acapaca
Distinguished Member
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2017
- Messages
- 1,072
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Top quality post on the whole, but in this passage you managed to arrive at a summary more coherent than anything we've spent the last 77 pages going round and round about. Very well said. I heartily endorse your point of view.Why not with chinos? Simply because oxfords are, or have been for a long while at least, very formal shoes, due to their sleekness. "Only with suits" seems too prescriptive a statement to have any validity in menswear, but the principle behind it makes sense (i.e. only with the more formal/sleek outfits). How much you are willing to push the boundary of what is appropriate with them, is probably largely down to culture, environmental factors, personal sensibility etc etc.
Indeed, I find they are perfectly fine with fairly formal separates, as shown as by Crompton or Boyer, usually in suede.
For the same reason though, I also dislike t-shirts with blazers as a combination that is too dissonant. Clearly, many others here disagree, including DWW himself curiously, if I recall correctly.
I can't help but read some of these threads, particularly in light of the interesting discussion going on right now about what is 'cool', and imagine them in a school setting. You've got your rebels, your innovators, your guys who don't give a ****. And you've got your hall monitors, your schoolmarms, and for lack of a better term, since 'nerds' these days seem to be en vogue, your dweebs. And then of course you have everyone in between.
I think there are ideas of value that the shrewd apprentice can learn from both ends of the spectrum. But in terms of motivations and approach -- let's say, historical fealty on the one hand and personal expression on the other -- the advice above is the kind that resonates more with me.