Fashion doesn't hang out on Wall Street for inspiration—or Yaletown, for that matter. It prowls seedy bars, back-alley galleries, and open-mike cafés. It walks the streets, and guys eager for a more of-the-moment look might want to check out one street in particular—Main Street—where the mainstream and marginal mix it up.

“We're a destination,” says Jim Dreichel, who owns the bustling salon Mine: Stylesource (177 East Broadway; www.minestylesource.com/) with his partner in life as well as business, Anthony Crosfield.

A city street is like a novel, each block a chapter revealing something new about its character. Some streets are like mass-market paperbacks: predictable, repetitive, comforting, and identical to a thousand thoroughfares elsewhere. Others can be Proustian. Layered by time, specific to a certain locale, they tell a tale of where a place has been and where it's going. One example is south Main Street around Broadway. You can see where it's been, and it's pretty obvious where it's headed. Branded SoMa by developers, the 'hood that shares a name with the blissful psychoactive drug in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is quickly morphing from down-and-out into very up and very in. But it hasn't lost its attitude.

“We get a lot of younger guys coming in from downtown and all over the city, 20-year-olds who want a retro-'80s look,” says Dreichel, specifying the “rooster” hairstyle and other voluminous 'dos popularized by the era's synthesizer-and-hair guitar bands. Forward-looking fashion frequently plunders the past, reinventing it for modern sensibilities. But please, boys, ix-nay on the back-combed Flock of Seagulls pompadour. It was a bad look then; it's a bad look now. Rest assured that Mine's versatile stylists, who also work on special events and for film and televison, aren't stuck in a time warp. Not everyone leaves looking like they just got in touch with his inner Nick Rhodes. The salon also carries a terrific line of mildly scented, non-greasy, and environmentally responsible hair and skin products called Eufora, including MoistureCleanse Shampoo ($26 for 473 millilitres), Urgent Repair Treatment for hair ($23.45 for 140 millilitres), and BodyBlends Moisturizer ($19.95 for 180 millilitres).

Main Street attracts men of all ages. Grups is a recently coined marketing buzzword branding 30- to 50-year-olds who aren't prepared to relinquish their young-at-heartedness. It's lifted from an episode of the old Star Trek TV show set on a planet with no grownups (grups). Grups and younger dudes will appreciate the vibe at Jonathan+Olivia (2570 Main Street; www.jonathanandolivia.com/) which is high-end casual with rock 'n' roll attitude and a hint of chic.

“I don't have a target age group,” says owner Jackie O'Brien. The boutique, which opened in September 2005, caters to all genders and is the exclusive or semi-exclusive purveyor in Vancouver of menswear from New York, L.A., London, and Sweden that merges traditional tailoring with urban street attire. O'Brien says that her clientele includes men in their 30s and 40s too. “They don't go out clubbing all the time anymore. They're more into going out for dinner, maybe seeing the latest band.”

O'Brien travels abroad, picking every item herself. “I don't follow the fashion magazines. I think of the store as a giant closet filled with all my favourite clothes. I look around to see what's happening on the streets in the cities I visit and pick clothes that I like and that I would like my boyfriend to wear.”

One of J+O's lines is Trovata. Last year's winner of Vogue's Fashion Fund Award is a labour of love by four California surfers who design each season around a made-up work of fiction. The spring and summer season is based on Von Campbell's Last Crusade, the story of a preppy, globe-trotting archaeological excavator with Etonian/Oxonian pretensions. Striped pullovers and jerseys, schoolboy blazers, white smoking-style jackets—think Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte from Brideshead Revisited in juvie. Fall items are based on a spy story à la The Pink Panther's Inspector Clouseau, like a tailored grey-tweed jacket ($525) with rust leather buttons, a patterned lining, and text from the story inside the lapel.

J+O also carries items by Fred Perry (golf shirts from $98 to $185). The British label became a fave among mods in the late '50s and early '60s, and its popularity within rock/pop culture continues. The shop also carries a range of pieces by Oliver Spencer, whose clients include the Scissor Sisters, Athlete, and Liam Gallagher. Fall duds due soon include wool bomber jackets ($350 to $400) and long-sleeve buttoned shirts ($150 to $200).

Up the street, Umeboshi footwear and accessories (3638 Main Street; www.umeboshishoes.com/) just got in some new Kenneth Cole Reaction shoes for fall. Jazz-dance shoes are the big thing in NYC these days. Think Capezio with a groove. Reactions's slip-on Tap Music shoes ($195) in white, black, or brown fuse Fame, Flashdance, and Footloose into sleek toe-tappers with slender leather soles and heels. But don't worry, men are not encouraged to swaddle their gams in leg warmers or suffocate their bits in Spandex. Some things from the past are best left there.