Best one-stop place to find cool shirts for men
Face it: women who like to dress well have it easier than men of similarly cool tastes do. This seems especially true in Boston. While women have an array of boutiques to help them keep up to date on the latest fabric, cut, and style trends, Beantown men are faced mostly with an endless supply of Oxford collars and versions of blue-for-business MBA-wear. Even the recent rebirth of color has already fallen into the rut of ubiquitous cotton shirts in strong stripes - a look that has reached such saturation now as to border on dowdy. (If you see a frat boy wearing a "hip" striped shirt with his cargo pants on a date at Friday's, it has stopped being fashion.)

Thank God for Industria Boutique. Tucked below ground level on Newbury Street, the narrow boutique has made its left side all about fashion for men with flair. There are Scandinavian and other European labels, with the occasional American brand tossed in. But it's the look, not the label, that makes the difference: wrinkled black gauze in a club shirt just this side of sheer ... distressed cowboy wear that looks as though it's been run over by a tractor ... elaborate embroidery on a funked-up tux shirt. Shop here, and no one will know you're from Boston.

Industria Boutique, 222 Newbury Street, Boston, (617) 859-3635.