Ben Silver

I just wanted to take a moment to recommend the Ben Silver website for men's clothes. I think the world would be an entirely better looking place if everyone, or at least the men, dressed in the fashion found here.
I was watching "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with my wife, and have decided that I need more silk knit ties. This are simple and casual, yet guaranteed to spruce you up compared to the next slob.
I'm honestly considering a road trip with my wife down south, with the express purpose of visiting this store in Charleston, NC. I've been receiving their catalogue for a few months now, and only wish I had money to buy their wares!

Dressing Your Age

I've copied and pasted the following article from men.style.com, particularly their Details magazine section. While I do appreciate the spirit of the article, I do find it rather ironic that it appears in Details. I mean they put Hayden and Zac on the cover, the cover!? No one who's 30th birthday is in their rearview should be seriously looking at this magazine.

It's Time to Start Dressing Your Age

If your thirtieth birthday is in your rearview, lose the rebellious-teen uniform.

-By Katherine Wheelock

Still clinging to that earring and biker jacket? Tell us your thoughts on dressing younger than your years right here.

Dressage

Image credit: infgoff.com

Call up a mental picture, for a moment, of Dina Lohan. In your mind's eye, the 45-year-old stage mom is probably wearing a low-cut top and a denim miniskirt. Maybe a pair of UGGs. In other words, an outfit a lot like one her 21-year-old daughter would wear. If you're reading this story and you're a 35-plus-year-old wearing a faux-vintage Urban Outfitters T-shirt and plaid Vans, you and Dina Lohan have a lot in common. Only, not having a honey-colored spray-on tan and highlights, you don't look as good.

In addition to the midriff-baring mom, you're inadvertently aligning yourself with another type you probably scorn: the Midlife Crisis Man. Being 38 and wearing a retro Sea World tee under a hoodie to Sunday brunch is essentially the same as being 48 and wearing a leather bomber and dog tags. You and Midlife Crisis Man—see Anthony Bourdain (dressing like a punk might be his thing, but the man is over 50) and Harrison Ford (the dad jeans don't cancel out the fear-of-mortality earring)—each might as well be wearing a big ol' baseball hat that says I'M AFRAID OF GETTING OLD.

"I don't get it," says Tim Gunn, Project Runway mentor and chief creative officer at Liz Claiborne. "I think men look older when they try to dress young. You stop and look at them, because there's something incongruous about it. And then you realize—wait, this person is way too old to be wearing those clothes."

"So many people have a distorted view of themselves," Gunn, who's 54, adds. "I remember once a few years ago seeing my reflection in a department-store mirror, and for a moment I thought, What's my father doing here?"

What motivates some men to cling to the vestments of their youth like a 4-year-old to the last pair of SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas in Toys "R" Us no doubt varies. But it can usually be categorized in one of two ways: deliberate (you don't get your ear pierced at 52 by accident) or unconscious (If I don't remember that 35th birthday, then it didn't really happen, right?). And it manifests itself in ways both subtle and heartbreakingly obvious.

"I've found recently that older guys are wearing clothes that are far, far too small for them," says British men's designer Oliver Spencer. "There's nothing worse than an [old] guy who's very fashion-conscious but not in shape wearing small shirts."

"A 45- or 50-year-old guy shouldn't be wearing ripped jeans or leather jackets," Spencer continues. "They shouldn't even be wearing jeans that are all washed out—those are for kids."

But what exactly is the turning point? How do you know when it's time to shed the uniform of your twenties for good?

"The hip quotient is a very defining one for many men," Gunn says. "But you have to reassess [your wardrobe] at regular intervals. It's different for every man—it depends on your body changing, your lifestyle changing, your work changing. I think I did an assessment at about 40."

Patti Stanger, founder of the Millionaire's Club dating service and host of the Bravo reality show Millionaire Matchmaker, points to a reasonable middle ground between dressing like an understudy for Keith Richards and shuffling around in hiked-up polyester pants.

