Tried something outside my usual silhouette and I’m not mad at it. All black, wide trousers, loafers and a little contrast at the sock. 1–10?

Is there anything that stands out? Anything to add or consider? Thanks.

I'm seeing more and more men wearing Carhartt shirts, tees and even underwear as their daily outfit.

When did Carhartt stop being work wear to become a trendy brand? Did I miss the memo?

Edit: I must say that I don't pay attention to fashion trends at all. I'm only noticing the brand now because I noticed some friends wearing it.

I need some style advice. I recently lost 40 lbs over the last 6 months (down from 255 to 215) and feel great, but I had to throw out most of my old clothes. Currently, I'm just wearing basic plain XL Walmart tees in black, grey, and blue. Large fits me just about right but I would feel more comfortable in them once I hit 205-210.

​For the past 25 years, I am strictly a "polo and jeans" guy, to the point where one of my co workers made a joke that I only have 2 shirts and 1 pair of jeans. They didnt mean it in a bad way but made me realize that i do practically wear the same thing. Aside from some concert tees that I only wear to shows, I've never really worn anything else.

​Since I'm basically starting from scratch, I want to invest in a whole new wardrobe and finally step out of my polo comfort zone.

​I'll be honest, I'm extremely bad at picking out clothes for myself, which is why I really need help. I've browsed through this subreddit and a few others, but I just have a hard time picturing myself in any of the styles. If someone is willing to literally put a full outfit together for me, I will buy it just to see how it looks on me in person rather than trying to judge it from photos. Budget if possible under $200 and I do have about 15 pairs of shoes of different styles, so wouldn't need to buy new ones but know what shoes to wear with said outfit would be great. 

Any advice where to shop for clothes, styles, or pieces is also welcomed.

The photos I included on here are from 2023 where I weighed about 220lbs. Wish I had more photos but that is all I could find. I normally don't like to take photos of myself. These were with family and friends.

Stats:

Age:39M

Height:6'1

Weight:215

I like how the jeans look without the shoes, I think it looks regular. But when I wear my shoes it makes it look skinny.

I'm wondering if this type of shoe is suited for this type of jeans and what other alternative shoes are there that will keep the straight leg look when I don't have shoes on.

Today im reviewing pompeii vega loafers (unboxing only) cause in returning them.

The fit is what i was looking for, not too narrow like other loafers but the size was too small. I chose 42 and i should have chosen 42.5 but they only have 43 so maybe i should have chosen 43.

The color is different than the images on the website, looks like a cheap tan. Maybe its this specific color and others look good.

The all finish and feel, feels cheap. But i think thats fair for 120€ loafers (thats the price i paid including discount)

All n all, im returning them and getting a GH bass.

I have had my good and branded clothes shrink after I wash and dry them in a washer and then in a dryer. Why does it happen and what can I do to avoid it in future?

TIA.

I’ve apparently become dangerously susceptible to clothing ads on Instagram and Facebook. 😂

That said, my batting average has actually been surprisingly good. I’ve tried quite a few brands now, so I thought I’d share my experience and see what other people have discovered.

Madepants - Bought their Utility Pants direct, which shipped from China. I later found the same pants on AliExpress for quite a bit less and bought a few more. Exact same branding. Overall, really good, although sizing runs just a tiny bit small. I’m now considering their M51 Parka Shell, and naturally I’m checking AliExpress before pulling the trigger there too. 😂

Cove - Nice boxy tees. Good fit and quality. Interestingly, my order was fulfilled by Amazon. Also just bought the Baggy jeans (light wash) So far, I like them! Seems vanity sizing? Sizes delivered are labeled 2 sizes smaller than I ordered, but.. they fit fine

Bearbottom - The shirts are nicer than the Cove shirts, in my opinion. Really like them and wish they offered more colors. Shipped USPS from Tampa, Florida. I also have a pair of their cargo trousers on the way, so we’ll see how those compare.

Vessi Stormburst Trainers - Bought them in white and these genuinely surprised me. They’ve become fantastic travel shoes. Comfortable, practical and they still look good. White isn’t the easiest to keep clean, but I’d absolutely buy them again. Shipped direct via UPS.

Rustic Dime Trousers - Really nice, especially for the price. Shipped directly from LA and arrived quickly. Definitely one of the better discoveries.

DailyBelts - Expensive, but nice. Mine originated in Dallas and was delivered by UniUni (Canada). Four days to California, which was impressive. The final delivery was slightly less sophisticated: they basically chucked it in the driveway. 😂

Wiesmade - I’ve bought the Bolinas Henley, Bodega Shawl Cardigan and Scout Blazer. The Henley is nice but runs small so size up. Everything is made in California, shipping has been fast, and the quality is GREAT. The catch? Definitely budget-breaking territory. They’re pricey, but the quality is good enough that I think of these more as an investment than an impulse buy.

So now I’m curious: what men’s clothing brands have Instagram or Facebook ads successfully talked you into buying?

I’m particularly interested in smaller/direct-to-consumer brands that aren’t household names. What turned out to be genuinely good quality and worth buying again? And, equally useful, what looked fantastic in the ad and turned out to be complete crap when it arrived?

I’m naturally suspicious of social-media ads, but annoyingly, some of these brands have turned out to be pretty damn good.

I’m wearing this light blue linen suit to my sister’s welcome party (dress code is “coastal chic”) for her wedding on Friday. The ceremony is in a hot climate in my state. I wore this suit to a southern spring wedding earlier this year with a white dress shirt, but this time will be even hotter so i was thinking a white polo? Also unsure about what shoes to pair it with

It's hard for me to phrase what I want exactly but I am looking for brands that would help me create a modern dark knight aesthetic , Elden Ring adjacent, eerie and mystical while also heavy and imposing.

However I do not want it to be over the top , over constructed or overly edgy (god forbid the skulls) nor I actually want to look like a medieval peasant from 1560s. Something like nazgul type of look without having to look like you just got out of a local goth gathering.

Preferably high quality clothing , maybe slightly gothic , elevated look but also nothing overly dramatic.

I've been looking some brands but basically the options either end up being too ridiculous or too plain.

I'm 33 and have been trying to up my fashion game. I'm getting fashion advice from a borderline gen Z girl friend of mine who is adamant all my pants are too slim. My older guy friends disagree.

In my quest to up my style, I'm contemplating:

1. Is it cringy to try and dress to the generation below you? (e.g. huge, swimmy pants)
2. Is it better to own your generation and nail it
3. Are slim cut pants a fashion disaster at my age?

Thoughts? Thanks all!

Edit: Since it’s come up a lot I’ll clarify: I’m short with an athletic build. Legs aren’t Sequoia redwoods by any means though.
loving the feedback, thank you everyone, reading everything!

Has Stussy's quality deteriorated? The fabric still feels premium and tight but the graphics designs have cracks , so much of them
I even flip shirts inside out when washing
What do you guys think

When you wear an outfit, ever feel like something is off? You have the exact same outfit but someone online looks better? Here is the only proportions guide you need to know. Must-Know for beginners into fashion

Slim Top + Baggy Pants : Yes
Slim Top + Slim/ Regular Fit Pants: Yes
Baggy Top + Baggy Pants: Yes
Baggy top + Slim/regular Fit Pants: NEVER

"But what If I am on the skinnier or fatter side?"

If you are skinny, you can pretty much wear anything; Baggy, Slim, Regular Fit, etc

However, if you are on the bigger side, especially with bigger glutes or thighs, I recommend never wearing slim pants, go for a relax fit or baggy fit for pants because a slim tight piece of clothing can make your worst attribute stand out

peace

Simple tee, linen pants and sude loafers.

I kind of botched my last post, where I asked if loafers could be worn with an outdoorsy outfit. Looking ahead to summer, I'm looking to avoid shorts and sneakers 100% of the time, and really still need to break in my Grant Stone Travelers. Is this outfit too dressy for such things as neighborhood walks, coffee runs and so on?

I see almost everyone around me wearing some variant of what looks like a running shoe, and as the world moves more and more into "athleisure" I feel I'm starting to look like a sore thumb to the general public.

This is a response to the recent “Dressing well isn’t a geometry exam” post, and I think the disagreement comes down to what we actually mean by “geometry.”

I agree that there is no specification sheet for looking good. There is no universally correct jacket length, button stance, trouser rise, trouser width, lapel width, or amount of break. Nobody needs to take a ruler to themselves and optimize every measurement to some supposedly perfect number.

But that is not really what geometry means in clothing.

Geometry is the relationship between all of those measurements, the body underneath them, and the rest of the outfit. A range of answers can work and it can still be a geometry problem.

Clothing has proportions, and those proportions are being placed on top of a body that already has proportions of its own. Some people have long legs and short torsos. Some have short legs and long torsos. Some have disproportionately long arms, broad shoulders relative to their waist, a long rise, or a short rise. Then you introduce jacket length, button stance, trouser rise, trouser width, hem length, shoe shape, shoulder extension, lapel scale, and everything else.

All of those things interact. That is the point.
So when we say that an inch “doesn’t really matter,” the obvious question is: an inch where, on whom, and relative to what?

An inch of jacket length does not automatically make a jacket good or bad. But it changes where the jacket terminates relative to your legs, where the buttoning point appears relative to your torso, how much trouser is visible, where the pockets visually sit, and the apparent relationship between your upper and lower body. That same inch may be almost inconsequential on one person and visually significant on another because their proportions are different.

