Building a Professional Wardrobe: Designer Ties and Suits
My husband isn’t a fashionista by any means, but he does take pride in the way he looks. Even now while he’s in grad school, he understand that looking good will be important for his job every day. The business world is especially concerned with employees looking sleek and professional, so my husband has been building up his wardrobe for the past few years, slowly adding more refined and classic elements that will make him look good for his first days on the job after graduation next year.
His favorite place to shop are usually online, where he can get discount designer ties and suits that make him feel fantastic without breaking our still-slim budget. He wasn’t always so concerned with how he looked, though. It took my husband a few years to decide to go to college in the first place. He worked a fairly good job in sales, and at first he thought he might stay there forever. The job quickly became unsatisfying, however, and after about four years he decided to go to college. Now he is almost done with his MBA, and I am very excited for him to be done. One of his professors a few years ago emphasized the importance of appearance in the business world, since people really do judge books by their covers. He taught about how to bring out the best aspects of a company and emphasize those with marketing and attitude, and he also talked about how important it is that the managers of that company emphasize their own good points in their appearance.
A while back I read on a blog that the fashion equation for business attire is 2 + 2 + 2 + 5, or two pairs of trousers, two ties, two jackets, and five shirts. We
decided to incorporate this formula into our search for items to add to my husband’s professional wardrobe. He has latched onto the classic 1960s style recently. He loves the way those suits in the old spy movies have been reinterpreted and are worn by stars like David Boreanaz in Bones, with the slim-fitting but not skin-tight trousers and skinny jacket lapels. He says this kind of suit just makes him feel classy and on top of things. He won’t deny that the sexy spy vibe is a bonus, but looking sexy isn’t as necessary in a business meeting as looking put-together is, and fortunately the suits my husband has bought are as polished-looking as they come. Also essential for him is the skinny tie.
We have gone beyond the equation for ties, but we figure that makes up for having a limited number of suits. But finding the skinny ties that my husband loves, despite their slight grown in popularity, is still difficult, so we usually end up looking for discount designer ties online. It seems that only the most fashion-forward men are wearing skinny ties, so only the top-of-the-line designers are producing them. We don’t have a huge budget for ties yet, so we go for the discount designer ties instead. Same quality, but a huge difference in price. We have tried looking at thrift stores for these elusive skinny ties, but it is only about one in ten visits to the store that we find a skinny tie at all, much less an attractive and clean one.
Websites that offer discount designer ties are some of my husband’s most visited websites of late. He has quite a collection now of ties from Dolce and Gabbana, Luigi Borrelli, and Gucci. He even as a very trendsetting knitted square-end tie from Valentino, which he likes to wear when he is feeling particularly suave. Those discount tie sales have really saved us, and I am extremely pleased that we have found such a great way to get the quality products we want without spending a whole month’s salary on one piece of clothing.