There’s no greater test of a relationship than the first trip to IKEA, so the meme goes. You and your better half wander the aisles and fight about shape, color, size, every piece of décor, a miniature battle in the long war to exit the store with both furnishings and your relationship. But ask yourself: is it better to have a spouse whose taste is different, even bad, or one with no opinions at all?

You might think no taste is best, but actually, someone with bad taste is in a far better position in the long run. (To be clear, by no taste, we mean someone without any preferences, as opposed to bad taste, someone with poor, uninformed or untrained preferences.)

So how could the former be worse than the latter? The answer lies in uncovering the path towards good taste, which we’ll be taking you on today. So read on to discover why bad taste can be a good thing, how tech is encroaching on taste as a concept, and what musicians, radio hosts and programmers can teach you about acquiring good taste.

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

Personal vs Objective Taste

Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it’s not true. –Paul Graham, Taste for Makers

For taste to be more than subjective requires an acknowledgment of hierarchy; some things are more refined, better made or more beautiful than others. But we live in an environment where this truth is half-believed. In his essay Taste for Makers, writer/programmer Paul Graham relates a paradox many children encounter. On the one hand, they are told that taste is subjective; the child’s brother can color people green in his coloring book and that’s just as good as anything else. Yet when the child is brought to the museum, they are told to pay special attention, because Leonardo Da Vinci is a great artist. These two things, everyone’s taste being equal, and some things being better than others, are not easily reconciled.

And British philosopher David Hume agreed. He wrote of this tension in his essay Of the Standard of Taste. In it, he tries to square personal taste to the idea of good taste, or having proper critical faculty to evaluate the qualities of a work.

His conclusion? You need a personal sense of taste to start, but it must be honed through various exercises before you can reach the level of objectively good taste:

Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty.

In other words, you need to have an informed, practiced, field tested and self-aware level of personal taste in order for it to be “good.” According to Hume, this takes the form of being, to use a modern term, “media literate” when speaking of storytelling art, detecting the subtler flavors in a wine only present to one practiced in tasting, or who has spent enough time comparing themselves to peers with recognized taste. It can sound like a real laundry list, but the first step towards good taste is both surprising and easy.

Why Bad Taste Is Better Than No Taste

“Beauty is the archenemy of mediocrity.” — Dietrich von Hildebrand

The truth is you need to get your feet wet if you hope to become someone with good taste. That means taking a risk and moving from “no taste” through to “bad taste.” Chances are if you have a desire to dabble in some creative act, whether it be dress, décor, painting, or simply a learned appreciation of an art, you have an inkling that some things work better – are better – than others, and you want to put that intuition to the test. This correlates with degrees of beauty, as the recognition of beauty is the great mediator between the subjective and the objective. As The Culturist put it: “the power of beauty is that it’s rooted in an objective ideal, and is therefore a bridge between individual experience and objective reality.” In a sense, refining your taste is you better aligning yourself with beauty.

In an aside from one of his early biblical lectures, Jordan Peterson explains why the move from not attempting to have taste to risking bad taste is necessary if you’re to establish a coherent relationship with beauty and, by extension, the divine:

“People are terrified of color. They paint their walls beige. They’re terrified of art. They buy some mass-produced thing, because they don’t want anybody laughing at them for their lack of taste. And they would get laughed at because they have no taste. But you have to…

Because what do you know, right? You have to develop it. And so you’re going to stumble along and make mistakes to begin with. And you’re going to show yourself. Because if you buy [based on] “Oh, I think this is pretty.” And [...] somebody comes over and goes, “Hey, what’s up with you?” It’s kind of hard on your self-esteem, but it’s a stumbling towards the right [...] you’re stumbling towards the kingdom of God.

That’s what you’re stumbling towards when you try to make an aesthetic decision and to put something in your life that’s beautiful, and it’s unbelievably worthwhile to do that.”

If this makes aesthetic choices sound like a battle for your soul, that’s because now, more than ever, it is. And the reason is likely resting in the palm of your hand…

Tech and the Algorithm’s Attack on Taste

Globalized digital platforms and feeds of algorithmic recommendations have flattened vast swaths of culture, encouraging uniformity and frictionless mediocrity. – Kyle Chayka, Airspace Redux

If you think Peterson’s choice of the word “terrified” is too strong for someone’s approach to color, consider how many people you know who either default to, or are strongly influenced by, online trends for much of their style. Author Kyle Chayka has written on the effect of tech and algorithms on taste many times, and in his latest piece for The New Yorker, Why Tech Bros Are Now Obsessed With Taste, he chronicles how big tech seeks to associate itself with the concept of taste because of how unpalatable they are to the public. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley’s understanding of the term equates to “that which will be most profitable,” which goes a long way to explaining how algorithms have been flattening people’s tastes into the a blandly palatable, no-one’s-favorite-but-acceptable-to-all elements of fashion, lifestyle and décor. After reading a poll where half of respondents said they preferred AI passages to real literary excerpts, Chayka proposed one possible reason for this sad state of affairs: “the online ecosystem has become so polluted—so fragmented, deceptive, overstimulating, ersatz—that it has warped our ability to exercise taste at all.”

