Good Jeans

Muzquiz stops to watch, but he doesn’t seem too alarmed. Coming to this Goodwill is fairly routine for the menswear influencer and content creator. As @edgyalbert on TikTok and Instagram, he blends a sarcastic, provocative persona with genuinely helpful style tips and historical knowledge. The approach has earned him more than 14 million “likes” and over half a million followers. His videos are full of tips about how to style jeans and cardigans; “fit checks” (that is, describing the details of his outfits) for activities like going to the FedEx store or getting a burrito; style reviews for contestants on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette; and clips that gently poke fun at guys who have poor fashion taste or take fashion too seriously.

The rise of @edgyalbert has continued in the past several months. Already this year, Muzquiz announced he is a Levi’s “ambassador.” In the fall, he had content deals with Ralph Lauren and Mr Porter and collaborated with belt maker Maximum Henry. A Timex paid partnership video he posted in September got more than 16 million views, his most-watched clip ever. Last summer, GQ called him a “social media sensation,” and in October, the fashion and beauty publication Glossy described him as “something of a guru.” Glossy quoted an industry observer as saying, “Muzquiz’s influence not only on how young guys dress these days but how menswear influencers present themselves can’t be overstated.”

At the Goodwill, Muzquiz is dressed impeccably, even for bin-diving. He’s wearing Paraboot’s Bergerac boots, Levi’s shrink-to-fit jeans, a black All-Time High T-shirt, a beige 3sixteen for Wythe hat, a Tudor watch, and a necklace. Digging through the bins with work gloves, he looks for interesting textures, “Made in USA” labels, tags for old tailor shops or defunct department stores, and indications that a piece was made long ago with care and is not newer and mass-produced. “You can go to any of these vintage stores and pay hundreds of dollars, but here I might be able to find that thing for two dollars,” he says. “It’s never going to be the dream pair of 1960s Levi’s or anything, but it’ll be something in between that I hadn’t really considered.” He has an eye for distinguishing worthy from worthless; one pair of Dickies, which appears to be made from 100 percent cotton, is “a slam dunk,” while another pair, which he says is likely made from a poly blend, is a pass. He leaves with three items: vintage Tommy Hilfiger shorts, a vintage high school varsity cardigan, and the all-cotton Dickies. The haul comes to $11.

In real life, Muzquiz is just as cool but not quite as “edgy” as his social media persona. “Part of it is genuine, for sure,” he says, but part is playing a character. It makes sense that he’s good at it, having gone to a performing arts high school and then done sketch comedy and improv at Vassar. College is also where his interest in men’s clothing grew. As a history major, he wrote his thesis on Levi’s and masculinity. Other papers in the department “were about the firebombing of Dresden or something, and I had this very silly write-about-jeans one,” he says.

After college, Muzquiz did some fashion writing and worked as a sales associate at one company that sells denim and other clothing and as a buyer at another. But it was during the pandemic that he became more interested in learning about vintage clothing and sharing his knowledge on social media. He felt like existing content creators who offered style tips didn’t focus enough on the history, character, and ethics of pieces. “It was people talking about, ‘You need green pants,’” he says. He wanted to do something different, and his approach quickly worked. One of his first TikTok videos got more than a million views. Another early one, in which he jokingly offered to “cyberbully your boyfriend until he starts to dress better,” got three million.

Making such videos is now his full-time job. He shoots content quickly, channeling his background in improv. “If I think too much about something, it won’t come out sounding authentic,” he says. He spends time looking to books and movies for inspiration and making strategic purchases on eBay. He also acts.

“He wears many hats,” says Caitlan Moore ’16, who lived with Muzquiz and last year directed him in LBJ: The Play, a comedy about Lyndon B. Johnson. “He can be the authoritative fashion historian, but he can also then shed all of that and be a really solid actor who just brings what the role requires to it.”

Sunny Zimmerman ’16, who wrote and directed the play, which will be part of the “Netflix Is A Joke Fest” in May, says Muzquiz’s social media rise makes sense. “It’s always been a part of his personality and his character,” says Zimmerman, who did improv with Muzquiz at Vassar. “Seeing him be able to use all of his expertise and knowledge for something in a way that combines his ability to act and play a role … It’s been both wild and inevitable just to watch this happen.”

Hundreds of videos later, all that work has amounted to not just a thriving social media career but also an extremely impressive personal clothing collection. Moore says Muzquiz’s closet had “the most tweed and corduroy and wool that you’ve ever seen.” He even had a locker for denim. “I also love jeans, but they’re just shoved in a drawer that sometimes doesn’t close,” Moore says. “But you open this locker and there are just stacks of beautiful different shades of indigo, and everything is folded nicely.”

Muzquiz’s number-one style tip for men? Start with a good pair of high-waisted trousers. “Someone changing their pants,” he says with a laugh, “can really change their life.” –Max Kutner ’11