Reddit mentions of The Fundamentals of Style: An illustrated guide to dressing well (Style for Men Book 1)

UK link if anyone needs it :)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007O3167C

Hi mate,

Completely understand where you're coming from, as this is the situation that most of my clients are in as well. As a starting point, I hate to be "that guy", but my book was written with guys like you in mind and goes into specific detail about how to find clothes that fit your body, how to put together outfits and even how to choose stores, what to do when you walk inside them and how to deal with sales assistants. Link is here:

http://amazon.com/The-Fundamentals-Style-Well-Dressed-ebook/dp/B007O3167C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332671978&sr=8-1

With that out of the way, the first thing that jumps out at me from your question is that you're not trying clothes on before you buy them. This is incredibly risky, especially if you're not well-versed in dressing well and might not know how to tell if clothes truly fit or not.

Far and away, most overweight guys tend to buy clothes that are far too big for them. Especially pants. They see themselves as 'big' and think "ok, I'll get an XL or an XXL, that'll fit". But this is often not the case at all.

Portly gents need to draw attention up towards their shoulders and away from their waists. Instead of that old, hackneyed, "I made a blog post about fashion!" advice of "don't wear horizontal lines", I suggest you start thinking about straight lines versus curved lines. Overweight men have curves, and you need to offset this by wearing clothes that have strength and structure to them. Most commonly you'll find that you look far, far better in a sport coat or blazer (which has a strong, padded shoulder) than you will in a hoodie or jumper (which has no structure and conforms to your body shape, which makes you look curved).

There's so much more I could say but to prevent this becoming an essay, I strongly suggest that you check out /r/malefashionadvice and use it as a starting point to feeling and looking good. Dressing well really isn't as difficult as it sounds - armed with a couple of hundred bucks, a little bit of knowledge and an afternoon, a man can completely transform the way he looks.

>I suspect that many popular posters also work in the fashion industry

I can think of one (jascination, who wrote this book, is a style consultant in Australia), but no one else that I know of. Shujin writes for Primer now, but that's not his regular job - I think he got it due to MFA, not the other way around. There was a post about what the Consistent Contributors do for a living a while ago (now deleted), but I think most of them were in regular white-collar office jobs. Lots of IT and graphic design people, if I remember correctly.

>I do also admit that there are quite a few clothing staples that every modern man should possess: oxford shirts, straight-fitting jeans, leather shoes, a couple of suits ...etc And I see nothing wrong in reminding men of this.

Those are basically the clothes people are referring to when they talk about the "MFA uniform".

I've literally been on the lookout for something like this, so thank you!


It's also available in the UK, for my fellow British redditors.

I wouldn't say that someone that "keeps looking at magazines" is someone who has no interest in improving their appearance.

But instead of magazines who are made to push always the latest and greatest fad, how about a book whose purpose is to introduce you to the fundamentals of style?

Random example: http://www.amazon.com/The-Fundamentals-Style-illustrated-ebook/dp/B007O3167C

As someone who worked in clothes and tennis stores as a teenager, I can assure you the shop assistants just want a sale. This much is true. But if you go out of rush hours, they will be bored out of their minds. Just go talk to them, try different things. Never feel sorry for saying "this is out of my price range". And don't take home anything you think you might use. Just like the girls rejecting you, reject anything that you put on and that doesn't click.