FUNCTION, fabric, fit · Real Men Real Style Community

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FUNCTION, fabric, fit

Yesterday I spoke about the esoteric aspects of fabric. Today I thought I might briefly tackle the FUNCTION piece of Antonio’s STYLE pyramid. Function is of course what to wear when and why.

Before the decimation of menstores and the devolvement into the abyss of senseless non-style over the past 15 -20 years either guys simply got this in part from their surroundings and/or had a trusted clothier at a local specialized men’s store to assist them. In my eyes, function is a large part like any other skill. Practice creates confidence and confidence produces comfort. While it’s wise for guys starting out on their personal style upgrade to shun graphic T’s and follow some of the basic rules like tucking in shirts and being very deliberate about what is worn outside the house-wearing the right thing to the right place can eventually become an issue of consistency. In other words how does one dress the majority of the time. 90% of the time people see me in tailored clothing. So for me to wear a graphic T and shorts to the gym is simply no big deal. In fact more than half the time I am dressed like this all day Monday as I work out in the morning and again in the afternoon and in between, I work from home on research and catch up that day. Rather than describe my outfits let me shout out to our own

@Alex Kilpatrick

on his recent Charleston trip. His travel outfit displays perfectly a practiced confident and comfortably dressed gentleman on a vacation. Likewise I have posted before the perfection of these 1960’s style icons by a pool between shooting scenes of the Magnificent Seven (McQueen, Brenner, Bronson). My advice to attack this art of Function is to 1) go to a quality men’sstore or at least their websites (watch out for this one- ad agencies can get whacky note the absurd ads in JPress versus the old lookbooks they used to have. Ben Silver still has some good ads on line). Then 2) either thrift or spend time trying to economically emulate these looks if these quality stores represent budgetary challenges (I do this all the time). These pics all represent various stages of “casual” dress. If one is early in the style upgrade-avoid the graphic T even at the gym rather than use this as an excuse to slip back into old poor habits. (Just wear a solid T shirt instead).

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