Your Medicine: Why You Keep Laying Bricks
You're more mason than fashion icon.
Looking like shit is a plague because everyone has agreed to stop calling it one. You can stare directly at your own reflection and not realize you’ve been infected.
We all do it. We delude ourselves into thinking good enough is fine, but most of the time good enough isn’t even close.
The idea of “sprezzatura” was fed to you by people who look better than you and want you to stay sick. That is the trick: making effort look like weather.
A good magician never reveals all his secrets. Lucky for you, I am no magician. I am a man sick of looking at you.
So let’s diagnose the symptoms. Bad outfits rarely happen all at once or on purpose. They come from ignored little problems left alone long enough to become terminal.
1. Your clothes don’t fit
Most men think fit means one thing: can I button it before I sweat through it?
That is not fit. That is survival.
Fit is not just whether something is too tight. Too big is just as bad, sometimes worse, because at least tight has the decency to scream at you.
Oversized, when done with no intention, just makes you look like someone’s little brother.
Clothes that fit well make it look easy. They don’t expose you, swallow you, or punish your body for dumplings and a few beers.
The magic is less about the piece itself and more about what the fit does for you.
The pants elongate the leg and break with intention. The shirt breathes instead of begs. The jacket makes you look broad and intentional, not like you are helping your mother bring in groceries.
Your medicine: try on your clothes. Donate or sell what does not fit and what is no longer worth negotiating with. Learn your measurements. Find a good tailor and treat them like an old friend.
Stop playing pretend. Just because you love her does not mean she loves you back.
2. Your basics suck
If my dad had built houses, he would have said every good house starts with a strong foundation, or whatever.
Outfits are the same.
Your basics were probably fine when you opened them in front of your mom on Christmas morning four years ago. But time comes for us all.
Your pits are stained. Your collar is crispy. Your tees are thin enough to tell on you.
And no matter how much you like T. rexes, they do not need to be on your socks.
The foundation is not supposed to be exciting. It is not supposed to embarrass you.
You do not need an archive to look good. You need a white tee without pit stains.
Your medicine: you do not need to spend stupid money on whatever the viral best white tee of the moment is. I own a few expensive white tees. They are sexual. They are also exorbitant when you are trying to build a foundation.
To find a shirt that works for you, build yourself a little potpourri of cheap white tees. Try them on. Wear them. Wash them.
Once you find the one you like, buy a bunch. When one gets cooked, toss it.
Do the same with socks, underwear, and beaters. Find the boring thing that works, buy enough of it, and stop letting your foundation rot while you shop for paint.
3. It’s all one color
Monochromism is the lie they teach you when they want to steal your drip.
I am not innocent here. This is where I lay most of my bricks.
My mom is big on matching, and now I put on a blue shirt with blue pants more often than I am proud to admit.
This is not me saying never go mono. Mono can work, especially if you are going all-black Johnny Cash.
But proceed with caution. Do not let your best shirt die because your pants dragged it into corpo camo.
Your medicine: look in a mirror. I know, stupid. But seeing yourself as a navy blob will make you think twice before stepping out.
Not every moment is the right time to peacock. Try new combinations, even if you do not think they work at first. Seek counsel if you cannot tell.
This goes for textures and patterns too, if you are feeling brave.
The goal is not to look like you landed a throwaway part in the school play as “Ocean” or “Desert.”
4. You’re a copycat
Nobody likes a copycat.
Any time I've bought something because I thought it looked good on someone else, I've been thoroughly disappointed. My Balenciaga logo scarf would tell you as much, if I hadn't sold it at a tremendous loss and shipped it across the world. There's nothing wrong with some light larping. What little boy didn't grow up wanting to be a cowboy, a soldier, or a mountain climber?
But it ends there.
Most runway items stay on the runway for a reason. They are made for people far more beautiful than us.
It is easy to get caught up in Timmy courtside in Chrome or Jacob’s back-pocket Bottega paperback.
That does not mean you should bankrupt yourself trying to become a carbon copy of your crush.
You copied the idea, not the swag. There is nothing sexy or lived-in about adding a full look to cart.
Your medicine: Don’t buy something because someone living a better life than you has it. Ask yourself: do you want the piece, or do you want their life? If it’s the second one, no shirt is going to fix that. The runway, tunnel fits, and spotted airport photos are traps.
You are here. So at least pretend you’re better than that.
If you really want some designer whatever, and I know I do, let it marinate.
Look for things you already own that do something similar.
If you really want to nerd out, find the vintage apple capital-F Fashion is biting from.
5. You don’t actually care
I do not know why the fuck you are here if this applies to you.
If you made it this far, you have to at least kind of care.
We all get into ruts. You fall into a uniform and stretch it past the point of dignity.
You know the jeans look more like leggings, the shirt looks like your pits wet the bed, and the shoes are one bad step away from becoming sandals.
The truth is, it is easier not to care.
Getting fits off is agony. But someone has to do it.
Your medicine: give a shit. Send fit pics to the boys. Snag a tough rez and rise to the occasion.
Buy something that makes it wiggle, then build something with it.
Get motion, or get lost in a sea of bricks.
If this fixed you, Godspeed.
If you need more medicine, subscribe.
And comment your most recent brick so we can all gather around the rubble.
—SP
I’ll go first: blue shirt, blue pants. Corpo camo.
What was your most recent brick—and did you know before you left the house?
Recently someone I consider a fashion guru told me it looked like I had two different outfits on. There was no harmony. The elements of the dish weren’t speaking to each other. There was desperate need of editing