Gen Z "Zoomers" and Classic Menswear

[R.O. Thornhill]

I'm happy to post photos of people of different sizes, including men who are very skinny and who are larger, men who are tall and men who are shorter. If people find this to be a useful exercise, I'm happy to post those photos.

It's definitely easier to dress well if you are of a certain size, and certainly helps if you have a handsome face. But I don't think these are requirements. Many people here have posted really beautiful outfits, and many are of different sizes.

I too miss when this forum was dedicated to discussing how garments actually fit, as opposed to "fits" and how to actually dress well (e.g., the coherent combinations thread; whnay's good taste thread - before it became a joke) as opposed to where to buy things. Think those days are gone

 

[Phileas Fogg]

Also, mother of god, did this thread get derailed HARD.

part of the tension comes from the fact that for most of us, we’re here either of casual observers and just trying to have a pleasant conversation about clothing and for others, albeit a small number, this is their entire lives and defines them.

Hence the occasional derailment and the latter don’t have much of a sense of humor The internet favors those with thin skins.

 

[smittycl]

West Coasters always on duty long after I'm in bed. I don't think dressing beautifully is something most guys aim for. I prefer to dress well. Wear items that fit and give a decent silhouette. Higher quality and well made items, not always the most expensive, can help with that.

Dressing beautifully to me implies intentionally drawing attention to yourself. I prefer, like Brummell, to not do that. A gentlemen who gets noticed immediately for his clothes is trying too hard.

 

[mak1277]

West Coasters always on duty long after I'm in bed. I don't think dressing beautifully is something most guys aim for. I prefer to dress well. Wear items that fit and give a decent silhouette. Higher quality and well made items, not always the most expensive, can help with that.

Dressing beautifully to me implies intentionally drawing attention to yourself. I prefer, like Brummell, to not do that. A gentlemen who gets noticed immediately for his clothes is trying too hard.

Ironic, then, that the only reason anyone knows who Brummell was is because of how he dressed and his reputation as a dandy.

 

[smittycl]

Ironic, then, that the only reason anyone knows who Brummell was is because of how he dressed and his reputation as a dandy.

Somewhat true but he pulled society away from grandiose Court dress and toward the modern. He just apparently did it well. The dandy part was likely more the fastidiousness and such.

"If people turn to look at you on the street, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable."

"To be truly elegant one should not be noticed."

 

[lordsuperb]

Somewhat true but he pulled society away from grandiose Court dress and toward the modern. He just apparently did it well. The dandy part was likely more the fastidiousness and such.

"If people turn to look at you on the street, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable."

"To be truly elegant one should not be noticed."

Oooof, my camelhair overcoat is a show stopper whenever I wear it out. By this definition I am not well dressed.

 

[emptym]

DWW: "No one wears CM anymore. Sad!"
Someone: "Here I am in my boxy Lauren Ralph Lauren suit, Van Heusen shirt, and Kenneth Cole shoes. Sleeves too long, pants fuller-than-full break, two buttons buttoned"
DWW: "No that's terrible."

Someone else: "Oh okay well...here's my grey plaid suit from Drake's with white poplin shirt, blue grenadine tie, gray socks, and chestnut brogues. Some nipping of the waist by my tailor, and I opted for a 46S instead of R so that the jacket fits my broad shoulders but is proportional to my body length."
DWW: "No not like that. Please read this 30-page thread about why you are totally disconnected from CM."

Third contestant: "Okay you win. Here's a navy blue three-piece suit from Steed with high waisted full-cut half-break, two-forward-pleat trousers, longer waistcoat, brown horn buttons, jacket moderate shoulders, gorge height, and lapel width, paired with navy blue socks and black hand-welted black captoe oxfords made by the zombie of John Lobb."
DWW: "You normcore doofus. It's boring and you should be more like Jeffery, that art writer guy who wears black suits with black shirts."

Fourth guy: "Okay here is the Kiton version of the above where everything is just edgy enough to get out of the normcore zone but not so wild that it puts me in the penalty box with the green oxfords guy. I am sorry I am not as cool as Jeffery."
DWW: "You are well dressed but not beautifully dressed. Now help me drag this goalpost over there before the next guy comes along."

