sometimes i dont know if im saying things are too obvious, but you should buy clothes that easily mix and match. that way, you can buy a handful of items to create an infinite number of outfits 🧵
an easy way to do this is to build a wardrobe around one or two aesthetics that easily play with each other. for instance, rugged workwear items draw from the same design language, so they work together.
similarly, if you normally wear things like suits and sport coats, you can get certain casual jackets that pair well with tailored trousers (pic 1, 2, and 3). but something too avant-garde (pic 4) requires different types of shirts and pants to create the right silhouette/ look
it also helps to stay within a tight color family. in menswear, blues, greys, browns, and olives play well with each other. if you like tailoring, get a wardrobe full of grey and tan pants, solid or striped blue shirts, and then a couple of sport coats. coordinating is then easy
my friend @DavidLaneDesign, who i mention often on here, mostly wears tailoring and workwear. dark jeans go with sport coats (blue hopsack or brown tweed) or casualwear (brown suede chore coat or olive field jacket). even light blue chambray transfers.
in this way, you can see how two adjacent aesthetics (tailoring and workwear) play well with each other. and by staying within some basic colors (e.g., blues, browns, olives), it's easy to coordinate. same pants, shirts, and sometimes shoes, but different jackets and thus outfits
about ten years ago, i interviewed a young guy in paris named brian. like most homes around the world, parisian apartments are small—tiny compared to US homes—so they have limited storage space. yet parisians are among the best dressed in the world.
when i interviewed Brian, he had two pairs of jeans, one pair of trousers, two sweaters, two pairs of boots, one pair of sneakers, some shirts, and a handful of coats. yet, everything could be mixed and matched, so he could create an infinite number of outfits
sorry if all this is very obvious. but i get this sort of reply often ("are you seriously recommending a $200 outfit?"). you do not buy outfits. you slowly build a wardrobe over a long period of time, and from that wardrobe, you mix and match things to create outfits.
fighters during the communist revolution: does your outfit cost $200? up against the wall, capitalist!
me: no no, I've built my wardrobe so these items can be easily mixed and matched
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going to get very into the weeds on color theory in mensewar, repeat some info that im sure many people have already heard me say, and then recommend some things without regard to price bc jason has the money to spend 🧵
tan shoes are one of the worst trends in men's style. i think guys buy them because they don't want to look boring in black or dark brown shoes. they want shoes with ZING! but in a tailored outfit, the focus should be on the V-shape formed by the coat, shirt, and tie. not shoes.
guys often pair tan shoes with dark suits. but this ends up creating two competing points for attention: your face and your feet. the bright colored shoes end up shining out from underneath your dark trousers like flashlights. they become a distraction.
fall is the time when joe biden gets to wear his one stylish sport coat
he just needs to get those sleeves hemmed, but otherwise:
- very good tweed color and pattern ✅
- wears with chinos, gabardine, and corduroy trousers ✅
- teams tweed with button-down collars and turtlenecks ✅
- very sophisticated New Englandy moc shoe choice ✅
some reasons why this look works so well
1. except for the overly long sleeves, the coat actually fits him reasonably well. this is different from how many other men wear suits and sport coats nowadays, which are often too tight and short. biden looks comfortable in his clothes.
the first is complexity. clothing in the past was much more complex to make. a women's dress would have pleats, panels, and sometimes a self-belt tied around the waist. men's suits were made of haircloth, canvas, and padding. now we wear t-shirts (four panels and a collar)
the second is materials. technology has improved materials in many ways, but has worsened some. in the past, men would have worn full-grain leather shoes. full-grain is called so because it shows the natural grain of the hide. it ages well and develops a patina
one way to help curb the excesses of fast fashion is to encourage ppl to value the patina and wear-and-tear that good clothes develop. that way, they: 1) buy less, buy better; 2) buy vintage; 3) wear things. examples
1. King Charles' patched-up suit (see hem)
2. King Charles' patched-up shoes
3. Vintage Lee 101-J trucker jacket with a repaired collar (collar has been repaired by hand with a bit of oxford cloth). Vintage denim garments are also great in that they're softer and often have natural fades (rather than pre-distressed fades that don't always look very convincing)
4. Old sweatshirts (easy to find vintage; just search eBay and Etsy for vintage Russell Athletic). Looks great with old jeans and boots
the NYT had an article about this earlier this year about how old beat-up Birkins are a bigger status symbol than new Birkins. this is a very old concept—people who signal generational wealth are considered "higher status" than nouveau riche
the idea of aping the signals of the upper-most class seems kind of crass, but ... whatever gets you there is fine IMO. valuing quality things as they age is good. the wear-and-tear becomes part of the item's beauty, like the Japanese concept of kintsugi
one of the worst trends in men's tailoring in the last twenty years is how the buttoning point—the center button on a three button coat or the top button on a two button coat—has gotten pushed up over the years. you see this on desantis vs biden. 🧵
when a bespoke tailor makes a coat, they place the buttoning point near the waist (the slimmest portion of your torso). this does a two things.
1. it allows them to create more waist supression, giving you that flattering V-shaped silhouette.
2. it creates a nice balance between the upper and lower halves of the coat. the buttoning point serves as the visual fulcrum for the jacket. it's the point from which the lapels bloom and the quarters sweep out.
Something I find interesting here is how many Twitter trads frame business casual as "traditional dress." I suspect many of them are between the ages of 20 and 50, and grew up during a time when most men stopped wearing a coat-and-tie with any regularity. To them, this is trad 🧵
But to an older generation, business casual is already a fall from grace. Much has already been written about the rise of business causal: the suit's slow slide into irrelevance as a result of the post-war culture wars, the '90s Casual Friday movement, and the rise of New Economy
In the early 1990s, Rick Miller and his PR team at Levis—parent company to Dockers—sent out a brochure to some 25k human resources departments. They marketed the idea of business casual as a way to give employees more freedom and comfort (and, in turn, more productivity).