The Stop Being Single Challenge – Part Four

In the last installment, we looked at one of the most common dating mistakes, fixating on one girl, and discussed the advantages of playing the field. This week, we’re going to talk about another one of the key areas in dating: fashion.

Not stylish
I promise to provide you with a simple, practical and extremely effective guide to sorting out your wardrobe. No Fluff, no filler, no ‘opinions’ – just solid, timeless principles that, if followed, will set you up with a great outfit regardless of your personal style preferences. This is a vitally important aspect of your dating life, so pay close attention.

Before we dive into the practical, why is what you wear so important?
The short answer: because it helps.


A longer answer: An old mentor of mine used to say that good fashion conveys social intelligence and ambition. That is to say the social intelligence to realise that the clothes on your back affect how you’re perceived and the ambition to care enough to act on it. Women like men with social intelligence and ambition.

Steve Jones’ Practical Fashion Guide
If you know your sense of style needs some work, you’re going to love this. If your threads are already dashed with dapper, then this exercise will be a fun fine-tuner for you.

First, create a folder on your computer desktop called: Fashion.
Second, Google some celebrities that you think have a great look. If you’re not sure, go for pretty much anyone really on the A-list. Check out their style; I looked specifically at movie stars, musicians and television personalities.

Search their names and click on the IMAGES option in google. Look through and save to your Fashion folder any photos of those people where you think they look cool, have good fashion, a great look etc… whatever it may be. Go by what you like and you’ll have a portfolio of people with a variety of great looks to choose from.

Third, choose an image with a look that you think you could replicate, something you could identify with. Maybe it’s a shot of Brad Pitt on a talk show or of some rockstar from a VH1 ‘Behind the Music’ episode. Next, go out with that picture and start shopping for that outfit. You don’t have to shop for the exact items in the picture, just use the image as a template and work around it. Ask sales assistants for advice, show them the look you’re after.


This process is called: imitate-assimilate-innovate. You imitate the professionally dressed and, by doing so, assimilate and absorb the subtleties of their style. After that you can, if you chose to, use the taste you have developed and innovate your own path.


Further Fashion Tips- Fit is King. It doesn’t matter how great the item looks on the hangar, or how good the discount is if it doesn’t fit you perfectly you must not buy it! I’m really serious about this one, you can wear the most expensive designer suit and look like a complete idiot if the fit is off. Equally, you can sport a relatively inexpensive jean and t-shirt combination and look like a million dollars if the fit is spot-on. Gentlemen, remember: FIT IS KING!

- Get it tailored. Here’s the loophole to the previous tip – if you must have that item, and the fit isn’t perfect, get it tailored to fit you before wearing it out.
- Start small, don’t buy too much at once. Getting your fashion together is a learning curve and even with a template you will occasionally buy something that, when you get it home, turns out to have been a terrible idea! That’s okay, mistakes are a part of your education and you can usually return clothes to the store anyway.
- Try on at least two items that are definitely not your style – two very ‘fashionable’ items that you could never see yourself wearing. When I have done this, I’ve occasionally found items that have worked very well. I’d have never considered some of them if I had been shopping strictly for ‘my thing’.
- Exercise. If you’re not in shape already, start taking some small steps in the right direction. Your clothes will just look better on you.
- Have a look around you. There’s a good chance you know some guys with a great fashion sense. Look at them and think, what is it about their style that works? Get specific. Notice the combination of top, trousers, shoes and accessories – anything around the neck, wrists? What are the colours? Copy them.
Conclusion

There you have it, gents, a practical fashion guide that you can put to use straight away. Your mission for the next fortnight is to organise at least two shopping trips to revamp your wardrobe. With with celebrity photos in hand I hereby commission you to brave your local high-street and purchase with panache!

See you next time!
Steve Jones, aka Keychain

Awesome advice! Keep em comin! Especially true about fit and tailoring.

