The Poor Man's Style and Dress Guide

The Poor Man's Style and Dress Guide

Background

I have been meaning to write this guide for some time, and I have brought up aspects of it in other posts. This is by no means a definitive guide to style. It is a guide for developing your own style on the cheap. Dressing and looking well doesn't have to be expensive. Please note that this guide is mostly for Americans. My European brothers will have to make some adjustments to these recommendations. This is also primarily a guide to casual, everyday style, not dinner dress or formal and business attire.

TL;DR:

Use a style service for ideas, but send everything back so you don't get billed. Shop at Goodwill, clothing wholesalers, and discount stores and websites. Have everything tailored, and tip your tailor well. Pay for a decent haircut, and have an expert you can trust advise you on the product you should use in your hair. Have them teach you how to style your hair. Pay attention to what you shave with and try various products and methods, thinking outside the box, until you can get the look you want without irritation of your skin.

Body

• Step one: Style and purchasing.

Most of us have no sense of style. This is because we have far more important stuff to be worrying about, and I, for one, have far more important things to be spending my money on than clothes and shoes. I'm a cheap bastard and I'm proud of that.

But if you don't have your own sense of style, you're going to need to borrow someone else's. There are a couple of services that can help. Bombfell is a service I personally used. At the time that I used Bombfell they requested a picture of you, and had you fill out a brief survey, and then a professional stylist would select clothes based on your likes/dislikes. They send you clothing every month and -- this is important-- you only pay for what you keep! They provide shipping both ways. There is no fee for opening or maintaining an account. You only pay when you keep something they sent to you.

I took everything out of the box and tried it on. Then I laid out the items I liked and took a picture of them with my phone. After this, I returned literally everything they sent me! I did this for a few months bridging two seasons: Fall and Winter. (Summer clothes are generally the same every year for men, and spring and fall clothes are mostly interchangeable.)

Net charge for having a professional personal stylist pick my clothes: $0. There are other style services as well. Here is an article that discusses three of them. Look into them and decide which one is going to work the best for you.

After you have a rough idea what is going to be in fashion and also look good on your body type, take your pictures to one of the following retail outlets: Ross, TJ Maxx (Called TK Maxx in Scotland, I noticed.), or Marshall's. Try to find clothing that is similar in cut, color, and style to the pictures you have. You might have to do some hunting, but you will find better deals than the $98 jeans and $102 Pierre Cardin shirts Bombfell sent you. In fact, I managed to find the exact same shirt that was sent to me by Bombfell at a Ross in North Carolina. The difference is that Bombfell wanted $96, and Ross wanted $9!

Do not forget about Goodwill, Value Village, and other clothing recyclers. My favorite sports jacket was six bucks at a Goodwill, $32 to tailor, and looks like it was handmade for me!

I never buy more than three shirts at a time, because you're not finished when you leave the store. You are more than likely not going to get a perfect fit off the rack, and it is pretty rare that you can't improve the appearance of a shirt by getting it fitted. Also, hem your goddamn pants. The grunge style of walking on the back edge of your pants cuff until it's dirty and frayed makes you look like a homeless person. The back hem of your jeans should fall 1/2" to 1" above the ground when in your most commonly worn pair of shoes. Higher, and you look like your basement is flooded. Lower, and you look like you lost your clothes in Hurricane Irma and are about to get a new position holding a cardboard sign next to a freeway off ramp.

Another site I recommend is Geek. This is a retailer out of China that offers Amazon-style shopping with pack-mule speed. Seriously, they are goddamn sloooooow. However, they are also very inexpensive. (Although you do have to pay for shipping.) I tend to get my jackets from there after looking at men's styles on Bombfell or other style sites. A $230 jacket can be had for less than $30, including shipping, if you're willing to wait a couple weeks for delivery. I mostly get outerwear from them, but they have great deals on dress shirts and jeans as well. In fact, the jeans I'm wearing right now were ordered from them for about $13 (plus $8 shipping and a three week wait) and look identical to a pair I saw at Buckle for $142. (Who the fuck is spending that much on jeans for chrissake?) Bear in mind that their sizes are Chinese and everything is both metric and also smaller. I'm not a big guy, but to them my 5'5" 152lb frame is a LARGE. Anywhere in the states it's a medium, and in some cases a small. Pay attention to their sizing charts. (Geek is really good about returns.)

• Step two: Tailoring.

I take my $9 shirts to a tailor in my home town. Wherever you live, find a good tailor and make them your friend! For $11, my tailor takes my expensive-quality but inexpensively-priced shirt and custom fits it to my body. (Fitted clothing is usually much tighter than you're used to wearing from the rack.) Make sure he knows that you lift (You are lifting, aren't you?) because he might need to leave some fabric across the shoulders for you to expand into as you get swole.

Keeping track? Style service, $0. Shirt: $9. Tailoring: $11. Total: $20.

Now, tip your tailor $10 per item! Total: $30.

This shirt in question started at $96. I have saved $60, and now have a custom-fitted name-brand designer shirt! On top of that, my tailor loves me. This is important, because when I needed that sport coat above tailored to fit me for a wedding in two days, He gave me a huge smile and said in his Korean accent, "You take care of me. I take good care of you! It be ready tomorrow!" He did that for me in the middle of prom season because I spent a little more to make him work harder for me. It's worth it.

