When it comes to how to dress, summer complicates everything. All other seasons afford you a degree of flexibility: a tie, scarf, sweater, light jacket, overcoat, boots, etc. can all be used to add character and flexibility to your outfit.

In summer however, sometimes the only answer seems to be to remove clothing. How do you dress elegantly when anything more than a t-shirt and shorts causes you to break out in sweat?

This is the question we’ve begun to address in our previous two articles (here and here) about James Bond’s summer style. In those, we covered topics such as which fabrics are the most breathable, the versatility of camp collars, and how tanned skin impacts which colors look good on you.

But amidst it all, one question remains: what do you put on your feet?

This is the question we set out to answer today, pulling once more from the adventures of 007. We’ll look at the three main staples of summer footwear, and address the most divisive topic of them all: to sock, or not to sock?

The answer might well surprise you…

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For the better part of a decade, the human face has been subject to a disturbing trend. Prominent pouts, chiseled jaws, cheekbones so sharp they could cut glass; more and more, both people are beginning to converge on a type of facial ideal. The trend is so pronounced that people are now wondering: are we all going to end up with the same face?

This isn’t limited to the chronically online, those getting plastic surgery, or people using social media filters. This has real health and spiritual consequences, not to mention the stifling image of “beauty” we are creating for ourselves. At its worst, the pursuit of the perfect face leaves some unable to feel anything at all.

Ignoring the problems won’t make them go away, but there are things you can do to push back against a trend that seeks to erase your individuality. Today, we look at why this is happening, what George Orwell can teach you about it, and the physical and spiritual consequences of an unattainable ideal.

What are the best methods to fight back against the pressure to conform to a standard set by algorithms? Let’s find out…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

Where Did This “One Face” Come From?

In 2019, an article by Jia Tolentino made the rounds where the author investigated what was then called “Instagram face.” The piece’s subtitle, How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look, alludes to the quasi-transhumanist nature of the trend; when your perception of your self feels “realer” or “truer” in its filtered form, a part of “you” needs the technology to change your face (at least until you can afford surgeries to make the change permanent).

In her article, Tolentino went to the heart of the phenomenon, Los Angeles, and asked people working in the beauty industry about what they were seeing. The trend for women, they told her, was towards a unified type of face, a Kim Kardashian or Bella Hadid look — features like a small nose, full lips, high cheekbones and zero visible pores – which an interviewee called Instagram face. The term can refer to both the type of face that worked best for engagement on social media, but also the one beauty filters and apps, like Facetune, were optimized to create.

The homogenizing effect of filters isn’t just speculation; one 2025 study went through 225 beautifying Instagram filters and found there was indeed a “digital beauty template”, a hegemonic style of digital facial modification that repeatedly opted for the same features. As one researcher put it, the digital beauty template, though containing underlying European beauty standards, was still “highly unattainable to all users – certain ‘ethnic’ features are selectively appropriated whilst others are erased, producing a filtered appearance that is ambiguously ‘exotic.’”

These findings mirror what one makeup artist from Tolentino’s article said, that the Instagram “look” combined influences from South Asian, African American, Caucasian, Native American and Middle Eastern faces into an appearance of “rootless exoticism.”

In other words, the face that everyone is striving towards, the face that algorithms, filters, and celebrities promote, truly belongs to no one and nowhere. It’s an illusion, and one that’s causing real-world harm.

The Consequences of Having “Inferior Faces”

Young girls are now bringing up photos of themselves on apps with the filters applied and asking cosmetic surgeons to make them look like their filtered selves. Its so common that the surgeons refer to it as “Snapchat dysmorphia.” The correlation between constant exposure to impossible beauty and feelings of inferiority are so strong as to be undeniable. One 2025 study from Stanford found that adults with significantly higher time spent on social media were far more likely to have body dysmorphia, while another study found that while text-based social media saw no effect, image-based social media platforms in particular were “significantly and positively associated with body dysmorphic symptoms.”

And while the facial convergence you’re seeing with some women isn’t happening to men yet, there’s an argument that they’re just catching up to where women are. According to one recent study, 70 percent of young adult women are unhappy with their bodies, but 60 percent of men are as well. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that feelings of looking inferior to an idealized self aren’t gender specific. For instance more men than ever are now seeking plastic surgery, and the male looksmaxxing subculture is producing men who obsess over jaw width and facial proportions to an unhealthy degree, to the point that it will inevitably create its own version of the “perfect” male face convergence.

Regardless of which gender does it, the pursuit of the perfect face runs the risk of eliminating the thing that made faces truly worth looking at.

Expression as Identity

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.”

–Genesis 1:26

Viewing your face, or any part of your body, as an object to be modified changes your relationship to it in a way that rejects its God-given nature. Every person is made in the image of God in their own way, and to reject that through radical intervention is a refusal to accept a gift of God. The Vatican’s International Theological Commission recently published a document, Quo Vadis, Humanitas?, addressing this issue head on:

Once modified, often with relentless frenzy, the body becomes a body-object in which the person-subject mirrors themselves, creating a relationship in which the person is no longer his or her body but ‘owns’ a body, from which arises the search for a ‘borrowed’ identity. In this dynamic, it is no longer necessary to accept one’s own body in order to realise one’s identity. It can be transformed according to the tastes of the moment.

A curious situation is created: the ideal body is exalted, sought after and cultivated, while the real body is not truly loved, being a source of limitations, fatigue and aging. One desires a perfect body, while dreaming of escaping from one’s own concrete body and its limitations.

Escaping from your real face in this way also leaves behind a fundamental aspect of who you are. In his essay, Aesthetic Significance of the Face, sociologist George Simmel wrote that the face takes on the lion’s share of conveying your personality through expression, but also through the record it keeps of your actions:

In the face, […] the emotions typical of the individual – hate or timorousness, a gentle smile or a restless espying of advantage, and innumerable others – leave lasting traces. In the face alone, emotion first expressed in movement is deposited as the expression of permanent character. By virtue of this singular malleability, only the face becomes the geometric locus, as it were, of the inner personality, to the degree that it is perceptible.

Simmel also credits this “location” of personality in your face to Christianity, which he writes had a tendency to cover the body, making a person’s face the sole representative of his appearance. This can be seen in the story of the garden of eden, where Adam and Eve feel shame on realizing their nakedness and cover themselves, or passages like 1 Timothy 1:29 which says women should “adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly.” This religious connection to the prominence of the face in beauty is more than incidental, however.

Philosopher Dietrich Von Hildebrand writes that the human face was created for expression, and it is in making expressions that you find the union of “physiological process with inner psychic and spiritual processes,” meaning the face displays things that otherwise only exist at the level of the mind or the soul. The human face is uniquely capable of transmitting the world of the invisible to the visible, to take your inner sentiment, your inner self, and manifest it outwardly. This is the true key to what can make any face beautiful.

Of course, there are faces that are naturally beautiful through their symmetrical form, the proportions between eyes, nose, mouth, chin, etc. These parts form a whole that is beautiful regardless of the expression on that face. But there is another path to a beautiful face, even for those who lack this formal beauty, those which are beautiful through expressions of goodness, purity, or intellectual statue. As Hildebrand says: “A look from eyes in which playful charm is linked to kindness and purity can possess a high degree of aesthetic value.”

Naturally, the question that arises with all this information is: what happens to identity when you change its most prominent physical feature?

A Permanent Mask

In the face […] there is always an expression of the personality; if it were devoid of all expression, it would be a mask.

–Dietrich von Hildebrand, Aesthetics, Vol. I.

Most “influenced” people do their best without drastic surgeries, relying on makeup, constant filter use, easy Botox or the occasional face hammering . But the closer you are to the limelight – or the more you want to be– the more likely you are to want that unnatural perfection. This desire makes perfect sense when you consider the origins of Instagram face; the onslaught of too-perfect content on social media and the pressure felt by those at the centre of the digital panopticon to look a certain way.

Though you might not think George Orwell would have insight into this, one of his short stories discusses this tension decades before the first smartphone. In Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell recounts an incident during his time as a British police officer in Burma where he had to put down a rampaging elephant in front of a crowd. He describes the tension between being seen as the person in control and yet feeling trapped into performing that role for onlookers.

Despite his purported position of control as a representative of colonial power, he felt like a puppet, made to act, a “hollow, posing dummy” who spent his time trying to impress the expectant crowd:

Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. […] For it is the condition of [the white man’s] rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

Orwell felt that pressure in one striking incident and had to write it out for catharsis’ sake. In his performance of “the man in charge,” which he felt was demanded by the literal crowd around him, Orwell resemble the modern day beauty influencer, who has no choice but to act out what is expected of them. And that expectation is often to be the most beautiful, the most desirable, the most flawless they can be. Imagine how Orwell would have felt had his expectant crowd followed him everywhere he went for his whole life, like those on social media do now?

In a world where privacy is rapidly becoming a luxury good, the only defense is that of the zebra; blend in with the herd, look like your peers – or who social media says are your peers — as any anomaly will allow the lions to target you. People are rightly terrified of exposing themselves to the great eye of the internet mob, a false, fickle god who loves one day and destroys the next, as it’s a god whose worship ultimately destroys you.

Author Claire Raymond explains how this happens in her book The Selfie, Temporality, and Contemporary Photography. Raymond writes that “Instagram face” is essentially a mask, and in more ways than one. Not only does it hide the person who has adopted it through plastic surgery but the subdermal injections and other procedures necessary to attain it have likely numbed their face to the point it feels and acts like a mask as well; less able to feel, less able to show emotion. “Numbness is the central feature of the experience for the woman who gets Instagram Face through cosmetic procedures. Others may see her more, but she feels less and less.” In this way, adopting this impossible face offers a trade off; you are flattening one part of your identity and protecting another.

For those of you who understandably would rather not live in a world where this trade-off is seen as a good one, what can be done?

The Fix

The good news is that there are some concrete steps you can take to combat this phenomenon. Kids are especially impressionable when it comes to visual media, but talking to them and making them aware of both the issue and their social media diet can mitigate the damage. Studies have shown that cutting social media use in half for a few weeks goes a long way to improving a person’s body image. Likewise, making your social media text-based (*cough* Substack *cough*) as opposed to visual based has a noticeable effect.

If you do have visual-media based accounts, next time you are doomscrolling, take a minute and audit how you feel when looking at different health, fitness, or beauty accounts. If they inspire you to work on yourself, that’s one thing, but if instead they create a sense of despair, of impossibility, you’re looking at something you’re better off unfollowing.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, reconsider your relationship with your face. As Hildebrand, Simmel and others have shown, your face is where who you are is made apparent to the world. To wish it to be someone else’s is in part to will the erasure of your self. Part of being human is living with flaws, and when you smooth them out, you erase what makes you, you. Every smile, every frown, every smirk is like water over river rocks, slowly, imperceptibly changing your face into something that reflects your disposition.

It follows then that being conscious about the expressions you wear gives you control about the lasting message your face will communicate to the world. Ask yourself: what do you want your face to say about you?

When influencers and celebrities decide that one face is best, they are admitting a deep insecurity about themselves and their place in the world. But as we’ve seen, that “ambiguously exotic” look is exotic to everyone precisely because it doesn’t belong anywhere, or to anyone. But adopting alien features is, by definition, alienating. Instead, when you learn to love and accept your face, the one made in the image of God, it will be beautiful no matter how it looks, and you’ll know where you belong.

