Sharp & Casual Dressing For The Young Man - Art Of Manliness Video - Quick Style Fashion
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Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm coming to you from my front porch here in Wisconsin and we don't have too many
nice days left here before winter sets in.
The sun's out.
It's deceptively cold, though I would say it's in the low 40s, but it's warm enough
that I could come out here and film this.
Now, what are we talking about today?
Today, I'm going to be talking about dressing sharp, but dressing casual for the young men.
I've gotten a lot of these requests, so I'm going to try to touch in on this today.
This is going to be a short video.
If you want more, this video is in support of my article over at The Art of Manliness,
and that article is almost 5000 words long, so we get into a lot more detail there.
This, again, it's just the primer.
I've got a few examples I'm going to show you here, but if you haven't already, please
subscribe to my YouTube channel.
By doing that, these videos will come right to you.
In addition, if you find this useful, I would appreciate it if you would click on the "like"
button right below.
And while you're down there, make sure to check out my free 47-page e-book.
It's 47 pages of great information about men's style.
So the article over at The Art of Manliness, what are we talking about there?
Well, that is a monster article.
You guys have been sending me questions.
"How can a young man improve the way he dresses?"
"How can he dress better?"
"How can he put his best foot forward and why?"
Why should a young man care?
I mean, you're in college or perhaps you've got your first job or you're in high school.
Why should you even care about the way you present yourself to the world?
Well, I'm going to tell you, there are two things, maybe not so much in high school,
but definitely in college and once you're out there with your first job.
You are out there trying to impress people.
I know that doesn’t sound great or anything, but you work for somebody or you're out there
and perhaps you've got your own business, but you've got clients who are going to pay
you.
If you're going door to door or if you are on the phone, in a sense, the way you dress
matters.
Why on the phone?
Because the way you put yourself together in the morning sets the tone for you internally.
They've done studies that show that a man can put on a doctor's jacket and he doesn’t
even have to be a doctor, but he's going to perform better on tests or on exams simply
because of the way the clothing affects him.
Think about that.
Whenever you put on a uniform and let's say most of us here in North America, we've played
football or we've played soccer, we've played baseball.
When you put on that uniform, you get into the mindset.
If you put on your basketball uniform, you go off on to that gym or on to the field,
whatever it may be, and you are ready to play.
The same thing applies when you prepare and you dress yourself in the morning.
And so, it affects the way other people look at you, the way you look at yourself, and
it's competitive out there.
Guys, if you haven't seen, the economy is not doing great across the world, and you're
also at a point where you're perhaps looking for a mate.
You're looking for your life partner and that is something that you want to be able to set
the right impression, so that is why this matters.
So three things that I don't really talk about this in the article, but I've talked about
them in dozens of my other videos, focus on fit, fabric, and style, so really quick.
FIT
Fit, make sure your clothing fits you.
You are in the best shape of your entire life.
You want to give off a good, healthy, masculine look and you can do that with your clothing
fitting you properly.
If it's too loose, well, you're simply putting yourself in a disadvantage because you're
covering one of your most -- well, your physical asset, which is your body and how you take
care of it especially at this point in your life.
FABRIC
Now, fabric, what do I mean by that?
Well, I don't necessarily just mean the fabric.
I also mean the quality of the build, how the clothing is made, so there is a difference.
One of the first things that we'll talk about here is polo shirts and these are pretty simple.
It's a little bit cold for a polo shirt right now, but the fabric of this polo shirt is
medium to low quality.
It's an Old Navy shirt.
I think I picked it up for probably $10 a number of years ago.
This shirt works fine, but it is of lower quality fabric and the build is low quality.
The buttons aren't that great.
These little things add up and that's why you see higher end shirts made from companies
like Polo, Ralph Lauren, something like that.
They command a premium because they're usually better made, not always.
They would be better if you could get them on sale especially with a student's budget.
STYLE
We've talked about fit.
We've talked about fabric.
Quickly, style, so one of the other items I'm going to be talking about or I'll talk
about here is the guayabera.
We talk about this in the article.
I've written an entire article about it, but this is a shirt that for many people, it looks
like simple white shirt, but the guayabera has embroidery.
It's got these pleats on the front.
It's got button placement.
It's also sewn with a -- this is made with a linen fabric, so things like that help set
the style apart epaulettes, double pockets on the front.
These help set the shirt apart and give you just a little bit better presentation of style.
So I've already started here on the shirts and today, I'm going to be going through talking
about how you can upgrade.
Most guys out there, you're wearing t-shirts, jeans, and running shoes.
I see it all the time.
If it's cold, you throw on a sweatshirt.
Let's upgrade that, so how can you upgrade the t-shirt?
Well, one easy thing that you can bring in, polo shirts, very easy.
Then we also talked about guayaberas, but there are also casual, long-sleeve shirts
which you could roll up and always look better than a t-shirt because they've got the color.
These aren't dress shirts.
You can see by the front patch pocket we have here on this shirt.
Also, the color is a bit of a stonewash.
This is more of like an orange-red.
It's not pink, but it's definitely -- it looks like a white with a red.
It gives it this orange feel.