Fifth guy: "Why don't you show us how you want us to dress? I have infinite funds and can replicate any lewk you'd like me to."
DWW: "Here are forty pictures on my hard drive of academics, musicians, painters, and various other guys who died of lung cancer, heart attack, or liver cirrhosis before turning 60. Everyone is dressed basically like the standard SF WAYWT guy, except they're elegant while you're a tool. Here's a picture from some guy's Instagram and I think he's well dressed too, for reasons I cannot clearly articulate except that his tailored jacket works and yours does not even though they're the same jacket. You are being descriptive I am being normative. You look middle-aged. Waaaah silhouettes!"

Well okay then.

I know this looks like I am putting words in your mouth but I don't think I am misrepresenting anything you've said in the recent past, as recently as this thread, so....I mean...like....what are you pushing for here? What's your end goal? Style does not exist in a vacuum, but is a dynamic constantly-evolving reflection of its times, so unless you can recreate all the gajillion variables that made guys in the 30s - 50s dress the way they did, you're not going to be able to recreate it. However, I don't think most guys here are too far off; it's not exactly some cheap cosplay facade.

So with that ruled out, what windmills are you tilting at then? For the longest time I assumed you had an eye for something that the rest of us didn't but now I am starting to think you're just completely locked in on how guys dressed during a tiny sliver of time between 1936 and 19.....well still 1936 but, you know, a few months later in that year. This kind of hair-splitting might make for a productive academic career but seems to really take the joy out of our silly collective interest in tailored garments. I spent enough time (too much time) in academia and am familiar enough with this song and dance, but others might just call you a hater.

So can you describe then what everyone is doing wrong? I'm asking seriously, because jokes aside I genuinely want to understand your view on this, which is hard to do when you mostly express your frustrations through passive aggressive threadjacks and vague roundabout complaints. If you have room in the DWW blog, I would also read a longer more fleshed out articulation, because I do want to understand, and right now, all are you communicating is that you like to be argumentative and contrarian.

Maybe you didn't intend it that way, but your post does lean heavily toward the thought that wearing items with the "right" style details, particularly made by the "right" brands should lead to universal approval. You do mention fit briefly in a couple posts, but the brands are the only thing that feature consistently. Instead of focusing on such parts, I think DWW is asking us to consider the whole.

A classic definition of wisdom is understanding the parts (particularly the most important ones) in relation to each other and the whole. It's easy to focus on the parts, but tough to consider the whole. One thing I learned early on was that when people first get interested in clothes, we're drawn to color. I think brand is another early obsession. Maybe later one considers basic fit (first in the sense of what's trendy), then maybe stylistic details, silhouette, texture, etc. Those are all parts. It's tough to bring them all together into a harmonious whole. It takes trial and error.

I'm saying that very few people can be "beautifully dressed" by your definition, and that being "beautifully dressed" is not a worthwhile endeavor in this day and age when most of us have to go at it alone in pursuit of this goal. So there's no point in lamenting when someone tells a beginner that they can get a good part of the way there just by taking an RTW jacket to a tailor. This is not an all or nothing scenario...

I agree that giving advice in basic steps is helpful. Sometimes DWW can get too obsessed with what's ideal and maybe should remember Voltaire's saying, "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

... I think DWW’s point is that many people (not calling you out) would make better use of their time by thinking about how to make their whole outfit work better than by thinking about how their shoes are constructed...

Amen.

 

[Stylewords]

None of the photos of ordinary people posted seem to be "beautifully dressed" to me. Correct within their style, but nothing particularly special.

 

[Mirage-]

DWW's personal standard is probably impossible to satisfy by most people here because, judging by his ad-nauseam repeated posting on the matter, it requires not only the outfit to be well fitting, high-quality, and inspired by the golden age (except for arbitrary exceptions he has decreed, such as sport coats with jeans and the famed "sleazy" look), but also requires the wearer to be supremely comfortable and care-free in them, such as a photo taken in real life setting by someone who daily wear those clothes, as opposed to someone stiffly posing for his own camera with stuff he just bought or, at least, just put on for an online audience.

