This is the sixteenth instalment of this Q&A series, and the questions keep getting more specific. This edition covers metal buttons on jackets that shouldn't have them, a knitted tie that won't behave with a suit, suede shoes blamed for a stain that usually isn't their fault, and a pair of green shell cordovan shoes still looking for a place in the wardrobe.

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Blazer hardware rules

When Do Metal Buttons Work on a Blazer or Sports Jacket?

A navy blazer with proper metal buttons is one of the safest combinations in men's tailoring. It never reads as under-dressed. The trouble starts when you try to extend that same confidence to other jackets. Metal buttons are not a universal accessory, whatever the catalogues suggest.

A striped blazer, the sort built for regattas and garden parties rather than the boardroom, can take metal buttons, provided they are plain rather than embossed with an invented crest. Add insignia to an already busy stripe and the two compete. An odd sports jacket can occasionally take a metal button too, provided it looks properly old rather than freshly stamped. The effect you want is heirloom. Get it wrong and it reads as fancy dress.

Suits are where the idea falls down. Metal buttons on a suit jacket do exist, but Chris has never seen a version that worked. A suit depends on cloth, cut and hardware agreeing with each other, and a bright metal button breaks that agreement. If it is shine you want, a horn or corozo button close to the colour of the cloth will get you there without the clash.

The rule, such as it is: metal buttons have a nautical background, and they belong on jackets that admit to it. That means a blazer, and at a stretch a striped odd jacket. Everywhere else, treat them as the exception rather than the default.

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Off-script jacket pairings

Styling a Varsity Jacket and Wearing a Tailored Jacket with Shorts

A varsity jacket, or a baseball jacket to anyone who hasn't spent time on an American campus, runs on contrast: a solid wool body with sleeves in a different material, usually leather. It works, provided you don't try to improve on it.

The combination that never fails owes more to Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop than any tailoring textbook: a grey marl sweatshirt, worn-in jeans, and white trainers. Nothing in that outfit tries to dress the jacket up into something it isn't, which is why it works.

Wearing a tailored jacket with shorts is a stranger proposition, and it rarely works for an adult, though it isn't forbidden. If you attempt it, the jacket needs to be soft-shouldered and completely unstructured, never double-breasted. The shorts should sit on the longer side and be properly tailored, in a cloth that relates to the jacket rather than fighting it. Separates work better here than a suit cut down into shorts, which rarely looks intentional.

Where this look does earn its keep is on younger boys, at communions and weddings, where the same combination reads as elegant rather than eccentric. For an adult, treat it as a single hot afternoon's experiment rather than a summer strategy.

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Smart-casual layering

Can You Wear a Waistcoat Casually, Without a Jacket?

Waistcoats have a settled reputation as formal wear, brought out to lift a blue suit and then put away again. That reputation undersells them. In some business-casual environments, particularly in the colder months, an odd waistcoat now sometimes stands in for a jacket entirely, and it works well.

The detail that separates a proper casual waistcoat from a stray piece of a three-piece suit is the back panel. Lining fabric on the back means it belongs to a suit and looks unfinished worn alone. A self-back waistcoat, the same cloth front and back, stands on its own. It gives you pockets and some structure without the weight of a full jacket.

The same logic applies to odd jackets and trousers more broadly. Mid-grey flannel is the reliable choice, right most of the time. Navy worsted trousers push the same jacket smarter. Cream gabardine, in warmer months, turns it into occasion wear, useful for a summer wedding. Khaki chinos keep things relaxed. If the jacket has a check with a secondary colour in it, use that colour as your cue for the trousers.

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Business tie pairings

What Tie Works Best with a Dark Grey Pinstripe Suit?

A dark grey pinstripe suit reads as business formal, which narrows the question. There is no single correct tie, but the safest route is a neat, fine pattern rather than anything bold: a small dot, a fine repeat, or a discreet stripe at a different scale to the suit's own. Burgundy and navy are the two colours that work most reliably, dark enough to hold their own against charcoal grey without competing with the suit's stripe.

A plain maroon spot on its own is a safe but unambitious answer. It works, but it doesn't add much. A micro dot in burgundy against a lighter ground gives the same neat, business-appropriate footprint, with a little more to look at up close, without distracting from the pinstripe.

