Formal and professional dress for stallions

[sherlockhooves]

Okay my fellow colts because we have this fashion section and because I worked for a couple of years selling suits and tuxes. I felt it was kind of my responsibility to make a thread dedicated to helping the professional stallion dress for success. Because not only did I sell the suits but I helped put whole outfits together. So I've decided to make a post on this thread once a week about a different aspect of formal or professional dress for us guys. There wont be any GQ stuff in here, this isn't about what's in style right now, these rules rarely ever change.

Okay so the basics, the suit itself.
Now the fit of a suit is determined, like most clothing, your body type. Now most high end suit stores will carry a few different cuts of suits. Standard or traditional cut, very straight and blocky. Then there's the tailored or athletic cut, narrower around the waist and more in a V shape. And last there's the slim cut, closer fitting and straighter from the shoulders. Suits usually come in standard dark colors; blues, blacks, browns, olive, greys. During the summer months you'll find tans, and more seasonal colors, but usually just the dark basics. Now on picking a color of a suit my advice, especially if this will be your first, is to go with dark grey or charcoal. This is the most versatile color you can get, a lot of people will say black but that's not actually true. A black suit is actually the bridge between a business suit and a tuxedo. They're appropriate for funerals or semi formal occasions, not business. A solid charcoal suit will go with any shirt and tie you pair it with and will always be appropriate for any business occasion. I could go on about three button vs two button and side rear vents vs center rear vent, but that's mostly down to the individual preference, though taller gentalcolts look better in three and four buttons than shorter in my opinion. The last piece of advice I can give for suit basics is this, spend the extra money to get it tailored. Off the rack suits look terrible when they don't fit right. In my years of fitting suits I can count less than a half a dozen times a suit fit someone off the rack. Always get it fitted to you, this makes you look more professional.

That's all for tonight. I'll have something else for you next week.
Until then L8ERS
S.H.

[sherlockhooves]

Okay my fellow gentlecolts. I know it's been WAY longer than a week since I last posted. I had a LOT of real life things happen and I kind of forgot about this hehe. Anyway I'm back and ready to keep this going.
So lets talk shirts. The shirt of your outfit is a backdrop, kind of like the canvas that a painting is done on. The shirt complement the tie, and jacket without drawing too much attention, its an accent. Now there are at least three important things to thing of when getting a shirt, other than cut. Like I said in my previous post here, a shirt can be many different kinds of cuts, find the one that's right for your body shape.
1: The color, this may seam like a small detail but it can be important. Depending on the setting determines the color of your shirt. If you are getting this shirt for business you look for lighter/muted colors. Out on the town or down at the pub you can go darker. The darkest shirt you should get for a professional setting is French Blue. Anything darker than that just becomes distracting. The classic fall back is white, but I personally think white is boring. I only own three white shirts and they all have something that makes them stand out. But as a rule white will blend with anything so its always a safe pick. Other colors I recommend are blue, ecru, lavender, and grey. Patterns such as stripes or checks depends greatly on the pattern of your tie and suit. But that's for another posting.
2: Collar and cuff style. Now this may seam very inconsequential but depending on your body shape you should keep this in mind. The average dress shirt has at minimum three different collar styles. Point, spread, and barrel. A point collar comes to a sharp point and is very close together. A spread collar is quite a bit wider, and a barrel collar is the same as a spread, but is rounded at the ends rather than points. Colts with wider necks would be a bit more flattered by the spread or barrel collared shirts. Where as a taller thinner neck would be be better for a point collar. Now onto cuffs, the ends of shirt sleeves. This comes down to personal preference. The most common cuff is the standard barrel cuff with the button on the end. But there are a couple other options. One is the notch cuff, a bit more expensive but slick looking. And the French cuff, now if you go with this you'll need cuff links, French cuff shirts have no buttons. But again its a personal preference, the most common shirt available though is the barrel cuff.
3: Sizing. Like a suit you need to be careful of the size. You go into a clothing store and see all these numbers on the shirts like, 16-16 1/2 by 34-35. What does that mean? Well I will help you with that. There are two measurements that ALL shirts, at least in the US, go by. The neck and the arms. When getting a shirt you NEED to know these things. Take a tap measure around your neck, under your Adam's apple, and make sure to give yourself a little room to breath. This is the first number that you see on dress shirts. Then have a friend measure your arms, starting from the center of your spine, over to your shoulder, and down your arm (make sure your arm is hanging down), to your wrist. And this is the second number. Now most clothing stores have shirts with two different numbers, why is that? Well you'll notice that those shirts have two sets of buttons on the ends of the sleeves. This is so if you're just an inch shorter than the average, you can button that second button and tighten the sleeve around your wrist so it won't fall over your hand. Higher end clothing stores will have exact measurement shirts available to you.
Alright not a bad second post. Sorry again for the long wait here gentlecolts. But I'll have more to come promise. If you have any questions about this or my other post, please don't hesitate to ask.