Personally, I've given up on having DWW come back to sanity and stop hijacking any and all threads to whine about people that obsess over (weird) shoes. I don't actually have any dress shoe in colors different from dark brown and black, but apparently that's not enough to prove to him that the problem isn't his thesis, but the method for his madness.
Still, I do enjoy his thread "the way they wore", except for the occasions where people decide it's time to start hating on the prince of wales (once again) for matters unrelated to style - yet another thread hijacked by needless insertions of unrelated opinions, oh well.
But that aside, the thread is the perfect example of my point above: it shows, for the most part, people actually living in their clothes, rather than putting them on for photoshoots. Of course, there's the obvious advantage that they are wearing something that is the norm of their time, so naturally they feel natural in them. They don't have all those idiosyncrasies of being costume-y, too dressed up, or whatever. And, most people wearing costly tailored clothing today tend to baby them, which may look fastidious rather than elegant to outside eye (I do it too, and currently my most expensive jackets are from Cavour bought at half-price sales). Instead, these people in their mind were usually just wearing "clothes", not "very expensive, hard-to-replace clothes meant for special occasions". So no, we will never satisfy DWW's nostalgia because we cannot literally travel back in time.

That being said, I dispute DWW's claim that most people in suits buy them good quality, have them tailored, but "just" pair them badly. The vast amount of people I see daily in suits and jackets don't wear weird dressy shoes in the first place, in fact the trend is the opposite: people in Italy keep wearing sneakers and even gym shoes with tailoring, much to my dismay.
I suppose the problem there could be DWW generalizing his own experience to the whole world, in classic american style, but I suspect the truth to be that he simply notices it everywhere because he hates it that much from the abundant time he spends on SF. Even more classic confirmation bias, thus.
But also, these people wear medium-to-low quality suits that are evidently too short for them on the jacket body (mid-butt, which is atrocious to my eye), way too skinny on the trousers, and crucially, often too long on the leg.
So no, they don't alter their jackets...many of them can't even be bothered to hem their pants!
And those that do, still have trousers puddle over their shoe, because they don't dare to hem the trousers as short as their ugly skinny cut would require in order to not get caught on the shoe.

Unfortunately, the short & skinny look keeps being pushed by ads all over the place, and we, or indeed even the collective of people that have an interest in tailoring here or anywhere else, are simply too few to matter against that barrage of marketing. We might ignore it because we have spent a lot of time reading and learning about menswear - but most people don't spend that much time in it, they are not on SF, they don't read PS or putthison or what have you. They get pushed (or choose for themselves, following the images they have seen) into suits that are too tight and often cheap thus badly made, because they think they are more "modern" compared to fuller cuts, then (surprise surprise) find them uncomfortable, decree that (all) tailoring is uncomfortable, and never wear it again as soon and as long as they have the chance (which many have been getting now, with post covid dress codes).

Another problem with tailoring adoption (or lack thereof) is, supposedly, cost. We say that good tailoring is expensive, and it's true, but the reality is that clothing in general used to be "expensive". The modern world has brought our expectations of clothing prices so much lower that what was once a very normal expense (in terms of per-item cost, not in the sense they would do it daily) now feels irresponsible, and it becomes hard to not feel the social pressure, or even the judgement from relatives, friends, collogues. Indeed my own family was in shock at how much I spent on a single pair or shoes, or jacket, irrespective of me telling them that I was really buying in the most value-oriented way possible while retaining some standard of quality (e.g. Meermin or Yanko, not EG).
Not too many years ago I was prey of the same idea, "that stuff is just too expensive, I can't reasonably spend that much". It took quite some time to get comfortable with the idea of spending several hundreds on a jacket, and who knows if I will ever be able to justify bespoke.
I already know, as DWW put it, that my interest is more a hobby than a need; but it follows that people that do not share the same interest are in theory right not to spend in it, as much as pure financial sense goes.

But ultimately, I think the most important point is the idea of comfort, although it's grossly misunderstood by the usual writers that comment on the decline of the suit.
I agree with the notion that comfort is largely psychological, besides the obvious sizing problems discussed above. People are not used to wear tailoring, so they don't find it comfortable, and since they don't have to wear it often or at all anymore, they don't actually keep wearing it long enough to ever get comfortable in it (or to figure out that they got the wrong size or cut, for that matter).
Indeed, modern casualwear and its perennial stretchy-ness has conditioned people to hate everything rigid in a self-propagating manner. And that goes hand-in-hand with overly slim cuts, since things have to be stretchy to be wearable that slim, and they are also (imo) purposefully made slim since brands know that light and stretchy things tend to not drape well.

