Welcome back to the Gentleman's Gazette! In today's video, we'll discuss how to
combine two of the most classic and iconic colors in menswear,
blue and gray.
Blue and gray are arguably the two most important colors in all of menswear, at
least when it comes to assembling your wardrobe.
Both of these hues not only play well with various
other colors that you might have in your closet but they also work very well with
one another making them extremely versatile. When
executed properly, a pairing of blue and gray will be able to look stylish in
both conservative and more bold settings. So today, we'll
look at the number of different ways that you can pair these two colors
together. Perhaps the easiest way to pair blue and gray is to do so in a suit
and tie combination. It's often said that when a man first
ventures into the world of tailored clothing
or when he gets a job that demands he wear a suit and tie
that a navy blue suit ought to be his first choice.
And pairing this blue suit with a gray tie is a surefire way to earn style
points. Following along this same line of
reasoning, the second suit that a man is often recommended to buy would be a gray
one, either in a darker charcoal gray or a
slightly lighter medium gray. Here then, one could simply
take the opposite approach and pair this gray suit with a blue tie
whether light or dark depending on the shade of
the suit. Blue, of course, is a cool color and gray can often take on a
cool tone, therefore, blue and gray will pair well
together in these circumstances. And even if a gray that you may be
wearing has some warmer brown tones, that's not anything to be afraid of
because blue and brown also pair very well together and you can
find more about that in our video here. By the way, if you'd like to learn
more about cool colors, warm colors, and related terminology, as
well as how to leverage these concepts in your outfits,
you can find our video on the color wheel here.
Meanwhile, if you're curious about why we would recommend a navy blue or a gray
suit as some of the first you should own, you can find our video on how many suits
we think a man really needs here. So while wearing blue and gray
together in a suit and tie combination may be easiest,
it can also be done in a variety of other contexts.
Let's take, for example, wearing odd jacket and odd trousers together.
If you're just getting started in the world of menswear and are curious to
learn how to pair jackets and trousers of
different colors together starting with the blue and gray pairing
will be easy. Like the navy suit, the navy blazer
is also a staple of menswear so if you take
this and add some gray trousers, you'll have a natural look that's a little bit
sportier than a full suit. Furthermore, adding some simple accessories to the
ensemble, like a linen pocket square in either
plain white or something with a bit more color
will ensure that your outfit won't be mistaken for a uniform.
Also, additional personality can be added to the outfit by incorporating
pattern in some of the other garments like your shirt or
tie. Meanwhile, the opposite of this combination,
which is to say, a gray sport coat with navy trousers
is perhaps seen a bit more rarely. Still, there's no reason to think you can't
pull it off if you follow these general guidelines.
The key here is to have a bit of variance in the types of fabrics between
your trousers and your jacket. So for example, if you were wearing more
plain blue trousers, you might want to go for a jacket that
either has a pattern or some texture to it. Pattern examples
for a sport coat might be something like a glen check or prince of wales check
and a textured weave like tweed would also be a good choice.
Full suits, as well as combinations of sport coat and odd trousers,
are probably the simplest and most basic way to
pair blue and gray together. Before we go on with any other suggestions though,
let's go over some more specific do's and don'ts
to ensure that you're putting the two colors together properly.
Our first tip here is to avoid extreme differences in contrast.
Using the example of a darker charcoal gray suit,
you might want to avoid an exceptionally pale
blue tie. A bit of contrast in your outfits is never a bad thing, of course,
but when the overall tones of the colors in your outfits
are at almost opposite ends of the spectrum, the cumulative effect for the
viewer can be a bit jarring. Our next tip which
we have hinted at somewhat already is to incorporate more pattern and
texture into the outfits. Using the example of a suit, you could, of
course, start with what we recommended at the beginning,
which is to say a plain blue suit, plain gray tie,
and perhaps a plain white shirt. This is a bit of a starker outfit though
and it will get boring quickly. Just by changing out the plain gray tie
for a glencheck model in silk or perhaps in wool for winter,
you'll already be adding a bit more visual interest to the outfit.
A medium gray suit might be well complemented by a navy blue
tie in grenadine, for example, and if you'd like to learn more about grenadine,
you can do so in our article here. And as we already mentioned,
adding some texture, either to a sport coat in something like tweed
or perhaps in a more casual outfit to the trousers in something like
corduroy, might also be a good idea. Our final tip here is perhaps the most
sophisticated method of pairing blue and gray together
which is to wear items that contain both colors.
Choosing a patterned suit would be an easy way to do this.
For example, a navy suit with a gray over check or the reverse, a gray suit with a
blue overcheck. Also, if wearing a sport coat and odd
trouser combination, having a weave that incorporates some
blue into gray could also look smart. Silk
ties with blue and gray geometric patterns or knit ties
that incorporate blue and gray fibers are also good
choices. A patterned shirt could also be an
option assuming that the scale of the pattern is harmonizing with the overall
formality of the outfit. Bringing all of these ideas together, the
outfit i'm wearing today incorporates a small micro checked blue
and gray shirt, also with a bow tie containing a
geometric blue pattern over a gray base. So we've
covered the basics of suiting and wearing combinations of
jackets and trousers, as well as our overall tips on pairing
blue and gray, let's get back into some more specific
examples. Now, talking first about layering further.
When discussing layering, we might immediately think of overcoats and
sweaters, as well as other items for cold weather
and indeed, these types of garments do present more
opportunities for pairing blue and gray together.
You could alternate your layers of blue and gray hues.
For example, wearing a blue tie, gray sweater vest, and blue jacket,
or you could go with large blocks of the same color
like wearing a sweater, trousers, and tie all in blue and then putting a gray
sport coat over top. The same principle can be extended to
overcoats depending whether the garment is blue or gray,
you can try to determine whether it would look best to wear
trousers in a similar color or in the opposite color.
