What Steven Alan Can’t Live Without

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I used to travel to Japan four times a year for work, and everywhere I went, I’d see Porter-Yoshida bags. I actually went out one night with the brand’s owner around the time I opened my first store, in 1998, and he gifted me this weekend bag and I’ve been using it ever since. I love how light it is. I’m abusive when it comes to luggage, and I’m often shoving it into overstuffed overhead compartments. I have some Rimowas from when I used to sell them in the Steven Alan Home store, but even those have been busted up over time. But the Porter bag has never torn, even though it’s one of my most-used bags. And the large-tooth zippers never catch on the bag’s fabric or any clothing. They’re still making them like they used to, from the same nylon fabric, although they’ve gotten a lot more expensive.

I love swimming, especially in lakes, but water always gets in my ears and I have to shake my head to try and get it out. It’s especially bad when diving. Around four years ago, I found these moldable silicone earplugs, and they are the perfect thing to prevent that. It’s so low-tech yet it works so well. They’re supposed to be reusable, but they really go all the way in your ears, so if you get any kind of dirt on them, that’s it.

Myfather is a jeweler, and I grew up around these things. They’re usually plasticky, but this one is made of solid steel and it just feels good. It’s like the Leica of loupes. I used to lose the cheaper ones often, but I think just because this one costs a lot, I’ve managed to hold on to it. I leave it on a lanyard to make it more visible. It’s perfect for shopping at flea markets because sometimes you just need to see the stamp to know what’s really going on. Like a stamp might look like it says “14K,” but then under the loupe, I see it actually says “14K GP,” which stands for “gold-plated.” The difference in value is huge.

This is the most iconic hiking boot Vasque has ever made. I love this boot because I have narrow feet and it comes in a narrow width. A lot of hiking-shoe brands offer wide widths, but narrow is harder to find. They just feel so good, and I like the way they patina as they age. I got my first pair on clearance at Sierra Trading Post; it was a special edition that was all black. And I later got two more. I used to have a house upstate, and we’d go hiking every weekend, so they’ve seen a lot of abuse, but I’ve never had to get them resoled. I could if I needed to, though, since they have Vibram soles.

I went to the High School of Art and Design here in the city, and I used to be obsessed with old-school photography. When I was 13 or 14, I took photography lessons at the Nikon School of Photography and the 92nd Street Y, and I took so many photos during high school. I liked Richard Avedon’s work, and I remember watching him work with a camera like this and wondering why he was shooting with that camera,because fiddling with the lens to focus can be such a slow process. When I used it myself, I found it was perfect for portraits. I can just be talking to you face-to-face, and because the camera is held down at my chest, I can read your reaction and just click, click, click away the whole time. It’s a subtle thing, but I find when you hold a regular camera up to your face, people start posing for it, so these images can look more natural. I also just love that it’s built to last a hundred years. It’s all mechanical, and there’s something so satisfying about that, like a nice automatic watch or a pair of shell cordovan Alden shoes.

My favorite Aldens are the plain-toe cordovan bluchers built on their Modified Last — which you can only get from one store in America called theMoulded Shoeon 39th Street. It has a narrower heel and a wider front, which is perfect for my weird foot shape. I used to carry regular Aldens in my store, and I remember visiting its factory. There was this salesman, Floyd, who was like 75 years old. Floyd would pick you up from the train station and drive you the three hours to the factory in Middleborough, Massachusetts. One time, I was inspecting a sample of white bucks (like the white shoes they wear in the Navy), and Floyd said, “I’m not going to let you buy those.” So I was like, “What do you mean? I want to buy them!” And he said, “Look, if I let you buy them, you’re going to be stuck with them because no one else is gonna want them. Then you’re going to want to return them, and we’re not going to want to take them back.” I finally convinced him to let me buy them. Then as soon as we got them in the store, Michael Williams from A Continuous Lean wrote about them on his blog, and they sold out in a second.

