Wellcultured - Well Cultured is a men’s online magazine with advice and reviews on fashion, dating, finances, health, music, movies and many other topics, as well as a robust message board and the Well Cultured Guide, a freely editable community wiki.

What top tier brands should I buy? Are there any that are safe bets? Are there any that I should save up for?

Short answer: There are none, no, and no.

Long answer: Brand should only matter to you in so much as quality and style is concerned. Outside of the aforementioned, brand matters very little.

One very sad misconception in the fashion industry is that, to be fashionable, you have to drop a lot of cash on big name brands. This couldn’t be further from the truth. While some name brands are of high quality (Brooks Brothers, Dior Homme, etc), other “top tier” brands (Ed Hardy, Rock & Republic) are just… bad. These seem to operate as pseudo-Veblen Goods- despite their relative unfashionable styling, it is their price that dictates their popularity in the fashion world. Of course, as you can probably imagine, this means that a lot of “fashionable” people wear these brands without even realizing how dumb they look.

To hell with brand. If the quality and style are good, feel free to buy any brand, regardless of the popularity.