STYLE GUIDES: essential or obnoxious?

sorry if that is like duh radical subjectivism 101

right after I graduated high school I bought 'dressing the man'

this was only because I was into old 40s-50s movie stars like cary grant and bogart and stuff

laurel i need more info on that book!

anyway I liked the book because it taught me about proportion, like I realized that I have a pretty long torso and short legs for someone my height. and there are ways to work w/ that. but yeah most of the color-matching stuff I just skipped over.

what was annoying was that it would show pictures of really famous and handsome dudes and the captions would be "look how his clothes really make his look!" and really, these were dudes who you could dress in a polo and khakis and who would still look awesome

??
http://images.usatoday.com/news/politics/photos/0717gorebuff.jpg

I am pretty proud of myself for being able to look sharp and separate myself from the usual workaday brooks brothers schmuckatrons despite almost 100% of my wardrobe being lands end and ll bean - and this schtick (I am comfortable acknowledging it as a such, where does that idea fit? hmm) took me like a decade of ill-considered middle-of-the-road experiments to settle into.

i do think theres this... not myth, i suppose, but perception that its just so tricky for ~dudes~ to 'dress well' & that w/o some expert handholding itd just be cheese-stained t-shirts & sweat pants everywhere

there is absolutely a problem for dudes, especially twentysomething young straight fools just entering the workforce, who don't know to match or coordinate their belts and shoes and blazers and ties and just throw on whatever. You could blame all kinds of factors - two off the top of my head would be the masculine "your mom dresses you" stigma which seems to make guys gravitate towards the cheese-stained t-shirt and ratty ballcap in rebellion against any kind of dress which might get a poindexter label, and the university culture that reinforces this by not discouraging it as adamantly as it probably should

but that could be solved by For Dummies content, and not even a book, a brochure; the thing is there's no money in printing dress-yourself brochures, so everything aimed at this market of desperate young bros with their first office job is in book format, overloading the simple advice with a lot of striped oxford nonsense. The overly helpful attitude of your average men's wearhouse sales clerk isn't very useful either.

So having said all this ruthlessly obvious crap, I wonder if maybe what the world needs for dumb guys who don't know nothin about to dress is "schtick guides" - "How To Roll Like Steve Jobs" lol amirite - at least give our guileless future dads of the world the option to play dress up in a couple of different ways without having to end up always looking like a cheap knockoff of something that was a mediocre idea to begin with.

Oh elmo, the book is at work! Sorry, was too busy today to deal w it. BUT I WILL.

The fashion sketches in it are the best, so dramatic. And all the illustrations have legs like 5' long, proportionally speaking. Which is less than helpful. But the truisms they're illustrating still hold, like: "A dark dress with a light scarf around the neck will draw an observer to your face. A dark dress with a white belt will draw an observer to your waist." And: "A beige suit and shoes and bag will always look good with many colors of shirt underneath, but a colored suit will have to be perfectly matched to everything else."

Basically it's all about Quality, or "Q". Buy the best you can afford, because worn-looking Quality is still better than new cheapness. Plus consider the usage for the fashion -- plastic trim masquerading as leather: non-Q. A vinyl poncho in a casual setting when it's raining: totally Q.

And so on.

If you must buy pearls but can't afford them, buy fake. But make them the best fakes, so that not even an oyster can tell the difference. It actually says that!

I looooved reading men's style guides, my whole childhood & teenage years. I remember some of the first of my parents' books I picked up were about men's fashion. The range of types of clothing was a lot smaller than women's clothing so the details seemed to matter a lot more. Maybe this is why men's fashion seemed so much more comprehensible than women's fashion, which is still kind of ?¿?¿? to me. Plus going to a tailor seemed so glamorous & posh. Men's clothes are also a lot more pragmatic than heels & skirts (not saying this is the entirety of the realm of women's fashion or that these types of clothing are bad). It was all abstract to me anyway, aspirational, no one in my family dressed nice.

...and there are the ones that are actually factually wrong, like Color Me Beautiful's statement that black haired people never have blue eyes.

oh Elmo you mean the 'put this on' guy whose own clothes don't fit right!

