This article is a result of a few guys in BBV4L asking me to write about fashion, and will hopefully be interesting and educational.

I personally subscribe to two universal rules of fashion:
1. You should look and feel comfortable in your clothes: At the end of the day, you should wear the clothes you like wearing and that best present who you are to other people. Whether you realize it or not, your choices in clothing tell people things about you and odds are you’ll want your clothes to be some kind of representation of your personality or what kind of person you are. There’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to dress, it’s all about preferences. If you wear something that somebody else decides to needlessly hate on because it’s not their preference, either ignore them knowing you feel comfortable, or casually tell them “This is how I roll, so you and your opinion can go fuck yourself.”
2. Your clothes should be appropriate to your setting: There’s a little catch to the above rule about just wearing whatever the hell you prefer; it should be appropriate to where you are or where you’re going. If you show up to the beach in a tuxedo, or to ‘The Oscars’ in shorts and sandals, you’ve earned whatever glib remarks people shoot at you. The traditional fashion rule is that if you aren’t sure what’s appropriate for the venue, it’s better to go over dressed than under. It’s not illegal to show up anywhere wearing anything you want (provided it’s not nothing) but it comes with the consequence that people will think you’re a clown or tool if it’s way too little or too much.

The style I’ll be discussing here is mostly a result of personal fashion tastes, mixed with things I’ve read and discussed, plus some common sense. My style preference leans towards the formal side though not overly so, and I often wear a suit and dress shirt with open collar with no tie with a decent pair of dress shoes. My preferences are the result of a childhood spent with a fashionable father, my obvious idolization of James Bond, and reading GQ/Esquire since I was in my early teens. Many will find what I write here to not be applicable to their personal tastes at all, and in that situation I’d encourage them to totally disregard what I’ve written and wear whatever they like.

First let me discuss a few basic guidelines I prescribe to.
1. Your style should be noticeable yet subtle, not gaudy and excessive: Whenever I flip through fashion magazines I inevitably see a vast array of designer advertisements. I believe a number of even very high end designers clothes to look way too flashy and attention whoring, or as I say when I remark about them to a friend “This designers stuff looks like he brought in a bunch of Euro Trash and had them vomit on his clothing line.” I recommend avoiding overly bold patterns, very bright colors (unless you’re somewhere they’re appropriate), or any accessories that are too blinged out. Example: I think giant gold watches littered with jewels look retarded. You can spend $20,000 on a watch if you really want, but it shouldn’t be something that’s going to blind people next to you and inspire muggers to target you.
2. You should be conscious of the style of those around you: This is something I struggle to find a balance with. I hang out almost entirely with poker players, and most of them dress very casually (this is not an insult directed by anyone, it’s simply their preference.) If I were to walk around in suits 100% of the time I would look ridiculous hanging around a group that’s in jeans and a t-shirt, therefore I keep the more formal wear for places where it looks more appropriate, namely casinos and high end restaurants. For every day wear I still aim a little more fashionable than the group, but I try to find balance by wearing jeans and a casual button up with decent shoes so I don’t look so vastly out of place.
3. The color of your belt should roughly match the color of your shoes, no black on brown combinations: As far as socks, they are mostly determined by your shoes or pants color, you can kind of go either way. Black shoes can handle black, grey, blue, or generally dark colored socks. Brown gets brown, tan, pale green, and generally light colored ones. For other colors of shoes, use common sense.
4. Don’t over pattern: Generally, if your suit has a pattern (be it pinstripes or something else) your shirt should be without one. There are a few ways to match pinstripes and pinstripes that can look good, but it can be difficult to find an appropriate balance. This is mostly done by having the suit with wide and soft pinstripes and the shirt having more thin and noticeable ones. Don’t mix and match patterns, such as a suit with pinstripes and a shirt with squares, that just looks messy. Also, I personally never wear any shirt or suit with a square pattern on it, as I believe this is a look for older gentleman.
5. One traditional fashion rule, which I’m less fussy about than most, is that light colored suits are for during the day, though dark ones can be worn whenever (but if you’re Humphrey Bogart, you get to wear a white dinner coat at bar time.) That said, I think this is probably an excessively nity rule, and if you’re wearing a light suit during the day and go change into a dark one you’re probably going a little too far.
6. I aim to buy and wear things that are fairly timeless. What I mean is that I don’t want my clothes to be overly trendy looking, and if one day I look back at what I wore at 24 when I’m 44 I won’t think “My God, I can’t believe I actually dressed like that.” Not only will this mean you get more wear out of your clothes, but you don’t risk things coming in and out of fashion heavily and you suddenly feeling that you wasted your money.
7. I personally don’t wear vests, and they seem to currently be out of style. I think the only people who currently look appropriate wearing a vest are older gentleman, however now and then I’ll see a guy wearing a dress shirt and vest but with no suit jacket, and if he has broad shoulders it can look smart on him. This is rare though.
8. No black shirts on black suits, unless you’re in the mafia.

