Quick! Give me (or link me) a primer on men's fashion!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Okay, that tie thread scared me, I admit. I’m going out with my husband to buy a suit today (turns out nothing in the thrift store is built for a 6’4" beanpole) and while cheap is my first criterion, if I have several cheap to choose from, what’s fashionable these days?

More importantly, what’s fashionable in TIES nowadays? I know ties change faster than suits. Skinny? Wide? Medium? What’s best for a tall skinny guy with long hair and a longish beard (this guy screams “vertical line”, in other words)? I’m thinking a wider tie with a thicker shorter knot might help balance him out a bit, but I also don’t want to dress him funny. What fabrics should I avoid?

This is immediately for a wedding, but there’s also a good chance the same outfit will be recycled for defending a dissertation and future job interviews in the academic field, so we’re thinking *fairly *conservative, but not Wall Street stuffy.

2

You’re fortunate in that a good suit that fits well stays fashionable for years and years. This is a pretty good guide for what to look for when you’re shopping:
http://searchwarp.com/swa4754.htm

Things to avoid:
a) synthetics or any shiny material
b) double-breasted suits in general
c) hi Opal <– my first time doing that, I swear

As for ties, if you’ve got the time/patience for it, you might swing by a high-end department store or men’s store to look at the ties they’re offering. Check out width and patterns. When you find styles within their offerings that you like, go find something similar at the thrift shop. Again, avoid synthetics.

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Awesome link! Thanks.

4

Two or three button single breasted seems to be the most popular look right now. As far as ties, I would probably go with a medium width. Too wide a tie might look like it’s overtaking his body if he is pretty skinny. (Kind of like a large bracelet or large watch looks on a small wristed person)

Basic black or dark blue/navy is going to fit the conservative look. Even if you don’t buy there, you may want to take him to a place like Mens Warehouse for fitting and see what looks good on him.

5

Ties: I go for ones with small repeating patterns in distinct, but not bright or attention-getting color backgrounds. I go for medium width, as I have for the past 20 years. Like I mentioned in the tie thread, they should stay in style for at least a decade. You may wish to consider the tie width to width of, um, opening between the jacket’s lapels. You know, how much shirt is showing. If there’s a lot of shirt showing, you may consider a wider tie.

Tie Knot: I have a longish bushy beard. It pretty much covers the knot. Don’t worry about anyone else seeing it.

Suit Style: I do single breasted because I’m a large man. Your man, being a beanpole, may do well with a double breasted to increase his fullness, visually. At least that’s what the tailor doing my last suits said. Because of his height, look at the length of the opening between the lapels. I don’t know which do well with tall and slim men, but check ones with low and high openings.

If you can find a coat that fits his shape well, he’ll both look and feel great, not like Barney Fife. If it doesn’t fit well, he won’t like wearing it and that shows. When it comes time to defend his thesis, he’ll need to feel comfortable in the suit. Make sure he stands, sits, bends to tie his shoes and/or pick something off the floor, and twist while trying on a suit. It should be comfy doing all those.

I got my last suits custom made. I feel extremely confident wearing them. I prefer wearing the suits to just shirt and tie. They fit well, highlighting my shoulders and apparently minimizing my midsection. While wearing one of these suits, people usually underestimate my weight by at least 30 pounds. That always helps the old esteem!

Suit Color: Dark gray is great for the single suit wardrobe. He can wear it to work or to a funeral and not look out of place. He can change the shirt and tie color to update the look periodically. It never goes out of style. Navy blue is good for the second suit. Black is a bit more funereal, but if it has subtle pinstripes, he may be able to wear it more often. Powder blue is a bit dated, unless you get the matching white shoes and belt. [ha ha!]

PS-Congrats on getting him in a suit for this wedding. I remember the other thread.

6

Sweet. Right now I’m leaning towards something like this, but of course we’re going to have to try things on before we decide. Dark grey, two button, cheap (ish) - the only thing it has going against it is the pleated pants, but I suspect he won’t even notice them with the jacket on.

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One incredibly annoying thing about men’s clothes. You know how they have those Big & Tall stores? You know how every department store has sizes going up to like XXX!!1!lolL? Why the hell isn’t there also a Short & Shrimpy section?

After all, at one point or another, every single man out there (excepting midgets) was my height. A lot of them were skinny. Men in other countries are very often my height in adulthood (I’m like 5’4", btw).

When I went to buy a wedding suit, I went to, not exaggerating, 13 stores before I found one that sold a suit that could be tailored down to my size. That was the first time Banana Republic got my business.