Bombfell prices: Shirt: $96. Jeans: $104. Belt: $42. Total: $242. (Total does not include tailoring.)

I paid (including tailoring): Shirt: $30. Jeans $31. Belt: $9. Total: $70.

• Step three: Hair.

Get a decent haircut. Yeah, the local beauty and barber college is $5 a haircut, and if you go to the outskirts of a military base you can find $8 cuts. But you will look like your head is misshapen and you tried to hide it by planting a chia pet on your skull!

Go somewhere like Sport Clips or Regis. These places offer the one thing you need more than anything else: a guarantee. If they fuck it up, another stylist can and will fix it, for free. Avoid places like Gene Juarez or Vidal Sassoon. You don't need to drop $400 on a haircut to look good, but you should be willing to pay for quality.

Take a few pictures of men with hair similar to your own. I'm blond, have a bald patch, and work in an industry that requires a military-style haircut. (Not a high and tight, fortunately.) I'm not going to take a picture of Antonio Banderas to my stylist and tell her to make me look like that. It's not possible, and trying and failing would look awful.

After she, or he, cuts your hair ask them to teach you how to style it! Whatever your mom taught you when you were four is no longer in vogue. You need a professional to show you how much and what type of product to use, and even the types of brush and comb to use. While you're there, ask if they have any advice on your beard, if you wear one. (An actual barber shop is the best place to go for this information and help, however.) Tip them well, just like your tailor, and they'll clear their schedule for you when you call them with a rush job before a date with that HB11 you scored, you lucky dog!

• Step four: Face and beard.

I have sensitive skin, so I use a Norelco OneBlade in the shower. I don't wear a beard for a variety of reasons, including the fact that I don't like the shape of my face when I have one. You do you.

The best shaving cream I have ever used isn't even a shaving cream. It's Banana Boat After Sun lotion. Sound crazy? Well, what's going to really bake your noodle is when I tell you this is also the only face wash I have used for the last year and a half.

I have a very good friend who is a former professional face model. At age 46, she looks like she's in her mid twenties. You may have even seen her in a few advertising circulars. I know she's done work for both Target and Old Navy ads. I asked her once what her secret was, and she told me she never washes her face. She washes her hands and then scrubs her face with her hands and the hottest water she can stand. When her hands feel oily from her facial oils, she washes them again and repeats the process. By doing this, she allows more of her body's natural oils to stay on her skin. A lot of men, especially, and I was one of them, alternate between dry skin and oily skin. One of the reasons for this, according to my dermatologist, is that frequent scrubbing with soaps will wash the natural oils off the skin. It gets dry, so it goes into a crash production of oil to try to self-moisturize, leading to breakouts. This causes us to frantically wash our faces, leading to dry skin... and I'm sure you can see the pattern here.

Two years go I had a massive breakout of acne and decided to try her recommendation and just use water to wash my face. It worked! In the space of one week my acne cleared up, and the itchy, dry skin also went away. However, I noticed that I was still having problems with razor burn because I needed something like soap to use as a lubricant for my razor. I got a pretty itchy sunburn last April and tried this Banana Boat stuff. Not only was it phenomenal on the sunburn, but I also noticed that my skin felt clean when I rinsed it off from my sunburned face. Lo and behold, six of the first seven ingredients are the same as those in most mild facial cleansers! I decided to try it with my razor, and it works really well. I have not had an acne breakout since I started using this stuff to wash my face. (The exception is one strange place under the left corner of my mouth where I sometimes get a light flareup once in a while after shaving.)

One of my friends shaves his head every other day. He used to get savage razor burn until he ran out of shaving cream one day and used his girlfriend's conditioner. (Yes, for her hair.) It was some $33 a bottle gunk, and it worked; he had no razorburn at all. He experimented with different conditioners and discovered that a $0.99 bottle of conditioner purchased at Big Lots worked as well as the $30 Vidal Sassoon nonsense (and it certainly made his girlfriend happier that he wasn't using her expensive shit.)

Recap:

You should always be looking for ways to save money on your personal style. It's definitely possible to be stylish without breaking the bank. Use a professional styling service to get customized ideas on what to wear. Never pay for this service; make certain it's one without a membership fee that only charges you if you keep the clothes. Take pics of clothes you like that fit your personal style and color palette, and take those pictures with you when you're shopping at inexpensive clothing liquidators such as Ross, TJ Maxx, and Marshall's. Don't forget about the many deals that can be had at Goodwill and other clothing recyclers, and consider trying sites like Wish.com and Geek (same company) for deals as well.

Take those inexpensive clothes to a good tailor, and tip them well for fitting them to you. Take the time to cultivate your tailor as a resource. When you're on a tight timeline, he'll be more likely to work with you.

Find some pictures of a hair style you like with hair that is similar to your own, and take those to a professional hair stylist. Stay away from barber colleges and other discounted cut-and-crys. You might save money, but cheap is not the same as inexpensive and a shitty haircut that makes your head look like a deflated football is going to cost you more than money. Make sure you tip them well and ask them to teach you how to style your hair and what product to use, from shampoo to conditioner to holding agents.

Try other products than expensive facial cleaners to maintain your skin. Pay attention to how your skin feels after you wash it. Does it still feel oily? You might need a stronger cleaner. Does it feel dry? Maybe you should just be using water and clean hands.