Raising the Bar

How high should one wear a tie clip?

Prudent gentlemen can respectfully disagree on this issue.  There is truly a continuum of solutions, within which every man must balance his competing desires and achieve equilibrium.  This equilibrium avoids the two obvious extremes: too high and too low.

The first factor to consider in finding balance is cold, hard functionality.  Tie clips exist to keep ties from flying around.  A tie clip touching the knot accomplishes nothing–the rest of the tie will swing freely.  On the other hand, a tie clip worn near the bottom of the tie does not prevent the tie from sagging in the middle.  Both such extremes defeat the function of a tie clip, and while I concede that some accessories, e.g., pocket squares, were once functional but have since become purely ornamental, it seems especially ridiculous to wear a real, functional accessory in such a way that it accomplishes no function.  If you want useless accessories, trade in your Y-chromosome and prepare to pay twice as much for clothes for half the quality, and at least four times the anxiety.

The second factor is actually how the height of the tie clip distorts the vertical orientation of the tie.  A small tie clip worn near the bottom of a wide necktie will cause the tie to hang crooked, adversely affecting the appearance.  Narrower ties and longer tie clips mitigate this problem.  For this reason, I typically wear my wider ties only with three-piece suits, with which tie clips are not needed.

The third factor, the psychological element, is the most subjective. A tie clip is increasingly prominent with added height.  A tie clip placed too low feels a bit bashful, as if one is uncomfortable with wearing a tie clip and prefers to hide it beneath one’s buttoned suit coat.  The tie clip placed too high looks a bit too forceful.  Worse yet, the overly high tie clip has been fashionable among hipsters, etc., for the very reason that such a tie clip is ineffective at restraining the tie, and the wearer thereby signals that his intention is unambiguously “ironic.”

In the midst of these competing factors, I think we can define a range of acceptable solutions.  For the lower bound, I recommend absolutely no lower than about two-fifths the distance from the end of the tie to the knot.  For the upper bound, I recommend no higher than the midpoint between the knot and the bottom of the V formed by a two-button sportcoat.  Strategic considerations will help determine the optimal point within this interval.

My ideal position for the tie clip: with the sport coat buttoned, the clip is visible, but not prominent.

It is important for a man to consider his body type.  A long, uninterrupted stretch of fabric will flatter shorter men, who would do better to position their tie clips higher up (and to use a smaller clip).  For tall men, a higher tie clip may appear overdone, and would be less effective at restraining the tie when stooping, something which tall men often must do.  Corpulent men would do best to use a moderate position–too high creates a long uninterrupted line over the gut, whereas the tie clip itself draws attention to the gut if positioned too low.  Tall and large men alike may feel that a small clip looks inadequate or feeble, and that a larger clip better harmonizes with their build.

The occasion is also important.  Positioning the clip higher projects a stronger presence, which could be valuable during a job interview or on a first date, especially for a younger man who needs to move upwards in society.  On the other hand, positioning the clip softens one’s appearance and achieves greater subtlety, which can be valuable during an interview for a job requiring subtlety (e.g., clinical psychologist), as a defendant in court, or in church.

Where to put a tie clip is highly subjective, and is an individual decision.  These criteria are guidelines, but aside from those hipsters who wear tie-clips as a puerile means of deriding well-dressed men, and men who wear their tie clips with needless shame, there is no wrong way to do this.  Men who respect themselves and others and wear their tie clips accordingly, will be respected.

Will hats ever be popular again?

The hat has fallen out of favor. A century ago, no man would leave home without a hat. What could have taken place in the past 100 years in America so to reduce the importance of the hat? Knowing why hats were popular and why they have become unpopular can shed light on whether hats will be popular in the future.

