If you read my Portugal post, you know how this started. Jennifer had opinions about my travel wardrobe. The citizens of Lisbon had opinions about my travel wardrobe. I came home suitably chastened and with a list of things to replace. Well, I’ve replaced most of them. This is the follow-up I promised — what I actually ended up with, how I got there, and a brief detour into a personal grievance about shoe soles that I cannot in good conscience keep to myself.
[Photo: the full haul]
The Outerwear
The fleece situation is resolved. As I explained in the Portugal post, my old Oxygen Marmont fleece had reached the end of its useful travel life — lightweight and functional, yes, but looking like something I’d found in a box in the garage, which Jennifer pointed out with some frequency. I went with the Helly Hansen Versalite I’d been eyeing. It’s heavier than a typical fleece, which I was slightly worried about, but the material is denser and doesn’t have that telltale fleece texture that says “I’m on my way to a 5K.” It reads more like a midlayer and I think it’ll travel better for exactly that reason. The old fleece has been reassigned to chores, where it will probably outlive all of us.
The puffer situation is also resolved. My old Uniqlo lightweight down jacket was leaking feathers — not catastrophically, but enough that they were ending up on the fleece I was wearing underneath it as a barrier layer, which is not the look. The new one is from Quince, also lightweight, also actual down, packable. The fit is slightly more relaxed than the Uniqlo, which I’m reserving judgment on until I’ve actually worn it out in the world. The old puffer is now the insulation layer for outdoor chores alongside the old fleece. Those two are going to have a great retirement.
For the raincoat, I’ve written about this at length separately and the search was its own ordeal. The short version: I found the REI Co-op Xerocloud 3L, ordered a size up so I could layer under it, and it’s longer than most rain jackets — long enough that it reads more like a trenchcoat than a trail jacket when you’re walking around a city. That matters to me. I don’t want to look like I’m about to summit something in Lisbon.
[Photo: the three layers]
The Shirts
I went looking for more collared prima cotton t-shirts — my travel workhorse, the thing that gives you a collar and a bit of polish without requiring ironing or taking up the space of a button-down. The hunt was, predictably, more complicated than it should have been. The challenge is finding them in 100% cotton, which sounds trivial and is not. Gap and Banana Republic make them, sort of, except that neither brand believes in carrying the same basics year after year, which is a retail philosophy I genuinely cannot explain. You find something that works and next season it’s just gone.
I ended up supplementing on Amazon, which I hate with a mild but steady passion. Amazon is just Walmart with better UX and an even less curated vendor situation — you never quite know what you’re getting from which third-party seller, and the idea that they can’t vet the quality of what’s being sold on their platform when they are among the wealthiest companies in human history is a choice they’ve made, not an oversight. But there is simply no other place that covers the full range of weirdly specific things I need to buy. I’ll probably write a whole separate post about Amazon at some point. For now: the shirts are ordered, the collars are right, and we move on.
[Photo: shirt lineup]
The Pants
For warm-weather travel I needed more linen pants. My existing ones had hit the inseam problem — the eternal 31-inch struggle between a short 32 that’s too long and a long 30 that risks revisiting my childhood trauma around flood pants. I’d rather not discuss flood pants. I’ve moved on.
I tried Quince but the fit was off in a way that’s hard to describe: not quite relaxed, not quite tapered, but somehow both at once. It’s almost like a flat-front pleated effect without the actual pleat, which is the worst of both worlds. Flat front, straight fit, not baggy, not skinny — this is apparently a complicated request in 2026.
The real find was Duluth Trading’s Fire Hose pants. They’re 98% cotton with 2% stretch, and they are genuinely excellent — soft, tough, and they have a reinforced gusset so they don’t wear through where pants usually do. The brownish color option works well with my general palette. I also landed a pair of chinos from Gap that are cooperating with my inseam. Both are going on the next trip and I’ll report back.
[Photo: pants]
The Sneakers, and the White Sole Problem
This is where things get complicated, and where I need to confess something before I can move forward.
If you read my light duty boot post, you know that I have an irrational hatred of white soles — and that I have also, somehow, become a person who owns two pairs of white-sole work boots. I’m aware this is hypocritical. I’ve made peace with it. White soles on work boots are absurd and impractical and I embraced them anyway, which is its own form of character development.
But here’s the thing. The white sole problem has now metastasized far beyond work boots. It has colonized sneakers, casual shoes, and what the industry apparently now calls “dress sneakers” — which is a category that should not exist, and whose existence I object to strenuously.
You know what I’m talking about. The dress shoe that’s been engineered to look like a sneaker. The sleek leather upper, the pointed-ish toe, and then the thick white rubber sole underneath it, which immediately undoes everything the upper was trying to accomplish. It’s a shoe that can’t decide what it is, and the white sole announces that indecision from the floor up. I’ve looked at these shoes, I understand their appeal in theory, and I cannot make myself buy them. There’s something about a white sole on a shoe that’s supposed to be dressy that just reads, to me, as “I am a middle-aged man who has decided that wearing sneakers is what young people do, and if I put a leather upper on them nobody will notice.” I notice. I always notice.
And the same goes for white-sole sneakers on adults past a certain age. There’s a version of that choice that’s just trying to reverse the clock, and I’d rather not participate. You’re older now. It’s fine. Embrace it.
So when it came time to buy travel sneakers — something I could walk 20,000 steps in without looking like I’m going to REI — I went looking for something with a gum sole. Natural rubber, that warm tan-brown color that reads as intentional rather than clinical. Not white. Never white.
And I found it, almost by accident. Adidas makes a Campus in a navy bluish suede with a gum sole and blue stripes that was almost exactly what I would have built in their customizer — which I was fully prepared to do. The stripes aren’t suede, which I would have preferred, but they’re also blue, and the gum sole is the thing that made the whole shoe. I found them on sale. Done. I put black elastic laces in them — the flat kind with the small cylinder connector at the top rather than the side clip — and they slip on and off without touching the laces. I’m still dialing in the tension but I think I’ve got it.
Then, because I was apparently not done, I went looking for canvas sneakers for genuinely warm weather — a city in summer situation where boots are too hot and flip-flops are not a real option for a full day of walking. Converse was the obvious answer but they only offer the Chuck Taylor in their customizer, and I wanted the One Star. So I went to Vans, built a pair through their customizer in a two-tone navy canvas with a gum sole and skate shoe construction, which people on the internet say is more comfortable for extended walking than the classic Vans thin sole. Before ordering the custom pair I bought a standard pair from Dick’s to confirm sizing — I was there for baseball cleats anyway — and I’m glad I did.
Two pairs of travel sneakers. No white soles. I’m comfortable with this.
[Photo: both pairs, elastic laces detail]
Where I Landed
The whole point of this exercise was to replace the specific things Jennifer objected to and fill in the gaps for the next trip. I think I’ve done that. The old fleece and puffer are happily in retirement. The raincoat situation is covered. The shirts and pants are sorted. The hiking sneakers are staying in the bag for trips that actually involve hiking — for everything else, the Adidas and the Vans are the plan.
I’ll post photos and report back after the next trip with an actual field assessment. That’s when the real test happens.
Even that's Odd 
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