Style Guidelines For Men

Style is something that should be simple and timeless. Something that when your grandchildren look back upon they will look on with respect not wonder. When grandchildren look upon pictures of their grandfather’s in their well pressed army uniform or in a nice suit at their wedding they feel a sense of pride. If they look back on their grandfather’s with long greasy hair, a ratty t-shirt, and jeans with holes in them they will feel something else, and that something else is not pride.

Most men dress nice because they think it will get them women. Which is unfortunate on many levels. Dressing nice should be a reflection of yourself not something you do for others, including the opposite sex. Not to mention style is vastly overrated when it comes to attracting women (unless that style does something for your confidence and if that’s the case you have other things you need to work on as well). However there is a place where style matters and matter very much so and that place is the world of business.

When a man walks into a place with a tailored suit, an erect posture, and makes eye contact with all he makes a mark. A very positive mark. This was true in the 50’s when many were taught this stuff by their fathers and it is just as true today. However nowadays because standards of dress (among other things) have fallen so abysmally low you will stand out like a sore thumb or perhaps more accurately you’ll stand out like Marilyn Monroe at a Feminist rally when you dress nice and understand the basics of style. Which I will show you in this article.

The Basics

Below are some guidelines that can be followed for casual wear when you don’t neccesarily need a suit but still want to look good.

• Shorts should be above the knee. Especially khakis or navy shorts. I personally prefer my workout shorts to be above the knee for squatting purposes as well. There is no need for your knees to be covered.
• The bottom of your shirt shouldn’t go past your wrist. Meaning that when you place your wrist against your side with your arms straight down the bottom of your shirt should not be touching your hand but fall just short of it. The only exception to this is some dress shirts as they were made to be tucked in and should be.
• The most important part of your style is the fit of your clothing. If your clothing doesn’t fit you could follow all of the rules lain out here and buy the most expensive clothing (not that price necessarily correlates with quality one hundred percent) yet still would not look good if your clothes were not the right size for you. Clothing fit is the number one most important facet of your style.
• Remember with the buttons on your blazer the SAN (sometimes, always, never) rule. Meaning that the top button on a blazer is sometimes buttoned, the middle button is always buttoned, and the bottom button is never buttoned. For a two buttoned suit button the top one and not the bottom. For one button of course just button the one there is.
• Your belt and your shoes should match. Never wear a black belt with brown shoes or vice versa.
• Your pants and your socks should match as well. No navy socks with khaki pants and no khaki socks with navy pants and so on and so forth.
• Your tie should fall to the mid point of your belt buckle. Shouldn’t go below your belt and shouldn’t be above it either. Your know that hole you stick the prong through to secure your belt? That’s where your tie should fall.
• Some of the best investments that you can make are a nice pair on khaki pants and a nice pair of navy pants they are like jeans as they match with about anything except they look a hell of a lot nicer.
• If you are out of high school (and even then) no flat billed hats, graphic tees, or jean shorts. Along with only wear a beanie when it is below freezing out. I’ve seen kids wear them when it’s 90 degrees out and I have no idea why.

Summary

How you dress says a lot about you to those around you. If you walked around with a tailored suit you could pretty much walk into someones house without being questioned. Put another way look like a bum and people will treat you like a bum. Look like a prince and people will treat you like a prince. While clothing and style in and of themselves don’t mean much (especially when used for compensation) they do reflect a good part of how a man feels about himself.

If you are nervous or feel uncomfortable about wearing nice things, you need to start. This says something about how you view yourself and the only way to overcome this is to fight against it. Style is incredibly important in business and never forget to dress for the job that you want not the job that you have. Wear something that your grandchildren will be proud of.

If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it. You can follow me on Twitter here.

-Charles Sledge