And ties! You might not think it, but when you’re my size, it’s hard to find a tie that doesn’t hang down past your crotch. It’s incredibly annoying!

You might think that I could shop in the boy’s section. I have, humiliatingly, tried that. At every store I went to that had a boy’s section, the suits in it sucked ass: they were made of like cardboard and canvas or something, clearly designed for one wearing if that, cheap as hell and horribly uncomfortable. Plus they didn’t come in my size. Apparently normal guys don’t wear suits from ages 10-17. (And yes, I checked prom stores. I was desperate).

Thanks for listening to this rant from the Short & Shrimpy section.

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You can probably get another pair of pants in the same colour that aren’t pleated. You won’t notice the pleats with the jacket on, but you will see them when he takes it off, such as when eating or dancing at the wedding! I’d recommend NOT getting pleats… they really don’t look good on most people!

I like the jacket you linked to, though.

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No problem. You know this only serves to escalate the Doper crush I have on you, right? I love Short & Shrimpy guys. (And my husband loves petite dark haired middle eastern women. It’s a total mystery how we ended up with each other!)

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I’m a little taller than you are (5’7"), but back when I weighed about 125 pds and had a 27 inch waist I went through the same thing. It totally sucks.

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Apparently, thin is in these days. Even for men.

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As certified 6’4" beanpole myself, I would suggest that you at least have him try on some pleated pants. On me, they look MUCH better and I won’t buy dress slacks any more unless they are pleated.

Check out both and then decide. He may end up liking pleats a lot.

Jammer

13

:o

gosh…

Daniel

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How much does the beanpole weigh and when is the wedding?

Does he have any Blazer or sportcoat we can use for measurement comparisons?

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Aside: This is referred to as the stance of the jacket. A suit jacket with a high stance has its buttons start higher than a jacket with a low stance. Just so y’all know when you’re telling a store clerk what you’re looking for.

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I think there is a vast conspiracy to make the world average - whether you’re my size (6’4", 225lbs - I’m not that fat!) or you’re shrimpy you’re out of luck.

I wear a suit 3-4 days a week to visit customers and my advice is this: if you can afford it, I would go custom tailored. It’s not that much more expensive than a top-end off-the-peg suit, but it will fit you so much better and look so much better, and if your tailor is any good, it will last a lot longer and therefore, even though being slightly more expensive, will be a better deal long-term. But even if you don’t go whole-hog and get a fully tailored suit, I would still get a tailor to give it a once-over and make sure it’s fitted to your husband’s frame, especially if he’s not ‘average’ in size / shape.

Don’t go trendy in the jacket - if you get one that’s conservative it will last years and years - 3-button single-breasted is pretty much the standard, with one side-pockets on either side and a breast pocket, and the lining should be a shiny lighter-coloured synthetic fabric. Simple, classic, and standard - wool is the best, and before you say ‘eww itchy’ it can be brushed quite smooth. You can have one or two splits in the back - either is fine, although a double-split (i.e. slit on either side of the bum) is more traditional and IMO wears better. Trousers should be flat-fronted although tall skinny guys can pull off pleats; make sure they are long enough to have a single break, just above the shoes, and try them on with the shoes he’s planning on wearing. Shirts - go for single-cuff, with both buttons and a cufflink hole (not sure what this is called) as IMO an average suit can be made more stylish with the simple addition of some nice cufflinks and most folks in the US don’t wear them so he will stand out a bit. Go for either a subtle pattern or solid colours in the shirt material, and go for 100% cotton with a tight weave, and don’t feel like you need to wear white only - IMO plain white should be avoided. Avoid button-down and big huge collars. Some shirts have two collar buttons which I like, but if he’s wearing a tie it’s a bit lost. And make sure the shirt fits properly - nothing looks worse than a shirt that is either too short in the sleeves or too tight in the neck - it looks like the poor schmuck is getting hanged!

A little colour in your shirt goes a long way. Make sure the tie is the opposite of the shirt - if he’s wearing a solid shirt, then a pattern tie, or if pattern shirt then solid tie. If you want to be super trendy get a tie and a shirt that match in colour and are both solid, with a matching handkerchief in the breast pocket - this can be quite a cool look. Solid metallic ties are quite trendy just now as well. Buy silk - artificial ties look like crap, and cotton ones look ancient. Silk is definitely the way to go. Socks should be dark coloured (unless you’re confident enough to pull off great stripey socks or something, in which case they should clash with everything else he’s wearing) and should be a mix of cotton and synthetics but don’t even think about wearing white socks no matter what. Shoes should be dark (black or brown), match his belt, be well polished (i.e. shiny, especially for a wedding), and if you MUST have a pattern on the shoes, then a brogue (aka wingtips) is about as far as I would go. For best all-round use get nice smooth toed shoes. I hate men’s shoes with buckles or any sort of mettalic crap on them, and you can’t pull off boat shoes unless you’re wearing a linen suit. Black suit means black shoes and belt; black suit + brown shoes & belt = awful.