So when you deliberately make a decision based on your own taste rather than copy styles of algorithmically generated “frictionless mediocrity”, as Chayka puts it, you’re doing something more difficult that you may realize. When you risk ridicule by voicing your opinion that some thing is good, you are taking the first step towards knowing whether it is. As scary as it can be, risking bad taste makes you the man in the arena, so to speak. You have stepped onto the field, ready to be tried and tested, and by virtue of this trial and error, come out the other side with a better understanding of what good taste is. And while that first step is vital, there are more important traits to cultivate your taste.

The Three Traits to Build Taste: Curiosity, Perseverance and Exposure

You have to understand a field well before you develop a good nose for what needs fixing. You have to do your homework. But as you become expert in a field, you’ll start to hear little voices saying, What a hack! There must be a better way. Don’t ignore those voices. Cultivate them. The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it. –Paul Graham, Taste for Makers

There are many ways to approach the cultivation of good taste, as many as there are think pieces recommending them. But for our money, the three essential traits you’ll need are curiosity, perseverance and care, so let’s go through them one by one.

Curiosity

A few years ago, guitarist John Mayer gave an interview where he said he wasn’t much of an advice guy, only to then give really good advice. Essentially, he said when you enjoy something you have learned, trace back why you enjoyed that thing, and learn the underlying patterns that built it . As it was meant for aspiring guitarists, Mayer uses the example of learning the scale from which a certain riff or section of song gets its structure to better understand what makes that combination of notes work.

But this advice applies to anything where quality is in question. When choosing what to wear, for example, it’s helpful to know why certain patterns or colors complement one another, and why some clash. To apply Mayer’s advice in this one area, notice when an outfit you’ve put together just works, and break it down into its components. Do these elements work well together? Do they work well with your body? If so, why? Ask yourself those questions enough, and soon you’ll know the answers intuitively, and will be able to bring that expertise into your whole wardrobe.

Perseverance

Once you’ve begun developing taste in something you love, you’re still only halfway there. In a now famous 2009 interview with Current TV, Ira Glass, longtime NPR host of This American Life, explained his approach to taste and where it gets you in creative fields. For him, anyone drawn to the arts, especially those doing creative work, do have somewhat good taste, but rarely the ability to execute on that taste in the first years of trying:

“Nobody tells people who are beginners—and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work […] we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? […] But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you[…]

A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit. […] most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be — they knew it fell short, it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have.

And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase — you gotta know it’s totally normal.”

This is a key point for taste – as with almost any skill – is that the gap between what you’d like to do and what you can do only closes the more you work at it. Your initial forays into buying art might be duds or your attempt at a new duck a l’orange dish didn’t go as planned, but in those middle stages between understanding of good taste and acting on it, it’s normal to make mistakes. The only way to get through it is to stick it out, and if you can do that, you’re nearly there.

Exposure

Another vital piece of the taste puzzle is exposure, diving headfirst into whatever area in which you’d like to develop good taste. This can be mentorship, it can be a university course, it can be a themed book club, or even an online discussion group. Hume makes a point of this in his essay, that would-be critics should take note of those already known for their taste and learn at their feet.

Likewise, if, say you’d like to develop good taste in architecture, spend time learning from those willing to talk or teach, visit a building that inspires you. And then, visit another one. And then another. The more time you spend around the things you want to develop good taste in, the more you’ll be able to say what works, what doesn’t and how your personal sense of such things corresponds to objective standards (whatever those may be in a particular domain). “A man, who had had no opportunity of comparing the different kinds of beauty, is indeed totally unqualified to pronounce an opinion with regard to any object presented to him,” writes Hume. “By comparison alone we fix the epithets of praise or blame, and learn how to assign the due degree of each.”

It boils down to this: spend time submerged in the things or styles you are drawn to naturally, especially those things which have stood the test of time and represent the pinnacle of whatever domain you wish to swim in. By virtue of that proximity, you will absorb the patterns, proportions and details that signify a thing is in good taste. Basically, good people and good works rub off on you, and produce the magic fairy dust of good taste in due time.

Come on In, the Water’s Fine

You may have noticed some swimming or diving metaphors in this piece. Thematically, that’s exactly right. When you’re starting out, learning about taste can feel like teaching yourself not to drown; there’s so much to know, and you don’t even know where to start!

Know that no matter your background or your budget, taste is no longer reserved for the moneyed elites; anyone with the desire and drive can develop good taste, if they only have enough curiosity, perseverance, and exposure to it. Just dip your toe in, and trust that pretty soon you’ll acclimatize. But might we suggest you hurry up and do it before Big Tech pees in the pool and ruins it for everyone?

These looks come from guys I personally admire and have connected with in the past, so they’re not just random influencers. Their respective styles are quite unique, but even if they’re not for you, they still adhere to classic menswear principles. There’s a lot to learn by breaking down why what they wear works, and then determining how to incorporate those principles into your own wardrobe.

So without further ado, let’s begin by turning to one of my favorite mutuals: a Frenchman with enough panache to give the British a run for their money…

Upscale & Understated

There’s far more than meets the eye in this outfit. At first glance, it’s pretty basic: a solid white shirt, solid brown tie…what’s really that interesting?

The magic here has to do with pattern and texture. Let’s start with the jacket: while beige and tan are summer staples, either of those in combination with a stark white shirt could indeed risk falling a bit flat. But this jacket’s pattern saves the day: the classic glen check adds visual interest by providing a dimensional pattern to contrast against the flat white of the shirt.

From this launching point, the tie is able to shine: the woven silk grenadine makes for a lovely physical texture that captures all the light and shadow of the sun in its manifold ridges. Its pocket square companion, though much smoother to the touch, nonetheless maintains enough visual interest with its different overlapping shades of brown.

The headgear tops it all off, and here once more the fabric harmonizes with the rest of the outfit. Were it paired solely with the smooth white shirt, the course weave of the hat would appear out of place. But with the glen check jacket and the woven silk tie playing their part, the hat is comfortably at home and rounds out the look impeccably.

Lastly, one note on color: in summer, it’s tempting to break away from the duller winter palettes and lean into vibrant colors. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, and as we’ve written before there’s a reason these colors look good in the sun. But you shouldn’t overlook the beauty of what I call the “colonial palette”: tan, beige, cream, sand, white, brown, etc.

At it’s best, the colonial palette gives off a classic, confident, and timeless look. It makes you stand out precisely by making you not stand out: the muted palette pales against the vibrant colors around you, yet somehow speak all the more powerfully against their backdrop.

But, of course, this style is a tad too formal for many. What if you want to go with something that’s a bit more causal, yet no less elegant? The secret lies in a look that’s quintessentially American…

Read more

Back in February the Tampa international Airport wrote what many of us are thinking when we go to the airport: enough with the pajamas. “The madness stops today. The movement starts now. Help Tampa International Airport become the world’s first Crocs-free AND pajama-free airport. DO YOUR PART. SAY NO TO PAJAMAS AT TPA.”

While the post was satirical, its virality is proof the joke struck a nerve. Many complained about what they saw as elitist shaming of a choice to prioritize comfort in an already uncomfortable environment. Still others were supportive of the idea, saying it was a matter of respect in a public space. With more airlines instituting rules on travel wear, it’s clear this conflict between comfort and respect is coming to a head. So who’s right? And how should you dress when traveling?

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

The Golden Age of Travel Starts With You

Tampa International isn’t the only air travel entity that’s made changes of late. Last year, Spirit airlines updated its contract of carriage to forbid guests from boarding planes if they had clothes or body art that was lewd, obscene or offensive. It also forbade people from going barefoot or being “inadequately clothed,” meaning see through clothes that exposed private parts. Other airlines, like Southwest, United and American Airlines all now have similar baseline restrictions around offensive clothing and going shoeless.

Also in 2025, the US transportation department launched a civility campaign, “The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You” to address an increase in passenger disruptions and make flying more courteous. One of the 5 key questions the campaigns wants flyers to ask themselves is whether they are dressing with respect? In the department’s announcement of the campaign, they wrote: “We can all do our part to bring back civility, manners, and common sense. When we can unite around shared values, we can feel more connected as a country.”

The name of the campaign refers to the halcyon days of early commercial flight in the 1950s and 60s, where comfort was the priority, the food was gourmet, and airplanes were designed with entertainment in mind instead of security or revenue maximization. At the time, the airport and airplane were destinations, luxury experiences (with a corresponding price, mind you) for which people dressed the part.

You could argue that desire and imposition of basic dress codes are either a sign that people long for some basic decency or that the social contract is so broken that we need to mandate the basics. Either way, we’re now at a point where we’re having to remind people to wear shoes.

So what happened?

Airports Became Liminal Spaces

Believe me when I tell you there was once a magical time when taking a trip on an airplane was glamorous—for everyone. There was indeed an era when ordinary humans arrived at the airport in suits and dresses; when passengers didn’t have to yank off their shoes at security; when you didn’t sit wedged into seat 35F paranoid about the sneezes of the barefoot schnook in 36E.

