Before I left for a trip to Italy earlier this month, I spent a week stressing about what to pack. I combed through my wardrobe, windowshopped on a dozen different websites, and checked the weather daily. (As it turns out, Venice in April is chiller than I expected—no linen pants for this guy). I was stumped, despite the fact that I own plenty of perfect clothes for a short trip to Europe in the spring. The struggle was in figuring out if I wanted to go to Venice dressed “for Venice” or dressed like myself. Preparing for a chill, relaxing week overseas had become a headache-inducing sartorial Rubik’s cube.
If you care about getting dressed in the morning, packing for a vacation adds a whole layer of stress to the planning process. It’s natural to want to dress like you think you’re supposed to when you step off the plane and into Wyoming, Paris, or the Amalfi Coast. Rolling up to cowboy country in Sambas doesn’t feel like the vibe, and you do, in fact, probably need breathable fabrics like linen for Mediterranean climates. The problem is that this urge often gives way to an inclination we’ll call Vacation Cosplay. It’s hard to define but you’ll know it when you see it: sometimes it looks like matching shirt-short sets, linen shirts in bold colors you likely won’t be wearing with confidence, and the sort of retro-style wear that’s so incredibly specific to its moment that it’s less a fit and more a costume (yes, I’m subtweeting the Goldfinger toweling onesie). Other times it’s falling into the trap of packing a collection of individual pieces rather than complete outfits, resulting in a bunch of mismatched fits and heightening the risk of actually running out of clothes to wear before you head home.
“I think the biggest mistake people make when they’re traveling is that they pack things they would never wear normally,” says Albert Muzquiz, the menswear TikTokker better known as @EdgyAlbert. “And that’s high risk, high reward.” On a recent trip to Alaska, the Los Angeles native had the chance to try out coats and sweaters he often can’t wear at home—crucially, though, they were pieces that still felt very much in line with his day-to-day wardrobe and established aesthetic. Still, for every trip to Alaska there’s also one to a city like New York, where he admits he sometimes feels the pressure to show out in such a fashion-savvy city. “I never feel like I’m dressed as hip as everyone else,” he says, noting that his wardrobe largely consists of tees and jeans. “I’ll always bring a fancier collared shirt with the assumption that I’ll put together some tasteful fit, and I almost never wear anything like that.” —Tres Dean
Click here to read the full story.
