Thread by @dieworkwear

I genuinely think this is a bad outfit. I'll discuss why and suggest some ways it can be improved. Hopefully this thread includes some ideas that you can use for your own wardrobe.🧵

The more glaring problem with Nick's outfit is the collar gap, which refers to how his jacket lifts off his neck. Good tailoring is all about fit and silhouette. The most fundamental dimension to this is how the collar should always hug your neck, even when you're moving.

The second issue is how his jacket looks like an orphaned suit jacket, which means a suit jacket that's worn without the matching pants. Sometimes, suit jackets can be worn on their own; oftentimes, they can't. When it fails, it looks like your ripped your suit pants.

Your ability to wear a suit jacket as a sport coat hinges on whether your jacket can convincingly pass as a sport coat. Two important dimensions for this: texture and pattern scale. The more texture and the larger the pattern, the more obviously something is a sport coat.

IMO, Nick's fabric is too suit-y. The worsted wool is too fine, smooth, and slick. The pattern's scale is too small. This would look much better as a black/ white puppytooth suit.

Here's an example of a brown puppytooth suit with a similar pattern scale. This one is made from woolen flannel, which has even more texture than Nick's worsted wool. But look at how much better this outfit looks with the matching pants. This is not a sport coat pattern.

Grey sport coats are hard to wear for two reasons: most men wear sport coats with grey pants, which are hard to coordinate with grey jackets. Second, it is easier for a grey sport coat to look like an orphaned suit jacket than more basic colors like brown or navy.

If you get a grey sport coat, try tweed. Tweed has so much texture that no one will mistake it for a suit jacket. Donegal, glen plaid, and herringbone all make for wonderful grey tweed sport coats. Better still if the pattern's scale is large.

Speaking of scale, look at how much better Nick's jacket would have looked if the pattern was bigger. A larger scale would have minimized the risk of this having a moire effect, and it would look more obviously sporty and casual.

Finally, wearing a matching tie and pocket square looks corny. Again, it makes you look like you bought this in a boxed set from one of those stores that supplies students with prom clothes. I also think that solid-colored silk squares look like a magician's cheap trick.

Instead, it's better to wear a pocket square that complements but doesn't directly match your tie. This looks less calculated and suggests that you just threw this random accessory into your pocket, and you happen to look great. Here, we see a blue square complement a brown tie

Everyone starts somewhere, so there's no reason to feel bad if you get some details in an outfit wrong. Plus, it's just clothes. But by paying attention to these details in fit, silhouette, texture, pattern, and color, you can go from pic 1 to pics 2, 3, and 4.