“You do not get laid in Everlane,” the company’s founder, Michael Preysman, said. Photograph courtesy Everlane

You may have noticed a certain type of ad on Facebook or, if you take it, the New York City subway, in which an everyday consumer item is presented in minimalist splendor: mattresses (Casper), rolling suitcases (Away), tampons (Lola), razors (Harry’s). Catalogue companies and the people on infomercials have been doing direct-to-consumer marketing for years, but these ads hail from a new generation of startups, companies often backed by venture-capital money, that want to use the methods and practices of Silicon Valley to “disrupt” regular old consumer goods. Take Casper’s Web site, which explains that its mattresses were created through an “obsessive” process involving “two dozen beta models” and “A/B testing.” Consider also these companies’ tendency to present everyday events—sleep, packing for a business trip, the onset of your menstrual cycle, stubble—as time-wasters requiring only the right gadget to be dealt with.

One of the startups to pioneer this formula was Everlane, a mostly online clothing company that sells “modern basics,” the kind of no-nonsense staples one associates with J. Crew and Gap. Everlane came on the market in 2011, selling cotton T-shirts. Since then, it has expanded into everything from sweaters to accessories and has reportedly sought to raise investment at a valuation of more than two hundred and fifty million dollars. This month, the company launched a denim line. A spin through the Web site reveals neutral colors and very little patterning beyond the odd sailor stripe. Prices are moderate (thirty-five dollars for a micro-rib turtleneck), and shapes are modern (high-waisted pants) but not trendy. The names assigned to each item—the City Anorak, the Cotton Turtleneck—conjure a utilitarian approach that prioritizes efficiency over all. Here is a wardrobe you could buy on your iPhone from the elliptical machine.

Everlane was started by Michael Preysman, who, in 2011, was a twenty-five-year-old peon at an Internet investment firm, researching companies like Facebook and Yelp. Preysman dreamed of starting his own enterprise, one that made stuff rather than software, and he saw an opportunity in retail. Clothes are cheap to make, but they’re subject to markups after they leave the factory floor—wholesalers, retailers, and various middlemen all take a cut. As Preysman told Business of Fashion last year, “A basic, high-end T-shirt costs about $7.50 to make, but sells for about $50. It was like, Holy shit, there’s a real discrepancy there.” Choosing the direct-to-consumer model, he focussed his advertising campaign on what he called “radical transparency.” If you click on Everlane’s Cotton Box-Cut Tee, which goes for sixteen dollars, you’ll see that the shirt hails from a factory in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and that it cost eight dollars to make. A photo essay documents the inner workings of the factory and attests to its ethical practices. A diagram breaks down the company’s costs—material, labor, transport. Everlane’s price, therefore, represents a hundred-per-cent markup, but the company notes that a “traditional retailer” would probably charge forty dollars.

The T-shirts are straightforward and reasonably priced, although you could save more money by shopping at, say, Old Navy. In some ways, the most radical thing about Everlane was its marketing. When I met him recently, Preysman was in no way offended by this observation. “Marketing has a negative connotation, but I think of it as—what a really great company does is figure out, What are the customer’s needs? And then giving it to them. And then telling it to them,” he said.

We were at a table in the back of Everlane’s showroom in SoHo. Preysman once swore that he would never open a physical store, but, like other e-retailers, including Warby Parker and Amazon, the company is now pursuing a hybrid model so that customers can try things on. (Everlane, which aimed never to have excess stock, has also reversed its “no sales” policy. Since 2015, it has had discounts; customers are asked to pay what they think is fair.)

Preysman, who is now thirty-two, with a beard that gives him a thoughtful appearance, was dressed in Everlane: jeans, white sneakers, and a navy-blue T-shirt. The look was clean but unremarkable, which is the point. “We’re not a fashion company,” Preysman said—nor would Everlane want to be. “It’s really, really hard to compete in the apparel world.” Large e-commerce companies can respond to microtrends with increasing speed and ease. “Amazon’s going to run the price down to the ground. Zara’s already done that.” The woes of the retail industry are well documented—Urban Outfitters and J. Crew are among the companies failing to compete with the giants—but, even in this brutal landscape, Preysman sees an opening. “Where people are winning is with item-driven businesses,” he said. An item, as he defines it, is a singular, non-interchangeable thing: a Casper mattress, a Canada Goose puffer jacket, a classic sneaker by Vans or Adidas. “It’s a thing that you can build an entire company around.” Is a cotton T-shirt an item? Preysman said that it can be. “I just don’t think that’s an item that people are necessarily looking for today.”

Instead, for the past few years, Everlane has been trying, through an iterative process, to turn sweaters and jackets into items. We took a spin through the showroom, which, to me, looked like a store that you might find on any SoHo street corner: racks of dresses and shirts and pants, tables displaying leather clutches. But Preysman explained that there were subtle innovations. For example, a regular apparel company like J. Crew churns out seasonal, “story-driven” collections—say, a rocker-inspired look for fall—a process that leads to excess inventory and selling corduroys when it’s still eighty degrees outside. Everlane, by contrast, rolls out new pieces one at a time, hoping that each will become a year-round classic: the Cotton Box-Cut Tee Dress ($25), the Slouchy Chino Pant ($58). Rather than designing to evoke a look or a feeling, Everlane creates its clothes for specific “use cases.” Walking to a rack of women’s clothes and removing a Long Slip Dress ($88), Preysman said, “We ask, Is she wearing it to a wedding? On the weekend? Is it work? Is it leisure?” He acknowledged, “Outerwear companies have been doing this for a long time. Like, Hey, you’re going rock climbing? Here’s the thing you need for that.” Everlane’s use cases are pretty much always daytime pursuits—errands, the office—never, say, date night or clubbing. “Then you’re playing in shine, frills, low-cut tops,” Preysman said. “It quickly devolves into fast fashion.” This means leaving opportunities on the table. He shrugged. “You do not get laid in Everlane.”

Despite plenty of buzz, the verdict still seems to be out on Everlane. The company has super-fans (and almost four hundred thousand Instagram followers) and many people I spoke to expressed an appreciation for the idea of “radical transparency.” But the clothes themselves often generated a mixed response. A twenty-six-year-old industrial designer told me that she’d bought a silk blouse from Everlane because “it’s basic and not ridiculously expensive—like Theory, but cheaper.” But she had complaints about the fit: “It didn’t fit around the chest and hips and ass area,” she said. “If I had the money, I’d choose Theory.” I saw what she meant when, at the showroom, I tried on the Japanese GoWeave V-Neck Cocoon Dress ($98), which is made from the wrinkle-resistant fabric triacetate, which Everlane calls GoWeave. The dress was sturdy but lightweight, and would be perfect for, say, a trip to the grocery store. But the shape was nondescript—more like a small bag than cocoon. It’s not that I’m hoping to get laid at the grocery store—but, I wondered, do I have to completely close off that possibility?

Part of the problem might be Everlane’s design process, which, in the early days, the company tackled with the same Silicon Valley “question everything” mentality that it had applied to distribution and pricing. “I had no idea how clothes were made,” Preysman said. He and his team employed something like the Lean Startup method, making T-shirts, and then other clothes, through trial and error. This resulted in some memorable mishaps: a turtleneck sweatshirt “that actually looked like a turtle with a neck” and a rainproof jacket that trapped sweat because the waterproof fabric was sewn inside-out. A happier accident was the Box-Cut Tee. Due to some pattern-making confusion, the company produced a batch of T-shirts that were two inches too short. It then decided to cut off another two inches; the shirt is still a women’s best-seller.