First, consider what made the hat useful to begin with. In the summer, a hat should shelter the head from the sun, and keep the wearer cool. Fabrics such as linen, cotton, and straw in light colors are especially effective at providing shade while still allowing for ventilation. In the winter, a hat should keep the head warm. The old saying that one loses 70% of our body heat through the head is not exactly true. If you’re already wearing a coat and pants, your head could then be responsible for 40% of your heat loss. It is not true that, if a person were entirely naked, 70% of his body heat would be lost through his head. (This is one reason why you probably don’t see too many people walking around completely naked except for a warm hat.) The important point is that if you are wearing a coat and pants and are still cold, a hat will warm you up without the inconvenience and expense of a heavy overcoat.

Furthermore, hats ornament the head, which is the most important part of the body. As such, hats historically were the focus of tremendous sartorial attention, and were designed in varieties to complement all head shapes, skin tones, body types, and personalities. Indeed, many professions and occupations were associated with a distinctive hat: the professor’s mortarboard, the sailor’s cap, the officer’s visor, the priest’s biretta, and many others.

The hat, nevertheless, has waned in popularity. Several factors have caused its decline.

The first is that according to Western customs, men who were neither soldiers nor clergy rarely wore hats indoors. Hats were an outdoors item. Suppose a man goes to his car in his attached garage, drives to work, parks in his building’s parking garage, takes the elevator to his office, and repeats this in reverse at the end of the day. His entire work day is spent “inside,” as it were, and if he followed the old rules, he would have carried his hat from home to his office, only to hang it on a peg all day before carrying it home. This man would likely see owning a hat as pointless.

Thus, the decline of walking, the rise of driving, and the movement towards a life lived indoors for many Americans in the twentieth century left hats as a sad casualty. The automobile, especially, with its limited head space, makes hat-wearing especially inconvenient.

Nevertheless, the forces that pushed the hat into near extinction are now also in decline.  Rising worldwide demand will likely raise energy prices, and this likely will prompt more Americans to commute by mass transit, which has a long history of hat wearing. Furthermore, mass transit often involves walking outside for at least a short distance. Even a brief exposure to the elements may lead many men to resume hat wearing during their commutes.

Men have worn hats in almost all cultures in and in almost all times throughout history. The disappearance of the hat in our present culture is the result of a peculiar convergence of economic forces, and is probably best interpreted as a temporary absence.

Why I Hate Fashion

Disclaimer: This is a rant.

Fashion is the ever-changing, narrow focus of the most attention-deficit-disordered sliver of the population. It is not a study in aesthetics or what looks good; in fact, I would say that much of what I have seen paraded down runways at fashion shows is an assault to aesthetics, delivered by anorexic, lifeless, genderless celery-stalks whose gaits and facial expressions that suggest to me that they have no reason to live (even though they’re not short people).

Fashion is favored by those who are interested in clothing for entertainment, not function. Fashion has been cycling away for the past few centuries. I’m not here to convince people to stop being interested in fashion or to try to stop people from wasting money and resources on it, to prevent the needless release of carbon dioxide into our already-sweltering atmosphere as crates of these overpriced goods are shipped hither from third-world countries where unsentimental peasants work in sweatshops for salaries higher than they had ever dreamed of making in the rice paddies. No, fashion will march on, and I will remain standing still, or perhaps drifting very slowly, but not marching lockstep with fashion. My purpose here is to explain why it is that I personally hate fashion.

A few minutes ago I was reading various fashion articles from the New York Times fashion section. It is absurd that every season demands a new set of “looks,” which all seem completely random and arbitrary to me. I sense a lack of continuity, of pedigree, of connectedness. Fashion seems to me to be the random musings of a few designers who produce something new every season with the hope that persons of weak moral fiber will be duped into discarding their existing vestments so as to have the newest stuff. The items’ primary draw is not their actual aesthetic accomplishments but rather their price tag. Sensible common sense in design seems not to have been in the minds of the designers of, for example, the latest tight jeans (which arrive pre-ruined) or the latest ridiculously high heels (which account for 75% of the average podiatrist’s business).

While I agree that clothing important to us for more than its original, protective function, clothes are no throwaway items. I intend to use my clothes until they have been expended, not until those who sell clothes have decided that it is time for me to buy something new.

