Mr Festive

Shirt by Harrods
Tie by The Tie Bar

Are you more Cindy Lou Who than Ebenezer Scrooge? Now is the ideal time to start wearing those classic Christmas colours. A must-have for smart-casual events or those looking to enliven their formalwear, this plaid tie from The Tie Bar will partner perfectly with a crisp white shirt. If pattern isn’t your thing, a solid red, green or gold tie would work just as well.

Mr Classic

Shirt by Turnbull and Asser
Tie by Drakes

Whether you’ve been invited to a formal dinner or just prefer to keep things low-key, a pale blue shirt with a burgundy tie is a timeless combination that is sure to impress your work colleagues and friends alike. To complete the look, pop on a tailored navy blazer, grey trousers and your favourite pair of brown shoes; adding a patterned pocket square for a dash of personality.

Mr Adventurous

Shirt and Tie by The Savile Row Company

Finding silk ties to pair with a striped shirt may seem like a tricky task, however it’s really not that difficult. Simply opt for two designs that complement each other rather than clash. Perhaps the easiest way of doing this is to stick with a block colour tie. However, for those wanting to be a little more adventurous, make sure the pattern on your tie is larger – or at least bolder – than the stripes on your shirt. As for stripes on stripes, they can work perfectly well as long as they aren’t the same width.

For those wanting to be a little more adventurous, make sure the pattern on your tie is larger – or at least bolder – than the stripes on your shirt.

Mr Corporate

Shirt and Tie by Mr Porter

If you insist on heading straight from the office to your Christmas party, at least make sure you’re wearing something suitable for both work and play. Our choice would be a pale pink shirt teamed with a patterned tie – an arrangement that will give your ensemble a playful edge without feeling too informal.

Mr Black Tie

Shirt by Harvie and Hudson
Bow Tie by Jaeger

For those attending a black tie event or any other fancy occasion, your go-to combination is a white shirt and black bow tie – complete with a black dinner suit and patent black shoes. When choosing your shirt, ensure it’s double-cuffed and secured by cufflinks, whilst your bow tie will look best if it’s made from silk.

Although we’ve covered the festive season classics, there are many more combos you could create yourself. But before putting together your own combinations, we recommend taking a look at the colour wheel. As a rule of thumb, colours either opposite or adjacent – like blue and orange – pair happily. Whereas anything else should be approached with caution. Have fun, and don’t be afraid to experiment!

The post Five Shirt and Tie Combinations to See You Through the Festive Season appeared first on Be Stylish!.

Layering is a big unknown for most guys. It’s a fancy name to something we already know how to do. Today I want to talk about one of those ways, and a really easy one at that. Plus, at the end you’ll get a more advanced tip to really make this type of layering shine.

You will need:

1. A business/dress shirt
2. A sleeveless vest (not a waistcoat)
3. A jacket or blazer
4. a secret accessory whose identity won’t be revealed until the end.

I’m not being secretive just to keep you interested. I first want to make sure you learn how to layer the vest properly. Adding that particular accessory at the end is gonna be a piece of cake.

Let’s start off with…

The Shirt

If you don’t yet have at least 2 or 3 quality cotton shirts to choose from, I strongly suggest you get some right now.

A solid white shirt will do but you can also mess around with prints such as stripes, checks or houndstooth.

I wore a purple and white houndstooth shirt myself, which constituted the innermost layer of my outfit. Here’s a close-up of the print:

The Vest

A wool vest will keep your back warm during autumn and spring and will be the second layer of your outfit.

In my case, I chose this simple white vest (the photo includes a purple polo shirt, not the actual business shirt, though):

Can you guess why I chose it? That’s right, it repeats the white on the dress shirt. Color repetition is crucial when you’re layering, just as long as you don’t overdo it.

The jacket

Although I wore this outfit at work, I broke the rules a little and, as my third layer, I chose a classic leather jacket instead of something more businessy, such as a sports jacket.

One thing about the leather jacket is that it matched the thin black stripes on the vest I forgot to mention. It looks like this (again, out of context as I don’t have a pohot of the full outfit I wore):

And that’s all there is to it. You have 3 layers, all comprised of garments you have or should have in your closet.

The secret ingredient

In my case, it was the tie. I chose a solid purple slim tie, that matched the purple on the shirt. That one particular detail made all the difference in the world.

