Guidelines: Essentials To A Beginning Wardrobe

For any professional, either starting out a brand new wardrobe or refreshing an out of date (or out of fit) closet. These are the Executive’s Cutting Edge essential basics to getting you looking sharp without overwhelming yourself. We believe you should dress from head-to-toe, and we laid this blog out with that in mind!

Suits:

When it comes to suits, fit will always come before color. It doesn’t matter if you buy the latest and greatest Baroni 150’s wool seasonal if it fits you like a cardboard box. Before you go color crazy, make sure your fit is on point. When it comes to colors, classics will never go out of style. A solid charcoal, navy, or black is crucial to any man’s closet. It can be dressed up for weddings, or business meetings, and then dressed down, dropping the tie, or using the coat as a blazer or the suit pant as a dress pant. A black suit is also a fitting addition, though more so depending on your profession. A black suit is great to own if you frequent black tie events, you can dress black up to that level of formality much easier than charcoal or navy. Navy or charcoal should be any man’s first choice when re-upping their wardrobe or starting fresh, but black can be useful as well.

Shirts:

When it comes to essential shirts, again, make sure you’re wearing the right size. Get your neck and arms measured to ensure you’re not wasting money on a quality shirt that will drape you in fabric or choke you out. A white or light blue dress shirt is a solid beginning to a shirt collection. Both can be paired perfectly with just about any suit imaginable, and leave plenty of space for colorful, or conservative tie choices. A light lavender can also fill your shirt closet at the beginning stage. Lavender is not as ludicrously versatile as white and blue, but can be used with most suit choices, and opens up new avenues for ties as well. Beyond color make sure you are buying a shirt that will last more than one wear. An all-cotton non-iron, like our Cooper & Stewart, is the type of quality you should expect from a dress shirt.

Ties:

Check out the tie section of our previous blog HERE, to understand the role a tie plays in your overall outfit. Ties must be done well when suiting up, a misplaced color scheme or too loud tie can quickly become an infamous talking point among colleagues or friends. Choose safe colors, to begin with, opting for blues, yellows, reds in different shades. Also, stick to stripes or dots, to begin with, even an easy paisley, or a paisley that only utilizes a few colors that build on your outfit, leaving that crazy paisley that invents new colors at home for now. See the picture below for an example of good starter ties.

Shoes:

As we mentioned before in our previous blog HERE, tan is the new black when it comes to dress shoes. A sleek, quality made pair of tan shoes will take you far when it comes to suiting up. They’re able to be paired with any suit, and color combination you can imagine, excepting black in most cases. Then when you’re a bit more confident, you can switch out your brown laces in favor of a blue, or even burgundy lace to add even more color tie ins and show off your fashion knowledge.

Socks:

Then there are socks. Socks can be the most exciting thing about suiting up if you’re willing to put in a little bit of thinking when you’re getting dressed. The goal of your accessories should be to create unison in your outfit. Your socks should tie in with the colors already present in your suit, shirt, and tie. Finding socks that hold hints or small lines of colors that are kin to the ones in your outfit sets you deeply apart from most of the other guys suiting up for their first time and can keep you in people’s memory in an easy way. Tom has often been referred to as the “fun sock guy” when he’s meeting people for the first time.

Bonus:

Lastly, comes the belt. Match your belt to your shoes. Try your hardest not to wear a black belt if you are rocking a pair of light tan shoes, and also consider the buckle of your belt when choosing belts. Do you wear a gold watch most of the time? Then choose a belt that has a gold buckle instead of a chromed silver one.

These essentials will get you started on the road to dressing professionally and looking your best every day. Questions? Give us a call or send us an email for any suiting or professional menswear queries.