- Jodi Peckman, Come Fly with Me

The short answer is that these once refined, elite spaces were opened up to a broader and less wealthy public, transforming them from luxury accommodations with dance floors and piano bars to the cattle cars we know today. This change was thanks to deregulation of the airline industry in the 1970s, increasing the need to be competitive, in combination with improvements in aviation technology, which allowed for more carrying capacity. Both these factors helped make flights far more affordable to the average person, but at the cost of the frills of the fifties and sixties. As the public that boarded planes changed to reflect these new priorities, so too did the airports harboring them. Thus airports and airplanes, once experiences in their own right, became merely liminal spaces – areas in-between other, more important spaces.

In fact, airports are one the most liminal spaces we have, existing as the intersection between nations, cultures, ground, and sky. Travelers pass through on their way to vacations, work meetings, family gatherings and sporting events. This means that without the price barrier selecting for “high net worth” that used distinguish travelers from regular people, it has become more difficult to have expectations for such spaces, as everyone from everywhere is at the airport.

A 2018 study titled Airports as Liminal Space published in the Annals of Tourism Research looked at how passengers use international airports as both destination and social space. It found that what an airport represents to passengers depends on whether they were seasoned flyers, whether the airport was local to them or foreign, and other factors. It also found they served as a place where social distinctions blurred due to the odd, in-between nature of travel equalizing everyone temporarily: “the liminal nature of airports allows for unique interactions and experiences that break the boundaries between home and away, and between work and leisure.”

While the study found that people were more likely to help or chat with strangers, the liminal nature of airports also allowed travelers to forgo feelings of obligations to others through the relative anonymity typical of such spaces. It also noted that liminal spaces allowed people to disconnect from their digital lives, using the airport as “personal time.” It makes sense then that, in a relative no man’s land with few kinship bonds between travelers, people would feel comfortable prioritizing their comfort over communal respect.

All these factors go some way to explain the relative laxity of dress in airports, but should that translate to a bare minimum expectation?

What can You Do About It?

It made sense to dress to the nines when you envisioned yourself sipping an apéritif and networking with fellow erudite travelers. Today, as many commentators pointed out after the announcement of the department of transportations’ campaign, economy passengers are signing up for what is essentially a barebones sky bus, not a luxe experience, and thus comfort beats style for them.

But contrast this with Qatar airways having a smart casual dress code for its business class passengers. Interestingly, the airline says that maintaining this standard ensures both comfort for their clients as well as respect for other passengers, highlighting two things. One, the more expensive seats on planes seek to operate as the natural heirs to the golden age of flying, not only offering more comfort and amenities, but also carrying higher expectations. Two, Comfort and respect can, and should, go hand in hand.

As we’ve written about before, style should be comfortable. If you don’t feel good wearing your clothes, it will impact your overall presentation, undercutting the power of proper dress, and make you less likely to wear your clothes. Because so much of our clothing is now cheap, and many people don’t understand how to dress for their body types, nice clothes have acquired a reputation for discomfort. It’s no wonder so many opt for crocs, sweatpants and pyjamas if that’s the only comfortable clothes they known. But once you know how to dress well, you’ll realize you can do both, even on a transcontinental flight, and not sacrifice anything:

The reason we dress so poorly today is not because we desire comfort, but because we don’t know what comfort truly is. In other words, it’s not about fabric, but philosophy. Most people’s idea of comfort only takes into account one aspect of what the concept really means.

– Evan Amato, The Myth of Comfort

This is why small adjustments, like ensuring your clothes aren’t tight, wearing your pants on your natural waist and not the hips, prioritizing breathable materials, etc. mean that even your posh outfits can provide you with comfort. The simple changes we’ve suggested in the piece above and our other What’s In a Fit articles can go a long way to making the tension between comfort and style a moot point.

As for “sticking out” in the crowd of travelers, remember that the airport, as a liminal space, provides a unique level of anonymity and freedom other spaces don’t. That means you can experiment more freely there than almost anywhere else. Who knows where you came from, or where you’re going? No matter what outfit you choose to wear, there’s a destination that will surely be appropriate for it. The same liminality that others use to dress down, you can use to dress up!

Finally, a reminder that, in a time where many have abandoned good taste, there are still excellent reasons to dress properly. In our piece on dressing for civilizational decline, we point out that in situations where the customs are lacking, you can draw on the true source of dignity to dictate your wardrobe:

When you derive your value from God and not the world, you can dress to reflect this truth. This is because custom is secondary to natural law. Where custom is evident, it can help inform our choices, like not wearing a three-piece suit to a waterpark. However, in situations where custom is unclear and there is room for dignified dress, natural law, because of its transcendent origin, is the final arbiter.

Dressing well can feel unnatural at first. As you put on clothes you’re not used to wearing, you might feel a bit out of a place. Like a poser, even. You want to look natural in what you wear, but it doesn’t seem to come, well, naturally.