The tie isn’t a layer, obviously, but it is a great finishing touch. Remember that, if you’ll be wearing a vest, you won’t see it all of it, mostly the knot.

The post Layering Vests and Shirts appeared first on Be Stylish!.

One of the tougher challenges I’m often faced to solve for guys is that of height. Being short sucks, I’m not gonna lie about it. Even I, despite my average height, sometimes wished I was taller.

There are a lot of tricks you can use to make yourself look taller. From not wearing a belt to wearing shoes with high soles to wearing similar contrasts top to bottom.

But one of the most important clothing items you need to consider when dressing to look taller is the dress shirt.

Learning to pick the right dress shirts is important regardless of your height. Because, if you truly want to be stylish, you’ll have to wear them both at work and outside.

First thing’s first. I’ll answer “the t-shirt” objection:

But George, I don’t wanna wear shirts. I just don’t feel comfortable in them. I love my t-shirts.

Shirts have an advantage over t-shirt: they come in vertical stripes. You’ll never see t-shirts in vertical stripes and you need them to make yourself look taller.

So if you’re looking to look a little taller, you’ll have to trade comfort for it. Don’t worry, you’ll learn to be comfortable in just about any item of clothing I recommend you.

Ok, the stripes are the obvious thing about a dress shirt that make you look tall. Next is the collar.

A narrow collar is better than a narrow one if you’re looking to gain some height benefits. Wider collars widen your frame while narrower ones make it look longer.

OK, things get a little complicated. But not too much. In casual encounters, it’s best to keep your shirt’s first button unbuttoned. This causes the two ends of the collar to spread out, widening your frame. In such cases, even narrow collared shirts will make your frame look wider.

Though they are rare, there is a type of shirt that won’t have this problem: the mandarin collared shirt. Mandarin collars are missing the pointy edges that most dress shirt have so unbuttoning the first button at the top won’t make your frame look wider.

If you can’t find those mandaring collared shirt, see if you can find shirt with button down collars. These will keep your collar more in place when you unbutton that first button.

Here’s a great looking stirped shrit with a button down collar:

You’ll find a variety of superdry shirts on cult.co.uk.

Problem solved. Just be on the look out for such types of shirts and try them on. They’re particulalry flattering if you have a round or a square face.

Third is the fit. A regular fit shirt will make you look wider, while a slim fit one will not only make you look taller but also younger (if that’s what you’re going for).

I left color last because it’s the one you need to be most careful about. Darker colors and black will make anyone look smaller and slimmer. You’re looking for the exact opposite: to make your body appear bigger and stronger, so go for shirts in bolder colors and white.

The post How Smaller Men Should Wear Dress Shirts appeared first on Be Stylish!.

TM Lewin, a UK online retailer, took things further and decided to see the differences between the office shirts style in the US versus UK.

The result? A very explicit infographic that I’m happily sharing below.

If goes through every aspect of a dress shirt, namely:

• the collar
• the color
• the pattern
• the cuff type
• and, of course, the fit.

The infographic shows us something we already knew. American men are more bold with what they wear while the British are more conservative.

Infographic courtesy of

The post US versus UK Rivalry Moves to the Closet appeared first on Be Stylish!.

I’m going to talk about the shirt exclusively, because it’s the first option you should consider when dressing casual (t-shirts go well too but let’s leave this discussion for another time. Shirts are of course the ONLY option when you’re invited or hosting a formal event.

So what shirt can you wear if it’s really hot outside. It all comes down to two options: a short-sleeved shirt or a long sleeved shirt.

One of the more recent trends in men’s style suggest that we should avoid short-sleeved shirts. For some reason, they are seen as too childish. They even suggest we avoid wearing them in casual situations.

The recommendation of those who hate short-sleeved shirts is simple: you either roll up your sleeves of your long-sleeved shirt or.. you just deal with the excessive heat.

Why is the short-sleeved shirt so hated. There are two main reasons that I could dig up:

1. It makes you look like a child or a bartender.
2. You can’t wear them with ties or bow-ties because the lack of sleeves will “unbalance” the entire outfit.

Because I don’t really enjoy the torture of staying in a long sleeved-shirt at high temperatures (just to follow a style rule that almost no one around you will know about), I decided to do a little digging. I wanted to know if short sleeved shirts are really that bad.

