Color In Your Wardrobe What Percent Of Color Should Be In A Man's Closet - How Men Use
Colors
Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm going to be talking about color.
This comes from my book, "A Man's Guide to Color", and today what I'm going to be talking
about is color and what percentage should be in your wardrobe.
THE CONFUSION
We see the color wheel.
Any of us that have really wanted to introduce color to our wardrobes, we found this color
wheel and it's confusing because look at the percentages of lime green, yellow, orange,
red.
Honestly, if we follow these and we went with these percentages, we would be dressing like
a clown.
Now, the color wheel isn't designed to give you a percentage of what color should be in
your wardrobe, but the way it's presented, that we feel that it is.
So you should be thinking about color like this.
This is something that I've created.
I have my artist actually just put it together, and we break out the percentages of white,
grey, navy blue, black, blue, brown, green, purple, red, yellow, and orange, and the variance
of each of those colors that should be in your wardrobe.
Now, this is an average guy.
Many of you out there will want more color and many of you out there will want less.
This, again, is just a general guide, so I think it's a good place to start, but yes,
this is probably a conservative professional who would be introducing these colors.
If you're in a creative field, why not introduce more color?
Let's talk about each of them.
WHITE - 20%
White, 20% of your wardrobe, okay.
This is going to be your underwear, your skivvies, all that stuff that goes on underneath.
In addition, you need to have a steady collection of white shirts.
They go with anything.
They're basically like a clean palette that you can draw.
They're a blank canvass.
I'm not saying you need to have white pants or a white jacket.
No.
Again, 20% of your wardrobe sounds like a lot and it's the one with the biggest percentage,
but there are others.
GREY - 18%
Let's go ahead and get into grey.
Grey comes in many variance, so we've got from light grey to charcoal grey.
Here, I'm just showing you a medium grey flannel, but grey should be your first suit, if not
navy blue.
It's great for having some grey flannel trousers, introducing perhaps a grey sports jacket.
This is a solid color that should make up and I see used a lot in suits and in jackets
of that sort.
NAVY BLUE - 14%
Navy blue, again, this falls with suits.
It can go with odd trousers that you decide to wear.
I like grey for trousers, but navy blue works as well.
Some of you will find that navy blue is just going to work better for your complexion.
For the older men, it definitely gives them a younger feel, so navy blue is going to be
-- and again, I'm talking more professional colors right now.
BLACK - 13%
So black, here we've got Thor.
Anyone in the comments who want to put his real name?
I enjoyed the movie, plus I'm really looking forward with the new movie coming out along
with the second Avengers, whenever that one hits.
But in any case, here he's dressed out in all black.
Some of you are going to find that black is going to go much higher.
You're going to prefer black over navy blue or over greys.
I like black simply because with the right complexion, it works.
I can tell you that if this gentleman didn’t have his hair slick down, it's very easy for
him to be overwhelmed by this black color.
I think he's wearing this outfit at night.
It's a little bit too much black for me, but when you're in the movie industry, you can
pull off a lot of this stuff.
If you have dark complexion and you have black hair, black is going to be a great evening
color for you, one that you'll be able to pull off.
And again, for many men, this is going to be even a higher percentage than 13% and they're
going to pull back on greys and pull back on navy blues.
BLUE - 12%
Now blues, not to be confused with navy blue.
This is going to be your light blue.
This is going to be your indigo.
This is your blue jeans, your blue shirts along with maybe light blue trousers if you
decide to go with something like that.
Again, blue is a staple color.
Notice how we haven't really brought in any of those lime greens or oranges yet?
BROWN - 10%
Brown isn't for every man, but I find if you have brown hair, you should strongly consider
brown sports jackets, tan trousers.
All these things are going to work, so tans, browns, they all fall in here together.
GREEN - 7%
Green, and I'm a big fan of olive, fatigue, military-looking greens.
They have a very military feel, so they become a very strong, masculine look.
Here you see a fatigue jacket to the left.
Any former marine, can you name that sweater to the right?
It starts with a W and the second part starts with a P. These olive greens, these solid
greens are very masculine color with a military heritage.
PURPLE, RED, YELLOW, ORANGE - 6%
Okay, the remaining 6%, purple, red, yellow, and orange.
So instead of taking up half of your wardrobe, these in my opinion should be a much smaller
percent.
These are accent pieces.
These are like spices and you can bring in some loud sweaters occasionally or a polo
shirt that's got a bit more color in it, but I like to reserve this for ties, for pocket
squares, for accessories like socks that are less expensive and you can rotate through.
You could be wearing a very simple navy suit with a white shirt and you could change out
that tie every day of the week.
You can get away with everything else being the same except for that tie, and probably
no one is going to notice.
They're just going to think that you have a pretty simple collection of suits, and there
are guys that probably do that.
So guys, remember, colors like these are like spice.
You don't have to add a whole lot to your wardrobe.
I would love to hear from you down on the comments below.
Where do you use color in your wardrobe and where do you maybe disagree with me?
Where do you agree?
What can you add to the conversation?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Please like this video if you like it and I'd love to see you subscribe.
I will see you in the next video.
Take care.
Bye-bye.