James Bond is a man better known for his black-and-white tuxedos than his pink linen button downs. And yet, when it comes to dressing for the summer, the latter is far more appropriate. Homme élégant that he is, Bond knows this, and dresses accordingly when operating in tropical regions.

But why is color more appropriate in hot climates? The answer might surprise you, as biology has a large role to play. As I’ve written elsewhere,

Neither your skin color nor facial contrast are static, and indeed they often change with the seasons. Sun exposure, for example, tends to increase the degree of contrast in your facial features: it lightens your hair while darkening your skin. But since light reflects less off of tanned skin, the relative brightness of your features changes, too. The whites of your teeth and eyes, as well as the natural redness of your lips or cheeks, now appear brighter by comparison.

The result of this is that men and women who typically wear austere colors in cold climates can dress far more vibrantly in the tropics. The Duke of Windsor, for example, when Governor of the Bahamas, was able to dress in a way he never would have been able to in England:

Last week, we broke down a classic Bond look from the 1965 film Thunderball. We looked at camp collars, linen trousers, and the versatility of cream colored clothing. It was a great intro on how to dress well in the heat, but it lacked one thing: a healthy dose of color.

This week, we return to the Bahamas to study Bond at his most colorful. We’ll analyze the color, pattern, and fabric of four different shirts to share inspiration for your summer wardrobe. We’ll also look at one of 007’s rare stylistic mishaps, and how you can beat Bond at his own game this summer…

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Of what importance is beauty to a Christian? What functions or purposes does it serve? The good, true, and beautiful make for a pleasant set of goals, but while the first two are inarguably of value, the beautiful has its detractors.

Ecclesiastes tells us that “all things are vanity,” and things that at first seem beautiful can certainly turn out to be snares for sin. The concern for beauty in the realm of clothing attracts many such criticisms. Most people consider the fuzzy line between material beauty and vanity to be dangerously easy to cross, and thus shy away from the one for fear of the other.

But, as we shall see, such a perspective ignores the deep value of visual beauty, and completely misses the point.

That’s why today, we look at different types of beauty, answer common objections to perceived vanity, and defend the “merely” beautiful as a positive good. Let’s begin…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

Metaphysical vs. Formal Beauty

When asked whether beauty matters in a Christian context, the answer is self-evident. The beauty of God’s mercy, the beauty of redemption, of virtue, of a humble soul: all these and more are good. These are examples of metaphysical beauty, an emanation that radiates out from the inner goodness of a thing itself.

Metaphysical beauty is qualitative, and is a product of the greatness from which it proceeds. This is the type of beauty of the Lord described in Zechariah 9:17: “For how great is his goodness, and how great his beauty!” Few people take issue with this form of beauty in Christian thought. Indeed, much of the faith is built upon divine beauty in some form or another.

In contrast, there is the beauty of form, that which you encounter in nature, art, architecture and, yes, clothes. Nature’s beauty, evidence of the intentions of its creator, can be appreciated outside of the questions of morality. But the closer the idea of beauty gets to the person, the more it elicits suspicion.

In his Confessions, St. Augustine asks a question that is deceptively simple:

Do we love anything but the beautiful? What, then, is beautiful? And what is beauty? What is it that allures and unites us to the things we love; for unless there were a grace and beauty in them, they could by no means attract us to them? And I marked and perceived that in bodies themselves there was a beauty from their forming a kind of whole, and another from mutual fitness, as one part of the body with its whole, or a shoe with a foot, and so on.

Notice the use of a mundane example in the shoe in relation to the foot. Beauty, Augustine says, can be found even in these material things. Yet the alluring nature of this beauty which Augustine identifies is what makes certain Christians approach it with unease. The beauty of a sunset or a bird’s call is exterior to you and doesn’t run the risk of flattering your ego, whereas a well-put together outfit does.

There is a long tradition within Christian thought that treats this issue with caution. Monastic practices of asceticism, along with passages such as 1 Peter and 1 Timothy, urge believers not to ground their sense of worth in outward adornment, but in “the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” and in “good deeds”. While these sources stop short of condemning beauty itself, they consistently redirect attention away from external display and toward interior virtue.

Such concerns are not restricted to the realm of beauty. Food, money, and relationships all run the risk of being misused. Beauty tied to the self does pose a particular risk, but this greater risk of self-referentialism does not mean it is inherently disordered. As we’ve covered elsewhere, it simply requires a greater awareness of intention.

Ultimately, the question is not whether beauty can be a disordered attachment, but what it looks like when properly ordered. And since metaphysical beauty is rarely the concern, a deeper look at how to correctly order formal beauty is in order.

Utility Is Not Superior

In an attempt to skirt around the danger of misuse, one path is to regard beauty of form as inconsequential — at best a neutral thing, not evil, but of little consequence to a life lived for God. The things of great value are those which are of a moral or spiritual concern. For a certain kind of person, even beyond these higher concerns, the functional or practical should take precedent; it is more important that a house not leak from its roof than that it be wonderful to look at.

In his book Beauty: What It Is and Why It Matters, John-Mark Miravalle writes responding to this contention that it does not address the fullness of the problem, namely that humans aren’t wired that way:

We could, and most of us probably would, describe the nature and purpose of a house, or clothing, or food, without making any reference to beauty. And yet we don’t want these things merely to fulfill their material function. We don’t want just shelter, or something we can wear to keep us from being exposed, or raw nutrition. We want to be delighted by more than just the satisfaction of our material needs.

Miravalle asserts that this need for delight is a reality of the human experience, not some malfunction of its faculties, and as such seeks to draw you closer to God. The draw to beauty of form is therefore not bait to fall into sin; it functions instead as a compass towards the good and true.

Admittedly, there is truth that beauty of form is a secondary concern in the Christian mind (“seek ye first the kingdom of God…”), but this does not render the utilitarian approach to the material a superior one. If you are to argue that the useful is more important than the beautiful in the physical world, does this not run contrary to Christ’s admonishment that you should not concern yourself with “what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on”?

This often misunderstood passage shows that even necessary concerns — such as where to food, drink, and clothing — are secondary to seeking the kingdom of God. If even these practical necessities can be set aside in this way, then beauty cannot be dismissed as mere frivolity by comparison. By that standard, all things are frivolous next to the pursuit of the kingdom. And yet, formal beauty is not just a secondary concern; it actually fulfills a great purpose, one that becomes clear when you understand what an encounter with it can do to you.

The Goodness of Formal Beauty

As an embodied creature, you exist in the realm of the physical and the real. A realm that God populated with a kaleidoscopic variety of beautiful forms. This decision was deliberate, and as Genesis indicates this creation was indeed “good,” it can be inferred that there is value to the numerous, beautiful forms within it.

For Catholic Theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar, it is precisely through these forms that you can better know the higher manifestation of beauty:

Only that which has form can snatch one up into a state of rapture. Only through form can the lightning-bolt of eternal beauty flash. There is a moment in which the bursting light of spirit as it makes its appearance completely drenches external form in its rays.

There is a saying in Zen Buddhism which provides a useful illustration here: “Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon with the moon.” This means you should not mistake the thing directing you towards something with the thing itself. In Von Balthasar’s example, beautiful forms are not merely fingers pointing at the transcendent, they are more like a channel or vessel through which the transcendent, otherwise far off in the distance, can finally be seen from the physical world. It is this characteristic that explains why the various forms which beauty takes, from cathedrals to poetry, direct your thoughts beyond the world they inhabit.

The implications of this for humans is profound. When you attempt to craft beautiful forms, be it a building, a garden or an outfit, you participate in some small way in the same act that first brought beauty into the world. Such creations are not guaranteed vessels of transcendence, and beauty of form of personal creation depends entirely on how it is intended. As Dietrich Von Hildebrand writes in Beauty in the Light of Redemption:

All possessions that appeal to our pride and our sensual appetites, indeed, all that are subjectively gratifying, lose their radiance for the redeemed, for the man, who has found the pearl of great price of the Gospel. All possessions, however, that have real value, that in themselves are honorable, excellent, significant, that fall like dew from above and ascend to God like incense, achieve a higher and new radiance in Christ.

Think of the Pure, Lovely and Admirable

Beauty of form is not meant as a trap (though it can ensnare the unwary). It is not a thing that you must suppress to be righteous, and it is not something to be shunned because of its proximity to your self. As Augustine observed, beauty calls to you, and that calling is no mistake. The beautiful in form is not a distraction or hindrance, but a direction towards something greater.

This is why the two forms of beauty mentioned at the outset, the metaphysical and the formal, are not either/or propositions, but instead are links in a chain between heaven and earth. This is why, when formal beauty is pursued for the right reasons, no matter what medium you choose, it leads to something greater than the sum of its parts.

So take heart that the beautiful in form and the divine need not be at odds with each other. They are two parts of a greater whole, working in tandem for the good. Instead of causing concern, the former should call you to contemplation of the latter. As Paul wrote to the Philippians:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

The most common question I get from readers is, “how should I dress in warm weather?” Because I write so much about jackets, suits, and ties, it’s a natural question. Many of these items get tossed aside in summer in favor of lighter, cooler fabrics.1

Unfortunately, most people take this to mean that summertime is inherently informal, or that there’s no way to look elegant in the heat. Over the next few weeks, I want to debunk these claims, and show how you can retain an elevated and dignified wardrobe during the summer months. We’ll begin by studying one of the best to ever do it: James Bond.

The early Bond films see 007 visit Jamaica, the Bahamas, Istanbul, Thailand, Venice, and other warm-weather, exotic locales. On each occasion, we get to see Bond (and often his enemies) shed the suit and don something more casual, though always elegant.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll take look at different ensembles James Bond wears in these hotter climates in order to give you inspiration for your own wardrobe. We’ll set aside the suits for a moment and enjoy something more casual: a secret agent on vacation, dressed to kill in more ways than one.

To kick this series off, let’s begin with a classic look from 1965’s Thunderball, in which Bond chases an international crime ring to the sandy shores of Nassau, Bahamas. If you plan on spending any time in tropical weather this summer, you can’t go wrong wearing this…

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When you look into the mirror in the morning, you are faced with a number of choices: What shirt do I wear? What colors or patterns are appropriate for where I’m going? Most people think this is mere necessity, what must be done to account for the day’s weather and what propriety demands.

Perhaps for those who think that way, this is true. But there is a deeper process at play if you’re willing to see it. Once you understand that your wardrobe is a palette and your body a canvas, you’ll never see your morning routine the same way again.

Today, we tackle some of the arguments for and against personal style as art, explore how your intentions can make or break an outfit, and show why thinking of your style as an artistic signal will transform the way you interact with the world.

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

How Can Style Be Art?

One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art.

–Oscar Wilde

A philosophical definition of style as art has to confront the nebulousness of “art” as a term. Common definitions in a post-Duchamp, banana-duct-taped-to-the-wall world are a challenge. Abstract painter Jackson Pollock, in the middle of a conversation on the subject, once drove a nail into his living room floor and declared “Damn it, that’s art!” to make his point.

Nearly a century before him, painter George Seurat said that “art is harmony” and left it at that. But such approaches don’t tell you much. If “everything is art” or “all that is harmonious is art” then there’s hardly a discussion to be had.

A good definition should be workable, and post-modern approaches don’t tell you much. A more useful definition (though not the only useful one) comes from the American Heritage Dictionary, which says that art is:

The conscious use of the imagination in the production of objects intended to be contemplated or appreciated as beautiful, as in the arrangement of forms, sounds, or words.

