This story originally appeared on the Gents Cafe Newsletter. You can subscribe here.
How often do we fall in love with an outfit we’ve seen on Instagram? Social media are an open book full of looks and outfits that we could be tempted to reproduce. Indeed, nowadays it is very easy to find inspiration for an outfit, as if it were a dinner recipe.
“What could I cook tonight?” If you have the right ingredients at hand, and your skills match the required level, you can reproduce a recipe quite easily. But when the question is “What could I wear today?”, reproducing an outfit might not always be the best idea…
Let me explain. Around 2010 I first discovered Tumblr, and a few years later was the turn of Instagram. Not a newborn in the menswear world, I already had—or I thought I had, at least—an idea of how to dress properly. My taste had been evolving, and my palette had already become more colourful, although I had not yet abandoned the false idea that black is an easy colour to match (yes your honour, I plead guilty).
Still, I ended up spending an unreasonable amount of time browsing pictures of Italian industrialists, actors from the Fifties and Sixties, and other gentlemen from all over the planet looking for inspiration. But alongside the influence of well-dressed friends and the discovery of more tailored brands, I soon understood that there is a crucial difference between what we like and what actually suits us.
First, we have to accept our morphology and dress accordingly. Then, we might prefer more or less structured tailoring and favour certain fabrics and colours. In the end, isn’t the goal of dressing to be ourselves?
For example, I love the work and identity of French house Husbands Paris. Nevertheless, I am not quite sure if their Seventies-influenced tailoring would really fit me. And that’s why I don’t try to reproduce the styles of Husbands’ founder Nicolas Gabard or Pulp’s frontman Jarvis Cocker—the latter a regular of the shop to the point they named one of their jackets “the Jarvis”. The most I can do is take Cocker’s advice to “always wear a suit, as you never know who you might bump into.”
Music aside, I was recently fascinated by a women’s corduroy suit by Husbands in a lovely Bordeaux colour which I saw published in French magazine L’Etiquette—a worthy read for men and women alike. I thought that I would fancy a similar model for myself, but, despite my love of bordeaux, that might just not feel right on me. In the end, it will likely remain a dream, and that’s fine.
What Husbands can certainly be, however, is an inspiration: for combining colours, patterns and fabrics, or even just the way Nicolas Gabard effortlessly pairs his suits with a denim shirt. And remember: don’t copy, get inspired!
Photo of Husbands’ founder Nicolas Gabard via GQ.