If I may, I'd like to add:

DO continue to personalize.
DON'T stop at just copying a celebrity.
I had a friend in Hollywood who was a pinnacle of male fashion. He looked like a farking male runway model every day. He wasn't just up on the trends of the season, this guy was up to the minute. But he couldn't get the girls. They all saw him as gay or metrosexual. The problem was, he didn't personalize. He looked like you cut out a fashion catalog cover and pasted onto a person.

DO pea cocking.
DON'T Peacock like everyone else.
As described in The Game, and as I can attest, it really works ...as long as you don't make the same mistake as Style and Mystery and unleash an army of Tyler Durdens all wearing the exact same outfit, cruising down Sunset Blvd like a hipster cloning project gone horribly awry (as if it could go any other way!) Don't be afraid to stand out and have your own style different from everyone else in the room, even if it is only in a small way.

DO know your audience.
DON'T be afraid to wing it in a pinch.
If you like punk chicks, dress like a dirty rock star. If you like the vintage Boardwalk Empire girls, get the three piece suit with trilby fedora. But if you're stuck coming off the plane in the three piece suit with no time to change like I was, don't give up on your night or alter your plans, add a pin to the lapel or a little toy to the pocket and hit that farking dive bar in that suit and rock it like nobodies business. I've never got so many compliments on a suit, nor so many compliments on ANYTHING in a dive bar, as I did that night.

DO be versatile.
DON'T limit your wardrobe, nor let it limit you.
As above, if you want the Mad Men chicks AND the rocker girls, consider a versatile wardrobe. Less is more. Save money and closet space without sacrificing girl-attracting power by picking things you can use for more than one occasion or in more than one way. As Steve Jones said, this shows off your social intelligence as well. Nice, well-fitting, dark blue jeans combined with a cool-yet-not-flashy music t-shirt (think some group that everyone agrees was awesome or at least talented, like the Pixies) and a classy-yet-not-overly formal jacket can get you into both the jazz club and the rock concert and pretty much anywhere in between.

DON'T think you have to spend a lot of money.
DO focus on your style, and do spend the money for at least one quality thing in your wardrobe.
Good style isn't always at the newest upscale store. Rememberer, whatever is in fashion now will come back in 20 years, and that means whatever is in style now probably is on a vintage or even Salvation Army rack somewhere. That being said, don't be afraid to spend for quality and also anything that perfectly matches your own style. Just as Steve Jones says how important fit, is, so can be quality and personality. If you want to be a wedding crasher, I can say it's worth it to spend a few hundred on those perfect Italian leather dress shoes if they are comfortable. They'll last forever, so the money pays for itself eventually, and the look you get from those bridesmaids is priceless. Likewise for anything that fits your personality so well that you feel like a million bucks wearing it. Do it. Who cares what it actually looks like or what it costs, the confidence when you put it on is like wearing chain mail to a knife fight.

DON'T let your girlfriend, sister, or hot roommate dress you.
DO pick out things YOU like and see which they respond most favorably to as women.
Believe me, I tried all three at various points, and was disappointed. Better to develop your own style and have them help you tweak it, and *occasionally* suggest new items from the latest fashion lines. Better still, if you can take them with you shopping and actually get them to LEARN your style, they can make great recommendations. But always make sure you're make the final call, YOU are the decision maker, after all. The exception is if they get you clothing as a gift, you'll have to wear that at least a little, but if you train them to your style it's basically making them happy and supplementing your awesome wardrobe for free. Anyway, they can tell you what a girl might be turned off by, but if you let them dress you for some reason girls will just throw together something metrosexual and then wonder why it's not working for you. Make sure if you get help from a girl, that she has her own style together pretty well-- thats a good sign. I have my sister and girlfriend trained pretty well, but the roommate and other girlfriends just didn't get it. And, I hope that I shouldn't have to tell anyone here not to let your mom dress ya!

Good luck! And thanks to Steve jones for this awesome series, I hope he keeps em coming.