People talk about sprezzatura, that Italian buzzword which conveys a sense of effortless elegance. But actually, what it really conveys is the appearance of effortless elegance. In practice, it often means taking 30 minutes to adjust your pocket square so it looks like you slipped it into your jacket without a second thought.

In other words, it’s rather vain. And certainly not “natural”.

So what’s the real key to looking natural in what you wear? To ensuring your clothes feel like an extension of yourself, and not just a costume you put on in the morning?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot the past few weeks, as I realized that much of the stuff that would have once felt odd on me — a summer jacket, an ascot, etc — now feels like an afterthought. As in, sometimes I literally forget I’m even wearing it. What I realized is that actually, feeling natural in your clothes is way easier than most people think.

So what’s the secret? As it turns out, it’s no different from anything else you do…

Read more

Why do people zone out when you talk? Why aren’t people jumping at the chance to meet up with you?

Sure, everyone’s busy. But people make time for what matters to them. Everyone knows someone so engaging that you’d gladly rearrange your schedule just to have dinner or a long conversation with them. So when it comes to being someone others genuinely want to spend time with, the old dating adage applies: "if they wanted to, they would."

So why don't they? It turns out, there's both an art and a science to being interesting, and everything from what you think to what you wear plays a role. Today, we look at the steps you can take, both big and small, to be the most compelling “you” you can be.

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

Seek to Be Interested, Not Interesting

Perhaps the world’s second worst crime is boredom. The first is being a bore.

-Cecil Beaton

Before you begin “making yourself interesting,” you’ve already taken a wrong step by focusing on yourself. At least, that’s according to writer-philosopher Alan Watts, who wrote about the great paradox of interest; to become interesting requires you to lose sight of yourself in something external:

You don’t get the full development of human personality by trying to cultivate personality. Did you ever hear of anybody who had true personality who got it through taking a course on how to win friends and influence people? Or how to be a real person? You never did. It’s rather: when you forget about your personality, and you become interested in something else, that you become interesting to other people.

Rarely is someone’s personal life so compelling that it suffices as a topic of dinner conversation. Rather, the people who hold other’s attention are those who animate their conversation with the zeal of the truly passionate. Studies have shown that the traits that make people seem boring are things like being passive, obsessed with one’s own life/problems, and displaying low to no enthusiasm. People considered interesting, however, were more able to contribute information to conversations, or able to share their thoughts and feelings while not centering things around themselves.

The best way to contribute information is to know it, and, to Watt’s point, the best way to know a lot about something is to become so enamored with it that it makes you forget yourself. Even if you can’t immediately think of a subject that makes you feel that way, there are ways to brute force this effect.

Writer/journalist Malcolm Gladwell once explained his method for finding stories as picking something mundane, like shampoo or pasta sauce, and researching until he found what was truly interesting about that topic. With a bit of patience and effort, anything can be compelling, if you only dedicate enough time to find it fascinating.

Fortunately, however, it’s likely you already have interests and won’t need to pull a Gladwell by researching random topics. Simply giving way to your natural curiosity and diving headfirst into things will give you enough to start.

But spending hours on something that makes you forget yourself is not enough. In fact, the main way most people do so is actually making them more boring, not less…

Track Your Phone Use (and Be Horrified)

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity.

-Ephesians 5:15-16

If you’re like a majority of the world, you (likely) have a problem with life-deadening screentime. So if you haven’t already, activate whatever personal screentime consumption metrics you can and watch your beliefs about your digital habits crash into the cold jagged cliffs of reality.

Research shows people vastly underestimate how much time they spend basking in digital light. In a way, this makes perfect sense. Insensitivity to sloth, like insensitivity to any sin, is the result of a gradual hardening against its aggressions on the soul. The more you indulge, the more calloused you become, and the less you take stock of what it’s doing to you.

Psychologically, this can act as a defense mechanism to maintain your sense of self as a “good person” when you continuously act in ways that contradict that belief. As a result, you either modify your bad behavior or your perception of that behavior. Recognizing the problem with quantifiable data, and being shocked enough to change, is an important first step.

The reason this comes up in a discussion about being interesting is that endless reels or Twitter scrolling can feel like developing an interest, while the format itself actually prevents this from happening. This is due to “context switching,” where the frequent bouncing of your attention from one topic to another in rapid succession prevents the retention of meaningful information. That interesting reel on exotic animals or a scientific formula will be a non-memory when you try to summon it up at your next dinner party, and the deficits in working memory and lower recall means almost nothing you saw doomscrolling becomes a part of your knowledge bank.

This black hole of time and empty educational calories makes you less interesting than a person who spent those hours doing things they can remember. So if you think you’re boring people, managing screentime is a necessary first step on the road to recovery.