 

[comrade]

DWW's personal standard is probably impossible to satisfy by most people here because, judging by his ad-nauseam repeated posting on the matter, it requires not only the outfit to be well fitting, high-quality, and inspired by the golden age (except for arbitrary exceptions he has decreed, such as sport coats with jeans and the famed "sleazy" look), but also requires the wearer to be supremely comfortable and care-free in them, such as a photo taken in real life setting by someone who daily wear those clothes, as opposed to someone stiffly posing for his own camera with stuff he just bought or, at least, just put on for an online audience.

Personally, I've given up on having DWW come back to sanity and stop hijacking any and all threads to whine about people that obsess over (weird) shoes. I don't actually have any dress shoe in colors different from dark brown and black, but apparently that's not enough to prove to him that the problem isn't his thesis, but the method for his madness.
Still, I do enjoy his thread "the way they wore", except for the occasions where people decide it's time to start hating on the prince of wales (once again) for matters unrelated to style - yet another thread hijacked by needless insertions of unrelated opinions, oh well.
But that aside, the thread is the perfect example of my point above: it shows, for the most part, people actually living in their clothes, rather than putting them on for photoshoots. Of course, there's the obvious advantage that they are wearing something that is the norm of their time, so naturally they feel natural in them. They don't have all those idiosyncrasies of being costume-y, too dressed up, or whatever. And, most people wearing costly tailored clothing today tend to baby them, which may look fastidious rather than elegant to outside eye (I do it too, and currently my most expensive jackets are from Cavour bought at half-price sales). Instead, these people in their mind were usually just wearing "clothes", not "very expensive, hard-to-replace clothes meant for special occasions". So no, we will never satisfy DWW's nostalgia because we cannot literally travel back in time.

That being said, I dispute DWW's claim that most people in suits buy them good quality, have them tailored, but "just" pair them badly. The vast amount of people I see daily in suits and jackets don't wear weird dressy shoes in the first place, in fact the trend is the opposite: people in Italy keep wearing sneakers and even gym shoes with tailoring, much to my dismay.
I suppose the problem there could be DWW generalizing his own experience to the whole world, in classic american style, but I suspect the truth to be that he simply notices it everywhere because he hates it that much from the abundant time he spends on SF. Even more classic confirmation bias, thus.
But also, these people wear medium-to-low quality suits that are evidently too short for them on the jacket body (mid-butt, which is atrocious to my eye), way too skinny on the trousers, and crucially, often too long on the leg.
So no, they don't alter their jackets...many of them can't even be bothered to hem their pants!
And those that do, still have trousers puddle over their shoe, because they don't dare to hem the trousers as short as their ugly skinny cut would require in order to not get caught on the shoe.

Unfortunately, the short & skinny look keeps being pushed by ads all over the place, and we, or indeed even the collective of people that have an interest in tailoring here or anywhere else, are simply too few to matter against that barrage of marketing. We might ignore it because we have spent a lot of time reading and learning about menswear - but most people don't spend that much time in it, they are not on SF, they don't read PS or putthison or what have you. They get pushed (or choose for themselves, following the images they have seen) into suits that are too tight and often cheap thus badly made, because they think they are more "modern" compared to fuller cuts, then (surprise surprise) find them uncomfortable, decree that (all) tailoring is uncomfortable, and never wear it again as soon and as long as they have the chance (which many have been getting now, with post covid dress codes).

Another problem with tailoring adoption (or lack thereof) is, supposedly, cost. We say that good tailoring is expensive, and it's true, but the reality is that clothing in general used to be "expensive". The modern world has brought our expectations of clothing prices so much lower that what was once a very normal expense (in terms of per-item cost, not in the sense they would do it daily) now feels irresponsible, and it becomes hard to not feel the social pressure, or even the judgement from relatives, friends, collogues. Indeed my own family was in shock at how much I spent on a single pair or shoes, or jacket, irrespective of me telling them that I was really buying in the most value-oriented way possible while retaining some standard of quality (e.g. Meermin or Yanko, not EG).
Not too many years ago I was prey of the same idea, "that stuff is just too expensive, I can't reasonably spend that much". It took quite some time to get comfortable with the idea of spending several hundreds on a jacket, and who knows if I will ever be able to justify bespoke.
I already know, as DWW put it, that my interest is more a hobby than a need; but it follows that people that do not share the same interest are in theory right not to spend in it, as much as pure financial sense goes.

