The Proper Blog

Ok, let’s talk about how great life can be when you’re less than 5′8″ tall.  Seriously.  Look at Tom Cruise.  It’s probably because he’s 5′8″ that he landed that key role in Top Gun as the motorcycle-riding, fighter-pilot-flying, Kelly-McGillis-romancing “Maverick” (yes, we wanted to be him).  And look at him now: he’s totally insane and he’s married to Katie Holmes (hot).  Some guys have all the luck.

Then there’s the mayor of the the US’s largest (and greatest) city, Michael Bloomberg.  He has proven himself one of the greatest business men in the world amassing a net worth of $20 Billion.  This month he’s one of Esquire Magazine’s “Most Influential People of the 21st Century“.   He may be 5′6″, but let’s just say that nobody is looking down on him.

Still not convinced, well tune into the daily show on comedy central to check out Jon Stewart. At the height of 5′7″, this guy sits behind a desk all day and makes fun of John McCain… Seriously, we want that job – we think we would be really good at it.

So life as a “vertically challenged” man can be pretty good.  But that doesn’t mean that shopping for clothes won’t be a pain in the ass.  One way to solve this problem is to limit your wardrobe to shorts, t-shirts, and a couple pairs of jeans.  Fine.  If that’s your strategy stop reading now.  We’re talking about buying proper dress clothes.

On that exact topic, in October 2008’s Men’s Vogue is an article by Josh Patner about clothing shopping for the shorter man.  He gives you the general advice: “Solids or more subtle patterns give you height… No double-breasted jackets; they overwhelm.  No textures; they make you look stubby.  No pale colors; they just look silly.”  We totally agree, and might add the following strategies:

1. Go monochromatic: Pair dark pants with a dark shirt, or light pants with a light shirt.  The idea here is to not divide the upper and lower half of your body, which, according to some, creates the illusion of height.
2. Wear vertical stripes: They visually elongate your body.  Strictly avoid vertical and even diagonal stripes (duh).
3. Stick to small prints: When wearing prints or patterns keep the designs small and subtle, not large and obnoxious.  Everything should be proportional to your body.
4. Focus on fit: More than ever, it’s important to find dress clothes that fit your body right.  If your sleeves are too long for your arms, your shirt tails reach your knees, or your shirt pocket is down by your belt, people will notice that something is wrong, drawing attention to that height thing again.

If you’re shopping for a suit, Patner suggests skipping the suits from Lanvin, Prada, and Tom Ford.  He’s had some success with Dolce and Gabbana “Martini” Style and Ralph Lauren Black Label, but at the end of the day he recommends the suits by Jimmy Au.  Why?  Simply because Jimmy Au focuses on creating a suit for men 5′8″ and under.  According to Jimmy Au, his suit patterns start from size XS and scale up, keeping the proportions of the suit proper.  If you live in Los Angeles, fit the above profile, and are looking for a suit, you might want to check it out.

Today, at Proper Cloth we are beginning to open our service to the first members.  We’ve done everything we can to make shopping for dress clothes online fun and interesting and in the process we’ve come up with some pretty interesting technology that I’d like to introduce.

One of the things we’re particularly proud of are the hyper-realistic product previews (oh, you thought those were photographs?) that we generate in real time as a member designs their product.  For one thing, this helps us keep our costs low because we didn’t need to physically manufacture a million different products and take a million pictures.  Another benefit is that it makes designing your clothing fun – showing you instantly the effects of combining different fabrics and design elements.  Because the product preview is so real, you know with certainty that you’ll like what you’ve created. Shopping on the internet is hard enough since you can’t inspect a product physically, but showing high resolution images sure helps a lot.

Another cool thing we’ve done is give users the ability to specify a shirt size based on any off-the-rack brand and size.  Have you ever gone shopping and thought: this shirt fits great, except it’s too loose in the waist, or the sleeves are too short, or the collar is too tight?  Or maybe it’s happened to you where you say: wow this shirt fits great, but it’s such an ugly color!  Well that sort of thing happened to us all the time, so we designed our system to solve this problem directly.  It took quite a bit of time and effort to measure all those shirts (and weirded out a bunch of changing room clerks) but we think it was worth it because it makes getting a shirt that fits so much easier and intuitive for our members.

Of course there’s a lot more to Proper Cloth than 3D product previews and a huge database of shirt sizes to choose from, but for now, we’ll leave that to our members to explore.

You probably have several.  You know what I’m talking about… in the back of your closet… had them since college.  Since you’re semi-fashion-conscious you have this nagging feeling they’re out of style but you just can’t put your finger on it…  Wait… out of style?  Dress shirts don’t go out of style!  They’re a classic, an essential.  Like t-shirts, socks and underwear.  A dress shirt should be kept, and worn until it falls apart…  right?  (Ok, maybe we’re not as fashion conscious as we like to think)

Like most male shoppers, you’ve acquired your wardrobe without much thought or understanding.  You’ve been swept up in different trends, buying what was “cool” at the time in a series of impulse buys.  Your closet looks like you threw the last ten years of pop-culture in a blender.  But, don’t worry, Proper Cloth is here to help.  Here are our four rules to determine if your old button-up shirt should be donated to the nearest Salvation Army.

