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The value of finding your signature style

You style is a reflection of your personal brand.

The value of finding your signature style

Steve Jobs and his signature turtleneck and jeans. (Photo: David Paul Morris/Getty Images/AFP)

Bill Cunningham’s bleu de travail jacket. Fran Lebowitz’s Anderson & Sheppard sport coat. IM Pei’s circular glasses. Anna Wintour’s sunglasses. Katharine Hepburn’s baggy pleated trousers. Wes Anderson’s too-tight suits. Keith Richards’ skull ring. Gianni Agnelli’s watch, worn over his cuff. Hillary Clinton’s monochrome pantsuits. Bruce Springsteen’s jeans and tight T-shirt. 

For the famous, having a signature wardrobe item can work very well. It accentuates the best features or makes a virtue of the worst. It inspires imitators and can elevate a person into a symbol. What about everyone else, though? 

For us working stiffs, the idea has appeal too. In the first place, it sounds easy. Pick one thing that really stands up and talks, put it on every day, and one becomes stylish without working too hard at it. Economical, as well: however much you spend on your one thing, the savings on the rest of your clothes, which everyone will ignore, will surely outweigh it. 

This is not an academic inquiry. I’m in the market for a signature something myself. Most days I put on a vintage tweed coat, purchased on eBay, worn with a light dusting of dog hair. It doesn’t seem to be getting the job done.

Karl Lagerfeld at the end of the Chanel 2014/2015 Haute Couture Fall-Winter collection fashion show on July 8, 2014. (Photo: Patrick Kovarik/AFP)

Anything that starts as clothing and turns into a costume won’t work. Tom Wolfe’s white suit and homburg hat may have succeeded as branding, but made him look like an underpaid Batman villain. The same was true, I hesitate to say, with Karl Lagerfeld’s black-and-white Victorian gothic look. Whether or not Lagerfeld looked good in any normal sense was clearly not his concern. He was creating a character. Steve Jobs’ turtleneck and jeans were, in their way, equally artificial and would be simultaneously studied and dull on someone who had not given us the Mac and the iPhone. Facade construction that works on a celebrity would be at best twee and at worst absurd on a civilian.

Another thing separating the famous from us unwashed is that they are rarely seen by the rest of us. I remember once admiring a striking soft purple suit in the presence of my father, a clothes horse himself. “Your friends would get tired of looking at it,” he said, and he was right.

Anna Wintour. (Photo: Kena Betancur/AFP)
Glasses that stand out for their size or shape are a standard approach and they do pretty well, checking the boxes for memorability, ease and relative economy. What is winning on Pei or Hockney works perfectly well for everyone. It’s a little too easy, but that is not much of a criticism. However, Anna Wintour’s ice-queen schtick aside, I don’t think sunglasses do the trick. They seem too overtly an effort to be cool and therefore there is inevitably something corny about them; consider Joe Biden’s aviators.
Architect IM Pei. (Photo: Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images via AFP)

Another non-starter: a watch, which is precisely what most men would offer if pressed to name their style signifier. Sorry, buddy, but that Rolex Yacht-Master is an anonymous blur that says, weakly, “I have some money, I guess?”

What about a signature colour? Lots of men stick with blacks, greys, browns and blues to keep everything working together, and I’m all for it. But what about picking a few shades of, say, orange or green and having T-shirts, watchbands, socks, scarves, ties or belts in it (not worn all at once). Don’t push it too hard and this might work well.

Another idea that appeals is having a suit that functions as an everyday uniform. While it might have unique or carefully chosen features, the key thing here is having one that is quite basic: a double-breasted grey flannel number, perhaps, or something black and slightly textured? Get it just right and own several, dressing it up or down as necessary. It’s an even better idea now that fewer and fewer men wear suits at all, because it is both conventional and not, simultaneously understated and notable.

And that, in a way, is the essence of a signature item that works for a regular Joe or Jane. We all want to stand out and be anonymous at the same time; for our appearance to be pleasing, memorable and characteristic without having it distract from the more important things about us — which are what we think and do.

Robert Armstrong © 2025 The Financial Times.

This article first appeared in The Financial Times.

Source: Financial Times/bt
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