The same applies to trousers. Rise can substantially change the apparent relationship between torso and legs. Width changes the visual weight of the lower body. The hem then has to interact with the shoe underneath it. A fuller trouser over a substantial shoe creates one relationship; the same trouser over a very small, low-profile shoe creates another. Neither is automatically wrong, but they are not visually interchangeable.

That, to me, is the useful lesson. It is not “your jacket must be exactly this long.” It is “understand what changing the jacket length actually does.”

The original post says:

“If the proportions work together and the context makes sense, that can be much more interesting than technical perfection. Clothes are supposed to leave room for creativity, not force everyone onto the same specification sheet.”

And I agree with the first sentence. But “if the proportions work together” is doing nearly all of the work there.

Nobody is asking for technical perfection, and nobody is saying everyone needs the same proportions.

You can deliberately make already-long legs look even longer. You can exaggerate the shoulders. You can wear extremely high-rise or low-rise trousers. You can wear a dramatically short jacket or a dramatically long one. You can wear enormous trousers with tiny shoes if that tension is the aesthetic you are trying to create.

That is creativity.

But creativity in proportion does not make proportion irrelevant. If anything, understanding proportion gives you more freedom because you understand what you are manipulating.

There is a meaningful difference between “I know this jacket makes my torso look shorter and my legs look absurdly long, and that is exactly the silhouette I want” and “the jacket is within an inch, so it probably doesn’t matter.”

The first person understands what the garment is doing and chooses the effect deliberately. The second person has been told that the effect is too minor to bother understanding.

Tom Ford is a good example of this. His tailoring can be extremely exaggerated: huge peak lapels, strong shoulders, aggressive waist suppression, unusual buttoning points, high rises, long trousers, wide trousers. Those choices are not evidence that geometry does not matter. They are deliberate manipulations of geometry.

Armani manipulates those relationships differently. Thom Browne manipulates them differently. Huntsman and Anderson & Sheppard manipulate them differently. They can arrive at completely different silhouettes because there is no single correct answer.

But “there is more than one good answer” and “the answer doesn’t really matter” are very different claims.

And yes, I completely accept that the average person probably will not consciously notice half of this. Your coworker is probably not going to look at you and say that your button stance should be 15mm lower. They may not know what jacket balance is, why one trouser rise changes the way your body reads, or why one shoe works better beneath a particular trouser width.

That does not make those relationships nonexistent.

More importantly, I am not sure why “most people won’t notice” should be the stopping point on r/malefashionadvice. Presumably the purpose of a fashion-advice forum is to help people learn to see these things.

Most people are not knowingly choosing proportions that work less well for the silhouette they want. They simply may not understand what those choices are doing yet. That is exactly why teaching proportion is useful.

The goal should not be to memorize a set of correct measurements. The goal should be to understand the relationships well enough to know when a difference matters, when it does not, and when you are deliberately breaking a convention for a particular effect.

That does not mean chasing perfection. It does not mean spending thousands of dollars. It does not mean everyone needs MTM or bespoke. Plenty of people happen to fit an RTW block extremely well and need very little alteration.

It just means there is value in understanding why something looks the way it does.

So no, I do not think dressing well requires technical perfection.

I do think dressing well is, to some extent, a geometry exam.

There just isn’t one answer key.

I’m leaning towards the red, I have no fashion sense

First off, posting a picture of myself on Reddit is horrifying, so please understand that this took an unreasonable amount of courage for a 40-year-old man wearing a Walmart T-shirt.

Be gentle. I am here to learn.

Background: I grew up dirt poor. Like, if we were buying new clothes, Walmart was the fancy option. Fortunately, life has been very good to me and I am now in a position where I can comfortably afford nicer clothes.

The problem is that nobody ever informed my wardrobe.

I am 40, married, have a gaggle of kids, and apparently still dress like I stepped out of 2005.

The outfit pictured is 100% Walmart Chic.

My current wardrobe consists of approximately:

• 10 copies of this exact size medium T-shirt in black, gray, navy, and whatever color this one is
• These pants (30Wx30L - Wrangler 5 pocket)
• One pair of jeans
• Baggy Adidas three-stripe pants that I believe were issued to me sometime during the 1st Bush Jr. administration

That's basically the whole operation.

I am not trying to become Rico Suave. I don't want anyone to look at me and think, Wow, this guy has really gotten into men's fashion lately.

I just want to look like a reasonably put-together 40-year-old man instead of a dad who got dressed in the dark before taking the kids to Home Depot.

So my wife took me to Macy's.

Apparently pants cost $70 now . . . I think I missed that memo.

Look, I can afford it, that's not really the issue. My childhood brain just cannot comprehend paying $70 for pants when Walmart will apparently cover both of my legs for $19.98.