1.) The Big Collar

You probably bought this shirt around the year 2000-2002.  The trend was Disco.  Your jeans from that time also look suspiciously like bell-bottoms (those should go too).  How to tell for sure?  Measure the collar at the back of the neck from the top to bottom.  If this is more than 1.5 inches, be concerned.  If it is more than 1.75 inches, wrap it up and tell your younger brother you got a present for him.  *The exception to the rule is if you are tall or have an abnormally long neck.

2.) The Double Button Collar

Another sign your dress shirt is out of date is the double button on the collar.  This feature is often paired with the over-sized collar mentioned above.  It was kind of cool around 2005 and 2006, but today: not so much.    *Yes, I know H&M has shirts on the rack today with the double button collar.  If H&M is your “in-fashion” reference, please leave now.

3.) Bright, Bold, Colorful, Diagonal Stripes

There was a time when loud, obnoxious colors were all the rage.  (Remember Ben Sherman?) Like a bunch of peacocks, we competed to see who could sport the most eye-catching patterns….  Well, that game is over.  Or maybe we just grew up.  Granted, there are some nice, relatively loud designs coming out of Thomas Pink today, but be careful with over doing it.  And if the bright stripes are anything but vertical you do not want to be seen wearing them.

4.) Poor Fit

Finally, perhaps most importantly, if your clothes don’t fit right, they are not in style.  At least not when you are wearing them.  You may have compromised on fit when you bought them originally.  They may have been gifts.  They may have shrunk more than you expected.  You may have gained a few pounds (Yeah I know that never happens).  Whatever the case, if your clothes don’t fit get rid of them.

Still not sure?  Bring the items in question by our office in Tribeca and we’ll tell you what we really think.

Yes, it’s true.  The world is ending.  Armageddon is here.  AIG nearly collapsed, BoA took over Merrill Lynch, Lehman bankers are working for Barclays, and today alone the Dow dropped 450 points.  With all this drama our offices are filled with gossip and paranoia.  No work will get done this week.  There’s just not enough time between spreading rumors about layoffs and monitoring Bloomberg for the next bad news.

So, what can you do to keep your job?  Hey, maybe even rise above the pandemonium and take advantage of the situation?  The first step is to look at the bigger picture and recognize that this current “financial crisis” was not caused by external factors.  It was not terrorists or elections that caused Goldman’s profits to plunge 70 percent this quarter.  No, this financial crisis is the opposite end of a feedback loop fueled by the finance industry itself.  The over-leveraged irrational-exuberance of 2004-2007 is coming back to haunt us.

As this realization comes into the collective consciousness, expect your employers to swing back (over-react) to policies of conservatism.  In fact, right now as you are reading this, your boss is selling off his personal stock in IBM and buying bars of gold.  Business strategies will also return to the basics.  Cost cutting measures will be back in style and anything that hints at “excess” will be gone within a few months.

With this understanding, it’s time to properly equip yourself for survival.  What does that mean?  It’s time to blend in.  All those loud, gaudy Thomas Pink Shirts with purple stripes and white collars – get rid of them.  Those Platinum Dice Cuff Links – hide them where no one can find.  Keep it simple the next few months with clean, basic white dress shirts.  With Proper Cloth’s Straight Point Collar, and Classic Barrel Cuff, you can be the poster child for conservatism and basic business fundamentals.  And of course with the Proper Cloth tailored fit, you’ll look sharp, self-aware and confident… and that could be just the edge you need to stay employed.

So, why not take a break from that deal-there’s-no-point-finishing-because-you-will-have-a-different-boss-tomorrow and check out Proper Cloth for a shirt that can really put you on the path to success.

It’s been a long journey turning Proper Cloth from an idea into reality, but we’re almost there.  Guess I’ll start with a bit of a personal introduction and an explanation of how all this got started:

After sampling a variety of careers, I went to business school, which included internships in Shanghai and Bangalore, and that’s where I got my first custom dress shirts.  The fabric was nothing special, the construction was mediocre and the negotiation on price was um… interesting, but generally speaking, the shirts fit pretty good.  So, the basic idea behind Proper Cloth was to improve on this experience: Offer custom fit dress clothing that doesn’t require someone to (a) go to China or India for the summer, (b) sacrifice on quality, and (c) spend over $200 per shirt?  Sounded intriguing…  After a lot of market research it became apparent that there wasn’t a great (as they say in business school) solution to the problem – so Proper Cloth began.

With Proper Cloth, we hope you’ll find it easy to design a dress shirt online.  We also have some innovative techniques to custom fit your shirt without requiring awkward body measurements.  Finally, be assured that all our dress shirts are made here in the states – basically we got hooked up with another designer brand’s custom dress shirt factory – so our quality really is the best you’ll find on (or off) the internet.

So, thanks for checking us out.  We hope you like our website and we know you’ll like our dress shirts.