Initially, I figured I’d kick this off by writing about one of my favorite stores in New York: Nepenthes, a fort of good taste in Manhattan’s tchotchke-filled Garment District. These days, the city is increasingly overrun by storefronts for direct-to-consumer online businesses that treat fashion as a problem to be solved. Nepenthes, which serves as the parent company of Engineered Garments and Needles (among other lines), treats getting dressed like an adventure, or maybe a kindergarten crafting hour.

The madness is laid out on the Nepenthes Instagram, where the brand’s preferred mode of dressing is modeled by the store’s employees: start with a pair of giant wool pants, layer an apron over them, finish with three cotton jackets and a fuzzy bucket hat. EG—and by extension Nepenthes—is America by way of Japan, with assists from Timothy Leary, Tim O’Brien, and Thelonius Monk. I don’t often leave without buying something, and it’s almost always something I hadn’t ever thought I’d need.

So I was surprised when the stuff that caught my eye on a recent visit was something else entirely. Traditionally, the small second floor at Nepenthes is home to a quietly killer footwear section. Those are still there, thank goodness, but they’re joined by an increasingly large selection from South2 West8, another Nepenthes-owned line. Where Engineered Garments reinterprets Americana, and Needles makes luxury goods out of non-luxury items, South2 West8 takes its inspiration from something decidedly more prosaic: fly fishing.

As in, these clothes are literally designed for fly fishing: shells, pants, and base layers that you would wear if you needed to stay very dry without sacrificing an ounce of drip. The serious fishing garments mostly come in sober black and navy. Which is fine, because there was also a size-medium fleece that fit me like an XXL, and not in a bad way. Last summer, a neon-purple mesh matching set—best worn by Zach Woods in this magazine—stayed on the racks long enough for me consider copping. And on this most recent visit, I came awfully close to leaving with a baggy black parka lined with a furry snow leopard print. For, you know, fishing.

The S2W8 clothes feel uniquely cool right now, but I think that’s in part because of context: menswear is drowning in gear, and South2 West8 is uniquely good at feeding that interest. What do I mean by gear? I mean straps. And toggles. And snaps. And clips, and buckles, and chest rigs and cross body bags. I mean menswear that feels technical, in some cases is technical, and in all cases makes the wearer look like they have concerns more severe than personal style.