But ultimately, I think the most important point is the idea of comfort, although it's grossly misunderstood by the usual writers that comment on the decline of the suit.
I agree with the notion that comfort is largely psychological, besides the obvious sizing problems discussed above. People are not used to wear tailoring, so they don't find it comfortable, and since they don't have to wear it often or at all anymore, they don't actually keep wearing it long enough to ever get comfortable in it (or to figure out that they got the wrong size or cut, for that matter).
Indeed, modern casualwear and its perennial stretchy-ness has conditioned people to hate everything rigid in a self-propagating manner. And that goes hand-in-hand with overly slim cuts, since things have to be stretchy to be wearable that slim, and they are also (imo) purposefully made slim since brands know that light and stretchy things tend to not drape well.

Excellent analysis. There was a time 50 or 60 years ago that most middle class men in Western Europe,
North and South America, Japan, etc wore tailored clothing most of the time. In that context there was
a percentage who were wealthy and had good taste and had acesss to high end RTW virtually anywhere
in North America and bespoke in several, cities. In Europe and Latin America , etc. bespoke could be found
in most cities. As a result, it was probably easier to get a great fit while expressing one's individual taste
than today. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, probably one of the richest per capita metro areas
in the world. Nevertheless, it is a menswear desert. There are a vanishing few stores that carry high
end RTW, all of whom seem to have the same buyer. There is no bespoke that I am aware of. Most
men of means wear casual clotthing virtually all the time. The handful of exceptions are on Style Forum.

 

[stuffedsuperdud]

Maybe you didn't intend it that way, but your post does lean heavily toward the thought that wearing items with the "right" style details, particularly made by the "right" brands should lead to universal approval. You do mention fit briefly in a couple posts, but the brands are the only thing that feature consistently. Instead of focusing on such parts, I think DWW is asking us to consider the whole.

Right, I am not here to just whore a couple of SF-approved brands; of course implied is that the wearer has taken the proportions of his clothes and physique into consideration, plus I tried to pair various brands in the way they they are normally worn, e.g. bad suits with bad ties, bespoke suits with considered shirts, ties, shoes, etc.; to go further than that would have required a much more elaborate post and writing what I did write was already more effort than it was probably worth.

My point of it all is, it's unproductive to sit around wishing that more people in 2022 could be a mid-century painter/writer/composer/actor/academic, dressed by his CU guy at Brooks Bros and nonchalantly smoking a cigarette while cruising through a soft life. That whole nostalgia thread shows "beautifully dressed" people yes, but it also accidentally reveals an ugly truth, that these guys were heavily the most privileged idle do-nothings of society at the time, or guys whose job descriptions include just to be seen. Coincidence? Probably not. I said earlier that style does not exist in a vacuum, and "beautifully dressed" seem to only arise in a few very lucky people who chose the right parents, genetics, and to a lesser extent the right careers, careers that society only needs a few people doing at any given time.

If the point is that we should all pay more attention to a coherent outfit when imposing ourselves upon the world, then I am all for it. If the point though is that not enough "well-dressed" people are making the leap to becoming "beautifully-dressed" people, well, to hell with that.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, probably one of the richest per capita metro areas
in the world. Nevertheless, it is a menswear desert. There are a vanishing few stores that carry high
end RTW, all of whom seem to have the same buyer. There is no bespoke that I am aware of. Most
men of means wear casual clotthing virtually all the time. The handful of exceptions are on Style Forum.

I know that it doesn't change the bleak overall picture that you are describing or what it says about our values when the wealthiest among us will go to outer space before putting on a proper jacket, but for what it's worth, Jonathan Martinez in San Francisco does bespoke. He seems to mostly be the in-house alterations guy for Tailors' Keep's MTM business on Columbus Street, and also does alterations for outside garments on his own, but if you want a bespoke garment made, he's a trustworthy option (you would go through Tailors' Keep for this though). Naturally he doesn't get too many bespoke orders but what he does get is regularly featured on the Tailors' Keep instagram, if you're curious.

