Details: How do you think style varies across different regions, from L.A. to the South to the Midwest?
JV: I’m from the Midwest. It doesn’t get a bad rap—it’s bad. It doesn’t mean there are not stylish people in Chicago or Detroit or Denver or whatever, it’s just when you get into Middle America, fashion is less important to them. They’re the slowest ones to move forward.
MB: I was alarmed at how good-looking the guys in San Francisco are. L.A. doesn’t have that kind of style.
JV: There’s a lot of fashion going on in L.A., if we can use that term loosely. The question of style sometimes is a real question there.

Details: What’s one item in your wardrobe that you consider essential?
TB: I wear the same thing every day: a gray suit and a white shirt.
JV: I have a leather jacket that I’ve been wearing I won’t even say how many years—and thank goodness it still fits. It fits a lot slimmer today, which happens to work.
MB: A navy cashmere crewneck is probably what I turn to the most.
JV: It’s the first thing I ever saw you in.
MB: It will probably be the last. It has holes in it. I still have the one my mom gave me from my freshman year in college.
TB: That’s truly preppy, really using the clothes and really wearing the clothes.

Details: As American designers, do you feel a certain obligation to promote an American sensibility?
TB: I think the most important thing is to do our own thing and that’s what people will respond to—that really is American.
JV: There was a period of time when there really wasn’t anything happening in American men’s fashion. It’s great to see what’s happening now.