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Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 10:43 am
by Seppia
Jin+Guice wrote:
Fri Mar 22, 2019 10:35 am
Why do you need to sprint and lift heavy stuff all the time though?
WAIT
Maybe Jacob is actually Tom Cruise under disguise

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 10:45 am
by jacob
Jack Reacher, dude.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 11:05 am
by C40
jacob wrote:
Fri Mar 22, 2019 8:21 am
It seems to me that fashion is more about seeing and being seen compared to doing. I really wear what I think is the most optimal for what I do around the house.

......

Well, I think I have. I actually did have a minor phase during my consumer years when fancy clothing was an interest of mine. Admittedly this was mostly due to running out of other things to spend money on. I'm fortunate in the sense that I'm relatively tall as well as height-weight proportional. My BMI is 23 but I'm in excellent shape, so denser than the average specimen, and this means that I can find suits that fit me off the rack w/o alternations. MW suits includes a tailor fit... well, whenever I've bought suits at $250+, the company has usually had a tailor check the fit. I've never owned anything bespoke though.

It seems pertinent to note that in terms of functional clothing, looking good loses to being able to walk 4 miles at any time, sprint, lift heavy stuff, not be cold, warm, or wet, and most importantly, not be subject to dog hair or rips. Ideally, it would contain lots of pockets too.

Business, business-casual, or "English gentleman" simply doesn't meet these objectives as well as outdoor/military/work wear.
[Disclaimer - because you (Jacob) don't care that much about fashion, this might not be useful or interesting to you,... but it may be for others here reading the thread]


It seems like you are equating 'fancy' (wearing suits and such) or expensive with fashion or looking good. The two are only partly related. I'm quite surprised that you are looking at it that way. (Of course, maybe I'm misunderstanding, and also I do understand that you are not specifically interested in looking good and that there may even be some benefits to looking unfashionable).

What we (well, for sure me, but I believe the others) are talking about in this thread when we say fashion is:
#1 - and mainly - wearing clothes that fit well (in a way that is both comfortable and looks good)
#2 - Not wearing clothes that look weird/ugly.

Here is an example of good fashion:

Image

Image

(the shirt actually doesn't fit him perfect, IMO it should be a bit more snug around his mid torso, but it's close enough to look good)

That shirt is:
- Simple
- Cheap
- Comfortable
- Looks good
- Related to the work/projects he does**

The shirt isn't worn just for looking good**. It's just his clothes, and his clothes look good.

**Ignore for a moment that this was actually for a movie and just assume this is a guy in real life and his clothes (for when he does projects/work) are like this.

I do work on my bicycle, van, and motorcycle and the clothes I wear can end up dirty a bit like these. One might think they are signaling blue collar / low class. But... they are also signaling 'handy', 'resourceful', 'knows how to fix things', 'not afraid to get his hands dirty', etc. I've had many occasions where women see me in my clothes like this, or see me actually doing the work, or see posts on Instagram and such of projects I'm doing, and they find it super attractive.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 11:09 am
by oldbeyond
I guess for me there's an internal ROI (I guess you call that vanity). I feel better wearing chinos/nice jeans + shirt + sweater + brogues/boots/nice sneakers, so I do. Because of buying quality where it's worth it (shoes, coats, bags, knit sweaters, jeans, belts), thrifting, maintaining/mending and being able to combine most stuff (not all combinations work, but most), it's quite inexpensive. It makes my GF happy which is an important consideration, but I don't think it has made that much of a difference with colleagues/clients. So the external ROI is likely quite context dependent.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 12:05 pm
by Jin+Guice
@jacob/jack_reacher: Haha, 4 to 5 times a day? You must be sprinting a lot more than you let on.

@oldbeyond: Thanks, this is a succinct summary of what I've been trying to say.

