Most people would not describe Trump as someone who wears slim-fit clothes. But here, we can see his trousers are quite slim in relationship to his body. You can tell because the hem barely covers the opening of his shoes.
If you're a heavier man who wears a suit with slim-fit trousers, you end up breaking the top and bottom halves into distinct blocks. Notice how much the jacket hangs over the trousers. There's a lot of empty space between the jacket's front edge and his pants.
It's a mistake to think that wearing slim-fit clothes makes you look slimmer. Or that everyone has to conform to some trend. A better approach is to dress for your body type. Look at the relationship between Jackie Gleason's jacket and pants.
The wider trousers here are not the most fashionable, but they are the most flattering (for him). By minimizing the jacket's overhang and reducing the empty space between its front edge and the trousers, you get a streamlined silhouette from top to bottom.
We see the same effect here on France’s President Hollande and Japan’s Emperor Akihito. Hollande's trousers are too slim for his jacket. As a result, he looks like an egg on sticks. Compare his silhouette to Akihito, where the jacket and pants flow and form a harmonious whole.
Such advice is not limited to men with heavier figures. Daniel Craig often wears suits that also don't flow. The top and bottom halves often form distinct blocks. This is partly because his trousers are too slim and his jackets are too short.
When you see beautifully dressed men, consider how the top and bottom halves form a silhouette. They don't always need to flow (in some casual styles, breaking up these parts can be intentional and part of an aesthetic). But in tailoring, it's often best when there is flow.
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I feel that there's a misunderstanding of the Met Gala and its purpose. 🧵
The Met Gala is, first and foremost, an annual fundraising event to raise money for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. Tickets to the gala are extremely expensive: $75,000.
The money goes towards the Costume Institute, which works to preserve fashion history. They have thousands of historical garments, such as this 1898 ball gown from House of Worth, founded by Charles Worth, who is widely considered the father of haute couture (high dressmaking)
Many men resist wearing high-rise trousers bc they fear they'll look like an old man. In this rubric, low-rise = modern; high-rise = Fred Merz. But low-rise pants change the ratio between your torso and legs, sometimes in weird ways. See Tucker Carlson, for example. 🧵
Even when he was young, Tucker favored low-rise trousers. You can judge this by his waistband's position in relation to his coat's buttoning point. For Dancing with the Stars, the costume dept put him in higher-rise pants. Ignoring the hem, I think the rise looks better on him
This doesn't mean that low-rise pants are *categorically* bad. If they were, they would have never taken off in the first place. They work for certain aesthetics, such as contemporary and rock-inspired looks. See @modsiwW (IG wisdm)
I see a lot of backlash here against men not wearing socks. IMO, this is a knee-jerk counter-reaction to the trend, which is as misguided as wearing something just because it's trendy. There is a better way to think about when you should wear socks. 🧵
As always, do what you like. But if you're wearing a formal suit with formal shoes, I think you should wear socks. Not doing so is incongruous and confusing. Or, at the very least, looks dated and twee in a 2012 menswear way.
What do I mean by "formal?" I mean the clothes men used to wear for business. Today, people often think that any kind of tailored clothing—even something as simple as a shirt with buttons—is "formal." But in the past, there were finer distinctions.
I get this sort of question a lot: "How should I dress given that I'm XYZ?" The XYZ usually has something to do with age or physical characteristics, such as height, skin tone, or body shape. So, let me do a thread here. 🧵
I don't really believe you have to dress for your age. You may want to consider your lifestyle, which sometimes correlates with age. But I don't think you have to dress in any particular way. Here are some older guys wearing all sorts of stuff that I think is stylish
Here are some younger guys wearing clothes that are considered by many to be "old man style."
If you like quality for quality's sake, and you mostly wear casualwear, then I think you should check out the Japanese brand 45rpm. 🧵
I fell in love with 45rpm 15 years ago after coming across their lookbooks. Their lookbooks at the time were often shot by Eric Kvatek, a talented photographer who now works for Kapital. Here are some images from more recent lookbooks (my old image files are too low res)
The thing about 45pm is that the "quality" is not always apparent to casual observers. Years ago, Antonio of 18 East—who used to run an Isaia sub-label called Eidos—broke down all the work that went into these seemingly basic navy 45rpm chinos.
In this old Brooks Brothers catalog from 1915, we see an entry for Chesterfields, a type of single-breasted "city coat" made with a velvet collar. At the time, Brooks Brothers offered these in Vicuna, Cheviot, and Elysian. Coats were lined in satin and piped with velvet.
Joshua Ellis, a British mill mostly known for cashmere, still offers Elysian today. It's a labor-intensive overcoating made with two layers of plain weave sewn together, then covered in a third layer of weft floats. This gives it a nap like velvet or corduroy.