"You have to give up the leather bombers and the Members Only jackets, yes," she says. "But it's not like you have to put on a grandpa Missoni sweater. My boyfriend's 50. On the weekends he wears Vans—adult Vans, the ones that look like boat shoes, not kids' Vans. I wanted to buy him a hoodie recently and he said, 'No, that's too immature.'"

But conquering arrested sartorial development—and then resisting the urge to regress—takes discipline.

Jean Touitou, the French designer and founder of A.P.C., is well over 50. He treats the abundance of graphic T-shirts and hoodies available to him like an aging socialite treats the dessert cart.

"Skinny jeans. I can't do it," he says. "Down jackets. I'm too old to wear them. It's not very sexy. If I were a woman or I were gay, I couldn't take the aging-rocker look. It seems it's a trend because we do not accept death, apparently."

So get a Ferrari. Get a 22-year-old girlfriend. But dress like a grown-up. To do otherwise is to undermine your dignity.

"I'm proud of my age," Gunn says. "I dress for the body I have and the work that I do and how I want the world to perceive me. I want to look like someone people trust and believe—not dress like somebody I'm not."

His point is a solid one. Self-delusion isn't flattering to anyone. Ask Dina.

Well Dressed Traveling Man

I have cut and pasted the following article from the NY Times. You can find the original here: Well-Dressed Travels Well

January 31, 2008
Dress Codes
Well-Dressed Travels Well
By DAVID COLMAN

IN fashion the swaggering march of progress sometimes offers more questions than answers. Like, why does a minor yet sublime improvement (upgrading to cashmere socks or handmade shoes, say) always take a back seat to some Dutch-designed, laser-cut, steel-paillette tank top that struts up and down a runway, to be worn maybe once more — by a model on the cover of Angst?

If you furtively harbor the notion that true fashion is more about the clothes men wear than those they don’t, you might avert your eyes from the runways and into the bleachers.

Contrary to the idea perpetrated on makeover and reality shows that men in fashion are a crew of sorbet-suited wags prone to flinging around pashminas, catty comments and little dogs with equal abandon, the majority of fashion’s men — shocker — are well and conservatively dressed. (As for the catticisms — so, so guilty.)

More important, if a man in any creative and vital business wanted a sensible road map for how to dress well for a long business trip, he would do well to bypass the runway coverage on Style.com in favor of the fashion vérité on The Sartorialist, the photo blog by Scott Schuman.

Mr. Schuman made his name shooting stylishly dressed “real people” on the streets of New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm and elsewhere. In the last few seasons, though, he has discovered a mother lode of good men’s style hiding in plain sight during the grueling city-hopping fashion parade known simply as “the collections.”

“People say to me: ‘Why do you shoot editors? They’re not real people,’ ” Mr. Schuman said. “But they are. They’re professionals with deadlines and work to do. It may seem romantic, but these guys are up at 8, going to shows all day and then out to dinner with an advertiser. You see them beautifully dressed, but they’re also practical. It’s about getting from Point A to Point B.”

If Mattel were to update its 2002 special-edition Fashion Insider Ken, he should come boxed with this: One suit (blue or gray), two pairs of jeans, five button-down oxford shirts (in white), a pair of dark shoes, a pair of sneakers, a cardigan, a V-neck sweater, a cashmere scarf, a simple overcoat (also cashmere), a light raincoat, socks and underwear.

Fashion Insider Ken would also need some sturdy luggage that is not too flashy (Jim Moore of GQ swears by Tumi) and a roomy, low-key but statusy shoulder bag that does double duty as a carry-on (Fabien Baron, newly named an editorial director of Interview, has one from Balenciaga). And one little flourish, so that you know he is not a dreary British peer: a U.K. football-club scarf, the latest impossible-to-get sneakers or a wood-veneer case for his little iPhone.

“I am very low-key,” said Olivier Lalanne, the editor of Vogue Hommes International, based in Paris. “I dress very conservatively — I think most editors do — almost to the point of being boring.”

