Welcome to Modern Fellows

Founded in 2012, Modern Fellows is an effort to get to know the entrepreneurs and innovative brands helping professionals dress sharp in the digital age.

Getting to Know the Entrepreneurs Behind Innovative Fashion Brands

Through brand profiles and interviews with small business CEOs and startup founders, Modern Fellows helps tell the stories behind the digital native and direct-to-consumer apparel and lifestyle brands making fashion more accessible.

Explore These Style Startups

About Jake

For more than 20 years, I have had the privilege to dress up for work. I started Modern Fellows in 2012 after spending years surfing message boards like Styleforum and Ask Andy About Clothes, wandering around my favorite department stores, getting to know emerging online brands, talking with tailors, and reading style books and magazines to develop a professional wardrobe and a confident sense of style without going broke.

Modern Fellows has since evolved to spotlight the stories behind a range of innovative, direct-to-consumer brands and retailers delivering stylish menswear, athleisure and workleisure for women and men, footwear, men’s jewelry and watches, and eyeglasses.

Global Perspective, Rooted in Washington, DC

Living in Washington, DC for more than 20 years, I’ve had the chance to see my city grow out of its reputation for being “Hollywood for ugly people” into a destination for brick-and-mortar locations from stylish digital native brands like Bonobos, Faherty Brand, Indochino, Marine Layer, Nisolo, and Suit Supply, while continuing to nurture heritage and luxury brands, department stores, and longstanding made-to-measure tailoring businesses.

Over the years, I’ve also had the good fortune to explore fashion around the world, from interviewing the founders of Away Travel, Proper Cloth and Black Lapel in New York City to digging into London’s Savile Row, visiting Italian style startup Lanier’s Atelier in Paris and trying out custom tailoring in Hong Kong, Thailand and Singapore.

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7 Posts to Get You Started

If you’ve never visited before, thanks for taking the time to check out Modern Fellows.  Here are several of Modern Fellows’ most popular posts:

  1. Explore more than 150 stylish menswear brands
  2. …and more than 70 stylish online women’s clothing boutiques to transform your wardrobe;
  3. Learn more about performance “workleisure” clothing for women and men for business casual offices…
  4. …and discover phenomenal alternatives to lululemon for stylish and comfortable athleisure clothing;
  5. Are “Dress Sneakers” appropriate attire for the White House? Or your office?
  6. Discover 23 Alternatives to Warby Parker That Let You Try-On Prescription Eyeglasses at Home;
  7. Browse craft clothing designers and American-made products via this list of Made-in-America clothing companies.