But even if you put the phone down and stare at the wall to recover your attention span, it isn’t enough, because there’s still an active element required of you…

Stop Waiting For Life to Happen

I have led a toothless life, he thought. A toothless life. I have never bitten into anything. I was waiting. I was reserving myself for later on—and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone.

-Jean Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason

In The Beast in the Jungle, author Henry James tells the story of John Marcher, a man living in dreadful anticipation of some great calamity he senses will someday befall him. Marcher can’t explain the nature of this catastrophe, which stalks him like a beast hidden in a jungle, but he knows it will be ruinous. Not wishing to afflict anyone with his curse, Marcher makes few friends, and refuses to court the one woman who expresses interest in him. By the end of the novella, Marcher comes to a frightening realization that the tragedy that would define his life was just how little he lived, waiting for it to start.

Similarly, many people spend their lives with what you could call Harry Potter syndrome; waiting to be discovered not for what they have done, but simply because they contain some hidden greatness or are intrinsically “special.” This thinking places all the effort on others to discover why they should care about you, and the truth is, it’s your responsibility to give people a reason to be interested. This passive mentality is pure poison to an aspiring interesting person, as it is entirely inward focused and the exact opposite of Watt’s advice.

So no, no one is coming to save you from your uninteresting life, but the good news is, no one is going to stop you from starting an interesting one, either.

And this being Letters from the Old World, we can’t help but make a bit of a sartorial suggestion to start you off.

Wear Your Interests on Your Sleeve

From the wreckage that was the mid-2000s pick-up artist “scene” came one piece of advice worth incorporating into your wardrobe: the idea of “peacocking,” or wearing interesting pieces of jewelry or clothing that inspires curiosity. By having something that invites questions from others, you not only provide entry points to conversation, but you share niche passions which would otherwise not be brought up.

But while pick-up artist “peacocking” is clumsy and ostentatious, picking a wearable conversation piece can — and ought to — be as subtle as the pattern on a tie or pocket square. Take, for example, Evan’s cufflinks in the photo below, which feature an engraving of his home state:

Small accessories like this are meant to be noticed eventually rather than immediately. You don’t want to draw attention to them, but you’ll probably be surprised by how often they come up organically in conversation. You don’t have to dress tacky like the free money guy, just wear something that has special meaning for you, and let things take their course from there.

You Are On Your Own

There are dozens of ways to break get granular about this topic (like suggestions to join a club, hone a skill, work on your public speaking, etc.), which is why this quick overview is simply intended as a springboard. Once you identify the main issues that stand in your way, you can focus on becoming passionate about something outside yourself, putting down the anti-memory formation devices, and taking action any way you can.

But beyond that, the way that you in particular will become a person worth knowing must be left to you. We can’t tell you to learn all about a certain topic or to pursue a certain athletic/intellectual endeavor and pretend it’s one-size-fits-all advice. At the end of the day, it’s simply about finding the things that speak to you in such a way that you can’t help but live your life in their pursuit, and make people want to know how your search is going.

As the majority of our Friday articles are for the fellas, this week we wanted to offer something special for the ladies. If you would like to read more from Aliénor in the future, let us know in the comments.

Regular programming to resume in August (we’re off next week!).

Have you had a good day? More importantly, have you lived it with style?

Glance at the watch upon your wrist. Whether time is your faithful companion or the incorrigibly hurried gentleman with whom you maintain a more complicated relationship, today we invite you to follow a woman who seeks to bring style to every hour of her day.

But first, what do we mean by style? We have already explored elegance as a matter of harmony that that touches every aspect of life. It’s what allows you to remain true to yourself, even as the hours change. What follows, then, is an invitation to dress your own hours in the same spirit, guided by the conviction that style reveals itself in the smallest details of everyday life.

We should also remind our dear reader that, just as Stefan Zweig titled his celebrated novel, if we are to follow twenty-four stylish hours in the life of a woman, we are following the day of a woman, not the woman. There are, after all, as many ways to live a day as there are women to live them, and no two days are ever quite the same. We would therefore be hard-pressed to write a book equal to the result of such an astonishing mathematical equation.

Just as the hands of a clock move ceaselessly onward, so our attention throughout this woman’s day rests upon the seamless flow from one activity and obligation to the next. We therefore offer these reflections mindful of the fact that no woman passes through her day dragging behind her a heavy trunk—or indeed an entire bathroom. Everything required for her style, we would suggest, ought to fit inside her beloved handbag. Is it not often said that a woman’s handbag contains her whole life? And for that very reason, one should never presume to search through it without her permission.

So let us set our heroine a challenge: to race against the clock without ever enjoying the luxury of returning home between the many engagements that fill her day. We shall see that she can emerge from this trial not only victorious, but impeccably stylish.

