Mashion
I used to be like you, I’d think that cartoon T-shirt which clung to your overhanging gut, itself roped off with your jogging bottom waistband was the height of sartorial elegance. Turns out we were both wrong - and whilst I shall never win a ‘best dressed’ competition, I will attempt to pass on the tidbits that I have learned after the last two years.
If you are looking at yourself and thinking ‘Hang on, that’s what I’m wearing now’ then read on, because for very, very little money, I can make you presentable!
Part 1. The £100 suit.
I always felt suits were uncomfortable strappado upon my bulging intestines. Then I discovered that I could make a suit work in almost any situation, work, play, nights out - all by picking the right suit and knowing the rules.
Moreover, you can now buy a perfectly good suit for £50 in Tesco, ASDA or Primark so it’s not as if it’s an expensive trip to a tailor shop for your first step into the world.Traditionally, a suit underneath £400 was something to be sneered at, but now we have the free market, so let’s celebrate it a little. Here is how to put together a good outfit for under £100.
Avoiding David Brent - The ‘Sausage Wrapped in Twine’ look
Firstly, your bodyshape will say a lot about you:
- If you are medium height (Between 5-6ft) and have a overhanging gut and boobs, then opt for a three button suit. These have squarer shoulders designed to make you look more like Martin Johnson then Ricky Tomlinson because they make your torso appear longer and squarer, reducing the impact of your belly. NOTE: You may have heard of the phrase ‘Sometimes, Always, Never’ bandied about - this relates to three button jackets and means that when you do the buttons up, you should sometimes do the top button up, always do the central one up and never the bottom - because it’s not designed to be done up (and makes you look like George from Seinfeld) - this is because royal fattie (Bonnie) Prince Charles (Not the jug eared one, one from history) was so fat he couldn’t do up his bottom button, so now all 3 button suits have an unusable bottom button.
- If you’re short, then a two or one buttoned suit will draw in your waist, making you appear taller. (As above, never do up your bottom button)
- A double-breasted suit should only be attempted if you’re some sort of thin athlete. Piss off, this blog ain’t for you, Dwayne Johnson.
Colour
As a neckbearded, pasty-white, needy gutsy child, the odds are that you have skin whiter than Justin Timberlake, which means you need to go for plain, dark colours. This means Black, Charcoal Grey, Dark, Dark Blue and Dark Green. Outside of this? You will look like a lobster.
If you get more confident, why not experiment with pinstripes? Just ensure the colour of the shirt you are wearing matches your pinstripe. Do not under any circumstances go near checked or grid-patterned clothing, because they will make you look like a teletubby.
The Shirt
My old Dad used to tell me ‘Son, invest in a decent shirt and the world will always respect you’ - at least he would if he wasn’t fictional. Anyway. My best advice is to go to Marks and Spencer and spend £15 on a thick cotton shirt which is non-iron. Why non-iron? Why thick? Some shirts are only thick in the ‘modesty areas’ which for some reason, are the shoulders and central ceam. The rest are as wafer thin as a net curtain and any chubster with prominent nipples might as well be topless. The traditional cure to this is to wear a wifebeater beneath it, but then you wind up looking like a man who cannot dress himself. This is the 21st century. When buying a shirt, hold your hand on the underside of the material. if you can see the colour of your skin through it, put it back. If it remains the same colour, then buy away. The classic shirt is white, but black or dark blue work well for less formal occaisions or going out.
If you are buying the one white shirt, then remember, do the buttons up until the collar but not the top one. If you are attending a formal event, your tie will hold (and is meant to) the collars together and prevent you getting neck ache, if you are attending an informal event, either loosen the tie to attempt a ‘casual’ tie-look, or remove it altogether and unbutton one further button. For the love of God though, if you unbutton another after that, you will expose your chest hair and look like a takeaway owner. The one button rule will save your life.
As someone who only rarely wears ties, I prefer to go ‘one button’ most of the time, with the benefit that I don’t look like a prick in a tie, more like James Caan from Dragons Den. Actually - stick with that theme. Duncan Bannatyne rocks the open-necked shirt and you can learn a lot from that. It’s formal without being stiff and suggests you’re relaxed and knowledgeable, not uptight and stuffy.
Socks
‘Trainer Socks’ (i.e. socks which stop beneath the ankle to give the impression you are bare footed inside your shoes) are worn only by Big Brother contestants. White socks should only be worn inside trainers at the Gym or similar sporting event. For every other minute of your walking live, black cotton socks or nothing. Any decent shop will sell these to you with an idiot premium, but there is no reason to go to Burtons to buy socks. A pair of socks should cost no more than a pound for excellent quality, oftentimes you can even find market stalls which sell nothing but socks and pants.