Add a pocket square in a related tone. Our Ivory, Crimson & Blue Madder Silk Pocket Square above pulls from the same burgundy family without matching the tie outright, so the combination reads as considered rather than thrown together.

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Formal neckwear explained

Wing Collars, Ascots and the Rules of Formal Neckwear

A wing collar will technically take a long tie. Whether it should is the better question, and the honest answer is rarely, unless you know exactly what you're doing. Wing collars belong to white tie, and occasionally black tie, both of which expect a bow tie rather than a necktie. Morning dress still sometimes pairs a wing collar with a cravat, though that combination is increasingly rare. A long tie with a wing collar has drifted into something closer to costume than convention, think Laurel and Hardy, or the 1980s fashion editorials that put wing collars with long ties, Tommy Nutter's work with Elton John among them. If archaic and retro is the look you want, it is available to you. For a conventional lounge suit occasion, leave the wing collar to its usual company.

An ascot, a cravat, or a bandana if you prefer the square-folded version, sits in a gentler register: semi-tied, pleated at the back, for occasions with more formality than an open collar but less than a full tie. It has fallen out of everyday rotation, but it is a useful alternative to the binary choice between tie and no tie. For the folds themselves, our guide to tying a bandana runs through the technique step by step.

And if you have never worn a striped tie because the idea seems needlessly complicated, it isn't.

A striped tie is not a puzzle. It is the easiest pattern in a man's wardrobe, and the most unfairly avoided.

Worn under a plain waistcoat in a three-piece suit, a striped tie doesn't create the pile-up of angles some readers worry about between collar, lapel and tie. If the three-piece format still feels new, start with a small repeat pattern rather than a stripe, simply because you're adjusting to more than one new thing at once. The stripe itself has done nothing wrong. For the mechanics of pairing one with a suit, shirt and pocket square, our guide to styling a striped tie covers it in full.

Our Heathered Oxblood & Ivory Stripe Silk Blend Tie, seen on the mannequin in this video, is a good place to start: easy against navy or grey, and confident without shouting.

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Getting the knot right

How to Stop a Knitted Tie Looking Too Casual with a Suit

A knitted tie isn't inherently too casual for a suit. It only reads that way when nothing else in the outfit lifts it. The flat, matte texture that makes a knitted tie appealing is the same quality that can make it sit quietly against a sharply pressed jacket, unless you give it some help.

The most effective fix is at the collar. A rounded tab or a pin collar lifts the knot, giving it a sharper, more three-dimensional shape than a standard point collar allows. Colour helps too. Browns and greens pull a knitted tie toward the country, right with tweed but working against a suit. Dark reds, blacks and deep blues keep the same texture while holding enough formality for tailored cloth.

Tie length is a separate problem, and it shows up most with high-waisted trousers, where the blade runs too long or the narrow end trails. There are two solutions. Have a shorter tie made, which solves it for good if high-waisted trousers are a habit. Or do what most men, Chris included, actually do: tuck the narrow blade into the waistband. It isn't a compromise. It's standard practice, and has been for thirty years by his own account. For this and other avoidable errors, our guide to common tie mistakes is worth a look.

A collar bar worn alongside a tie clip is a style statement rather than a conservative business choice, and the one rule that holds is that both pieces should be in the same metal. Wear both if you can carry them, and leave them both off if you're not sure.

Our Midnight Blue Knitted Wool-Cashmere Blend Tie sits at the dark, sharp end of this spectrum, formal enough in colour to hold its ground against a suit while keeping the texture that makes a knitted tie worth reaching for. Browse the full knitted ties collection, or read our full guide to the knitted tie for more on knotting and care.

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Shoe construction and care

Goodyear Welted vs Blake Stitched: Choosing and Caring for Your Shoes

Goodyear welting and Blake stitching are both respectable, machine-assisted methods of shoe construction, above cemented shoes and below fully handmade work. The real difference between the two has less to do with which is tougher and more to do with what each is built for.