As for specifically dressing for a wedding, it depends on the time of day. Wearing a black suit during the day is to be avoided, so for a daytime ceremony I would recommend dark grey or navy blue. He can also then re-use the suit later for other purposes; blue and dark grey are pretty bog-standard wherever you go so would work fine for this occasion. However, black suits (like tuxedos) are de rigeur for evening affairs, so it really depends on time of day. Even the best of black suits looks funeral, however, so if he wants to wear it for other funtions then a colourful shirt / tie combo is advised.

Not sure if you get them in your area, but a store out on the West Coast called Men’s Wearhouse is very good IMO - lots of selection, and lots of variety in sizes, and staff that actually seem to know what they’re talking about :slight_smile:

17

Bambi,
My igorance is fought and defeated. I now know I wear low stance jackets.

And GomiBoy, thanks for explaining why I’ve been told me to always wear a colored shirt and tie with my black suit. Since you seem to know about style, can you tell me what color suits should be in my wardrobe, preferably in priority (i.e. if I have only one suit, it should be dark gray. Two suits, dark gray and dark blue.) I’m about to order more suits but don’t know what colors. I wish I could just e-mail, “Send me 5 suits,” but I have to specify.

WhyNot, sorry for the hijack.

18

Free advice is worth exactly as much as you pay for it so happy to help out! :slight_smile:

Never thought of myself as a fashionista before - guess it comes from living in London where most men wear suits to work and the weekend newspapers often have a ‘Men’s’ style section as well as a women’s. You get to know that it’s subtle differences that ‘make’ a suit work, and it can easily go astray.

My thoughts are if you only have 1 suit, then go navy blue or dark grey, both are fine. If you are going for two suits, then one each navy blue and grey, and if you’re going for 3 suits then get one in black - black is best for evening events. If you are going for 3 or more suits, and you’ve already got blue + grey + black, then I’d start looking at fine pinstripes or birdseye for the suits and start looking at other colours - I’ve five suits now, not including my tux, and they are navy blue, birdseye dark grey, black, brown, and pinstripe black; three of them are custom tailored and I seldom wear the ones that aren’t anymore as they just don’t fit nearly as well. I hardly ever wear the brown one, except in the summer, and wear the pinstripe one the most. But it also depends on what you wear the suits for - I wear them mostly for work and rarely for social occasions, so someone doing the opposite might get a black suit as their 2nd suit. I’m about to buy 2 more suits, and will be buying a birdseye grey suit and a pinstriped navy blue suit.

If you want to look super cool in the summer, I would get 1 linen suit, but with the following caveat - wear it to work, or wear it out socially, but don’t do both, and if you wear it to work make sure to schedule any meetings in the first part of the day because you’ll look quite cool and disheveled by noon as the linen wrinkles :). Linen is also the only material I would wear in a light-coloured suit or with boat shoes, so it’s very much a summer thing.

19

Gomi,
Thanks for the help. Monday I’ll have an idea of what to order.

20

Well, to give everyone the Rest of the Story:

Husband went out shopping alone for the suit, as I was watching too many toddlers to even think about taking them along. He came home with a medium brown suit which is cut almost like the one I linked to - it was the only one in the store (having a clearance sale) that fit, and he likes brown, so that was good. White shirt, fairly standard, and a tiny diamond patterned gold/brown tie of medium width as well as new brown dress shoes and belt. Pretty good, I thought.

And about two hours before the wedding when we were already in Mexico, he discovered he’d forgotten to pack the shirt. However, he had been shopping with my brother earlier and picked up a nice monochrome embroidered linen short sleeved mandarin collared shirt. And my father (father of the groom, standing up in the wedding) mentioned that the shirt husband had bought was very much like the shirt that the bride had picked out for him (my father) to wear! So my husband took that a license to wear his new shirt with the suit pants, belt and shoes, but with no tie or jacket. (He wanted to wear the tie, but I managed to convince him that mandarin collars and ties don’t mix well.)

It was split - about half the men were in suits and the other half in nice but more casual wear. He was actually a little disappointed in the end not to wear the suit. We comforted ourselves with the thought that at least he now HAS a suit to wear to defend his dissertation and job hunt.

And on the way home, the airline lost the garment bag with his suit in it. :smack: