Young Man Style Advice - 4 Tips On Building Your Inner Core - Gentleman Fashion Tips
Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm going to be giving style advice to the young man who is just starting his
journey.
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Okay.
I've got a couple of questions, both of them from young men, and so I'm going to try to
address them both here with some bigger overarching answers.
"Hi, Antonio!
I'm a 17-year-old man, about 6'5", 195 pounds.
Due to a recent growth spurt, everything I own is too small.
I'm clueless as to what to do because I've never been taught how to dress.
Can you help me?"
The other one is, "I'm 15 years old.
I live in Australia and I'm skinny and tall, and I want to know if you have any suggestions
for me on what to wear.
I want to look manly, but I don't want to look ridiculous.
Can you help me please?"
He's also asking about wallets and can I help him find a manly wallet.
Okay, so this is a bigger issue and I see this with a lot of younger men, especially
younger men who have no role model or nobody showing them how to dress, and perhaps they
come from a single -- they've got a mom raise them or they have a father who he's focusing
on other things and he's not focusing on helping his son into the world of men's style and
understanding how important it is that we put our best foot forward.
The first thing I'm going to say to these young men is focus on building you.
It's totally non-style related, but if you watched any of my other videos, you know I
talk about how style is not the end all, be all.
There is no such thing as manly clothing or a manly wallet.
There's only the man who owns these items and by himself being whatever you define it
to be as a man, whatever you define manliness to be.
But through that, basically the clothing and the items that he owns, they allow him to
show the -- I've used the analogy of a diamond and how you've got to polish a diamond, and
that's all clothing and all these accessories that I talk about.
They really are.
They're polish on a diamond and they help you shine.
So in both of these cases, they sound like very young men who are just starting their
journey, and if they were anything like me, I was incredibly -- how can I say it -- shy?
I look back on high school and I really regret unfortunately a lot of things in terms of
being able to talk to girls.
I could not do it.
I was just horrible in high school.
I wasn't confident in myself as a young man.
I was really thin, very skinny, and I just felt that -- well, I felt like a weakling.
I felt like people could push me around.
I did get pushed around a bit growing up, and it's one of those things that you carry
with you.
And at this point, that needs to be your focus.
I know clothing is a part of that and I'll give you a few tips on this, but I would say
first focus on challenging yourself because to this day, I'm still not a huge guy.
I go to the gym.
I try to stay in good shape, but most men, I think when it comes down to it -- I'm average
in size, so probably half of the United States is bigger than me.
If I try to measure myself in that way, I'm always
going to fail, but I've come to the realization through experience, through pushing myself,
through challenging myself, through taking on responsibility that I know who I am and
I know what kind of a man I am, and I'm not afraid to be who I am.
And so, the clothing I choose, it becomes much easier once the inner core -- once you've
worked on who you are, then choosing clothing, believe it or not, becomes a lot easier because
you're able to choose what you like, choose what complements you and go for it.
So whether you're a mechanic, whether you're a banker, whether you're a lawyer, whether
you're a plumber, it doesn’t really matter.
If you understand who you are, then you can put on your uniform or you can put on whatever
uniform it might be and you're going to feel and you're going to look good.
Let me see.
Push yourself, seek responsibility, so the next thing for these young men is I would
say find a mentor.
It'll be great if it would be somebody local, but I understand you may be in a small town.
You may be in an area where nobody's dressing in a manner that you respect.
So subscribe to a magazine.
I've recommended Esquire.
GQ is not that bad.
There are a number of these magazines, Men's Health.
Look through pretty much any magazine you get and look at the gentleman and say, "You
know, I like this guy's style."
I was looking at the CEO, I believe -- was it Twitter?
I think it was the CEO of Twitter.
Gosh, it wasn't Twitter.
I'm kicking myself here.
Maybe it was Groupon, one of these internet companies.
It wasn't Facebook, I'll tell you that, but in any case, it was one of those startups
out in San Francisco and it had a gentleman, and he was wearing a dress shirt and he had
a hoodie over the dress shirt.
Not my style, but I looked at the overall picture of him.
He had a pair of dark denim on.
It was actually a nice hoodie, like something that looked like it cost maybe -- or it's
Italian or something.
It was a more stylish-looking sweater/hoodie.
I was looking at that style put together, and again, it wasn't me but I was like, "You
know, I can see this working for the right man," and it was making me reconsider my stance
on the typical hoodies I see around here.
Find a picture like that.
Find a few of these styles.
Tear those out of a magazine and say, "You know, I'm going to imitate this.
I'm going to find a way to put this outfit together for perhaps a lot cheaper and I'm
going to try it.
I'm going to experiment," because number three, once you've found people to imitate, you need
to experiment.
You need to not be afraid, and this goes back to part one when I talked about having confidence
in yourself because this is the point in your life when you want to try new things, you
want to experiment.
I mean, I'm not into Goth and all that stuff.
I think guys painting their fingernails and stuff like that is a little bit out there,
but I would have to say that those guys have a bit of confidence.
To be able to dress in that manner, to be able to walk into their school or wherever
they're going and to know that people are staring at them, but they're learning a valuable
lesson.
They're learning the ability to indentify themselves with a group of individuals because
you'll notice that those teenagers that dress that way usually stick together and they have
a very deep connection with each other.
I can tell you as a man who cares about his appearance, whenever I run into another well-dressed
gentleman, I can tell there's a little bit of an instant bit of respect that we both
know that we put in the extra time to polish our shoes, to throw on a sports jacket even
though we're just walking around Wausau, Wisconsin, that we went the extra mile.
And so, we give each other just a little bit more credibility.
Now, you can destroy that by sounding like an idiot or not knowing what you're talking
about, but you can see where I'm going.
So the last thing I'm going to say for young men is that number four, they need to learn
to be industrious.
They need to be resourceful.
It's at this point which you're going to be picking up skill sets, and this kind of goes
to experimenting, but I would say for the taller men, it sounds like you're tall and
skinny, it's going to be hard for you to find shirts that fits you properly.
Learn to sew.
It's not that difficult and you're at a point where you could go ask people to give you
a few extra tips.
Ask for an old sewing machine.
Walk into a seamstress' shop and see if she's got something, some old shirts or throwaways
that you can experiment darting on.
You pick up these skill sets and they're going to be useful.
Many young men, they learn how to change oil on a vehicle, which I learned.
I grew up with horses and kind of almost like on a ranch, not a very nice one.
It wasn't the nicest ranch, but we did have horses.
We had lots of animals and it was something I learned a lot about that.
Nowadays, I don't have a lot of animals, but the skill sets, I've learned about fixing
my aunt's truck, delivering a foal, things like that.
I don't know where I'm going to need that again, but it was something that was an incredible
experience.
I learned a lot.
And moving forward, I've seen that stuff happen.
I can take that and move on.
I'm not saying that you need to follow and become some type of a seamstress or a tailor.
I'm just simply saying realizing that you're a human being that you've got a lot of potential
and that you can learn to do anything.
Once you pick up the skill -- I can tell you that I get emails from guys all the time wishing
that they knew how to fix this.
And if you know how to do some basic sewing, the best part is whenever you go looking at
tailors or seamstresses, you're going to be able to say, "Oh, I can look at this guy's
work and he does a really shotty work.
I'm going to move on."
And you can tell that by the way he does his stitching.
Perhaps it only took you a few hours to learn this.
Okay, guys, I gave you four tips.
I think I went into a lot of detail on them, but I think this is an important subject because
there are a lot of young men out there who are seeking guidance and I feel that they're
worrying about really kind of the smaller things and they need to look at the big picture,
which is focusing on themselves and proving their confidence, and then experimenting going
out there, finding a mentor, and being industrious.
This has been Antonio Centeno with Real Men Real Style.
I'll see you in the next video.
Bye-bye.