The big question I get asked as a men’s personal stylist and image consultant - What actually makes a good outfit? After all, it’s only fabric, right?

Why can some men seamlessly create stylish outfits while other guys fumble around putting something together that’s barely passable?

You need to go deeper than the elementary stuff. There are some things you should consider when constructing an outfit for yourself (or deconstructing an outfit on another to adapt it to yourself). 

What Makes a Great Outfit?

First, realize that a great outfit is not first judged on the metric of what you like to wear.

Imagine if a food critic went around rating restaurants only based on whether or not they carried his favorite dish: Grilled Cheese. Unfortunately, that’s not a very good metric for evaluation.

You may visit an exhibition where some of the paintings may not be to your taste, but you’d never demand the art be taken off the walls. 

If you simply base all your judgments of an outfit on what you currently feel, you’ll never be able to evaluate objectively, and you’ll never be able to expand your palette, opening up the doors to things you never knew you liked. 

When looking at an outfit (yours and others), use objectivity. Act like a researcher. Doing this will help you dissect why certain things work and why they don’t. Aim to come to an understanding, not a judgment. This is precisely what the following framework helps you to do.

Viewing outfits with the following framework will help you construct far better outfits. You’ll also understand why some outfits look great, while others don’t.

Here are the components that, I believe, make a great outfit. 

Balance

In a Balanced outfit, no one item or element dominates; The items in the outfit work as a team, each playing their position. 

Let’s think about this from another culinary perspective. Have you ever had an incredible dish that was spoiled by too much salt, making it dry out your palette and taste nothing but sodium? 

It doesn’t matter how good the food underneath the pile of salt is. That overly strong taste has thrown the whole thing out of Balance, and we can’t taste anything else in the dish.

It’s the same thing with an outfit. We don’t want one overpowering element. That one item will pull the viewer’s attention so strongly away from the rest of the ensemble, that the items are no longer acting as a unit. The other nuances of your outfit get lost because we can only focus our attention on one element.

Think about this as a push and pull. If one part of the outfit is too strong, we would use another item to either tone it down or match its intensity. This is the same thing we’d do when preparing food. If one ingredient is a bit too powerful, we either need to tone it down, or we need other ingredients to pull their weight and stand out on their own. 

No one element or item should take center stage when you look at your finished outfit. Instead, you want the entirety of an outfit to be absorbed and enjoyed as a whole. 

Complexity

Watch any style advice channel video on Youtube, and you’ll see something funny — Nearly all of these guys are wearing some sort of jacket. Take a second to search “men’s style” or a similar term on Google; you’ll see much of the same. 

Simply wearing shorts and a t-shirt is generally considered a dull look to most. Yes, if you make things fit well and wear the right colors, it will look good, but it’s still a bit flat. 

Going back to our Youtube example, if you were to add a layering piece (like a jacket) and a couple of accessories, BAM — Apparently, you can now be considered a style icon. This is because the outfit now has Complexity. 

A Complex outfit has a lot to say. It has more elements to be dissected by the eye. There’s always something more to look at. It’s interesting but not overpowering, which is an important distinction to make. 

The outfit doesn’t need to be bold, loud, and brash to be Complex. It can and regularly should be the opposite. 

Complexity in an outfit is constructed by layers of nuance and subtlety that, built altogether, create an outfit that takes the eye a second to process and enjoy. 

There’s a reason you take a second longer to admire a good-looking outfit. 

Precision

Precision is the degree to which each individual item in the outfit is executed successfully - each item fit’s the wearer precisely.

Think about a suit jacket. When wearing a jacket, we want to show a quarter inch of shirt cuff out of the jacket sleeve; We’re looking to make sure the jacket isn’t pulling in the front; We’re checking that the lapels aren’t bowed; We want the rear of the jacket to cover your butt; Etc., on down the list of things we evaluate in an individual jacket. 

Let’s say this jacket passes through all these checkpoints. We then can consider it a shining example of an item being Precise. It’s an example of it precisely fitting its wearer. 

You can do this with any item in any outfit, from shorts to a suit. You want to ensure that each item fits appropriately according to “menswear standards.” There’s always some debate about how things should fit in menswear, but in general, we all agree on the same general principles. My take: no matter what, at least make your body look better rather than worse when you put something on. If each item in the outfit fits you well, the entire outfit will look “put together”.

Cohesiveness

We just covered Precision, which focuses on individual items and how they sit and fit on the person wearing them.

Cohesiveness focuses on how those individual items play together (I covered this four years ago in the article “Outfit Congruency”).

