Style Tip #259: Just Because It Looks Good Doesn't Mean It Will

More than half the time, the individual articles of clothing we're wearing are perfectly fine, wearable pieces. The only problem is that when they come together, it's like mixing lamb and chicken into lobster bisque. It just doesn't work. But I'm no chef, so correct me if I'm wrong.








Many of us have had a time when we've entered a store and we see a pair of shoes that look so good that we just cannot not buy them. I had one such moment last night where the choice was between a classic pair of dark brown lace-up loafers and on the other hand, a very beautifully constructed pair of boat shoes in a shade between cream and light brown. 




To cut a medium-length story short, I chose the dark brown lace-up loafers. Why? Had I gone with my love-at-first-sight intuition and selected the boat shoes, I would have ended up with a very nice, but very impractical purchase. 


Let me explain.




Many a time when selecting a purchase, we tend to choose an article for how it looks on its own. We fail to realize that dressing doesn't just consist of wearing a pair of beautiful shoes and nothing else. By failing to do so, we forget to consider one very important factor when it comes to good dress-sense: outfit co-ordination.

Dark brown leather loafers, on their own, may look like the plainest pair of shoes made by the plainest shoemaker in the plainest corner of plain-et Earth... but when you pair them with a fitted light blue shirt, a good leather belt and white fitted shorts, the formerly modest pair of loafers joins forces with the rest of the ensemble and the entirety morphs into an extremely elegant, put-together weekend look. 










On the other hand, if I had chosen the boat shoes, I would have on my hands right now a specimen that would be very pleasing to the eye. But the merit of the shoes would end there - frankly because I would have nothing much to pair the shoes with. If outfits were NBA teams, great outfits would be the Spurs - a team with complementary players who work together to get the job done, and not the Lakers - a team that lives on the strength of one Kobe Bryant. 

"It's aight team, I got this"

Rather than being the result of a single article of clothing, a nice outfit is the fruit of the co-ordination of several key components - a pair of great shoes, a winning shirt-trouser combination, a belt that isn't out of place and a nice watch as the cherry on the cake. 










That being said, it's also not true that we should never allow ourselves the freedom of clothing experimentation - if you have more than a few bucks to spare, splurge on that funky belt you've always wanted, go for that pair of quirky brogues your mother warned you about... but if you're looking to assemble a wardrobe that will serve you long time, you can never go wrong by starting with the classics. 

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Why You Like Who You Like

About one third of the world's population believe in the notion of "love at first sight". The other two-thirds are realistic.


But rather than embarking on a debate into the virtues and setbacks of committing your love life to somebody who may turn out to look quite different in the morning, I am here to put forth yet another largely baseless, ill-researched theory on the things we do and why we do them. 




Today, I'm going to tell you... why you like the people you like.




You heard it here first on Straight Eye for the Straight Guy - attraction to the opposite sex is dominantly influenced by two factors: 


Firstly, the quality of your relationship with your parent of the opposite sex (if you're a woman - your relationship with your father, and vice versa) and of course, that thing we call the media.  












The Parent-Child Relationship Theory


It's safe to say that our parents are, respectively, the first man and the first woman we meet here on our introduction to planet Earth. 


The implications of this are severe.


Not only are our early personalities shaped largely by our parent's interactions with us and their own behavioral traits - our taste in the opposite sex also stems from them.


A bold claim, yes. Get it? I bolded the word bold. Aha ha aha ha ha...




....




Yeah.










Allow me to explain this claim with the analogy of a boy and his mother.




Presuming that the said boy grew up having a healthy and reasonably close-knit bond with his mother, his early perceptions of women will be formed based on her. What a woman behaves like, how a woman talks, how a woman walks... are all the little cues his developing mind will subconsciously perceive. 


She will be the benchmark - the standard that he will judge all the subsequent women he meets in life - including his eventual partner. 

Take my life for example. Me and my mom are tight. Not Mama's-Boy tight, but we do have a "healthy and reasonably close-knit bond". With my father taking over the breadwinner duties, my mother was the most constant character in the long running sitcom of my upbringing. Therefore, how she interacted with me, what she taught me, and the things she did for me as a child gradually shaped my adult perceptions of what a woman is capable of and also formed in my mind the inherent 'value' of a woman. 