Here’s what I found (and it’s good news):

Short sleeved shirts are back and are recommended even by GQ. Here’s what they’re saying on their blog, the GQ Eye (this is an article published in april 2011):

One of the best trends in recent years, in addition to the return of the waistcoat and flat-front pants, is the return of the classic short-sleeve shirt.
[…]
The short-sleeve button-down is on the casual side of business casual, more so than its full-sleeve counterpart, but I think it’s quite acceptable in a summer-casual work environment and far better than a polo shirt.

You can find the link to the blog post here.

So what is the GQ gentleman trying to say? That the length of the shirt’s sleeve is just a trend like anything else, that’s in or out of style. And here’s another important lesson: never trade comfort for style.

A golden rule of style says that you should always feel excellent in all the clothes that you’re wearing. And if it’s really hot outside and rolling up your sleeves is just not enough, go ahead and wear a short-sleeved shirt.

Conclusions

Ok, let me give you a brief recap of the key points you should remember from my research.

First of all, short sleeved shirts are great and can form very stylish outfits.

Second, wearing them with a tie or a bow tie is a fashion no-no and I agree to that. On really hot days you won’t be wearing such accessories anyway because you’ll barely be able to breathe.

Third, a long sleeved shirt will always be more stylish than one with short sleeves.

And finally fourth, rolling up your sleeves is a great way to be stylish.

It’s all up to you and your own sense of style to make the right decision.

The post The long-sleeved shirt versus the short-sleeved shirt appeared first on Be Stylish!.

That’s why I am writing this article on white shirts. Every man should have such a shirt in his drawers.

But first of all, a little history. The world’s first shirt was discovered in Egypt, almost 5000 years old. Until the twentieth century it was a garment of underwear. The richer you were, the less you showed the shirt. Wearing the shirt with nothing else over it was an indication of your poverty.

While in the nineteenth century, the color of choice was white, and a blue shirt was unthinkable, 100 years later it had become already the most common choice of style.

Ideas on how to wear your white shirt

1.A cardigan

During the warmer months try to forget black, gray and navy and sneak an attention-grabbing cardigan.

Best colors here are forest green, bright blue or a pastel.

For you stylistically daring junkies out there, consider shades like yellow as well, and remember that you can get away with brighter, more outrageous colors the darker your skin tone is.Alternatively, if you’re sick and tired of brights, try out camel.Not many men use it in their apparels.

photo:http://www.hypebeast.com

2.A striped blazer

Break out of your usual style routine by boasting a striped blazer. It gives you a chic, nautical look, especially during the summer months.

And here’s the best part: although a patterned blazer will definitely turn heads in your directions, stripes are mean a conservative look, so it goes very well in formal environments.

3.White pants

A white dress shirt may be heard of before, but when teamed with white pants to create a head-to-toe white ensemble, it becomes incredibly refined. To get this look right, just find white pants in a lightweight material.

And this is how it should all look:

photo:http://www.linenpantsformen.net

4.Track jacket

photo:http://www.aluba.com

Contrasting a white shirt with a track jacket is a quick way to achieve that hip, high-low look that has stylish written all over it. You probably won’t be able to wear this combination in the office, but for the weekend, there is no better option.

Though denim is the obvious choice when it comes to trousers here, this jacket would be stunning with white pants and sneakers.

If you are thinking of being more formal, don’t overlook the possibility of wearing a pocket square. White goes with white.

photo:http://www.essentialstyleformen.com

Good luck matching your white shirts!

The post The White Shirt – A Classic appeared first on Be Stylish!.

One of the things I advise here at Be Stylish is to keep your sporting clothes for sporting activities. Things like shirts, vests and leather shoes will look way better on you then if you wore your gym equipment on a night out.

But what if you want to show your passion for sports and remain stylish at the same time? Is there a way to do it in a subtle way?

Enter the world of rugby shirts.

A rugby shirt is similar to a polo shirt, which makes it a great alternative to them. It comes with either long or short sleeves and always has thick horizontal stripes (also known as hoops). The difference lies in the fact that the rugby shirt’s collar is more prominent, pointed and can sometimes come in a different color that the rest of the shirt.

What are they made of?

Rugby shirts specifically made for the game of rugby are mostly polyester. The reason is they fit tighter on the body and are more aerodynamic.

However! …

For going out, you shouldn’t go for the polyester ones. Cotton breathes and it’s the number one choice for a variety of items of clothing. Yes, this includes rugby shirts. Sure, if you like to play rugby, you probably already have a few polyester rugby shirts but, for going out, you need the cotton ones.

