Top 5 Things I Regret Buying THE MOST | Worst Purchases & Luxury Regrets

00:14 - (upbeat music) I’m Brian Sacawa and you’re watching He Spoke Style where we give you the information and inspiration you need to dress well, have more confidence and unlock your potential.

00:26 - So you know I’m a big fragrance lover, and you also know that I like nice fragrances, and one of my favorite things about fragrance is that there’s always something new to discover.

00:36 - You know, I always have the ones that I go back to, but it’s the thrill of the hunt for something new, and unique, and special that really excites me.

00:43 - And one of the fragrances that started creeping into my mind and piquing my interest was one from a house that I was familiar with, having seen it and smelled it in some higher-end department stores over the years, but one that I never actually went ahead to purchase for myself.

00:59 - So the particular fragrance that captured my attention was Baccarat Rouge 540 by Maison Francis Kurkdjian.

01:06 - Never smelled it, never seen it in the store, but as I was going down one of my fragrance rabbit holes, it was one that started to sound really interesting.

01:16 - For one, Baccarat, I mean, beautiful crystal, lovely hotel in New York, great bar where Robin and I have enjoyed a few cocktails that were a little too expensive.

01:26 - So it had that allure to it already. Of course, having no idea what it smelled like, I read every review I could find in all the usual places, watched whatever video I could find basically to try and convince myself that this was a good choice.

01:41 - I wasn’t completely sold on it based on what I was hearing and what I was reading, just kind of didn’t sound like something that was me.

01:48 - People said it was kind of orangy, on the sweeter side, but the thing that intrigued me the most and ultimately swayed me to make the purchase, this was a complete blind buy, was the fact that people were saying that it was transparent.

01:59 - So I don’t think I’d ever experienced a transparent fragrance before.

02:04 - So yes, I spent too much money. Should have gone with my gut, not a fragrance for me.

02:10 - I don’t like how it smells on me. But not a total loss though, because Robin actually likes it and I like how it smells on her.

02:17 - Next is the story of a mistake I made a very early on when I started to get more serious about putting time and effort into how I dressed.

02:25 - It’s a mistake that I believe is unavoidable for anyone who gets into this kind of thing.

02:30 - The full video for that is right up there. I wanted to be different.

02:33 - I wanted to show people that I was in the know.

02:36 - And one of the brands that at the time for me really stood for that was the Black Fleece line by Brooks Brothers.

02:42 - Black Fleece was designed by Thom Browne known for the, quote/unquote, shrunken suit, and like a lot of his tailored stuff it was classic, but definitely had his modern take on what men’s tailoring should be.

02:52 - The shirts were phenomenal off-the-rack shirts.

02:55 - The pants were shorter. The legs width was wider than you would expect for pants that short.

03:00 - And the jackets were a little short as well.

03:02 - But I’m not talking about the jackets here.

03:04 - I actually kind of really liked the Black Fleece jackets.

03:06 - I had of course, that crazy navy octagon pattern one, wouldn’t necessarily wear it now, but I wouldn’t say that I regretted buying it.

03:14 - And I also had a big tartan plaid one that I got a lot of use out of.

03:18 - The thing I regret buying, however, were the matching pants to the tartan plaid jacket.

03:24 - I never wore them. The plaid was just too big, too bold.

03:28 - I thought I could pull them off in like a holiday situation or something, but I tried them on and just could not bring myself to wear them out of the house.

03:37 - Still have them, size BB1. If you want them, hit me up in the comments.

03:41 - Okay, so although I am very fortunate to have a regular photographer that I work with, I do like photography myself, and I do need to take pictures sometimes when Rob or Robin is not available.

03:51 - So basically, it’s important for me to have my own camera.

03:54 - Before I buy anything, I do lots of research and, of course, Rob is a great resource for things like that.

04:00 - Well, I was in the market for a camera around 2013, 2014.

04:05 - I wanted something that wasn’t too expensive, like around no more than $1,000, but that could still take really good photos.

04:12 - Ideally, I was looking for something that I didn’t have to buy a lens for.

04:15 - So pretty much what I wanted was a really nice point-and-shoot.

04:19 - Rob and I had gone on our very first trip together as part of He Spoke Style.

04:23 - We spent this really whirlwind weekend in Venice, Italy as guests of Persol.

04:28 - His usual camera, the camera that we shoot all the photos on, is Canon 1DX Mark II, way more camera than I needed or cared to deal with.

