Hard Fits: Cian Nugent
Indie rock uniforms, Bob Dylan's shoes, and not looking too Protestant
Welcome back to Hard Fits, an interview series about menswear and the men who wear it. Today’s subject: Irish musician Cian Nugent.
Cian and I have been pals online since his appearance on an early episode of Jokermen. He makes ruddy, warm records that proceed according to a lackadaisical internal logic. There’s an easy, familiar romance to his sound—acoustic guitars, dry drums, plenty of pedal steel—that he also mirrors in his appearance.
After we started trading DMs about the peculiarities of the perfect pair of shoes, I roped him into a transatlantic call that began at about 1 AM Dublin time. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Okay, so I'm not keeping you up like past your bedtime or anything.
It's a Friday night. I tend to turn in around like 3 or 4, anyway.
That's wild. I’m closer to waking up at that time.
Yeah, I'm falling into these music hours, which someday is gonna have to change.
It's the way of an artist.
When I'm 40. That's when I'll start getting up early.
What do men look like and dress like in Dublin? I have no concept whatsoever.
Well, one difference that I've always noticed when I've been in America: a lot more baseball caps.
I wear baseball caps all the time.
I mean, when I was like 11 and I was into Limp Bizkit, I was rocking the Fred Durst. But somehow, I just never really felt good in a baseball cap.
Last year I fell down a flight of stairs and gave myself a black eye, which was a bit of a disaster. Afterwards, I had this big shiner, and I was like, “I’m gonna have to do something about this, I can't be seen in public with this huge black eye.” So I started wearing this Olympics baseball cap that I found on the street. I washed it of course, but it was kinda cool.
So I was wearing it, but then some friends of mine said to me like, “No, you're just drawing further attention to the fact that you've got a black eye. You look like you're in disguise with this weird cap on.”
The only guy in Dublin in a baseball hat.
Yeah [laughs]. But y’know, style stuff is a little more global [these days]. Like the baggy jeans are in here, [at least] amongst younger people. Weird leather jackets. Some of my friends that aren’t into fashion at all are like, “Why are people dressing like my older sibling in 1996?”
We’ve come out of the skinny jeans indie rock look, but it took a while to get out of it here because Ireland is like a year behind London, maybe even more. We’re always a little bit behind trends. But yeah, if you’re like a music person—there’s always the sort of people who are into music but don’t see themselves as being into fashion.
Presentation on stage is a big part of performing—that’s the other part of it, besides actually getting up there and doing the playing.
I feel like things have changed a little bit recently, and it’s more accepted that people will be conscious of how they look and what they're wearing on stage. But for a while at least, in certain sectors of the “indie rock scene,” you just wore ratty 511s and Chucks and a shitty old T-shirt. Anything beyond that and you were “going pop,” or you were inauthentic. You were corny.
It’s funny, a lot of music people will be like, “No, I’m not into fashion.” But they’ll still spend 150 quid on a pair of Levi’s, or a new Detroit jacket. And it’s like, well, you’re kinda spending money on clothes here! It’s obviously something you care about. But the next step beyond that into designer stuff or vintage stuff is…
It’s a bridge too far. There's something disreputable about caring that much about your ensemble, or appearing like you care that much.
But you’re still spending money to wear the uniform. You’re still engaged in these things, you’re still caring about the way you look.
Before you play a show, do you put a lot of thought what you’re going to wear on stage?
Well I’ve been thinking about this. I’m going to the UK next week for some gigs, and I’m traveling light because I’m just touring on the train and hanging out in friends’ houses. It’s gonna be a low-budget affair. But I was like, “I can only bring one pair of shoes.” So what’s a good shoe you can wear on stage and not look too ratty, but you can also walk around in all day.
So I think I told you, I bought these Paraboots recently…
Hell yeah.
And they look smart. But I’m wondering, “Can I walk around in these all day? Or do I also need a pair of trainers for walking around in?” And then because I’m nerdy and get obsessed with weird little things, I end up looking up like, “What trainers does Bob Dylan wear?” Like what does he wear when he’s walking around? You know he loves a hoodie.
Oh yeah, and talk about baseball hats—that’s a man who wears a baseball hat.
I love that he’s always so clearly in disguise. Whenever he’s out, it’s like, “Who is that person that’s clearly trying to disguise their appearance?”
