On Style: Geek Look Number One
Dec. 20th, 2006 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakAs I wrote yesterday fashion isn't just designer labels, fashion is also choosing comfort and practicality over the look of the moment. I think that it is very sensible to be choosing comfort as a number one criteria, but far too often that is where it stops. Color and fit should also be part of the criteria for choosing clothes and choosing how to care for them.
I'm starting off the the look that I've already mention, the ubiquitous tee shirt and jeans.
#1 Tee shirts should fit. I'm not saying that everyone should have tee shirts that look like they were painted on, just that they should fit your body. It does nothing to make a tee shirt more practical if it hangs in a mass of wrinkles. Keep in mind when buying them that not all companies size a small, medium, or large in the same way so you should take advantage of the fitting room to check and see if it will fit the way you expect it to. The seam between the body of the tee shirt and the sleeve should fall somewhere between the middle and the top of the curve of your shoulder. If it is falling bellow that the shirt you are wearing is too big. Hanes "beefy" tee shirts are a particularly good example of size inflation. If a large shirt fits you well you should try a medium when getting tee shirts particularly for that brand and style.
For guys like me who are slight of frame even smalls from Hanes are far too big and I have to wander over and get a boys extra large (20) if I want it to fit and I'm not talking fitting tightly. For that I'd have to go down as far as boys large or even medium depending upon the manufacturer. A notable exception on size inflation is American Apparel. They're also notable for being very consistent in sizing so if you go by their sizing charts you will get a correct fit.
All through my high school years and into college I made the mistake of assuming that I was a medium or large. As a consequence it looked like I had no shoulders in older pictures of me and I probably looked even less fit than I was.
#2 Jeans. As with tee shirts they should fit. Fortunately because of sensible sizing (for men, women are stuck with an insane system) geeks tend to have jeans that fit. The occasional exception to this is in length. Even if they are pre-shrunk jeans will tend to creep up after a few washings so when you try on a pair of jeans they need to have a clear wrinkle at the bottom where they hit your sneakers. I made the mistake of accepting 30x32 (that's 30 inch waist and 32 inch inseam) as my size for year when they actually barely fit off the rack and after a year or two of washings they'd be shrinking away from my shoes and showing off my socks. That isn't a bad look if you want that to happen, but usually people want their pants to completely cover their ankles. So what I actually needed were 30x34 jeans either cuffed or washed a few times.
And since I'm talking about it this is how you should wash jeans. COLD WATER and a medium cycle unless they're particularly grubby. Rather than trying to take out stains by using warmer water use a spot treatment like "Spray n' Wash" and use a detergent without brighteners unless you want your jeans to look lighter. Examples include Woolite, Dropps, Cheer Dark Formula, Sears Ultra Plus, Seventh Generation, and Cheer Color Guard. Don't use a detergent combined with fabric softener, they don't work as well as separate products. When drying you can use the high heat cotton cycle, but the less heat you use the less your jeans will change size. If you have the time put the dryer on a lower temperature cycle.
#3 Accessories. If you are wearing jeans and a tee shirt, wear a belt. If you don't think you have the body to be wearing tight fitting clothes and don't want to show off, you should tuck your tee shirt in and wear a belt. Period. End of story. When buying belts get one that is sized as being one size larger than your waist size. For example with my 29 inch waist I should get a belt sized as 30 inches. If you have a 34 inch waist and they don't have a 35 inch belt, check the next available size, probably a 36 inch belt.
#4 Decoration. Picking plain tee shirts is not a bad idea. In fact I applaud geeks willing to wear a plain single color tee with jeans, it is a good look. Though beware too much of one color tone. Blue jeans look best with some contrast, for example with white, red, green, or purple. Blue with blue often does not work as well unless they are very different blues.
The thing is most geeks pick tee shirts with some slogan or artwork on them, at least when not at work. And then it goes all wrong by picking a favorite piece of art or a very long saying. On your chest or back it needs to be a simple design in order to work well. Here is an example of a bad choice from Think Geek. Yeah that's kinda funny (if you're audience is a bunch of roleplayers), but "When you find yourself in the company of a halfling and an ill-tempered Dragon, remember, you do not have to outrun the Dragon..." is 23 word (plus it has more on the back) and in a hard to read font as well. Contrast that with this tee with just the one word "geek" in a much easier to read font. It essentially says the same thing but in a way that is more elegant and a quick read. Tee shirts are like moving billboards, they can't have a message on them that take a long time to read/take in. Likewise artwork or symbols on shirts should be simple and clean rather than a big square block in two-hundred and fifty six thousand colors showing your favorite illustrator's work. For one thing chests are not generally very flat so they are not a good display surface for complex art like this. Even staying with the same company and the same subject mater I can find this simple embroidered unicorn design on a tee shirt, it would look a lot better on someone's chest than the first option. Plus simple designs wear better, complex ones start looking bad faster because the loss of a little information hurts them more.
