Outfit Of The Week / July 11, 2024

Outfit Of The Week 7/7/24 – 7/13/24

For this week’s edition of “OOTW”, I have chosen an outfit I wore on a date with my wife.

My wife and I don’t get to go out to dinner very much, so we always jump at the chance when the opportunity presents itself. Happily, my in-laws agreed to look after the kids for a few hours.

This week has been a particularly long one. My wife and I were debating whether or not we should still go out since getting the boys fed and in bed took a little longer than expected. Ultimately, we decided that we shouldn’t waste the chance.

We were only gone for about two-and-a-half hours, but we still got dressed up. We sat in the restaurant’s bar area and had enjoyed some well-made cocktails and grub.

Before we dive into what I wore, please let me address my crazy hair in these pictures! It was windy that day and I haven’t had a haircut in a while. I look like Rod Stewart!

Anyway…

Since it’s summer and fairly hot, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to wear a tie. Honestly, I don’t get to wear a tie all that much, so I went with this textured, red-with-blue-stripe silk tie from Charles Tyrwhitt. This is one of my favorite ties. The colors go with everything, the stripes are arranged in such a way that they can be paired with pretty much any patterned shirt or jacket, and the texture looks equally at home in winter as in summer (or with a smooth poplin as with a heavy oxford shirt).

My jacket was my summer workhorse: a navy, unstructured blazer from SuitSupply. This blazer is fantastic in hot weather. If you hold it up to the light you can see through it, since it has no lining. It’s very “Italian tailoring”, meaning that it’s very soft and kind of slouchy and fits a bit like a cardigan. I bought this jacket probably ten years ago and it’s one of my favorite pieces of clothing for the summer. It makes it so I can still “dress up” even when it’s hot out. I also like the patch pockets (none of my other jackets have patch pockets).

My shirt was a simple, light-blue, poplin shirt from Charles Tyrwhitt. I don’t usually like mixing too many patterns so I wanted to keep the shirt solid, since I was wearing a patterned tie and pocket square.

The pocket square was a brown-and-blue patterned square I picked up when my wife and I visited Paris many years ago before the kids were born. It was the only souvenir I bought on that trip and it carries a lot of warm memories. It’s also surprisingly versatile. The blue in the square coordinated nicely with the blue in my tie (and brown and blue go with pretty much everything anyway). I also discovered that this is a great square to wear when you’re wearing a pink shirt (because the brown goes so nicely with pink).

My pants were a pair of tan, wool trousers from Men’s Wearhouse. These pants are cut to be worn with suspenders, but I decided on a belt. Unfortunately, I have lost a bit of belly circumference since the last time I wore these pants (thanks, wood-chopping!) so the waistband was a little rumpled under my belt. No worries, though. I just arranged the waistline so the wrinkles were in the back, under my jacket. After all, I was going out to sit in a bar and drink gin, not walk a red carpet, so I wasn’t too broken up about the less-than-ideal fit. Moving forward, I’ll make sure I wear suspenders with these pants.