Taking the criteria from this definition, we see that style, as an imaginative, conscious creation of an outfit by an individual using the forms and pieces in a collection, results in an ensemble that is meant to be appreciated as beautiful. In this way, style conforms to this workable definition of art.

A standard argument against style as art is that it merely uses articles of clothing; it does not create anything new. But the outfit as medium requires you to be aware of lines, shapes, color theory, the interplay of textures, patterns, and proportions. It requires an imagination honed through experience with the material to produce beauty.

Another counterargument is that clothes are meant to be functional and for this reason should be discounted as art. The theory goes that clothes cover and protect as a primary function, and any other purpose is merely ornamental. While an argument from functionality seems compelling, to accept it would exclude artistic mediums like pottery or architecture, which both have utility but are still generally recognized as artistic mediums.

Additionally, within the medium of clothing itself, we often find details created for utilitarian purposes morphing over time to become something more. In her book Seeing Through Clothes, art historian Anne Hollander writes that the stylistic elements of dress often eclipse the practical:

It is obvious that certain details of dress have originally been invented for utilitarian purposes. But it is equally obvious that the desire for a satisfying-looking style in dress is stronger than any need for useful arrangements, since the looks of such arrangements have often proved much more enduring than their use. Also, their utility has often been quickly sacrificed to stylistic considerations.

The lapels on early military uniforms, for example, which were intended to cross over and keep the chest warm, were speedily atrophied into decorative flaps, worn buttoned open to show the color of the facing. They could still button across, too, but they were never worn so.

In this way, while dress, like architecture, does fulfill a primary purpose, it can be elevated from practical necessity into the realm of art. To say art must be solely for the purposes of contemplation or aesthetic appreciation argues that cathedrals or didactic poetry lose artistic merit due to their practicality. That is an absurd conclusion.

And when you consider just how much can be expressed through the medium of dress, it only heightens the absurdity of rejecting it as art.

From the Practical to the Ineffable

Style is what combines the clothes and the body into the accepted contemporary look not of chic, not of ideal perfection, but of natural reality.

–Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes

One of the purposes of art is to express what normal channels of communication can’t. The painter Georgia O’Keeffe said that abstractions in her work were the easiest way for her to communicate what was intangible within herself. “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way— things I had no words for.”

Likewise, the way you pick an outfit, the colors, patterns, and pieces, don’t say things as straightforwardly as literally words could. Clothing is not a representational art most of the time. But the expression of clothing is not meant to be communicated in words (and hopefully you can forgive the irony of having to write that sentence). Style is an abstraction of feeling, and it loses something when translated into language.

A style can be joyful, dark, intense, or erratic, but those words fail to give the full impression that seeing the outfits would bring. Such impressions often invoke sentiments before they prompt spoken reactions. Where words fail us in the presence of great art, so too do they prove insufficient when witnessing a crowd of well-dressed people. Especially in an age where culture makes few demands on public dress, there is something striking about the man or woman who has made an outfit that brings elements of style, color, and material into harmony on their person, something that the words “beautiful” or “well-dressed” fail to communicate.

But if the choice of outfit a person brings into the world is an artistic act, then what happens when that choice is not intentional?

You’re an Artist, Whether You Like it or Not

Dress is a form of visual art, a creation of images with the visible self as its medium.

–Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes

Even if you believe your clothes aren’t expressing something, they are. Semiotician and philosopher Roland Barthes viewed fashion as a sign system, a structured means of communication where “signs” carry inherent meaning. That the meaning is inherent implies that you cannot “opt out” of this mode of communication. At best, you can decide to ignore what you are communicating. As painter Desmond Morris wrote “It is impossible to wear clothes without transmitting social signals.”

This is why a laissez-faire approach to what you wear equates to acting as a canvas for someone else’s designs. When you are not intentional with your choice of style, you are often buying and wearing whatever happens to come your way. Rather than seek out colors, forms, and materials with which to communicate your message, you passively transmit what others have to say.

When the clothes on offer at the store are there by virtue of advertisers or fashion cycles, wearing them without much thought is letting others use your body for their own purposes. To make matters worse, items like fast fashion are, by their cheapness and transient nature, rarely signaling anything meaningful. At best, they are echoes of better items, inferior copies made to be sold quickly before fashions change.

To accept this reality is the first step in the artistry of style. Style always speaks, but it becomes a genuine artistic expression when it evidences an individual’s intentionality. Whether that intentionality is yours or someone else’s depends on how much of you went into your outfit.

The Artist in the Mirror

The artist’s first creation is himself.

–Harold Rosenberg

If all this sounds exhausting — like a call to master color theory and learn about textiles before you get dressed tomorrow — rest assured it’s nothing of the sort. Rather, it is a call to awareness, to recognize that you too are a participant in art form.

Whether you are paying attention to what you wear, or passively wearing whatever has found its way to your dresser, you are making a profound statement. Your body isn’t just a receiver for the experiences in the world, it is also a place from which you announce your presence. How that presence is conveyed can aspire to beauty or fall short: it can express what words cannot say, or say nothing at all.

When you understand that your style is an art, dressing yourself is more than a perfunctory act. It is a chance to create, to signal something to the world, and populate it with more of what you would like to see there. Even with your newfound appreciation, there will be off days. But there will be far more days of inspiration. Days where you see your body as the canvas it is, waiting for you to work your magic.

Like it or not, you’ll be painting that canvas every day for the rest of your life. Whether it becomes a beautiful work of art or not is up to you.

I remember when I arrived in Europe in late 2015. I saw people in the street, at the market, wearing dirty sneakers. For me, it was shocking — almost scandalous.

For the people complaining about lack of money, I’ll tell them something they probably do not want to read…

–Kevin Ayia

I’ll be honest. When it comes to style, there are very few people I look up to.

Sure, there are the classics: Cary Grant, the Duke of Windsor, Alain Delon, etc. But today, despite the thousands of menswear guys you see online, it’s rare that you find someone who really stops you in your tracks. Hardly anyone dresses in a way that makes you pause to appreciate their style and see what you can learn from it.

Hardly anyone, that is. Because a man named Kevin Ayia is one noteworthy exception.

When I first came across Kevin’s profile on Instagram, I was immediately impressed. His style struck me as an impeccably refined classic style with a modern twist, but little did I know how great of a story their was behind it. Then a few months later, Kevin shared this photo:

It was him in Cameroon, just about a decade ago. I could hardly believe I was looking at the same guy I had been following for months. So I reached out to Kevin to learn his story, and what followed was an incredible account of his journey from parking lots in Cameroon to the pinnacle of classic style. I’m thrilled to share it with you today in interview format.

If you prefer to keep thinking that you need money to dress well, or that you’re being humble by dressing poorly and “not standing out”, then don’t read this interview. But if you want to be inspired to use your clothing to transform your life, then read on.

Kevin’s story will teach you about how to overcome excuses, master style on a tight budget, and use the way you dress to improve the world around you…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

Evan: Where are you from originally, and how did you first get interested in menswear?

Kevin: I am from Yaoundé, Cameroon. I had a very normal childhood and teenage years there, and after graduating from high school, I moved to Germany to study electronic engineering. I think I’ve always had an interest in menswear in some way; it’s something that has always been with me.

Evan: Tell me about the beginnings of your menswear journey, and the story behind your first suit.

Kevin: Like I said earlier, I think I was always interested in menswear, classic menswear to be precise, but as a young man I needed the click to really dive in. And that click came in the most boring form possible: I needed a suit for my sister’s marriage.

I went to TJ Maxx and got myself a three-piece polyester suit. At this point I had no idea about cut, fabrics, silhouette. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to look as cool as Thomas Shelby or Nucky Thompson.

The sad thing is, I ended up not attending the marriage because of my university schedule. What a pity!

Evan: How did you begin to develop your style on a budget?

Kevin: By learning! Once I started learning about good cut, reading about fabrics, and training my eyes, I started to look at my polyester suit with side eyes.

And what I realized was: quality comes with a cost, and serving burgers at Burger King is not the right career to afford nice clothes.

I needed some workaround, because once the knowledge is there, bad quality cannot be satisfying anymore. So, I start thrifting, online first and physical shops later. It helped me develop my taste and my style on a tiny budget. Mistakes were made of course (wrong size, bad cut), but looking back, my financial situation gave me the opportunity to think and learn about what I was doing instead of using money as shortcut.

For the people complaining about lack of money, I’ll tell them something they probably do not want to read: this is a blessing in disguise especially if you are starting, and not only in menswear. In my opinion this principle applies to any new activities or hobbies.

Not having a ton of money to spend on clothes helps you curate carefully what you are spending on. And because we all make mistakes at first, these mistakes will cost far less than if we already had a lot of money to invest. You’ll rarely find exactly the garment you’re looking for, so you’ll have to settle for similar items, which is a fantastic way to refine your sense of style.

I could talk about this for hours, but I’d like to conclude by adding that the most unique pieces in your wardrobe will also come from this quest.

The only problem is, searching for secondhand clothes is time-consuming, whether online or otherwise. But be patient, and the reward will be worth it.

Evan: How did your interest in menswear shape other aspects of your life?

Kevin: My interest in classic menswear has literally changed the way I interact with society in general and all art forms in particular. The way I listen to music, or watch movies drastically changed. I delve deeply into almost every subject that interests me, because menswear has taught me never to stop at the surface.

Just as fabric is essential to the cut of my pants, I learned how wood and other materials could shape my interior. I realized that the color schemes I used for my outfits could be applied to my living space or my photos, just on a different scale... and vice versa.

Evan: To you, what is dressing well all about?

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Our modern conception of beauty aims at the perfect, the symmetrical and the unblemished. We speak of beauty in a Botticelli, Brahms or mountain-ringed vistas, and while these are indeed beautiful, they don’t tell the full story. What many are missing is the transformative power of the imperfect, the scarred and the broken.

Where most today seek out comfort and positivity in the beautiful, thinkers, theologians, and philosophers have long understood that there is beauty in pain, in wounding, and in the flawed. In fact, without these things, beauty cannot be experienced in its fullness.

This shadow side of the beautiful is neglected for many reasons, but once you understand it, you’ll have a better grasp of what truly makes something beautiful. You’ll also begin to find the transcendent in places few ever think to look…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

Smoothing out the Sublime

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us.

–Rainer Maria Rilke

In Saving Beauty, philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that “smoothness” is the problem with the modern understanding of beauty. For him, smoothness means that which puts up no resistance to the viewer. It is the frictionless, the easy, the unchallenging, “something one just likes.”

The smooth is the signature of the present time. It connects the sculptures of Jeff Koons, iPhones and Brazilian waxing. Why do we today find what is smooth beautiful? Beyond its aesthetic effect, it reflects a general social imperative. It embodies today’s society of positivity. What is smooth does not injure. Nor does it offer any resistance…The smooth object deletes its Against. Any form of negativity is removed.

Negativity as Han uses it means a wound of sorts. It confronts, imposes, or shocks you in a transformative way. It echoes Rilke’s Archaic Torso of Apollo: “There is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.” Negativity is the small terror, the challenge that knocks you over when witnessing the sublime. It encompasses the paradox, the contradiction, the painful.

