The Power of the Uniform
Dressing expresses and makes impressions. Clothing, first and foremost, serves as an outward manifestation of the wearer’s personality, but one’s garments also impress upon other people. Anyone who claims they dress only for one’s self is lying.
Jeffrey Deitch's colorful suits are as much works of art as what he shows in his gallery.
Striking the balance between dressing for expression and impression - as well as saving time in the morning - is made easier when one adopts a uniform. Not a uniform that’s forced upon the wearer, or which denotes one’s service in the constabulary or armed forces (unless that’s one’s vocation), but a uniform that is a blueprint. This blueprint lays out how every day’s outfits are created, and allows for tweaks and flourishes that prevent sartorial fatigue. The uniform can be deviated from for certain occasions and whimsies, but its practicality is an efficient way to discover and refine individual style.
Strangely enough, it’s the most creative dressers that adopt the uniform. They can venture out into left field because they start with unimpeachable basics. Gallerist Jeffrey Deitch’s bright tailored ensembles come to mind immediately. Deitch starts with the most basic of canvases - the suit - but eschews the formal palette of grays and navys for pop art colors like purple, yellow, pink and electric blue. Paired with his cream-colored, circular thick-rimmed glasses, his technicolor suits suit him well. Frank Muytjens of J. Crew is known reintroducing rugged American workwear to the masses, and even as the trend has waned he can still be found wearing double or triple denim on a day-to-day basis without looking affected or contrived. Even Nick Wooster always begins his outfit with a pair of cropped pants. To see him in anything else (except for suits and shorts or tailored ghurkas) would cause street style photographers to have a conniption.
Owning a series of similar garments with slight variations sounds monotonous on first thought but, for example, think of all the things one can do with a blue shirt. That’s why all my shirts except two have a hint of blue in them - or are completely blue. There are a few classic oxfords, of course, but the rest are motley assortment of fabrics and styles, from Navy-issued chambray shirts to linen popovers and blackwatch plaids. These shirts are new and vintage, expensive and inexpensive, casual and formal. They go with anything from bottle green ties to red bandanas, suede shoes to work boots, gray suits to Barbour jackets. You can wear them under a shawl cardigan during a winter storm, or roll up its sleeves for a summer beach day. They’re all-season and all-purpose.
Nick Wooster makes the case for cropped trousers.
And what goes better with a blue shirt than white pants? Not everyone is intrepid enough to wear white pants year-round like me - that’s for the better, since they won’t deal with the frustration of having to constantly replace their pants - but they’re an alternative to blue jeans and khakis. I own four pairs, ranging from my daily Levi’s stone denim (a Sid Mashburn exclusive that lies between off-white and wheat) to a pair of Eidos trousers that gets plenty of miles with my suit jacket. They’re more versatile than a pair of blue jeans, and the conundrum of black vs. brown shoes is easier to solve when the pants are a neutral shade.
Blue shirts and white pants aren’t everybody’s uniform, nor should they be. Rather, the variations in how they can be worn and paired are infinite. Not everyone needs a uniform when getting dressed but for some of us it feels right. At the very least, it helps pare down our options so we can save brainpower for other, more important decisions than getting dressed.