Why You Look Bad In a Suit
Wesley Huff, let me help you...
One of the biggest mistakes guys make when they get into menswear is thinking that a nice suit will solve all their problems.
Now, don’t get me wrong: a well-fitting suit with classic proportions can be extremely elegant. Worn properly, it surpasses practically every other type of men’s garment. However, these are not usually the suits you buy off the rack in the department store.
Recently, I came across a video of the Christian apologist Wesley Huff presenting a lecture series for Peterson Academy. Unfortunately, his outfit was a textbook example of how not to wear a suit. It made him look unserious, and many viewers even joked about his appearance in the comments.
Here’s a still from the video:
The fact Wesley’s attire garnered so much negative attention is unfortunate, because it distracts from his message about the historical reliability of the Bible. But it also proves a point we’ve harped on much here at Letters from the Old World, namely that your appearance plays a role in how your ideas are received.
As we wrote in our article God Wants You to Dress Well:
If you hold to a conception of Christian faith, then you are called to evangelize to the world. The best tool of evangelization you have is how you lead your life. You can talk about how you’ve given your life to something greater and how it has transformed you, but if your appearance is immature or unkempt, then your clothes work against what you’re trying to convey.
The point of this article is not, however, to simply critique Wesley and leave it at that. It’s to show what you can do to avoid these same mistakes, and specifically what you can look for in a suit to make sure it enhances your authority, instead of undermining it.
To see what I’m talking about, check out the image below. I sat down with ChatGPT and requested it make 5 simple changes to Wesley’s attire. The result? He looks like a totally different man:
Now before we proceed, I must first apologize to Wesley for not taking the time to snag a more flattering screenshot/facial expression. Objectively speaking, Wesley is a good looking guy and (for all I know) a man of character, so I don’t want anyone to think this email is about tearing him down. For that reason, I’m including the photo below, which is a much better representation of what Wesley actually looks like:
With that preface out of the way, let’s now dive into the five things I changed in Wesley’s attire so you can see exactly how, and how not, to wear a suit…
1) Color
In my first edition of What’s In a Fit, I wrote about why clothes should be an extension of your facial features:
Contrary to popular belief, dressing well isn’t just about learning which colors and fabrics go well together. It’s about learning what actually looks good on you: it’s intensely human and personal, because no two people are alike. “Just buy a suit” is awful advice. Instead, you ought to focus on things like picking colors based on your skin tone, and mirroring the degree of contrast in your face with the degree of contrast in your clothing. In short, your dress should be an extension of your natural features.
The colors of Wesley’s shirt, suit jacket, and tie aren’t working out for him because they drain the color (and life) from his face. If he didn’t change literally anything else about his outfit except for the color, he would still look 10x better. Either of the two options below beat the original washed-out gray:
But you don’t even have to go so far as to change the color of your suit and shirt. Simply by wearing a tie that mirrors the natural color in your face (instead of draining it) you can make a world of difference. Check out what happens when you replace Wesley’s gray tie with a warm red one:
If you want to learn more about how to dress for your body type, check out my intro to classic style article, as well as my menswear's guide to color. In the meantime, we’ll proceed to outline the other four things I changed in Wesley’s outfit.
Because once you’ve masted color, you need to look to the details. These are the things that you might never consider, but which once you see, you’ll never overlook. Of these, nothing makes more of a difference than the next item on our list.
For most guys it’s afterthought, but it has a disproportionate impact on how you appear to others…
