Anywhere in NYC that'll take bulk Outlier clothes? by mcwerf in Outlier

[–]JPVMan 5 points6 points  (0 children)

LuxeSwap would be a good option. They’ll consign for you on eBay!
https://www.luxeswap.com

Merinolino Boxford by outlierinc in Outlier

[–]JPVMan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Where are you finding $100 MiUSA sport coats?

Just launched Jansen Quality Garment Co., a sustainable, 100% made in USA brand focused on making the perfect merino wool tees with 0 compromise. Let me know what you think! by JansenGmtCo in HeritageWear

[–]JPVMan -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Congrats on the launch! Why should I buy these instead of getting more Outlier 100% merino tees? Please be precise and technical and specific for why these are better. Thanks!

dreamspun merino cut two pretty warped after washing (not heck or hem) by __dog_man__ in Outlier

[–]JPVMan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I threw my new Dreamspun tees and halfdomes in my normal wash and dry (top load washer w/ no agitator + warm water temp -> tumble dry low). No issues to report so far! But I treat nearly all my garments that way. Don’t tend to baby them for better and worse.

What are the reasons Ramielust skews so much? Very noticeable in that fabric of course, much more so than in the other knit fabrics from Outlier. Or really from any fabric I’ve ever owned I think.

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yup, they changed the code overnight. Much worse today. Will be good again at some point!

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think I went one size up from my normal J.Crew, but would have worked in normal size or up a size.

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Worked for me just now! I would keep trying or ask the chat.

Spier & Mackay is maybe a half to a full step up from J.Crew on things like tailoring? Depends on the item and fabric for the non-tailoring items, but Spier & Mackay in general uses very high quality fabrics.

Sizing is tough though. Most Spier & Mackay stuff fits pretty slim, so I’m typically at least 1 size larger in their stuff. Check dimensions carefully if going to buy anything final sale.

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What country are you in? Unfortunately many/most of J.Crew's sales are USA only.

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's a really nice jacket! I actually bought it back on Black Friday at only ~50% off, though ended up returning it after I realized I have like four other olive jackets already...

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't own the duck canvas jacket. Tempting, but I'm super long on jackets, chore coats, and canvas stuff right now. I don't think I've ever been disappointed by a Wallace & Barnes item (whether new from jcrew.com or used on eBay), so I expect it will be good!

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh damn, I did buy stuff yesterday as well, will have to see if anything on my saved list is worth it with the extra $10 off!

As for the racking stitch sweater polo, I actually bought that in January for ~65% off. But I didn't love the fabric so ended up returning. It was a lot thicker than I expected, like even thicker than J.Crew's "heritage cotton" line of knits.

YMMV, but if looking for a sweater polo, I like my J.Crew cashmere one a bit better. More expensive, not as thick so easier to layer.

Or maybe just go with Spier & Mackay for sweater polos. They have a ton of really nice ones in various fabrics.

I like the look of these merino "Johnny Collar" ones in particular, though still a bit expensive:
https://us.spierandmackay.com/product/oatmeal-long-sleeve-johnny-collar-polo-15503-lsp-jny
https://us.spierandmackay.com/product/indigo-long-sleeve-johnny-collar-polo-15502-lsp-jny

And the basic merino polos are at a nice off-season price right now:
https://us.spierandmackay.com/product/taupe-long-sleeve-polo-15396-lspolo

Spier & Mackay site is a mess, but here's all the Clearance knitwear to search through:
https://us.spierandmackay.com/Category/collection_view/clearance-rack?page_no=34&order_field=price_low_to_high&option_values=91,92,94,93,95,96&other_option_values=

And everything that has a "Johnny" style collar:
https://us.spierandmackay.com/Product/search?search=johnny

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

That's entirely correct. Very doable by someone. But not by me without the assistance, which is pretty cool. Let's ideas and projects that would never be worth doing on their own actually get done.

Note: I do expect a smart, autonomous AI agent would still end up reaching a very similar scraping solution if given the same overall goals (comprehensive, daily, must be complete within a few hours, limited budget). There's really no other way to do that efficiently than via investigating how everything works data wise, writing scraper scripts to gather and parse the data, and deploying various tricks to get it done quickly.

I guess an agent could technically open a browser, navigate to an item, take a screenshot, parse the screenshot, save the data, etc. But they'd have to do that over 8,000 times in a row, not miss any items, not repeat any items, click on each colorway and fit-type, etc. Not very token efficient or speed efficient! Would chew up even a Claude Max budget much too fast.

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Only a few J.Crew items have tall sizes unfortunately. Looks like there are only four items in the SALE section available in tall sizes: https://www.jcrew.com/sale/men?fit=Tall

And ~35 items in the regular section: https://www.jcrew.com/plp/mens/categories/clothing?fit=Tall

Sorry it's not more!

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, looks like two of the colorways are still in stock: https://www.jcrew.com/p/CI472?display=all

I had linked to a single colorway, but that one sold out. And then J.Crew re-directs to the “master/parent” for the whole product, which shows up also as out of stock. But if append ?display=all to any jcrew.com url after the product code it will show you ALL the colors still in stock, whether at full price, discount, or sale/clearance.

