Duluth trading company is one of the few companies that makes shirts that fit me — so I’m kind of locked into a lumberjack aesthetic whether I want to be or not.

Back at the beginning of the summer, Edgar wrote a bit about how to dress, and how one goes about developing a sartorial aesthetic – in less pretentious terms, a personal style. Recently, in our conversations, my own attempts to develop one has come up and been a matter of discussion.

A caveat: while Edgar is tall and slim, I don’t have a body that many retailers stock clothes for. My legs are a mere 28 inches long, my shoulders are about 50 inches around, and I have a pronounced gut. Before anyone begins to talk about diet and exercise, I take full responsibility for the gut: I’ve never been terribly athletic, and have made some half-hearted attempts in the past to get rid of it, but it’s probably going to just be here. And no amount of exercising is going to lengthen my legs: we’re always told that we can achieve anything we dream of, but I’ll never quite breach six foot. I will, forever, retain the shape and relative density of a bowling ball.

For example, in the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe was held up as the ideal American beauty — and the 1950s was a time of great prosperity in America.

Yet another caveat: it’s something of a shame that bodies come and go in fashion as much as clothing does. When the economy is strong, it’s apparently the case that more buxom women are considered attractive, and when it is weak, the opposite is true. While I may be more bell-shaped than is considered attractive for a man in the early 21st century, Edgar assures me that I would have been in high demand in the Early Modern period. If only time travel were possible and that corresponded to a time of modern sanitation.

So, for a long time, I took the rather stereotypically masculine approach of not caring what I put on my body so long as it wasn’t full of holes (some of my clothes do have holes; I never said I completely abandoned this approach,) and claimed that anything else was vanity, pure and simple.

Even when I went to punk shows, I never really adopted the uniform. I kept wearing the same clothes that I did previously. I’d jump in the pit, but I’d still be wearing jeans and a (wordless, non-graphic) t-shirt. Later on, when I decided I was wearing button-up shirts, I didn’t change my behavior. I think the only thing that kept me from getting ostracized is that I was there with people who were wearing the clothes.

This isn’t to say that I’m immune to vanity, simply that I found subtler ways to exercise it. For example, through high school and college, I was an actor, and so I learned to pay attention to my own body language. I paid attention to how people walk, and noticed some people carry themselves better than others, and sought to manipulate my own walking and posture. I noticed that some men who had my body type held their arms out in an awkward fashion and walked with a shuffle, like a sea bird landed for the first time in years. Not wanting to look like this, I adjusted.

But, as Edgar has been saying forever, and said in that prior piece, there’s a problem looking at clothes as a vanity: the way that you dress is the only way that you can influence others’ perceptions of you without actually having to talk to them. Given my conversation skills, I quickly did an about-face and began to work on my wardrobe and hygiene.

So, I’ve put together some thoughts on how to dress, complementing Edgar’s. These are a bit more geared towards people who have trouble finding clothes.

First, I’d say that it’s best to ignore issues of currency or vintage style — possibly an odd statement coming from someone as against nostalgia as myself, but I don’t say this out of a desire to inspire metachrony. As I mentioned above, body types go in and out of fashion almost as quickly as clothing does. That’s because they go in and out of fashion at the same time for the same reason: particular garments are designed to look good on particular body types, and it’s a mistake to think that something that’s hip is going to look good on you simply because it’s what everyone thinks is good. There were times when people thought that low-rise jeans, bell bottoms, and cargo pants were a good idea, and with the exception of cargo pants, each of these looks good on a particular body type. Try things on, and see if it works for you.

Of course, when you’re not shaped like the ideal, you’ve got a bit of an uphill battle to fight. I would kill for high-waisted men’s pants that actually look good, because I’ve got a very long waist and something that sits higher would look better and be more comfortable. Unfortunately, I’m also fat, so good luck finding something like that that can be afforded on the type of paycheck I’m bringing home.

The notch in question is the depression at the middle of this photo. Image taken from wikimedia commons.