Goodyear welted shoes can be resoled repeatedly over a long working life, which makes the construction the sensible choice for anything you plan to keep and repair: oxfords, Chelsea boots, the smart end of the wardrobe generally. Blake stitching is less bulky and, on the right shoe, more elegant, particularly on loafers, where a Goodyear welt can feel like overkill. Neither beats the other outright. Reserve Goodyear welting for shoes you expect to re-heel for a decade, and Blake stitching for loafers and anything more casual.

Suede attracts more anxiety than it deserves, mostly because people assume rain is the culprit. It rarely is. What actually stains suede is usually salt or general soiling, not rain. The remedy is simple: a proper suede shampoo, a brush, and patience. Let the shoe dry naturally, away from direct heat, and repeat as needed. Scrubbing a mark makes it worse. Treat it gently and repeatedly instead.

Colour is a different problem, and green shell cordovan is as good an example as any. If a striking colour is hard to place in an otherwise restrained wardrobe, there are two honest answers. It may simply be a shoe for later in your collection, once the fundamentals are covered, rather than an early purchase. Or colour isn't fixed: a patient application of black polish will subdue a bright shoe over time, giving it a rich, antiqued finish that makes an impractical colour properly wearable.

On the broader question of whether belts, watch straps and shoes must match: they don't need to, and plenty of well-dressed men ignore the rule entirely. Keep the one distinction that matters, black with black, brown with brown, and treat the rest as optional.

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Wearing colour with confidence

What to Wear with Sage Green Corduroys and Other Bold Colours

Sage green corduroy is more versatile than it looks, and the shoes are the easiest way to prove it. Anything in the brown family works, and a reddish brown, burgundy or cordovan, works particularly well against this green. The trousers aren't limited to Chelsea boots either: loafers, brogues, semi-brogues, oxfords and chukka boots will all do the job. The one colour to avoid is black, which flattens the warmth of both trouser and shoe.

Above the waist, autumn tones work better than the more obvious wine or burgundy: browns, golds and beiges do the reliable work of holding the outfit together. If you want to dress the trousers up, a double-breasted blue blazer over sage green corduroy is a smart combination, and the contrast between blue and this green reads sharper than most people expect.

Committing to colour more broadly rewards restraint everywhere else in the outfit. A burgundy suit with a black dress shirt is a fashion combination rather than a conservative one, better suited to an evening than an office, and it works best kept tonal: black shirt, black knitted tie, or an open neck with no tie. Contrast-collar shirts, white collar and cuff against a striped body, follow the same logic. Sharp under a double-breasted blazer, more precarious under a linen suit, where the same combination tips from considered into costume.

If you're ready to commit to colour the way this question suggests, few pieces state the case as plainly as the jacket above, one that asks the rest of the outfit to organise itself around it rather than the other way round. Our guide to styling a pink summer jacket takes the argument further.

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Cloth, weight and climate

Fusing, Cloth Weight and Dressing for Hot Climates

Fusing, the process of bonding an interlining to the shell cloth of a jacket, has a reputation for stuffiness that hasn't kept pace with the cloth itself. Modern fusible interlinings breathe considerably better than the versions that earned fusing its reputation. Most of a jacket's breathability also comes from the back rather than the chest piece, which is where fusing is usually used. A lightly fused jacket won't out-breathe a fully unfused one, but the gap is smaller than the reputation suggests.

Cloth weight tells a similarly counterintuitive story. Twelve ounces sounds heavy for summer wear against a ten-ounce alternative, but weight alone tells you little about how a fabric wears. A twelve-ounce fresco, open and textured in its weave, wears noticeably cooler than a tighter ten-ounce flannel, because the weave matters more than the number on the bunch card. For a proper summer business suit, that same twelve-ounce weight also buys you drape and structure a lighter cloth can't supply, a fair trade for the small loss in coolness.

Truly hot, humid climates, the kind found across much of India, call for a different category of fabric rather than simply a lighter version of a temperate wardrobe. Seersucker, linen and lightweight cotton remain the reliable choices, each built to move air rather than merely weigh less. The same principle extends to accessories. A good felt hat, sometimes called a trilby or a racing felt in England, will shrug off a light shower without complaint, but a proper soaking needs a proper recovery: dry it away from direct heat rather than in the sun, brush it thoroughly once dry, and use light steam if it needs coaxing back into shape.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Your Menswear Questions Answered

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