Graduating into adolescence, I, like everybody else, had my share of crushes and puppy-dog relationships. But as a whole, I found that the women I was most attracted to had elements of... my mom.


As horrific and wrong as that sounds, it is true. I realized that women who displayed character traits akin to my mother and/or bore appearances most similar to her struck the loudest chords in the opposite-sex-attraction lobe of my brain. 

This theory, however, does not apply to those who have had estranged or relatively distant relationships with their mothers/fathers. Take my friend Mortimer* for example. Mortimer grew up despising his mother, but adoring his father. While he balked with prejudice at anything his mother did or said, he metaphorically worshiped the ground his father walked on. 


And I kid you not - the woman he married resembles his father (in her defense, his father was a fine looking gentleman). As photographic evidence is unavailable, you'll just have to take my word for it.






The same applies to women. Women who have had fantastic relationships with their fathers are more likely to be attracted to what I call the "George Clooney" male phenotype, ie. older men who resemble fatherly figures. The same could be true of women who have had the lack of a father figure in their lives - their need for such a man is expressed in their attraction towards powerful older men who might not be immediately perceived as 'attractive' in the aesthetic sense of the word. 

"Who's your daddy?" I am.

The whole jimmy of it is that our parents somehow or rather, do play an influential role in influencing our taste in the opposite sex.








That being said, in the majority of cases - an even more powerful influencing factor is










The Media Theory


This will probably come as no surprise to many. Today's world is a world of information overload - billboards, television programs, music videos and print advertising bombard our five senses continually, persistently and effectively. We buy products because we like an advertisement we see on the tube. We drive carefully because of a particularly horrifying accident we witness in the newspapers. And more significantly, we are attracted to the people we are attracted to because of what we see glorified by the omnipotent behemoth that is The Media. 

I conducted a short informal survey over the course of several months where I posed 2 very simple queries to a small sample group of Malaysian-Chinese women. 


The first question I asked them was:


1. Did you predominantly grow up watching Hollywood films or Hong Kong dramas (very popular among the Chinese population of Malaysia) ?


2. Compare the following 2 male models and choose the one you find more attractive. For the experiment, I used two models with roughly similar features and subjective attractiveness, but perceivably distinct ethnic differences. Daniel Henney (a Korean-American model/actor) and David Gandy (a British male model):

Daniel Henney 

David Gandy

As you may have already guessed by now, the women who grew up with Hollywood media overwhelming chose David Gandy over Daniel Henney. The opposite was true of the "Hong Kong drama" women who did not hesitate in selecting Daniel Henney over David Gandy.

Admittedly, the survey failed to take into consideration many intangible factors, but it does suggest the conclusion that the media has an alarmingly powerful influence on why we like the people we like.  

For further evidence - we needn't look further than the prevailing lack of Asian male - Caucasian female couples. In western society, Asian males couldn't be represented worse - Chinese men are almost always cast as grocery store owners and/or samurai-wielding-yakuza-karate-chop types. Hardly the same level of virility as the action star or the charming protagonist often played by the Caucasian hero. Sure, one could argue that Jackie Chan and Jet Li have paved the way somewhat for the recognition of Asian men in Hollywood - but consider this - when have Jet or Jackie ever really gotten the girl?

This pretty much sums up what Asians mean to Hollywood.

In conclusion - beauty is not so much a genetically-coded concept as it is one that is shaped through the various influences we absorb through course of our lives. Give it a thought - the people you find yourself attracted to - why them? Why not the Amazonian jungle-woman? Why not the stunning women of Tanzania or the exquisite beauties of the Native American tribes? 

I think you know the answer. 

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals  

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Dressing Identity

Okay, okay get this - 



Two men meet at a party. They're both wearing identical logo tees. 


What happens next?








They both go "DUDE WE LIKE, HAVE THE SAME SHIRT!!!" 


"LIKE, TOTALLY RAD!"


*high five* 




*chest bump* 




*beer-mug-clinking*


and perhaps an ensuing celebratory photo to commemorate this moment, the memory of which both men will cherish for generations to come. 