Another difference between the “sportswear” rugby shirts and the “street wear” ones is that the formers have a big number on the back. You won’t always find numbers on rugby shirts that are meant to be worn on a night out.

To me, the presence of the number on the back dresses the outfit down, and I don’t personally want that. I prefer to dress my casual outfits up, to stand out a little more.

But this is up to you. Style is about following some guidelines as well as making personal decisions.

Are rugby shirts for me?

Let me put it right from the start: if you’re too short, rugby shirts are NOT for you. They have big horizontal lines that make you look wider. If you’re not that tall, your goal should be to look taller. Vertical stripes are for you in this case (think dress shirts).

If you have a belly, rugby shirts are not for you either. They’ll make your belly stand out so much you’ll want to run away home and change.

But… if you’re skinny and either tall or of average height, you should definitely go for rugby shirts. They’ll balance you out by widening your midsection.

Layering

The natural question every guy wants to know the answer to is: what goes well with a rugby shirt?

Well, a lot of things!

You can wear a t-shirt or even another collared shirt under it. Think about it: if you were tower the rugby shirt in the picture at the beginning of this article, what would happen if you wore a white shirt underneath? You would get two white collars one on top of the other.

That’s coolness at its best right there…

Here are some other things you can wear with rugby shirts: slim ties, sports jackets and even some sleeveless vests (stay away from vests with vertical stripes – since the rugby shirt has horizontal stripes, you’ll create a weird effect).

Stay stylish!

The post Stay Casual With Men’s Rugby Shirts appeared first on Be Stylish!.

A few weeks later it hit me: the polo shirt combines formal with casual in a very stylish way. It keeps the collar from the dress shirt and borrows the short sleeves from the regular t-shirt.

There are good and bad ways of combining casual with formal. Wearing sandals with a suit is a bad example. Wearing a slim tie with a polo shirt is a GREAT example.

The best part when it comes to polo shirts is that you can wear them with almost anything. Try any of these (just make sure you coordinate the colors):

• Shorts
• Dress pants
• Jeans
• Slim ties
• Leather shoes
• Sneakers

Here’s a nice looking outfit of a green polo shirt and a sports jacket:

(Don’t wear your polo shirt’s collar raised, like the guy in the above image does it, though. It’s not very stylish.)

Notice how you can wear a bold looking color like green and look stylish. The black of the blazer is what tones the whole outfit down for a classy yet stylish look.

A warning when it comes to polo shirts. Never wear them in formal situations. If you’re a salesperson or a businessman, never show up at your meetings in one. Nowadays, when dress shirts are making their way more and more into the world of casual, it’s silly to start wearing polo shirts to important business meetings.

Layering

If you’re looking to get more out of your polo shirts outfits, try layering them with vests. This will show everyone that you pay attention to the way you dress. This is me wearing a blue polo shirt and a white vest:

Whatcha think?

The post Wear Polo Shirts For a Stylish Summer Look appeared first on Be Stylish!.

When most men think about a military shirt, they imagine an ugly camouflage shirt. But today’s stylish military shirts are not like that at all. They have very good fabric and colors (as you are about to see).

So why are they still called “military” then? Well, they do keep some elements from the original models worn by the soldiers. One is the epaulets and the other is the front pockets.

These two elements are actually a blessing if you’re thin because they will make you look bigger. This is actually one of the best guarded secrets about how to look “larger”. Instead of wearing a normal shirt two sizes too large (which will make you look ridiculous anyway), try a military shirt that fits you perfectly. The epaulets will make your shoulders look bigger and the front pockets will make a more prominent chest.

What you have in the picture above is a perfect example of a stylish military shirt. It looks good, it makes the guy look bigger and the sleeves can be rolled up if it’s too hot outside. It goes perfectly in any casual situation.

What can military shirts go well with?

Whether you’re a jeans person or a dress pants person – it doesn’t matter. Military shirts go very well with both. The thing that matters is how to match it with your outfit. In order to really bring out the potential, you need to make sure all colors go well together. This of course means you need some color coordination advice as well as some practice.

To get you started, here are some outfits which include of military shirts.

One important thing: most military shirtscan either be worn tucked or untucked. (You’ve probably already noticed this from the pictures.) This is something you need to figure out for yourself depending on the outfit.

The post Are Men’s Military Shirts Stylish? appeared first on Be Stylish!.