HOF: What Are You Wearing Right Now - Part III

[Claghorn]

Friday didn't feel like a day for a pocket square. I hope this isn't a sign of regression.
(the shirt has blue micro stripes; it isn't white)

 

[mimo]

Looking good, Clagster. I think a conservative white PS might have set that off beautifully though. I like that jacket.

My blur of the day:

 

[Cravate_Noire]



Full outfit pic?

I found this once as a full shot

 

[mktitsworth]



This is a great example of why it's dangerous to simple ape an Apparel Arts picture. Everything looks so much better drawn.

I don't like the suiting since it looks, to me, alternately loud (with such a bright pinstripe) and dull (with the low contrast, uneven herringbone).

But since you have it and like it, I think you need to wear it like the photo - with mostly blue accessories. The tie is too red to go well with medium grey and too bright itself next to the electric blue stripe.

If you want to go for a solid tie, navy is probably best.

Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, the suit is not grey. It's much closer in color to this

[

than it is to the color of the suit in the apparel arts picture. The stripe is also lavender (probably closer to wisteria) rather than blue. Still, I thought about navy - it's what I've done with it before with other solid shirts- but navy with the blue shirt and lavender stripe seemed to put things off balance. In that case I think an indigo tie will do well, but I had to send mine off to be repaired yesterday. I will keep all of this in mind for the future though. As I said elsewhere, the pocket square wasn't really doing it for me either.

For what it's worth, I like the pattern of your suit and would wear it myself. I dont know what stage you're in or if this is your "1st" suit or just your 1st custom suit. Either way, if it fits you well then you'll be alright. The color is suitable for any daytime business and is interesting because it is not navy/charcoal/generic pinstripes.

Thanks.

McTits, for what it's worth, I think your suit is outstanding, and I like what you've done with it.  The problem with SF sometimes is that it begins to develop its own iron-clad orthodoxy - currently grey flannel or tweed it seems.  Which are both great.  But it's nice to see someone staying firmly in the realms of classic menswear (I maintain that this is just not the place for jeans and anoraks), while taking some risks on pattern and combinations.  Yours works for me, and like any bold style choice, it is largely dependent on the man carrying it.  No photograph can tell that truth, but in real life I can imagine you have the personality to make that kind of statement - a bit of swagger, if you will.

Actually, I envy the SF illuminati their tweed and flannel defaults, that are just too warm for me where I live - my own routine style of looser-fitting linen suits is as much a function of geography as aesthetic preference, and the SF-standard is something I adore when I get the chance.  But whatever your reasons for choosing something away from that, I applaud you.  A mixed response is better than a shrug of the shoulders, especially if you know that when you go out in the real world, you look and feel like the nuts and everybody knows it.  Good on you, McTits.

Tweed and flannel are both very prevalent because it is winter and they are wintery fabrics. I don't feel that I can make much of a statement either way about how nice they are because I don't own any - such things don't make much sense when it's too hot to even wear a jacket for a third of the year and it only gets below freezing for a few weeks, maybe a month, at most. I appreciate and feel that I have a lot to learn from the existing studies of the English and Southern Italian traditions. Some of it however is almost completely inapplicable, either contextually or practically. Additionally, there are regional cultural elements which play a role that have little bearing coming from either of these - primary examples for me are things like western boots and western hats. There does appear to be some validity to the assertion of an acceptable business attire in the Caribbean of shirt, shorts, tie, jacket. I am also aware of an Indian adaptation of the English lounge suit which incorporates more traditional elements of that culture. Neither of these are the subject of this forum however, which is rather explicitly focused on western dress in the English and Southern Italian traditions with varying levels of acceptable variability. Still, I think it would be interesting to see someone study the regional variations associated with dressing well. Maybe someone's done it and can point me to it.

Within these two, there's plenty of reason for orthodoxy which can be found in other threads. I think recently both the Whnay thread and the General Chat thread have recently hit upon this as a related subject. As much as it can grate upon me, there is a cultural and historical precedent for certain fabrics and colors in certain seasons. Additionally, regardless of the reason for it, that sort of orthodoxy is the context which frames this forum. As such one should expect to be considered based upon the norms of the community in which they are engaging. Lavender is not a winter color, but violet is the Liturgical color of lent. Traditionally, at least around Catholic Louisiana, it is perfectly acceptable to wear Violet or Lavender during Carnival and through the warm seasons. Ash Wednesday is this coming week, so it seemed close enough not to matter for as little of it as there is.

