Who wore it better, me or . . . me? · Real Men Real Style Community

Aug '25 (edited) • OOTD 👔

Who wore it better, me or . . . me?

I wore this outfit last Friday to go dancing (first and second photos). Looking back on it, I think I could have made some better choices in putting it together, though I had my reasons. The pants are an off-white or cream and the jacket’s stripes are pure white, so there is a mis-match there that I recognized at the time. But these pants had buttons for suspenders (necessary for comfortable rug-cutting) whereas my pure white slacks didn’t at the time, and I didn’t have time to sew them on. So I went with the cream pants. Ditto the saddle shoes — they were just too busy to really harmonize with the jacket’s plethora of stripes. But they are in fact dancing shoes, with composite soles made for spinning. And they don’t look half bad with the cream-colored pants. But I have to admit that the over-all look of this outfit makes me uneasy in retrospect — there's just too much going on.

So the next time I wear this Isaia "Summer Stripes" seersucker sport coat, I am going with the re-formulated, less cluttered look shown in the third and later photos . White pleated Loro Piana slacks instead of last week’s cream-colored Ralph Lauren trousers. A. Testoni plain brown cap-toe lace-up shoes instead of the Jose Botta white-and-brown saddle shoes. A less brutal shade of blue for the shirt. Solid blue suspenders instead of khaki. However, I will be adding a silk paisley pocket square so as not to earn the scorn of the Pocket Square Police a/k/a

@Michael McDonnell

In the constant pursuit of timeless fashion, the best criticism is (sometimes) self-criticism.

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