This is not a new concept and I certainly won’t pretend I’m the one to have created it. However, I’d never heard it given a term before.

Anchoring is using a more subtle piece of one’s wardrobe in order to tie everything else down and prevent it from getting out of hand.

I’ve been experimenting with this quite a bit this summer. Most of my suiting commissions this season were items that definitely did not function as anchors – massive windowpanes, double-breasted suits, yellow jackets, and others.

In order to properly subdue these bolder pieces, I wore primarily white and blue solid shirts and almost exclusively one solid, navy knit tie. It works with everything I own and is very subtle – thereby anchoring the rest of what I wear.

Anchoring is a valid concept for men because we want people to pay attention to our faces, not the just the clothes we wear.

A man in a navy suit, white shirt, and solid tie will have a face that is much more interesting than his ensemble. Same goes for the guy in dark jeans and a white T-shirt.

However, take those same men and put the first in a loud glenn plaid suit with a bold windowpane, a gingham shirt, and a garish foulard tie; then put the second in a pair of moss green jeans and an Affliction T-shirt. All of a sudden their faces aren’t that interesting and become the least noticeable parts of their appearance.

Anchoring is typically accomplished with larger, more commonly worn, more expensive, and more versatile items – which makes sense because these items provide the most bang for an anchor’s buck.

It’s why the first suits a man should buy are navy and grey and why solid T-shirts are more preferable than their screen-printed counterparts.

In fact, when a man starts to build his wardrobe by procuring the Staples, I recommend each of them be purchases in a color and pattern that makes it an anchor.

There’s nothing wrong and nearly everything right with having an entire wardrobe that consists of nothing but anchoring items. However, some men (especially those who lean towards the Rakish Archetype) like to embrace a fuller, more vibrant wardrobe and will begin to purchase items which are not anchorable.

The best way to move beyond the basics is to choose louder, more memorable colors and patterns in smaller and cheaper items. Shoes, ties, pocket squares, watch bands, shoe laces, jewelry, and myriad other pieces can make a big difference in subtle ways.

Moving up from there would be items like shirts, pants, and jackets.

And the granddaddy of all would be moving to complete head-to-toe items like suits in more memorable and colorful variations.

Regardless of how bold any particular item is, a complete outfit should always have some anchoring. Hence my simple shirts and ties for my bolder jackets and suits.

Play around with it, experiment, and have some fun.

I’ve been hitting on this a lot lately, but it’s a topic that continues to come up. Oddly enough, it’s never actually directed at me or on the site. I just read about it on friends’ sites or other forums that link to me. Don’t know why that is, but these keyboard warriors never actually come here to tell me their uniform is the only acceptable way for a man to dress.

There are two “hate facts” that men everywhere need to accept.

1. People judge you

It doesn’t matter if they should or shouldn’t. They do. We are always being sized up, evaluated, judged, and treated accordingly. We’re judged for threat we do or don’t pose, the respect we do or don’t command, the attraction we do or don’t build… whatever value we can offer to other people is constantly being assessed.

2. People judge you according to your appearance

The human brain likes efficiency. Because of this efficiency it creates shortcuts. That’s where stereotypes and other surface assessments come from. Our brains recognize patters, and then safely assume that most people fall within recognizable patterns.

This isn’t good or bad, it just is.

Coincidentally, the men who try to tell you that concern for appearance is unmanly are the ones who judge most harshly according to appearance.

To them, there’s only one acceptable masculine appearance – indifferent utility. Anything that appears to be beyond that uniform is considered to be flamboyant, gay, effeminate, shallow, or any other negative term they can come up with.

However, this assessment is based entirely on a failure to adhere to their standard of an acceptably masculine appearance. This strict judgment doesn’t come from men who are equally comfortable in any article of clothing – only those who profess that their uniform is the most masculine.

And that’s why they immediately lose any semblance of credibility. When a man can honestly wear whatever is placed in front of him, not have it affect the way he carries himself, and not have it affect the way in which he interacts with other people, only then can that man say that clothing and appearance don’t matter.

We never hear of men like that because they don’t exist. As soon as we start to move out of our aesthetic comfort zones, we quickly realize that our appearance has a significant impact on how we carry ourselves and how other people treat us. Period.

Men have always used their clothing as a way to signal status. We use it to show allegiance to tribe and distinction from other tribes. We use it communicate strength, wealth, courage, refinement, mastery, and honor.

It’s not limited to a particular culture or a particular period of time. As long as men are dependent on each other, we will use communicative shortcuts in attempts to display our worth to the tribe.

The error occurs when it’s taken too far, and again this is where aesthetic critics fail to understand the importance of style.

They believe, because men like me preach the importance of appearance, that we believe appearance is the most important aspect of being a man. When the truth is that it’s far from it.

Clothing, grooming, and other aesthetic cues are simply the medium. They don’t make the man. A refusal to say they are at the bottom of the hierarchy of masculine value doesn’t automatically require they are at the top. Appearance can be valuable without being the most valuable.

It’s all a sour-grapes approach. The men who chaff the most at the importance of appearance are usually the ones in whose favor it doesn’t work. It’s akin to wimpy academics saying strength doesn’t matter or idiot strongmen saying intelligence doesn’t matter. Both are threatened by a masculinity that requires excellence in an area in which they lack – so they reject that definition of masculinity and choose to double down on another.

