When Men Are In Doubt, They Can Lose the Tie and Button Up

Button Down: Three to five years ago, a man could do one simple thing to a dressy shirt that would turn him from looking nice to looking hip: button up. Legend has it that the look came when some bon vivant stripped off his tie during a raucous cocktail party and left the top button secured.

Today, buttoning a dressy shirt to the top and wearing a jacket still has a hint of artsy-ness, although now that it’s seen at high school dances in Nebraska and the Country Music Awards some of its elitism has worn off. But according to trends, the buttoned-up look hasn’t gone the way of the Nehru jacket yet.

“It’s not as hot as it once was, but it’s still very popular,” says Raffi Balouzian, a buyer with Politix in Newport Beach. “It looks great with just about any kind of shirt, and it’s great if you can’t decide on a tie. You just button the top, put on the jacket and go.”

Mousse on the Loose: Remember the slogan, “The Wet Head is Dead”? If you’re a guy who’s just gotten around to seeing the Michael Douglas film “Wall Street,” and you think a half-pound of mousse will look great on your head, take a look around.

“Guys are cutting down on the amount of mousse in their hair,” says hairstylist Frank Stevens of Fullerton. “When they first began to market mousse to men, guys discovered it and thought it was a great way to control their hair. It became macho.”

But now the wet-head look created by lots of mousse has dried up in favor of a more natural appearance.

When your hair is wet, squeeze a golf-ball-size amount of mousse into your hand and run it through your hair, then blow dry it. This will give you the advantage of control from the mousse without the slippery look. As Stevens notes, “Even Pat Riley’s looking a little drier these days.”

Don’t Get Stiffed: There’s an old rule of thumb around the office. If a guy’s shirts are so starched they look like cardboard, he’s probably in marketing; if they’re as scrunched and wrinkled as his great-grandmother, he’s probably in engineering.

But what about everybody else?

When the person behind the counter at the dry cleaners asks you how much starch you want in your laundered shirts, do you fumble around, not knowing what’s the best answer? Heavily starched shirts look pressed the entire workday, but they make you feel like you’re wearing armor. Shirts with no starch are comfortable, but by the time you arrive at your desk they can look like you rolled them into a ball before putting them on.

“It’s really a personal preference; just go with what feels right,” says Chuck Balboa of Chuck Balboa’s Menswear in Orange.