Before you run out and start buying stuff, I think it’s important to figure out who you are, what you’re comfortable with, and what you do on a daily basis. From there you can try to incorporate some new pieces that complement your current lifestyle and situation.
The first thing I might suggest on how to identify your current style, is to look at what you have in your closet. Take a broad view of everything. First of all, are you happy with it? Do you have a variety, or is everything relatively the same? Also, try to put everything in a category and see what you come up with. Just a few categories might include casual, business casual, formal, classic, youthful, or preppy.
If you don’t know where to start, I would suggest using technology to your advantage. Go to Google image or Pinterest and type in some phrases like menswear, blue jeans with brown shoes. Or tan Chino’s with blue shirt. You’ll end up finding countless different photos showing that basic combination on lots of different guys (some might even look similar to you). From there you can see whether or not that might be something that you could try.
That brings me to my next point, you NEED to be willing to try new things and step outside your comfort zone. Look, if you’re a denim and boot guy and you’ve never worn a pair of chinos with sneakers, that would be stepping outside of your comfort zone. You also need to realize this will take some time and effort on your part to figure out.
Now, one thing I’m not suggesting is to go out and buy an entire new wardrobe. I would suggest that you take things slowly piece by piece to figure out whether or not it’s even something that you’re comfortable with. For example, if you’ve never worn pink chinos before, and it’s something that you really want to try, it will take a little bit of time to get used to wearing pink chinos. Listen, the last thing I want is for you to feel like you’re wearing a costume. So if you know it’s not working for you, it’s not working for you and move on to something else.
I remember many years ago when I started to get into menswear, I went a little crazy and started wearing all of the things all at once. I would wear a volcanic pocket square with a lapel flower with a watch and a bunch of bracelets and lots of different patterns. A lot of that stuff combined together looks relatively cool in Instagram photos, but tends to not translate as well in real life.
Start small. Start at the ground with your shoes and work your way up. If you wear the same kind of shoes every day, or if you’ve been wearing the same style of shoes for the last 15 years, it’s time to try something else. Try to think about what looks cool to you? What are you interested in? For example, maybe you like the idea of wearing a plain white sneaker? You’ve seen dudes wearing them or maybe you’ve seen photos, but there’s no reason you can’t give it a shot.
There’s a lot of ways to experiment with new things for not a lot of money. For example, try Nordstrom rack, outlet shops or some of the less expensive fast fashion retailers. You could probably walk into H&M right now and buy a cheap minimal white sneaker for about $30. That’s one of the things about fast fashion is that it allows you to dip your toe in to something new for not a lot of money. If you find that that item works for you, you could then go and buy something a lot higher quality.
Guys, if this topic interests you, please hit the thumb up button over on YouTube and subscribe because I’m here twice a week covering topics like this. Oh, and by the way.. holy shit! 100,000 subscribers in 4 months! Holy smokes man, Thank you so much for being here! I’ll make a video soon and talk about that, as well as some state of the union stuff, but for now, I’ll see you in a few days for a brand new post. Until then, take care.
Very nice!! I like your gentle encouragement to try something new. Think I might go shopping. ????