To that end, let us divide these twenty-four hours into four parts, just as we commonly divide the day by its four meals. For you will soon discover that style concerns far more than the clothes you wear. It extends to the appearance of your home, to the care devoted to cultivating your circles of family and friends—in short, to everything you see, hear, breathe, taste, and touch.

Night has now given way to dawn. Our heroine’s alarm has just sounded. And with the rising of this beautiful summer sun, our odyssey through the hours begins…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

I. The Domestic Hours

Tea or coffee? Our woman knows that upon waking the body asks for three things: hydration, warmth, and light. So first, a few sips of water to set the machine in motion. Then, a second measure of water, this time not for herself, but for the kettle.

What a lovely kettle it is. It may seem a small thing, yet choosing one that matched her cups and the soft green-striped kitchen towels when she first furnished this modest little kitchen is a pleasure she has given herself every morning since. Such tiny details belong to the realm of things no one is ever obliged to do. And yet that gentle shade of green repeated throughout her city apartment creates a kind of quiet tableau, one that is sometimes enough to restore good spirits after a restless night.

But whatever the night may have been, it is over now. Let us throw open the windows to welcome the fresh air and the morning light so essential to our well-being, and which make our homes more beautiful with each passing day.

She also knows, having read it often enough and confirmed it through experience, that the body emerges from sleep beneath an ancient surge of cortisol. Since she has no desire to place her day under the sign of unnecessary stress, she chooses a breakfast rich in simple proteins. Yesterday it was fresh cheese with almonds and fruit. This morning it will be scrambled eggs on whole-grain toast, served upon a plate striped in the very same green as her coffee cup (and her kettle).

And so, for the first time that day, both body and eyes are satisfied, while the house fills with the mingled scents of fresh air drifting in through the open windows and breakfast rising from the kitchen.

It is a gentle scene. Antique engravings depicting the pastoral life of the Grand Siècle adorn the tall white walls, their quiet elegance set against oak floors and a modern American-style range. The room itself is simple, almost spare, yet once again we see that beauty so often arises through contrast.

Upon her white wooden bedside table rests a small stack of unfinished books. We all know what it is to collect books forever begun, each one a promise of a world we never quite finish exploring. There are paperbacks whose pages she can dog-ear without too much remorse as they accompany her in her handbag, alongside handsome old editions with yellowed pages that seem to breathe the air of vanished centuries.

Among them rests an eighteenth-century edition of the works of Jean Racine, annotated in pencil by an unknown hand sometime in the 1860s. It was purchased less out of any urgent desire to read its contents than for the quiet delight of bringing home two traces of history at once: that of the great playwright himself, and that of the anonymous reader who encountered him generations later.

Our libraries, after all, are the wardrobes of our minds. We should want them to be eclectic yet harmonious, composed of both new and vintage volumes, but above all full of books chosen simply because they have captured our hearts.

II. The Busy Hours

But time is passing!

Speaking of wardrobes, what does our heroine’s day actually hold? The answer to that question determines another that concerns us greatly: What shall I wear today?

Like a well-crafted recipe, a successful outfit depends upon three essential ingredients: one’s schedule, one’s mood, and the day’s weather. Bring these three into harmony, and there is very little chance of making a sartorial mistake.

Today’s agenda includes several hours of work in the city center, an errand requiring a twenty-minute walk, a long-awaited reunion with a dear friend, and dinner afterwards. So she leaves in her wardrobe the towering heels reserved for formal occasions, along with that charming satin dress which, lovely though it may be, is hardly suited to a professional meeting, even if it would have been perfect for the evening’s social engagements.

Yet moving briskly through the city does not mean resigning oneself to flat shoes. A pair of leather sandals with a sensible five-centimeter heel offers exactly the right balance: graceful enough to flatter the leg, practical enough to keep pace with the day.

Another dilemma arises. Since we have challenged her to move directly from work to her evening plans without the luxury of changing clothes, how can one outfit serve both worlds?

The answer, once again, lies in contrast.

Certainly she would regret greeting her dear friend in an overtly corporate ensemble—a matching blazer and trousers paired with a sober blouse—even though modern tailoring offers many such outfits with undeniable femininity. But what if she simply separated the suit?

The trousers remain, while the blazer gives way during the workday to a romantic sky-blue blouse adorned with delicate floral motifs, perfectly suited to the beautiful summer day unfolding outside. She has not forgotten that these clothes must accompany her on foot beneath the July sun. The blouse is pure cotton; the trousers are woven from a blend of cotton and linen.

One brief stop at the ironing board is obligatory. Here again is one of those details that seems unnecessary, until one sees the difference. The same is true of slipping a leather belt through the belt loops, even though the trousers were never in danger of falling to her ankles.

