Dress Like a Man (3 page)

That's because the raw material is one of the most important factors influencing how a garment looks and how it holds up over time.

Unlike bespoke tailors, however, most ready-to-wear clothing brands don't list the specific weight or origin of their materials. Department stores certainly aren't going to! A man needs to acquaint himself with the look and feel of quality materials before he shops, so that he can tell the good stuff from the bad.

You don't have to know the technical data to get a sense for the quality of clothing. Run a hand over it and, whenever possible, try it on. Look for signs of good raw materials:

• a nice "drape" -- the cloth should hang straight, without wrinkles or billowing
  
• a smooth, even handfeel
  
• no bumps or rough patches (unless part of a regular, repeating weave)
  
• sturdiness -- the cloth shouldn't feel thin and transparent
  

Don't be shy about visiting some high-end menswear stores to run your hands over the good stuff. Go ahead and try on some suits and shirts that you can't afford, if you have to. It's worth having a sense for what really nice clothes are supposed to feel like.

Construction Quality Check

While you're looking at the fabric, you should also make sure that the garment was put together competently.

Flip it inside out and take a look at the seams. They should be neat and even, without stray threads or irregular loops all over the place. Pull gently on them to see if the stitches loosen or stretch -- that's a sign of cheap construction, and any garment that shows it won't last very long.

Make sure basic things like zippers and buttons are sturdy and firmly attached. If they're crooked, hanging by a thread, or flimsy, it's a sure sign that the item was cheaply made with little or no quality control.

Skip items that don't meet a high standard of physical quality. This is the second step on your style pyramid, and it's just as key as the first one. Buying something that will wear out quickly is a waste of your money -- and cheap garments tend not to look as good even before they start fraying and failing.

Fashion

The third and final step of the style pyramid is the most personal one: your individual style or fashion sense.

Once you're confident that an item fits well and is well-constructed, you have to ask yourself whether it will work in any of your "looks."

That's a subjective measure. There are no hard and fast rules here. But you should think about the other items in your wardrobe, and about the sort of "self" you try to project when you dress.

Some men think in terms of archetypes: urban cowboy, power businessman, earth child, rocker, and so on.

Other men focus on their color and complexion, or look for styles that have a cultural or national association.

There's no one right way to do it. But there
is
a need to stop and think honestly about whether or not a specific purchase is going to add to your wardrobe.

We'll talk more in the next chapter about ideas of interchangeability and how to make your wardrobe all work together. For now, just be aware of fashion as the final step in your style pyramid: you should be buying things that you like the look of.

There are a few classic pieces every man should own (we'll list those in detail in a later chapter as well). Beyond that, define your own style, and pick clothes that fit into it. You're the one that has to wear them, after all.

How to Use The Style Pyramid

So how does all that work in the real world?

It's very simple. Whenever you can, shop in person -- there's no substitute for actually holding, touching, and trying on a garment. Online shopping is fine for brands you know and trust (especially if they have free shipping and exchanges), but when you're looking for something new, do it in person.

Run through the same procedure for anything that catches your eye:

• Check the sizing and hold it up to get a sense for whether or not it has a hope of fitting you. If it doesn't, put it back.
  

• Next, check the seams and the detailing. If there are obvious failures of quality control, again, put the whole thing back and walk away.
  

• If it looks like it might fit and the quality is good, think about whether or not it fits into your style and your wardrobe. Are you going to wear it much? If it's going to sit in the closet unused most of the time, put it back.
  

Only bother with actually trying on clothes that can pass
all
of those tests.

It will make you a pickier shopper. You'll end up skipping a lot of potential purchases. And that's just fine.

The goal here is to only spend money on things that are worth it. In the modern shopping environment, that's surprisingly hard! Stick to the style pyramid, and enjoy owning clothes that actually work for you.

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HAPTER 5:
T
HE
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NTERCHANGEABLE
W
ARDROBE

The last chapter talked about the "style pyramid," which is essentially a way to double-check your potential clothing purchases.

That's basically a triage mechanism. It's good for preventing mistakes, but it doesn't do much in the way of constructive wardrobe building.

So what should a guy who wants a better wardrobe, but who isn't sure where to begin, be focusing on?

Interchangeability.

It sounds more complicated than it is. An interchangeable wardrobe is exactly what the word suggests: one where you can swap different pieces in and out easily, and still have them all work reasonably well with one another.

There'll always be a few outliers. Everyone ends up with one or two beloved pieces of clothing that don't necessarily go well with a lot of other pieces. But the goal of the man just starting to expand his wardrobe should always be to buy clothing items that
work well with one another.

Before You Buy: Decide What You Already Own (and Like)

No one, no matter how badly he's been dressing, is starting with an empty wardrobe. You own
some
clothes already. (If you don't, shopping is going to be an awkward experience!)

