In the past I’ve talked about the dangers of matching colors in what you’re wearing. The biggest offenders are when your pocket square matches your tie and when your socks match either your tie or pocket square. It ends up looking too contrived and gives off an amateur impression.

However, it’s important to know that you can get away with matching colors, it just has to be done in the smaller and more subtle details. Here’s an example of what I wore to a meeting my dad and I went to last week.

If you notice the outfit as a whole, there’s nothing that really seems to match. I have on greyish pants, brown shoes and a belt (yes these should match), a white shirt, navy blazer, blue pocket square and a green tie. All of these are all relatively complementary and nothing is an eye sore.

Once you get in closer on the details though you can see the pocket square matches with my cufflinks. They’re not exact, but close enough that you can tell it was intentional.

Same goes with my tie and the shoelaces I have on. They’re not exactly the same but they’re close enough and the laces are small enough that you can get away with it.

These kinds of details are what draw people in. They will make someone do a double take and then be more intrigued by the man focuses on the small things. They will encourage people to come up to you and start conversations or even just complement your style. And even if no one else notices or cares about how it looks, you’ll stand differently knowing that you know exactly how to put an outfit together. Believe it or not, you get the same sense of self-respect from learning to dress well as you do from learning to do anything else well.