@C40: This is on the money. I'm only making this sightly hard because, after a lifetime of wearing ill-fitting t-shirts, I'm enjoying wearing fancy clothes and nerding out on this a bit. Going the jeans/ t-shirt/ boots route is trivial, unless you absolutely refuse to care at all. I agree with you that this is the most efficient route in that it is both the easiest and the cheapest.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 12:13 pm
by C40
Augustus wrote:
Fri Mar 22, 2019 12:03 pm
I have a pair of gym shorts and some older permanently stained tshirts I switch into before doing manual labor stuff, don't you guys value not smelling stinky? My body pumps out a ton of sweat and what I'll call "musk" when I'm doing hard labor. My wife says it's attractive, but I don't think so haha..
I do still bathe :D

Personally, as long as I clean my body once every day or so, I don't get stinky. If daily, I'm pretty sure I don't need to wear deodorant. (though I did just recently make my own first batch of deodorant and I like it)

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 12:30 pm
by theanimal
Jin + Juice- Care to share the links you enjoyed reading about fit and construction?

I only have a handful of shirts that actually fit me well. When I wear them, I get women looking me up and down, even ones I've known for a long time. As of now, I'm not entirely sure where to find such shirts. Maybe I should just get more of the same.

Something worth noting (and I think it's been mentioned by Jacob and others before) that the more fit you are, the better you look in your clothes.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 1:16 pm
by Jean
A manly smell is a part of a men's style. Hiding your smell will deshumanise you and reduce your opportunities with women.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 1:27 pm
by Bankai
Does hiding your body under clothes dehumanise you as well? What about hiding your 'natural' hair by getting a regular haircut?

Speaking of the smell of sweat, perhaps you'll increase your opportunities with some (likely a small minority) of women while turning off the vast majority of them. It's also not very helpful in most other social interactions.

Personally, I consider the smell of sweat as a very good indicator of other negative traits, similarly to being obese.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 1:32 pm
by C40
Well, there is a big difference between B.O. (sweating and then stinky bacteria growing) and a person's own natural smell (which is, for example, what your shirt may smell like after wearing it for a couple days (if you don't have BO))

Somewhere between those two are a sort of musky scent, which I believe is what Jean is referring to.

(not sure whether this is conjecture or actually known for sure) - There are potentially very important biological factors carried or detectable in the way a person smells. I don't mean B.O. here, I mean the natural or musky smell described above. When smelling a potential mate, one can detect that something is "off". I've certainly had that. Where I just don't like the way a woman smells and it doesn't feel right. Supposedly the smell may carry some information related to genetics, immune systems, etc. relating to the likelihood of having better children together. Some even suggest that one could save a lot of time by smelling a person's shirt after they've worn it before even considering dating. There actually some kind of dating events where people actually do this. It's like speed dating but you just smell their clothes instead of interacting.

Masking your smell with perfume or cologne is, IMO, a no-no. I'm put off when a woman smells perfumed rather than like a person or like nothing. (though some do a good job by using light amounts of certain essential oils that work well for them)

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 1:37 pm
by C40
Bankai wrote:
Fri Mar 22, 2019 1:27 pm
Does hiding your body under clothes dehumanise you as well?
A tangential thought on this relating to the thread subject: the simplest way I would try to describe well-fitting clothes is that when you see a person in clothes that fit well, you can tell what their body looks like naked.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 1:43 pm
by Jean
If you're inhabited by stinky bacteria, people have a right to know in order to avoid you.
I'm serious, If your smell is bad and requires to be hidden, you have an other more important problem that need to be found and addressed.
My feet smell very bad when I wear shoes. Not wearing shoes solves this -> shoes are bad for me. ERE is about getting the freedom to make those nescessary choices.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 1:53 pm
by Peanut
jacob wrote:
Fri Mar 22, 2019 10:17 am

What do you think Zuckerberg's nerdy hoodies cost?
If they are Loro Piana cashmere then $2-3k, and if they are Vince a mere $400. I just read about this in an amusing nyt article on the wardrobe costs of that Billions show, where I learned Steve Jobs’s turtlenecks were a designer Japanese brand. I think I assumed he was wearing Gap.

Personally don’t see the point with such basic basics, but maybe he liked the feel.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 11:24 am
by Jin+Guice
@theanimal:

This is the most important one, because it's about fit:

https://restartyourstyle.com/1018/shirts-fit/

Here's the one I use for construction/ quality:

https://propercloth.com/reference/high- ... ess-shirt/



I didn't scour the internet looking for the best article, I just found the top hit that seemed like what I wanted.

