Nick Moore has a specific and well-developed personal style—obvious when he wears a kilt on golf and hunting trips.

The 31-year-old clothing aficionado and professional clothier for Tom James Co. began cultivating what he calls his “British Town and Country” style aesthetic in high school. “I think in another life I was part of the English landed gentry; I would have loved to have lived in Downton Abbey, post-WWI in the English countryside,” he says.

Along with his appreciation for kilts, Moore admits to having a love affair with tweed jackets. For boots, he prefers Australian R.M. Williams. Belts are another obsession (his favorite is an alligator-leather Martin Dingman belt with a personalized brass monogram buckle).

But the Nebraska-born style consultant says he is just as comfortable in torn jeans and muddy boots as he is in black tie.

You’d be hard-pressed to find Moore in old, tattered denim, though. His elevated sense of style even translates to his active pursuits, including hunting, fishing, and golf.

He says he abhors much of the newer tech and sporting gear, so he wears clothing he would normally wear every day for his outdoor activities. And yes, that includes tweed jackets.

“It’s not like I have a completely separate wardrobe like most people do,” Moore says. “I don’t have one stitch of camouflage. I’d rather wear a tweed jacket than an Under Armour microfiber camo-techie sort of thing.”

His day-to-day and activewear wardrobe consists of an abundance of tweed and natural wool in the fall and winter, and cotton and linen pieces in the spring and summer.

The “master of it all,” Ralph Lauren, Moore says is a key inspiration for his style and was even the focus of his capstone during his MBA studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

“He [Ralph Lauren] is able to create his own narrative through clothing. He was a very active guy, being outdoors and doing fun sports,” Moore says. “He picked that medium and he sort of created a movable feast of self-expression. And I love guys—speaking of movable feast—like Hemingway; I loved the way guys could look good and be active.”

For special occasions in the field—such as the opening weekend for pheasant hunting in South Dakota—Moore breaks out a kilt. It started with Moore wearing a tie adorned with pheasants on one trip a few years ago. From that fashion statement, a competition of style-wits emerged between Moore and his hunting buddies.

Reaching back to his Scottish heritage on his father’s side, Moore decided to take his hunting attire to the next level. He surprised his companions one year after asking his grandmother to sew him a kilt for the hunt.

Since then, the sometimes tartan-clad hunter has expanded his wardrobe to three kilts (including a formal one for black-tie occasions).

“It’s an impractical thing to wear hunting, but it makes people happy,” he says. “It gives a little levity to something that a lot of people, I think, take too seriously.”

Moore says he enjoys having the right gear for the right moment. He appreciates the details of a custom fly rod, the grain of wood on a shotgun, or the hand-stitching in a garment.

“I just love the details. And I think that’s probably where I get most of my excitement in clothing,” he says. “In all elements of style and design, in life, are the details—the little things that maybe no one else will notice. But I will.”

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Individuals wishing to contact Moore for style consultations can reach him by email at [email protected]. Visit tomjames.com for more information.

This article was printed in the May/June 2018 edition of Omaha Magazine.