Back to What Basics?

Learn the basics.  It’s almost the mantra of the menswear community.  Pretty much everyone and their mother has said it by now, and I’m just as guilty of as the next guy.  But no one’s bothered to answer the really simple question: what makes something basic in the first place?

It’s the conversation about bow ties on Esquire’s Style Blog between Lawrence A. Schlossman and Chris Callis that got me thinking about this.  Lawrence is ready to burn the bows while Chris is tying one on, but they find semi-common ground when Chris recommends “you have your basics down and are ready to develop your style” before coping one.  It’s good sound advice, but it got me thinking about what the basics actually are? And are there any universal basics at all?  If you’re a reader of either of these gents’ sites (which you should be by now, seriously)* you’ll realize pretty quickly that this would be an even bigger debate than whether papillon neckwear is in or out.

Simply put, one man’s Boglioli is another’s black tie.  Style is at its most basic an expression of self.  It’s not like high-fashion precisely because to have style we each have to be a little different, not the same.  We lead different lives, have different passions, different personalities, and different aspirations.  And so we dress differently.

“Basic” implies a start or a foundation.  If we all dress differently, it only follows that our foundations should be slightly different, no?

I’ll speak for myself first.  I’m a graduate student – I don’t get much opportunity to wear suits, so starting my sartorial journey with solid navy and gray suits would be pretty useless right now.  I have to stock my closet with odd trousers, moderately-casual sport coats, and less formal ties, because if I didn’t I wouldn’t have anything to wear most days.  This means a different understanding of color and texture from the guy who wears mostly suits, as well as understanding little ways to dress things up or down on a budget.

My style reflects the life I live and what I do in my clothes.  My basics are the things I live in day-to-day and how I think of putting them together.  They’re certainly not the things that sit in my closet unworn or the new stuff I want to snatch up when I read my tumblr feed.

Things like collar shapes, which Lawrence points to as something to be mastered before moving on to bow ties, aren’t perfected over night.  I agree that collars are crucial, as are things like jacket length, lapel width, trouser drape, and all other manner of the minutiae which keeps menswear so interesting, but dressing simply isn’t a step-by-step process.  I didn’t get up one morning and think that I’d finally had enough practice wearing shirts that I could now move to the previously-elusive necktie.

So is a bow tie a basic?  Maybe.  Is knowing how and when to wear one?  Possibly.  But more importantly, that blue blazer, spotted knit tie, pair of slim chinos, grey suit, paisley pocket square, or whatever else you can think of, might be one man’s extravagance and another man’s basic.  And that’s style.

*Sartorially Inclined, HTTTGAP, and Men of Habit if you really need a hint…