When I was in Japan for business, I’d see this thing behind the counter at okonomiyaki places and all the little bars by Shibuya Station. I’d order some roasted mackerel, and it would always taste so good, so I just had to get one for my home. You start by putting a little water inside the pan so that it steams and grills at the same time. The fish comes out exactly how I want it: crispy skin but perfectly moist and flaky on the inside. It even has a catalytic converter so it doesn’t make your house smell fishy. It’s just perfect, and I’m surprised more people around here don’t have one.

A combi steam oven was one of the things that I really wanted when we remodeled our kitchen. I had read about how it could cook really quickly without being a microwave, and I thought,That sounds like an amazing thing.I find that certain foods just don’t taste right when they’re microwaved, but when you steam them, it’s really good. Perfect asparagus in five minutes. Or it also works as just a regular convection oven. We almost never use the full-size oven unless we’re having a lot of people over, so that saves on power. Even when we’re entertaining, it’s good for keeping things warm.

They call these tongs, but they’re more like tweezers. They are perfect for pulling sardines or anchovies out of a tin, without getting oil on your fingers. You can use chopsticks, too, if you’re good with those, but these are really easy, and the metal doesn’t retain smell. I don’t do much serious fine-dining-type cooking at home, but they’re good for placing garnishes.

Thirteen years ago, when we renovated the house, I knew I wanted a sauna in the basement. I’ve always loved going to spas — King Sauna in Palisades Park, New Jersey, is my favorite place to go on a day off. I had heard that a far infrared sauna was much easier to deal with than a traditional sauna, and it’s true. It heats up in 10 to 15 minutes, then I can spend 20 minutes in there decompressing. I find it very therapeutic, almost like meditating. It’s too small to do anything else in there. It comes with these colored LED lights that I thought I’d never use, but I actually like using the red light so I can leave the basement lights off and still see.

I don’t think the design is anything special, and it’s actually pretty uncomfortable because it doesn’t come in half sizes, but I like having the data. My wife is an acupuncturist and herbalist, and she thinks this is just the dumbest thing. She’s always asking me why I wear this ring, and I tell her it’s because I don’t sleep very well. Then she’s like, “So then what? So what do you do with the knowledge, knowing that you had a bad night’s sleep? Don’t you just know that when you wake up and you’re tired?” And she has a point. But sometimes I wake up feeling okay, only to find that the metrics show I actually didn’t get much rest. Last night was one of those nights, and I like to have that information so I know not to work out as hard. I just use it for sleep tracking. I know some people use it to tell them,Oh, you might be getting sick because your temperature is, like, a degree off,but I’ve never looked at any of that stuff. I’ve had this for a couple of years, but I think the new, narrower one looks like they’ll be more comfortable.

[Editor’s note: Alan has the older version; we’ve linked to the latest Oura Ring 5.]

My son, who’s in grad school for architecture, helped me design this new store in Brooklyn. For a while, he had wanted to go into music production. He was always playing around with Teenage Engineering’s synthesizers and keyboards, so that was my introduction to the brand. This store is only 250 square feet, so I needed something small and attractive that still sounded good and was easy to stream to. We don’t get to use this feature because it’s high up on a shelf, but I like that it can rewind whatever you’re playing, like you’re spinning a record backward on a turntable.

I’ve never liked designing collections because I wasn’t trained that way, and I don’t want to make a bunch of stuff I don’t love, just to go with the stuff I actually like. I always start with the fabric, and then I’ll imagine what kind of garment it wants to be. Almost every shirt I make starts with a vintage shirt that was almost right but maybe the pocket or the length was a bit off. The Single Needle Shirt starts with this smaller button-down collar. The collar has a really fine stitch going all the way around it. It has a clean placket. And I make them from cotton that’s woven in Japan on these narrow looms that a lot of mills avoid, because they’re costlier to operate. I machine wash everything to get just the right amount of wrinkles. You can dry-clean it and press it if you want, but it’s meant to be easy — there’s no heavy fusible lining the collar. And I can always recognize if someone is wearing one of my shirts, even though none of my stuff has a logo on it. There was actually a New York article Steve Garbarino wrote about this shirt in 2005 called “The Shirt That Ate Manhattan.” And they’ve held up. This Brooklyn store just opened, but so many people who come in know the brand from that time, and they’ll tell us, “I still wear your shirts that I bought 20 years ago.”