New York is a famously sprawling city, but its local menswear scene is surprisingly tight-knit. So when Commission—the NYC-based label founded by Dylan Cao and Jin Kay in 2018—launched its inaugural men’s line just a few years ago, it got a lot of people talking, and fast.
In 2020, the brand was shortlisted for the LMVH Prize, a king-making competition whose prior winners include a murderers’ row of the industry’s buzziest stars. In 2023, Commission notched an even bigger W: a coveted spot on GQ’s list of the most exciting emerging designers on the planet.
Our own objectively correct biases aside, the brand has enjoyed a meteoric rise by almost any metric. So if this is the first you’re hearing of it, don’t be too hard on yourself—the downside to that ‘emerging’ moniker, after all, is a certain limited distribution, especially if you don’t know where to look.
Which is exactly where we come in. Last week, we spotted a closet’s worth of Commission’s spring 2025 collection available at SSENSE, nestled quietly among the retailer’s million-or-so other SKUs. And because gatekeeping is sort of contrary to our entire ethos around here, we decided to do you a solid by spotlighting a few of our favorite pieces.
The Garrison Jacket, for example, boasts most of the details you’d expect to find on a classic-leaning Harrington—ribbed hem, zipper front, timeless khaki hue—but ditches the typical back pleat in favor of pleated shoulders, shirting-esque barrel cuffs, and an assertively cropped silhouette.
The Twisted Polo scans as a standard, Lacoste-adjacent riff, until you get to the slanted placket and fully twisted side seam, which skyrockets the whole shebang into uncanny valley territory. Similarly, the Varsity Blazer seems straightforwardly ‘80s—padded shoulders, funky houndstooth fabric, voluminous notched lapels—as long as you discount the rotated welt pockets (though really, why would you discount ‘em, when their mere presence makes the entire jacket infinitely more functional without compromising its elegance).
And that’s to say nothing of the brand’s house-specialty tracksuits—tough-guy sets for the Dimes Square crowd—or its gently-curved Shift Trousers, which one especially dialed dude in our rolodex called his “favorite pants, period.”
If that seems like high praise for a brand that started making menswear less than five years ago, well, that’s kind of our point. Commission tends to elicit that type of reaction from clothing nerds, a group, for better or for worse, you now have one more topic to discuss with.
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