Now let’s discuss the specific articles:

Suits: I believe that no article of clothing can make a man look good like a well made suit. Take an average looking, average shape guy, and put him in a well made designer suit tailored specifically to him with the appropriate accessories and he’ll suddenly look very sharp.

When it comes to suits you really do get what you pay for. It takes very little interest in clothing to be able to notice the difference between a guy wearing a cheap suit and a well made one. I would say if a person only has room to pay for one really quality aspect of their wardrobe, it should be suits. Shirts, shoes, socks, accessories; these can all be obtained cheaply in the right places or the middle ground stuff can look fine when combined with the slickness of a quality suit.

When you buy a suit you are mostly paying for three things; the material quality, designer name, and the amount of man hours spent on hand stitching. The higher quality suit, the more hours spent on hand stitching. Cheap suits are fused together with glue, which means they don’t drape and contour well over the body and they will eventually ‘bubble’, which means after enough wear and cleaning you will notice small bubble like spots pop up and stick out all over the suit. Even some well known designers use glue fusion on the cheaper lines of their clothing, so do your homework and make sure to avoid this. If you’re out clothing shopping, you can ask the shop assistant about this. They might tell you that the glue is fine and all that bubbling stuff is exaggerated; don’t listen to their shit they’re trying to sell you something (perhaps someone in the fashion industry can come in and elaborate on this, who knows perhaps the process has gotten better but until I see something conclusive I’ll aim to avoid them.)

Having a suit tailored to fit you seems like a must, and even an average suit will wear much better when this detail is given attention. When it comes to buttons, anywhere from one to three is acceptable, but two is the standard. Three is a little bit 90’s but can still be pulled off nicely (they look best on tall men), and one seems to have regained style, but I think this may be one of those things that winds up falling out of being fashionable in the not so distant future. When you wear a three button suit you wear it with just the middle button done up, or occasionally with the top two buttons done up; if you have just the top on it places considerable stress on the button plus it looks a little off balance, and you only button all three if you work in a funeral parlor. For the two button suit, the consensus seems to be you only button only the top button, though when I’m out in a windy day and don’t want it blowing everywhere I’ll button both. If you can’t figure out the one button suit I advise you to get a vasectomy in order to maintain quality control on the human race.

When it comes to lapels (which are the part of the suit that runs down from the shoulders towards the buttons) I prefer a more long and thin one, which seems to be the modern style that also has been around and looking good for decades. Additionally, long ones have the benefit of making you look a bit taller. Here is an example of a long lapel suit by Z Zegna:
<a href="http://s173.photobucket.com/albums/w63/Bond18/?action=view¤t=longlapelsuit.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w63/Bond18/longlapelsuit.jpg" border="0" alt="Long lapel suit"></a>
There’s no golden rule about them, but excessively short or wide ones look pretty dumb in my opinion. You also don’t want them to be too thin either, but most aren’t. There are some that are both long and wide, which I’d recommend avoiding because then it tends to dominate the suit and if not made properly can flop around and make you look very stupid.

If you truly want the ability to show off the quality of your suit, get one where the buttons on the sleeve can actually be undone and unbutton the very bottom one on each sleeve. This designates quality because even on many very expensive suits the time isn’t put into the hand stitching for this feature, and by leaving the bottom button undone you are essentially flaunting the quality of your suit. Unfortunately, only pretentious English gentleman and people who have read this article will know what you’re doing.