Ines de la fressange did a style guide book - must buy.

haha I def wear dark navy, dark brown and black together! idgaf

tbh i think reading barthes' fashion system really caused me to go up my own ass about overthinking this
--tangelo amour (elmo argonaut)

what is this roland Barthes thing and where do I read it? (sorry for many responses at once I am at a bar getting hit on by space nerds, must look busy!)

i could use a style guide to teach me how to tie a tie though

i thought this thread was going to be about strunk and white

i could use a style guide to teach me how to tie a tie though

after watching the english banker's double windsor fatty knots catch on with the 201x triple patterned suit shirt tie joker crowd I am officially more proud than ever that the only thing I can do with a necktie is the four in hand

that being the knot you can invent yourself when given ten minutes and no context

I don't know if it was hipsters or teevee or what who brought it back but the not-wrinkle-free, not-cut-for-a-fatty, plain old pinpoint collar oxford is something that we need to ensure never goes away again

yeah the sort of snug-fitting and slightly rumpled, soft-looking collars are really great

"good morning I'm professor el tomboto, I just got back from vilnius by the way, pretty exciting stuff - can anybody tell me where vilnius is?"

^ this maybe is the linkage between style and schtick that if I were a better thinker and writer I could nail down, as to why I think it's necessary and useful

If you must buy pearls but can't afford them, buy fake. But make them the best fakes, so that not even an oyster can tell the difference.

i cannot say how much I love this sentiment

daria: the fashion system is a really interesting read and i definitely recommend it; he posits three types of abstracted "garments" which exist in relation to "real clothing" -- a technical garment, comprised of procedures and technologies; a visual garment, comprised of a photo or illustration; and a written garment constituted by words. he focuses on the latter two, since all fashion magazines juxtapose word and images -- he uses i think a year's worth of fashion french women's magazines as his data set and explores how the written & visual garments interact to create capital-F Fashion. and then it goes on from there.

that's a pretty shoddy summary actually but it's good!

"good morning I'm professor el tomboto, I just got back from vilnius by the way, pretty exciting stuff - can anybody tell me where vilnius is?"
--El Tomboto

lithuania?

how do you get to vilnius without knowing where it is?

btw tombot is on to something -- i'm thinking intensive schtick-based weekend style seminars, like the sort that business school undergrads are forced to attend except instead of "what to wear to a business dinner" it's all "find your inner eccentric" self-discovery vibe

Well, but Tom, you do dress nicely, but one of the reasons clothes look good on you is you have the perfect build for them--the kind of build that clothes can just hang off of. I think it's harder for men with more extra weight on them to look good in clothes, especially of the aforementioned LL Bean variety.

So my style advice for men, is to diet.

fat jared was a snappier dresser before subway turned him into tiger woods.

^ that sentiment would fit in nicely on styleforum xp

innocuous websites that make you irrationally angry:

putthison.com

innocuous websites that make you irrationally angry:

putthison.com
--burberry kush (elmo argonaut)

oh most definitely. don't they recommend to put on many clothes/accessories that one should really not

eh it's mostly just aspriational office dressing but the tone just irks me. i get that there are lots of guys who have to keep a professional dress code and want to look sharp and need help doing so -- obv i am not of that demographic (not that i always look sharp i mean, i don't) but the style he advocates is just so homogenized and devoid of personality. some guys can wear a uniform day in & day out and look great doing it, personally i cannot think of anything more boring.

idk i took a look @ his site & aside from the tedious 'grownup' rhetoric it just seems sorta w/e mb interesting in that they appear to be much more interested in v conservative italian mens fashion rather than fussier english-derived tailoring or american workwear stuff

also w/in the first three pages theyve recommended two things i own & a third that i liked the look of so

yeah the 'grownup' schtick is pretty awful, i guess i just hate the way style guides like this tend to scare dudes away from color and pattern and any exhibition of eccentricity whatsoever, sometimes it's appropriate to fit in but eh

but full disclosure i am wearing a blinding madras shirt & tie combo today so

i am really, really okay with most people being told not to wear colors and patterns

i dont actually hate color or pattern or flair or eccentricity i just dont think you should be allowed it until youve passed a test

there should be a "license to fashion"

http://www.rooneyshop.com/img/oliver%20spencer%20red%20shorts%20front.jpg

^ acceptable office wear for me

well part of the whole style guide purview w/r/t to men's fashion is reinforcing this learned helplessness around 'dressing like an adult' so i think most of these dudes exaggerate the role of 'rules' & 'tradition' in defining the spectrum of whats acceptable dress

sorry max i am operating w/o a license :(

those shorts are v pretty btw

elmo, im sure you could get a license

honestly if theres one thing that bothers me abt mens fashion is the prices ppl charge for a pair of cool shorts! i did some shopping last wknd & it was just ridiculous the # of brands where shorts were equally or even more expensive than pants!

