Shirt Meet Tie

Some men have terrible taste in shirts and ties – a quick glance around your work place will confirm it.

For those unfortunate enough to be confined to suits for the majority of their working week, fashion has to take a back seat. Corporate suits can often be mind-fumblingly dull and the sea of miserable faces trudging to work every morning is, to my mind, a mix of both work-based hatred and the realization that they really don’t know how to match up their shirts and ties.

Getting creative with your shirt and tie combinations is one of the best ways to showcase your love of fashion and style within a formal environment, but they’re extremely easy to get wrong. After all, colors and patterns can be confusing individually, but when you start mixing them together, all hell can break loose.

The Checked Suit

With the majority of men still purchasing suits in standard shades of navy or grey, a subtle check is all you need to mark yourself out as a confident, stylish gent who is aware of the latest trends, but not a slave to them.

From windowpane to gingham, there is certainly a lot of choice on the current market – but to ensure versatility and longevity, we recommend you opt for a timeless neutral hue and a classic, muted pattern such as Prince of Wales check.

Those who don’t want to make so much of a statement should try breaking up the suit and wearing the jacket with solid colored trousers and brogues for an evening out – heritage chic at its finest. Alternatively, team your check trousers with a neutral blazer, white shirt and smart leather Derbies for dinner with the other half.

The Light Blue Suit

Timeless and highly versatile, the navy suit has long been touted by menswear publications as the only one you’ll ever need. Yet while navy is often the most admired, this season we suggest opting for a lighter shade of blue.

Seasonally-appropriate, a pastel or petrol blue suit will help give a contemporary twist to your smarter aesthetics without having to push your boundaries too far.

In terms of styling, keep it simple with a plain white shirt, linen tie and brown suede loafers for summer events, removing the tie and switching to white Jack Purcell for a modern take on smart-casual.

But don’t restrict yourself to wearing just the full suit – with blue continuing to dominate men’s wardrobes, you are bound to get endless use out of both the trousers and blazer when you split it into separates.

For instance, try teaming your jacket with selvage denim and brogues for a night on the town, or combining the trousers with a neutral colored polo and smart loafers when heading to the office on dress-down Friday.

The Shoulder Of A Suit

A lot of suit terms can be mixed and matched, but I’m a fan of something I’ve always called the ‘British rolled-shoulder.’ Others might call it something else, but it is effectively where the shoulder padding finishes. A lot of Italian and US based designers prefer to have the shoulder padding finish precisely where the bone does. A British rolled shoulder has the padding extend over the shoulder and roll down into the sleeve. It’s a technical difference, but it’s also a visual trick that makes the shoulders seem broader and the arms better built.

Such a padded shoulder is perfect for the masculine figure a modern suit is meant to convey, hence it isn’t an element of the preceding sack suit

What is a Sack Suit?

The name gives it away. A sack suit is a largely unshaped cut of suit. Though not literally like a sack, it features the same natural shoulders of the drape cut, but is devoid of any front darting. The front darting results in a suit that is hard to marry with the hourglass or V shaped cut preferred by most men. And despite being a classic, a quick check of my Mad Men DVDs reveals that the sack suit has even been abandoned by Don Draper for a drape cut come season two of the series.

Is A Pocket Square For You ?

Like the tie bar, the pocket square is a classic and timeless menswear detail that has made a comeback in a huge way. Thankfully, guys are discovering that they are allowed to rip out the stitching of their suit jacket’s breast pocket and fill it with a small accessory that makes a big impact with a high style reward.

A small accessory that makes a big impact with a high style reward.

A pocket square improves a suit jacket or blazer’s versatility, adds visual interest and depth to a look, and provides a subtle but powerful means of personal expression. There are many ways to fold a pocket square,some simple and some more complicated but how you choose to rock it depends mostly on personal taste (and slightly on the degree of formality of the occasion). As with anything, practice makes perfect and a little time invested in the skill upfront will ensure you can wear the pocket square any way you want with ease and flair. Here are five of the folds I use most often and that are guaranteed to have you covered from casual to formal.

Make It Custom!

Make it custom. Because in this day and age, anything and everything in your closet can be customized. Options range from computerized made-to-measure ( those nifty Web sites that ask you to measure your own shoulders) to full-blown bespoke (rendered with you in mind from the first stitch). The happiest of mediums comes from BookATailor : Its made-to-measure program for suits and shirts. It is overseen by its team of tailors and craftsmen, who customize the fits and finishes to your liking. The possibilities are practically endless.

What's A Vent and What's it for?

 For those unfamiliar with the term, a vent is the slit you see on the backside of blazers, sport coats, suit jackets, and any other type of jacket. Like many modern menswear details, vents originated from military heritage. As a functional necessity while traveling horseback, the vent provided comfort to the rider by allowing the jacket’s tails to part and fall gracefully along the sides of the horse. Not only did vents ease the buttoned jacket from bunching and constricting the body while seated, it also prevented unattractive fabric creasing where the bunching would have occurred.While very few men today travel by horse, the same functional principle applies in any situation where you need to be seated with your jacket on. Another benefit of the rear vent is that it permits easier access to your trouser pocket: the give from the vent negates excess fabric gathering and pulling as you dig your hand under the jacket to get into your pocket.

Bonus tip: Never put your hands, or any object, in your blazer or suit jacket pocket unless you want that area to get stretched out and misshaped. Most jackets come with basted (loosely stitched shut) pocket openings – keep the basting intact to prevent entry at all times and to preserve the jacket’s clean lines.

Learn To Suit up Properly and Everything Else Follows

Whether you're an office guy who needs to look sharp for the competition, or a creative type who dresses up because he likes to, the suit is the basic building block of looking good. It's a timeless, ever adaptable, sometimes maligned, but never improved uniform. Consider the roots of that word: uni, as in a universally good idea to save your ass from the danger of too much choice; form, as in the opposite of formless, sloppy, or unfocused. We'll get to the specifics of lapel widths and armholes and vents and how to do it right, but let's first agree that this is where dressing like a man begins. Get the basics down and then you can lose yourself in perfecting the details, what the ever dapper Tom Wolfe once approvingly called the sartorial "mania for marginal differences." And that's when things get interesting.

HOW TO: Double Breasted Suits

BookATailor Teaches You All The New Styles

So, you want to up your fashion game by adding a double breasted suit into your wardrobe. How Prince Charles of you! Here are a few things to keep in mind when considering one. 

1. Go for peaked lapels. You’ll look extra sharp. 

2. Always leave it fastened until you sit down. 

3. Six buttons look the best.

4. Just like with your two button suit jackets, leave the bottom button undone on your double breasted suit jacket. 

Spotted: Book A Tailor at the Godzilla Premiere

Check out one of the stars of the recently released "Godzilla" film, Victor Rasuk wearing his custom Book A Tailor suit!

Hey Bravo Fans...

Recognize this guy? It's Josh Altman from the hit Bravo TV show, "Million Dollar Listing: LA". He stopped in to our showroom to get fit for a new suit. 

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Hey New York City, did you know that if you come into the NYC showroom and order with us you can have your order delivered to you if you're in the Manhattan, Brooklyn or Queens area. 

Schedule an appointment at Book A Tailor with one of our styling geniuses and take advantage of it today! 

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