When it comes to what altercations to done on a suit I recommend doing the following:
A. Have the sleeve length such that when wearing an appropriate dress shirt you are showing roughly ¼-3/4th’s an inch of sleeve. If you wear cufflinks all the time, you can go a little more in order to show them off a bit, but this length seems to be the standard. I prefer about half to a three quarters inch.
B. Have the trousers at a length that they comfortably drape over your shoes but do not risk touching the ground, as this will quickly damage them. When you are standing there should be a slight bend in the pants about two inches above your foot where the fabric folds in from contact with the shoe. The tailor will pretty much get the length correct for you here.
C. If possible, have the breast pocket opened up so you can wear pocket squares if you so choose. These can sometimes provide a nice way to add variety to your look without going so far as wearing a tie.
D. The tailor will likely take care of this for you, but a suit should wear fairly thin on you (as is the style these days, and in my opinion, looks the best.) How thin you want to go is up to you, but don’t go too far as it will cut down your mobility in the cloth. That said, suits that wear thin tend to look more tailored and slick on the whole, assuming you have the kind of physique where wearing one is appropriate.

As far as brands go, the very highest quality suits you can get are created by Saville Row tailors from England or extremely high end Italian designers, such as Brioni (James Bond often wears both of these in the movies.) These will run you roughly $5,000 to $10,000 per suit, and obviously no real person can afford them. For suits that look good, wear thin, and hold up well I’ve become a large fan of Zegna. Their high end suits are around the $2,500 area (sometimes much more) but their Z Zegna line was created for young men and is more in the $1,000 area. However, some parts of a Z Zegna suit are fused with glue, though they also include hand stitched parts as well and I own several of them and have not had any issues with bubbling over multiple years of use. Many high quality suits will go on sale at places like Saks Fifth Avenue or even the outlets themselves during a sales season, and can be obtained considerably cheaper than the prices I’ve quoted (often about 30-40% cheaper in some cases.) I own only a couple of suits that I paid full price on.

Ties: I personally rarely wear ties. This is because they are the mainstay of the ‘professional world’ and I take a certain degree of pride in not having to participate in their formality. However, you will either occasionally have an event where a tie is mandatory, plus every now and then I’ll mix one in for varieties sake. When matched up appropriately a tie can really make an outfit come together nicely.

When it comes to choosing an appropriate tie just use common sense, don’t have some gaudy pattern that is excessive and stands out too much. Don’t match your tie precisely to the color of your shirt either. Your tie should share some degree of coloring with either your suit or shirt, but again not match them perfectly. If you have a suit and shirt with pin stripes, go with a plain pattern tie. If you have a suit and shirt with no pattern, get a tie with squares or pinstripes.

As far as which knot, go with the Windsor or Double Windsor. Just trust me on that, you can ‘Youtube’ how to tie it. I’d recommend getting some crappy tie to practice with until you get good at it because if you’re not naturally good with knots and shit you just might wreck a tie putting pressure in the wrong places trying to get it right.

Shirts: First things first, you need to figure out your size. Shirts measurements are in neck width and sleeve length. For example, my shirts are ’16, 34/35’. This means a 16 inch neck and 34-35 inch sleeve. If you’re not sure what yours are, either try a bunch on and see what fits appropriately or just have a tailor measure you. When the top button is closed, your shirt should be snug but by no means suffocating you. If it’s not tight enough it hangs loosely and looks sloppy. Your sleeves should come down to the very end of your wrist but not start spilling over onto your hand, which is not only bad fashion but will get annoying when you try to use them. You also don’t want them too short because they will wind up hidden beneath your suit sleeves. Don’t think for a fucking second about getting a short sleeve dress shirt, unless you want to look like one of the schmucks from ‘Office Space’, though it will afford you an opportunity to make the ‘O Face’ reference.

The modern style in shirts seems to be a more slim and tailored look. I’m personally a big fan of ‘Hugo Boss’ and ‘Zegna’ shirts, which both often fit this way. These will run you roughly $100-$200, though again you can get them cheaper on sale sometimes. It’s hard to explain a shirts quality of fit precisely, so if you want to see what I’m talking about I suggest you go somewhere like Zegna and try on one of theirs, then go to a department store and try one of their generic ones. I promise you’ll notice the difference, both in quality of construction and fit.

