Be Better Guys

What sent me over the edge was flipping through a recent GQ and coming across the Dolce & Gabanna ad. The one with greasy guys in some of the chedd-liest clothes I’d ever seen in one place. That and a stint at Dallas/Ft Worth airport during a layover. It was then that I realized dudes are wearing a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be jettisoned out into space during the next space station mission.  Stuff that should have been “out” a long time ago but still hangs around on the bodies and heads of fellas…making them look like jamokes and goombahs and – well – trash.

We need more men of style in this decade.  We need more men who are in touch with the concept of class and grace.  We need more men to get rid of the dipstick clothes they once thought made them cool. Because they never did.

Be Better Guys hereby issues the 2010 Retirement Plan:  items and styles that you may still be sporting that are relics from the previous decade…or even earlier.

Hats: I’m ok with hats.  I’m not ok with hats worn to convey irony.  The hat retirement list is as follows:

• Stingy-brimmed hats like what Justin Timberlake wore to death 3 years ago.  These would be cool if it were 1956 but they look cheap and chincy today and one in fifty guys actually look cool wearing one.  The other 49 look like bitty Justins.  And I don’t mean the cowboy boots.

• Flat-brimmed baseball hats. I was a ballplayer and we didn’t wear our hats with the brim as flat as if a backhoe drove over it.  I don’t advocate making them all bendy like your old U of Texas hat but a nice and normal arc to the brim is fine.  And take the labels and stickers off it for cryin’ out loud.

Shirts: There is one style of shirt that in my opinion never should have been made.  It has since been bastardized and “duded-up” and needs to just go in the bin:

• Printed graphic tee shirts. These “freak flags” screaming “I live for Las Vegas!” have run their course in American apparel.  How do I know?  Because when I was at DFW I saw a guy – oh maybe 55 to 58 years old – wearing one.  And his wife?  One of those feaux Ed Hardy jokes from Christian Audinger.  Holy hell what a train wreck this couple was.  Of course there were plenty of guys in their 20s and 30s wearing graphic tees under their flat-brimmed baseball hats.  Great look guys.  I know mechanics way more stylish than you.  I do.

Ripped Jeans

Jeans: Guys jean s just dork it up decade after decade ever since the late 60s.  I don’t know why.  Basic jeans – Levis 501s or Wranglers or even some of the more standard premium denim jeans – really make guys look good.  I know this because my wife tells me so.  I got a pair of sassy denim and she was like “Why’d you buy those?  You look like a douche.  Return them and if you need a new pair just get Levis.  You always look good in 501s.”

Jeans that are ripped/distressed/belt-sanded/treated/flame-broiled by someone other than you.  If you rip your jeans doing something fine.  You don’t go BUY a pair of jeans that the manufacturer rips for you.  Come on.  Steve McQueen would bike right over you on his Triumph Bonneville and back up once to make sure you got some quality rips in them jeans.  No – you buy jeans.  You work in the yard or in the garage in the jeans.  Sometimes they rip.  You just saved yourself $150.

• Overly baggy and sloppy jeans. Fellas – the droopy/sloopy jeans style is now about 25 years old.  It started in the mid-80s with early hip-hop.  Then it was cool because it was different.  Now you look like you raided your grandpa’s closet and swiped his size 50-waist jeans for your size 34 body.  Buy jeans that fit.  That’s it.

Bonus!  Facial Hair: Been a lot of guys experimenting with facial hair the last several years.  Some guys keep it classic and if they want sideburns they grow normal sideburns.  If they want a beard they grow a normal beard.  I’ll even spare the goatee and give it a break since I normally assail it for being more played out than Nirvana’s “Nevermind” (which it is but you can keep your goatee for one more year before it goes on 2011’s retirement list).

• Pencil-thin beards. Lot of those really greasy-looking pencil beards here in DFW today.  Nasty.  If I had to do business with some guy who had one of those ¼”-thick scrawls of facial hair that makes a highly-manicured straight drop from ear to jaw and then a razor-sharp hard right toward the chin…hell.  I wouldn’t trust the guy.  If I were a girl I would trust him either.  Either you grow the beard in full or you shave.

• The ironic mustache. Oh now I’m started!  Guys who do “irony” with their style – and they mainly live in New York and LA and a few reside in DC and Boston and Miami (but Chicago – smartly – would kill the “ironic” guy with a quick toss off the El platform) – need to be driven around town in the trunk of a Ford LTD.  And there’s no greater “irony” violation than the “oh I’m just being funny!” mustache.  The whole “I’m wearing this really thick mustache like I think it might have been in 1979 is SO funny and cute!  Chicks dig it!”  No they don’t.  Not real chicks.  Real chicks think you look like an asshole trying to be funny.  And us guys?  We just want to punch you because you look like an asshole trying to be funny.  Either grow a full beard or shave.  You can have your goatee.

Enough with the dated clothes and looks that were never cool or hip or stylish to begin with. You don’t have to look like every other guy if you wear something stylish.  I don’t look like every other guy and I do it by using color or mixing several patterns or wearing French-cuff shirts or Chelsea boots.  Point is not that my style is better.  It’s to say you can still stand apart and still look unique – you can still be YOU.  You also need to know that in the never-ending pursuit of the Better You you need to retire some things that may have been mistakes from the start that you are being reminded are mistakes today.  Start the decade fresh and do it in style. Before you get punched.