STYLE GUIDES: essential or obnoxious?

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!

thanks hs! i thrifted that shirt on weds and had to wear it right away

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.

ok what

ha "pop of color" is maybe the most grossly overused fashion / design phrase next to "color blocking"

TH conservative is relative i guess? i mean compared to drop-crotch trousers those shorts are p conservative

i'm just trying to get a handle on the vision he must have looked in that get up

a vision of casual sophistication i have no doubt

lol @ 'get up' its a pair of shorts a dress shirt & a sweater, which was my point. like i have no idea what kind of dreary tweedery ppl wear in your fisby richmond park nabe if that outfit deserves a 2nd take

style guides can suck it . . . . if i ever had to read a style guide i would slap myself silly

lol my current style tip is "try not to look homeless"

I've been trying and failing to get my husband to follow that advice for quite a while now.

this is another tack at what I was trying to get to by the way - what I would want to teach the world of young duders is to look at this picture, borrow or don't (probably very don't) but look at how they are kind of pulling it off, and understand that the pulling it off is far more important than what you're putting on. If that makes sense. If it doesn't let's start over from the top.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1c/Time_Crash.jpg
(also seriously this picture, what, how is this 8 minutes of gold not available on my Roku)

I like that there's a bit of yoda in sprezzatura, there's no trying to have style (trying is super verboten), there is only having style. You can accomplish this lots of different ways. Failing is okay, you can wear a brown coat with black boots and it might work with the right shirt or it might not, but baggy gray suits or khakis with blue shirts every day is no way to live.

skate shoes (or any canvas CVO really) with a twill blazer is horribly underrated imo

if anybody made exciting argyle socks that were the least bit comfortable, I could see that being a thing for me to try out, but the price for the fabric on what I've seen is a bit more precious than I can endure

i feel like style guides are there to cause the brain to think abt clothes, eventually the thought one has is am i pulling this off, so its a process imho

of course ive never read a style guide cause im already a pimp ass gangster

i think if you order in bulk you can get some decent stuff @ happysocks for... well i mean socks are p cheap already so theyre hardly a steal but yknow, a reasonable price.

i run through socks too quickly to ever justify buying nice ones but i used to pick up paul smith ones @ barneys when they went on sale

argyle is too much pattern for me

whenever this thread shows up on new answers i think it is going to be about, like, the oxford comma

I like that there's a bit of yoda in sprezzatura, there's no trying to have style (trying is super verboten), there is only having style

yeah see i think that a sense of effortlessness can definitely elevate a look, but seeing style bloggers talking "how to sprezz" (no really) just seems completely laughably ass backwards

i mean i understand that sprezzatura is a sort of affected carelessness, but i just don't think it's always stylish. honestly i don't think it's bad to look like you put deliberate and fastidious care into your appearance!

However fashions change ultimately clean bright clothes are always a good look.

that's not exactly what i mean...

how to blog nonchalantly

i think if you order in bulk you can get some decent stuff @ happysocks for... well i mean socks are p cheap already so theyre hardly a steal but yknow, a reasonable price.

yeah, and theyre having a clearance sale, buy 10 socks get 50% off. so like $50 for 10 pairs? not bad. i got like 25-30 pairs of them already though.

honestly i don't think it's bad to look like you put deliberate and fastidious care into your appearance!

"appearing effortless" is not the same as "appearing as if you put in no effort"
misinterpretations of sprezz are exactly as horrible as trying too hard

fucking style guides for clothes are almost as bad as style guides for writing, I think is what we've learned here (replace "never use passive voice" with "sprezzy!")

no offense but aren't most of you lol old? who cares

idc im totally sprezzy abt all this

honestly idk "sprezz"

or "swag" for that matter

just realized my jeans are stained with fake blood #sprezz

reading these guys proclaim the rules like they're set in stone and then seeing them post pictures of themselves looking like dressed-by-numbers cornballs is pretty entertaining. I'd also enjoy seeing how many of their Style Commandments would survive one single Carolina summer.

Let's just acknowledge that real style was never possible until converse all-stars opened a website that allowed the hoi polloi to order custom shoes for under a hundred buckos

the other day i was thinking about doing a fuckyeahmenswear thing but for mens fitness type shit like

dont come at me with those fucking salads sprezz-dawg
i just ate at fucking baja fresh. twice. cuz i just eat fried shrimp like that.
i see you in the morning running through park like a chump hampster when im fucking w/ all you can eat breakfast
for three hours
i got these abs when i bent down to pick up a pen i dropped. the only crunch i know is the captain
so walk the plank
fuckers tryna impress they dates with some kale and kidney beans
put that quinoa away ive got genetics keeping me regular
im fucking speedboat-dating supermodels while i get calf definition from just being so gd fly

haha for some reason i thought this was the thread where we talked about that site, guess not...

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lochv0dhS51qznrwro1_1280.jpg

durr

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e239/allocryptic/51309172.jpg

why are sarah palin's "girl parts" distressed

is that a wrinkled pussy joke?

sarah palin isnt that old!!

look it's not my wrinkled pussy joke

been thinkin about this a lot tbh

would it be too obvious and undergraduate of me to conclude the essential function of men's style guides is to police masculine gender hegemony and economic class privilege