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1 week ago | 
wmbrown.substack.com | Matt Hranek
Before we get into it, here’s a reminder that Father’s Day is exactly two weeks away. If you’re still scrambling to find a gift for dad (or on the inverse, looking to drop a hint to whoever owes you a gift), we’ve put together a gift set with our friends at Faust Wines. It includes a 2022 bottling of The Pact, their flagship Cabernet, plus a copy of my cookbook A Man & His Kitchen (needless to say, the juice will pair nicely with more than a few of its recipes).
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3 weeks ago | 
wmbrown.substack.com | Matt Hranek
We’re just four weeks out from Father’s Day, which makes now the ideal time to get the wheels turning on a gift for dad (or for yourself—forward this on to your significant other/kid.) Dads may not be the easiest to buy for—but if your own happens to be a Wm Brown fan, that task just got a whole lot easier.
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4 weeks ago | 
wmbrown.substack.com | Matt Hranek
Having swam in the deep end of the vintage watch world for so long (it occurs to me that A Man & His Watch will be turning 8 years old this fall! A Man & His Watch 2 is coming—stay tuned!), it’s easy to forget just how daunting that scene can be for those who haven’t already spent years of their life obsessing over it. Plus, vintage watches seem to be hotter than ever, thanks to social media and all the new ways to sell online.
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1 month ago | 
wmbrown.substack.com | Matt Hranek
Along with shorts, striped tees and safari shirts, one of the items I’m most excited to get back into once the weather warms is the jungle jacket. A cousin of the M-65 field jacket made famous by De Niro in Taxi Driver, the Vietnam-era army issue is notable for having four slightly angled patch-flap pockets, which are incredibly useful for holding everything from AirPods to ticket stubs to sunglasses when I travel.
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1 month ago | 
wmbrown.substack.com | Matt Hranek
I’m the worst with dates—every year when I see someone at some event that I wish I was at, I promise myself that I’ll build it into next year’s calendar. Of course I forget, and then I’m back to having fomo the following year. I figured that many of you may be in the same boat, so why not put down all the things I think are interesting that may inspire a trip or two, both near and far.
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1 month ago | 
wmbrown.substack.com | Matt Hranek
In our most recent fall issue, we ran a Factory Tour feature on my friend Nathan Hellard, who’s been quietly producing some of the best linen in the world through his business Maison Hellard, a literal mom-and-pop workshop in the southwest of France (his sole assistants in the project are his parents and his trusty cocker spaniel, Vaillant). Ever since my friend John Sugden introduced me to Nathan at a bird hunt in the Scottish Highlands in 2024, I knew that I wanted to make a cloth with him.
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1 month ago | 
wmbrown.substack.com | Matt Hranek
Thank god I have friends and colleagues who live in London and and know it inside-out, otherwise I would never know how to navigate what’s going on in this town. Sadly, I don’t get to London enough, and when I do, it is never for enough time. It always seems like I am missing something (or someone for that matter)—rushing around the city trying to fit everything in. Plus as a creature of habit, I pretty much do the same things every time I visit, not exploring the city to its fullest extent.
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2 months ago | 
wmbrown.substack.com | Matt Hranek
I would say by now that I’m officially a veteran of these Swiss watch fairs. I would also say I really enjoy them. I like seeing the latest and greatest the brands have to offer, I enjoy the comradery of my peers in the watch community, I love the brand swag bags and care deeply for the people in the trenches meeting and greeting us and repeating the same dialogue over and over again about the latest offerings (I feel you!), and I like the endless espressos and Champagne offerings.
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2 months ago | 
wmbrown.substack.com | Matt Hranek
There’s been a jewelry store in this medieval Italian city since the 17th century. But it isn’t just a store. Walk through the ancient wood-paneled showroom, duck under a heavy curtain, and you are admitted into the inner sanctum of current owner Giuseppe, the 13th generation of this family of jewelers. However, that’s not why this dapper gentleman in his 60s is such a local celebrity.
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2 months ago | 
wmbrown.substack.com | Matt Hranek
I’ve made no secret about being less enthused about spring than I am the other seasons. There’s a romance to being reunited with a favorite tweed jacket at that first sign of fall, and an excitement to breaking out shorts when summer kicks into high gear. With its transitional temperatures and hard-to-pin-down weather, spring just doesn’t have the same strong and immediate associations. What it does require, however, is utility—particularly where rain is concerned.