Men’s Fashion Commandments: Start Caring
Combining fashion and men isn’t always easy. The popular notion is that anything a guy handles should be tough enough to endure some literal manhandling, and that’s still true for a lot of dudes. In order to be truly serious about your style, though, this is something that you’ll have to change about yourself. It’s high time you started caring.
Fashion is often portrayed as a high-maintenance vice, but that’s not entirely true. It takes attention to detail, yes, but it’s not the worst in terms of tedium and cost. Some estimate that keeping up a stamp collection or a garage full of vintage cars would be far pricier. At the same time, you also have to consider the practical benefits of maintaining a closet full of stylish clothes – such as the heads you turn on the street and at the office.
A Different Kind of Label
When you hear the term ‘label’ in men’s fashion, the first image you’re likely to think of are the big brands and designer names with international stores. The more important label to you, however, is the one that’s literally attached to your clothes.
Grab any one garment of yours and flip it inside out. You should find anywhere from one to four little strips of paper affixed to different spots. These are your care labels – yes, they’re the more important variety – that contain, among others, specific instructions on how to take proper care of the garment in your hands. Should you care? Definitely.
Delicate items like silks and wools get destroyed when you just fling them into the wash with all of your other clothes. It’s hard to imagine a standard silk neckties or that cashmere sweater lasting more than a few rounds in the washing machine with all your t-shirts.
Even hardier items like canvas jackets and jeans, however, are not exempt from needing a certain degree of care, lest they become drastically different from when you bought them. A pair of jeans, for example, could bleed color and fade considerably if you wash it in a way other than prescribed. This is especially true for garments that have a lot of deep, dark or bright colors featured in the textile.
Let’s not kid ourselves: men’s fashion costs a lot nowadays. Getting all the right pieces in high quality materials isn’t cheap. And since you’ve invested a lot in your wardrobe, you wouldn’t want your clothes lasting any less than their limit. The answer is simple: care.
Dry Cleaning Dilemmas
If you live in a city with medium to high living standards, then dry cleaning wouldn’t be a cheap exercise. How, then, do you reconcile fashion’s love affair for dry cleaning with more practical concerns like, oh, a budget?
Truth is, you don’t have to dry clean your clothes as much as the glossy photos in style magazines might suggest. Shirts, for example, aren’t recommended for dry cleaning at all. Suits and sport coats – even the ones you wear regularly – are ideally dry cleaned once every six months at most. Delicate accessories like silk neckties ought only be dry cleaned when absolutely necessary.
It all brings us back to the care label. Unless it says that dry cleaning is your absolute only option, you’re pretty safe with having it laundered. Otherwise, buck up the extra bucks to give your clothes some expert TLC. Style isn’t just about wearing the right clothes; it’s also knowing how to take care of the things that make you look good.
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