Style Through Intelligence.com

Hmmm...what is style?

Men’s Style is NOT fashion!

There I said it! Maybe I’ve offended some people, contradicted others and maybe even agreed with a lot.

A common mistake that a lot of people (especially men) make, is that they seem to think Style=fashion, which ultimately couldn’t be further from the truth. Technically speaking, if a man dressed in everything that seemed to be “fashionable” at the time, he would be in a lot of trouble.

Men have it a lot easier than women in a sense, because women do have to keep up with “fashion” to be considered stylish. Fortunately for men, when it comes to clothing alone, there are lots of timeless pieces that are very stylish and always will be.

Style is deep

Style goes even deeper than just the clothes that one wears, and clothing is just a small part of overall style.

We’ve all seen the guy at a party or in some other social situation that you just know is “someone” because he has a certain style about him. This is what I am referring to and eventually what I want to get ALL our readers to achieve.

I have spent quite a lot of time trying to compose this post and hence figure out a way to systematise it. I basically did a brain dump of everything that I thought could possibly be associated with a stylish man in my journal, in order to come up with four basic subheadings on what I believe is style. Just have a look in the photo below of what I had originally come up with:

My brainstorming on the definition of style!

Two types of style

So to begin with I think there are two types of style:

1.       Quick Style

2.       Lasting Style

Each type has their own purpose, and are both necessary in your quest to style, but ultimately lasting style is what we all want to strive for.

Quick style is important in the early days. The way to “quick style”, can be viewed in an earlier post I did: . This is still the best, quickest and easiest way to get started, and I will go into specific examples of this in later posts.

“Quick style” is a way we can learn what to wear and when to wear it, through trial and error. It is a very good way to get us thinking about our image and the way we present ourselves. Mostly, it serves the purpose of us being “consciously aware” of style, ourselves and the way we are viewed by everyone else. From this we can then build up the foundations to create lasting style.

Lasting style is more  of an in-depth, continuous improvement-type view that covers a number of different aspects of our life and that will come together in such a way that even on our worst, average and most disappointing days we will still be viewed as stylish.

Because eventually unless you have “lasting style”, you will fall down in a number of ways. What happens the next time you meet with the girl you’ve got a date with that night (that she thought you were stylish)? Unless your style is lasting, there is no way you’re going to get to a third date with her!

To further illustrate the difference between the two, and why it is inevitably going to be important to focus on lasting style, I’ll use an old house as an example/analogy.

Let’s assume this old house is starting to look old and decrepit and has a wooden frame that is starting to rot (or has termites) and you the owner need to do something about it.

What are the possibilities?

If you needed to sell it straight away you could give it a quick paint from top to bottom, maybe install a new kitchen and put in some new carpet, if time and money permits. This is the equivalent of quick style, who knows how much longer before the wooden frame gives way, but it doesn’t matter because your quick style has served its purpose, just as it would if you had to dress up for one night.

However, if you are going to live in it for the next 10 years, then it is going to be a good idea to replace the wooden frames, put in some termite protection, add some waterproofing and on top of that still give it a paint job, extra kitchen, new floors and maybe even a new bathroom. But needless to say you are going to have confidence in it and hence be comfortable living in it, just as you would have the confidence and be very, very comfortable within your own new stylish self with the lasting style you’ve created!

I hope this analogy connects with everyone who reads it because as a structural engineer, I guess it’s my way of incorporating my profession into this site J.

I will be going into more detail of quick style in the future and give specific examples where everyone can get started, but for the remainder of this post I will focus on lasting style, and why it is important to keep this in the back of your minds whenever making decisions down the track in relation to your own style.

Lasting Style

So what is lasting style?

As mentioned earlier, from extreme analysis, I have come up with 4 main sub categories (Style Quarts) for men’s style. These being:

• Image
• Presence
• Intelligence; and
• Lifestyle

Each of these categories intertwine with one another and have certain aspects of each other that overlap:

The four quarts of style!

However, when meeting new people there will only be two of these categories that a person will immediately notice of you: Image and your Presence. They won’t visually notice your presence, but they will be able to tell if it’s there or not, unlike your image. These are the two upfront quarts that give you your style.

Intelligence and Lifestyle are running in the back ground and complementing the two foreground quarts:

Style behind the scenes!

This post will be continued in Part 2.