How Damien Broderick Became the Most Dapper Man on TikTok—And Remained Unapologetically Himself
An interview with one the app's snazziest dressers and biggest men's style creators.
The subset of online men who revel in Savile Row tailoring and other traditional modes of dressing can be a stuffy bunch. Often, these gents are so tethered to the ideas of “proper” and their laundry list of “style rules” that they can come across as elitist (or at the very least overly sincere, a la “swag is for boys, class is for men”). But Damien Broderick is, echem, cut from a different cloth.
Often filmed from one angle in the modest hallway of his apartment, his videos don’t lean on the dopamine-pumping tricks of lightning-quick editing, trending sounds, or pristine, unattainable locations. Yes, he is fact the kind of guy who only wears sweatpants when working out and will rock a shirt and tie on a random Tuesday for no other reason than he wants to (in fact, when we hopped on Zoom for this interview, he was donning a full suit complete with a tie pin), but he makes no grand proclamations about this being the way men must dress.
Put another way, he likes suits, ties, proper shoes, and pleated pants, and if you happen like those things too, he’s got hundreds of videos in the backlog to see how the proverbial outfit sausage gets made. Maybe you’ll use the clips as inspiration the next time you’ve got some formal-leaning engagement, or maybe you just enjoy the borderline ASMR quality of his GRWM content. That’s up to you.
As he’s gotten bigger, Broderick has also embraced a kind of radical transparency about some of his struggles—particularly as they relate to his skin and hair—as well as, despite thousands to sift through daily, taking the time to respond to questions sent across DM and his various comments sections. Again, all of this reinforces the idea that while he might wear fancier clothes than your average bloke, he considers himself no better or worse than any other guy out there. At the end of the day, dudes who care about clothes just want to feel a little more confident when they head out the door each morning. Damien is simply sharing how he does that for himself, and it turns out that’s exactly the kind of thing millions of people want to watch.
All of the above is why I reached out to Broderick a few weeks ago to chat about his background, how he found his sense of style, and navigating a rapid rise to social media superstardom. Enjoy!
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Jake: You're looking sharp. Was that for your shoot that just got canceled or you're just dressing up?
Damien: Yeah, literally it was for the shoot that got canceled [laughs].
Where is it from? It looks very British.
It's from an Irish company called Bond Brothers. I went for that British aesthetic, slightly roped shoulder, double-breasted, and the lapels are slightly wider. It's a VBC cloth, but it's fully lined, full canvas. But the trousers are actually more of an Italian style. The waistband is extended, there's a double pleat there, and they're high rise. So kind of British on top and Italian on the bottom.
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How did you first get into men’s style?
I was always kind of interested in men's style. My dad was in the military, so I think I get the formal aspect from that. I remember being in school and I would pull my tie down and slip it over my head, but then the next morning it'd be completely undone because my dad wanted me to re-tie it every morning. So little things like that I think probably really set the foundations for me when I was growing up. All through my childhood I just played sports, so I was just in sports gear all the time. But then as I got older and was playing sports a little less, I started earning my own money, that's when I started to really experiment with my style. I'm so glad that half of those outfits do not exist on the internet.
What were they like?
They were so bad. Oh my god. But then as my style progressed, it just became more and more refined. The more you learn about it, and the more you talk to other people within the space, the more you learn about your own proportions and what you feel comfortable in, what you feel confident in, and what style areas you gravitate towards.
How would you describe your style today?
I like to play that very fine line between style and costume. It's a very thin line. It's probably a single accessory more and you look like you're on your way to be in a period play and one accessory less and the whole thing probably falls apart. I'm still constantly evolving it and refining it, trying to simplify it as much as I can.
You mention being in school and wearing a tie. Where did you grow up?
I grew up here in Dublin. So all the schools... it was a full school uniform, so it was black leather shoes, slacks, shirt, tie, and then a V-neck jumper was our school uniform.
Has that influenced the way that you dress today? You lean towards more formal things, and I'm always curious to know how that upbringing in dress code environments in Europe and the UK, particularly, has an effect on people. Obviously there are private schools here in America, but most people in my orbit were going to public school and wearing whatever the hell they wanted to.
I'd say it definitely has an influence. There's lots of people that I went to school with that absolutely hate wearing suits and only wear them to work and they only wear them if they absolutely have to. And then there's me, who basically is overdressed all of the time. I’ve always loved how a suit made me feel. I'm always kind of striving for that feeling of almost like the power suit when you put it on and you feel invincible.
One of the things you do well is illustrate how a suit can be a part of someone's wardrobe in a more regular way than might be required. You call it “overdressed,” but if there are guys out there who are a little bit uncomfortable or haven't really had tons of positive experiences with suits, what would be your pitch to them about maybe getting some more tailoring into their lives?
The first thing is always fit. I think most people associate suits being uncomfortable because the store clerk just throws a tape around the chest and goes, "You're a 38," and then throws it around the waist and goes, "you're a 32." And then they hand them a suit and then it's really ill-fitting. So they're not getting the compliments they probably should because the suit doesn't fit right and it's not very comfortable because it doesn't fit right.
