Someone from @piersmorgan's staff asked if I would like to come onto Pier's show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, to talk about the state of his attire. Since he invited feedback, I thought I'd do a thread comparing his style to menswear icon Kermit the Frog. 🧵
Let's again start with the basics.
The core of any outfit is fit and silhouette. Pier's suit jackets often have lapels that buckle away from his chest and a collar that floats from his neck. This suggests his jackets may be too small.
No such issues for Kermit the Frog. His clothes hang beautifully and smoothly while still giving a distinctive, flattering silhouette.
Piers knows that he looks best in a tailored jacket, so he wears them to social functions. However, he relies too much on formal tailoring, such as dark worsted suits in sober colors.
This puts him in a somewhat awkward position of trying to find ways to dress them down. He knows that people at the event may not be wearing suits, but he also doesn't know what else to wear. So he ditches the tie or wears a suit jacket with jeans to look "kinda casual."
A dark worsted suit without a tie is like the night sky without stars. Kermit the Frog understands this, so he always makes sure he has something—sheen, color, or pattern—between his jacket's front edges. This adds a bit of visual interest to what's a very sober ensemble.
Kermit also knows that if he doesn't want to wear a tie, he should opt for a more casual top. He often reaches for a charcoal turtleneck. Since turtlenecks aren't meant to be worn with ties, he doesn't look like he's missing something.
Since Piers seemingly only has dark worsted suits in colors such as black, navy, or grey, he often looks like he's just come out of a business meeting, even when he's at social functions.
No such issue for Kermit the Frog. He has a wider variety of options, such as tweeds, checked sport coats, and casual suits made from materials like linen and available in colors like cream. This allows him to look put together without seeming corporate.
For a more casual look, Piers often wears these plain, smooth Merino sweaters in solid colors. These sweaters can sometimes be fine under a tailored jacket, but on their own, they lack something.
No such issue for Kermit the Frog. He knows that if you're going to wear a sweater on its own, the knit needs something like a pattern or texture to make it interesting. Good options include spongey Shetlands, chunky Arans, Fair Isles, and ribbed Shaker knits.
The biggest issue with Piers' casualwear is that it has no direction. It's sort of a mishmash of generic clothes: polos and button-up shirts with pre-washed blue jeans or flat-front beige chinos, sometimes layered with a plain Merino sweater.
When he layers, the outfits lack cultural meaning or coherency (e.g., topcoat with polo and sweatpants). When he tries to look a bit cooler, he thinks only in terms of single items (e.g., the black dress shirts popular with divorced men hitting the club).
Kermit doesn't think of outfits in parts or as a pseudo-science (e.g., black goes with blue), but as cultural language. He thinks of the *total* outfit and what it conveys. The rebel look with a biker jacket and jeans. Or the time he wore white suits with gold chains in the '70s
Here, we see him taking chances with a beautifully patterned serape and a safari jacket worn with a neckerchief and beret.
Men often struggle with this because their identity may be rooted in just being a "normal dude," so they see any outfit that deviates from some middle-class uniform as "cosplay."
But do you think a frog actually herds cattle?
By thinking of clothes as cultural language, Kermit is able to put together cooler outfits. Here, he's channeling 1980s Miami Vice energy with a lightweight jacket, pink mock neck, striped pants, white horsebit loafers, and giant sunglasses.
Compare these two outfits. Piers' black polo with checked knee-length shorts and bad sneakers says nothing. But Kermit's cargo shorts with an Aloha shirt, fishing bag, and straw hat says: "I'm a mid-century sportsman on vacation."
To develop your visual vocabulary, you have to pay attention to culture. Think about how clothes were worn in the past by various cultural groups. Here we see all the references for Kermit's outfit above.
You can see how the same language is channeled in Aime Leon Dore's spring/ summer lookbook. The outfit on the right is a little better because the man is wearing a jacket (outfits often need a finishing layer). But perhaps Kermit was hot that day.
We see the same issues here. Piers is wearing a slim, shapeless topcoat with a stretched-out V-neck, a white dress shirt, a scarf, bad jeans, and suede loafers (confusing, no cultural message, aesthetically unappealing).
