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Here are common mistakes you might be making that are dragging down your perceived sense of fashion.
1. Dirty Shoes (even slightly dirty)
Minimalist kicks are all the rage right now, from whites, blacks, grays, and even light browns. Good shoes are an eye-catcher for sure, so you need to make sure they are well-kept.
White shoes or brown shoes can give you the most points -- but are easily detracting from your fashion if you let them get dirty.
Trust me, if you have dirty shoes, people are noticing. If you're bold enough to wear white, we recommend purchasing shoes of quality enough to wash without damaging them. You'll need quality products if you want clean shoes to continue to play in your favor for the long term.
Pro-tip: Buy a shoe washing bag on Amazon to prevent your shoes from getting damaged. I used to go through white shoes every other month until I did this, and now they last 6+ months. You can just toss them in the washer on delicate with these.
2. Wrinkled shirts
Wrinkles can bring any modern man down, and are easily the bane of most mens wardrobes. If you've gotten comfortable rocking the wrinkles, you're doing yourself a disservice.
I've thrown a lot of shirts away just because they wrinkle too easily. Life's too short to be dealing with wrinkle's, man. From a designer perspective, shirts that easily wrinkle are using too much of one blend of material, and normally it's a first indicator that it's cheap if it won't unwrinkle.
Linens & cottons wrinkle the most. The thing is, most shirts need to find a balance between cotton & a base material to be both comfortable & soft. Too much polyester feels like sandpaper and too much cotton won't last very long.
If that Macy's shirt you bought for $160 is wrinkling easily, that's because it's secretly a $10 shirt.
Do yourself a favor and implement two investments into your life:
- Better shirts that don't wrinkle (look for cotton PLUS a base like polyester or a small amount of spandex)
- A portable steamer
All shirts wrinkle a little bit, so the portable steamer will be clutch. I have a hook sticking out of my wall in my closet that I can hang shirts on, and then I easily steam them to get them looking super crisp.
3. Clashing colors & accessories
An easy way to put yourself at a serious disadvantage is clashing colors. There are safe color sets, and unsafe color sets. While fashion tends to reward the bold, there are a few things color combos should avoid, like:
- Red & Purple
- Orange & Blue
- Red & Green
- Orange &Green
- Blue & Gold
- Blue on different blues
- Maroons on other colors
- Grays on other grays
Men most often mess up their blues, grays, or maroons. You're going to be safest rocking whites with your bold colors. Consider pants as the bold color, and then matching shirt/shoes colors that are more minimalist like white or black.
There you have it folks -- 3 of the most common pitfalls you need to avoid. Once you master the basics of what NOT to do, you can start graduating into the little additions that can help you stand out!