Unfortunately, beauty today has been separated from the sublime in favor of a beauty of positivity. Han sees the artist Jeff Koons as an embodiment of this new, smooth beauty. Koons is famous for his pop art, which Han describes as having “no disaster, no injury, no ruptures […] Everything appears rounded, polished, smoothed out.” Koons hopes for his work to please his audience and leave them unburdened. You are not wounded by beauty in his work because that would distract from the immediate pleasure Koons wants to share. But wounding is necessary for true beauty, says Han:

The healthy is a form of expression of the smooth. Paradoxically, it radiates something morbid, something lifeless. Without the negativity of death, life solidifies into something dead. […] Negativity is the invigorating force of life. It also forms the essence of beauty. Inherent to beauty is a weakness, a fragility, and a brokenness. To this negativity, beauty owes its power to seduce.

Han argues that to save beauty, you must reunify the beautiful with the sublime. To marry the two together is to return a transcendent element to beauty, to create an uncomfortable friction or distance between the viewer and the viewed. In this space there is challenge, wounding and recognition of imperfection. These confrontations demand you transform into something greater than what you are.

Sacred Scars

There are few examples of beauty married to sublime wounding as overt as the story of Christ’s crucifixion. If you’re living in the West, you may have grown numb to how unusual seeing a crucified man hanging on the wall should be. This was an act of torture and death, subverted and transformed into the ultimate act of love.

There’s a particular devotion to the wounds of Christ that speaks directly to the relationship between the broken and the sublimely beautiful. In 2018 Pope Francis spoke of this devotion, saying that meditating on the wounds through prayer can lead you to a richer understanding of the transcendent:

I may think: “How do I look at the Crucifix? As a work of art, to see if it is beautiful or not? Or do I look within; do I penetrate Jesus’ wounds unto the depths of his heart? Do I look at the mystery of God who was humiliated unto death, like a slave, like a criminal?”. Do not forget this: look to the Crucifix, but look within it. There is a beautiful devotional way of praying one “Our Father” for each of the five wounds. When we pray that “Our Father”, we are trying to enter within, through the wounds of Jesus, inside his very heart. And there we will learn the great wisdom of the mystery of Christ, the great wisdom of the Cross.

Medieval depictions of Christ wounds rendered them as large, red almond shapes on the page. These images confront you in both their yonic symbolism and their depictions of torn flesh, perhaps the most recognizable icon of suffering we have. They are the embodiments of the Christian paradox, that you must lose your life to gain it. Yet these wounds invite us to transform ourselves via suffering.

To focus on the wounds of Christ and see them as worshipful is to reflect on the subversive nature of the Christian story. To take the Cross, an object of death and torture, and make it the ultimate symbol of eternal life and hope. This is a perfect embodiment of the sublime aspect of true beauty, one that terrifies in both form for what it shows and concept because of what it demands of you.

The demanding and transcendent offer one approach to the beauty of brokenness. But there are concepts outside the Western tradition that offer another. The sublime is not always the overwhelming encounter. Sometimes, it’s a quiet acceptance of impermanence, a melancholic, spiritual longing.

Golden Repairs

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, at the moon only when it is cloudless?

–Kenkō, Essays in Idleness

Japanese aesthetics draws on a separate tradition from Western understanding, but in recent years it’s drawn increasing interest for its novel propositions. One such proposition is the idea of Wabi Sabi, which seeks out and affirms the beauty in the imperfect and the impermanent.

The concept is a marriage of two terms: Wabi, which encompasses austere, empty beauty, adequacy and the moderate; and Sabi, which denotes desolation, aging well, rust and the acquisition of patina, all of which confer a type of beauty. Taken together, Wabi Sabi becomes an aesthetic appreciation of asymmetry, wear, roughness, and austerity.

In Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art Of Impermanence, author Andrew Juniper writes that Wabi Sabi can be seen in “the small nuances of color, the curve of an opening petal, the crack in a bamboo vase, or the decay of a knot in old timber.” Such objects produce within you a spiritual longing and a serene melancholy. But rather than a self-indulgent self-pitying brought on by the impermanence of things, it is instead “a sadness tinged with longing.”

A wonderful instantiation of Wabi-sabi is the art of Kintsugi, the repair of broken items with the use of gold. Kintsugi emphasizes the damage the repaired object has suffered as a part of its beauty. Rather than hide reminders of impermanence, the practice invites you to see the chaotic lines and chips of the ceramic as additions, not subtractions, to the aesthetic of the object. In doing so, it says something profound about how you should approach aesthetics and life itself. It is not simply a perfection of forms, but an appreciation of the experiences, good or bad, that it undergoes through time.

Whether it’s the wounds of Christ, the cracked vase or Rilke’s sublime terror in the face of Apollo, the meaning is the same; damage can mean destruction, but it can also be a profound source of the beautiful.

The Power of Your Imperfections

Han’s diagnosis remains true to this day. Beauty has been stripped of its fullness, of the sublime and its terrifying wonder. But you can bring its wholeness back by embracing the roughness, the scars and the cracks in your own life. Not as hindrances, but as pathways to a different understanding of beauty. One that loves the aged patina of a leather jacket as much as the chip made in a family heirloom or the scars you earned living your life.

There is of course a time and a place for the perfect form, the Platonic ideal and the pleasantly beautiful. We need more of these in a world that feels sapped of its wonder. But when you learn to love through the wound, you deepen your compassion. When you learn to gild the cracks in the world, you increase your ingenuity. When you seek out the rough instead of the artificially smooth, you reclaim something of the sublime.

When you welcome the fractured as an element of your aesthetics, you’ll find beauty not despite flaws, but because of them.

My family and I have been in France for the past three weeks. During this period, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with the photographic genius behind our publication, Raphael Barberi.

If you don’t know, Raphael provides all the original images we use in our articles. He has an eye for capturing beauty unlike any other, and it has been an absolute pleasure working with him over the past months. It is easy to say that Letters from the Old World simply would not be the same without him.

Today’s article is inspired by a conversation Raphael and I had over breakfast one morning. Somehow, the topic of my socks got brought up, and I mentioned that they were a Christmas gift from my wife: silk écru socks modeled after a pair worn by Napoleon. What better gift could there be for a lover of both history and menswear?

As the conversation progressed, we realized that one of the easiest ways to enchant the world around you is simply to elevate the small, seemingly everyday objects in your presence. Even something as simple as socks can take on a whole new meaning when made special in this way.

Today, I want to share a list of 7 objects you can easily transform from ordinary to enchanted. Coincidentally, many of these also make unique and unforgettable gifts, as evidenced by me never missing an opportunity to compliment my wife on her purchase of Napoleonic footwear.

So if you want to bring a bit more magic into your everyday life, or give a gift that lasts generations, here are seven easy places to start…

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It seems we are in a race to the bottom when it comes to our language. Not only are we becoming ruder as a society, but we are also swearing more and more, encouraged by the growing claim that swearing is actually good for you. Study after study promotes its supposed benefits: from pain-dampening effects to improved physical performance, swearing is considered a sign of both physical fitness and high verbal IQ.

Who could object? Only masochistic, sluggish, low-verbal IQ types, surely.

But how you speak isn’t just a question of personal preference or optimizing performance. Problems of swearing, rudeness, and poor vocabulary share a common root issue: ugly language. And it’s an issue that deserves your attention.

According to thinkers like George Orwell, St. Paul, and the Earl of Chesterfield, beautiful language is one of the most profound ways of shaping yourself, and the world, into what you want them to be. Speaking well isn’t just a question of avoiding vulgarity, but one of actively making your speech an expression of the beautiful.

Today, we look at how language deteriorated, why the decline matters, and how you can bring beauty back to both your speech and your world.

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

I Swear It’s a Problem

One reason many don’t want the quality of speech to matter today is that they live in the trampled remains of Chesterton’s fence on this matter. Attitudes towards speech have liberalized since the 1950s, as modern entertainment became more vulgar and cultural commentators began questioning speech codes for media. This happened at the same time as adults’ overall vocabulary skills started to decline, a trend that has held strong since at least the 1970s.

This culture of edgy-cool often uses obscenity as a shortcut to power, emotion or presence. It says “I am very serious, I care intensely about this.” Unfortunately for those people, linguistic inflation is real, which means that when everyone employs vulgarity, its impact lessens, desensitizing people to that sort of language.

Another element of the problem is an increasingly hostile and stressful world. Rudeness is an intuitive reaction to a world that feels designed to antagonize, and studies demonstrate that swearing in particular helps people to mitigate stress, anxiety and depression. When the world feels like an attack, it’s only natural to want to respond in kind.

Unfortunately, this coping mechanism is unlikely to be sustainable. A 2011 study showed that the more you curse, the less impact it has on your ability to endure pain. What’s more, more than 1 in 3 Americans said that, since the pandemic, they almost always or often encountered people behaving rudely when out in public. For most people, “rude” in this instance meant things like cursing and displaying curse words . And yet this revulsion failed to stop phenomena like the slew of grossly titled books that flooded airports and bookstores for the better part of the last decade.

In short, our capacity for intelligent speech is shrinking, our tendency to speak rudely is increasing (with diminishing returns), and our words are losing potency. Despite opposition from most people, these trends are unlikely to stop.

The question then is what can be done? As it turns out, different thinkers from different traditions all have surprisingly similar responses.

Orwellian Language Tips

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

–George Orwell

As a writer, George Orwell was naturally attentive to the importance of language. He returns to the topic several times across various essays, most overtly in his 1946 treatise Politics and the English Language. Written as a denunciation of the sloppy language invading politics during what he called England’s “general decline,” it provides an evergreen diagnosis for many problems of language today.

While Orwell found the primary causes of linguistic decline to be political and economic, he cautions that it’s not a one-way street. For him, the effect can become the cause, as social ills and poor speech form a reinforcing feedback loop. He compares it to a man awash in failure becoming a drunkard, and his drunkenness deepening his failure. “It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language,” he writes. “It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

But rather than see this ouroboros as a terminal decline, Orwell believes this give and take means that the process of decline can be reversed. The intervention can occur at the level of the individual, someone who chooses to abstain from the bad habits found around him and opting for the good instead:

Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

Though his advice was aimed at the written word (this is the essay which produced his famous “6 rules for writing”), practical suggestions like avoiding ugliness, imprecision, and vague words are still applicable. But Orwell’s arguments here remain firmly in the practical and political, and there are in fact far greater reasons to pursue a pure tongue.

The Biblical Case for Beautiful Speech

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

–John 1:1

If ever there was a book that elevates the word, it’s the Bible. In Genesis, God creates the world by speaking its elements into being. As Psalm 33 says “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” It’s clear that words and speech are seen as powerful tools of creation.

It makes sense then that the proper use of these tools is regularly discussed in the New Testament. Colossians 3:8 says you should rid yourself of things like slander and filthy language. Likewise, 1 Peter 3:10 cautions that “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech,” and Ephesians 4:29 admonishes you to “not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

As for the sort of words you are encouraged to use, Proverbs alone contains a wealth of advice. It says your speech should be “sweet to the soul and healing to the bones” (Proverbs 16:24). You are told that “The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit” (Proverbs 15:4) and that aptly spoken words are “like apples of gold inlaid with silver.” (Proverbs 25:11)

It’s clear that the content and intent of speech is of great moral concern. It impacts both your character and your community’s character. Just as God spoke the world into being, so too does your speech craft the world around you into a harsher or kinder one.