And of course, when wearing a sweater as its own outer layer,
the same general color pairing rules apply as when we discussed
sport coats and odd trousers. Incorporating
more accessories like gloves, hats, and scarves
also provide further opportunity for pairing blue and gray
and again here, you have two broad theories to follow.
Let's use the example of a navy overcoat, you could go
largely monochromatic and select blue gloves and a blue scarf to wear
or provide some more contrast with a gray scarf
and gray gloves. Speaking of which, the Fort Belvedere shop has a wide variety
of both gloves and scarves in blue and gray
colors, as well as others to choose from and you can find them here. Speaking of
our Fort Belvedere offerings, you could also go with a double-sided scarf like
this one in dark blue and gray allowing you to
incorporate both colors or just show one depending
on how the scarf is tied and of course, boutonnieres are a great
accessory to incorporate too. You're not going to find many gray
flowers but you'll find various tones of blue
such as the veronica persica that i'm wearing today
or something like a blue cornflower that incorporates a bit more of a violet tone.
Though blue and gray are usually some of the most conservative colors in menswear
in most applications, a bolder choice would be to
wear either of these colors in your footwear.
Dark navy oxfords might be a good choice with a more conservative suit
as they might, at first, look like standard black shoes
but upon closer inspection, do incorporate just a bit of added color.
If you're looking for something bolder though, you could go for a shoe
in a true blue, say for example, a whole cut
oxford or maybe a monk strap shoe, these would go well with a
gray suit. Polished leather shoes in blue might look good with a sport coat and
odd trouser combination but your best bet in terms of wide
availability for blue shoes are probably going to be navy
loafers in suede. Pairing blue shoes of any sort
with blue trousers can be a bit trickier but you should be
able to pull it off as long as the two colors are
relatively similar in brightness. If you'd like something that would be
maximally versatile with blue and gray outfits,
though a bit bolder, you could try to find a
spectator shoe that incorporates blue and gray.
Solid gray shoes are even more rare whether in leather or suede and they can
be trickier to pair with your outfits. Gray leather shoes are often going to be
on the lighter side and for this reason, they can be awkward
to pair with navy trousers due to that high contrast principle we
discussed previously. Therefore, a gray shoe that is slightly
darker in color, more toward the medium to charcoal end
of the spectrum might be more versatile. For example, the
gray suede shoes I'm wearing today are medium gray, slightly darker than my
trousers, and therefore, serve to ground the outfit
somewhat. Of course, if you're not quite ready yet
to make the leap to blue or gray shoes, you could also spice up an outfit by
adding shoe laces in those colors. For example, you might
want to put gray laces on a pair of black oxfords to
make them a bit less formal or you could put blue laces on a pair of
brown shoes to make them more playful and as you
might have guessed, Fort Belvedere also offers shoe aces in
various colors and you can find them here. And on the
topic of footwear options, socks are also a natural way to
incorporate some blue and gray into your outfits.
For a more conservative look, try to match the color of your socks to those
of your trousers and for a more playful look, you could go
for more contrast. In either scenario though, we wouldn't
necessarily recommend trying to match the color of your socks
to your shoes. Again here, wearing socks that do contain
both colors, for example, blue and gray shadow striped
models would be a good choice. Finally here,
though we do focus on classic style at the Gentleman's Gazette,
we would be remiss in this video not to mention perhaps the most commonly seen
piece of blue clothing that anyone owns, denim blue jeans.
For a more casual look, jeans can certainly be paired with a jacket
providing you're hitting some general bases to make sure the outfit isn't
overly casual. Dark wash denim is best for slightly more formality, of course,
the jeans shouldn't have any distressing and the jacket should be slightly more
casual like something in an unstructured cotton or again, a wool
tweed. And as denim shirts have become more
popular too, you might take one of these in a medium
wash, pair it with a dark navy jacket, and some
gray trousers, as well as perhaps some blue suede
loafers and have another good casual outfit. And if you've got
questions about any of these concepts, we've got videos
on pairing jackets with jeans, finding the best denim for your body
type, and denim shirts, which you can all find here. There's a
reason why blue and gray are probably the two most
fundamental colors often seen in menswear,
they're both relatively neutral and they're maximally versatile in combining
with a wide variety of outfits, therefore, it
stands to reason that they should go exceptionally well together. Those who
are new to color coordination can use them to create
fundamentally sound outfits with minimal anxiety
and those who are more advanced in their menswear journey
can come back to pairing them together as a constant while continuing to
experiment. And if today's video has inspired you to
look into further color pairings, we've got an
entire playlist on that subject which you can find here. In today's video,
I'm trying to exemplify many of the concepts we
discussed. Most of my outfit elements have blue and
gray in them; the largest of these would be my blue
jacket and gray trousers. The jacket is a bit lighter than a
standard navy, probably in something more like a medium
to even a royal blue, it's plain in color to ground the
trousers which have a bit more texture in their weave. As mentioned
previously, my shirt features a micro check pattern in
light blue and dark gray perhaps even almost black but everything
is working harmoniously within the color pairing.
My bow tie is one of our jacquard weave silk models from the Fort Belvedere shop
in a color that we call battleship gray and it has blue
diamond accents also from Fort Belvedere are my veronica persica
boutonniere in light blue and my white linen pocket square which features a
blue contrasting x stitch. My socks are from Fort Belvedere
too, they're gray and feature a contrasting
light blue shadow stripe and my shoes are gray
suede derbies from Heinrich Dinkelacker. As an added
bonus today, my suspenders are also in a blue color
even though they wouldn't normally be seen
and you can find all of the accessories featured in today's video
in the Fort Belvedere shop here.