Gloves Are a Style Statement You Need to Stop Ignoring

“We’re on a mission to bring back glove culture,” says Niklas Magnusson, bespoke glove cutter at Hestra, a family company in Sweden founded in 1936. He’s in New York on a four-city North American tour to measure clients for custom orders and, while he’s at it, resize their ideas about how gloves can look and feel.

Just as the hat, buffeted by the winds of social change in the mid-20th century, stopped being a full-brimmed sartorial statement, so the glove ceased to be anything more than a grudging, ugly defense against frostbite. “People tend to buy gloves that are designed for the coldest day they’re going to wear them,” Magnusson says. But in recent years, dapper men in temperate climes have revived the stylish glove. You can even see it in pop culture: The paws of Ryan Gosling in Drive and Ansel Elgort in Baby Driver are handsomely wrapped in supple leather as they grip the steering wheels of their getaway cars.