there has been a growing trend to wear dark worsteds suits (navy or grey suits made from a fine, smooth dressy wool) with a dress shirt and no tie. and it looks so bad. 🧵
everyone who does this thinks they look like george clooney or tom ford. or they're cool and relatable and just a casual sort of dude. they project neither of those things. they just look like every downtown schlub who hates wearing a suit but bitterly does so bc they have to.
the thing is that there are many types of suits. if you want to dress down the suit, make it look intentional. choose a casual suit in a non-business color (e.g., brown, olive) and material (e.g., cotton, linen).
or go with a sport coat, which is inherently more dressed down than a business suit
instead of choosing a bright white dress shirt with a semi-spread collar (very business-y), choose a more casual option, such as an oxford cloth button-down, long-sleeve polo, or some kind of sweater (e.g., turtleneck or crewneck)
in this way, you are making everything casual. you are not just wearing a business outfit but without a tie—the laziest way you can try to "dress down" a suit. a business suit without a tie is like the night sky without stars. the chest area looks empty. the outfit looks sad.
if you're wearing a business suit, put on a tie. if you are trying to communicate something a little more casual and relaxed, then make everything relaxed. do a casual suit. or ditch tailoring and dress casual. make the outfit coherent so it doesn't look like you hate ur suit job
going to be blunt: a good way to dress better is to ask yourself, "does this look like the sort of thing a finance MD would wear?" dress sneakers, dark suit without a tie, fleece vest with dress shirt, business casual, etc. all these things are bad
i know some people are going to be like, "i work in a casual office and can't wear a tie." very reasonable! then just don't wear a dark business suit. many ways to do business casual that's not fleece vest, slacks + dress shirt, or dark suit with no tie
Sometimes I think about the closure of G. Lorenzi, a Milanese gentleman's shop that had been around for almost 100 years until their closure in 2014. The shop was special because it carried so many one-of-a-kind items from artisans — total handmade craft production, not factory.
At the time of their closure, they still carried over 20,000 items of 3,000 models, including speciality knives, picnic sets, and nutcrackers. They had over 100 styles of nail clippers and 300 different hairbrushes alone. Proprietor Aldo Lorenzi scoured the world for artisans.
There's nothing wrong with factory production. But as more of our lives get taken over by machines — including art and writing — this sort of production feels special.
Trailer for "A Knife Life," a documentary about the store by my friend Gianluca Migliarotti, available on Vimeo
I spent 15 yrs on a menswear forum. The longest argument I had was over a tiny detail that can be seen in this photo. For 6 months, I argued with the same five guys non-stop every day. The argument got so heated the forum owner banned one guy for life.
As I've mentioned before, there's a lot of coded language in menswear. Navy suits can be worn with black oxfords because this was the uniform of London businessmen. Brown tweeds go with brogues because these clothes were worn in the country. In this way, we get formal vs. casual.
The same is true for shoes. Tiny details come together to communicate something, much like how words form a sentence. Black is more formal than brown; calfskin more formal than suede or pebble grain; plain design is more formal than broguing. All of this stems from history.
The year is 2024 and you're browsing for a new shirt online. You come across a store selling shirts from Portuguese Flannel. You do your research and find they make quality garments: clean single-needle stitching, flat felled seams, quality fabrics, MOP buttons, classic designs
So you go ahead and purchase one. The shop charges 139 Euros and throws in free shipping. Given the exchange rate in 2024, that means you paid $163.19.
First, let's do an experiment. Here are two relatively similar outfits: a blue shirt with a pair of dark blue jeans.
Which do you like better? Reply to this tweet with your answer. This way, people can see how the majority of people "voted."
If you said the right, then we have the same taste. This is despite the outfit on the left following this exact guide — and the outfit on the right not appearing in the guide at all.
I both agree and disagree that it's subjective. Like with anything, my views on tailoring stems from a "first principle." That principle is that men wore tailored clothing better in the past (specifically the period from about the 1930s through 80s). 🧵
If we agree on this, then there are certain ideas that naturally flow from this principle, partly because men's dress during this period was governed by time, place, and occasion. As stated before, one such idea was city vs country clothing.
Another such idea was resort or evening wear. Or summer vs winter wear. And so forth.
One can carry these ideas forward into today's age without it look like historical cosplay. Just like how we are currently using words to communicate, some from the early 1900s.
Twitter has a character limit, so I assume (intelligent) people will read context and know I'm talking about interior design and fashion, which today are coded as "gay interests" for men. Not painting or architecture, which carry no such stigma.
IMO, it's absolutely true that American Protestants were uniquely against certain forms of ornamentation, including fashion. For instance, the Quakers deliberately shunned adornment and extravagance in dress, stressing the importance of simplicity.
In his book "The Suit," Christopher Breward writes about how Quakers would talk about "troubling lapses into self-fashionableness by wayward members" during meetings. However, the Quakers were small in number and often seen as unusual by their fellow non-Quaker community members