There are numerous types of cuffs on a shirt, the standard which has one button, the shotgun which has two buttons, and the French cuff, which is what cufflinks are inserted into. In my opinion cuff links are a very sexy look and should be worn whenever appropriate, so I aim to get French cuff whenever possible.

Also pay attention to the collar on the shirt. I personally prefer collars that run in the middle of length and height. I think short collar shirts look dumb and will fall quickly out of fashion, and very high collar ones just flop around and make you look like you’re stuck in the 70’s. Here’s an example of a short collar shirt:
<a href="http://s173.photobucket.com/albums/w63/Bond18/?action=view¤t=shortcollarshirt.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w63/Bond18/shortcollarshirt.jpg" border="0" alt="short collar shirt"></a>
Like I said, it looks pretty dumb, but his Javiar Bardem in ‘No Country for Old Men’ haircut probably isn’t helping.

Here’s a good example of a more moderate collar shirt, which as you can see pops out of the suit nicely without garnering too much attention:
<a href="http://s173.photobucket.com/albums/w63/Bond18/?action=view¤t=mediumcollarshirt.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w63/Bond18/mediumcollarshirt.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

When you wear a collar with a tie you obviously button it up to the top. Without a tie I recommend you undo the top and second button. If you only undo the top it’s a bit on the conservative side but can absolutely look good in many situations. If you unbutton the third one you look gay, and I’m not trying to be insulting.

Shoes: As I mentioned before, your shoes should match the color of your belt and of course, fit into the overall color ensemble of the outfit. The classic is leather material, though occasionally some suede shoes can look good with formal wear.

Jeans: With dark jeans you go with a darker shirt/shoe (or possible jacket) ensemble, and with light obviously lighter. That said, dark jeans are a bit more versatile than light ones, and you can wear a light shirt with them just as easily (I often like dark jeans with a white shirt.)

The cut should be on the slim side but not overly thin unless you want everyone to know how much you like punk rock. Here's a decent example:
<a href="http://s173.photobucket.com/albums/w63/Bond18/?action=view¤t=jeanspic.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w63/Bond18/jeanspic.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>You want to be able to move around, but a baggy look is going to look dumb when the rest of your clothes are on the form fitting side. Make sure they aren’t too long, as again they’ll drag along the ground and get torn up.

You can go with either laces or loafer, though I often prefer loafer since they take half a second to put on and I don’t have to worry about laces snapping or getting dirty or any shit like that. I prefer longer, thinner looking shoes, but it’s important to note that shoes shouldn’t be so long and pointy that they wind up looking ‘elfish’.

The tip can be either on the round or square side, and it’s not terribly important but I recommend finding something congruent to your overall look. If you’re a fat guy with soft, round features I’d recommend going with more rounded shoes, and if you’re a thin guy who prefers sharp looking clothing go for more square tips or sharper round tips. Here’s a good example of a more long, thin Zegna shoe that I own and find to be very versatile:
<a href="http://s173.photobucket.com/albums/w63/Bond18/?action=view¤t=blackleathershoe.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w63/Bond18/blackleathershoe.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Just remember, overly long and thin shoes that curl up at the tip will have people asking you “How’s Santa?”

Cuff links: Like most accessories just make sure your cuffs are tasteful and not tacky. I’d recommend staying away from very bright colors or gem stones, and I personally won’t even wear gold colored cuffs. My favored look here is something silver or steel, and if it has coloring it should be congruent with my outfit.

Watches: As I mentioned before, a lot of guys like to use a watch to show off but I think giant, blinged out watches are overbearing and for guys who would like to get their watch stolen. I won’t even wear a metal band watch, as I think leather is a classic and handsome look that feels more comfortable on my wrist. That’s not to say you can’t get an extremely expensive watch if you want, but there are ways of going about this that people who know quality when they see it will recognize yet realize you have the subtlety to be understated in this area. I personally don’t bother with expensive watches because it’s exactly the type of thing I tend to lose, and these days I’m not wearing one at all. Jack Strauss once said something to the affect of (and I’m paraphrasing) “I used to want a Fossil, then I wanted a Movado, then a Rolex, and then a Cartier. Then I realized the true luxury was in not having to know the time.” He was a clever guy up until the day he dropped dead right on the table.

Well that’s all I can think of to go over for now. If there’s any questions just fire away.

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