 

[Hampton]

Awesome.

I found this once as a full shot

 

[Cravate_Noire]

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

This is a great example of why it's dangerous to simple ape an Apparel Arts picture. Everything looks so much better drawn.

I don't like the suiting since it looks, to me, alternately loud (with such a bright pinstripe) and dull (with the low contrast, uneven herringbone).

But since you have it and like it, I think you need to wear it like the photo - with mostly blue accessories. The tie is too red to go well with medium grey and too bright itself next to the electric blue stripe.

If you want to go for a solid tie, navy is probably best.

Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, the suit is not grey. It's much closer in color to this

[

than it is to the color of the suit in the apparel arts picture. The stripe is also lavender (probably closer to wisteria) rather than blue. Still, I thought about navy - it's what I've done with it before with other solid shirts- but navy with the blue shirt and lavender stripe seemed to put things off balance. In that case I think an indigo tie will do well, but I had to send mine off to be repaired yesterday. I will keep all of this in mind for the future though. As I said elsewhere, the pocket square wasn't really doing it for me either.

For what it's worth, I like the pattern of your suit and would wear it myself. I dont know what stage you're in or if this is your "1st" suit or just your 1st custom suit. Either way, if it fits you well then you'll be alright. The color is suitable for any daytime business and is interesting because it is not navy/charcoal/generic pinstripes.

Thanks.

McTits, for what it's worth, I think your suit is outstanding, and I like what you've done with it.  The problem with SF sometimes is that it begins to develop its own iron-clad orthodoxy - currently grey flannel or tweed it seems.  Which are both great.  But it's nice to see someone staying firmly in the realms of classic menswear (I maintain that this is just not the place for jeans and anoraks), while taking some risks on pattern and combinations.  Yours works for me, and like any bold style choice, it is largely dependent on the man carrying it.  No photograph can tell that truth, but in real life I can imagine you have the personality to make that kind of statement - a bit of swagger, if you will.

Actually, I envy the SF illuminati their tweed and flannel defaults, that are just too warm for me where I live - my own routine style of looser-fitting linen suits is as much a function of geography as aesthetic preference, and the SF-standard is something I adore when I get the chance.  But whatever your reasons for choosing something away from that, I applaud you.  A mixed response is better than a shrug of the shoulders, especially if you know that when you go out in the real world, you look and feel like the nuts and everybody knows it.  Good on you, McTits.

Tweed and flannel are both very prevalent because it is winter and they are wintery fabrics. I don't feel that I can make much of a statement either way about how nice they are because I don't own any - such things don't make much sense when it's too hot to even wear a jacket for a third of the year and it only gets below freezing for a few weeks, maybe a month, at most. I appreciate and feel that I have a lot to learn from the existing studies of the English and Southern Italian traditions. Some of it however is almost completely inapplicable, either contextually or practically. Additionally, there are regional cultural elements which play a role that have little bearing coming from either of these - primary examples for me are things like western boots and western hats. There does appear to be some validity to the assertion of an acceptable business attire in the Caribbean of shirt, shorts, tie, jacket. I am also aware of an Indian adaptation of the English lounge suit which incorporates more traditional elements of that culture. Neither of these are the subject of this forum however, which is rather explicitly focused on western dress in the English and Southern Italian traditions with varying levels of acceptable variability. Still, I think it would be interesting to see someone study the regional variations associated with dressing well. Maybe someone's done it and can point me to it.

Within these two, there's plenty of reason for orthodoxy which can be found in other threads. I think recently both the Whnay thread and the General Chat thread have recently hit upon this as a related subject. As much as it can grate upon me, there is a cultural and historical precedent for certain fabrics and colors in certain seasons. Additionally, regardless of the reason for it, that sort of orthodoxy is the context which frames this forum. As such one should expect to be considered based upon the norms of the community in which they are engaging. Lavender is not a winter color, but violet is the Liturgical color of lent. Traditionally, at least around Catholic Louisiana, it is perfectly acceptable to wear Violet or Lavender during Carnival and through the warm seasons. Ash Wednesday is this coming week, so it seemed close enough not to matter for as little of it as there is.