But I am ready.

So I have two questions:

1. What is the elevated version of whatever style I am currently wearing?

I like simple. Casual. Comfortable. Masculine. Nothing flashy.

Basically, imagine my current outfit is Level 1 Dad.

I would like to unlock Level 3 Dad.

Not Level 47 Italian menswear influencer drinking espresso on a balcony in loafers with no socks.

2. Where do I buy it?

What stores? What brands?

Gap? Banana Republic? Costco? Macy's? Some mysterious store that adult men know about but nobody told me existed?

I genuinely have no idea.

Stats, in case they matter:

40M
5'10"
150 lbs
Shirt: Medium
Pants: 30W x 30L

A small shirt technically fits me perfectly, but it hugs my arms and chest enough that I immediately feel like a divorced personal trainer named Chad, so I prefer medium.

I also like a little room in my pants.

Absolute non-negotiable: I cannot do the pants that taper down into tiny little ankle openings. I have tried. I look down, see my shoes attached to two little fabric funnels, become deeply uncomfortable, and immediately want my 2004 Adidas pants back on.

Again, this took an unreasonable amount of courage on my part, so please be kind and send me in the right direction.

Thank you in advance.

Shirt - ASOS mock neck oversize tee
Pants - ASOS pleated wide leg cargo pants
Shoes - H&M lug sole deck shoes
Watch - Zenith Defy skeleton
Belt - Cultum ‘Our Legacy’ western buckle belt

Tryna find a matching set in color, not really feeling the super sporty stripes vibe though. Something more lowkey and clean. And also been looking at some Brands but hard to tell what actually looks good as a full fit. Don't want it looking like a costume or too matchy-matchy if that makes sense.

Nocta has some tonal stuff but idk if it's worth it or just hype anyone tries their sets.

The budget is flexible but not trynaa drop crazy money also want something I can wear separately too, what's worth checking out?

Hi, I'm after a top to layer with my suit and overcoat during the colder months.

I've just spotted that (with a first order 10% off) I can get new directly from John Smedley for £145.

Before I pull the trigger is that my best option around that price, or are there any others I should be looking at?

Thanks

i have a field spec tee that i love, and i want to simplify my wardrobe my having all black and cream t shirts. i can't justify spending 60 bucks on a bunch of shirts, but the bronson looks promising. the buck mason in L and the bronson in XL look to have the same measurements, but is the bronson meant to be a take on the field spec? will they fit the same?

I've been leveling up my wardrobe for the last ~4 years after having a realization that I had no motion. Absolutely dripless. However, in the process of finding what I enjoy wearing, I feel like I've overbought sometimes. I feel obligated to cover a lot of different bases with my aesthetic and my personality has changed a lot from my mid to late 20s (I'm about to turn 30). I'd reckon I've wasted in the ballpark of ~$2K over 4 years. Anyone have cautionary tales/tips on how to avoid wasting money?

I think my pitfalls have been chalked up to a lack of patience and wanting something to work when it doesn't. There are times when I could've shopped around a little bit longer to find the same thing or something similar cheaper. I also struggle with wanting to have something I like in another color or two, and that adds up, especially when my aesthetic changed. I think the largest L is that I used to wear tighter clothing and accumulated a decent amount until I realized I actually enjoyed wearing comfy loose fits way more, so I could have sampled a broader range of fits earlier on.

I absolutely love Thursday boots, but I have an awkward foot, so it makes finding the perfect size a very big hassle. I wear a size 8 US in sneakers and I have a skinner but wider foot. I’ve had my pair of stormking tobacco captains for 3 years now, which are the best and most comfortable shoes I’ve ever owned, but I had to return them 2 times in a row in order to get the right size, going from 7.5 to 8 and finally to 8 wide.

We are nearing the end of summer, but the Chicagoland area can get very hot from June to September, so I wanted to get a leather shoe and choose the handsewn loafer since it was a heeled shoe which I can dress up or down. I was worried that there would be heel slip, and unfortunately there is quite a gap, even when I walk and when tied to the max. The side laces are not real laces so I wasn’t able to really synch them down. The width is good but I’m afraid that if I go to a size 7.5, I’ll get my toes squished. I’ve never owned any actual loafers in my life, so I don’t know how they should properly fit, but I know for sure that this isn’t working for me.

the yellow line is where the tip of my big toe is

I don’t know if I should try again or just cave in, pay a little more money, and get a Thursday product I can trust will fit.

(Edit: I had been gifted an 100 dollar gift card for Thursday boots so I really wanted to get something)

(Edit edit: i heard the Jim green shoellie would be a very good alternative to a summer shoe I could just beat up and take anywhere, or I could prepare for the colder weather and exchange and pay that extra money to get a black label challenger boot which I would also intend to beat the hell out of)