HOW TO USE PROPORTION IN MEN'S STYLE

Guys often have a lot of trouble pairing items together. They'll get hung up on lots of things, but when you're pairing outfits, you only need to pay attention to a few key points.

1. Color/pattern - making sure the colors go together.
2. Style - making sure the items have a similar throughline.
3. Proportion - making sure the items have relatively similar proportions.

Let's discuss proportion a bit more, as it's something I see a lot of guys mess up, particularly because they own a bunch of items with no consistent fit. If this sounds like you, read on.

Proportion: The correct, attractive, or ideal relationship in size or shape between one thing and another or between the parts of a whole.

When putting two items together, you want to make sure that the way those two items fit is relatively similar.

If you have a slimmer fitting shirt but baggier pants, both will look worse by the contrast of those two together.

Your body will also tend to look wonky when you do this, as the clothing doesn't follow the natural shape of how a body should/would look. Imagine a man with massively stout legs but a twig-like torso - it doesn't happen.

When you're evaluating how clothing fits, no matter if you like things tighter, looser, or somewhere in between, there should be one goal: Make your body look good, or at the very least, normal.

Let's think about a suit; Picture yourself wearing one in your mind. Imagine if the pants were two sizes too big, and the top was two sizes too small. Of course, this would look ridiculous, but guys do the same thing with their outfits all the time.

Here's an example photo I was sent just a couple of days ago for review. This isn't all that bad, and it's a small detail, but notice how the shirt fits much roomier, and the pants fit much slimmer.

Notice how it causes the top half to look out of proportion and even larger than it might look with a similarly roomier pair of pants. Ideally, we'd slim down the shirt in the situation by buying a different fit/size or tailoring this one.

So, if you're wearing something a bit tighter on the bottom, do the same on the top, and vice-versa. The same thing applies to your slightly roomier items as well.

Ideally, the items you're buying fit relatively the same, and if not, you're tailoring them. This will ensure that you don't have to worry much about pairing proportion when you're coming up with an outfit.

Everything in balance. Everything in proportion. This is part of the way you build an attractive outfit and a visually attractive body shape.

If you want a more advanced, in-depth look at how I think about constructing awesome outfits, read this.