Perhaps I could be accused of having an anti-female bias. Indeed, women’s clothing is far more fashion-driven than men’s. Men’s clothing changes very slowly. The suits on the racks in August of 2011 will not look much different from the ones we see now. A man in a tennis (polo) shirt and trousers from the year 1950 would hardly stand out more today than he would have in 1965. Perhaps the trousers would be cut a bit large in the thighs, or the placket on the polo shirt might be cut a bit differently from what we’re used to, but this would be apparent only to the keen observer. On the contrary, women are much more expected to conform to present thinking in fashion.

This talk of gender, however, is irrelevant. Gender is only an accidental factor in this. There are members of both genders who are and who are not interested in fashion. My point is that I find fashion irksome. I do not believe that the people who decide what is to be “fashionable” are qualified to decide such. The desire to have the latest look is a vile corruption of the easily distracted, lightweight mind, a useful asset to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but today a mere tumbleweed blowing in the winds of change. Worst of all, I see fashion as a channel for jealousy, and a means by which those direly lacking self-confidence may deride others.

When those fashion people can concentrate for more than five minutes on one topic despite the penetrating infatuations of their shallow brains, and when they decide that they want to talk about clothes that actually look good, then maybe I’ll let them enter my house through some entrance other than the doggy door. Yes, I realize that their ridiculous clothes make it impossible to bend over enough to get through that doggy door. It doesn’t bother me because I don’t have a doggy door, and so I guess the idea that I’d even let them into my house is moot.

The cutting edge dulls fast, but a baseball bat never needs sharpening.

A Break from the Ordinary

All good things must come to an end, and trousers are no exception.

Somewhere near the ankle, the pants must end. There a few practical reasons for this, the most important one being that the pants can’t have an infinite length and have to end somewhere. Second, the pants can’t be too long or they’d interfere with walking and other ordinary activities.

Exactly where the pants end is a real compromise. On one hand, there is the desire to have pants that are long enough and actually cover the ankle, and, on the other, there is the desire to keep the pants neatly draped and out of the way.

American tradition prefers that, for cuffed trousers, the hem rest gently on the top of the shoe with no “break,” or wrinkling in the pants. For uncuffed trousers, the hem is cut slightly longer in the back (to cover the ankle better), and there is a slight break. This breaks (PUN!) from European tradition, which favors no break at all.

For the past fifteen years or so, very long pants have been favored. Men often wear pants that have considerable bunching at the ankle, even in the back. This is not just a slight “break.” This is wholesale wrinkling and scrunching of the trouser material. The even drape of the pants is completely ruined for the last 6 inches of the trouser leg. This is possible thanks to tapered pants; pants with a wide ankle opening would interfere with walking if the pants were cut too long.

Perhaps you are wondering what’s wrong with pants that are too long. You might point out the advantage that, if the ankle is narrow enough, the trouser material does not interfere with walking and the high-water problem is completely avoided. I, on the other hand really think that the excess length looks sloppy. The bunching of the fabric around the ankles creates this awkward juxtaposition of wide and narrow. It reminds me of the 80′s exercise girl look with the scrunched up leg warmers.

For another thing, a short man does himself a disservice to wear his pants bunched around his ankles. The bunching shortens the apparent length of the leg: instead of being one, long, uniform rectangle of trouser, it is a slightly shorter rectangle with another segment beneath it–divide and conquer is how one decreases apparent length, which is why vertical stripes de-emphasize width. For the man who is so tall and narrow that he wishes to de-emphasize his length, he’d probably be lucky to find excessively long pants anyway, so for him excessively long pants are a non-issue.

