I’ve been wondering this for a while. Why do I dress the way I do? What makes me like the things I like?
I know I touched on some of this in my article on getting smart but I’ve been thinking about the ins-and-outs of my actual ‘look’ for a while. I think it came to me to write about it when last week I went to work wearing with my jeans rolled up a couple of inches showing off my Desert boots and bright red socks – I was also wearing a grey/blue pinpoint shirt (last season +J) and a cashmere cardigan (six colour melange mix from Margaret Howell, nice).
I thought it worked, the other half thought it worked, most of my mates did too but people at work didn’t get it at all. So was I off the mark? I don’t think so. Was I trying to make a statement? Nope, I was just doing something that I do in summer just this time with bright socks (because it’s far too cold to get bare ankles out), I’m not exactly on my own with this either – I’ve seen lots of people doing a similar thing of late. There were two main reasons I was doing it: 1) It has the practical advantage of making sure your suede boots/shoes/trainers don’t get covered in denim bleed (denim bleed is the nemesis of suede, once it’s there it’s nigh on impossible to shift) and 2) because I thought it looked good on the people I’ve seen doing it too and thought it looked good on me so gave it a crack…
In the summer we’re used to seeing people with trouser legs rolled and we all think nothing of it – it’s warm and people are trying to keep cool, that makes sense. Doing it in winter doesn’t to most people though, not really. But where’s the difference apart from having your socks showing? It’s just another way of wearing something, not a statement and socks are as just as worthy of considering when you put yourself together as everything else. Plus, like I said, you don’t knacker your footwear rolling your jeans up.
The reason they didn’t get it because it’s too far away from how they dress, from their references as to what looks good. However as soon as something becomes a trend then you find people jumping on bandwagons and doing a similar thing, all because it’s been deemed ok to do so – but they need that overall level of acceptability before deciding it’s fine to dress like that.
Style’s a unique thing. We share overall aesthetics with other people, that’s obvious – many people have similar taste and what we see looking good on others we often try ourselves – but the way you actually put yourself together is unique because it’s a purely personal thing (unless you happen to have a stylist). I don’t see anyone that dresses exactly like me, I see people with a similar aesthetic but not looking the same, never looking the same. Some of that comes down to simple differences in garments – shades, shapes, brands etc. For instance if I had been wearing a different cut of jean with a crepe sole desert boot and a chambray shirt I would have looked different to how I did – but it’s a detail thing, to your average man in the street I’d have looked no different. Also, I generally do the top button of my shirt up, even without a tie because it feels smarter to me, rather than leaving it undone, immediately formalising the shirt to an extent. Some people would wear a tie with it, others a bow tie. Like I said – different people, different style, same overall aesthetic.
The great thing about this is that you’ll see things on other people that you know will work on you, but at the same time will be different when you do it, as you’ll no doubt purchase something similar but not the same – influence, not copying. Most days something I see will spark off a new idea, although I’ll admit this comes more from dapper old gents rather than twentysomething trendies. Again, for me it’s about classic style, not trend.
Now there’s obviously an influence to the way I look, there must be for me to have ended up dressing the way I do. We develop style though our lives due to outside influence – the emulation of people we aspire to be like (whether that be musicians, sportsmen, our fathers etc). It’s also from getting older, smarter (as in less casual), being able to spend more on items, knowing not only what works for size and shape but also understanding what goes with what, loads of things really. That’s why it develops as we age, because we understand how to make ourselves look the best we can, plus due to our professional lives many of us want to look smarter as we get older an this in itself requires a different way of dressing. I look broadly similar to how I did five years ago but everything now is much more considered, well made and detailed.
We all want to have our own individual look and we do to an extent, it’s just that it’s generally part of a look that many others have. We’re unique in the details, not the overall, that’s the bit we share because there’s only a finite amount of influence were exposed to. So keep trying what you think looks good, keep taking ideas off others you see and trying them for yourself – the worst that happens is that other people think you look like a div. Big deal, you probably think that of loads of people who think they look great – I like Engineered Garments, others think Dsquared2 is cool, different strokes and all that lark…
I for one am going to continue wearing my jeans rolled up, with my socks showing in all their brightly coloured glory.