elias said with a sly smile.

"He's got the scents," Stephon says as he points to Reggie. I had already noticed. Turns out Reggie was wearing Oud Ispahan by Dior.

"Elias likes accessories," Sora points out. I noticed that. He's got on necklaces and rings, and his Instagram is filled with great timepieces.

"We’re all great at what we do," Stephon says. "Each of us brings our own little seasoning."

A few nights later I looked around the buzzy downtown bistro Lucien and thought certain parts of the city has started feeling a little like the 1979 classic The Warriors, with all these little gangs of people showing up at bars and parties, giving the distinct impression that they all coordinated the way they dressed. As I sat waiting for my squab, I noticed three distinct crews around me: One was a four-top that looked like were all wearing The Row head-to-toe—or at least cribbed all of their influences from the Olsen Twins’ lookbook. A few tables from them, a group of 20-somethings all dressed like 1993: Baggy jeans, a vintage Sonic Youth Washing Machine t-shirt, a flannel shirt tied around a waist—but watching one sneak indoors vape hits gave them a contemporary update. A few tables away from them, no less than six chic witchy goth types all sat talking about Vanerpump Rules. These three groups had no connection to each other (besides the fact that I watched one of the Row people give a cigarette to one of the chic witchy goths), but I couldn't stop thinking about how coordinated it all felt.

New York has always had duos, cliques, and groups. In the Sixties you might be at a party somewhere and Andy Warhol would walk into the room with whoever was part of the Factory crowd that week. Hanging out downtown in the aughts meant you’d likely hear "I think that's one of the Misshapes," the trio of DJs, at some point in the night. Sometimes people are lumped together by a place or a common theme in their work.The Ramones and Television had little in common save for they both played at CBGB, but because of that, they wind up forever with the same label.

The abundance of people to see, events to attend, bars to drink at, and parties to check out all within the same night is one of the things that keeps drawing people to New York. But even with all the things going on and conversations being had, as the author Oliva Laing wrote in her book The Lonely City, "You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people." It's not so much that the members of Team Cozy Boys were lonely or in need or friends, but as anybody can tell you, there is strength in numbers. Walking into a room with one, two, or three other friends can make things easier.

Jake Mueser, the founder and creative director of J. Mueser, gets this. On his own, he's easy to spot in a room with his 1990s lounge lizard Nick Cave-era hair and the impeccable tailoring he designed. But when you see him out at a party for a brand launch at Dante in the West Village or a low-key Fashion Week party in Chinatown, more likely than not he’ll show up with any number of his crew, which he says came together through "a blend of menswear and social life." This includes Wm Brown Magazine founder and editor Matt Hranek; Pete Middleton, founder of nuevo westernwear brand Wythe; Emilie Hawtin, former J. Crew editorial director who is now collaborating with Muser on the brand Clementina, writer, and modern-day jet setter Zach Weiss, and a few others. Mueser has been friends with a few of these people for years, but he mentions that during the pandemic, when he hosted smaller, more intimate gatherings for his brand, a "small kind of group" formed out of that. "When the world started opening back up, we’d brought all these people together, so it just sort of made sense." He says that these days, his shop serves as sort of the starting point for a night out. People will meet there, maybe have a drink, then head out to whatever event together. But while Mueser's group haven't given themselves a name or an Instagram page Team Cozy Boys are, well, Team Cozy Boys.

And since standing out takes more work than ever these days, sometimes it's good to be seen with people who compliment your style. Last summer, Brock Colyar introduced readers of The Cut to "a gang of TikTok bros in their mid-20s who have decided to call themselves the ‘East Villains.’" Not long before that, I confirmed that LeeRock Starski and Tashawn "Whaffle" Davis hang out in real life—two people I’d never met but I’d noticed share an obsession with late-1970s and early-1980s outer-boro NYC styles (think: Sugar Hill Records, Spike Lee's Crooklyn, Kangol, old Adidas, ringer t-shirts). When I ask Davis, he also mentions other friends he likes to go out with, like the photographer "Sola" Olosunde and Brianna Jones, whose own social media is filled with looks that could have you thinking they were taken before a night out at Paradise Garage or Studio 54. Then there was the foursome I’ve come to call the Brooklyn Strangers, a quartet I saw casually walking down a street in Clinton Hill one Saturday night, all four of them in Wrangler jeans, western shirts and cowboy boots.

By The Editors of GQ

By Michella Oré

By The Editors of GQ

As for Team Cozy Boys, the guys realized they’d grown up basically the same way, looking at Tumblr, photos by Mordechai Rubinstein or Scott Schuman (Mr. Mort and The Sartorialist, respectively), Style Forum, and the now-defunct blog Four Pins. Elias, Reggie, and Sora are all from New York, Stephon grew up suffering through the Florida heat in Ft. Lauderdale. They’ve all worked for different brands, from Todd Snyder to Boglioli. And they all share the same hero, Ralph Lauren, which makes sense, given all four of the guys are dressed as if they popped right off a Polo vision board at any given period over the last 40 years. When we meet, Stephon is in a blazer with a pink scarf around his neck, Elias has wire glasses and the lenses have a reddish tint, and Reggie's in a white shirt and pleated trousers. Their looks are all rooted in prep, but it's hardly cosplay or anything that fits into the current notion of another "preppy revival." If anything, it's closer to the sort of reinterpretation of classic American and British styles you might see if you crack open a copy of the Japanese magazine Popeye. Team Cozy Boys are American City Boys, to steal the publication's phrase.

Still, there is something all of these groups and duos have in common: All these people are trying to make their own way, whether it's with their own brand, podcast, or a menswear garage sale like the one Team Cozy Boys have been putting on every few months, Alfargo's Marketplace. Each event seems more packed than the last, with dealers like Wooden Sleepers and Tazewell setting up tables, and some extremely well-dressed people spilling out onto the sidewalk.

Each of the four guys has bigger hopes and dreams. They want to make their way in the menswear world, maybe own a brick-and-mortar shop or their own brand. But for now, they’re just happy having a couple of friends to go out with. Reggie estimates they hang out at least two or three times a week. Sometimes it's to just hang out and get dinner, but other nights, it's to go out. They have a calendar they share of things that are coming up. It makes things easier. And even though each member has their own distinct style, there is one thing they make sure to always keep each other updated on.

"One of us will always send out a text asking what the others are wearing," Stephon says.

"Yeah. Cause like two of us may show up wearing shoes from Belgian or…" Reggie starts.

Stephon finishes: "If we show up in the same thing, he’ll get upset."