Kermit wears a similar outfit but employs a field parka, a Fair Isle knit, and a scarf. The coat gives him a distinctive silhouette. The sweater is visually more interesting. All the elements in the outfit make sense in terms of weather and cultural language.
Again, the same issue here. Piers is wearing generic clothes (no cultural message, lack of a finishing layer, visually uninteresting). Kermit improves on this by aligning the materials (chambray with denim) and using an open shirt as a lightweight layer. Has a workwear vibe.
Finally, Kermit knows that dinner suits (aka tuxedos) should be worn with black bow ties made from the same material as the jacket's facings, not long black ties, which should be reserved for business meetings, court appearances, and funerals.
Piers looks best on his TV show, where he employs a visual language he knows (dark suit, light shirt, dark tie). He just needs to learn a few more languages for when he's off the show and perhaps pay attention to Kermit the Frog.
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The buttoning point is the topmost button on a two-button coat or the center button on a three-button coat. It serves as the coat's visual fulcrum, determines the narrowest part of a jacket, and is where the lapels bloom.
Here, we see Jackson has a very muscular figure. The V-shape formed by his broad shoulders and narrow waist is even more extreme than the Statue of David.
I disagree that you dress like Cary Grant. In this thread, I will list some of the ways in which your dress differs and why such important details matter. 🧵
On Twitter and elsewhere, I often notice that people collapse men's style into very broad forms. A suit is just a suit, and pants are just pants. But in fact, tiny differences make a huge impact, and more attention should be paid to silhouette, shape, and detailing.
Let's start with the basics.
A collar gap can appear if your jacket's shoulders don't match the slope of your natural shoulders. Or if the jacket isn't cut right for your posture. Or the jacket is too tight across the chest (the most likely reason for Tristan's collar gap)
Along with keeping you warm and protecting you from the elements, our clothing performs other important functions: making us look good, communicating our identity, and speaking in a language that makes cultural sense. In tailoring, the number of buttons communicates something. 🧵
A one-button closure is considered formal. With the exception of Huntsman, a Savile Row tailoring house that has made it part of its house style, it is typically only seen on evening wear, such as dinner suits (aka tuxedos).
A two-button closure is less formal than one button. On Savile Row, this was the standard for business suits, which are less formal than eveningwear. The bottommost button here is not meant to be fastened.
Here are two suits from the NFL Draft? Which do you like better?
Before reading on, please take the time to make up your mind independently, so you are not influenced by what I'm about to say. I will give my opinion below on which works better. 🧵
I should note I don't know anything about sports or these two men. The following is just commentary on the clothes, not them as people or athletes. Getting into the NFL is a massive accomplishment, and clothes don't take away from that. Congrats to both on their achievements.
Between these two suits, I think the pink one works better. Many will be drawn to the fabric: the color, sheen, and what looks to be a camo pattern. All these elements make it unique. It's also nice that it complements the woman's dress without directly matching. Very thoughtful
Let's talk about how to find a good dry cleaner. 🧵
First, dry cleaning can be harsh on clothes, so it's best to minimize how often you dry clean them. Suits, sport coats, and wool trousers don't have to be dry cleaned often, but your frequency depends on your lifestyle (e.g., smoking, climate, etc).
You can minimize how often you need to dry clean by using a garment brush. Support jackets by their shoulder and brush down to knock out dirt, which can cut into fibers like tiny razors. I use Kent's CC20 clothes brush, but their CP6 is also good.
Amazing to me how much better tailoring was back in the day. Just watch this scene and pay attention to your general impression of the clothes. Then, I'll point out some things in the thread below. 🧵
One of the things that sticks out to me is the degree of care taken to align the stripe across the panels. This is not always possible across the collar, shoulder seam, and gorge because the panels are different lengths. But care was clearly taken here to minimize the mismatch.
You still see this in the best bespoke. In pic one (a suit by Steed in the UK), the chalk stripe flows smoothly across the seam that connects the collar to the lapel (known as the gorge). Compare this to pic two, where the pattern doesn't even align across pockets (bad and lazy)