I've always had a fascination with classic Americana--clothing, cars, motorcycles, furniture, art, film, music, architecture, etc.--relics that recall a not-so-distant golden age in our collective consciousness that lies just out of reach. Cask Heritage Menswear pays homage to this place. It's a time, an experience, that is gone but engrained in our cultural memory and though we can't travel back in time, we are able to revisit it, in a sense, through contact with its relics. Through vintage clothing, we are able to grasp a bit of the past; each piece is endowed with a storied history and by wearing it, we carry on the story and add to it our own.

To some this may sound like a bunch of sappy nostalgia, but for me it rings true. I get a real sense of excitement from looking through racks and piles of old clothes, imagining the places they have been and the people they may have belonged to. I also enjoy the thrill of the hunt and though I may only come across one gem for every 10,000 pieces I sift through, I find the whole process therapeutic. And the reward is well worth the time. Finding a rare or interesting garment is like unburying a piece of treasure and connecting with its past.

I've always built my wardrobe one piece at a time, so the search is endless, and in my searching I have often come across pieces and thought to myself, "Man, this is so rad! I wish it was in my size!" And reluctantly, I would pass it up knowing that I had no use for it. After years of doing this, it finally occurred to me that I pass up so much great stuff that I could probably fill a shop with it all. Then I found Etsy and realized people all over the world were doing just that. So ultimately, Cask grew out of a combined passion for vintage clothing, the joy of the hunt and the desire to share my finds with others. In an age when most of our clothing is mass produced by machines in enormous factories overseas and fashion is driven largely by immediacy, low cost and planned obsolescence--when clothing and the trends it follows are made to be discarded for others month-to-month in an endless cycle--there is something gratifying about the thought of wearing clothing with a history that was produced with quality in mind, more slowly and with a human touch. This is what Cask Heritage Menswear is all about.