Style is Interior Design for Your Body

Style is just interior design and architecture for your body.

I recently moved into a new place and along with that comes the need for new furniture. As I design my place, I keep thinking about how similar interior design is to clothing and style.

Men often forget that style is just visual science, much like architecture, and interior design. It's a learnable, and teachable practice, you just need to know the rules.

Good rules cross different disciplines, and here are a few parallels I've found that should help you improve your outfits and everyday style.

1. Proportion to space

Your furniture should be in proportion to the space it is in. It would be absurd to have a couch that eats up three quarters of your living room, or a bedroom you can hardly walk into because your bed hogs the entire space.

In the same way, your clothing should be in proportion to your body.

I get questions constantly from readers and news outlets like, "Should clothing fit tight or loose?" I always want to say, "It should just fit."

Just like you shouldn’t have a couch that is too big or too small, your clothing should match the size of your body and follow your frame. That is it. If a shirt is pulling, sagging, or ballooning, it is the furniture equivalent of a an extra large couch jammed in a studio.

2. Quality over quantity

When I first started buying furniture, I thought I could be cheap and "get away with it." Every one of those pieces ended up being returned or sold off. It has been a massive headache and I ended up getting a designer to help me with it all.

I beat myself up over it because this is something I would never do with clothing, and it is something I constantly tell clients to avoid.

When needed, spend the money. You will be far happier. Most guys learn this lesson the hard way, both with furniture and with clothes. You will learn it too. The only variable is how much time and money you waste before you get there. Most guys circle back to work together only after thousands have already been spent.

Buy the right stuff. It'll last a lot longer, you'll look better, and you'll be happy with what you own.

3. Set it up once and forget it

The biggest lie in menswear is that you need to constantly buy clothing and "refresh" every season.

You can. But why?

Imagine how ridiculous it would be to buy a new couch every season. You would never do it. Yet the fashion industry and subscription box services love to tell you that you always need more stuff. You do not.

If you set up your foundation correctly, you will spend a shockingly low amount of time shopping. Build a wardrobe the way you build a well-designed room: invest in the right anchor pieces once, then stop fiddling with them.

If you do not buy furniture every season, you do not need to buy clothing every season either.

4. Congruent theme and appropriate style

You would never style your home with three competing themes, trying to smash together Spanish Gothic, Mid Century Modern, and Farmhouse in the same space. It would look off, and there would be no cohesive direction.

This is exactly what most guys do with their wardrobe.

They have random styles smashed together: preppy, gothic, modern, streetwear, whatever item or brand caught their eye in the moment. Then they wonder why they cannot create outfits. Their closet has no cohesive look or feel because all the items are chosen randomly, so every time they try to get dressed, something feels off.

You might know that feeling where you look in the mirror and think, "Something is wrong here, but I don’t know what." This is often the culprit.

A simple fix: choose a clear theme for how you want to look, the same way you choose a direction for your home. Then stop buying outside that theme.

5. Negative space and clutter

In a well-designed room, you do not fill every inch with stuff. You leave negative space. Blank wall, empty floor, room around the furniture. That space is what makes the pieces you do have actually stand out. Style works the same way.

Most guys have way too much visual noise in a single outfit. Loud competing colors, patterned shirts, branded items, etc.

You need "quiet" pieces in your wardrobe that act like negative space. Simple tees, clean jeans or trousers, solid knitwear, minimal sneakers. These are the empty walls and clean floors that let your better pieces breathe.

A few simple rules here:

• One focal point at a time. If your jacket is bold, keep everything else simple.

• Not every item can be a statement. For every "loud" piece in your closet, you should have several quiet ones that support it.

• If you feel "overdone" and you cannot figure out why, remove one item or one pattern. Same idea as taking one accessory off before you leave the house.
  

If your outfits always feel a bit chaotic, it is rarely because you need more clothes. It is usually because you have no negative space.

Strip things back, give your best pieces room, and your style will instantly feel more intentional, the same way a decluttered room suddenly feels expensive.

As you can see, there is a lot of overlap between interior design and style. Having style is simply the act of putting together items in a way that is visually pleasing and aligned with you. It simply science.

Style, like any other discipline, can be learned. It is just visual principles put into action. Once you know those principles and you have the right clothing, much like having the right furniture, you will look good with very little effort.

That is what we do here at Pivot: Show you what looks best on you and then actually get you the clothing and build the wardrobe to make it happen.

If you are tired of guessing and want help setting up your wardrobe the right way, you can see more about my personal styling services here, built exclusively for men.


If you want to talk through what this would look like for you, you can schedule a short call with me here.

-Patrick