Two Easy Tips for Pairing Men’s Clothing

It may come as a surprise, but during the pandemic, this business didn’t do so well. As it turns out, personal styling and image consulting aren’t considered essential businesses. Who knew. Of course, post-COVID, things skyrocketed, but during the lockdowns, I ended up being fairly bored.

As some of my clients know, I filled that time with learning about wine. Don’t ask me why, maybe it was an excuse to drink, or maybe I was tired of feeling embarrassed looking at wine lists at dinner.

While learning about wine, one of the things that fascinated me was food pairings. I found it interesting that wine can pair perfectly well with a dish or, conversely, completely ruin it.

I think about pairing your clothing and making an outfit the same way.

You may have felt this before: Sometimes, things just fit perfectly together, and other times it feels forced and disjointed. You’re likely left wondering why.

Here’s a classic tip to know how to pair wine with food: “what grows together goes together.”

The idea is simple. If a wine comes from a specific region, it almost always pairs well with traditional food from that area. For example, Chianti with Italian food, Rioja with Spanish tapas, and so on down the list.

Let’s take this same example of “What grows together goes together” and apply it to clothing so you can create much better outfits.

First, you can easily pair clothing that was made by the same designer or brand.

Every clothing brand has a direction for its design, from Levi’s to Loro Piana. The clothing has a signature “vibe” that runs through everything they make.

Let's take a well-known example: Polo Ralph Lauren is a classic American brand with clothing that could be described as “preppy”.

Now contrast this to a store like AllSaints, where things are more "industrial"looking.

If you walk into either store, you'd notice the difference right away. Note how it would be very easy to mix and match things from the stores individually, but nearly impossible to pair the two brands' aesthetics together.

Each brand had a signature direction, and they stick to it.

 

 

Because each brand has its own aesthetic direction, it’s easy to pair an item with another piece from the same brand. If it sounds simple, it’s because it is.

So we can say, “what is designed together goes together”. Just like food and wine from the same region, clothes from the same brand are designed to complement each other.

Once you identify a few brands you like and what works for you, it’s smooth sailing. The designers at those brands have already done the hard work to make sure their items all pair together.

A second way to apply this is with fabric. We can quite literally apply “what grows together goes together” here.

If you’re stuck trying to pair an item, look at what fabric it’s made from and then pair it with the same fabric.

E.g., Linen paired with linen, cotton paired with cotton, wool paired with wool, etc. Pairing the same fabric together almost always works because those materials naturally look and feel right next to each other.

Here are examples of those three fabrics paired with each other, starting with wool on the left, cotton center, and then linen on the far right.

 

 

Using the “what grows together goes together” principle gives you two easy ways to put together better outfits in the future (and might help you next time you’re looking at a wine list).

Hope this helps.

x Patrick