Men Dressing Badly

The husband is a hopeless dresser. When I met him (in the 2000s) he was still stuck in the 80s. I've tried my best to dress him better, but I have to confess that he is my biggest failure. His stubbornness knows no bounds, nor does he really give a dime about his dress. Unless it is a suit (which he loves and actually appreciates) or a coat (same) he couldn't care less. His only criterion for most items of clothing is simple and gross comfort. But then he does have  a strange phobia. A color phobia, to be exact. He abhors dressing in one color, whether tone on tone (dark blue with lighter blue, say) or solid matching color top to bottom (black pants, black shirt, say). When I say 'hates' I do not use that word lightly. He refuses, he throws tantrums. Some of the biggest fights (nay, blowouts!) in our marital life have been about his tops and bottoms having to be of different colors contrary to my best fashiony advice.

So yesterday he send me the following story from the Wall Street Journal - with somewhat of a victorious smirk.

As if.

First of all, the story was about formal wear. Secondly it was about golfers - whose dress code is really ludicrous to begin with. That said, however, I actually appreciate his point - partially. Sure, men who can dress and care how to, should inject more color and vibrancy into their clothes. But the vast majority of men of my acquittance has no idea how to dress nor do they care. The license to color would be tantamount to a death wish.. they would all look like clowns...

Here, ladies, check this out for yourselves:

Guys, Enough With the Matchy-Matchy Clothes

Shirts, ties, hankies, socks, belts all the same color? Beau Brummell, where have you gone?

By CHRISTIAN CHENSVOLD

Pro golfer Jason Dufner attended the Kentucky Derby earlier this month wearing a light-blue sportcoat with a peach-colored windowpane pattern. Taken alone, the jacket might have been regarded as a commendable bit of menswear derring-do. But Mr. Dufner also wore a shirt in the same peach shade. The matchy-matchiness didn't end there: His wife wore a hat and dress with a pattern identical to her husband's jacket, and she carried a handbag that had his shirt's same peachy hue.

Gentlemen, resist the lure of the matching ensemble—certainly don't coordinate your clothes with those of anyone accompanying you, but also avoid the shirt that duplicates the color of your trousers, the tie that appears to have been cut from the same cloth as your pocket square. Well-dressed men use individual pieces that complement each other; duplicating colors or patterns just looks like a failure of imagination.

Take the broadcast journalist. If you see a guy sprucing up his gray or blue suit with a lilac-striped shirt, lilac necktie and matching lilac pocket square, he's probably telling you whether it will rain tomorrow.

The supply of well-dressed men has been in steady decline since the 1930s, the so-called golden age of menswear and the style apex for the average man. That was an era that still honored the Latin proverbars est celare artum—roughly, "art conceals itself"—and the Italian wordsprezzatura, the art of calculated nonchalance in manner and dress.

The concepts are surprisingly practical, yet they go unappreciated by the man who wears outfits that match too well, suggesting labored care and obvious vanity. In the early 19th century, Lord Byron said of Beau Brummell, the most famous dresser of all, that there was nothing remarkable about his clothing "save a certain exquisite propriety."

Nowadays, too many aspiring Beau Brummells are going for a certain exquisite sameness. Some diagnosticians trace responsibility for this malady to John Travolta, or his costumer, in the 1978 movie "Grease." Mr. Travolta, as Danny Zucco, portrayed a juvenile delinquent whose outfit for the big school dance consists of a black suit, pink shirt, pink handkerchief and pink socks.

Matching tie and hankie sets in "pop" colors like emerald green and fire-engine red (sometimes, as a bonus, with matching clip-on suspenders) have long provided coordinating convenience for the man who wants to dress snazzily but doesn't quite know how. Now, though, the matchy-matchy instinct appears to be spreading—most notably to the golf course. There was a time when fairways were the preserve of riotously clashing togs, with male golfers dressing so loudly that it was the distracting equivalent of coughing during someone's backswing. The yellow-pants-with-sky-blue-shirts era was immortalized in the 1980 movie "Caddyshack" and carried on long after. But today pros such as David Lingmerth at last week's Players Championship find it perfectly logical to wear a white shirt and pants with red hat, red belt and red shoes.

For off-duty golfers and other men, the real battleground is the daily challenge of trying to look stylish in the office or when going out socially. For those who have a hipster aversion to neckties and never wear one, there is no hope. For those who do wear ties, too often they are tempted to choose a color or pattern hoping for a pop effect—but that way the matching pocket square lies.

Tradition-appreciating sartorialists know that the necktie is best when its effect is a neutralizing one. A dapper dresser may wear something outré, such as a glen-plaid suit with lavender overplaid, or a Donegal Tweed sportcoat the color of a muddy bog but flecked with every color of the rainbow, but he'll choose a tie in ultra-subdued black grenadine or navy knit. For nothing expresses confidence like a restrained necktie, a sartorial symbol of strength held in reserve. And then instead of matching pocket square to necktie, he'll choose one that echoes a color in his shirt or suit.

I try to heed the words of Edwardian writer Max Beerbohm, who wrote of striving to achieve through dress "the supreme effect through the means least extravagant." To that end, I consider my most refined item of clothing a thin, gauze-like silk pocket square in matte black speckled with tiny blue dots the size of flea eggs—understatement, oxymoronically, to the extreme. It doesn't match anything I own, but it goes with everything.

Mr. Chensvold, a New York-based menswear writer, recently launched the site GolfStyle.guru.