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" At some point in my tenure as a sportswriter, I figured out why big-time athletes disdain the vast majority of reporters. It wasn&amp;#039;t because we were small and weak. It wasn&amp;#039;t because we asked impolite questions and wrote articles they didn&amp;#039;t like. No. It was because we dressed like shit. I came to this conclusion after seeing a photo of myself sitting in the Cincinnati Reds&amp;#039; dugout interviewing their star slugger. I can still see the blue short-sleeved checked shirt I was wearing in that photo. I can still feel the rush of humiliation I felt when I realized that the superstar must have looked at me for the first time and immediately thought to himself: writer. He lumped me in. And he wasn&amp;#039;t wrong to do so.  It&amp;#039;s hard to be successful if you&amp;#039;re lumped in. If you&amp;#039;re one of the many. You can get along, for sure. Bureaucrats get along. But dressing -- style -- is about standing out; it&amp;#039;s about making a subtle statement, and that statement is simply: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m different.&amp;quot; You can&amp;#039;t be so outlandish that the statement is read as either &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m better&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m an asshole.&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s a fine line. Nick Sullivan, Esquire&amp;#039;s fashion director, has a phrase he uses to describe what it is we&amp;#039;re talking about: the Extra 10 Percent.  There&amp;#039;s some guidance on these pages, advice on navigating the journey toward a personal style. But the secret to dressing a little better is simply this: You have to want to. If you don&amp;#039;t, it&amp;#039;s just not going to be part of your life. And that&amp;#039;s not a terrible thing. Style is a gentle act of will. I remember when I started to care. I bought a few things -- things I could afford. A couple of dark suits, some nice shirts -- mostly white at first, then some stripes. Some basic ties -- a black knit, a gray-and-dark-gray repp. But nothing mattered until the morning I stood in front of my closet and thought about what I was going to wear.  On that morning, or one soon after, I remember looking at my humble wardrobe and wanting to try something I had never tried before. I don&amp;#039;t remember what the combination was, but it was an important moment. It opened up possibilities. I no longer had outfits. I had options. For a while I tried dressing in threes: two patterns and a texture. I discovered that the simplest way to make people think you look sharp is to dress in black and white, especially a black suit, white-white shirt with French cuffs, and white-white pocket square. For various six-month periods, I&amp;#039;ve entirely eschewed the tie, only to adopt it anew when the season changes. There are millions of rules. (Always wear white to the face. The turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear.) And those rules need to be accepted and then, on a case-by-case basis, modified or rejected.  I failed a lot and I still fail. Sometimes I get to the office, after dressing in the near dark of early morning, and I think, This is what I&amp;#039;m wearing? But what the stink? It&amp;#039;s a day in the life. Tomorrow, I&amp;#039;ll spend my ninety seconds in contemplation and move on. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a2780/whytodress0607/>