I found these articles by googling "how to tell if a dress shirt fits" and "how to tell if a dress shirt is well made," if you replace dress shirt with whatever article of clothing you're looking for one of the top 3 hits on google will generally have what you're looking for. Like I said, it's pretty much a cake walk.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 3:19 pm
by Bankai
The male pheromone androstenone is not the same as androstenol. Androstenol is the scent produced by fresh male sweat, and is attractive to females. Androstenone is produced by male sweat after exposure to oxygen – i.e. when less fresh – and is perceived as highly unpleasant by females (except during ovulation, when their responses change from ‘negative’ to ‘neutral’).

So, men who believe that their ‘macho’, sweaty body-odour is attractive to women are deluding themselves, unless they are constantly producing fresh sweat and either naked or changing their clothes every 20 minutes to remove any trace of the oxidised sweat. Generally, the female-repelling androstenone is the more prominent male body odour, as the fresh-sweat odour of androstenol disappears very quickly. In terms of scent, the sweaty macho-man is therefore likely to be unattractive to most women, most of the time – at best, he may elicit a grudging ‘neutral’ response from women who happen to be ovulating (which of course excludes all those taking oral contraceptives).


Source: http://www.sirc.org/publik/smell_attract.html

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 4:44 pm
by Jean
I spend most of the summer mostly naked and producing fresh sweat, that might be were I get my impression from. Filtering out women on pill is an other upside to this method.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 6:13 am
by Kipling
Some comments on bespoke suiting from the perspective of a legal professional services environment. Note that in such an environment (i) there is a whole lot of clothes - based signalling going on, and (ii) the financial rewards of success far outweigh the financial costs of making the attempt. Consider very carefully whether (ii) applies before going for bespoke which is otherwise an extremely expensive habit!

First, though, to support what everyone (Prognostat, Bankai, 7w5) has said in this thread about being in shape always being in style is absolutely, and eternally, true. So, that first. Not least because if you work fourteen hours a day and you are still in shape then you are demonstrating/ signalling awesome amounts of self control. The senior staff in your firm notice this.

Second, what G'n'J said about the right haircut. It appears that a successfully-revised haircut is one of the things that it is acceptable for female work colleagues to compliment male colleagues on these days [note: the reverse is not the case!].

Anyway, to return to the bespoke point. Ultimately lawyers get paid because a client has hired them to do some lawyering. Potential clients are usually talking to you because you are from [name] law firm and because they have an idea of, and approve of the values of, that firm. If your clothes clash with the impression they have of that firm then they will go elsewhere. We dress to look authoritative and sober and sensible. Because that is usually what clients want from lawyers. Note this does not universally apply, tech lawyers dress somewhat more like their Silicon Valley clients.

For the professional services workplace if I can reduce it to one principle (of which I am not the originator) it is that you should dress for one level above where you are (but which is where you want to go next). You need to signal that you are spending your money in a way that aligns you with the people who you want to be among and who otherwise have the power to apply drag to your promotions (they will not necessarily be the decision-makers about whether you get promoted, but they will usually be consulted). So a trainee lawyer should wear respectable off-the-peg; a junior lawyer should wear made-to measure and a senior associate gunning for partnership should grit their teeth and go for at least one bespoke suit. When you get towards the top of the ladder you can start to forge your own image. [Most days when I am not meeting clients I wear a bespoke navy blazer, off-the-peg chinos, bespoke striped formal shirt, brown leather belt, brown suede boots. This signals, of course, that I have nothing left to prove… ]

To talk about each of the above suit options in more detail. I have been through all of these over the years as I have worked my way up the ladder. Purchasing power parity being what it is you can probably translate pounds for dollars. If you work five days a week in an office and always wear a suit, you need at least two jackets and five pairs of trousers. Wool is an organic fabric and it needs time to rest and relax between wears.

- Respectable off-the-peg. Think £400-£800 for a jacket and a pair of trousers. It is virtually impossible to get a good new suit for less than £400 because good wool fabric is actually quite expensive, £50 a yard and up, and a suit takes four yards. Add labour and retailer's margin and there you are. What everyone has said above about getting the major measurements (chest, shoulders) right and getting the rest altered to fit. Usually such suits are made in a factory in a LCOL country. Machine sewn throughout. Simple alterations to fit (sleeve length, trouser length) are usually done in a couple of hours locally.

