Men’s style has evolved fashion thanks to innovative brands that have elevated clothing past common attire. This means you now have more options to build your ideal closet with distinctive outfits that only you own.
Mass-produced clothing in retail stores doesn’t offer much room to cater to individual styles. Therefore, customizing is the solution to getting items made to your specific taste.
Here’s a man’s guide to creating a personalized wardrobe.
Determine Your Budget
Budgeting is important in building a personalized wardrobe, as men’s clothing can range from consumer retail brands to unique luxury fashion. There are also customization costs to consider if you want designs hand-made or created with your own logos, texts, and patterns.
You can do this by dividing your disposable income into your spending categories. Financial experts recommend using about 5% of your take-home pay on clothes. A limited budget can be reduced to 2% of your budget per month. Doing this also helps you allocate how much money to set aside for personalizing key items, such as printing custom design shirts or engraving your initials on leather bags and wallets. Keep in mind that building a wardrobe is a process that involves adding a few new items so you don’t spend too much money on shopping at one time.
Analyze Your Wardrobe Needs
A personalized wardrobe should reflect your character, style, and interests and be packed with clothing that meets your lifestyle and occupational needs. A corporate man mostly attending business affairs dresses differently than creative professionals or graduate students participating in casual events.
That said, a personalized wardrobe should be versatile enough to cover attire for work, leisure, in-season, and items that can be worn for any dress code. Therefore, you can list frequent occasions and activities you get involved in and the clothing you need for each.
These can be smart suits for work, athleisure for the gym, and casual outfits for friend meetups or traveling. Note niche designs you can’t find when shopping, as these will be perfect for ordering personalized items.
Begin With The Basics
As with any wardrobe, starting with the basics for everyday wear lays an essential foundation to build on and ensures you have all the key pieces. Your choices will vary depending on your style persona, which falls into modern-classic, traditional, rugged, athletic, and eclectic. However, staple items for men’s wardrobes include:
- Formal dress trousers.
- Casual pants such as jeans, chinos, or cargo joggers.
- Button-down shirt
- A casual blazer
- A jacket, puffer, or windbreaker.
- Sweater or sweatshirt.
- Casual T-shirts that are plain, patterned, or graphic printed.
- Casual knee-length shorts
- Formal Suit
To make your wardrobe more personalized, you can shop for staples in boutique stores specializing in creating unique garments. A major advantage of boutiques is working with a tailor who can alter your investment basics, such as a suit to your body proportions, and even advise you on color palettes that complement your appearance.
Add Layers And Accessories
Accessorizing is all about coordinating and bringing your entire personalized wardrobe together to make an impression about your style. Fortunately, there are plenty of layered outfit choices and accessories to experiment with until you find the right ones.
Once your closet is stocked with the basics, you can use them to find add-ons that match. For instance, if you want to dress up your wardrobe, you can accessorize with a signature watch, a braided bracelet, lapel pins, a trench coat, dark sunglasses, and a leather messenger bag.
A beanie hat, ball cap, and hoodie with a crossbody bag are top choices to keep things casual away from work. Don’t be afraid to try out unconventional styles that can help you narrow down features of your individual accessories style and draw inspiration from them. This can include oversized scarves, engraved dog tag chains and silver rings, exposed novelty socks, brightly colored belts, or a patterned bucket hat.
Get The Right Shoes
Shoes are a statement piece because they’re considered a status symbol, and the popularity of sneaker culture has placed them at the forefront of men’s fashion. This is also why shoes are the easiest to personalize for one-of-a-kind custom footwear.
From Chelsea boots to loafers and dress sneakers, each pair can be selected or recreated to your tastes. Leather is the most versatile and durable fabric because shoemakers allow you to choose your preferred texture, color, thickness, and finish.
If you’re a street-style maven, you can visit a custom sneaker shop to create shoes in your chosen images, patterns, and colors. Alternatively, go for the DIY route and make your own design using paint and laces with your text printed on them.
Conclusion
Creating a man’s personalized wardrobe can be achieved by first identifying your clothing needs by examining your lifestyle and occupation. From here, you can set up a budget and shop for everyday staples as a basis for your style.
Then incorporate accessories, layered pieces, and shoes that match the staples. At each stage, you can personalize your choices through customization, finding unique garments, or creating them using your designs.
Fashionable man walk on the street near buildings. Wear blue jacket and all black. Winter, autumn outfit. Jacket with blouse and black sneakers.