This is similar to Balance. However, we’re not looking at the “strength” or “weakness” of items as we were in Balance. Instead, in Cohesiveness, we’re looking at how the individual items integrate; We’re making sure there are linking elements between each piece in the outfit. 

The items should all be integrated in a way that feels harmonious and connected. One item isn’t trying to be a college prep, while another is a drug-sniffing rockstar. You wouldn’t pair salsa with carrot cake. Don’t do the equivalent in your outfit. 

Let’s take a pair of cowboy boots. Pair it with a silky polka-dot button-up shirt. You can visualize that it doesn’t work well. Why? The two items have no Cohesiveness. They do not belong together. There is no common thread connecting them. 

Let’s take that same pair of cowboy boots and pair it with a pair of jeans. Now things start to feel more cohesive. Why? Both items were originally created for the outdoors; doing rougher types of work and made to stand up to the elements. This is the through-line of the outfit.

We want each item to have a common bond. The items should all be integrated in a way that feels harmonious and connected.

Here are some easy ways to think about how each item could be connected:

Are they around the same level of formality? - There is a reason you won’t regularly see cap-toe oxford shoes with shorts. 

Are they from the same time frame? - A piece in style in the ’60s has a higher chance of looking weird with something paired from the ’00s than if you were to pair two items in the same time frame. 

Are they worn for similar weather? - An airy linen shirt worn in summer tends to look strange paired with a heavy coat worn in winter.

Are they worn for similar purposes? - A pair of heavy denim Levi’s go well with a rugged lug sole boot, as both were developed for doing rough outdoor work. Pairing the same pair of boots with a stylish bathing suit? Probably not your first choice. Find other items developed for the same type of purpose to make it pairing easy. 

I’ve used exaggerated examples above to highlight the contrast between the items, so you get the idea. Keep in mind there are other ways that clothing items can have a similar bond between them. 

Integrity

Are you who you say you are? Or rather, are you who your outfit says you are? 

As our last principle focused on the clothes’ relationship with each other, Integrity focuses on the clothes’ relationship with the wearer. 

The clothing of the wearer should be congruent with the wearer.

A guy who has been sitting in his mom’s basement for the last five years eating Saltines while playing World of Warcraft would have a hard time pulling off the same outfit as a rockstar — wearing, say, a black leather jacket and ripped skinny jeans.

There should be no disconnect between your personality and your clothing to someone you meet. The clothing backs you up. 

Do you ever meet a guy and get the sense after speaking with him that he’s not who he says he is? There’s just something off. It can be hard to put your finger on, but there is certainly something that doesn’t line up. There is something about his words and his actions that isn’t congruent. We want to avoid this incongruency between you and your outfit. 

When I work with a personal styling client, I spend time workshopping their unique style and adapting the clothing to their personality, lifestyle, tastes, etc. 

Anyone can just buy clothing. Unfortunately, this is the problem with subscription boxes and department store stylists. Sure, they can show you what’s trending this week. But the chances of that being something you like, that aligns with your personality, lifestyle, how you want to be seen in the world, etc., are very, very low. 

If you don’t know where to start with your personal style, read this. You should actively be looking to purchase clothing that aligns with you internally. There is always a way to bring out your tastes and personality in a stylish way.

Bonus: Your Emotional Response

Now, once we’ve gone through it objectively, you can make a more emotional evaluation of how you feel about the outfit.

The trick here is to suspend your thoughts on if you like or dislike an outfit until the very end, as you’ve now had time to dissect all the elements. 

It’s perfectly okay to dislike a “good” outfit. We all have our personal preferences. You should wear things you love and own pieces you’re proud to own. But remember, just because you dislike something doesn’t make it “bad.”

My mother hates fish, but that doesn’t change the fact there are Michelin-starred Sushi restaurants. However, if I were to choose somewhere for the two of us to dine, we wouldn’t be headed to Nobu for yellowtail.

Summary

Use this framework to start judging your own outfits and other outfits you look at. A lot of times, working through these elements can be illuminating.

You’ll also start to understand why your outfits don’t have that “put together” look. As a bonus, you’ll also begin to understand why others wear what they do and likely be less judgmental about it.

Evaluate: Is everything in Balance, or are there some overpowering items? Does this outfit have Complexity, and is it interesting to look at or relatively flat and dull? Is each item executed to Precision, or do some things fit a little weird? Does everything feel Cohesive with a common linking element between everything, or does everything feel disjointed? Does this outfit have integrity, matching who is wearing it, or does it look and feel like a costume? And finally, based on all of this, do I like it? Life is too short to wear sh/t you hate.

No go put on a great outfit.

-Patrick

PS. If you want to cover this in more detail, look at the Online Image Consultation Program here.