How does your environment affect your style?

[TourbillonTurk.]

Your salary, occupation, your environment i.e. neighborhood or campus and finally your social circle regardless of your age will always affect your style.

 

[LanceW]

The environment of the south greatly affects my style by limiting practical uses of jackets.

However, I think my style affects my environment even more as dressing well precludes me from fitting in. While I enjoy the clothes, I don't have many friends.

 

[patrickBOOTH]

You'll always have friends here on Style Forvm.

 

[Blackhood]

I actually dealt with this today. I've returned home from university in the West Country to a more urban town.

When dressing to go out in mildly terrible weather this morning I pulled on a Button down shirt, Tweed flat cap and Barbour international. Ditched the wellies and went with storm welted brogues. At university where a significant majority of my peers are farmers or from the Landed Classes this is about as inconspicuous as one could hope for.

My parents on the other hand were shocked that I wasn't in a leather jacket with a v-neck t-shirt underneath. For about 2 hours I suffered jokes about going Hunting/Shooting and looked thoroughly out of place climbing into an Audi rather than a Land Rover.

Smart also has different social connotations for me. If I put on a shirt and a sports coat to go out with my "home friends" I'm often ridiculed for dressing up too much, and the last time I wore a pocket square I was spoken to in nothing but Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward quotes (I have intelligent but slobish friends).

On the other hand I regularly don a 3pc suit for meetings/work at university because I'm on a business course. Dressing in Jeans simply isn't an option if you don't want to get laughed at, and as such being smart (pocket square and all) is not only socially acceptable but expected.

I'm a bit of an extrovert and as such I usually dress one step above the social norm, but have learned that there is "quirky" and then there is "eccentric". If one were to quantify it I suppose I would describe it as 110% of the social norm.

 

[mkarim]

Originally Posted by julius12

First I predict how my friends / others might dress, then I dress up a bit more, but not by too much to avoid being overdressed.

+1

 

[SpooPoker]

I bring extra peak lapels and bead bracelets in my rucksack where ever I go. Its kind of like Mardi Gras being around me.

 

[GBR]

Originally Posted by patrickBOOTH

You people really are not getting the point of this thread.

Do enlighten us as we clearly have not raised our game to your level

 

[TheFoo]

My environment only influences the way I dress to the extent there are direct, tangible consequences. That's to say, unless I'm going to get fired, lose out on an opportunity, or be kept out of a place, I dress as I please.

I don't dress like any of my family or friends (except for those I've met through a shared interest in clothes). I don't know the reason for the divergence, except that I've always been more interested in surrounding myself with aesthetically-pleasing things than most of the people I like spending time with.

I care much more about whether my clothes make sense within the framework of classic men's dress. For example, I like my clothes to be season-appropriate--I'd wear fresco in the summer even if it didn't actually keep me any cooler. But even then, I don't follow the 'rules' very rigidly.

 

[1969]

Perhaps another question is "How do your city's style and your work environment merge and what is your relationship to that"?

 

[Sonny58]

I work for a software company where many of my peers dress in tee shirts, shorts and sandals. So I run the risk of being called out if I deviate much from that. A while back someone commented on my shoes saying that they had "outgrown" uncomfortable shoes a long time ago. He wears Birkenstocks now.

And it seems the hot climate here only encourages folks to dress more casually.

It's funny, since I started reading SF I've found myself wishing I worked somewhere that required nicer dress. Maybe one of these days I'll get a job "downtown" where they dress better! That would be swell.

 

[voxsartoria]

..

 

[sellahi22]

My wardrobe has been developed independently of my environment, but what I put on day to day does depend on the situation. I just take note of the level of formality of the occasion and match it with my wardrobe. Roughly, this means casual (sweater/jeans etc), semi-casual (jacket, trousers), semi-formal (suit), or formal.

I do not like to overdress or impose a formality standard on others (to me that's like wearing costume instead of integrating wardrobe with lifestyle), but I do like to do the best I can within the appropriate range of formality.

 

[TheFoo]

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

This presumes perfect information, although I'm down with the whole recklessness of the concept.


- B

I'm not presuming perfect information. Quite the contrary, actually. While I can be fairly sure that showing up to work in a leather S&M suit will get me booted from the office, I don't know if wearing a pocket square will mark me as a silly dandy or signal confidence, so I don't bother to guess and do as I like.

 

[MORNINGSTAR777]

I work in fashion design so pretty much anything goes. If I had to define the median style of most design offices it falls in the range of well dressed casual or outfits that would definitely get praised in SW&D. I used to wear a suit and no one thought anything of it (would get complements), but I realized it felt too forced and that sport coats definitely seemed a lot more "relaxed" and not as contrived as the former. As I said before since there's no real restrictions on dress at work, weather is the biggest determining factor for me. At the design office I work at now the only rule I've been told is that shorts are not allowed (corporate company), so I work within what I find aesthetically pleasing and comfortable for 85+ degree weather (somewhere between MC & SW&D). In cooler weather it's full on MC.

 

[lemmywinks]

Flip Flops are 100% ok.