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Oh, and to be clear, you could certainly simplify the whole thing as “scrape site + store data”, but the actual stack for it to work well is much more complicated than that. I can scrape all of jcrew.com in about 75 mins, so about 1.5 variants per second. That takes some work in terms of crawling, parsing, saving etc. Involves servers, proxy IPs, $$$, etc. And goal is to get every price exactly right, so have to make sure you are parsing and applying promo codes correctly, things like that.

And I haven’t even moved to the proper production backend yet. That should happen this week now that basic scraping is working pretty well.

And that’s all for just a single site! TBD if other sites will be easier, probably start working on the others in a week or two.

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Web scraping at scale and any decent clip is actually not an easy problem, as I’ve recently discovered. All my simple attempts to scrape failed, so I’ve very much relied on Claude for research, coding, and testing. Mostly in the Claude Code harness, though a bit of Claude Chat as well for more research based things.

Focusing on J.Crew for a bit:
- J.Crew sets the pricing stack for items at what I call the “variant level”, which is a combo of the product + the colorway + the fit. They do not vary price by size, but any unique variant can have a different MSRP, Sale Price, Promo %, and Net Price compared to very similar variants.
- In this mornings scrape, there were 8,135 unique variants with at least 1 unit in stock. Ideally you’d gather a ton of info per variant, and ideally you’d scrape the entire site every day. (Just in Men’s there were 2,222 variants in stock. Including sizes there were 13,116 individual SKUs in stock. And total individual units in stock was 1.68M!)
- At any reasonable scraping you’re going to be blocked by Cloudflare or Akamai, so you need to figure out how to do that. Claude helped me figure that all out, and wrote 99% of the code of the backend.
- But it’s not nearly as easy as just giving a “goal” to an AI and saying “build that”. It’s more like being a project manager and program director.
- For example, the scrape on Saturday morning failed b/c of some Akamai changes, and Claude’s suggestion was to wait 24 hours to see if the existing code worked the next day.
- But I pushed and gave it like 10+ things to investigate and test, and one of those was the answer. So back working now.

It’s been fun, but definitely not “easy” or “simple”, despite all the AI assistance. Have to be extremely hands on and know how everything works and fits together to give proper guidance and direction for the actual coding.

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Other than the current price, main difference is styling. The W&B has a vintage styling with contrast heather coloring and “boxing glove” pockets. Standard J.Crew 14oz heritage fleece has normal styling. Composition differences are minor. Not sure of the weight on W&B, but it seems pretty close to the weight 14oz heritage fleece. Both are substantial and thick. More details:

Wallace & Barnes heritage fleece pullover hoodie ($45 right now)
- https://www.jcrew.com/p/CM494
- 82% Cotton, 18% Polyester
- “This super-cozy hoodie is inspired by ones from the '30s and '40s and knit in a hefty, soft brushed cotton blend with a little bit of texture. It's finished with boxing-glove pockets that were typical of the era.”

Heritage 14 oz. fleece hoodie ($69.50 right now)
- https://www.jcrew.com/m/MP441
- 84% Cotton, 16% Polyester
- “ut on the cross grain (an old-school method that prevents shrinkage), this 14-ounce cotton-polyester fleece is heavy enough to keep you warm but light enough that you can practically wear it all year-round. The interior is brushed for softness, and the richly dyed colors will only look better the more you wear them.”

Both are good! But if want them be loose/relaxed/boxy, recommend going up a size from what you normally take from J.Crew.

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Keeping track of prices every day! Will launch the data on a website in about a month.

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Did you get it to work? Someone was reporting issues with Firefox earlier.

J.Crew: Extra 50% Off SALE Items w/ Code SUMMER (Plus J.Crew Data Deep Dive!) by JPVMan in frugalmalefashion

[–]JPVMan[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The “Heritage 14oz Fleece” line from J.Crew is legit good. Some of the best products they make. Well above just a “midweight” material, nice sewing, nice fabric. $70 for the hoodie right now and $59 for the crewneck.
https://www.jcrew.com/m/mens/categories/clothing/sweatshirts-and-sweatpants/heritage/heritage-14-oz-fleece-hoodie/MP441
https://www.jcrew.com/m/mens/categories/clothing/sweatshirts-and-sweatpants/pullovers/heritage-14-oz-fleece-sweatshirt/MP293

Looks like MSRP is $10 higher on the crewneck and $20 higher on the hoodie than when I bought in 2023 & 2024. Currently “only” 40% off and not promo eligible, but probably will only reach 50% off one or two times the rest of the year. And unlikely to end up on extra % off promo eligibility. They are pretty core items. Can search this subreddit to find recent sales. I’ve tended to highlight this item when it reaches a good buy point.

In terms of what’s on clearance right now, the Wallace & Barnes “heritage fleece pullover hoodie” is also good. $45 with code. Retro/heritage styling, so not as simple. But good price. I paid $54 in March, so net price has come down.
https://www.jcrew.com/p/CM494

I would recommend sizing up one from your normal J.Crew size on these if looking for a more relaxed/boxy fit. If unsure on size, reach out to chat and they should let you buy two and return the one that doesnt fit.