A common fallacy in dressing is the belief that to dress well, one must dress up. That to dress well involves donning an uncomfortable suit at every opportunity. Of course, smart clothes being uncomfortable is another common misconception, but that’s an entirely different kettle of fish, and we’re not yet done poaching our original batch of salmon. The fact is that dressing well has nothing to do with the formality of your outfit. If you’ve ever seen anyone in an ill-fitting grey suit, complete with off-colour shirt, and shiny polyester tie, you’ll begin to understand what I mean.

The illustrated example above almost wraps around to catwalk territory in its subversion of good dressing. Surely a catwalk-worthy outfit must be the goal for anyone wishing to join the decently dressed? Thankfully, this is not the case. High fashion has entirely different (and often contradictatory) motiviations and principles to dressing well on an every day basis, and any notion that consciously seeking style means dressing like an art installation can also be discarded.

Formal wear isn’t dressing well. High fashion isn’t dressing well. So what is? The principles that make an outfit good are completely orthogonal to the genre of the ensemble. In my most humble opinion, dressing well can be broken down into just three fundamental foundations: Fit, Colour, and Texture. And that’s a FCT. Terrible acronym puns aside, that’s not to say that a more formal outfit can’t look good; it most definitely can! The point is that any style choice can be made to look great, and it’s far more important to know how than to own a wardrobe full of non-iron shirts. Take a plain white t-shirt, some slim fitting jeans, and a decent pair of boots, and I hope you’ll agree that the outcome is much more pleasing to the eye than the unfortunate suit above!

If, like me, you work in the tech industry, this probably comes as good news. A lot of us are lucky enough to work in environments where suits or even “business casual” wear is not required, but may still wish to dress well. Armed with this knowledge, you can keep your look at a similar formality to your friends and colleagues, yet still feel well put together. Once you grow more confident, you might want to branch out into other styles that might stand out a bit more, but the same basic foundations will always apply.