Video of the week: Mixing patterns

[alden]

[ismailalmurtadza]

Mr.Alden
A valuable insight indeed
I would like to suggest a longer version(if possible),and would want to see the whole assemble,like the model sitting down,close up shots and also include a still snapshot as a slide shows.
I am no movie producer nor director but just suggesting.

Almurtadza

[Bethlehemtown]

Dear Mr. Alden,

Just a shoddy excuse of a note to say how much I enjoyed your commentary today. It is refreshingly straight to the point, with iridescent wit. You've put your finger nicely on what I find a disturbing point: so many sartorial bloggers make dressing a blood sport. They seem to want the information or the look or the label, everything, in short, except how to enjoy wearing clothes. I suppose this is a bit of tumbrel talk, but I agree with you entirely: train your eye to see what's good for you.

My best to you,
Bruce Boyer

[alden]

Dear Mr. Alden,

Just a shoddy excuse of a note to say how much I enjoyed your commentary today. It is refreshingly straight to the point, with iridescent wit. You've put your finger nicely on what I find a disturbing point: so many sartorial bloggers make dressing a blood sport. They seem to want the information or the look or the label, everything, in short, except how to enjoy wearing clothes. I suppose this is a bit of tumbrel talk, but I agree with you entirely: train your eye to see what's good for you.

My best to you,
Bruce Boyer

Dear Bruce,

Many writers in the sartorial blogspace do front load a lot of unnecessary complications and stress to the simple pleasure of dress. Making simple things complex, in theory, guarantees readerships. But readers can wind up pretty confused and their attempts at style, as a consequence, will suffer.

Real advice about dress is very hard to transfer because so much of it is built upon individual sensations and feeling. I recently advised a young reader “to wear whatever rags make you feel like the world is yours.” I confess it is not much of a formula.

Video simplifies the discussion in a positive way by communicating real images, hopefully imbued with a bit of humor, one of the key ingredients of style.

Your critique is very much appreciated and I hope to read more of same on the LL.

Cheers

Michael

[kilted2000]

Great, but why no ps?

[Greger]

I suppose a lot of people who are asking are new and have never paid attention to colors, other than teen clothing.

Something else to think about, and this is very true, "some people can't sing" and need somebody else to pick color combinations. The rest of use should wing it. But, on the other hand, how many great artist had lessons; some many lessons. And, some people, is it possible to teach them to sing? Skin color, personality, body proportions, eye color, hair color, etc., all play into a good scheme or a poor one. Because of those reasons, and people being born everyday, I suppose, the questions will never end.

[Costi]

To me, Michaels' urge translates into "Be an artist, not an art critic". Art is not produced the way it is analyzed in a book by an art critic. So I would say know the materials with which you work (clothes, in our case), choose them well and dress the way an artist writes, paints or composes music. If you find some compositions look better than others, THEN analyze and try to understand why (what colours you combined, how the shapes complement each other, why two patterns clash or work well together). Refinement comes with time and, when you reach a point where you can also explain how you dress, then you have become a master. And when you think you have become a master, you realize your "method" is not worth a penny compared to someone else's natural talent, so you open your mind and, with the experience (trained eye) and concepts acquired, you are ready to explore, refine and learn every day.
It is like love: if you can explain why you love someone, then you don't really love them! Which does not exclude thousands of books attempting to explain what love is, or even HOW we should love...

[Gruto]

To me, Michaels' urge translates into "Be an artist, not an art critic". Art is not produced the way it is analyzed in a book by an art critic. So I would say know the materials with which you work (clothes, in our case), choose them well and dress the way an artist writes, paints or composes music. If you find some compositions look better than others, THEN analyze and try to understand why (what colours you combined, how the shapes complement each other, why two patterns clash or work well together). Refinement comes with time and, when you reach a point where you can also explain how you dress, then you have become a master. And when you think you have become a master, you realize your "method" is not worth a penny compared to someone else's natural talent, so you open your mind and, with the experience (trained eye) and concepts acquired, you are ready to explore, refine and learn every day.
It is like love: if you can explain why you love someone, then you don't really love them! Which does not exclude thousands of books attempting to explain what love is, or even HOW we should love...

In a way I agree totally but paying a romantic tribute to the artist's method hides some prosaic things about the well-dressed man: there is a logic in dressing, sports, music, art, tailoring, well, in almost any kind of human fields. In the beginning you follow the rules, you try to learn the game, you work hard, and you analyze a lot to get everything right. The better you become, the more you can rely on the senses doing what feels right and still you will get it right because you have internalized the game including all the unsaid tricks, pitfalls, and possibilities.

This is why we pay a tribute to the artist, sprezzatura, rock of eye, naturalness, ease, wit and all this: they are signs of mastery.

However, if you forget or deny that also mastery comes from hard work, experience, and time, then things go wrong. You start to imitate mastery instead of learning it yourself. Like some sort of Don Quijote you start to combine colours and patterns AS IF the combinations comes natural to you. Like all types of mastery excellent dressing comes from hard work more than anything else. Even the prodigy has to practise - a lot.