- Made to measure. Think £800-£1,200 for jacket and trousers. Cut to your dimensions from the same sorts of fabric as above (generally a fairly restricted range of fabric in the same sort of price range as above) and allows you to choose features (single, double breasted etc) and allows you to order e.g. a second pair of trousers (very strongly recommended, you usually won't wear your jacket when at your desk, so the trousers always wear out first by a factor of two or more). Usually made in a factory somewhere in your own country, since speed of delivery matters. Usually machine- sewn throughout, sometimes with hand-sewn button-holes. Typically takes a couple of weeks to a month.

-Bespoke is a different game. Think £2,000-£3,000 for a jacket and trousers. This is a process, a relationship with your tailor, rather than an event. It starts with a discussion about you, your job, your lifestyle; it moves on to how much you carry in your pockets (and which pockets) whether you get public transport to work (ticket pockets, possibly lighter-weight fabric if you are in a city that gets really warm)... the tailor measures you up and assesses your body shape, discusses with you your desires for the look (including whether you are interested in the latest fashion in mens' suits – which might produce a very different result from a 'classic' suit depending on the fashion of the time- always go for 'classic' as otherwise your suit will be out of fashion in three years). We are probably forty minutes to an hour into the discussion here and we haven't got to fabrics yet. Then fabrics- books and books of sample fabrics - running from £80 a yard up to £1,000 or more... make sure you look at the fabrics in daylight as well as artificial light. Such suits are usually made on the premises where you see the tailor. Only the major straight seams will be machine sewn. All detail elements (button holes etc.) and drape elements (furl of lapel etc.) will be hand sewn. You will normally have at least two more meetings with the tailor after the first one so that they can (i) check drape and construction details (ii) make final adjustments. Typically takes three months.

Of the three categories, bespoke is the only one that really lasts. This is for three reasons. One, the fabric is usually a bit better and sometimes longer lasting than MTM (at least if you do not go for exotic soft cloths like merino). Second, the tailor will cut it to fit your personal physical idiosyncracies which would otherwise wear a suit out. [One shoulder a bit lower than the other? They balance for that. Dress to the right rather than the left? They will cut appropriately.] Third, the tailor allows fabric in the making for, and can adjust the suit if, you lose or gain weight (wearing a suit that is too small will fast wreck it).

But, even bespoke wears out. You will not get more than about 300-400 wears out of a pair of trousers if you sit at a desk all day (c.f. what DLJ said above about standing up). You might get 800-1000 wears out of a jacket. I have made two identical jackets and five identical pairs of trousers to a 'suit' and only own one such suit (usually navy blue) at any one time.

This post is already far too long so I will not go on to bespoke sports jackets, shirts, or shoes...

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 7:19 am
by Ego
Kipling wrote:
Sat Mar 30, 2019 6:13 am
For the professional services workplace if I can reduce it to one principle (of which I am not the originator) it is that you should dress for one level above where you are (but which is where you want to go next).
+1 Not just for professional services. Parties. Interviews. Work. It is much better to err on the side of being over dressed than under dressed.

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 11:46 am
by Kipling
Oh: and I should add two riders about custom tailoring and the workplace. Firstly, for a given identical body composition, (good) bespoke does look better than (good) mtm which looks better than otp. I add the (good) qualifiers because, because of the higher levels of communication as to customisation being required, you can end up with a garment being wrong due to poor communication. Secondly, a bit like expertise in other areas, a male colleague who habitually wears bespoke can likely tell whether you are wearing bespoke, mtm, or otp. A colleague who habitually wears mtm can tell whether you are wearing mtm or otp but likely cannot reliably tell whether you are wearing bespoke or mtm. A colleague who habitually wears otp likely cannot tell reliably whether you are wearing otp, mtm or bespoke. Think about who you are trying to send signals to...

Re: Mens Fashion

Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 11:59 am
by jacob
@Kipling - In terms of signalling (and countersignalling), I think this holds in general: "It takes one to know one". Also, people in the know at a given level will recognize all lower levels, but only 1 level higher. (This is similar to Wheaton levels and any kind of development of differences in kind.)

A derived hypothesis would be that romantic [attractiveness] points are primarily scored not because making an effort makes one look better (even if it does) but because it demonstrates a shared interest in looks.