Anyways, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t quite get comfortable in a pair of trainers.
I think I messaged you when we were going back and forth about shoes. I'm wearing the Oboz these days. They’re super-comfy and weird, like, Matrix-looking shoes.
That feels like a quintessentially Californian type of thing to me, a pair of trainers of some sort.
I used to wear a bunch of Adidas running shoes, then I went through a Hokas stage. And now I've got a little bit more of the NorCal crunchy granola thing going.
Did you do the Sambas thing?
I used to wear Sambas like 10 or 15 years ago. They're classic. I've worn Stan Smiths, I've worn Superstars—Adidas is just great shit. But no, over the last 5 years, no Sambas. Though not because I was like, “Oh, I don't want to be part of the Samba wave.” They’re always gonna be cool, whether or not they’re the hottest thing people on TikTok are buying.
Did you ever go down the Red Wings path?
Yeah, I had a pair for like two or three years when I was 21 or something. They're great boots, but I could never figure out how to integrate them into everything else I had going on.
You know that picture of Bob Dylan wearing the “Godspeed To You” t-shirt?
Oh, I’m very familiar. Is he wearing Red Wings in that?
He’s wearing a pair of Iron Rangers in that photo.
I’ve never clocked that!
I was looking at that picture and I was like, “Damn, Bob looks good in the Iron Rangers.”
But yeah, sometimes the Red Wing thing is [strange]. Because they’re expensive, they end up getting worn by like, guys that don’t do work.
That’s the whole story of workwear for the last 15 years, right? The only people who wear workwear now are people who do email jobs.
It’s funny. You end up looking like a film producer, or a graphic designer.
I take it you’re not on the workwear tip yourself.
Well that’s the thing. I am, but it’s a complicated relationship. I do love a French workwear jacket, like a chore coat. But like the Sambas, it’s become so ubiquitous. And it's sort of like, “What does this say about me?”
I was talking with my friend Sean recently. He’s gone from being a normal guy in indie rock clothing to someone into like, Issey Miyaki and Yohji Yamamoto—like high-end Japanese stuff. He’s starting to wear some wild stuff. And I have [an Issey Miyaki] jacket that he gave me, and it’s beautiful, but I’m like, “I don’t know if I can really pull this off.” I’ve tried, but I don’t know if I’m selling it.
I feel like I want to get a little weirder with my clothing choices. But then I still want to feel like myself.
Totally. I’ve got this torched Bedale that I’ve had for over a decade. I did like a three month backpacking trip through Europe in 2014, and I wore that jacket every single day. I still have it, and I still love it, but I find myself wondering like, “Do I look like the guy who just bought his first Barbour when he’s 32 years old?”
When I was a teenager, I always used to wear a Barbour I’d gotten from my grandmother, which somehow fit me. Every day going to school, I would always wear this Barbour coat, and I don’t think I really knew that it was expensive, or a “thing.” Recently I pulled it out again, and it’s all torn up to the point where I can’t really wear it anymore.
I live in the Dublin suburbs, just a normal middle-class area. But nearby is where like, Bono lives. If I take the train for two stops, I’m in the poshest part of Dublin. And their charity shops—or “thrift stores”—have good stuff in them. And so I was down there recently, and it was a half-price day in one of the shops, and there was a Barbour that was just like the one I used to wear. It was marked at 50, down to 25 quid. And so I was like, “I gotta get that, I can’t walk away from that.”
But it’s funny, because in Ireland—and this might be context that Americans are unaware of—you don’t want to look too Protestant. Protestant here means like, countryside, wealthy, old money, landed gentry.
Makes sense. That’s what we’d call a WASP over here: white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
Exactly. And y’know, some aspects of good fashion are a little WASP-y, a little Protestant. I keep hearing people talk about the Ivy thing, which is not too far removed from WASP.
They were synonymous! The WASPs were the ones at the Ivy universities that ostensibly began the look whenever it was, 60 or 70 years ago.
I’ve grown up with friends that were Protestant and were like, “I’m not going to be ashamed of this. I’m going to embrace my Protestant look.” And I’ve had to be like, “You don’t want to look too Protestant, man. It’s not a good look.”
Catholic is the only respectable thing to be here.
Cian’s latest record is “She Brings Me Back To The Land of The Living”