travel wear

You’ve probably heard horror stories of petty crime happening to travelers… like the infamous pickpockets on the Paris metro who work in teams, letting one distract you while the other raids your bag. It makes it sound like riding the metro entails putting your valuables (and your life?) in danger. But if it’s that bad, why don’t Parisians get pickpocketed on their way to work? For that matter, why don’t New Yorkers have their phones and wallets stolen every time they ride the subway? Half of the answer is that our imaginations are worse than real life: these are actually...

A black garbage bag stuffed with dozens of our best attempts at an incredible, technical t-shirt sits like a burial ground of sorts on the floor of our headquarters in New York City. I abused those shirts hiking, biking, and the rest of my everyday life for days at a time. I really wanted to love each and every one of those shirts. But none survived what I put them through. They showed sweat stains. The fabric started to pill – you know, those tiny fuzzy balls you see on sweaters when they start getting worn out. And after a...

The New York Times Travel Show features more than 500 exhibitors and is held annually in January at the Javits Center in New York City. Thousands of people attend. We’ve been before, but we’ve never had a physical presence – until this year. The goal of our booth was to meet customers, showcase our products, and get your feedback – and boy, did it deliver. As we developed the booth design and built it out, I was thrilled that it felt true to what Bluffworks is all about: authentic and high quality, different from what everyone else was doing at the...

Many of us have the dream of owning fewer things, a smaller collection of well loved pieces that all reliably go together. When you get up in the morning, you can take anything out of your closet and look great. This is the concept of a capsule wardrobe — a limited number of pieces that mix and match and go with every other piece. The whole idea is to save time and conserve energy in thinking about what you should wear, so you can apply yourself to more important things. A work capsule wardrobe is a slightly different beast, as...

I adore watches. They feel like a trusty tool that’s always on my wrist, that survives high dives and low clunks, hopefully without fail. In this day and age, using a watch is still more satisfying than looking at my phone. And they communicate something about me (a delicate, elegant timepiece versus a rugged field watch). Despite what you may have heard, watches aren’t dead. The question is, what is the best watch for travel, and why is it different from the watch I wear everyday? Some travelers look for a watch that is less expensive than what they wear...