STYLE GUIDES: essential or obnoxious?

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

i feel that is a boring thing to conclude, seems obvious to me but idk

yeah but its still p much true!

where w/e you want just be really handsome

this is still my one sentence style guide btw

oh totally

*reblogs old mcqueen photos*

*steve, i mean*

Alright elmo, quincie, and anyone else: I put that style guide poll up FINALLY. Have at it.

I completely agree with elmo's shit up there

disappointed that I missed the poll

fwiw the international cybersecurity practitioner style guide includes a LOT of not ironing anything, chuck taylors, non-shiny ironic "ha yeah like this is a tie but not serious" ties and shell toes. everybody is totally surprised

I feel like there should be a whole style guide just telling nerdy dudes how to be more like the last couple of dr. whos so they can get out of the black tshirt and doc martens hole we've been in for decades

You will have to leave Eccleston out of the guide then

yeah yeah I meant smith and tennant. eccleston is exactly the problem (and more or less how I dressed during most of my 20s)

WILSON'S LEATHER

lol

have been thinking about this quite a bit today, again

at this point, i have temporarily dropped out the blog circuit because the it was causing more resentment than enjoyment

i pretty much am a style guide now

j/k

I am a lot happier now that I've stopped looking at style blogs, geek li