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"    For most dudes, fashion is a conundrum wrapped in a deep-fried taco of insecurity. While young women are generally expected to care about what&amp;#039;s in style and learn how to put together appropriate looks for various occasions, most guys\u2014of my generation, at least\u2014grew up believing that being interested in fashion somehow reflected poorly on our masculinity. Archaic, yes. Sad, yes. But the fact remains that my growth in this area got stunted at a young, impressionable age. Steve Perry from Journey was a T-shirt and jeans guy, so I too was a T-shirt and jeans guy. (Thanks, Steve.) Now I&amp;#039;m too old to learn about the rest of this big wide world of clothes. I doff my sweaty baseball cap to the guys who can match a striped tie with a checked shirt, but I simply cannot join them. My left eye twitches when I have to, say, shop for a suit for a wedding. This makes my wife, Karel, worry that I&amp;#039;m going to buy one of those tuxedo T-shirts instead. If this scenario rings a bell, allow me to shed some light on the situation, so at least you&amp;#039;ll understand what&amp;#039;s going on in your guy&amp;#039;s head when he&amp;#039;s wearing a tank top to your dad&amp;#039;s retirement party. We hate all shopping like you hate swimsuit shopping It&amp;#039;s a kick in the ever-expanding gut to see how far we&amp;#039;ve let ourselves go since the last time we hit the mall, which was probably the last time you forced us to, 12 months or so ago. It&amp;#039;s a yearly test of personal insecurity: Can you hold your head high as you march from the dressing room to the rack to get the next larger size of jeans? If my wife is any indication, most women are saddled with a heightened awareness of any new curve that appears. It&amp;#039;s no fun for you, but at least you know what your bodies are up to. For guys, disrobing in the fitting room can be a horrifying shock. Since when did my six-pack turn into a pony keg? Plus, there&amp;#039;s the basic fact that your average clothing retailer is sensory overload for the uninitiated. Imagine walking into a busy bait-and-tackle shop without knowing the first thing about fishing and being asked to make a good choice about what you should buy. You just want to hold your breath and grab the brightest, most obvious item and bolt, which is (I believe) how I ended up with a $75 sweatshirt that has the word PLAYA across the chest in rhinestones. The best way to help your dude shop is to get him to look online before he goes to a store (but don&amp;#039;t let him shop online\u2014oh, no\u2014unless you&amp;#039;re positive about the size; otherwise his pants will arrive, not fit, and end up secretly taking up space in his drawer for the next decade). Once you get to the store, make sure he goes into the dressing room with a couple different sizes so he doesn&amp;#039;t have to make the walk of shame. Clothes shopping for a guy like me should be like a bank robbery: lots of planning so he can get in and out as quickly as possible. We already know what we want to wear This outfit versus that outfit? What does that even mean? Most guys found their &amp;quot;look&amp;quot; in their teens, and getting them to grow in any way is like trying to teach your dog how to use the toilet. Some guys love a specific type of clothing, like my neighbor who wears tracksuits (or at least track pants) at every available opportunity. Or my friend&amp;#039;s brother Art, who looks shell-shocked and weirdly naked in any outfit that doesn&amp;#039;t include a tie. Those guys might not drink the same beer, but they have the exact same problem. My issue is that I&amp;#039;m stuck in a particular era of fashion. I&amp;#039;m determined to dress like I belong in the &amp;#039;70s, in denim and tight T-shirts and boots. I tell myself that my look is &amp;quot;timeless,&amp;quot; but if bell-bottoms were timeless, Levi&amp;#039;s would still make them. For years, Karel would leave magazines open to pages of men&amp;#039;s clothing she thought would work for me, and point out dudes who were of a similar build but had a better sense of what to wear. I love that she made the effort, but it felt like she was trying to teach me an alien language. So I still drop the kids off at school in torn jeans and a ratty old T-shirt with a picture of a fiery skull on it that says Headbanger. The upside is that I don&amp;#039;t have to field many requests to volunteer. The subtleties of fashion are lost on us Ask most men about accessorizing and look deeply into the dead-eyed stare you receive in return. It&amp;#039;s in the details where guys like me are rendered completely helpless. For some, it might be picking the right shoes for the outfit (or even having the right shoes), knowing what tie works with what suit, or choosing a hat that doesn&amp;#039;t make you look like a character from Entourage. Look, I went to art school: I understand the color wheel, and I still can&amp;#039;t manage to make my slacks and shoes match. Karel has six pairs of sunglasses, and pairing the right ones to her outfit makes a real difference, but it&amp;#039;s something I could never hope to achieve. Yes, I am that old dog who will never learn to use the toilet, but even though it&amp;#039;s too late for me, that doesn&amp;#039;t mean my son has to make a mess everywhere too. I won&amp;#039;t let my boy be a one-trick fashion pony. Between now and high school, he&amp;#039;s going to learn the difference between retro and vintage, and he&amp;#039;ll understand what you&amp;#039;re supposed to wear to an upscale spring garden party at the governor&amp;#039;s mansion (just in case). I&amp;#039;ll make sure he understands that knowing how to dress will give him confidence and make a good impression. And when he graduates top of his class from university and wins the &amp;quot;best-dressed smart guy&amp;quot; award (that&amp;#039;s an award universities bestow, right?), I&amp;#039;ll be in the audience cheering the loudest. I&amp;#039;ll be the old man in a tuxedo T-shirt. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/mens-perspective/a18737/guy-fashion-explained/>