Admittedly, the opposite problem, high-waters, pants of inadequate length, are an extreme to be avoided as well. Steve Urkel, nerd icon of the 90′s sitcom Family Matters, wore high-waters that were a salient feature of the caricature. Generally speaking, a man’s socks should not be visible when he is standing in still air. That said, I have noticed some fashion-forward men having higher hems. Indeed, such a look was popular in the 20′s, especially among men displaying their spats. Of course, now men are displaying their hairless ankles and sock tan lines, the diametric opposite of spats. I admire these men for breaking (PUN!) from the slouchy, baggy look. I can’t say that I’m going to sport the highwaters, but I appreciate the change in direction.

Here are some pictures that I took for demonstration:

Too Much Break

Too Little Break

This picture reserved for Goldilocks

Not Suitable for All Purposes

Many people go about buying a suit from the wrong direction. They decide that they need a suit and then pick their favorite suit from the store. The existence of so many different colors, patterns, materials, silhouettes, and other variables in suit construction testifies to the variety of purposes for which suits are constructed. A man buying a suit should have his purpose in mind, for a suit to be worn to parties is different from a suit to be worn to court or a suit to be worn to a job interview.

Many today use a plain black suit for all of those purposes. Some “traditionalists” like to scorn the black suit, although I have no idea where they get this “traditionalist” notion from, since historically men have worn black suits for all occasions. One thing is certain, however, and that is that a black suit, while it will never lose you points with the sartorially inclined, will never gain you points. I have a black suit, but I haven’t worn it in 2 years except for the two times I’ve checked it for fit and mothing.

Let’s take four examples and consider what kind of suit might be desired.

1. The festive suit: For a strictly social engagement, such as a party, a wedding, or a night out on town, the usual conservatism can be relaxed. I suggest avoiding suits in black, a color to be reserved for black and white tie. A festive atmosphere encourages individuality in the form of pinstripes, windowpane, herringbone, or even a subtle glen plaid or houndstooth. Consider a color more interesting than black, like charcoal, navy, or brown. In the summertime, such options as khaki, white, striped seersucker, greyish-olive, and light blue are available (many will dispute the light blue–all I’m saying is that it’s an option for those who are so inclined, a number that does not include me, who owns no light blue suits). There are even bolder options for those who indulge in the ephemeral excesses of fashion. Nevertheless, those who wear a plain black suit for festive occasions convey a lack of originality in an environment where original, funny, outgoing personalities thrive.

2. The court suit: Few people spend much time in court, but there are environments similar to courtrooms where polished, neat, conservative, yet unadorned appearances are desirable. For example, a manager meeting with the owner to discuss bad performance, an entrepreneur meeting with his investors to ask for more money, or anyone before his superiors for a punitive chewing-out. In all of these cases, the man wishes to appear professional, competent, and polished, yet he does not want to project opulence, excess, or flashiness. A simple tie is ideal, along with a cheap watch; and french cuffs are probably unwise. Looking too flashy could convey the message that the man is some kind of high-roller who doesn’t need mercy or sympathy. Think humility.

A plain black suit might actually work as a court suit. Medium or dark charcoal would be better, though, if for no other reason than that dust and lint do not show up as much on charcoal. Navy is well-suited to this purpose as well. Patterned fabrics are to be avoided. This suit should be as unadorned as possible–even pinstripes would start to suggest the flashiness that we talked about earlier. If pinstripes are the only option, duller and farther-spaced are better. The cut should be as conservative as possible. Lapels should be notched (double-breasted suits are probably too strong a choice) and regulation width–nothing noticeably wide or narrow. The jacket should be single- or double-vented and should have at most a moderate amount of shoulder padding and waist suppression. The trousers should be medium width, tapered or straight leg, certainly not flared (which doesn’t really look good anyway). Skinny and baggy suits should be avoided. The pants should be worn no more than 2 or 3 inches below the navel. Stay away from slip-on shoes, interesting collars, bold ties, flashy rings, pocket squares (handkerchiefs okay–you’re so sorry you might start weeping, right?), lapel pins, colored shirts, watch chains, or anything exotic.

You may have noticed that I gave very specific criteria for a court suit. I have done so because of the intense scrutiny faced when delivering bad news, begging for mercy, or defending oneself. The goal is that few will notice the suit, and that those who do will be pleased to see that the man has followed all of the guidelines.

