Most people would not describe Trump as someone who wears slim-fit clothes. But here, we can see his trousers are quite slim in relationship to his body. You can tell because the hem barely covers the opening of his shoes.
If you're a heavier man who wears a suit with slim-fit trousers, you end up breaking the top and bottom halves into distinct blocks. Notice how much the jacket hangs over the trousers. There's a lot of empty space between the jacket's front edge and his pants.
It's a mistake to think that wearing slim-fit clothes makes you look slimmer. Or that everyone has to conform to some trend. A better approach is to dress for your body type. Look at the relationship between Jackie Gleason's jacket and pants.
The wider trousers here are not the most fashionable, but they are the most flattering (for him). By minimizing the jacket's overhang and reducing the empty space between its front edge and the trousers, you get a streamlined silhouette from top to bottom.
We see the same effect here on France’s President Hollande and Japan’s Emperor Akihito. Hollande's trousers are too slim for his jacket. As a result, he looks like an egg on sticks. Compare his silhouette to Akihito, where the jacket and pants flow and form a harmonious whole.
Such advice is not limited to men with heavier figures. Daniel Craig often wears suits that also don't flow. The top and bottom halves often form distinct blocks. This is partly because his trousers are too slim and his jackets are too short.
When you see beautifully dressed men, consider how the top and bottom halves form a silhouette. They don't always need to flow (in some casual styles, breaking up these parts can be intentional and part of an aesthetic). But in tailoring, it's often best when there is flow.
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Have you ever noticed that people dressed better in the past? Even in the summer, when it was scorching hot?
Why is this? 🧵
I want to first dispel some myths.
Contrary to popular belief, people didn't look better because they were slimmer. We see many corpulent men in the past who dressed better than the average man today. It's not true you can look good in anything if you have an athletic body.
Dressing well was also not limited to the rich and famous. A reader sent me pics of his grandpa, born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to a working-class Chinese family. He immigrated to London and then Canada, where he worked in an auto parts store and by installing light fixtures.
Let's start with an experiment. Here are two men wearing tailored jackets with jeans.
Which do you think looks better?
If you choose the outfit on the right, then we have the same taste. But why does he look better?
The answer stems fro a basic rule of classic tailoring: the jacket needs to have a certain relationship with the trousers so as to form a harmonious whole.
On April 30th, Josh Smith of Montana Knife Company said you won't have to worry about tariffs if you buy American.
Last week, he realized his costs are going up bc he imports equipment and steel. And so do his suppliers.
IMO many people aren't aware of how much they import.
Genuinely not posting this to gloat, but hoping that people reevaluate how much of their life is connected to an international supply chain. Many small businesses, including artisans, will see their businesses shutter because of these tariffs, regardless of how they voted
Extremely long, but if you want to hear it, Josh breaks down the challenges he's facing. I hear similar stories in menswear (e.g., 3sixteen needing to import the best denim, which comes from Japan). All this now faces tariffs.
Glad I bought a Sebenza in MagnaCut before all this.
In this thread, I will tell you, definitively, whether Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.
This way, you will be more informed when shopping for your wardrobe . 🧵
I should state two things at the outset.
First, I never comment on womenswear because I don't know anything about it. This thread isn't actually about Sweeney's jeans (sorry, I lied). But in the last few days, I've seen grown men buying American Eagle jeans and I can't abide.
Second, while clothing quality matters, it's more important to develop a sense of taste. Buying clothes isn't like shopping for electronics — you don't "max out" specs. It's more like buying coffee — you sample around and identify what notes you like. Develop taste.
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.