The stitching is white, so little things like this helps set this as clearly a very casual
shirt, but this shirt looks much better than even a polo shirt, I think, definitely if
it fits you.
Remember I talked about fit, so let's go quickly with this shirt right here.
I'm bringing in this white dress shirt and this is dressier than that casual shirt I
just showed you.
And another thing I did with this white dress shirt, it's going to be a little bit hard
to see, but hopefully you can -- actually we went through and we darted this shirt,
so the back of the shirt, we brought in about an inch on the two back sides, and what that
did is it made the shirt fit a bit closer to the body, so pay attention to the style.
Pay attention to the fit.
All of that adds up.
This casual shirt is a bit darker.
Therefore, it's going to be a little bit dressier than that orange reddish one I just showed
you, but the embroidery on the shoulders, that really says and sends a signal that this
is more casual.
It has no front pockets, so that makes it a little bit, I would say, dressier.
We're talking shades of grey here.
This shirt right here is a good fit.
I could wear this out into the evening, not so much that reddish orange.
That's more of a day wear.
Now, we talked quickly about dress shirts and many of you young men, you're out there,
you do have occasions for a dress shirt, but let's say you don't want to necessarily wear
the white dress shirt or the light blue dress shirt, which is the standard for most men
out there.
Well, why not bring in a different fabric.
And so, here again we're going to fabric, which is one of the three components I talked
about, and we're bringing in a little bit of a check fabric.
This is a shirt made by 5th & Lamar, good company out of Austin, Texas, and I really
like this fabric.
It's blue.
It's got a little bit of white in it as well, so we use very classic colors.
From a distance, it's going to look simply like a light blue shirt, but when you get
up probably within, I would say, 20 to 30 feet, you're going to start to see that there's
a bit of a pattern in there, and this really sets itself apart from all the other, just
regular solid blue or white shirts out there.
I mentioned sweatshirts, all right.
I love my Texas sweatshirt, but I don't wear this all the time.
I wear it on game days.
I wear it when I'm out exercising, going to the gym.
I see guys wearing their sweatshirts all over the place.
How about you take that up a notch?
Many of you guys have seen me in the last few videos wearing this pullover.
This is a pullover sweater made by Timberland.
It's 100% wool.
It's like 90% to 95% wool.
I really like the fit and feel of this.
This sweater fit me really well.
I like Timberland's website.
They give you the exact measurements, but this right here is a huge step up from the
sweatshirt.
A step up from this is actually going to be a cashmere sweater, and this is a cashmere
turtleneck in a solid olive green.
This one right there, it's casual in a sense that it's got a little bit of knitting right
here in the shoulders.
It's got the Timberland logo.
It's got the buttons right here at the front.
These look like they're Horn, but they're imitation Horn.
This one right here is more streamlined and it's going to fully cover the neck, even though
a little bit -- probably in the same level of formality is going to be this very nice
V-neck sweater, so I can wear this over a dress shirt, that blue dress shirt.
Again, this is actually from 5th & Lamar.
They just started getting into sweaters.
A simple V-neck sweater is much more elegant.
It puts you in a whole another level than trying to wear a sweatshirt, guys.
Okay, so quickly we're going to talk about jeans.
These light-colored jeans, I've had these for years.
They were made from Levi's.
These are about as informal as it gets, although this is going to give them a run for their
money.
These, I love the buckle, and it's because of these tears and these rips here that it's
okay casual wear for the young man, but when I see a guy in his mid-30s, early 40s trying
to pull off a look like this with a form-fitting t-shirt, it doesn’t matter that he takes
care of his body.
He looks like a 40-year-old guy trying to dress like a 20-year-old guy.
So you can wear this as a young man for ultra casual wear, but if you're wanting to set
a better impression, I would invite you to instead look for a solid pair.
You can go with the same shade, but doesn’t have any distress in it.
And Levi's, again, a great company, great brand, l really like what they put out and
they've been doing it for well over a hundred years.
Now, let's talk about this.
This is something a lot of guys get confused about.
If it's got cargo pockets on it, gentlemen, this is casual.
These are not dress slacks.
You don't wear these with a dress shirt and you don't try to pull these off.
They're just going to be too casual for what we're trying to do here.
Okay.
The stack is getting high here.
It's getting hard to reach.
Now, for ultra dress, I mean, that's kind of an oxymoron, but for the dressiest jeans
that you're going to be able to wear, look for something that's made from raw denim.
They're going to have a very dark indigo look and these can almost be -- I wear them with
a sports jacket pretty often.
I was just in Chicago.
I went to a whisky-tasting event.
I wore jeans very similar to these.
One of my favorite pair of trousers that is really -- you don't see it too often -- are
going to be grey flannel trousers.
Gentlemen, grey flannel trousers are a little bit harder to find, but if you can start to
incorporate that in your business casual wardrobe, you're really going to take a step up.
Okay, guys, enough for this video.
I go into a lot more detail in the article.
We talk about footwear.
We talk about accessories.
We talk about a lot more in the article, so go check it out.
I'm going to link to it down below and I will see you guys in the next video.
Take care.
Bye-bye.