This financial advisor’s advice on clothing (old and new)

Aug 5 (edited) • OOTD 👔

In my over 42 year adult professional career in institutional and personal finance, 27 years have involved helping families with their financial journey. In my eyes, building a quality classic timeless wardrobe fits that journey hand in glove. During my 10 years as a professional clothing advisor previously, I recall Harold Powell telling me that his stores had a philosophy of narrow and deep versus the trendy department or fashion oriented stores (the box chains today) who had a philosophy of wide and shallow. In other words in a Harold’s store there were charcoal grey, medium grey, Navy, Olive and or tan suits predominately solid with some muted patterns in the suit section (as opposed to a broad array of colors at our competitors. This meant that one could get the brand one could afford and had, for him, the best fit and he could wear that suit for decades knowing that it would be perpetually “in style”. Financially this still makes a great deal of sense to me be that a suit, sport coat, trouser, shoe or tie (shirts and socks simply don’t have the same resiliency and a shorter life longevity ). My basic advice is to buy things that will last but prudently stay within one’s budget. Less is more. If one were to allocate 1% of one’s income to clothing (after one has $1,000 minimum emergency funds and ZERO!!!! debt on anything but a home PERIOD!!!!!!!!!!) then if all one can afford is one navy blazer and grey trouser for dress wear that’s just fine. That will suffice in 90% of circumstances. To do that math - say a guy has $70,000 disposable income with only a mortgage as a liability-spending $700 on a navy blazer, trouser, shoe, belt, shirt, and tie would be very reasonable. While there are a million iterations of this (3%, 5% even perhaps 10% but never on credit)-It’s the concept I am trying to get across: Buy the best classic timeless dress outfit you can presently afford based upon your limits AND SET THE LIMITS.

Having preached this since the early 1980s here is how I do that. I shop sales. I will illustrate using today’s OOTD

• Brushed cotton burgundy blazer (the local lower end men’s store in town has the Pendleton socks and shirts I buy during their seasonal sales and I snagged this mis-sized cheap coat on a manikin marked down to $60 about 5 years ago

CT cotton/linen shirt ( bought on their buy 4 at $49 a piece sale)
RL tie from 1982 while I still had 40% store discount. Orig price full retail $40 today that’s $140
Samuelsohn gaberdine wool trousers 60% of end of season sale full retail $ 380. First new quality trousers in 10 years as I finally lost weight and hit desired goals.
Martin Dingman shoes and belt on buy -shoes-get-$150-belt-thrown-in promotional at local Tulsa store. Shoes were around $300 I believe?
Pantherella socks about $30 full retail
Borealis dive watch free from Antonio

I provide this detail to illustrate the intentionality of budgeting, and planning a wardrobe over a 40 year period by knowing what’s in my closet and adhering to a classic timeless menswear approach as opposed to an adhoc approach to shopping on a whim unaware of one’s budget, and unaware of how fashion trends in the long run make no real economic sense.

In my case I have had periods of significant-to-me income and periods of very limited income as a self employed individual so knowledge of clothing has been very beneficial. As everyone is on their own journey, i provide this as my journey if anyone can benefit from it.

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This financial advisor’s advice on clothing (old and new)