My rule of thumb: No more than six syllables of words critical to your tee shirt's message and the design should be clear at a second or half second glance, probably limited to three colors or less (not including the color of the tee shirt). And just with jeans, wash them in cold water if at all possible unless it is totally plain and white or very light. Spot treat to get rid of stains and tumble dry on the coolest cycle you can stand to use.
Next time moving on to more professional geek looks.
I'm starting off the the look that I've already mention, the ubiquitous tee shirt and jeans.
#1 Tee shirts should fit. I'm not saying that everyone should have tee shirts that look like they were painted on, just that they should fit your body. It does nothing to make a tee shirt more practical if it hangs in a mass of wrinkles. Keep in mind when buying them that not all companies size a small, medium, or large in the same way so you should take advantage of the fitting room to check and see if it will fit the way you expect it to. The seam between the body of the tee shirt and the sleeve should fall somewhere between the middle and the top of the curve of your shoulder. If it is falling bellow that the shirt you are wearing is too big. Hanes "beefy" tee shirts are a particularly good example of size inflation. If a large shirt fits you well you should try a medium when getting tee shirts particularly for that brand and style.
For guys like me who are slight of frame even smalls from Hanes are far too big and I have to wander over and get a boys extra large (20) if I want it to fit and I'm not talking fitting tightly. For that I'd have to go down as far as boys large or even medium depending upon the manufacturer. A notable exception on size inflation is American Apparel. They're also notable for being very consistent in sizing so if you go by their sizing charts you will get a correct fit.
All through my high school years and into college I made the mistake of assuming that I was a medium or large. As a consequence it looked like I had no shoulders in older pictures of me and I probably looked even less fit than I was.
#2 Jeans. As with tee shirts they should fit. Fortunately because of sensible sizing (for men, women are stuck with an insane system) geeks tend to have jeans that fit. The occasional exception to this is in length. Even if they are pre-shrunk jeans will tend to creep up after a few washings so when you try on a pair of jeans they need to have a clear wrinkle at the bottom where they hit your sneakers. I made the mistake of accepting 30x32 (that's 30 inch waist and 32 inch inseam) as my size for year when they actually barely fit off the rack and after a year or two of washings they'd be shrinking away from my shoes and showing off my socks. That isn't a bad look if you want that to happen, but usually people want their pants to completely cover their ankles. So what I actually needed were 30x34 jeans either cuffed or washed a few times.
And since I'm talking about it this is how you should wash jeans. COLD WATER and a medium cycle unless they're particularly grubby. Rather than trying to take out stains by using warmer water use a spot treatment like "Spray n' Wash" and use a detergent without brighteners unless you want your jeans to look lighter. Examples include Woolite, Dropps, Cheer Dark Formula, Sears Ultra Plus, Seventh Generation, and Cheer Color Guard. Don't use a detergent combined with fabric softener, they don't work as well as separate products. When drying you can use the high heat cotton cycle, but the less heat you use the less your jeans will change size. If you have the time put the dryer on a lower temperature cycle.
#3 Accessories. If you are wearing jeans and a tee shirt, wear a belt. If you don't think you have the body to be wearing tight fitting clothes and don't want to show off, you should tuck your tee shirt in and wear a belt. Period. End of story. When buying belts get one that is sized as being one size larger than your waist size. For example with my 29 inch waist I should get a belt sized as 30 inches. If you have a 34 inch waist and they don't have a 35 inch belt, check the next available size, probably a 36 inch belt.
#4 Decoration. Picking plain tee shirts is not a bad idea. In fact I applaud geeks willing to wear a plain single color tee with jeans, it is a good look. Though beware too much of one color tone. Blue jeans look best with some contrast, for example with white, red, green, or purple. Blue with blue often does not work as well unless they are very different blues.
