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Matching Leather & Matching Metals In Menswear - Men's Clothing Accessories Matching Tips
Hi! I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style. Today, we're going to be talking
about matching metals and matching leathers in menswear.
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it. The link's right down there. We'll also link you to a great article, but I said that
was the last thing I was going to mention, so technically I couldn't mention that last
article, but I did anyway.
Okay, this is the question, "Hello, Antonio! I've got an interesting question. It's a simple
rule that your belt should match your dress shoes. However, I'm wondering about your dress
watch. If I'm wearing brown dress shoes and a brown belt with a silver buckle, should
my watch have a brown band and silver rim? What if I wear a watch with a gold rim or
a black band? Maybe I'm paying too much attention to detail. Thank you very much. Raymond."
All right, Raymond, I've got some bad news for you. If all of your metals and all of
your leathers do not match exactly, one year from the date that you wear this outfit, you
will turn to dust. Sorry to deliver this news to you, man. All right.
Seriously, so you are paying a little bit too -- I mean, the general rule is leathers
match leather. Metals match metals, but there are exceptions to that rule. And probably
the one I can think of for most men is you simply don't have enough metals and enough
leathers to make sure that you match it exactly, especially when it comes to items like a watch.
You've got a favorite watch. You've got one that you just love to wear, your only really
nice dress watch perhaps, and it doesn’t match your belt or your shoes.
In that case, wear it. It's a very small detail, something that if you get fit, fabric, and
style, which I harp on all the time, if you get those right, this is going to be a small
thing. If you understand that those are the rules but you decide to break it anyway because
that watch has sentimental value to you, all the more power to it.
That takes me to the second thing, is that you've got an item that has sentimental value
such as a wedding ring. My wedding ring is silver. Now, most of the metals I wear is
silver. I'm not a big fan of yellow gold, so I keep everything silver, keep it simple,
but most men, their wedding rings are gold. And if they like silver and everything else
is silver, of course they're always going to have that mismatched, but it's a small
detail. It's a sentimental detail and on that case, you can bend and break the rules.
The other one is going to be how small is the item. I'll leave that as last because
I was going to say visibility, but it really comes down to how small it is and is it even
visible. So in this case, this is very small. Now, if I'm wearing a huge ring, let's say
I'm a Texas A&M Aggie and I've got the huge ring -- well, ask an Aggie to see those rings
-- those things are just huge. At any case, he'll want to be a little bit more tuned to
that ring matching some of them out just because of its visibility.
Now, when it comes to buckles, if you're wearing a suit all of the time and you've always got
your jacket on, technically no one's ever going to see that buckle. So let's say you're
wearing a pair of monk strap dress shoes and they've got a silver buckle on them and your
belt has a gold buckle. Well, keep your jacket on and all of a sudden, because it's invisible,
no one's going to know. Now, if you're the kind of guy and you take your jacket off quite
a bit, then you're going to have a mismatched metal.
Now, the same thing with leathers, again, those same things are going to apply. You
want to try to match your leathers, but you don't have to match them exactly, and this
really applies to browns because browns, there are so many different shades. And if you try
to get your shoes to match your leathers, your leather shoes to match your leather belt
exactly, you're going to be hard-pressed especially if you condition or you polish your shoes
quite a bit because over time, they're going to change in color.
A quick tip though is if you're out buying a new pair of shoes, make sure to get a belt
especially if you're looking at browns, light colored browns especially. Find something
when you're out buying the shoes, when you have the shoes with you that matches, purchase
it, take it home. You're going to be good to go.
Blacks, that's why it's so easy, and again, white-blacks are in the realm of -- every
man should have black shoes and a black belt. They're the most conservative, the most simple,
and they're also the easiest to match, of course.
All right, Raymond, hopefully that answered your question. And you will not turn to dust.
You'll turn to stone actually.
Take care. I'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.