At 35, I've been (mostly) dressing like an adult for almost two years.
I’m not 100% sure what I should do with this Tumblr.
My style has stabilized. I never properly examined its evolution. The more embarrassing moments are lost to my memory. I should’ve recorded them.
Alas, here I sit, in a Lands End Canvas sweatshirt and shorts, having settled on the compromise of quality for the cheapness of their wares. Do I have anything more to share?
I am unsure.
Fitting
Ah, the benefits of losing weight. I had to stow this Cantarelli jacket when I gained too much weight to wear it without excessive strain at the button point.
I’m undecided if the wool knit tie is too incoherent with the warm weather jacket. I just can’t stomach saying good-bye to all my burgundy ties for the season.
Janelle Monáe - Q.U.E.E.N. feat. Erykah Badu
This is more stylish than anything labelled #menswear.
Cleaning
Chief Wiggum was wrong, you can get chocolate out.
I was baking and neglected to put on an apron. The top photo shows the result of this negligence. As one of my workhorse shirts, I really didn’t want to sacrifice it to the baking gods, even if the resultant cake was very good.
I refused to resign myself and the shirt to this chocolatey fate and deployed my favourite laundry weapon: OxiClean. I’m not one to wantonly tout a brand, but this stuff really works.
First, I made a concentrated slurry out of the powder that I put directly on the stain. I let that sit for about two hours. Then I soaked the shirt overnight in the concentration recommended for ‘tough laundry stains.’ Finally, I did a cold water wash. There is no trace of the chocolate.
Note: Sorry for the wildly different colour cast. I was shooting under quite different lighting conditions. Trust me that this is the same shirt.
Polo shirts.
I don’t aspire to look like a prep. I’ve cribbed chinos in loud colours and madras shorts and trousers from the preppy handbook. I can’t mess with polos, lest I transform into full prep.
It’s just not for me.
Fitting
This suit was absent from my rotation for a while. Why? I got too fat to wear it. Simple as that. I’d been putting on weight for a while, mostly due to stress eating. I quietly consigned the suit to the closet, with a slight bit of shame, but not changing my eating habits. The turning point came when my neck got too fat to comfortably button up my pink Brooks Brothers OCBD. I finally acknowledged that I needed to make a change.
So, about six weeks and 30lbs later, the shirt fits and the tweed suit will be a short-lived part of my cool spring wardrobe.
I put this together acknowledging that Toronto is having a cool spring, but with the flowery pocket square to represent my hope for warmer days, even though that’ll mean the suit will again be out of rotation, although this time for happier reasons.
Thanks, Tumblr!
Surviving
This is a Lands’ End shawl collar sweater in a cotton-wool-linen blend. Obviously, it should not go in the washing machine. Unfortunately, in the rush of a post-vacation launder it wound up in there. Once I realized what happened - thankfully, prior to it going in the dryer - I was heart-broken. I live in this sweater through fall, winter and early spring.
However, the heartbreak was premature, as you can see. The sweater survived. In fact, as it was starting to bag out a bit, the wash actually tightened it back up. Of course, the wash almost certainly shortened its life and I won’t be repeating the mistake.
Hello Tumblog friends!
My partner and I will be in San Francisco for almost a week starting Tuesday.
What should we do?
What should we eat?
Younger Us - Japandroids
remember saying things like “we’ll sleep when we’re dead”
and thinking this feeling was never gonna end
Wow! I will actually be in SF on April 4th for a conference. I can’t 100% guarantee I’ll be available for this, but I will certainly try to be.
Amazing!
We’re hosting our first Style Forum / #menswear meet up in San Francisco. I’m putting it together with tons of help from Squalor to Baller, Broke and Bespoke, and A Bit of Color.
The event takes place April 4th, with drinks at our shop at 6:00, followed by dinner at a place TBD around 8:00. I’m hoping to bring in a sponsor for some fantastic whisky. Stay tuned.
The broader details on the event are here: San Francisco SF Meetup
Feel free to reblog.
In B&W
Before I had kids, I was really into photography. Now, five years later, I’m getting back into it; taking photos for their own sake. This means I’m probably going to play around with my wiwt shots a bit more.
Although I started doing this just for fun it made something apparent to me: viewing an outfit in black & white helps judge pattern mixing better. By removing the different colours, you can focus on the shapes of the patterns.
Combinations
I haven’t been posting many wiwt shots lately, in part because I’ve been choosing to stay casual or wearing redundant outfits. I decided to post this one because I’m particularly pleased with the combination of colours, textures and patterns in this outfit.
The suit is quite boldly checked, although the checks are hard to discern from a distance. The colour is also an unusual gray-blue. It wouldn’t work in almost any office setting. As a casual suit, I felt comfortable with the button-down collar. I also thought the wool knit tie worked well with both the pink shirt and the blue-gray of the suit. This knit tie also has a really nice texture to it. Since the tie is matte, I decided to throw in a silk pocket square.
Neither the shirt nor the tie has a pattern, so I wanted to include one in the pocket square. However, this is sort of a tricky proposition. On the one hand, the pattern of the suit is quite large. Yet, the multiple overlapping checks actually create the impression of a fairly small pattern. I thought the bold, pink polka dots of the pocket square fit into the middle ground between the impression of both big and small patterns contained in the suit.
The suit is thrifted Aquascutum.
The tie is eBay’d Lands End.
The shirt is Brooks Brothers ESF, bought on sale.
