![]() ![]() Rugged clothes such as workwear can make you feel emotionally protected from the world. Or you might just like wearing things because you want to feel a certain way. The dissonance between your clothes and personality can be its own kind of style (sometimes this works, sometimes it does not). You might be a quiet, shy person who loves wearing rock ‘n roll styled double-riders and black jeans. ![]() Even when you speak to these guys over the phone, their vibe is inescapable.ĭressing for a vibe doesn’t mean you have to dress according to stereotypes. Both guys dress well for their vibe - Marco wears Kapital, Bode, and Engineered Garments Mitchell wears soft-shouldered sport coats and Italian-Americana menswear. Mitchell lives a quiet life just outside of Nashville, where he raises a family and works for a church organization. Marco is a dancer who loves riding his motorcycle and attending warehouse parties in Los Angeles. A few months ago, I interviewed Marco Martinez and Mitchell Moss, who have dramatically different personalities. Finding your style is partly about connecting your clothes to this vibe. ![]() Your vibe is your personality, how you move, speak, and interact with the world. This minimalist jogger outfit does not.Įveryone has a natural kind of vibe. His hair, glasses, and dark worsted suits on his show perfectly convey that vibe. The other problem is that we already know Colbert’s personality - a dry-humored comic who parodies buttoned-up conservative commentators. Nothing is coherent - there is no vibe.įor Colbert’s outfit to work, it would help if he was put in a stone grey minimalist room and if the hair and make-up people gave him a different hairstyle, possibly also glasses. But they still look like mannequins modeling clothes given to them. True, many are beautiful people, so they get away with it. This is why so many celebrity shoots come out looking awkward. Along with that, you have a photographer who sets up the shoot. You have a team of people who manage the editorial (the interview subject is often a celebrity), the advertising department that secures the clothes (because you have to advertise clothes), and then the stylist who puts the outfit together. Even if the clothes technically fit him, they don’t fit his vibe.Įvery once in a while, a fashion publication will miss the mark like this, I assume because different departments are handling different things. There’s clashing everywhere: his outfit, the room, his hairstyle, and the eyewear. And the stylist dressed him like a 2015 menswear influencer - a sleek bomber jacket, luxurious joggers, and the minimalist pièce de résistance, all-white sneakers. He’s an older man with square eyewear frames and an even squarer hairstyle. Colbert is in an opulent room with Persian rugs, 19th-century furniture upholstered in jacquard fabrics, and a rich tapestry in the background. If you wear eyewear, specific styles may also help finish a look. Some hairstyles fit better with certain outfits than others. The other part, and not often discussed on menswear blogs, is how grooming connects to your outfits. Think about style as writing a sentence, not throwing paint on a canvas. ![]() You don’t have to go into full cosplay (unless you want to), but knowing about 1960s Ivy Style, ’70s sleaze, ’80s Armani, rebellious punks, ’90s minimalism, and so forth can help you think about how to create sensible, coherent outfits that are culturally legible. On a higher level, it means being interested in culture and thinking about how various social groups have dressed in the past and present. At the most basic level, this means thinking about how to dress for an environment or occasion. To create a good outfit, you have to be sensitive to various cultural signals. Hence all the color charts online about how to create pleasing combinations.īut a good outfit is more like social language. They hear that blue pairs well with white, or green doesn’t look good next to purple. When guys start to pay attention to how they dress, many think about it in terms of artistic expression. We’ve long stressed the importance of thinking about clothes as language. And why I think Stephen Colbert, who usually is well dressed, looks bad on the latest cover of Wall Street Journal Magazine.ĭressing for a vibe means being sensitive to the emotional and social message you’re sending out. The term “vibe” has become such a cliche in culture writing (e.g., vibe shift), but it captures some of the things I’ve tried to communicate over the years. The longer I write about men’s style, the more I think people should dress for a vibe. There are a million guides nowadays on how to dress for your body type or occasion. ![]()
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