Wellcultured - A men's fashion, fitness, sex, and lifestyle magazine.

Occasionally, someone sends me an e-mail or a forum message with some sort of question or comment- usually based on some sort of “fashion fact” (or somthing similar) that I’m supposed to “teach” or otherwise acknowledge. Some of these (such as the whole “white before Labor Day/white after Labor Day” thing) are fine, others are not. So, with no further adieu, the Top 5 myths that were never really “fashion fact”.

Myth 5: Fashion is expensive

Admittedly I’m to blame for most of this. Fashion doesn’t need to be excessively expensive- in fact, for the most part, you can find good fashionable things at a local mall. There are exceptions, of course, but there has never been a demand for you to drop big money on clothing just to be “fashionable”. Most of the “expensive stuff” is incredibly ugly anyway. Intelligent readers will search for deals and “cheap stuff” and work with it. In fact, the most “expensive” stuff is sometimes best purchased cheap- as the saying goes, buy a $100 suit and put $500 worth of tailoring into it, not the other way around.

Myth 4: Fashion in excess is “being gay”

Absolutely not. I’ve gone over this as well- you will not instantly look gay by dressing well (unless you dress like a homosexual, in which I can’t help you). Dressing well with tailored clothing is in fact often done by homosexual men, but it doesn’t scream gay- and most who claim it does are simply trying to come up with a catch-all excuse for dressing poorly. Dressing well can get you MORE women, not less.

Also, a quick note- the whole Metrosexual deal is ridiculous and stupid. The Wikipedia Article on metrosexuality reads like a cross between a disease article and a F-deserving sociology paper, so even that is vague on the topic- no-one knows what it “is”. That being said, your sexuality does not inherently change from your personal cleanliness/style habits.

Myth 3: Fight Club‘s Tyler Durden is not the pinnacle of Fashion

Let’s go ahead and get this out there: stop thinking Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden character from Fight Club is anything but a character. You should not dress like him- you can learn a few things from his style, but Tyler Durden should never be emulated, ever at all.

Tyler Durden dresses ostentatiously as a foil for the narrator’s character (without spoiling much, one can say this is really wants to be). Fight Club is built on the binary of the Narrator versus Tyler Durden, and in a very Ishmael v. Ahab way, the Narrator fluctuates back and forth TO Tyler. Tyler is meant to be a character who is wild and untamed, a kind of “super guy”- that means that he wears incredibly ostentatious clothing. You, unfortunately, are never going to be in such a clear cut position where anything you wear looks good- the movie was set up to do that.

That being said, he does have some good stylistic flair about him. Tyler’s infamous crimson jacket, with the semi-70s lapels and close tailoring, is admittedly sexy as hell. Similarly, one could get away with wearing some of Tyler’s shirts (though rarely)- and his hairstyle is fairly awesome. Still, all of those things don’t mean you should use him as some sort of idol.

Myth 2:”If I dress like _____, I will look good”

Okay, I keep saying this, and no-one listens.

Hipsters, Goths, “Nerdcore”s, Emo kids, and any other group I can’t come up with in a minute: you are not fashionable. Yes, you may adhere to the fashion of your particular in-group, but that doesn’t make you some sort of fashion king. Skinny jeans, Chuck Taylors, too-tight t-shirts and keffiehs are not fashionable- you may get attention from your in-group (and if you want that, so be it), but stop trying to put words into my mouth for your own in-group.

My job here is to provide you with an interface for the general world- that is, to dress you appropriately enough to look decent. I’m not going to start talking about how to “dress emo” or something like that- I have no experience in that sense, nor do I want to have it.

But I will say that I don’t really care if you do get into fads. In a great sense, we’re all following one fad or another (or at least falling into roles of some kind, even gender roles), so I’m not going to start pointing and laughing at any given group (though I will note some of you look so much like women I can’t help but laughing). Don’t get angry if I don’t write about it, but don’t take that as some sort of insult.

Myth 1: You have to be rail skinny to be “fashionable”

This is one thing that pisses me off about most other fashion writers, so let me set the record straight: you don’t need to starve yourself to be fashionable.

Yes, lots of models are anorexic. Yes, a lot of guys in the fashion industry starve themselves intentionally. Yes, this has become a nasty circle, as models become skinnier so designers design skinnier and they keep trying to go smaller. This does not apply to you.

Think of it this way- would you like your members of the opposite sex (or the same sex, whatever) extremely tiny, waifish, and without a shred of fat? Most guys will say that they prefer women healthy, not skinny (though there are exceptions), and girls will say the same for guys.

If you want to look good, then look good naturally- be fit, healthy, reasonably muscular, and have fun- but don’t sacrifice the aforementioned to “look good”, because it usually falls flat on your face. While we will talk about dieting and how to look good, the goal is never to become skinny or ridiculously small- the idea is to get to your healthy size and stay there.