I altered the name of the blog- did you notice? Don’t worry; that’s the only thing changing about it.

A little bit of rest. My mother said this to me quite a while ago- 2008, I believe. She took a rather well known sequel film (I will not divulge it out of embarrassment) and dumbed down the “intellectual” title to something I quite enjoy and has stuck in the back of my head ever since. The phrase is obviously not overtly related to menswear, but I think it fits in with the direction my writing has taken, especially when compared to what it was in the beginning. The blog is more personal. More introspective. More slouchy. I think the new name fits!

The name Street x Sprezza was never a good one; I recounted this story on the podcast. The moniker was coined as a combination of streetwear and sprezzatura, evoking my cringy #menswear inclinations and the casual style of my then-writing partner. Obviously the rest is history and the blog became my personal diary, documenting my vintage-picking excursions, explorations in the classic menswear industry, and all the style cues I’ve ever tried. So many memories, both written and visual, are captured in the 400-odd articles amassed over the blog’s six year tenure

While my style and approach to menswear changed (for the better), the blog’s name never did. Hell, it even stayed a free “dot wordpress dot com” site! This was because I couldn’t be bothered to make it into a serious endeavor; I just wanted to focus on writing and photographing whatever I wanted. I wasn’t planning on monetizing at all, and paying the wordpress fee/hosting just didn’t seem worth it for a proper name. And so the name was relegated to being a memento since Tim never really contributed to the blog, acting as a permanent placeholder.

Obviously I didn’t expect the blog to get bigger (it still isn’t, but it enjoys a humble audience) and over time, I began to cringe at how bad the name was. “Street x Sprezza” (.wordpress.com). Such a bad fucking name. People would simply refer to it as “Ethan’s blog” more than Street x Sprezza. Could you imagine how embarrassing it was to explain the name to people, let alone how to spell it? Just awful. Alas, I was just going to deal with it; after all, people enjoyed the content!

Then, today, I decided to change the name. It wasn’t because the blog just passed six years of existence nor was it because of the deep introspection I’ve done lately on topics like influencer culture, POV, slouch, and music. [I won’t lie, it did creep up a bit; if the blog was getting to the level I wanted it to be, shouldn’t the name follow it?] No, it was none of that. The reality was because WordPress had a flash sale where a plan and domain was less than $50! This seemed like a great deal and enough for me to take the leap and turn it into a dot com. Finally.

At first, I was just going to make it StreetxSprezza.com and just double down on the awful name I came up with literally by combining two hashtags. Unfortunately, it was taken. The guys in the Patreon Discord suggested StreetxSprezza.blog or .net; all gross. I eventually decided that if I was going to shell some money for the domain and can’t get a simply .com, then it should have a completely new name, one that I enjoyed. Slouchy Considerations was one (as well as Slouchy Threads), but I felt like they were all too on the nose. Despite the cringe name, I liked how similar it was to Die, Workwear- a nonsense title where the content speaks for itself. And no, it wasn’t going to be StyleandDirection.com

Finally, I went with the title you see above you: a little bit of rest. I like it! It’s vague enough for me to continue writing about my menswear adjacent topics like photography or films that I enjoy. To be clear, the name is the only thing that’s changing on this site. I still am committed to non-monetization (outside of the Patreon, of course) and I will do my best to not have ads on the site (it helps if you continue to use ad blockers on your browser just in case). It’s simply a new name, one that I think fits the site quite well, both in menswear and my general disposition in life (which you see from this blog and podcast anyway).

At last, I can finally share the full name of this blog with people and be proud, instead of cringing internally.

Always a pleasure,

Ethan M. Wong