Two years ago I wrote an article for Primer Magazine about making the transition from summer to fall. 

As excited as we #menswear nerds get for tweeds, flannels, and layering, it’s still hot in the northern hemisphere for a few more weeks. 

One of the best tricks is to go more seasonal with accessories. A wool tie or pocket square won’t wear any warmer than a silk or cotton alternative and will have the aesthetic connotation of the coming season. 

For casual wear, start leaning a bit more towards the Rugged archetype. The roughness of materials and earth tones associated with this season all hearken from the days when men did work outside. So swap the polo or T-shirt for a Henley and throw on a pair of work boots (both of which are Staples, btw).

Today I’m doing just what I suggest. I have on a summer-weight open-weave suit, but threw on a wool tie and square. I’m even wearing socks again. I’m not sweating in this thing, but there’s no denying that summer is coming to an end. 

In the four years that I’ve been writing about men’s style, the most commonly issued argument against any of my points is that, “real men dress however they want,” or some other iteration of the same statement.

This standard is not only applied to clothing, but to almost anything else a man does. Real men eat, say, think, do, and be whatever they want. The problem is that the statement is not true in any regard. Real men may be more bold, assertive, and direct, which often leads to them getting, being, or doing what they want more often but it’s always measured against the costs of doing so.

If we were to apply that standard to its extreme, that would mean the crazy bum I see in front of my shop every day is the most masculine man I know. He wears what he wants, says what he wants. In fact, the crazy man even defecates where he wants to. I’ve seen him helped by countless people. He’s been offered a place to stay, been bathed and shaved. Yet he somehow shows up to the same spot every day, wearing different, beaten clothes, and continues to protest anyone who wants to offer him anything but cash. There are no standards of society holding this guy back, he’s a true man who follows the beat of his own drum.

Except I doubt anyone sees him as that, certainly not as a paragon of masculinity.

The problem with doing whatever one wants is that it directly contradicts one of the most universal and essential aspects of masculinity – mastery. Throughout the history of any group of people, be it small tribes, large nation states, or any organization in between, the value of the men has always been based on their utility to the group, and that utility is only applicable if it can be controlled. Uncontrollable men are expelled from groups more quickly than rabid dogs are put down.

If a man wants to be part of civilization, the requirement for doing so is that he controls and gains mastery of his berserker instincts. This means that doing whatever one wants is the antithesis of manhood. Self control and the ability to work within a group is what separates us from beasts. Even more advanced group-based species like wolves have a hierarchy which is dependent on ability but remains cohesive because of the self-control of each member of the pack.

Even the most powerful men in the world are subject to the consequences of their decisions. Kings have been deposed, entire governments have been overthrown, and countless families have been destroyed because of people choosing to do what they want without regard for or at the expense of the apparent consequences.

Whether we like it or not, we are always signaling our status and our fitness within a given group. The same man can wear different clothing in different contexts and be consistent. By doing so he demonstrates self-mastery and an ability to understand the nuance and context of the situation in which he finds himself.

It may be on a broader scale, like a man dressing in overtly feminine clothing, or on a smaller scale like wearing a suit to the beach, straying too far from the agreed terms of his tribe, calls a man’s fitness to be within a tribe into question.

This is an amoral reality to being non-solitary creatures. In order to work with others and accomplish greater things than we can do on our own, we are required to limit and master ourselves in a way that keeps us in harmony within the group. It’s why we criminalize murderers and rapists. If the standard for manhood were doing whatever one wants, then our pariahs would be our heroes. However, their inability/unwillingness to control themselves is exactly why they’ve been removed from society.

It’s not just polite or mainstream society which places restrictions on its group members. One of the first and easiest ways to adapt to any subculture is to dress, talk, and otherwise mimic the standards of that culture.

The other week I was at a meeting in a local collective space for small startups. Most of the people who work in that field are the stereotypical urban, environmentally-minded, SJW types who are part of the system but still like to consider themselves as underdogs. As I was checking in, I heard one lean over to his friend and say, “can you believe they’re letting in some bourgois crony?” Ironically he used the same tone and sneer he probably decries on his tumblr when someone from a country club in the 60’s talks about “letting in the riffraff.” Because I was wearing a suit I didn’t fit the dress code of the environment. I knew this wasn’t my tribe so I wasn’t too worried about standing out, in fact I wanted to do so. It was a way for me to signal myself as part of the out-group.

Standing out aesthetically can be considered from fragile, robust, and anti-fragile perspectives.

When a man’s reputation or position within a group is fragile, even tenuous, he needs every opportunity to fit in and continue to assert himself as a worthy member of the group. He can’t afford any deviation, and this includes the way he dresses.

When a man’s reputation or position within a group is robust, he can afford to dress in a way he wants. However, choosing to do so means he spends his available social capital on his appearance, at the expense of being able to so in other areas.

When a man’s reputation or position within a group is anti-fragile, he can’t afford to dress in a way that fits in with the standards. His identity as a rebel, outlier, and rake practically requires him to dress and act in a way which draws attention, rather than trying to avoid it.

Which bring it all back full circle. Whether the attention he gets is positive or negative, a real man understands that there are consequences to every action he takes. This knowledge is one of the largest things that separates a man from a child. Children bemoan the consequences. Men understand them and use them as a means to a desired end.