do i have to be serious, don't make me do stuff.
I feel like Levi's are probably the best national brand out there, but I've found some good local brands as well. The problem with casual men's clothing is that there isn't a lot of places to buy them that aren't all chain stores. Women get a lot of the fancy specialty shops, but men really just have either online or the mall. Yeah you can go to an outlet mall, but the stuff there is usually lesser quality than the garbage they sell at Macys.
Hell, even the nice dress shirts I have are either from Men's Warehouse, Macys, and one of them (that I like a lot) is from Banana Republic. I have one pair of Seven's that I bought myself as a present one year that are really nice, but I had to buy them from Nordstrom, because there's no small shop around here when I can actually get a decent recommendation. I think sneakers are the only item that I don't really care all that much about because I always thought that no one is really going to look at your sneakers.