RF Kenmore on menswear trends: community-driven brands, the Porsche-in-store cliché, and surf brand revival chances
Mar 20, 2026 with RF Kenmore
Key Points
- Buck Mason has scaled to 50-60 stores with men's apparel driving disproportionate revenue, an unusual pattern since women's typically overtakes once introduced.
- Community-driven subculture brands like Bandit, Satisfy, and Soar break through culturally but face a structural ceiling that limits how many can coexist at scale.
- Surf brand revivals including Florence Marine X and Outer Known exist but lack a credible path to mainstream cultural adoption without an unusual catalyst.
Summary
RF Kenmore is a menswear industry veteran with over a decade working inside men's apparel brands, who now creates content aimed at making the category more accessible. His central argument is that existing publications and institutional voices aim too high — runway, luxury, temporary brands — leaving most people without relatable guidance. That gap is why he started writing.
Buck Mason
On who's winning at scale, Kenmore points to Buck Mason. He estimates the brand has opened roughly 50 to 60 stores and says men's still drives a disproportionate share of revenue, which is unusual: women's typically overtakes men's once introduced. He expects women's to catch up eventually, but describes the men's foundation — t-shirts, sweats, coastal linen, quality fabrications — as genuinely strong.
The Porsche cliché
The vintage car in a menswear store has become a well-worn move, and Kenmore is openly amused by it. He traces the lineage loosely to Aimé Leon Dor's Soho pop-up with a Porsche collaboration, which may have predated Buck Mason's adoption of the format. His take is that however overused it's become, a car in-store does do real work — cars are personal enough to signal brand identity quickly.
Supply chain and community
On operations, Kenmore says COVID forced diversification away from single-vendor China concentration, pushing brands toward Latin America and India. But he argues supply chain model is less determinative of success than community. His definition is specific: brands like the hardcore running labels — Bandit, Satisfy, smaller UK labels like Soar — have built genuine subculture footholds rather than broad lifestyle identities.
Running brand durability
Kenmore is skeptical that running brands can sustain the current cultural moment at scale. He calls out Malbon for opportunistically pivoting from golf toward run clubs as an example of chasing hype. His concern with the running category is less about any single brand and more structural: subculture focus is what breaks a brand through, but it also caps the ceiling. Whether 10 separate running micro-brands can all coexist long-term is, in his view, genuinely unresolved.
Surf brand revival
The surf brand question is where Kenmore is most direct about the limits. Billabong and Quiksilver are effectively gone from culture. Florence Marine X, backed by the Hurley family with pro surfer John John Florence as its face, and Kelly Slater's Outer Known represent the modern attempts at a credible surf-adjacent brand. Kenmore acknowledges both exist, but when pressed on whether any of them could break into mainstream cultural identity — the Instagram GT3 RS owner rocking Outer Known — his answer is essentially no, not easily. He doesn't close the door entirely, but the framing is that it would take something unusual, with the half-joking suggestion that Billabong would need ASAP Rocky as creative director.
Getting into menswear
For anyone trying to learn the category, Kenmore's practical advice is a uniform: pick a reliable top and bottom, buy well-made versions that fit properly, get them tailored if needed, buy multiples, and introduce one interesting statement piece from there. His broader point is that the institutional media covering menswear doesn't serve that audience — which is the gap he's trying to fill.