Think about what you own that you like to wear. It may not be on the cutting edge of fashion, but at least some of it can be worked into more stylish outfits as you upgrade the rest of your wardrobe. Go through the whole collection and divide your clothes up into three piles:

• Obvious losers -- stuff that doesn't fit, is damaged beyond repair, or is so hopelessly unstylish you won't even consider wearing it. (As a basic rule of thumb, anything you haven't worn in over a year can go into this pile automatically, unless it's a very purpose-specific garment that you have solid but infrequent reasons to wear.)
  
• Functional but unstylish clothes that you still wear, just not as part of any coordinated look.
  
• Good-looking clothes that you like and want to keep in rotation.
  

Throw the first pile out or give it to charity. Consign the second to work clothes, or start thinking up ways to pair the unstylish pieces with better accents to make them look more deliberately stylish.

The third pile -- assuming there is one -- will be the start of your new, upgraded wardrobe. You'll want to keep those items in mind, and buy clothes that work well with them in coordinated outfits.

Begin Building a Solid Core

Your "core" items are your big pieces, the ones that cover big swaths of your body: shirts, jackets, and trousers, for the most part, plus maybe a few vests and pieces of outerwear.

Build a core of simple, versatile items that go well with as many different looks as possible. Plain white dress shirts are a good example: they can be worn under matched suits for a strict business look, but they can just as easily be worn with blazers for a dress-casual look, or with jeans as functional work clothes.

In the next chapter, we look at five pieces of clothing every man should own. These are good examples of a "core" you could build (though they're hardly the be-all and end-all of wardrobe building).

The point here is to have some unflashy pieces that are sturdy, well-made, and well-fitted. That way you have something to wear your flashy pieces with, when you start buying them.

These may feel boring at first. Buy them anyway, and buy them in good quality. If every piece in an outfit is a flashy eye-grabber, you're just going to look confused and clashing. A simple, interchangeable core wardrobe makes your style pieces infinitely more versatile. Without the basics, nicer clothes are one-trick ponies.

Expand Your Accent Collection

Interchangeable pieces tend not to have the brightest colors or the most vivid patterns. Those things don't always play well with others, so your core won't feature much of them.

That's all right, though. That's what accent pieces are for!

"Accent" items are generally -- but not always -- smaller things like neckties, pocket squares, belts, and shoes. Anything that stands out as an eye-grabbing piece against the backdrop of your core items could be considered an accent, however; "Nantucket red" pants are a good example of a larger item that basically serves as an accent.

These are how you start transforming a handful of interchangeable core items into a wardrobe of hundreds or even thousands of looks.

It's basically a multiplication problem. If you own three interchangeable pairs of trousers, three interchangeable shirts, and three interchangeable jackets, your "core" items have twenty-seven unique combinations (three times three times three). A few of those probably won't look great, so round a bit and call it twenty to twenty-five core outfits.

Every unique accent multiplies that entire number. So if you've got three eye-catching accents, pairing them with your existing core already gives you
seventy-five unique outfits.

In practice, it's never quite that easy. Some colors don't work with others, some styles don't mesh, some looks just don't appeal to you...you're never going to get perfect mathematical efficiency out of this system.

But you can still get an impressive range of looks with just a few small changes.

The Power of Interchangeable Items

Let's look at two very generic pieces of clothing for an example: a pair of dark, decently-fitted jeans and a plain white dress shirt.

Those two, combined, make a single, pretty generic look. It's respectable enough for day to day purposes, most places, but it's not going to catch anyone's eye.

Now start adding accents.

Pair the shirt and jeans with a slim black belt and a pair of black brogues. Suddenly it's much dressier.

Throw on a broader, brown leather belt with a decorative buckle instead, and replace the shoes with Western boots. Now you've got the urban cowboy thing going on (a bolo tie would take it even further).

Replace those Western boots with some sleek black Chelsea boots, make the belt colored canvas with leather trim, and throw a colorful scarf around your shoulders, and suddenly you're contemporary urban, with maybe just a hint of metrosexual flamboyance.

You can go on and on like that all day,
without ever changing the jeans or the shirt.
And we haven't even brought jackets, sweaters, overcoats, and other layers into the equation yet.

That's the power of an interchangeable wardrobe, and that's what you're trying to build by starting with a good core and then adding accent pieces.

How to Tell If Your Wardrobe is Interchangeable

Take a look at your options in the closet right now.

An "interchangeable" item, broadly speaking, is one that you can pair with at least half of the other frequently-worn items in your wardrobe.

Taking things a step forward, you want at least half the items in your wardrobe to meet that qualification. Think of it as the "half works with half" rule, if that helps.

Half your wardrobe, give or take, can be less-flexible accent pieces. There's no harm in owning some style pieces -- in fact, it's encouraged. But a good half the wardrobe should be solid, interchangeable core pieces that work with the majority of your clothes.

Don't be too strict with your rules. This isn't a delicate chemical formula. You've got some wiggle room.

But do strive for that versatile, interchangeable wardrobe. If nothing else, it makes finding two things to throw on in the morning that will look decent together really easy, even before you've had your coffee.

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HAPTER 6:
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LOTHING
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