If you put a well-tailored suit on, it feels like a second piece of skin…it feels like armor. That's one thing. But if they realize how versatile a suit is, they can really elevate an entire outfit just by changing the jeans for a pair of slacks. You don't even need to wear shoes or loafers—you can still wear a plain white trainer, but even just the slacks.
So just get at least one really well-fitted navy suit. You can wear the blazer with jeans, with corduroys, with khakis. You can wear the whole suit together and you can wear the trousers on their own whenever you want, if you just want to elevate it up with just a polo shirt just going to the bar or maybe you're going on a date and it's not super fancy. One suit can carry you so far, it's not even funny how far it could take you.
“I've been doing fashion content on the internet for eight years. It took me eight years to get 15,000 followers on Instagram and then took me another nine months to go from 15K to 40K, and then took me 90 days to go from 40K to 1.2 million.”
You’re wearing something right now that has British inclinations up top and Italian down below, but is there a particular type of suit that you feel most comfortable in?
I pretty much exclusively wear high-rise trousers. That's what I feel most comfortable in and I'm a relatively short guy. I'm only 5'8, so I think high-rise trousers elongates my legs and give me nice proportions. I'll always go with at least a single pleat, double if possible. The reason for that is with the high-rise, if you're sitting down, you obviously get more space around the top of the thigh area, which makes it more comfortable when you're sitting around. I also think pleats are just a really nice aesthetic on a trouser, especially if they're high-rise, because otherwise you get all this blank space.
I like jackets to be British in shape, but to be a little bit Italian in their construction. I like mixing the traditional style elements from say one tailoring background with the other. So either half canvas, or depending on the weight of the cloth, full canvas. I'll generally go half lined with a softer shoulder, and slightly bigger lapels.
When did you first start turning getting ready into, oh, I can make videos out of this, and then when did you realize that there was an audience there for that?
I've been doing fashion content on the internet for eight years. It took me eight years to get 15,000 followers on Instagram and then took me another nine months to go from 15K to 40K, and then took me 90 days to go from 40K to 1.2 million.
Whoa.
It was a slow burn, but then once the burners went off, it skyrocketed. TikTok was much more of a steady, consistent growth. I started I think in December 2021 and then by December 2022, I had hit 900K. But if someone went back to the very, very early TikTok videos, there's whatever trending sound is on it’s really terrible transitions from one outfit to the other or showing how to wear a gray suit three ways. Really just fucking terrible stuff.
I saw other people doing “get ready with me” videos and for me it was almost out of laziness. I was like, okay, I want to create content around the fashion or whatever else, but how do I make it as easy as possible? I was like, I'm just going to document what I'm wearing every day regardless of what that outfit is. Eventually the format came of just going trousers, shirt, for our cologne, for our timepiece, whatever else.
Even the clicks and the claps, that was a natural habit that I would do anyway and I was editing it out of the beginning of the videos, then accidentally left it in, and then it became this whole thing in itself. Even the monogram in the inside of this jacket says... I don't know if you can see that, it says, "Click, click, clap."
What advice would you have for other people looking to find an audience the way you did?
I think no matter what you're sharing on the internet, if you find your own voice and you do it consistently, you will find your audience. Whether you're talking about lawnmowers or whether you're talking about fashion, it does not matter. If you can do it in your own unique way and consistently, you'll eventually find your audience. I think there's an audience out there for everyone.
I almost feel like sometimes that explosion can happen before a person's ready and then they haven't found their voice yet. So they don't even know where to go from there. I think for you, because you had so much experience in terms of creating content, by the time it hit you were able to maintain your own thing.
I had worked with some major brands over the course of those eight years anyways like Raymond Weil. I was a brand ambassador for them for a year. I worked with The North Face, Canada Goose, BMW, Mini Cooper, and Nokia. So I had the experience of doing collaborations with major brands even as a small creator. So now that I'm a big creator, nothing has really changed other than there's just more eyes on the content.
When you first started, I'm assuming you had a different job. What was that?
I've always worked a day job. At the very beginning, eight years ago, I was working in retail and it was basically just a mirror selfie of what I was wearing that day. This was when, I think, before you could actually upload to Instagram, you had to use the in-app camera and it was just all those really terrible filters and all the images were square. It was very, very early days and that was the very beginning of my Instagram. Someone could scroll, and do a lot of scrolling, because I've had my Instagram account since 2011. I've never changed it. I've not gone back and deleted any of those really terrible images where I have those tacky Eldredge knot things that I really tell people not to do. It’s because I've made that mistake. Don't do it.
I think that still there's a tendency among some men to associate ornateness with "class,” right? They have a three-piece suit and it has a fancy lining and a big pocket square and they’re doing a fancy tie knot, and it has the vest. It's this idea that the more details that you put on your tailoring that is somehow more elevated or classy it becomes, which ironically I always thought-
Is the complete opposite.
