The evolution of my fashion sense was a combination of avoidance and testosterone-inspired ignorance. It started with the obligatory trip to JC Penney before my first day of school, became ridiculous during the Hawaiian shirt look in the 80s, and recovered slightly with the “metro” craze of the 90s. Today, I try for acceptability, but still manage to trip my wife’s withering gaze when I throw on something for the neighborhood social.
But I’m better.
I wish I could take the credit, but that has to go to those Internet fashionistas who dared to climb the greatest of mountains—how men dress. For someone like me, the best sites/blogs not only show me what is fashionable, but take that next step and 1) show me where to buy it, 2) why I should buy it, and 3) how to wear it. Currently, the kings of this new generation of blog is the declaratively-welcome Put This On, where they combine lists of clothes men should have in their closets with a multi-part history of the button-down shirt. But if those gents are the kings then StyleGirlfriend is the queen. She meets all the criteria in the voice of someone who is gently ignoring your slacker tendencies while telling you what people really think of certain sunglasses, or how to wear a polo shirt in public. The definitive word in walking you through the world of what to wear must be that of fashion journalist cum sociologist Andy Gilchrist, whose site Ask Andy About Clothes not only gives you answers to all sorts of situations but does so with wit, wisdom and statistics. Where else will you find not only information about how to dress for a variety of situations (job interview, public speaking, TV), but gives you the latest research on why clothes shopping is good for brain function.
Other sites, such as A Continuous Lean, use men’s fashion as a way of exploring the nature of manhood, or like the site Well-Spent, the nature of quality. And then there are the standards like the GQ Eye and Esquire, which still weigh in heavily on what it takes to be the 2013 equivalent of a Dapper Dan.
So, remember, you sir, the one in the Motley Crue t-shirt: help is only a click and a gaze away.
–Ryan Schryver