The thing is most geeks pick tee shirts with some slogan or artwork on them, at least when not at work. And then it goes all wrong by picking a favorite piece of art or a very long saying. On your chest or back it needs to be a simple design in order to work well. Here is an example of a bad choice from Think Geek. Yeah that's kinda funny (if you're audience is a bunch of roleplayers), but "When you find yourself in the company of a halfling and an ill-tempered Dragon, remember, you do not have to outrun the Dragon..." is 23 word (plus it has more on the back) and in a hard to read font as well. Contrast that with this tee with just the one word "geek" in a much easier to read font. It essentially says the same thing but in a way that is more elegant and a quick read. Tee shirts are like moving billboards, they can't have a message on them that take a long time to read/take in. Likewise artwork or symbols on shirts should be simple and clean rather than a big square block in two-hundred and fifty six thousand colors showing your favorite illustrator's work. For one thing chests are not generally very flat so they are not a good display surface for complex art like this. Even staying with the same company and the same subject mater I can find this simple embroidered unicorn design on a tee shirt, it would look a lot better on someone's chest than the first option. Plus simple designs wear better, complex ones start looking bad faster because the loss of a little information hurts them more.
My rule of thumb: No more than six syllables of words critical to your tee shirt's message and the design should be clear at a second or half second glance, probably limited to three colors or less (not including the color of the tee shirt). And just with jeans, wash them in cold water if at all possible unless it is totally plain and white or very light. Spot treat to get rid of stains and tumble dry on the coolest cycle you can stand to use.
Next time moving on to more professional geek looks.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-20 07:02 pm (UTC)But I would not dare send it on to my co-workers who MOST ought to read it.
I have, however, bullied my boss into exactly one (1) ruse for his T-shirts:
"No wearing of T-shirts to work that are already stained when you put them on."
But he has trouble with it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-20 07:23 pm (UTC)But do remember that some of us don't get to do teeshirts that fit the body. When the phrase "36D" is involved, it's probably better to go with something that fits over the 36Ds in question, rather than merely straining over them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-20 07:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-20 07:49 pm (UTC)And if it's a long tee, and the designer didn't think to flare it out again at the hips, those of us with big hips to go with the big boobs are in *real* trouble...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-20 09:10 pm (UTC)So how would you recommend modifying the advice? Point out that cut matters for men and women, but especially for women with large busts?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-20 09:33 pm (UTC)Also, henleys, polos, and other center split styles are more forgiving that a round neck t shirt.
What is your feeling on t shirts with different color neck and cuff bindings? Or double bindings to look like a shirt within a shirt? It the color combination works, I like them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-20 10:06 pm (UTC)The fitted t-shirts are called just that.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-21 06:03 am (UTC)My own approach is that clothes I wear should be appropriate to temperature, legal (Southern California summers get very warm), clean, and inexpensive -- more or less in that order of importance. But then, I seem to distinguish between "fashion" and "style" in ways that you don't, and I generally assign little importance to physical appearance -- a pattern formed long before becoming a decrepit old geezer, at that.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-21 09:03 am (UTC)I suppose I don't distinguish between fashion and style. To me they are like climate and weather, they're part of one another. Millions of personal style choices bouncing back and forth between different people make up what is in fashion or not for different groups.
What I view as wrong is making choices in the absence of information. If a person actually chooses ill fitting clothes or even ugly clothes knowing what he or she is doing, I applaud the choice. But far too often little thought is given to the language of what we wear and some are never taught how to speak it. Particularly in the later case I hope to educate a few people about how to present themselves well and in a manner they desire (within limits). Because I was that person who didn't know any better for years.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-16 10:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-16 11:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-17 12:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-17 01:13 am (UTC)Point taken
Date: 2007-01-17 02:28 am (UTC)Sadly, the whole issue is fraught with cultural subtext, from hippie casualness to geek/fan anti-suit prejudices to a certain redneck conditioning to hold in contempt anyone male who cared about such things. (I think you know I'm not a homophobe; but I was born and raised in the South in an era when any non-violent male was constantly terrified of being accused of being a "sissy" [to use the least loaded term that comes to mind].)
Re: Point taken
Date: 2007-01-17 06:34 am (UTC)Ideally speaking I'm trying to get more geeks dates, jobs, and so on by teaching them the clothing and grooming side of social niceties. Plus I just geek out about the subject, I'm interested in how clothes are constructed. How they work. How they're described. Etc... And cologne, soap, moisturizer, etc, etc, etc...
I realize that being totally into clothes isn't for everyone, just as computers aren't for everyone. I just think that everyone should look good in clothes to the level they're already putting in. I want to solve problems, make things easier. I know I'm not perfect at this. Gosh this should turn into its own entry.
In addition to realizing that everyone isn't like me there are other reasons for me to think they shouldn't all dress like me. In fact it would be tragic for me because then I'd have to work harder to be fabulous!