Typical straight guy scenario.






Two women meet at a party. They're both wearing the exact same dress. 

Recipe for disaster

What happens next?






Nothing much... except -












ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE.
















A mystery of life: why in the world do women make such a big deal of wearing the same dress, donning the same shoes or carrying the same bag at the same time and at the same place?














Because every woman understands this cardinal law of style - 


Dressing well also means dressing exclusively. 




That means wearing a dress no other woman else has, sporting a pair of Manolo Blahniks that no other girl owns and carrying a Hermes Birkin that no other lady within the vicinity is likely to be able to afford. 






Where a majority of men see domino-dressing as nothing more than an entertaining quirk, many women see it as nothing short of a 2012 caliber catastrophe. 




Therefore, to be a good dresser, not only in the eyes of man, but also (very importantly), in the eyes of a woman, the word of the day is to be unique - to have, what I call a "dressing identity".  


Take for example the gingham shirt phenomenon. The gingham shirt was the in-thing about 6 months back, and is slowly falling out of trend circles as we speak. 




Don't sport the gingham shirt when every alternate man on the street is wearing one. Dressing well is not about being a trend-following, gingham-shirt wearing zombie. It's about having your own individual sense of style, and sticking by that look regardless of what's in and out of style. Truly outstanding dressers (from James Dean to Johnny Depp) all sport a distinctive style that is truly theirs. 


When Grease bell bottoms were tres-chic, not only was every John Travolta-wannabe on the street wearing them, every Travolta-wannabe on the street was also looking like a douche in the process. Sure, the man himself may have looked somewhat... forgivable in bell bottoms, but that doesn't mean every other Tom, Harry and Dick will. 




The mere fact that something is a trend does not make it stylish by default. 




Think popped collars. Think cat-eyed visor sunglasses. Think carrot-cut trousers.






At the end of the day, it pays in massive dividends to find a look that suits you and your personality and to stick by it. 




Are you a geek? Embrace the way of the black rimmed glasses. Rock the buttoned-up-all-the-way-to-the-collar shirt.

More of a man about town? Keep a good variety of well-fitting oxford shirts and polo tees at arms reach.

Does rock flow through your bloodstream? A timelessly well fitting leather jacket never fails.

The gist of dressing well is to be supremely comfortable in your second skin, ie. the clothes you're wearing - in the sense that what you're wearing is what you are. Ultimately, a man only looks good in nice clothes if he feels good wearing them.


Trends will come and go and are not for everybody, but once you find a look that represents your identity, a look people come to associate you with, you'd have taken yet another huge step towards well-dressed-man nirvana.

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Whiskey for Hair Growth!

More than once in my life, I've been told that rubbing whiskey/brandy on your face is guaranteed (a word that has lost all value) to make you grow facial hair.

Though, I've seen my fair share of chronic drunkards without a sliver of facial hair. They probably either drink their alcohol with extreme decorum and care or just aren't drinking the right drinks. 

In any case, Straight Eye for the Straight Guy recently polled 45 readers on their facial hair preferences. 

The majority (35%) were of the stand that a little bit of facial growth is the way to go.

Now for the vast majority of Asian men like myself, who at best, can only grow facial hair that has been termed by the ladies as "insufficient"... woe is us.

But wait! Hope arrives valiantly in the form of the second highest polled option - 28% of voters liked us "clean & shiny" folk - a look that the Chinese have perfected over generations of living in sterile environments that did away with the evolutionary need for facial hair.*

Only 4 people thought that being "follicularly blessed" was an actual blessing, disproving the notion that more is more when it comes to facial sprouting. Though I'll bet my bottom dollar that the latter 4 voters are not men who have to wake up 20 minutes earlier every morning to whip out cream and a razor sharp Gillette just to work through that plumage that makes its renewed, unwanted appearance every morning on the faces of the dearly blessed. 

And finally, to the remaining 26%:

1 Samuel 16:7 

"The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."

Good night and God bless. 

*Apparently facial hair is a natural-selection result of living in dustier environments, as it helps to trap and minimize dust from entering the respiratory system. 

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