Make Black Friday Great Again

You must be joking.

I'm not doing a Black Friday post this year - for a few reasons: 1) there are a lot of good Black Friday lists already popping up on sites like Die, Workwear, Styleforum, and Dappered 2) I'm consciously trying to not blow my load before leaving for Japan in a few days, and 3) Black Friday is just not that great.

Listen, listen. I'm not saying that there aren't any deals around, because there are plenty of good deals. But they're mostly good deals, not fantastic deals. Stores know that we are trained, like a pack of Pavlovian dogs, to salivate at the words "Black Friday," and they don't need to have insane clearances on a day when people are already primed to buy things anyway. So most of them run a normal sale (which have started to be like a week long or longer), call it their "Black Friday sale," and then sit back and rub one out in self satisfaction as people buy things anyway.

Looking back over the last year or two, the best sales had nothing to do with Black Friday or Cyber Monday. They were usually end of seasons sales or at the end of a fiscal quarter - like the extra 75% off Final Sale at J. Crew (not sure if we'll ever see that again), the Unionmade Archive Sale (no one knows if there are any on the horizon, but it seems like no time soon), or the Mr. Porter semi-annual sale (still the best all-around sale out there).

I'm really not trying to kill your Black Friday Holiday Boner - in fact, I totally support it. The pure volume of sales on Black Friday is definitely a thing to behold, and it's a good time to buy things that aren't usually on sale. I just want to inject a little bit of perspective into a day many assume is a must-do for shopping, because there's gotta be a few guys in the world who have been in a coma for a decade, woke up last week, and believed that this is the very first time J. Crew has done this sale. So please just approach things with a skeptical eye.

In other news, this Document Robe Coat at No Man Walks Alone is insane and you should buy it. See, I support you.