In defense of brown

Over the past couple years, I've gotten the distinct impression that in many corners of the internet where men's style is discussed seriously by gentlemen (who have many hours of the day to spend on the subject and many thousands of posts to their names to prove it), the color brown is regarded as little more than the color of peasants and the khaki-wearing masses. In this current era where super-thin lapels and Mad Men styling is all the rage, it's gotten even more of a bad rap.

Now granted, I love color and I've learned to embrace it more and more over the years, but I will never be one of those fellows who holds a grudge against brown. It's always a solid base to build upon, and while I may be inadvertently flaunting just how out-of-touch I am, I'd have to say that in some permutation it probably makes an appearance in my clothing choices roughly 3-4 days out of the week.


As mentioned above, it's a solid base to build upon, and depending on ones mood, it can be ultra-conservative or actually play off even brighter colors in a way that I think works surprisingly well.


Here, I paired a micro-hounds tooth jacket (actually, the upper half of a suit) with some brown chinos. Up top is where I let the colors play a little more, with a light blue gingham shirt, an eye-popping red linen tie and a red, white and blue pocket square (this one, actually). Sure, it's nothing that will get me called out for being a peacock, but I'd also argue that it's not completely boring either.

Fighting fire with fuschia

I must admit that the hardest part of the year for me to dress well is during the dog days of summer. It has officially lapsed into heat furnace mode and gotten stuck there during the course of the past two weeks or so, and in combination with a bicycle commute, it makes for a low-level sweat before I've even started work most days.

For reference, this is about what it's looked like the past couple days as I've left work...

I would say it's the humidity and not the heat, but...

At any rate, today I decided to throw caution to the wind and buck up against the sun with a combination of one of the brightest shirt and pant combos I own. It was simply too uncomfortable to wear a tie, so I left it at home.



Up top, I went with a dark pink (you say pink, I say fuschia) and white vintage Arrow gingham shirt. Below, I finally broke out the baby blue Polo khakis I got over the winter (and mentioned in this post awhile back). Tied them up with a dark brown leather belt which went with some leather PF Flyers on my feet (not pictured) of the same color.

When I first put it together, I felt like it was too outlandish, but as the day went on it felt more right. I even took a stroll in the sun at lunch (which is sometimes necessary for sanity when you work in a window-less basement) and didn't come back drenched.



I have to admit that at least part of the reason I rolled up the sleeves (besides the temperature) on my shirt is that they're simply too short for my arms, and look even more silly otherwise. I love the shirt so much that I can't bear to get rid of it, so until I find a replacement there will be bare (bear) arms to deal with.

I only caught a little bit of ribbing for the outfit, which seemed pretty reasonable in my fairly conservative town. Maybe they were right, though. Is it too much?