Recent Articles

I’ve been searching for a DOPP Kit which would be sized correctly for how I travel, while also looking sharp and being aesthetically pleasing. There’s a lot of DOPP Kits out there, but this Full Disclosure Dopp kept drawing me back to it. The size seemed right, and all of the materials looked nice.

I was about to buy one in classic leather, until I realized that this would spend most of the time around water and soap, and leather doesn’t seem like the right choice of material for that type of use. So instead I opted for the Vegan leather alternative, and there’s no going back — this is a fantastic DOPP Kit.

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One thing Members regularly read about is new gear I pick up and items I am eyeing. I tend to note new things I am testing or trying at the end of most of my Member Journals. I went back through the last 8 months or so to take a look at the gear I’ve mentioned and pulled out a selection to share.

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Having recently moved to Colorado, I’ve been doing a lot of day hiking with my family. So, I thought it would be a good time to go over what I am keeping my pack and using right now, as I am sure it will change in a few months.

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I started taking a packable tote with me for travel. It comes in handy during airport snack stops when you buy slightly more than what fits in your bags. Or during strolls around cities when you pick up a few odds and ends and don’t want to be carrying around large branded store bags. Or if you live in a state where the norm is the use your own tote bag to carry anything you buy.

While I have a lot of thoughts on non-packable tote bags, today I want to talk about two packable ones which I think are quite excellent in different ways. I often carry one of these with me.

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I’ve had this Kifaru Echo for nearly a year now, having picked it up back in August of 2023. And while I immediately loved this bag, I didn’t use it a ton, and so it sat around waiting for Texas hikes which never happened. But when I moved to Colorado, I knew this bag was going to get used a lot for hiking.

And after putting this bag through the paces on the trails, in the mountains and woods — I can confidently say that this is the best outdoors backpack I’ve used.

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I stopped wearing polo shirts for a while, and when I was ready to get back into them, I wanted to wear the best ones out there. I was told that the Sunspel Riviera Polos were in a league of their own — the best for sure. I bought a long sleeve variant, and then I bought another, and a few more including short sleeved models as well.

Yes, I agree, these are the best polo shirts you can buy.

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Imagine if you could go buy an exceptionally well finished watch, with a great movement, a really modern-if-classic design, and do that all for under $1,000? That’s what the Traska Venturer GMT offers, and in a lot of ways it represents the best value for dollar on the watch market.

But labeling it as a value buy, is a disservice to what this watch is. The finishing is at least on par with Tudor. In fact, I think it might be a better watch than my Tudor GMT — at a fraction of the price. None of this was expected, or really apparent from the website marketing. So, I’ll do my best to explain how it accomplishes this feat.

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I’ll keep this short and sweet. I am pretty ambivalent about the standard Topo Designs Accessory Bag, they can feel oddly bulky and like overkill. But I was intrigued by the Topolite variant which uses a lighter fabric for the same Accessory Bag.

This is the correct way to execute this Accessory Bag, and it’s fantastic.

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This ‘blazer’ is one of my favorite items of clothing — so much so that even given the pricing (roughly $1,000), I own three of these blazers and still want more. If you look at this blazer online before you read about it, you’ll likely not get what makes it so great — you’ll be distracted by what looks like a rather traditional blazer.

But that’s a mere illusion. A part of the magic of what makes the Sid Mashburn Ghost Blazer so amazing to wear is that it looks pretty normal, while wearing exceptionally well.

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