But while Scripture shows why improving your speech matters, how do you so you practically?

Some Fatherly Advice

Words were given us to communicate our ideas by: and there must be something inconceivably absurd in uttering them in such a manner as that either people cannot understand them, or will not desire to understand them.

–Earl of Chesterfield, Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son

While cleaning up your language is a great first step, as with anything, it is far more powerful to fight in favor of something than against something. So if you’d like to actively beautify the way you speak, a great resource is the edifying letters the Earl of Chesterfield wrote to his son.

In wanting to properly educate the boy into a man, Chesterfield covered nearly every conceivable topic, and proper speech and language came up often. As the Earl wrote:

An agreeable and distinct manner of speaking adds greatly to the matter; and I have known many a very good speech unregarded, upon account of the disagreeable manner in which it has been delivered, and many an indifferent one applauded, from the contrary reason.

For Chesterfield, proper diction – the choice of words and style of delivery – was of the utmost importance. As such, he recommended reading great English authors like Dryden and Swift while paying attention to their language. For your purposes, these particular authors might be outdated, but the principle remains sound. You also have the advantage of being able to hear other’s speak whenever you’d like. So find someone whose manner of speaking draws you in and pay attention to their choice of words, intonations, enunciations and inflections. With enough familiarity and practice, you can start to incorporate more of what makes them great into yourself.

Chesterfield also says to take inspiration from other great orators like Cicero and Demosthenes, the latter of whom famously overcame his stammer by speaking with pebbles in his mouth. Don’t go gobbling river rocks just yet though, as the larger point he’s making is to make a conscious effort to work on a skill which is available to everyone who works for it: “Every man, who can speak at all, can speak elegantly and correctly if he pleases.”

Together, these three sources cover the political, sacred, and social aspects of speech, but they all converge towards a unifying conclusion.

A Final Word on Words

Having gone through the arguments for elevating your language, keep in mind that the standard is not perfection. Even Paul himself couldn’t avoid strong language all the time. In Galatians 5:12, he wished for the Judaizers to castrate themselves, and in Philippians 3:8, he compares his heritage and goodness under the old covenant to “skubalon” – a word which connotes excrement and disgust – next to Christ. But these are the exceptions which prove a rule. For Paul, strong language retained its bite because he used it sparingly.

So while the apologetics for vulgarity have a point, remember that aesthetic judgment carries within it a moral component, something which no scientific study could understand or incorporate into their metrics. As many before you have found, degrading language is not an inevitability. But to avoid it requires effort.

The words you speak and the way you deliver them have the power to shape your small corner of the world. The goal is to practice what was, after all, the very first act of creation, and do so in a way that reflects the power within it.

Style is fundamentally about two things: the big picture, and the small details.

The big picture is composed of things like fit and proportion. You can wear the most expensive suit in the world, but if its cut isn’t flattering, you’ll never look good in it. On the other hand, if you know the fundamentals of proportion, you’ll look good no matter what you wear.

As for the details, these are the things that make your style look authentic and lived in. These include everything from the way your suspenders attach to your trousers to the type of leather your shoes are made of. Once you master the big picture items, the details are what bring your look to life.

Most people go wrong by focusing on everything in the middle. They watch James Bond or Peaky Blinders and think that if they only get the right suit or the right tweed jacket, they’ll look just as cool as the protagonists. But if you’ve been reading our weekly What’s In a Fit articles, you’ll know why this never works.

So far in this series, we’ve covered big picture items such as color, contrast, fit, and how to not look like you’re LARPing. We’ve covered details in articles about pattern mixing and dressing like the landed gentry. Today, however, we tackle what is perhaps the most overlooked, yet most revealing detail in menswear: the pocket square.

The story of the pocket square is a fascinating one. Starting with its humble origins as a literal snot rag, it has since come to be the one item of menswear that reveals more about its wearer than perhaps any other. But how did it come to symbolize so much? How do you wear one, and what does how you wear it reveal about you?

Today, we look at the underestimated power of the pocket square. We’ll discover why it has such a powerful visual effect, share practical examples of how to style one with different colors and fabrics, and explore what it reveals about its wearer’s character and philosophy.

Who knew there was so much to explore in one small piece of fabric? Now, let’s dive in…

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If the body is good, and beauty is good, shouldn’t you want to make your body beautiful?

This seemingly intuitive reasoning is appealing. But if the internet has shown us anything, it’s that we live in a time where every good is taken to excess. It’s unsurprising then that people have morphed proper stewardship of the body and beauty into something grotesque. The looksmaxxer – a man whose goal is maximizing his physical appearance above all else – is the logical result of this cult of beauty.

Though it may seem impossible, there is a rightly ordered way to improve physical beauty, if only you can avoid the many wrong ways encouraged by culture.

Today, we look at the right and wrong way to approach physical beauty, what mice can teach you about how we got here, and how to improve your body without giving in to a culture of narcissism.

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

A Visit to Mouse Utopia

From the 1950s through to the 1970s, researcher John B. Calhoun conducted a series of experiments to determine the effects of population density on behavior. To do this, he created miniature “utopias,” enclosed spaces where either mice or rats were given unlimited food, water, and plenty of space for them to nest and play.

Though his initial trials all ended early, in 1968 his 25^th attempt, “Universe 25,” ran long enough to produce horrifying results. Starting with four male and female mice, by day #560 the population exploded to over 2,200 rodents. The mice were shoulder to shoulder everywhere they went, in constant contact to the point that male mice were unable to defend territory and thus abandoned the idea of doing so. The untenable population density had turned a paradise into a hellish experience.

The subsequent social dissolution created an environment where fighting was common, mice weren’t interested in sex, few females carried pregnancies to term, and parents increasingly neglected the offspring they did have. This in turn led to aberrant behaviours in the mice.

Calhoun took special notice of one group of males he dubbed “the beautiful ones.” These mice avoided socializing, approaching females, or fighting, preferring instead to eat, sleep, and obsessively groom themselves. They were healthy in body but socially useless, incapable of parenting or engaging in normal mouse society. Their beauty was maintained, but it was completely severed from its natural purpose.

Humans aren’t mice, of course. But the parallels between these “beautiful ones” and a new type of man, the looksmaxxer, are uncanny.

Of (Utopian) Mice and (Looksmaxxing) Men

For you fortunate souls who haven’t heard of looksmaxxing, it’s an ideology advocating for the maximization of physical attractiveness, often to the detriment of other considerations. Born on fringe message boards in the 2010s, it entered the broader public discourse in the 2020s thanks to social media influencers. Chief among these is Clavicular, the moniker of a young man notorious for smashing his cheekbones with a hammer to maximize their size, taking meth to stay lean via appetite suppression, and using steroids and testosterone replacement therapy in his early 20s.

In both the mice and men in question, we find untested, unscarred males retreating from normal socialization and responsibility to instead turn inward to focus on grooming themselves beyond all reason. Both are reacting to a world that feels hostile, where the codes of conduct have broken down and social dissolution feels self-evident.

For the looksmaxxer, this absence of transcendent order or purpose leads him to a Darwinian concept of the body: if value is tied to your physical appearance, then maximizing it is only logical.

But strange as it might seem, what they’re doing isn’t entirely wrong.

Disordered Loves

Once modified, often with relentless frenzy, the body becomes a body-object in which the person-subject mirrors themselves, creating a relationship in which the person is no longer his or her body but ‘owns’ a body, from which arises the search for a ‘borrowed’ identity. In this dynamic, it is no longer necessary to accept one’s own body in order to realise one’s identity. It can be transformed according to the tastes of the moment.

A curious situation is created: the ideal body is exalted, sought after and cultivated, while the real body is not truly loved, being a source of limitations, fatigue and aging. One desires a perfect body, while dreaming of escaping from one’s own concrete body and its limitations.

–The International Theological Commission, Quo Vadis, Humanitas?

To give the devil his due – and as we’ve written about before – the human body and its beauty are worthy of recognition and appreciation. Desiring the beautiful is not where looksmaxxing goes wrong. After all, investing time and effort to improve the aesthetics of your life can be a virtuous thing if done with the right intention. So there is some good hidden deep in the hearts of the young men obsessing over appearance.

The real issue is one of order and category. Catholic philosopher Deitrich Von Hildebrand draws a useful distinction between the beauty of the human body and what he calls its “sensual charm”. For him, the true beauty of the human form is present regardless of whether it conforms to current beauty standards.

But for some, Hildebrand writes, this is a difficult dichotomy to apprehend:

For debauched men the beauty of the body is an intensification of sex appeal. But we must affirm very decisively that the beauty which a body can possess is as such completely independent of every kind of sensual charm, and that every attempt to reduce beauty to this charm is utterly absurd. The beauty of the human body is a definite, genuine beauty, a high beauty of eminent aesthetic value.

What Hildebrand is getting at is that the beauty of the human body can be understood and appreciated for its own sake as a Godly creation, rather than as only an object of desire, lust, or envy. To view it only through this lens, and to work on improving the body’s sensual charms in isolation, is therefore to put the cart before the horse.

In this way, Hildebrand recalls Thomas Aquinas’ ideas of rightly ordered love: love of the right things, for the right reasons, and in the right proportion. This concept is one Aquinas’ himself borrowed and refined from St. Augustine, who wrote in the City of God that:

…though [something] is good, it can be loved in the right way or in the wrong way – in the right way, that is, when the proper order is kept, in the wrong way when that order is upset.

Just as pornography displaces the healthy desire to procreate from its natural fulfillment, so too does this “pornography of the self” displace the rightly ordered desire for health, beauty, and fertility from the reality of actually having those qualities. Clavicular is the true embodiment of this, as he has used TRT and medical interventions to optimize for attractiveness and the signifiers of a fertile male, at the cost of actually being fertile. In his excess, Clavicular is living out a bizarre instantiation of C.S. Lewis’ famous admonition that “in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function.”

But thankfully, there is a rightly ordered way to cultivate the body beautifully. And while it has its challenges, it is far less likely to make you sterile.

An Ordered Love of the Body

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

–1 Samuel 16:7

Virtues are the means by which you can seek to achieve sainthood in all facets of your life. It’s no surprise, then, that even with something as basic as the body there are best practices to follow. To start, you must recognize the role for which your body is meant.

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he emphasized that your body is meant for the Lord, and that it is a member of Christ himself: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” The body as imago dei thus demands a certain amount of reverence from you. Since your body is not your own, you must treat it as you would any thing over which you were given stewardship.

Do not hate or love your body’s appearance inordinately, but rather appreciate it for the transcendent beauty it represents. For as Pope Francis wrote in Laudato Si, “learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology.”

Perhaps the most pertinent passage, however, comes from 1 Timothy 4:8, which says “For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” This is an excellent biblical guide on balancing the improvement of the body with your faith. It says that to maintain and care for the body of course yields some beneficial results. It allows you to live longer, in better health and do more. After all, a fit person is more physically capable of lending a helping hand than someone who is not. And yet at the same time, the passage states that these concerns will always be secondary to the first and greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

This commandment is what ties Calhoun’s mice to the looksmaxxers. Lacking a transcendent good for whom they could moderate and pursue their efforts, both mice and men slid down the slope from well-ordered love to excess. Their beauty was without direction, and festered as it was forced to turn inward.

So, if you want to know if your actions are rightly ordered, the ultimate question - whether you’re working out, taking supplements, or considering superficial enhancements - is this:

Who are you doing it for?