ill admit that im probably p conservative w/ fashion - i paried those shorts w/ a traditional fitted white dress shirt & light chambray cardigan w/ a ribbon detail on the cuffs and front & a pair of english saddle shoes in brown leather & blue. its more color than most ppl wld try but its not clashing or playing w/ volume. i think max is right too in that its better to dress to your own comfort rather than try to be 'creative'

at the same time i think style blogs cld do more to expand the range of what ppl 'feel comfortable' wearing, particularly since more uniform & subdued clothes end up making ppl focus on fit ime

lol my current style tip is "try not to look homeless"; I just threw out a bunch of frayed clothing I'd had for 10+ years

yeah i'm not saying i want to be 100% color adventures all the time, i have many days where i dress v simply & conservatively but sometimes i like to turn the volume way up

'personal style' is a thing ppl talk about but I think everyone should be encouraged to determine what is 'essential' or 'classic' for themselves & their look, i think this idea gets lost when addressing a larger audience.

also i know men's mags do this sometimes but i think dude fashion could benefit from the 'dressing for your body type' instruction rather than assuming all men are built the same way

i like ridiculous loud colors, generally if i'm going to wear color i figure, just go for it.. though women's blogs/magazines are irritating because saying stuff about a "pop" of color is as ubiquitous as saying "we're OBSESSED" with whatever trendy item of the week they thought about and blogged about one time.

i also think that in order to work out a style you have to probably go through a period of many fashion disasters. i hope i am over that now.. i guess the stuff i wear has gotten more conservative because lolwashington, that's how it is here.

essential, but apparently ignored by rugged individualists

i love your tie and shirt combo, elmo!

men who internalize style guides as some sort of prevailing superego of fashion, that shit is dumb, stop doing it

who the fuck dresses like that, prime ministers?

you can do that shit with a t-shirt and a hoodie

who the fuck dresses like that, prime ministers?

tumblr #menswear powerbloggers, half of styleforum, moderators at r/malefashionadvice

i'm not endorsing wearing a t-shirt and hoodie to work

but i do think if you're a lawyer or accountant dressed like that a lot of people are gonna be like wtf.

you can get the same dose of color theory with a dress shirt and a sweater

there are teachers who are menswearish, like they'll wear suspenders, old-timey shirts, rolled up jeans with dress shoes, etc

i think it makes more sense to dress like a camp counselor than going that route

i think there's a line of overdressy that you don't need to go very far to step over comfortably in business clothing

like if you get the fit right, you can wear basics all the time and wear a tie or something and look a million bucks

I pretty much agree that the shirt in that picture is way too same-but-different in pattern to the jacket and they don't look good together, especially with the busy tie. Two of the three would work, but not all three.

All this stuff is like jazz -- you can make the wrong notes sound right. But since most men are not miles davises of style, the rules are there to help them avoid looking like a mess. That said, yeah, these style bloggers get a bit fascistic about it.

I say that a man who is not a miles davis of style.

idk, i wouldn't have picked the combination but fair is fair and i'm not wearing it, i think it looks nice but it's not even very noteworthy imho. & i'm not going to criticize anybody for overdressing because i overdress for any & every occasion.

the thing that bummed me out was the "oops i broke a rule please don't pick on me" vibe from the caption.

it's hard to tell -- it looks like the kind of thing that, if everything was otherwise high quality and well-tailored for the man wearing it and the guy was well-groomed and put together etc then it might work very nicely, but if it was just your average midtown manhattan guy with off-the-rack clothes, the clash would make it look extra sloppy.

i dunno, it's not even that defensive in tone i guess, but i just get VERY SUSPICIOUS of dudes who consistently annotate their WIWT shots by explaining how they put their outfit together, what rules they followed, why they chose blue socks, why it's appropriate for the weather or the occasion. like everyone's gotta play the role of gq assistant fashion editor all the time? stfu.

also i think i have a higher tolerance for clashing than many other ppl fwiw

the tie is a dark "value" than the shirt and the jacket is inbetween, as it should be

the hue of the jacket is brown which is like a shade of orange which goes nice with the gingham which is like a hue of blue, complementary colors etc if i'm reading it right

there a consonance between the gingham and tweed and the tie itself is tying it all together HOHO but with a pattern that breaks up the non-square lines in the tie and he's correct it picks up some of the colors in the jacket

big fucking WHOOP