04:37 - But on that trip, he did take an extra camera with him to shoot a little video and just play around with, and it was the Fujifilm X100S.

04:45 - Small, powerful, good-looking camera that he really liked.

04:49 - So that is actually the camera that I ended up buying.

04:52 - I absolutely hated that camera. You know, maybe it takes a certain kind of photographer to use that camera, but I could never get it to do what I wanted.

05:03 - I can’t count the number of times that I was so disappointed in the photos that I’d taken.

05:09 - There were instances where I needed to get a good shot and it just failed me.

05:13 - And I tried to get better with it, but it just did not work for me.

05:17 - So it ended up being more of a prop than anything else, which was terrible.

05:22 - Next, this is not style related in any way, shape or form, for the record.

05:26 - You may know that I used to race a bike, and bicycle racers are very particular about their equipment.

05:32 - At the elite level, small things like your shifters, your brake calipers, your tires, can all make a really minute but huge difference when you’re stacked up against people who are all, you know, basically at the same ability level.

05:45 - Wheels are one of those things that are extremely important.

05:48 - And since it isn’t style related, I will try to keep it shorter, but there is a very scary story involved here.

05:55 - So I was looking at getting a pair of Zipp 404s, but you know, they’re really expensive.

06:01 - And there was this guy kind of in the cycling community around here who started selling his own wheels so I decided to support him instead.

06:08 - As soon as I got these wheels, I felt like I had made a huge mistake.

06:14 - They were light, which is good, but they felt really cheap to the point of like not inspiring any confidence on the bike at all.

06:22 - So that next weekend there was a road race, and my job in that race was to attack early on, getting a breakaway, make the field chase me so my teammate could sit in and then launch a counterattack once they caught me.

06:35 - I did exactly that, but this was one of the most frightening breakaways that I had ever done.

06:40 - It was a very hilly course, there were a lot of fast downhills.

06:44 - And these wheels were freaking me out. They were supposedly trued, but they were wobbly, and I literally thought they were going to fall off the bike or break in half.

06:54 - So imagine what that feels like when you are going down a hill on a bike at 45, 50 miles an hour with only a thin layer of spandex between you and the pavement.

07:04 - I got rid of those things real fast, bit the bullet and got some Zipp 404s.

07:10 - The moral of the story is that it’s worth paying more for quality.

07:13 - So how cool are people like Angel Ramos, Jake Mueser, Matt Hranek, Steve of The Snob Report et cetera.

07:22 - I love seeing photos of these guys on Instagram.

07:25 - Their style is just so natural, and relaxed, and easygoing.

07:29 - It’s very inspiring to me and I really like their approach.

07:32 - And one of the things I saw all of these guys wearing quite a lot over the last year, year and a half or so, was a particular pair of sunglasses.

07:40 - Sunglasses are tough for me. I have kind of a narrow face so there are a lot of sunglasses that just don’t work for me.

07:47 - Some of them that I really love, like the Persol 649 or 714, or even Ray-Ban aviators, thankfully, come in smaller sizes and those are always the sizes that I wear.

07:58 - Now, the sunglasses in question that I was seeing all these guys wear, they just looked so cool, were the Porsche Design sunglasses by Carerra.

08:07 - So I started looking into them and was kind of disappointed to find out that typically these are very wide, which definitely meant that they would be way too large for my face and look completely ridiculous.

08:18 - But the more reading I did, I did find that there were smaller sizes available, particularly in vintage models.

08:25 - So I hopped on eBay, searched for vintage versions and specifically ones that were designated as small.

08:31 - I found a few pairs, and the pair that I liked the most wasn’t that expensive, it was like a hundred bucks.

08:37 - So I decided to roll the dice. You wanna see what these things look like? Yeah, not really for me.

08:46 - The takeaway is that we all make mistakes and it doesn’t even really matter how much knowledge you have about a certain thing.

08:53 - You know, I talk a lot about suits and tailored clothing on the channel, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t made my fair share of mistakes when it comes to my own suits.

09:01 - I can’t make decisions for you, but, hopefully, sharing mistakes that I’ve made and talking about why I decided to do those things can help you if you find yourself in a similar situation.

09:11 - And that’s exactly what I talk about in that video right over there.

09:15 - So click there to find out what I view as my worst custom suit mistakes. .