The Choosy Beggar

Over the next 10 days, The GQ Eye plans to post “10 Steps to Affordable Style.” Magnifico. Really, few things please us more than hearing truly stylish guys — like author Hooman Majd — wax practical about clothes shopping and maintenance. Majd, for his part, gave new life to a 20-year-old Hermès sports jacket with some suede elbow patches. 20 years old! That’s setting the bar pretty high, but we can all learn a lesson from such a superb, long-term investment.

In other ‘Affordable Style’ news, the Eye notes that Uniqlo is now stocked with the same whipcord suits it endorsed last summer. (Note: These suits will not last 20 years.)

Uniqlo – 546 Broadway between Prince & Spring – 917-237-8800 – Map

Long story short, respected Ruffian designers Brian Wolk and Claude Morais got together with Macy’s for a diffusion line named Threads & Heirs… And it sucks. Or, as The Shophound writes: “It’s not aggressively unattractive, like Ed Hardy for example, but it doesn’t look to us like anything you wouldn’t otherwise expect to find at Macy’s … It’s just kind of blah.” [The Shophound]

Online, Mountain & Sackett just reduced all F/W neckwear by 25%. Some styles are entirely acceptable at least three seasons out of the year, like this handmade Cortlandt silk and wool stripe down to $55.

• Beyond The Rack – X
• Editors’ Closet – X
• Gilt Man Trovata, DKNY, Mountain Hardware
• Haute Look – X
• Ideeli – X
• Reverse (pass: Reverse) – Acne Jeans, Nudie Jeans
• Row Nine – X
• Rue La La – Theory (pictured), Ariat footwear
• The Top Secret – X

Listen, clothes aren’t that important. At the end of the day, we’d easily endorse a good man in a polyester tracksuit over a snake in Savile Row’s finest. That said, for the sake of your professional career and personal reproductive aspirations, we strongly suggest that you consider this list of style fails compiled by our friends at GQ. Surprisingly, though, the list’s missing some of the biggest fails we see around town, the most common of which is the (Kenneth Cole) square-toe dress shoe — in lace-up and loafer form. To call these things unrefined is like calling the Nets a work in progress. We’ll get to clothes later (suggestions?), but other all-too-common footwear fails include:

“Hybrids” — Some occasions call for sneakers; some call for shoes. None call for these ill-conceived eyesores.

“Contoured” (Puma) kicks and (Paul Smith) dress shoes — They had their moment about 10 years ago, but now it’s time to put this streamlined look out of its misery. Like the lesson we learned with “hybrids,” if life calls for a sharper looking sneaker, wear a shoe.

“???” — We don’t have a name for these monstrosities, but they and their beastly brethren are all over the place. They’re like the black square-toe’s ugly cousin. God-awful.