This is grey to me, a lighter/medium shade grisaglia.

 

[Orgetorix]

RLPL suit (jacket's a bit snug)
BBGF shirt
Talbott tie

 

[mktitsworth]



This is grey to me, a lighter/medium shade grisaglia.

Interesting. Time for some science! I just did a Color grab on it using gimp and came up with this with (171, 153, 129), which translates into a hex code of #ab9981. According to here this has an HSV of (34.3, 24.6, 67.1). In short:

To me this looks as much brown as grey, but that's not very conclusive, and I have at my disposal some of the most powerful image processing and mathematics software in the world. So why not use it? This isn't terribly far from either the pale taupe or crayola taupe listed here. The nearest grey is #ababab. To compare them I just computed the cartesian dot product of the color sample from your jacket with each of the three colors I've mentioned. All are pretty close (within .993) of each other as color vectors, however I suspect that this is to their similar value height - all are about 70 or so. #ababab has coordinates (0,0,67.1) in HSV. So, if we project that out we are down to the H and S coordinates (which are polar). For both the Pale Taupe and the Crayola Taupe, the agreement is still excellent - .986 and .989 repsectively where as for the grey it's 0. As such, I would still say that this is more of a taupish color. I did a few more grabs, but all still seem to be in that same color range, though some lighter and darker. I can do the analysis again, but I don't expect the outcome will be terribly different.

Edit: To be preemptive, I'm not trying to be a dick to you about this and if this methodology comes off as such, you have my apologies. These are the sorts of things that interest me, and that you refer to it as grey is equally interesting. If this is actually grey, then the point is moot, but this (the color above) is certainly the color to which I am referring. My wife is an artist and I'm a mathematician, so I think of greys as specifically being those colors which lie along the line between the origin and (1,1,1) in the RGB square (with practical variations acceptable. In looking at this, I found the HSV scale, which I really like because it looks like greys are colors with coordinates (0,0,z). Back to the point though, my technicality is not meant to be obtrusive, it is merely a requirement of my argument.

 

[Henry Carter]



RLPL suit (jacket's a bit snug)
BBGF shirt
Talbott tie

Org, I think the stronger shoulders on this suit balance you out very well, nice.

 

[MrDaniels]



RLPL suit (jacket's a bit snug)
BBGF shirt
Talbott tie

Really nice, clean look. And that ticket pocket really takes it the next step. Was this a leftover from the business week, or did you have a Sunday event...or possibly church (I think if you dress that nicely for church you automatically get into Heaven...)


OK...give us the sucker punch...how much did you thrift it all for?

 

[Cravate_Noire]

Which picture did you use? A grisaglia has a distinct multicoloured texture, it is white to pearl grey and black actually on the posted suit (and varies with combinations that look pearl grey to charcoal as a whole).

 

[Orgetorix]



Org, I think the stronger shoulders on this suit balance you out very well, nice.

Thanks. I admit my preference is usually for more natural trad-style shoulders, but I'm happy to wear ones like these when they come my way!

Really nice, clean look. And that ticket pocket really takes it the next step. Was this a leftover from the business week, or did you have a Sunday event...or possibly church (I think if you dress that nicely for church you automatically get into Heaven...)


OK...give us the sucker punch...how much did you thrift it all for?

It was for church. Now that I can't wear suits to work during the week since my office went casual, Sundays are about my only excuse to wear them.

Suit: Consignment shop, $28
Shirt: Outlet, via Steve Smith, $45
Tie: Thrifted, can't remember, but probably less than $5
Shoes: Thrifted, IIRC $15 or so

So, total under a Benjamin.

 

[Johnboy]

RLPL suit (jacket's a bit snug)
BBGF shirt
Talbott tie

You looking great as usual Org. Thumbs Up Bud!!

 

[mktitsworth]



Which picture did you use? A grisaglia has a distinct multicoloured texture, it is white to pearl grey and black actually on the posted suit.

I figured as much. I took color samples from both the one that you've spoilered (the first picture posted) and the full length fit. All had the same taupish family. The calculations are done on a sample from the first picture however.

 

[MrDaniels]



It was for church. Now that I can't wear suits to work during the week since my office went casual, Sundays are about my only excuse to wear them.

I say wear a suit a couple of times a week anyway...keep them all on their toes...


Another amazing find/ bargain on the suit.