3. The Professional Suit, a.k.a. The Interview Suit: The professional has a different task. When times are good, it’s good for the professional’s suit to impress people and convey a sense of creativity (creativity is the most desperately needed skill in today’s workforce, executives say). Of course, an excess of creativity could come across a bit strong–one wouldn’t want to give the interviewer a weird impression. The wise man surveys the place beforehand to discover the ordinary dress code. Whatever one’s prospective colleagues are wearing should be the candidate’s base line. Some might say to dress exactly like the others do, I would say to dress just a notch above them because your interviewer will likely suspect that you’re a bit dressed up for the occasion, so this is your way of letting that interviewer know that, once the drudgery of your quotidian duties sets in, you’ll look just like everyone else. The happy medium is looking sharp while not dramatically upstaging your prospective colleagues.

If you decide that you need a suit, then this section can help you. I’d say that the ideal interview suit is charcoal or navy with dull pinstripes, preferably widely-spaced. A solid color is just a bit too dull. Herringbone is okay. I’d stay away from brown. Light grey or khaki are acceptable in the warm season. Once again, stay away from fashionable silhouettes–regulation lapels, ordinary waist suppression and shoulders, single- or double-vented, medium-width legs, straight or tapered. In fact, just generally stay away from fashionable silhouettes at work; that’s what the festive suit is for. Double-breasted might suit those with an average to thin build. Wingtips would be ideal shoes for this occasion, preferably black, although we men all know that some navy and grey suits can take brown shoes. Some women, on the other hand, refute this, so perhaps black shoes would be the safer option. Once again, stay away from loafers–they look too comfortable, and your imaginative interviewer might get the idea that you like to slip them off for cat naps after lunch. If you take my advice and wear a striped suit, wear a solid-color shirt, preferably white. French cuffs with simple links or knots would be good for this occasion, as would a straight or spread collar. A tie clip or cufflinks with your initial might even help the interviewer remember your name. The tie should be interesting but conservative. Consider an interesting stripe, or some kind of geometric pattern–the ties worn by the lawyers on Law & Order are often worthy examples. Avoid elaborate designs, and avoid wearing a tie with your prospective employer’s logo or colors. You don’t want to project to the interviewer that you have gotten a bit ahead of yourself and already feel like you work there. Obviously you should avoid ties that suggest their competitors.

Also, just remember that there were once ultra-conservative firms where even blue shirts were not accepted at work (that’s why blue shirts were acceptable before blue collars were, hence the style of blue shirt with a white collar). In California, some might consider you stuffy for wearing pants to your interview, but elsewhere you may still run into these extreme conservatives. You may have noticed that the President doesn’t really wear pinstriped suits very often, and his shirts are almost always plain white or a very light blue. This conservatism may not be apparent on the surface, but if even a liberal President like Barack Obama doesn’t wear pinstripes, it would seem that somewhere down there we still think pinstripes are just a bit flashy. That said, a candidate wants to stand out at his interview, and I think subtle (not bright), widely-spaced pinstripes are a good compromise of flashiness and conservatism.

4) The Traveler’s Suit: One of the saddest things is the way people dress to travel these days. When we imagine tourists, we imagine nerdy looking people with t-shirts, shorts, sandals, socks, and fanny packs. Business travelers still look okay, but the premise that one dresses well to travel is completely dead. I’ve got my ideas as to why suits might be, well, suitable for travelers.

