The Current State of Personal Style.

JFK’s personal style is forever relevant.

The complicated thing about clothes and personal style is the fact that there’s no “correct” way to dress. Generally, it’s good to put effort into your appearance which signals to other people that you care. Your style can evolve and follow fashion’s journey or you can have a uniform. No one can say there’s only one way to do all of this. Sure Coggins or whomever can help refine your approach, but the ideas exist across a spectrum. There are dress codes and social norms, but there really are no rules. That’s the fun part. If anything, people get too caught up in other people’s ideas of what is cool. 

One of the problems now in a post mono-culture world is the fact that everything is both hyper-trend driven and completely trend-proof at the same time. There’s no huge prevailing style so no one seems to know what the hell is going on. To me, that’s a good thing. No we can all stop caring about what is cool. We can also stop listening to “cool people” — thank the Lord — and just wear what feels right to us.

My perspective on style is to do what works best for you. Sometimes we might need help from an authority to get new ideas or to find the things that make us look good. That outside input is good, but the critical thing is finding the confidence in our own style. 

There was a piece recently proclaiming the chore coat is dead. My view is that this article wasn’t aimed at us. Chore coats are great. More guys are wearing them now and that includes some “cool guys” who care more about Fashion than perhaps you or me. Those “Fashion” guys are going to move on from the chore coats need to find something else to differentiate themselves. Us on the other hand, we just want to find good things that help us look our best and chore coats are useful in that sense. There’s no reason to get rid of them.