[alden]

In a way I agree totally but paying a romantic tribute to the artist's method hides some prosaic things about the well-dressed man: there is a logic in dressing, sports, music, art, tailoring, well, in almost any kind of human fields. In the beginning you follow the rules, you try to learn the game, you work hard, and you analyze a lot to get everything right. The better you become, the more you can rely on the senses doing what feels right and still you will get it right because you have internalized the game including all the unsaid tricks, pitfalls, and possibilities.

I agree with you. The problem arises when young men or those who would learn are presented with five variations of the same rule or simple contradictions of same in books, blogs or internet forums. If you are a musician learning your scales or to read music, isn’t the study clear and straightforward no matter the teacher?

So instead of mucking about in the rules morass, or become infected by the dreaded sartorial advice pathology (sap), why not learn to develop your own eye and style. Stay tuned for a video on this subject.

However, if you forget or deny that also mastery comes from hard work, experience, and time, then things go wrong. You start to imitate mastery instead of learning it yourself. Like some sort of Don Quijote you start to combine colours and patterns AS IF the combinations comes natural to you. Like all types of mastery excellent dressing comes from hard work more than anything else. Even the prodigy has to practise - a lot.

It has been my observation that men are mostly unadventurous souls. They do not leap into the unknown as you describe above, but adhere like glue to rules, conventions or a style they have adopted (even if it does not suit them.) If only men were as courageous, I believe they would make progress more quickly. Trial and error is often the best solution.

That is one reason I am using video, images make more instantaneous sense than all the harangues on dressing put together. The key is to expose the variety and diversity of style in these images. Let the viewer select to try one or another.

Cheers

Michael

[Costi]

I also agree with you, Gruto, that study, analysis and experience improve the sense of style (if they don't mummify it), but what I am saying is that dressing shouldn't be considered such a hard thing to learn, so much work and studying to do. And, more importantly, it needn't START with a two-year theoretical course. A few basics is all that is needed (understanding the building blocks of classical dressing - the tie, the shirt, the shoes, the trousers, the coat, the hat etc.), good taste and extensive use of Michael's secret magical device, THE EYES. Dressing is supposed to be fun, like playing a Mozart tune with two fingers on a piano keyboard, rather than hard work like performing Rachmaninov No. 3.
Dressing well is an easily approachable art, if we may consider it an art. As in any art, becoming a virtuoso is rare and not a necessary condition for fulfilment. Most people will improve their dress dramatically once they start paying THE LEAST amount of attention to it, and that already makes a huge difference. Of course further refinement is not possible without analysis and a deeper understanding of the forces at work, but these are questions that arise in one's mind with time, as one makes progress along the road to elegance. If we make it complicated from the outset with rules, interdictions, complex interrelations between the colour of the hair, the hue of the tie and the cut of the lapel, chances are anyone who admires elegant dress and aspires to it will feel discouraged to even attempt it, when the truth is that we don't dress each and every day with all these things in mind and perhaps most elegant dressers that we admire would not be able to explain HOW they dress or give others advice.
I think Michael's videpost is mainly addressed to novice dressers, who need to understand that starting to dress well is more simple in reality than you may think if you read a complex book on it, much like a painter did not have clearly in his mind at the time he put colours on the canvas all the intricate intellectual ideas that a critic may use to explain the painting when analyzing it later on. But Michael's "tip" is also a reminder to advanced dressers, who may be tempted to intellectualize dressing too much as a result of in-depth study, that at the end of the day, after studying, analyzing, reading and interpreting, the final result must pass a simple test: THE EYE.

[Gruto]

First of all, I really enjoy The Dress with Style clips. They transmit so much more than photos about the specific garments.

I also agree that dressing should be fun. A spreadsheet won't work.

I also agree that the eyes, not some sort of formula, should guide you. However, I would say trained eyes.

I guess my only point is that a fun method ignoring the history of classic men's wear including the rules works better for an experienced suit-shirt-tie man than for a newcomer. He should be allowed to learn the rules. They are the basis of mastery.

[Greger]

I suppose Alden is saying to learn a few rules and then step out on your own. After a while learn some more from the "masters" and step out again. It is like painting. You never paint somebody eslse' work, unless you are learning something about brush strokes, and you would throw the painting away, so not to be accused of stealing somebody else' work (in fact, you wouldn't want anybody to know you painted somebody else' work).

The musical explainations are interesting, because some people can't sing. Their voices slide all over the place trying to hit the right notes. Maybe they can learn by wave lengths of the notes in their mouths, but not by ear, or they would be doing it by ear. Some can sing by ear but they are a quarter note or half note off, because of the shape of the head, or how the flesh is in it, or some other reason.

[uppercase]

Here're some photos of a man who knows how to sing (taken from The Sartorialist with thanks):

[Costi]

An admirable voice for the apparel arts