Seasonal concerns obviously dictate what the suit should be made of. Winter travelers would benefit from a tweed suit, especially a three-piece suit. Traveling offers a unique opportunity to relax, so these suits are opportunities for all of the interesting tweed fabrics out there to shine. Those airplanes can get cold in flight, and the tweed offers a nice warmth of its own. The tweed is also great for car travelers, who will appreciate the warmth when they get gas, or for any traveler exiting his vehicle. The ticket pocket, that extra pocket seen above the right-hand pocket on some suits, was actually introduced for railroad travelers, and any traveler would benefit from the additional pocket. The three-piece suit offers four pockets in the pants, anywhere from five to seven pockets in the coat, and two to four pockets in the vest. The traveler who wears an unattractive fanny pack for lack of storage might do much better to wear a suit. The vest and coat can be removed without great difficulty and passed through an x-ray machine. My ideal pants would be high-waisted and pleated, with slightly wide legs. The pleats do concede appearance for comfort, but the hours spent sitting appreciate that benefit. I’ve found that high-waisted pants are the comfortable option when one is seated, since the waist is much less distorted than the hips when one is seated. The suspenders eliminate the constricting belt. Loafers allow the traveler to remove his shoes conveniently for inspection and sleeping. A knit tie or wool tie, or perhaps even a scarf for those so inclined, would be an ideal compliment to this outfit.

The summer traveler would do well to have a similar suit, except perhaps in khaki or white, and perhaps made of linen, cotton, or tropical worsted wool, and without the vest.

It is an uphill battle trying to convince people to aim higher than ultra casual for traveling. People are obsessed with comfort, and, admittedly, travelers are often doing things that would be rough on suits. What I disliked, though, was going to plays on Broadway, surrounded by a sea of t-shirts, ripped jeans, cargo shorts, etc. I’m making a trip up to Washington and Oregon in a few weeks, so I’ll be experimenting with ways to dress well while traveling. The traveling suit is no dead idea.

I’d be interested to hear what the rest of you think. My opinions are certainly not universally held, and some retorts from other directions would advance everyone’s knowledge on this topic.

The Abuses of Button-down

The Problem of Button-down Shirts

It doesn’t seem obvious that a shirt collar would need to be buttoned down. Unless you were the kind of preppie jackass who wore his shirt collars popped up about five years ago (these people should have had their collars permanently sewn down with hard titanium thread), you probably have not had problems with unruly collars. Apparently polo players did a century ago, hence why they wore shirts with collars that buttoned down to the shirt, a style that Brooks Brothers copied.

There is some confusion as to what the term “button-down” means. It refers to a style of collar. Here’s a picture of someone wearing one.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, as photographed in 1937 by Carl Van Vechten. Van Vechten's whole portrait archive is in the public domain and is a convenient source for stock photographs.

This could be called a “button-down shirt,” although I’d prefer to call it a “shirt with a button-down collar,” brevity having been sacrificed for the sake of clarity. Often, people say “button-down” when they mean “button-front,” which refers to a shirt that buttons completely down the front (as opposed to a pullover shirt).

Besides this, there seems to be confusion as to the nature of the button-down collar. The way I see it, the collar is one of the most important factors in determining how formal a shirt is. The collars descend in formality in this order:

1. Standing
2. Wing (also called “wingtip” or “poke”)
3. Straight/Spread/Rounded Turndown
4. Button-down
5. Band (what one sees on very old work shirts and t-shirts; dress shirts that accept detachable collars also feature banded collars, but, these are particularly rare today, and they are not meant to be worn without the collar)

The button-down collar is, for all practical purposes, a casual collar. When I was in high school, I thought of the button-down shirt as being suitable for wear with a suit, but I have since realized the error of this thinking. One could suggest that buttons are perfectly acceptable on on formal and informal garments, citing the numerous buttons on a typical suit coat, especially double-breasted ones. There is a difference between the buttons on a suit coat and these collar buttons. The buttons on suit coats are (or stand in the place of buttons that once were) used to close the garment. The buttons at the collar points are not closures–they’re meant to fasten the collar so that it doesn’t fly around.