Speaking of which… Pants
If you seek to wear Y-Fronts ‘ironically’, then grow up. Black, plain boxer shorts or commando. James Bond doesn’t wear superman pants and neither should you.
Shoes
Shoes are the problem, because we have two issues - Colour and Price. This is where you are going to have to be creative. A £50 suit and a £15 shirt, a £1 pair of socks and a £10 tie leaves us with £24. Most decent shoes will cost you twice that.
First thing, don’t scrimp on the shoes. Your feet are an important body part and if your feet aren’t comfortable, then you won’t be either. Secondly, you know those cackling harpies in ‘Sex and the City’ and it’s stereotypes (cf. any menopausal woman with a credit card who pretends she’s living in New York and not Bolton) - well they do know one thing, ‘the sales’. I never shop for shoes full price, because I have massive Size 12 feet which means that either I buy full price (£100) or I buy those disability-moccasin things you see in the back page advert of the daily mail. No, instead check out the sales assidiously, mostly one or the other high-street chains have a sale, and you can often grab a shoe that’s (according to the arbitrary rules of people who follow such things) ’sooo last season’. Well bugger that, last season’s about as modern as you’ve managed by accident so far in life, so for it to be achieved intentionally’s a bloody achievement (Me included here).
Secondly, is colour. When I was 22, I believed that any shoe that wasn’t black was a horrible abomination. ‘Sex offenders wear BROWN shoes!’ - until I met someone (His name’s Ben, he’s charming) who wore Brown shoes (much to my dismay) and said that he really liked them. I was walking home down Oxford street and saw a pair of plain brown shoes in the Clarks for £15 and, like a brown-paper-bag perv wandering through Soho, furtively wandered in to buy them, hoping that I wouldn’t be found out.
Turns out, Brown shoes have a multitude of bloody handy uses. They help to offset the line of your trousers to make you look taller, they are a lot less dull than black shoes and they go a lot better with jeans (We’ll get to Schmuart-Casual in a later seminar). Here’s some shoes that I’ve bought in the last sales run which cost me (individually) £20 each.
This bad boy is a Black (Yeah I know, it looks brown) patent leather brogue which I’m saving either for a job interview or my inevitable career as a silver service waiter. I’m going to blow people away when I serve them soup in those shoes! The cost? £20
This is a ‘tarnished’ style Italian leather tailored shoe which I think looks very, very dapper, which I’m either going to wear to a Job interview or to work full stop, because they are excellent shoes - these are the sort of shoes you would go to a wine bar with, or better, to impress anyone you meet. The cost? In the sales, these were £25
Of course whilst those two are mildly extravagant fashion purchases, I’ve saved the best(est) till last…
Yes kids, a tarnished brown patent leather brogue. Which is such an awesome shoe, I can’t stop wearing it. I wore them to graduate from law school in, I wear them to work, no-one can deny the awesomeness of these shoes.
As an aside. I’m not gay.
So anyway, you grab a pair of decent shoes like the examples above, and you have an ensemble (french for ‘Clothes you can wear’) which should see your friends, colleagues and people in the street say ‘Hey, he’s not a sex offender, he’s a regular part of society, why not ignore him in approbation’. Because everyone loves the crushing anonymity of conformity.
Advanced Lesson - The Suit
The scene - You’re going out, but it’s not to the pub with the lads, it’s to a bar, or worse, a club, a posh one. Half a pint is gonna cost you six quid and you’re going to hate it. More importantly, there is a socially required need for you to dress appropriately. Either the nazis on the door are going to exclude you based on their prejudging or worse, women will laugh at you. So here’s what you do.
Grab your trusty new suit, but don’t grab the shirt. Just the jacket and trousers. If you have one already, get a black, plain, logoless poloshirt. At a push you can have a Lyle & Scott one, which they sell in Burton (It has a gold eagle on the left nip), but otherwise plain. (I have it on good authority that olive-skinned or a/c men need to choose neon pink, but I can’t comment). Put it on and your jacket over the top. You can now choose, a pair of jeans or the suit’s trousers, coupled with a pair of Brown shoes. Why not black? Because it’s a bar, and there’s an expectation that you have some sort of ‘personality’, so at least pretend. It’ll take away half the awkward conversations you will have that evening.
-o-
This is my first draft and my first rambled attempt at explaining such a manifesto of clothing and clothery, as such I would appreciate all comments and other fashion based conclusions to make us all better dressers.
Next time: Why wearing a Keffiyeh with white-rimmed sunglasses tells the world you either hate Jews, excessively admire Kayne West or you’re a french tourist and other sartorial accidents in the world of ‘casual dressing’.