A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.

-Gandalf

Think of your favorite characters from literature and film: Aragorn, Don Vito, Indiana Jones, James Bond, etc. Think of the men you admire most, the swaggering heroes and wise leaders who drive the plot and save the day.

Now, ask yourself a simple question: how often do they rush?

I don’t mean “rush” in the sense of rushing into battle or moving swiftly when the occasion calls for it. What I mean is, how often do they rush through their day-to-day lives?

Do you ever see them speeding through traffic because they’re late for a meeting? Replying to work emails at lunch? Hunched over a table with a protein bar in hand, wolfing it down while replying to a flurry of text messages and checking their notifications?

There’s a reason you never see your favorite characters depicted in such a manner. Simply put, heroes don’t rush. They move with intention and purpose, having structured their lives in such a way that renders hurry completely unnecessary. Their lack of rush reflects their discipline and self-mastery, and is an absolute prerequisite for becoming a hero.

I’ve been thinking about the sacred — and I don’t use that word lightly — art of slowing down for quite a while now. Back in July, I wrote that “the best indicator of success in life is how rarely you rush”, and have become increasingly convinced of that in the months since.

Today then, in this first installment of The Elements of Elegance, we look at what rushing does to both your body and soul, why the art of slowing down is indeed sacred, and the best ways for you to start easing off the metaphorical gas.

If you want to live your life as art, or with any degree of elegance, you can’t afford to ignore this…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

The Physiological Stakes

Recently, a video went viral on X depicting a woman doing normal, everyday activities such as washing her hair, putting on makeup, and walking in the park. She began each activity at “normal” speed, before consciously slowing down to a much more human pace.

The video got over 33 million views, and with good reason: the way the woman began each activity is essentially the default setting for all of us these days. The caption, “when you realise that going slow is the secret to a regulated nervous system”, captures a simple truth that far too many people today overlook.

The fact of the matter is, speed is a stress signal that tells your body you’re in danger. This plays out repeatedly in the scientific literature. Take, for example, the fact that you remember more of what you study following aerobic activity. The reason why is that your body assumes that when you run, it’s because you’re in danger. As a result, it sharpens your focus to become more attentive to your surroundings, both for safety in the moment, and to eventually remember your way home.

But while short-term stress is typically healthy for the body, long-term, chronic amounts of stress are not. The speed at which most people are used to operating in the modern world is unhealthy and unsustainable, and as a result many live with their nervous systems paralyzed in a constant state of danger.

But what does any of this have to do with elegance? The answer is surprisingly simple: elegance can not originate from a position of fear. The word elegance itself derives from the latin verb ēligere, meaning “to select with care”. Being able to truly choose — ie., having quality options to choose from — implies that you’re in a relative position of strength. A life lived in fear is incompatible with such a position, and thus incompatible with elegance.

But if this is how rushing impacts your body, how does it impact your soul? And what can you do to start slowing down and living with elegance in your day-to-day?

Fortunately, the answer is surprisingly simple…

Read more

Though fashion and style share many similarities and can refer to the same ideas, to use them interchangeably limits your ability to think properly about personal aesthetics. This is because while most people think they refer to the same concepts, the philosophies that ground fashion versus those that ground style are significantly different.

To say that someone is fashionable is to say that they are up to date with trends; they have an eye on what the world is wearing and dress to fit. It relates to industry rather than to the person. To say that someone is stylish, however, is saying something deeper about their intentions.

While it can mean they are aware of current trends, it is not necessary for the stylish person to wear the bleeding edge couture found in fashion capitals. Rather, the stylish person is someone who crafts their appearance using a combination of aesthetic understanding and deeper values.

Today, we explore the hidden chasm between fashion and style, the values inherent in each of these concepts, and how knowing the difference between them can help you mold a personal aesthetic rooted in something good, true and beautiful…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

An Etymological Starting Point

Knowing where the words “fashion” and “style” come from is helpful in separating them from each other. It also reveals why using them synonymously robs your language of useful nuance.

Fashion finds its origins roughly 800 years ago in Latin words like facere, which means to make. From there, it flows into factionem, which also refers to doing or making, to old French’s façon, which keeps the emphasis on creation while growing to include meanings like the face and appearance of something, and then again to fasoun, describing the form, shape, or appearance of a thing.

You can see that fashion thus has roots in both the making of a thing as well as the appearance of it, dual meanings which find their synthesis in the idea of the fashion industry. Thus fashion, for the purposes of this piece, refers to the industry it has built as well as the downstream effects it engenders, including cycles and trends. Fashion today is about the infrastructure built around the manufacturing, buying and selling of clothing, which necessitates the cycles of churn that mean “fashionable” people must continually purchase new clothing in order to remain fashionable.

As for the word style, its origins are equally salient. Starting with the Latin word stilus, which refers to a writing instrument, manner of writing, or mode of expression, in old French it becomes stile, a fashion or manner. Its use in English also begins with the notion of a writing implement, then turns into a person’s particular mode of expression while writing, and later broadens out to all manner of personal, external presentation.

Even today, we find that style still retains its reference to the modes of expression of an individual. Just as the stylus from which it takes its name allows you to make your signature, so does style allow you to make your mark with your look. You would say someone has a personal style, but you’d be far less likely to say they have a personal fashion for this reason.

Acknowledging once again that the two terms in question are often used interchangeably — “they are fashionable” often means the same as “they are stylish” — the point of sharpening the distinction allows for greater accuracy, and should be encouraged. Thus, “they are fashionable” when used with more precision means the person follows fashion trends or the fashion industry, while “they are stylish” means that the person understands how to dress well, regardless of if their attire is fashionable or not.

While this may seem like splitting hairs, seeing the difference is crucial for how you think about presenting yourself.

Fashion is a Trap

The reason for the constant change of fashions, which has now become seasonal — changes which are slower in basic lines, but extremely rapid in secondary variations — seems to be a desire to surpass the past. It is facilitated by the frantic character of the present era, which has a tremendous capacity for burning up in a short time all that is meant to satisfy the fantasy and the senses.

–Pope Pius XII

The reason to draw out the concepts of fabrication and industry in the idea of fashion is to understand why you should be wary of it. When it comes to figuring out what to wear, fashion should not be your go-to. Fashion is a system that by its nature creates and promotes dissatisfaction with what you have, demanding constant novelty from its creators. It also promotes conspicuous consumption, selling clothing as ephemeral status signifiers which are relevant today and déclassé a year from now.

The drive behind fashion comes from outside yourself, and is dictated by people whose morals and goals are, at best, unknown to you. A great example of this occurred at the tail end of the skinny jean era when designers started filling the catwalks with models in wider-legged jeans. Those whose job it is to predict culture — coolhunters and trend forecasters like WGSN — spotted the new look and alerted their fashion retailer clients to begin conditioning customers to want wider legged pants.

Soon enough, those retailers introduced mom jeans, and when those caught on, wide-legged pants, and now the fashion forward are sporting ultra-wide looks that will eventually go out of style themselves. The channel Maxinomics did a fantastic breakdown of this process here if you’re interested in learning more.

This is fashion. The hunt for cool, for status, for novelty. Its goal is not to keep up with the Joneses, but to be the Joneses you envy. Fashion wants you comfortable in your clothes only as long as they haven’t figured out the next thing they want to sell you.

In short, they want you focused on what others wear and feeling discontent with what you have. The complete opposite of what people like St. Paul say provides real contentment:

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

–Philippians 4:12-13

So, if you’re sufficiently disenchanted by all this and want to escape the hedonic treadmill that is fashion, you need to understand style.

Style is the Solution

By misconstruing fashion and style, we lose the meaning, purpose, and significance of both. […] It is especially important to note the significance of personal style because it is a sign of being made in the image of God.

–Lillian Fallon, The Theology of Style

If fashion is eternally driven and motivated, style is its mirror opposite. Style refers to your signature, a display of your personal “brand.” It is meant to showcase your beliefs, your understanding of aesthetics, and be your contribution to the beauty in the world. When a stylish person is fashionable, it’s likely that the fashion just happened to fit into their style.

Style is a risk. It is the opposite of an insecure conformity. It can single you out as someone who rejects or disregards both the values and consensus of the fashion industry. It is an act of self-confidence to rely on your own understanding of what is true, beautiful, and good. When that understanding is properly formed and based on solid ground, you don’t need to chase after what others are doing or wearing.

In Ralph Waldo Ermerson’s essay Self-Reliance, he suggests that envy of others is a form of ignorance, and that imitation is a suicide, usurping yourself in favour of another’s ideals. For Emerson, to do as others do when it entails acting against your instinct is to betray your nature and bury the talents that God had bestowed on you. In doing so, he says, you refuse the part God intends you to play and sow discord in your heart:

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.

When it comes to style, then, expressing your own, not that of trend hunters or industry insiders, is a far better approach to living with integrity and the dignity that comes from being made in God’s image.

The Final Step to Style

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

–Hamlet, Act I, Scene III

If there is one takeaway from all this, it’s that you shouldn’t let external pressures influence what should be a deeply personal process. If you don’t know where to start, just avoid taking cues from those who want you in an endless cycle of clothing consumption. Instead, do some research not on what’s trending, but on what has stood the test of time.

Once you’ve learned to separate solid style advice from fashion’s fickle influence, you’ll be able to dress in a way that both shows who you are and what values you live by. Where others enviously pursue the latest fad and cast their attention outwards, you can forge your own path, one guided by something greater than trend forecasts.

Fashions come and go like the tide, but if your understanding of appearance is rooted in the eternal, then your style’s foundation will be as solid as they come.

It’s officially been 3 months since the launch of Letters from the Old World, and wow, what a ride it’s been!

PJ and I started this publication with the desire to ground discussions about aesthetics, style, and elegance in something deeper than surface level. We wanted to make the case for dressing well — and indeed, for cultivating beauty in all aspects of your life — from both a philosophical and theological perspective, blending practical advice with the forgotten wisdom of centuries of Christian tradition.

While we expected some interest in these topics, we were totally unprepared for the overwhelming response. Each week, we reads dozens of thoughtful comments, restacks, and DMs from our incredible readers. People have expressed gratitude for helping them articulate something they’ve long felt, or for encouraging them to see these topics from a fresh perspective.

Our paid readers have been especially supportive. Here are some of their comments, shared with permission:

Because of the support of our paid readers, we’re now able to expand Letters from the Old World to cover even more topics. Beyond just style and dress, we want to make the argument for cultivating beauty and elegance in all domains of your life.

In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be sharing more content to help you do just that. In the immediate future, we have two new article series that will occasionally supplement our Weekly Essays and What’s In a Fit series. They are as follows:

Old World Reads

This is a series we’ve had in mind since the start of this publication, and the first edition will arrive in the coming weeks. In these articles, we’ll look at the hidden gems of European literature: from Italian epic poems to forgotten works by authors like Charles Dickens.

Our idea is that by stepping into the world of these books, you’ll be able to immerse yourself in the artistic currents that shaped Europe’s great cultural tradition, and draw on that inspiration in your own life. These articles will be exclusively for paid subscribers.

The Elements of Elegance

Following up on the success of What’s In a Fit, we’ll begin looking at the building blocks of elegance itself, and what it means to carry yourself in the world with dignity. We’ll look not only at why elegance matters, but also how you can cultivate it no matter your stage in life: including the ones with toddlers and tantrums!

