Men's Style Conundrums: Vests
It's a fashion question that countless men have asked in the past: should you wear a vest
? Yes, vests are acceptable even when you're not wearing one with the whole three-piece suit shebang. A layered look with a vest, however, occupies its own special place on the scale of formality. Wearing a vest per se is no style faux pas right now, but wearing the vested look to the wrong occasion most definitely is, regardless of the time period.
What's in a Vest?
At the very core of it, the vest is a formal item, something you add to an outfit in order to dress it up. Notice how a three-piece suit - the holiest of holies in office fashion - ranks a notch higher than the regular two-piece variety that most men wear. And in that case, it's the vest that makes the difference.
Yet the vest alone isn't much. It's like wearing a necktie without wearing a suit jacket; you don't realize its fullest potential in terms of formalness when you don it alone and without the companion pieces of the set. For vests, wearing one as is will definitely dress up your current look, but the result will be less formal than any ensemble that includes a suit jacket. Suit jackets have much more weight than vests in the world of men's fashion.
Should you elect to don a vest, see to it that the occasion is casual and does not demand for office formal; any situation that demands any version of 'formal' requires one or some other version of a jacket. Unless your office has a very lax dress code, wearing a vest by itself will most likely offend some fashion sensibilities there. Reserve the vested style for more casual times such as dinner out with friends or Casual Fridays.
Vested Interests
If you're one of those people who compartmentalize style pieces into 'casual' and 'formal' categories, vests fall squarely into that latter category. The easiest and safest way to wear a vest, therefore, is with other items that come from that same group; mix and match is a slightly more advanced trick of the trade.
Modern men's fashion encompasses an extremely wide variety of vests from traditional solids to more contemporary fashions. A vest can be somewhat tricky to wear as it gets more prints and patterns, so a black, gray or navy vest in a classic suiting fabric will give you the most mileage. Of course, you shouldn't eliminate patterns altogether either; you could start with a simple check using any one of the aforementioned colors as a base.
One fail-safe way to style a vest is to wear it over a crisp white shirt. Not only does the shirt come from a similar level of formality, but the simplicity of the solid color is one of the most universal and wearable in all of men's fashion. Regardless of the pattern or print of the vest, you've got a solid outfit right there. Just pair it with a freshly pressed pair of pants - dark denims or black slacks preferred - and you're good to go.
You could also notch the formal factor up simply by adding a tie. Neckties are easiest to work with, not least because you probably have a fair number of options in your closet already. Have the tie contrast with the vest: patterned tie for solid vest and vice versa. A more sartorial choice, however, would be the bow tie, especially now that patterned bow ties are emerging as quite the trend in men's fashion.
Should you wear a vest? It's not a style that works for every man out there, but you must definitely try to do so. Just learn what to pair with the look and where to actually wear it, and you'll look that much more dapper than the vest-less man standing next to you.
by: Hendrik Pohl
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