| | | Of everything we've recommended this year, here are a handful of ideas to make moves on right now. | | If you have trouble reading this message, view it in a browser. | | | | |  | | |  | | | | The Patagonia Fleece They'll Wear for Years | | | | Folks, gather round. Circle up. Take a knee. I've got some important news: It's fleece season. There's a good chance whoever you're buying for this year, like so many of us, is cooped up at home all the damn time nowadays. And while robes and hoodies are always going to have their place, a fleece jacket is a way to break the monotony while maintaining optimal levels of coziness. Plus—and here's the really crucial part—one of Patagonia's true icons, the Retro-X jacket, is actually available at the moment. If you've ever gone on the hunt for this jacket in the colder months, you know that disappointment follows not far behind. Not so today! Here's why it makes a perfect gift. It's a fleece institution. The Retro-X sits comfortably in the pantheon of great fleeces no matter which expert you ask (Patagonia's Snap-T pullover also ranks, but tends to sell out less frequently). It's better than ever. The latest iteration of the Retro-X jacket is made from 50 percent recycled materials and Fair Trade certified, so you can feel good about its impact on the planet and people who made it. It's just plain cool. The tufty, high-pile fleece. The contrasting nylon chest pocket. The stand collar with its own contrast paneling. Taken all together, it's greater than the sum of its parts. Buy It Here | | | | | | | | | | | |  | | | | The Sweatshirt-Turtleneck Hybrid Made for This Moment | | | | If you know someone who's found themselves in a bit of a stylistic rut lately, a dynamite fleece turtleneck is juuust left field enough to help them get your groove back—while not taking them anywhere they weren't already willing to go. Todd Snyder and Champion's latest creation is one super cozy sweatshirt, made in Canada out of 16 0z. fleece, and then garment-washed for over half an hour to achieve peak softness. Here's why this will go over splendidly. It's the ideal hoodie alternative. The transitional nature of the piece is one of its biggest selling points, especially in comparison to its slightly, ah, schlubbier hooded counterparts. It's a Champion. There's a reason the iconic Champion logo carries so much industry cachet after a century in the business, and that public goodwill isn't a result of the brand phoning it in for the last 100 years. It's made to be bought in multiples. This is exactly the kind of garment that invites doubling (or tripling, or sextupling) up. An easy-to-wear staple that's just different enough, made with care, and still somehow inexplicably comfy. Buy It Here | | | | | | | | | | | |  | | | | The Toaster Oven That Will Forever Transform Their Attitude Towards Toast | | | | Pull up a chair, have a seat, and prepare for a tough question. Have you ever really—like really—questioned your relationship with toast? We all know toast is one of the most flawless foods devised by humans. Crunchy, comforting, and exalted on social media, it's about as perfect as food can get. But what if I told you there was a new way, a better way, to transform bread into something that actually transcends toast? The Balmuda Toaster Oven is a device that can help you—and most certainly, the foodie on your list—achieve toasty nirvana. Sold now in the United States for the first time, the kitchen gadget attracted an almost cult-like following in Japan and South Korea for years due to its use of steam to imbue any starchy product with an almost impossible balance of crispiness and warm fluff. Here's how. It's one small(ish) step for toaster ovens. You crank the temp, set the timer, and the Balmuda gets to work, making pleasant whistling sounds as it steams your bread. Then the heating coils click on and that bread is roasted to a golden brown. And it's one giant leap for toast. Even bread that had gone past its expiration date could be easily resurrected. It handles more than toast, too. It's also so adept at reheating leftovers—pasta, dumplings, even veggies—that they may even consider ditching their microwave. Buy It Here | | | | | | | | | | | |  | | | | The Heavy-Duty Shirt Worth Getting Nostalgic About | | | | Style Director Jonathan Evans almost remembers his first introduction to L.L.Bean's chamois shirt. He knows the general contours of the story. He was right on the verge of adolescence and his dad, from whom he inherited at least some of his packrat tendencies, had a stash of old shirts that he was finally (again, almost) big enough to wear. So his dad passed them down to him. Among them were a few "shammy shirts," as he (and pretty much everyone else, including the team at Bean) calls them. Brushed cotton. Heavy. Warm. Cozy. Extremely "Dad" shirts, in the best possible way. Should you gift L.L.Bean's signature heavyweight shirt just because that person on your list might one day be able to dunk on the younger generation when it comes to their (relatively) youthful style? Nah. This is why you should gift it. It's the Platonic flannel shirt. There's a reason this thing has stuck around for so long. It's versatile, for one thing. The brushed, heavyweight flannel is sturdy enough to stand in as a jacket on days that are merely brisk, but soft enough to serve as a normal shirt when it's truly cold. They can wear it with everything. A shammy shirt will look equally cool with wide-leg trousers and a mock-neck sweater, the sort of pieces that might be created by designers like Evan Kinori or Christophe Lemaire. Or they could throw one on with slim black jeans and a black tee, giving it a bit of a rocker vibe. It'll last (almost) forever. That's why so many fans of the style hold onto their shirts for years (and, probably, why they occasionally get bent out of shape when Bean makes minor adjustments to the design that they only discover when they re-up after a long hiatus). Nothing lasts forever, of course. But these shirts come close. Buy It Here | | | | | | | | | | | |  | | | | The Innovative Earbuds That Feel—and Sound—Just Right | | | | Halfway through working on Esquire's Best Earbuds of 2020 ranking earlier this fall, Dom Nero was on the lookout for a weird headset. But almost every earbud he tried was designed one of two ways: like a little bulb, or like a button with a stem on it, AirPods-style. How boring. Then he found these. Samsung's Galaxy Buds Live, which are shaped like lima beans and quite unique. They don't go into your ear canal so much as onto it—take a look at people wearing them on Samsung's website to see what we mean. It's really hard to describe. You'd never think they'd fit in there, but after wearing them for a bit, you begin to wonder why all earbuds aren't shaped like this. Nero knew right away that the Galaxy Buds Live, which are fairly priced at $140 (or $120, if you take advantage of Samsung's trade-in program) would be perfect for our Funkiest Design category. What he didn't expect was for them to end up becoming the earbuds I use most often. These beans, really, are magic. And they'll be magic for the audiophile on your phone, too. Here's why. They feel right for every part of the day. What surprised us about the Galaxy Buds Live was—despite underperforming in the realm of noise-cancelling, if that's important to you—they work in almost any setting. They're the podcast-listener's buds of choice. They can slide the Galaxy Buds Live onto their earholes during a walk in the park, and let a podcast play out over the crunchy leaves and chirping birds, which they'll actually still hear because of the way these beans are designed. They are actually hands-free. All of the issues with the buttons or touch pad controls on true wireless headsets don't exist here. They're usually too hard to push, which will stick them painfully deep into your ear canals, or they're too sensitive and end up activating anytime you reposition them at all. The controls on the Galaxy Buds Live—which are actually pretty customizable thanks to the Galaxy Wearables app—feel just right. Buy It Here | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow Us | | | | | | | | Unsubscribe Privacy Notice | | | esquire.com
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