 

[DougDevious]

I'm wondering if what we need right now, to get 'classic' menswear out of it's current rut, as well as achieve my hopes of tailored clothing becoming more popular among the 18, even 16 to 25-year-old age bracket, is a bit of recklessness and carelessness in the matter of bringing people into the scene.
The menswear world right now is holding the hand of the few young guys that wanna get into it, making sure they don't make any massive missteps because that circle of people is so small at this point, that they have to cherish every new guy that becomes interested, which are usually the type to be super careful and obsessed with details anyway, so they read up super carefully on guides, read blogs, and watch videos on 'capsule wardrobes' and such, approaching their exploration into tailored clothing with extreme trepidation given how expensive it is, and more importantly, how expensive it is to get right.
But I would like to propose that having this kind of knowledge and mindset from the outset, and especially being exposed to this "all-or-nothing" mindset that I've critiqued may be what makes it so hard for people, especially people of my age and means, to get into the style.
Even considering my "punk rock" style, I still know in and out the rules of tailored clothing, how it should fit, formality, how it should be put together, and all of that, and it makes me intensely aware of the shortcomings of what I'm currently able to put together with my slapdash bargain bin wardrobe.
Of course, I didn't start out like this.
If I had been this aware of the fundamentals and nuances, and most importantly the PRICE of suits and ties when I started, I might have been discouraged from attempting such a style at all.

Spoiler: LOOOOOONG

I started writing up a detailed exposition dump on my complete history when it comes to fashion, but to simplify it down as much as I can for brevity's sake, let me just say that I have always been interested in digital art and content creation, and having a visual "internet persona" to represent myself as part of that art.

My earliest forays into proper fashion were informed by trying to create a visual trademark for myself on youtube and TikTok in the form of an angry bird's beanie and a pair of rubber swimming goggles held to my head via bungee cable (which back then I thought of as an unironic fashion statement as much as it was just me being ironic and silly like zoomers tend to do), as well as trying to maintain a reputation as sort of a micro fashion icon on a streetwear Discord server by continuously coming up with wacky and colorful outfits out of whatever I could bring home from the thrift store.
It was during this time that I was lucky enough to find a black ladies' suit jacket and overcoat (which I didn't know at the time were made for ladies), that I was able to start exploring the style of suits and ties, taking inspiration pretty much exclusively from fictional characters like Doctor Who, the Joker, and various anime characters and whatnot, because I had never been exposed to any other "menswear media" or figures like the rest of you.

Of course, being such a young little upstart, having parents that never "dressed up" themselves, and having no earthly clue that there even were rules to men's fashion at this point in time, things got off to a running start before I knew how to walk.
I'd pick apart what kind of mindset I was coming from with suits, what I knew at the time, and more importantly, what I didn't know, but I think just sharing some of my outfits from that period of blissful and creative ignorance should tell you all you need to know, if you have the same capacity for analysis and inferring context as I do.

Spoiler: old cringe outfit dump

Again, for brevities sake, I'm only going to showcase my older outfits that feature this black ladies jacket, and the ones I actually thought looked good (a lot of my reputation on the streetwear discord was due to me posting a lot of my "outfits" mainly as ironic jokes)

Perhaps the first outfit I ever did. My only justification for the tie choice was that I liked polka dots and clown aesthetics. No forgiving that shirt though, I knew it was the fuglies thing on earth.


Probably the definitive "first look" I ever had. I like purple.


Green Checkerboard suspenders! Dollarstore quality, obviously. A wallet chain was always in my lexicon of "punk rock" style affectations. Look at the massive print on that gingham!



My black walmart chuck knockoffs were always my go-to shoe choice, thanks to David Tennant's Doctor Who, but also because they were basically my only shoes. The green coat is a badly fitting ladies' coat, but I always had a soft spot for it. Check out the massive tie knot!

I wore this to the airport for a trip to a "comic-con"-like convention, where I would wear an anime cosplay costume I had spent a month cutting, sewing, and detailing from scratch.


First time wearing 'actual' dress shoes (which I also got from walmart). Unfortunately not my first time wearing a shirt collar that's actually within at least an inch of my own neck size. Still proud of the shirt and tie color combo.


Like I said, it would be a long time before I started to care about having a shirt collar that actually fits (or a decent haircut for that matter). My interests are on full display in the background. I wonder what that scarf is supposed to be referencing?

Needless to say, I just picked **** because I think it looked cool and I liked fun colors, not because I knew anything about fit, fabric, or construction.
I mean, for ****'s sake, I didn't even know what french cuffs WERE until I bought a size 38 (i'm sz 36) gingham check shirt for $4 because I liked the colors!! When I looked at the shirt sleeves and noticed what I know now is supposed to be folded over, I didn't know what the hell I was looking at.
Why were the sleeve cuffs so long? Where were the buttons?
I had to look it up on google and that very same day ask my grandma if grandad had any cufflinks gathering dust that he could hand down, which just my luck, he did. With a matching tie bar, no less.