Second, I think it’s a good idea to develop hard lines for what you will and won’t wear and plan around that. In my opinion, the current fashion of buttoning shirts all the way up over the suprasternal notch is a terrible idea: regardless of what gender you present as, or your sexual orientation, chances are there’s someone out there that you are or would be attracted to who will get some enjoyment out of looking at that particular spot. At the very least, I doubt anyone in the contemporary world is going to be offended by seeing it, and you’re going to feel more comfortable with it uncovered. This, however, is my line: I don’t want to cover up that particular point unless I’m cold or I have to wear a tie. Otherwise, it’s going to be exposed.

Third, in contrast to what I just said, you should test your boundaries and see what works. For some people this means trying on a dress or getting an outlandish haircut. For me it was the comparatively boring move of getting a shirt or two with patterns other than plaid (which...I have to admit, wasn’t easy? There are patterned shirts in my size, but just about all of them are designed to also work as tablecloths at a backyard barbecue – the theme of my wedding was plaid, so I’m not about to knock it, but I want options beyond that, personally.)

Next, and this edges a bit into the healthy masculinity series, which I need to get back to working on in earnest, but if you don’t already do this, you need to learn to step outside of yourself and think of yourself as not just a self-who-observes but a self-who-is-observed. In men this is often coded as effeminate and vain, but in actuality it is potentially a more generous way of approaching things: in public or at work, other people have to deal with you. It’s generally a much better thing to try to be at least inoffensive to the eyes (or at least offensive to the eyes in an interesting way,) than bland or irritating, which is often how poorly-fitting clothing or poorly-chosen clothing comes across to people.

I don’t hate Guy Fieri, he actually seems like a nice guy — but everyone who wears their sunglasses like this is communicating that they have nothing but terrible ideas.

And many of these things are often small choices, often things that don’t cost anything. Consider the trend among men of putting their sunglasses on the backs of their heads when they go inside (or it gets too dark for some other reason.) This, as opposed to putting one arm of the sunglasses into the collar or buttons of their shirt is not simply a fashion choice, it’s a fashion behavior, and I have no idea why it always signals that this man is going to come into my job and act like he’s an authority on bourbon and probably make some kind of disparaging comment about his wife or girlfriend in the process.

This is related to the older phenomenon of how one ties their tie functioning as a class signifier: with the middle class opting for a less-symmetrical, easier knot, while more moneyed individuals opted for a knot that was more esoteric (including, let’s be real, bow ties.) Fashion is an outgrowth of behavior, which can signal something about personal character – a realization that Edgar offered all of us freely already.

This, however, is the actified end of the same self-objectification I mentioned above (which, if memory serves, is ultimately a slightly less-woke version of something Simone de Beauvoir said. But she was analyzing gender and I’m trying to teach you how to get dressed. There’s only so conscious of the world you can be, because every time you wash synthetic fabrics you’re introducing more microplastic beads into the environment, and how many garments do you own that were sewn in the global south or an American prison? Let’s check with Karl Marx: there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. Let’s figure out how to get dressed and then try to save the world.) You should make sure that your clothes communicate who you are and who you want to be perceived as; you should also make sure that it looks good, and is comfortable.

As another aside, Winter is the only time of year I fit in with the punks in Kansas City. We all own the same beaten-up pea coat. Because pea coats are easy to come by and functional: in this way, their adoption would be an example of the difference between fad (a flash-in-the-pan viral adoption to harvest social capital,) and a trend (a gradual shift in behavior because it leads to better results over time.) Among KC punk rockers of a certain age category, the adoption of the pea coat is a trend. It’s just lucky that it also tends to look good.

You can also tend to get them from thrift shops, and if you’re willing to go through the trouble of cleaning things from a thrift store, that’s probably the best way to find nonstandard clothes.

Lastly, and most importantly, when you consider how you get dressed, you should make sure that it’s actually something you want to wear. I think cargo pants – and especially cargo shorts – are generally a bad call, but I own multiple pairs of cargo pants and shorts because it was what was most functional for the job I had at the time I was buying them, and if something is desirable either because of the conditions you find yourself in or just your own inclinations, then of course, that’s what you should wear.

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The Difficulty of Developing a Personal Style