Over Accessorizing Is A Suit Killer

What Is Over Accessorizing?

An Accessory by the dictionaries definition is; a thing which can be added to something else in order to make it more useful, versatile, or attractive. A small article or item of clothing carried or worn to compliment a garment or outfit. To accessorize is to decorate or augment (something, especially a garment) with a fashion accessory. Accessories should be considered as sides to a main dish.

Over accessorizing is having far too many accessories on your outfit. Simple!

 

Why You Shouldn’t Over Accessorize

You shouldn’t over accessorize because it takes away all the attention from your main outfit (in this instance lets say that is your suit). Your suit should always be the focal point. Everything else should work together to make the focal point look even better. There is only one star of the show, everything else is a supporting act.

Over accessorizing is like having fish and chips; plus peas, pickled onion, gherkin, bread, baked beans, rice and roast potatoes too. Just ridiculous.

I remember reading a blog post on the unrefinery.com which addresses over accessorizing and they created a point system. Each accessory had points attributed to it depending on its ‘visual weight’ and ‘try-hardiness’ etc (p.s I realize try-hardiness may or may not be a real word, but you get my gist). The point system worked by tallying up all the points attributed to the accessories you were wearing and anything greater than 6 was a misdemeanor ha!

In my opinion, you should never wear more than 3 ‘loud’ accessories. By ‘loud’ I mean anything that is the opposite of understated, anything that would cause someone to say ‘wow look at that!’, or anything that actively draws someones eye to. It would be like going to a concert to see a band and all of the band members tried to sing lead at the same time. It would be mad confusing and too much to take in. In context of a suit, a pocket square other than a white straight fold, is loud.

 

How To Accessorize Properly

Try and stick to a 3 ‘loud’ accessory item maximum. With a maximum of 2 on your upper body. An example of this would be a loud tie and pocket square (upper body) with loud socks (lower body). Another example would be loud shirt (anything other than a plain pastel colour), lapel flower and dazzling watch.

Coco Chanel famously said to women, when you’re ready to leave the house look in the mirror and remove one accessory. What a great woman.

In closing, you can never be too over-dressed but you can definitely be over-accessorized.

We look forward to seeing you styled up to the nines when you’re next in a suit.

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