Take a look at the following photo and tell me if you can spot what's wrong with the layout of this room.

If you said the lamp was too big for the space, you'd be right. And, you'd be in agreement with the commentators on Pinterest...

That was likely easy to see, wasn't it? It's very clear that, in relation to everything else in the room, the lamp was far too large for the other elements.

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

Everything you can think about can have accurate and visually pleasing proportions - Cars, homes, and even people's bodies and faces. Most guys can accurately spot proportions in many designs but don't think about it much when it comes to their outfits.

I often see men trying to diagnose why an outfit has gone wrong, but when they can't put their finger on it, it has something to do with proportion.

Here's the key...

Every piece of clothing you put on should have a congruent proportion to both your body and the other pieces of clothing in the outfit.

This is important and one of the primary keys to unlocking great outfits.

When getting dressed, think about proportion in two ways.

1. The proportion of the clothing items to your body.
2. The proportion of the clothing items to the other clothing you're wearing.


First, think about the relationship between the clothing items and your body. Let's take a tie for example.

If I have a very large client with a very large head, dressing him in a skinny tie would only make him look larger by comparison. This is because the size of his body and head would be out of alignment with his clothing.

Another example would be a man with a large mid-section wearing skinny tapered jeans, which would make his legs look like toothpicks. This only makes his belly look larger by comparison to his legs - getting a result I loving call "the lollypop effect"

You want to ensure the elements you're wearing are proportionate to you; never too small or large for you.

Second, we'll consider the relationship between the clothing items you wear.

Let's go back to our tie example with my client, who is a bit larger.

If we have correctly dressed him in a slightly larger tie to be proportionate to his head, we will also ensure that the clothing items that surround that tie will be larger.

Take a look at the ties worn in the below example from the TV show "Suits." Do you notice how the jacket's lapel matches the tie's width?

Just as in the example above, we want to make sure that everything we're wearing has a proportional relationship to the other items around it.

This goes for everything you're wearing, far beyond just ties.

Let's go back to our skinny jeans example again. If you decide to wear a pair of skinny jeans, but decided to pair that with a very large chunky boot, the proportions of those two items will look off.

It's much better to pair a slimmer-looking shoe with those pants, lest you appear like you're wearing some sort of clown shoe.

It's always good practice to put together clothing items that have similar proportions to one another when developing an outfit.

(By the way, if you want to read about me disagreeing with Levi's CEO Chip Bergh about skinny jeans for an article from BestLife, head here)

Proportion is where fashion falls short.

If something baggy or skinny is trending, that's all fine - but you need to make sure to adjust and account for your body type before jumping in head first.

Let's heed PIVOT Maxim #492734 - Wear whatever the hell you want, just make it look good on you.

When you're looking at whether an outfit you're wearing "works" or not, make sure you're adding proportion as one of the line items you're checking off.

So, to sum it up - only buy and wear clothing that is proportionate to your body. When wearing that clothing, make sure it's proportionate to the other clothing around it.

It's as simple as that.

Hope that helps.

x Patrick