One of our main aims with Letters from the Old World is to strike a fine balance between philosophy and practicality. The articles in this new series will be no different, as we’ll share practical tips on how to live your life as a work of art. For, in the words of Pope John Paul II:

…all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.

A portion of these articles will be made available for all readers, while others will be exclusively for paid subscribers.

Moving Forward

If you would like to support our mission and help us share our message with even more readers, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. If you do so today, you can lock in at our annual rate (40% discounted) while it sill lasts:

Subscribe now

We’ll be taking this week off to prepare for all that’s to come as we head into spring. In addition to the two new series outlined above, you can expect more surprises and features as the year progresses.

Our publication is 100% reader supported, and we truly couldn’t do this without you. Thank you for making the first three months of Letters from the Old World better than we could have imagined, and we look forward to continuing this journey with you.

Pax et bonum,

-Evan & PJ

One last thing!

Raphael Barberi, the brilliant photographer behind all our publication’s original photos, has just launched a fundraiser to help him add a new lens to his arsenal.

As part of his fundraising efforts, he’s releasing several of his most popular shots (such as the one above) as prints, phone backgrounds, or framed photos for those who contribute.

If you’d like to support his phenomenal work, check out his full catalog on X or Instagram, and consider backing him at the link below (the Founder’s Package is a great deal for photography lovers). Letters from the Old World truly wouldn’t be the same without him.

Link to Fundraiser

I’ll be honest with you: I’m not a country boy.

That said, I do love the outdoors. As an Eagle Scout, I spent many a weekend camping in the Appalachian mountains, and, on one particularly memorable occasion, sailing up and down the Atlantic coast while spending the nights on the beaches of North Carolina’s outer banks.

But now I live in Italy, a place where nature is far more bucolic than it is wild. Thousands of years of continued inhabitance have made it so that most places, even the most “remote” ones, are never that far from civilization. Even in the mountain valleys leading up through the Alps or the Dolomites, it can be near impossible to find a plot of land that is so remote you can’t see any other houses from it.

Your environment, of course, can’t help but influence you, which is the reason for this intro and disclaimer. I’d be lying to you if I told you I knew how to dress like a farmer or a cattle rancher, as that is simply not the case.

In today’s email, then, I’ll talk to what I do know: how someone who lives in a relatively urban environment can dress for incursions into the outdoors, whether that be for a stroll in the countryside, a rustic weekend retreat, or day’s shooting.

Fortunately, our culture has a rich tradition of this back-and-forth between city life and the countryside. This is no more evident, of course, than in the lives and lifestyle of the English aristocracy. In today’s article, I’ll pull from their example to show how to balance practicality with elegance in rural environments, as well as share the history of why certain patterns and fabrics read as more “outdoorsy” than others.

We’ll look at the three main categories that define the nature of dressing for the outdoors, and how you can master each one. Once you learn these secrets, there will be nothing stopping you from stepping out into the countryside with the rustic grace of the landed gentry…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

1) Fit & Function

When it comes to dressing for the outdoors, nothing is more important than fit and function. Everything in the countryside originates with doing: from chopping wood to walking through a muddied hollow. As such, the mobility and functionality of what you wear should be prized above all else.

This does not, however, mean that elegance gets thrown out the door in favor of baggy jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers. As we’ll see in the next sections, the five steps to dressing well still apply to outdoor wear, as do the rules of visual proportion. There are some caveats to these though, which we’ll cover in the final section of this article.

In the meantime, one of the best places to start is with your trousers. They should be cut wide through the leg for maximum mobility, allowing you to bend, kneel, and sit with ease. Ideally, all your trousers should afford you this degree of mobility. My corduroys, for example, are cut with the same width through the legs as my suit trousers, and both pairs allow me to crouch down like this with ease:

If you’re investing in made-to-measure (MTM) trousers, this is easy to accomplish. But if you’re buying a pair off the rack, try getting a size or two up: since most trousers run pretty slim through the leg these days, the trade off of getting more leg room and deeper pockets is well worth the small hassle of wearing a belt or going to a tailor to get the waist taken in.

Fit and function inform all aspects of outdoor wear, especially your shoes and jacket (more on these later). But crucially, they also distinguish the authentic from the fake.

To show one such example of this, take the interview that Letters from the Old World reader shared in our subscriber chat this week. In it, the Financial Times interviews a costume designer for the television industry, who (as should be expected), correctly interprets the hidden meaning that authentic outdoor-wear communicates:

Financial Times: How did you research the costumes?

Laura: I visited the areas of London with a high concentration of financial institutions going from Bishopsgate, Spitalfields Market, Leadenhall, Poultry, Bank, the Gherkin to Canary Wharf and Mayfair, and looked at how people dressed.

I looked at where people might shop on their lunch breaks or what they might see and want. Clothes and accessories are subtle passports into places and acceptance. They are about showing that you have taste, certainty and confidence.

Financial Times: What are some of those taste and class markers?

Laura: Take waxed jackets as an example of clothing. In Canary Wharf the waxed jacket is more likely to be navy blue and box fresh, they might be a shorter Ashby style by Barbour. In Mayfair, they will tend to be more broken down and olive green in tone, because they are emblems of a different wealth and have a different type of use. A waxed jacket was designed for field pursuits but is worn on the commute from Shenfield to the city, it is not the same thing as going from the Cotswolds to the city. It’s a world of class coding.

For our non-British readers, the important context here is that Canary Warf is where successful professionals (often of first-generation wealth, such as traders or investment bankers) work. Mayfair, on the other hand, is where many people from landed backgrounds live, and where you’ll find private wealth managers and family offices. Shenfield is an affluent commuter suburb 20 minutes outside of London.

All this to say: when a article of clothing like a waxed jacket is worn for its status rather than its function, it shows. The people who actually spend time in the countryside bear marks of that in the color, texture, and feel of their clothing.

But crucially, the opposite is also true: clothes that don’t have their roots in the organic development of countryside living betray themselves at fake and look out of place in the outdoors. This, perhaps more than anything else, is the key to looking natural in what you wear in more rustic environments.

So how do you tell the difference between the authentic and the fake? That’s exactly what we look at next, by covering everything from fabric to footwear, patterns, jackets, and more. We’ll outline the seven staples in an Englishman’s country wardrobe, break down some of the best examples of aristocrats dressing for the outdoors, and suggest a practical packing list for your next rustic weekend outing.

It’s everything you need to know to look and feel your best next time you take a trip to the country estate…

Read more

The line between youth and adulthood is blurring. Though puberty and cognitive maturation are happening earlier and earlier, the few markers of adulthood left, like marriage, starting a family or buying a home, occur much later (if at all). Adolescence now extends well into what was formerly considered adulthood.

This dissolution of milestones has unfortunately extended to manners of dress. It is not uncommon today to see some older men wearing the unkempt styles or trendy fashions of youth culture. Though some might shrug this off as personal choice or a lack of maturity, the symbolism behind this rejection is much darker. The adult who refuses to dress like one is caught in an unholy mix of propaganda, the worship of youth, and the existential terror of death.

Today, we look at the origins of the cult of youth, what it reveals about modern society, and what you can do to resist it. The phenomenon of men dressing like boys is indeed a dire one — but luckily, thinkers like Cicero and St. Paul can help you navigate the chaos and live in light of reality…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

The Obsession with Youth

The advertising industry…flatters and glorifies youth in the hope of elevating young people to the status of full-fledged consumers in their own right.

–Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism

Humans have always valued youth to a certain extent. Youth is energy, vitality, physical beauty, legacy, all things society needs to sustain itself. But the superficial obsession with youth and beauty has grown exponentially since the late 19^th century, when marketers sold all manner of beauty potions, creams and tonics to distinguished readers looking to maintain a youthful glow. Even in the 1940s, George Orwell wrote of this obsession as a nascent phenomenon in Britain:

The impulse to cling to youth at all costs, to attempt to preserve your sexual attraction, to see even in middle age a future for yourself and not merely for your children, is a thing of recent growth and has only precariously established itself.

By the 60s, youth culture was a veritable phenomenon. Following the baby boom, advertisers saw young people as an increasingly large demographic with disposable income to whom they could sell the world. As the young people became increasingly prominent and ads became more youth-centric, the locus of culture followed. A famous slogan of the time was “Don’t trust anyone over 30”. Rather than assume the mantle of adulthood with all its concomitant duties, people turned on, tuned in and dropped out.

But as time marched on and the hippies grew up and got jobs, the cultural focus on youth remained, which did not bode well for society. By the early 2000s, Roger Scruton observed, youth culture was increasingly promulgating beliefs that were, ironically, damaging to both youth and to culture:

Youth culture is an attempt to make the best of it - to make oneself at home in a world that is not, in any real sense, a home, since it has ceased to dedicate itself, as a home must dedicate itself, to the task of reproduction. Home, after all, is the place where parents are. The world displayed in the “culture of youth” is a world from which the parents have absconded - as these days they generally do. This culture aims to present youth as the goal and fulfilment of human life, rather than a transitional phase which must be cast off as an impediment once mature commitment calls.

–Roger Scruton, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture [Emphasis added]

Is it any wonder that people would simulate youth’s style and appearance as much as possible when culture implies that old age cannot be fulfilling? The logic underlying this is that maturity means your best years are behind you. You overshot the goal and are no longer relevant, desired, or considered.

When culture equates youth with value, aging can only be a slow transition to death.

All that’s left for you then is…

The Denial of Death

The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.

–Ernst Becker, The Denial of Death

Ernst Becker in his book The Denial of Death posits that much of human activity is designed around avoiding the reality that you will one day die. For Becker, humans avoid reckoning with death by pursuing something heroic, which he calls an “immortality project.”

These projects reconcile humans with their mortality by creating meaning via things which will outlast them, like having children, writing a novel or following a religion. But in a culture that rejects children, doesn’t read and isn’t religious, there are fewer viable strategies for coping with mortality.

Becker writes that, in the absence of meaning:

Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. As awareness calls for types of heroic dedication that his culture no longer provides for him, society contrives to help him forget.

Similarly, Christopher Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism writes that, though the fear of death is not new, it has taken on a new dimension since society is increasingly incapable of providing meaningful escape:

Obviously men have always feared death and longed to live forever. Yet the fear of death takes on new intensity in a society that has deprived itself of religion and shows little interest in posterity.

In the breakdown of sources of meaning, all that is left to overcome the terror of death is superficial hedonism. It is no coincidence that this maps onto youth culture, with its sense of immediacy and ignorance of death. Faced with the prospect of a death without meaning, to pretend to youth by borrowing its customs and appearance is an understandable reaction, especially when the alternative is staring into the abyss.

Unfortunately, even if you wanted to keep pretending, it still won’t do you any good, because…

Dressing “Young” Doesn’t Work

One fellow, in a bright yellow summer suit of ultra-fashionable cut, with a red necktie, and a rakishly tilted panama, surpassed all the others in his crowing good humour. But as soon as Aschenbach looked at him a bit more carefully, he discovered with a kind of horror that the youth was a cheat.

He was old, that was unquestionable. There were wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. The faint crimson of the cheeks was paint, the hair under his brilliantly decorated straw hat was a wig; his neck was hollow and stringy, his turned-up moustache and the imperial on his chin were dyed; the full set of yellow teeth which he displayed when he laughed, a cheap artificial plate; and his hands, with signet rings on both index fingers, were those of an old man.

–Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

What is unsettling about the old dressing as the young is the contradiction in which the body asserts one thing that the costume tries to contradict. Such mixed messages are difficult to parse, and thus unpleasant on both symbolic and aesthetic levels.

Fashion, after all, is a language. And like a language, different strata of society have different vernacular. When someone from one strata attempts to co-opt the style of speech of another, it rarely goes well. Younger generations ridicule older ones for attempting to use and understand their slang and be cool, just as mature people can tell when younger people use big words to seem smart.

In short, people can spot a fake from a mile away. Dressing like the youth doesn’t make you look young. Instead, it creates dissonance for those around you. When they see your neon colored sweatshirt or hoodie paired with a face that clearly aged out of high school, it feels uncanny. As the Thomas Mann quote at the beginning of this section shows, wearing the ultra-trendy cuts of the day may mask your age momentarily, but the contradiction comes through eventually.

If you’re an adult, dressing like a teen will not de-age you in the way you’d hope. If anything, it draws attention to your age, because all the other fresh faces wearing the latest trends will stand in sharp contrast with your more distinguished mien.

If you really want to look good, there are more fitting ways to do so.

What to Do Instead

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.

–Ecclesiastes 3:1

The co-opting of youth customs and dress by adults offers two insufficient methods of escapism. The first is a way to ignore your fading social relevancy in a culture obsessed with youth. The second allows you to engage in a type of Peter Pan syndrome, where you can pretend you will not grow old and die. The fetishization of youth culture by adults, at its heart, is a rejection of truth and reality.

The problem goes beyond just aesthetics, then, as the desire to escape reality is ultimately a product of the crisis of meaning. The solution to it must therefore be grounded in a morality that addresses that crisis.

The most productive counter is to embrace the reality of hierarchy, duty, and mortality that escapism eschews. By doing so, you reassert truth in a childish culture. When you reject the trendy clothes of youth in favor of the dignified dress befitting an adult, you not only respect your own worth, but you also act as a guide for those coming of age.

As Cicero wrote in De Officiis: “the inexperience of youth requires the practical wisdom of age to strengthen and direct it.” In a time where the adults in the room certainly aren’t acting like it, do not contribute to the blurring of social roles. Let the young people find their way through the mire of youth trends if they want, but do not participate yourself once you have grown past them. Do not take part in an increasingly absurd marketing experiment where the semblance of youth is sought to the detriment of dignity.

Instead, dress to fit the role appropriate to your age, and do it well. If you don’t know how, invest the time to learn. You don’t have to master everything all at once, but even a small step away from fashion and towards fittingness is a step in the right direction.

Most of all, accept that there is no going back, no matter how badly the world wants to tell you there is. To everything there is a season. To pretend otherwise is to refuse what you are called to do. As St. Paul wrote:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

–1 Corinthians 13:11

But in all this discussion of the right and wrong way to do things, a crucial distinction can be easily lost: namely, that dressing well is an art, not a science. You must know the rules, but you must also know when to break them. To follow them too rigidly is to kill what you want to bring to life by dissecting it on the operating table.

Many people, especially conservatives, are reluctant to break the rules. Rules provide comfort by giving you a framework to work within. You know what’s right, you know what’s wrong. And, to be fair, society errs far too much on the side of complete lawlessness in matters of dress. Being a stickler for the rules is far from the worst crime you can commit.

But I assume that if you’re reading this, you’re probably a bit like me: you’re far from a relativist in matters of dress, and believe that there are indeed standards to be upheld. You want to learn the rules of style that are rooted not in arbitrary matters of fashion, but in eternal and even biological realities that shape what we deem to be beautiful.

That’s why today, as we dive into our third and final installment in our series on pattern mixing, I want to share one of the rules that was hardest for me (and likely for others of my disposition) to come to terms with: that true style is a “vibe”, not a science. It is based on rules but not bound by them, and transcends technicalities to create a work of art.

To illustrate this, I’ll be showing pictures of men who break the “rules” of pattern mixing that we laid out in the past two articles. We’ll see where it works, where it doesn’t, and what these examples can teach you about how to break the rules with style…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

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Patterned Perspicacity: Instinct Above All

When it comes to mixing four patterns together, instinct trumps rules of the game. By this point, having spent time pairing two and three patterns together, your instinct should be sufficiently honed to master adding in a fourth.

That said, there still are general rules of thumb you can follow when it comes to execution. For inspiration in these guidelines, we can look to Luciano Barbera, owner of the Italian clothing company of the same name:

Here, Signore Barbera follows much of the guidelines we laid out in last week’s article. He varies the stripes by scale, anchors the look with a tie that breathes, and employs a pocket square that harmonizes with each element in the ensemble individually. So far, everything is by the book.

These same guidelines are at play again in the following shot, where Barbera varies his two main check patterns (shirt and jacket, respectively) by scale and then chooses a tie that could go with either. The pocket square then harmonizes with the tie while also providing another point of visual contrast against the muted jacket and shirt combination:

But before you accuse Barbera of simply being a stickler for the rules, we need to look at other examples of people following the “guidelines” and getting it wrong. Because in doing so, you’ll realize that Barbera’s instinct for style is something that transcends the playbook’s technicalities.

So what does it look like to fail by following the rules, and to succeed by breaking them? To find out, let’s turn to a man you’ve almost certainly seen before…

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In photos of societies from the early 20^th century, you’ll notice that people often wore the same things as each other. The norms were fairly set. Part of this was lack of access to inexpensive mass-produced clothing, sure, but part of it was also a cultural consensus. You knew what to wear to work, to church, at home, etc., because everyone did.

Nowadays, the very idea of norms is seen as oppressive by some. That breakdown is evident in the vanishing standards for public dress. You know that dressing well is a matter of norms, but how can you dress well in a place that refuses the imposition of standards? And would it be humble or lazy to “conform” to this lack of expectations?

Today, we look at why standards of dress have declined, what responsibilities you have in a world that rejects norms, and why the duty to dress well doesn’t disappear when cultural standards do.

Let’s begin…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

The Collapse of Cultural Norms

We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of decline; that the standards of culture are lower than they were fifty years ago; and that the evidences of this decline are visible in every department of human activity.

–T.S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture

In 1897, C.E. Humphry dedicated a whole chapter in Manners for Men on the importance of dress to man’s social life. “If a man does not dress well in society he cannot be a success,” wrote Humphry. “If he commits flagrant errors in costume he will not be invited out very much, of that he may be certain.”

Just over a century later, even the most successful among us don’t hold to this rule. This is particularly jarring because of the social responsibility elites were once expected to hold. As T.S. Eliot writes in Notes Towards the Definition of Culture:

It is the function of the [elite] class as a whole to preserve and communicate standards of manners – which are a vital element in group culture.

While some excuse the abandonment of standards as a mere relaxation or allowing for more comfort, the danger is this attitude seeps into every area of life. As an example, in an earlier piece, we quoted fashion consultant Tim Gunn, who relates just how “relaxed” these norms have become for some:

I have heard from brides that they feel disrespected by guests who show up in tracksuits, or by the bereaved when their friends show up tieless and jacketless at the funeral home.

The problem isn’t just aesthetics but philosophy. Tracksuits at a wedding are what happens when we can’t agree that there are objective values and real standards that we should all insist upon. It is representative of the increasing subjectivity of meaning, a rejection of symbolic distinctions between things. You can’t know whether something is fitting to wear if there is no shared objective standard for making that determination.

It’s a culture that rejects the idea of the intrinsic fittingness of things, and it’s the exact thing C.S. Lewis tried to warn you about.

The Loss of Natural Law

In C.S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man, he uses the term Tao to refer to the doctrine of objective value: what others would call natural law, God’s law, or traditional values. For Lewis, the Tao provides a common human law, inherent and self-evident, which applies to all: “the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false.”

The loss of Tao is what makes navigating the modern (lack of) expectations for dress so disorienting, because within a subjective system one point of reference is as valid as the next. So where your ancestors would have relied on their peers, you now get to look at a cacophony of clashing styles. Where once the Tao informed the world in the language of the true and false, real or unreal, beauty or ugliness, society now questions the very concepts themselves.

This is why Lewis believed that a “dogmatic belief in objective value” was necessary. Without it, culture is unable to set high standards and you have no way to orient yourself.

But just because society won’t do what’s necessary doesn’t mean that you can’t.

Virtue to the Rescue

While the world slides into confusion by debating the existence of objective value, Christians know it exists. As such, there is a good argument that, to borrow from Eliot, you belong to the class of people who must maintain the manners of society.

But doing so in the current climate is challenging. We are told by the likes of St. Augustine and St. Francis de Sales that in matters of clothing, Christians should consider their environment and their place within it when deciding what to wear. This presupposes that the environment — meaning the place, time, people, or some combination of the three — would make demands of you. But as such demands become rarer, what was once seen as normal can come to be seen as outlandish or performative. Isn’t the humble thing to do to not rock the boat?

Aquinas would disagree. In the Summa Theologiae, he offers of the virtue of magnanimity as the better response. If you are not familiar, magnanimity is the characteristic of someone who rightly esteems themselves as capable of, and striving toward, great and worthy things.

The magnanimous person, Aquinas writes, “strives to do what is deserving of honor, yet not so as to think much of the honor accorded by man.”

When you derive your value from God and not the world, you can dress to reflect this truth. This is because custom is secondary to natural law. Where custom is evident, it can help inform our choices, like not wearing a three-piece suit to a waterpark. However, in situations where custom is unclear and there is room for dignified dress, natural law, because of its transcendent origin, is the final arbiter.

A Practical Ethic

To dress with care when those around you don’t isn’t necessarily vanity. Vanity comes from the desire to aggrandize yourself, especially in relation to your peers. Likewise, if you dress down for fear of standing out, it is not humility. When you recognize where your real worth comes from, you refuse to diminish it for the sake of conformity. In those instances, in the words of Aquinas, you become magnanimous, someone who “deems himself worthy in accordance with his worth.”

Thus, grounding yourself in God and tracing your intentions back to him are key. To forego presenting yourself with care because your environment doesn’t care is no solution.

Instead, dress honestly in proportion to your worth. What is truly fitting remains so, even if the whole world forgets it.

Because after all, the ultimate standard is a transcendent one.

Consonsantia is the second of St. Thomas Aquinas’s requirements for beauty, and it means “proportion” or “harmony”. When applied to dress, consonsantia is primarily reflected in two main fields: in the rule of 2/3rds, and in the wearing of patterns.

Learning how to mix patterns together tastefully, then, isn’t just a question of expanding the possibilities available to you in your wardrobe. It’s about something deeper, about reflecting the order and harmony of the cosmos out into the world. This is perhaps why we find it so elegant when done well, and so egregious when done poorly.

Last week, we looked at how to pair two patterns together. Today, we build on those foundations by moving on to the next part in our series on pattern mixing: pairing three patterns.

At this stage, risk and reward go hand-in-hand, and a fine line separates the summit of style from the apogee of arrogance. How do you mix three different patterns? Three similar patterns? Three patterns when two are the same?

No doubt, these are treacherous waters.

Fortunately, however, there are some helpful rules of thumb you can follow to navigate the shoals, and I outline all of them in today’s article. If you want to learn how to pair three patterns together tastefully — so they reflect harmony rather than chaos — then read on…

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