Six Codes, one price, and they are not ranked. Choosing well takes about a minute if you ask the right question.
Ask where, not which.
The mistake is choosing the one that looks best on this screen. On a screen the Midnight Code wins almost every time, because black photographs beautifully. In daylight, in an ordinary meeting, it is the one most likely to be wrong.
So do not ask which Code you like. Ask which room you are actually in most often, and buy for that room. The table below is organised around exactly that, including the part most shops leave out: where each one fails.
| Code | Shirt | Trouser | Shoe | Where it works | Where it does not |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Power Code | Black | Dark grey | Black Chelsea | Rooms where you are being judged before you speak. Pitching, negotiating, meeting someone senior for the first time. | Daytime summer, anywhere hot, or a room where you want to look approachable rather than certain. |
| Executive Code | White | Navy | Black Chelsea | The default working uniform. Client meetings, the office, a lunch that might turn into a decision. | Nothing, really. This is the one that never looks wrong, which is also why it is the least memorable. |
| Elegance Code | Light blue | Dark grey | Brown Chelsea | Daytime events where black shoes would look severe. Weddings before six, lunches, meeting a partner's family. | Black tie, funerals, or anywhere the dress code says formal without qualification. |
| Midnight Code | Black | Black | Black Chelsea | After dark. Dinners, launches, bars where the lighting is low and everyone else is in navy. | Any daylight event. All-black in sunlight reads as a uniform, and usually the wrong one. |
| Contrast Code | White | Black | Black Chelsea | Maximum formality without a tuxedo. Evening weddings, awards, anywhere you might be photographed. | The office, unless your office is a law firm. It is a lot of contrast for a Tuesday. |
| Modern Code | White | Light grey | White sneaker | Offices without a dress code, and the weekend where you still want to look decided. | Anywhere with a stated dress code. A sneaker is a choice, and a formal room reads it as a mistake. |
If you are only buying one.
Buy the Executive Code. White shirt, navy trouser, black shoe is the most useful combination in menswear, and it is the only one here that is never actively wrong. It will not turn a head. That is the point: it frees you to be the interesting thing in the room instead of your outfit.
The exception is if you genuinely have no dress code at work. Then buy the Modern Code, because a suit trouser and a Chelsea boot in a room full of hoodies is its own kind of wrong.
If you are buying two.
Take one from daylight and one from evening: Executive plus Midnight. Between them you are dressed for almost anything, and they share a shoe, which means one pair of boots does the work of two.
Two Codes also give you six outfits rather than two, because the pieces cross over. The white shirt from the Executive works with the black trouser from the Midnight; the navy trouser works with either shirt. Nothing in this store is designed to be worn only one way.
What is identical across all six.
Every Code has four pieces: a long-sleeve shirt, a straight-leg trouser with a slight taper, a leather shoe and a leather belt. Every piece is unbranded, on purpose. Every Code is sized the same three ways, explained in the size guide. Every Code ships in 10 to 20 business days, and if a piece misses, we fix it and you keep the piece.
The only differences are the four colour decisions in the table above. That is the whole product: not the garments, which you could find anywhere, but the argument about which four belong together. The method page explains how those arguments were settled.