It's getting late over here, but I'm writing this just to sort of explaining my perspective and idea that I think, somehow, the floodgates should be opened, at least a little, to a new demographic of people by just accepting that they're going to have an awkward "peach fuzz" phase of their style journey where they can be forgiven for buying cheap, loose-fitting stuff in order to explore their style and figure out what they really like and want.
I would rather see a large influx of clueless doofuses and awkward geeks (like myself) who get initiated into menswear by buying cheap, gaudy suits and shoes and shirts and wearing them every day to try and dress like their own imaginary anime/movie character (just like I did!), as we did with the admittedly regrettable "fedora-tipping neckbeard" era than being stuck with the slow-as-molasses trickle of new styles and perspectives we are seeing at the moment.
More of a "fail faster" kind of style journey than the carefully guided one most of us styleforum guys are doing at this time.
Yes, it means a lot of the suits guys will start buying will be made of lower-quality fabric,
and yes, there will be problems with the fit,
and absolutely yes, some guys will get suits in the most cringe colors, patterns, and fits one can think of,
but personally, while it will undoubtedly produce large amounts of cringeworthy outfits and regrettable purchases, I think a "peach fuzz" era of a suit-wearing movement, if done right, would be a good way to jumpstart interest in suit-wearing, at least among the trendsetting youth.
Besides, if that happens, then the average styleforum user's ability to see these issues and diagnose such problems will become a lot more useful than it is now (though this kind of help will have to have it's own thread, if not it's own subforum).

Here's an image of what I imagine you'd expect to see from such a movement:

Spoiler: Behold, a man with unassailable style and charisma

At best, images like this will start popping up at a dizzying rate, faster than the people who would make fun of them for it could even keep up with. some will crash and burn, but the ones that persist will be strong enough to refine their style and eccentricities and become big movers and shakers in the style world, causing a renaissance of sorts for the suit. (Best case scenario)

 

[Spinster Jones]

Some good points, absolutely.

But we pretty much have the answers to how a suit should be worn. This is also why DWW created the "What we wore thread". They had their 'peach fuzz'-phase in the 19th century, so we don't have to. The answer lies in those that had the means to perfect it before our time, I think. But if you're interested in that sorta thing you should check out sapeurs.

We can always try to make suits "better", but it was a gigantic industry for 200 years. It's hard to imagine that those few who care are able to reinvent something that has been thoroughly explored.

That's why fashion is moving towards other pastures. What's the best way to wear gorpcore, for example? How should a man wear a skirt?

 

[smittycl]

View attachment 1782435

And what exactly looks good about this guy? Seems like someone you would see in Vegas at 2:00AM on a Tuesday.

 

[celery]

None of the photos of ordinary people posted seem to be "beautifully dressed" to me. Correct within their style, but nothing particularly special.

I think what happens with Derek is that he holds many strong opinions and has shared them so frequently, that his real answer is fragmented throughout them.

He's really looking at the gestalt of dress.

On the more fundamental level, understanding:

• Proportion
• Material choice
• color
• fit according to "le rules"

To move into the not-well-articulated space of "beautifully dressed", you then need to understand how, when, and why to apply:

• Authenticity of self
• Context of any given piece and any purposeful juxtaposition
• Appropriate amount of restraint (or lack thereof)
• fit according to one's body (what is 'correct' and what looks good on a particular person is not always the same)
• Wearing one's clothes as opposed to being a collector of material goods

The challenge rests with there being no real guide on how to do the second set. Time, effort, and desire are the barriers. One of his biggest complaints with CM and fashion in general is that people want to skip learning and simply say "gimmie the list of good stuff and show me pictures of inspo." Which leads to people becoming more like hoarders/collectors of material goods rather than taking time to learn themselves in relation to their clothes.

The larger man he shared is working with a really difficult to dress figure. People who aren't overweight have no idea how challenging it can be to dress well while big. He understands himself and his clothes, and it shows.

Foo and Greg are great examples of people who "get" the right amount of restraint in adding complexity/interest to their fit without making a mess.

But, to hop back on topic for a minute - I think the best way to get Gen Z and future generations into CM is to allow it to die and be reborn and subsequently absorbed into the greater world of dress. As long as it's seen as stuffy, boring, workplace attire it will continue to decline. For it to live, it needs to be set free and for people to discover it as a joyful part of dressing.