But boring should not be confused with unattractive or cheap, just understated. Mr. Lalanne chuckled. “You can’t tell it’s expensive unless you touch me,” he said.

And this being the world of Fashion Week, Ken does need labels, the crucial ones being Jil Sander, Thom Browne, Prada, Dior Homme and, most of all, that master of statusy understatement, Martin Margiela. Even Mr. Margiela’s ultradiscreet trademark, four little white pick stitches on sweaters, shirts and bags, is instantly discernible to the style cognoscenti while invisible to others, like a whistle only dogs can hear.

Why so safe? “I think there’s a little bit of fear of being a fashion victim,” said Pierre Rougier, whose fashion public relations firm (luckily for him) represents Jil Sander and Balenciaga. “I have to have enough to meet all my clients, but I get everything in one suitcase and a carry-on, and I can go for 20 days.”

His formula is familiar: “A button-down shirt, a V-neck sweater, a pair of black pants and very classic shoes.” Not that he isn’t finicky. “I can get obsessed with the fit of pants,” Mr. Rougier said. “I fell in love with these Jil Sander pants, and I bought them in four colors.”

For professionals in a creative field, their pragmatism seems almost unimaginative.

“The simpler the better,” said Tommy Fazio, the men’s fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman. “I basically wear navy and gray, so everything is interchangeable. If you think about your closet, there are 10 things you always wear. So you pack those things, some basics to go with, and you can travel for two weeks.”

In the end, clothes that make it easy to look good are the best things designers can offer — and the smartest things men can buy.

“To me, there’s always a disconnect between the runway and real life,” Mr. Schuman said. “You watch the show, you hear people talk about how brilliant Miuccia Prada is, but you know it’s never going to end up on them.”

He added: “I don’t want new. I just want to feel like I look nice.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/fashion/shows/31CODES.html?_r=1&ref=fashion&oref=slogin

Skinny Jeans on Men

Ok, maybe I need to change the name of this post to "Skinny Jeans Kill Your Sperm!" or something equally alarming. Something must be done to kill this fashion trend among men!
Take for example, this guy at Lavazza:

Who could have possible told him that these pants look attractive? Or would enhance his image in the eyes of the world? Ok ok you might say that maybe he doesn't care what the world thinks of him, maybe he's self confident enough to do his own thing.

That just doesn't fly. If you look at these skinny jeans people (and there are a lot of them in Logan Square) you begin to notice that their fashion choices are basically the same as the next skinny jean type. It's as much a conformist uniform as the iconic "Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" though in my opinion a much uglier uniform. So now we have someone who is not only a clone, but a poorly dressed one as well.

And be honest, what woman wants a man who wears jeans that skinny (of course other then the equally conformist hipster girl)? Now I'm not jumping on the "men should be real men, ubersexual" bandwagon. Those types of people are usually trying to justify a man acting as if he were the center of the universe, that the usual roles don't apply to him, that all sorts of bodily functions should be allowed and discussed in public, and finally has a real problem sorting out exactly what they think are the roles and rights of women in the world. But come on, with legs skinny enough to fit into these jeans these guys would probably have trouble pushing through a heavy revolving door, let alone carrying or moving large objects for their loved ones. I have never, never met a women who did not admit to loving the feeling that when she is being held by a man, she is really being held by a man, and not some skinny bean pole. And when the zombies come, or those crazy S/M wearing bandits come sweeping off the plains signifying the end of the world as we know it, these skinny jeans guys are not going to be the ones people coming looking for for help.

Dressing in the Summer

It is very hard for a man to be well dressed during the summer. Days like this, temperature in the 90's and humidity hovering around 100%, are just very very uncomfortable. Someone recently told me that sweat was just nature's way of telling you that you were moving too fast or working too hard for conditions. That is a load...on days like this I usually just sit here, not moving at all, and still I sweat. I have stood directly in front of my ac unit, blowing full blast, and I could still feel the sweat forming on the side of my body not facing the fan. It's almost impossible to wear clothes in conditions such as this, and that makes me grumpy.