First of all, a collar to be worn with a suit or anything more formal should be stiff enough that it does not fly around. Second of all, a man wearing a suit should avoid situations that would cause his collar to fly up. I’ve never had my collar fly up except when I was inverted. Third of all, consider analogues in other parts of clothing. Consider the buttons on a coat or shirt. They exist to keep the garment closed. Consider, on the other hand, the buttons on the pocket flaps of work shirts and military garments. These buttons exist to keep the flaps closed. These buttons are concessions to utility at the expense of appearance, hence why suits commonly don’t have buttons on the flaps for the pockets, except possibly for the rear back pockets, and these usually lack flaps so as to be less obtrusive. Military garments do typically have the button-flap pockets, although it is worth noting that the Ike Jacket, a particularly interesting military garment, completely conceals its buttons (partly for looks, partly because these buttons were snagging on things, hence the fly front). And military garments are of a different character than what we civilians generally wear.

I do, nevertheless, often wear button-down collars. Indeed, the straight collar with a sport coat and contrasting trousers looks slightly of place, in the same way that a standing collar would look out of place with a suit. But the button-down collar has its place: casual wear. Now, my definition of casual does differ from the generally accepted definition today. I’d use casual to define everything below a suit, but above athletic wear, sleepwear, work wear, or what people wear when they obviously are completely unconcerned about their appearance (e.g., leggings as pants, sleeveless shirt on a man).

The button-down collar has a special place in casual attire, as far as I see it. Consider a tweed sportcoat; twill, solid color trousers (or perhaps corduroy); a button-down shirt in a solid color or with a windowpane, tattersall, or stripe pattern; a wool, plaid or silk/cotton, knit tie; plain derby shoes, an eight-panel or ivy cap; and perhaps a very plain vest. This is the essence of good casual. Notice that this form of casual consists of basically the same garments worn with a suit:

• Matching coat, trousers, vest —> contrasting coat, trousers, vest in bolder fabrics
• White, straight-collar shirt —> boldly-patterned shirt with soft collar that requires no special pressing and that is more comfortable against the neck
• Silk neck tie —> sturdier neck tie in a less luminescent fabric that holds up better to laundering
  Oxford shoes, cap toe or brogues/wingtips —> Derbies with a less glossy finish, perhaps in a suede leather that requires no polishing
• Derby, fedora —> eight-panel cap that is less expensive, harder to crush and damage, softer, and easier to travel with

As you can see, this form of casual allows for gentlemanly but laid-back dress with relaxed rules that open up new possibilities for expressing one’s personality.

The button-down collar ought not to be worn with suits. It’s a great collar, and it’s great with casual-wear. Notice, however, that you’ll never find a suit model wearing a button-down collar in the Brooks Brothers’ catalogue, nor will you find said collar on suit models in just about any catalogue. Once this guideline was pointed out to me, I realized the good sense behind it, and I now follow it. Moreover, anyone I see wearing a button-down collar with a suit can instantly be identified as uninformed.

It’s (About to Get Even More) Complicated

Achieving colorimetric harmony would be an easy task . . . if one’s wardrobe were unlimited. Nevertheless, I think that, excepting my boater’s hatband, I ordinarily am able to do reduce my color dissonance to acceptable levels, even with a finite selection of vestments.

Thus, this fledgling, new challenge has emerged to keep me from equilibrium: the contrasting vest. I intend not to wear such vests with suits, but rather to wear them under my sport coats, which I wear with contrasting trousers. This new variable substantially complicates matters, however. It’s like going into all-range mode on Star Fox 64. Indeed, with such an outfit, it would be difficult to achieve harmony between sport coat, trousers, tie, and vest.

For example, on an ordinary day, I might wear a grey herringbone sportcoat with a green tie and navy pants. What color vest could I wear? I think a dark charcoal vest is really the only option, and I still don’t even know if that would look good. This juggling act is one that I, nevertheless, intend to solve, even if it requires that I have 4 vests, even if I wind up wearing vests with really ridiculous patterns. After all, the Victorian Era vests were characterized by how crazy they were. Anyway, I am on the verge of getting my 1907 Elgin pocket watch fixed, and I’d like to be able to get some use out of it without also having to install watch pockets on all of my trousers. Ergo, I will wear vests.