In fact, I always thought the word “classy” itself sounds kind of cheap.
I always use the word “elegant” and I always associate elegance with having an impact with very little.
Do you feel like you have a lot of that kind of guy in your audience? What's your experience been like in terms of just the vast array of people who are now watching your videos?
I think there's probably a percentage of them that would never dress the way I dress, they probably have no aspirations to do so, or if they do, they probably don't have the means. And a lot of them are probably more interested in the watches and the colognes rather than the overall kind of aesthetic. But there is a lot of people who I see, and it's increasing more and more, where I'm getting tagged in videos where people are saying, "Oh, my outfit today is inspired by you," wherever else. And I'll DM them back and I'll give them my kind of 2 cents and I'd be like, "I would probably change this and I would probably do less of this and push more into this," or whatever else.
“I want to show people that I'm just a normal guy that just happens to have a big audience. I'm no different than anybody else.”
Every once in a while you will be like, I'm working from home today, I'm going to wear something super laid back. But do you ever have moments where you just... Like right now I'm in a hoodie and sweats and a beanie, do you ever have moments where you just are wearing that?
Jake, I'm sitting on a sofa now and-
I know you're in a suit for a shoot. I just want to know...
Honestly, no. I only wear sweats when I'm exercising. My stance on that is I only wear a snorkel when I'm swimming, I only wear sweats when I'm exercising. So generally when I get out of bed, I'll put a pair of trousers on or maybe a pair of jeans or maybe I'll put sweats on and then maybe a dressing gown. But then once I'm dressed, I'm dressed. I'll get breakfast and have a cup of tea because I'm not a big coffee guy. Even if I'm finished doing what I'm doing, I'll just stay dressed for the day. I pull my tie off, I'm not going to sit here in a tie and a collar bar and a jacket. I'll take them off, I might roll up the sleeves of my shirt and kind of relax my outfit. But yeah, if someone was to just randomly burst through my door, they're never going to be like, "I fucking caught you wearing sweats." It's not going to happen because it doesn't happen.
It seems like you've been traveling a good amount recently. Is that one of the fun things about traveling to you—being in places where maybe people have more like-minded style views to you?
Absolutely. I was in Paris and it was during Couture Fashion Week, so there was lots of shows on, I went to a Valentino event and pretty much... I was wearing a three-piece suit at that and I felt like the most uncool person there. Everybody was really pushing their fashion boundaries. Noah Beck and all these huge 20, 30 million follower people were there. I'm like, God, I played it so safe with the three-piece.
Then I was in Italy for a week, at a wellness retreat for four days and stayed in a small town called Parrano, which is in Umbria. It's about an hour away from Florence in one direction and an hour away from Rome in the other direction. I was having Campari spritzes and pizza for breakfast every day. It was just the life. It was insane. Everybody there was just like, "You belong here. Just how you dress, your style." .
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I really respect the way that you've dealt with your hair loss and psoriasis, by taking it head-on. I am self-conscious, like anyone else, so I thought that that was really cool. Can you talk about why you created that content and what led you to get to a place where you were comfortable sharing those experiences you've had?
There's over 125 million people in the world that suffer with some degree of psoriasis. So I do think it's a very normal thing, but it's not normalized, which makes no sense whatsoever. But there's people out there that literally have missing limbs or life-threatening diseases and things like that. I have bad skin, but I'm not going to die from psoriasis. I know in six months or a year's time or five years time, I'm going to inevitably have another flare up. That's just my life and that's just something that I have to deal with.
In terms of making the content, this was when TikTok was consistently on the grow and I kind of said to myself, if I want to do this, if I want to continue to grow an audience and grow an audience for the reasons that I want an audience, then I don’t want to be your very typical influencer where everything is super polished and I come across super rich.
I decided that's not the type of creator that I want to be. I want to show people that I'm just a normal guy that just happens to have a big audience. I'm no different than anybody else. I come from a working class family. I've worked a day job all the way up to basically this month. So having psoriasis is a normal thing, losing my hair was a normal thing. I went and got a hair transplant because I wanted one. I love having hair. I didn't feel like going bald, so I went and done something about it. I just think these are conversations that people should be having. If a man wants to go get a hair transplant, sweet.
I think if more influencers took that kind of mindset of just like, this is who I actually am, this is my actual life, and I'm just giving you a tiny little glimpse of that, I think social media would be a healthier place. That's not me blowing steam up my own arse or trying to blow my trumpet, it's just I've been around the industry, the influencer industry, for almost a decade now and I've always been kind of sick of the ass-kissing and the super polished lifestyle.
I'm just going to be myself and if I make it, I make it and if I don't, I don't. I'm doing this because I enjoy it. I'm very lucky that I've reached the numbers that I have reached and I have the opportunities that I have now while not compromising on my integrity. I hope that shows other people, younger creators, that you can just be unapologetically yourself and you can still be a huge creator on any platform you want.