"The Cheat Sheet of Italian Style" is not published yet, but I found out it can help the guys too, who don’t have it that easy as we think.
A friend, Ed, posted the following challenge in a closed Facebook group.
“Ok ... here's a challenge for you folks.
Back in the day, about a hundred years ago, I used to LUV wearing a suit and tie to work.
Now that I work from home? I have two uniforms: Summer, cargo shorts and a polo. Winter, jeans and a heavy flannel (or hoodie).
So what I need from you good people is convincing that I need to dress better... say like this dude, my Insta bud” accompanied by a picture featuring a rainbow circle of what looked a bunch of lace up, brogues, loafers.
First of all: Ed is a professional, owns several businesses, is the only member of the group I have personally met and, even if we differ in our opinion for cargo pants (gulp) is a man of style. Don’t mess up with his wristband watches collection though, and, for his own delight and many more hopefully, there’s a chapter in the book titled “Borrow from the boys” which will be highly entertaining.
The Facebook group he is the administrator for is composed of men and women, all independent consultants who write, that is copywriters of a new generation, the ones that are entrepreneurs first, they come from and live all around the globe, and I think it’s enough to describe the kaleidoscopic congregation of highly prolific minds.
Which brings me to my first point: walk out of your comfort zone.
It’s easy for me to talk about style and fashion and the empowering experience that is discovering one’s style when I talk (and write) from the standpoint of a “professor”. I know, I see where you are making the mistakes, I correct, you pass the test, prize? Your own contentment, happiness, fulfillment, growth and one more person distinctly dressed in the world.
But the lively conversation that ensued catapulted me out of my realm: it was like preparation for the SAT (and yes, I have a Junior in the house, so the analogy comes spontaneous), rough territory, mine fields. I am humbled by the experience and I have to share my takeaway.
The concept that stood out was: I work from home, I don’t need to dress-up and that makes me happy because the years of corporate dressing are gone. The peak was “dressing up slows me down and depresses me”, a brazen statement to hear that I am still trying to dissect it and attempt to understand.
Corporate attire
In the book I describe in details what happened when I was handed my first Employee Handbook that listed in HR jargon what I had to wear. My first encounter with “corporate attire” resulted in 6 of the most miserable months my heart recalls. “Do you mean I am “the girl that does Facebook” because I am wearing a black taffeta full skirt by Oscar de la Renta to work? Didn’t you ask me for “black”? So but then if I’d wear a black ill-fitting sheath dress from ____ (I blank out, but it’s some bridge collection from Macy’s) I am “the girl from marketing”? I leave it as is, I still get fired up about it and the book will do.
Dress-up.
Truth is: there’s no dressing-up for _____ insert what you want, church, office. The only dressing up is when you are attending a gala that requires couture level and sartorial knowledge or when you play dress-up as a child wearing what your parents wear for galas.
Dress for.
I am going to break another news, the concept of dressing for _____ is a major fail that brings the self-esteem levels lower down the drain, besides creating an insurmountable divide between Italian style and American style. B O Y I said it, but it’s true, just look in the streets and in the metro.
Only person one should dress for is oneself.
The cliché
The undertone of many comments was the cliché of style and fashion as shallow which is so … shallow, I don’t really know where it comes from, maybe usual male dominated corporate America that sees a woman or a man caring for their appearance, clothing, accessories, new seasons, colors, fabrics, collars as frivolous.
Really?
I just have a quick annotation: many of the colleagues of the group own a business, have a website, have profile pictures all “dressed-up” according to their standards, because the rest of the time they live in comfort “exercise clothes” and “scruffy looks”. When they need to meet a prospect client they simply put the “interview suit” on. I find it an alarming divide. First, truth is, when you dress up for an occasion in which you want to impress, like a networking event or an interview or a meeting with a prospect, good chances are you’ll be sniffed miles away. Second, we are not college students going for the first interview with a Calvin Klein suit charged on the department store card and returned the following day, that is not what you expect from a professional.
To put it in different words, the ones of the founder of the group, “Even when I'm only on the phone with them,[the clients] I can't imagine having a serious conversation if I was in raggedy sweats.”
Metrosexual, who?
There seemed to be some misunderstanding as to what metrosexual means, which is, by the way, one of those words so 2011 that is not used anymore, unless you want to corner someone. And, to give so humorous respite to this opinionated piece, I’d like to invite everyone to laugh their belly out with “Fuck yeah menswear”. Style is an individual language, the first and primordial one, boxing it in to definitions and titles has been attempted forever, some of them resisted the gods of the weather, like prep or sprezzatura, some of them like metrosexual or normcore got weathered down.
Hell yeah, it was a trip down a lane I had never walked before, hard to digest, but more so convinced that my ten struts to the Italian way make sense even for whom is not Italian.
THERE ARE A LOT OF OPINIONS STATED, THAT I'D LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU ALL THINK. COMMENT AWAY THEN