An article in The Courant this morning says that this summer’s high street styles are similar to last summer’s because most retailers are worried to put anything new and untried on the shelves while the papers are full of talk about a recession.
The article recommends buying clothes that have a classic fit and that won’t go out of style in a season and pairing them with an item or two to make them look current. This advice, however, seems appropriate for fashion in general, not just in times when money is tight.
While everybody wants to look fashionable, you have to be careful not to try and adopt every current fashion trend all at once. The best way for most people to wear fashion is to find a current look that suits them and adapt it to their own personal style. It’s always important to look like yourself, not like a catalogue. This enables you to look both trendy and unique and to be daring without sending out a red alert to the fashion police.
The main thing to remember is that clothes should make you look your best and should reflect your mood and your personality. Being a little daring is great - but make sure that your clothes reflect what you intend for them to reflect and not something entirely unflattering and make sure that you don’t look like you’ve been trying too hard to look trendy.
Esquire has a rather entertaining list of fashion tips for men who would like to dress casually yet still look fashionable and appealing. While much of the list has merit, we’re not 100% on a few of their suggestions. A nice-looking pair of jeans is acceptable casual dress for just about any casual or smart casual occasion unless you’re told no jeans. Although we’d tell you to leave the really worn-out, ripped jeans for lounging around on a Sunday, doing a bit of shopping or perhaps creating an edgy look for a night out, you will find very few places that you would wear a pair of chinos to which you could not comfortably wear a nicely-tailored pair of jeans.
Male Mode has posted a rather amusing brief history of briefs. Strangely, they left out the emergence of the male thong.
What this brief glimpse into the history of men’s underwear does reveal is that not only have comfort and support have always been two key factors, but, at least judging by the photos in question, when they think they look good, men like showing off their fashionable underwear.
We’re always looking for interesting stories about men’s fashion here, and we spotted one the other day in the Globe and Mail about pockets on men’s trousers and jackets. The article makes a very good point by saying that slimmer styles of trouser mean we have less room in our pockets for the ever-growing number of things we need to keep in them such as wallets, cell phones and keyrings.
The fact is that most men carry a wallet in their pockets stuffed with all manner of credit cards, handfuls of coins, receipts for the last two years and an ever-growing number of business cards. Even where a wallet is kept for the sole purpose of storing cash, our cell phones are getting bigger again as we want to update Facebook and Twitter from our phones, look at Google Maps or check our email on the go while also using our phones for GPS and to take photographs.
The thing is, and it’s something we’ve always known, guys, when we shove all this junk into our pockets, it looks pretty bad. Having a huge lump against your leg or your bum cheek does not flatter anyone. There’s a reason that women carry handbags and this is it.
Sadly, we have no idea how to remedy it either, save the Globe and Mail’s suggestion of inside pockets. If anybody’s got suggestions, we’re listening.
If you haven’t seen this one before, have a look at The Sartorialist. The blog focuses mainly on photographs of people on the street who have a really good sense of style or whose clothing looks particularly striking for one reason or another. It’s a great place to get ideas about how to carry off the current season’s styles. We look forward to the day when we see a shot of our men’s jeans on the site.
We spotted an article in Forbes about styles of jeans that are appropriate for the office which is pretty spot-on. Although a lot of businesses now allow employees to dress more casually, it is important to look stylish and neat, whatever the dress code at your office may be. Here at Schultz, we’re partial to our own designer jeans when we’re working, a fact which probably comes as a huge surprise to our loyal readers, which is one of the reasons we designed Schultz jeans to be so versatile.
Based on Forbes rules about appropriate jeans for the office, we’d recommend our Blouberg and our Rockview styles in particular. Just make sure that you remember to button them up when you’re at work.