She smiles, recalling Théophile Gautier’s famous preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, in which he distinguishes beauty from utility. The belt is not there to hold up the trousers. To begin with, choosing garments properly fitted to one’s figure is among the first principles of elegance. More importantly, she has learned that defining the waist gives the silhouette its proper proportions and pays tribute to the beauty of the feminine form.

All that remains is to gather her hair into a chignon. A simple claw clip will do if time is short, while a handful of discreet pins can create the classic French twist that beautifully frames the profile, lengthens the line of the neck, and frees her from having to fuss with her hair twenty times before the afternoon is over.

A few drops of her favorite perfume, plus her cherished jewelry worn as a kind of personal signature. (We may return another day to the remarkable power of jewelry.) With that, she is ready for everything the day has in store.

But we can already hear the question forming: what of the evening, with its leisurely seated dinner, surely calling for attire a touch more refined?

Our friend, as it happens, has more than one trick tucked away in her handbag.

III. The Social Hours

Fast forward, and the little hand of our protagonist’s watch has already begun its second circuit of the day.

The ordinary duties of work have been discharged, making way for an evening of leisure in a more festive atmosphere. If lunch consisted only of a light salad, freshly prepared at the café just around the corner from her office, it was because she had every intention of enjoying a richer dinner later: richer both in nourishment, and in delight.

And here, at last, is the answer to the question we posed earlier: if an evening out calls for attire more elegant than that of the workplace, what is one to do?

“It depends upon the dress code,” you may say.

Certainly. But that is not the case here. Evening belongs to a different world than day, and marking that transition—however unnecessary it may first appear—plays no small part in rest, renewal, and the simple joy of living.

This is precisely the idea behind what sociologists have come to call the Third Place: that setting which is neither home nor workplace, but a space where one is free to become another version of oneself. Distinguishing this third sphere from the first two is also the perfect opportunity to step into an entirely different mode of dress.

Had she been able to return home, she would no doubt have exchanged her blouse and trousers for that little satin dress and a pair of high heels. But what is one to do when the luxury of that stylish interlude is denied?

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“Everything you want is on the other side of being cringe.” Perhaps it’s an idea you’ve heard before. In order to achieve your dreams, so it’s said, you must first endure the discomfort of being judged and potentially ridiculed by others. But is this true?

Unfortunately, the short answer is often yes, but not simply because Gen Z decided to label any degree of perceived effort as try-hard or “cringe”. No, this is a phenomenon deeply ingrained in the human psyche, and it’s been around for ages.

But rather than being a cause for despair, it can instead inspire you: because once you know how the game works, you can play it to your benefit. When others’ reactions are predictable, you can plot your course around them safely. It’s like sailing through a shoal-ridden bay, except now you have a map that tells you exactly where the shoals lie.

Today, then, we look at the reasons why being beats becoming in the social hierarchy, why trying is perceived as negative, and why those who push through the cringe to finally “arrive” suddenly get all their actions retroactively legitimized.

Fortunately, going from cringe to cool is much simpler than you think. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

Being Beats Becoming

In the social hierarchy, being outranks becoming. Or, in other words, trying to be is viewed more negatively than simply being.

The reason for this is that trying is a confession of position. In striving for something more, you reveal what you don’t already have. This means that visible effort becomes something of a class signal, pinpointing where you fall in the social hierarchy.

This effect is then compounded by several factors. The first is the fact that people dislike dynamic social ladders. For as much as they might claim to be in favor of “social mobility”, a dynamic social ladder often results in their discomfort and insecurity. The reason why is that people naturally prefer stable and predictable social environments, in which their role is known and defined. If their relative status within that environment is constantly in flux because of the upward or downward movement of those around them, then their own position — and thus their security — feels threatened.

Another factor is that the success of someone else within one’s own social environment is often interpreted, at least subconsciously, as a judgment on one’s own effort. “If that person can succeed and move up in status, why can’t I? What am I doing wrong? What’s wrong with me?” These are the questions asked by an honest conscience, but all too often buried and ignored by a prideful or insecure one.

To avoid the discomfort of cognitive dissonance, the mind opts to preserve its esteemed judgment of itself and instead point the finger at others, labeling them as try-hards or social climbers. This naturally results in what’s called “tall poppy syndrome”, a phenomenon in which people who stand out from the crowd are criticized or resented by those around them.

In short, people hate becoming. But yet, it’s the only way you’ll ever achieve your goals…

The Effort of Effortlessness

I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.

-Cary Grant

Cary Grant is often regarded as one of the most suave men to ever grace the silver screen. From his consummate cool to his impeccable wardrobe, few could compete with him in his prime. But, of course, his apparently effortless style was anything but.

As his quote at the top of this section attests, Grant intentionally strove to cultivate his public persona and become the man he wanted to be. This necessarily required the effort of becoming. But what Grant realized is that moving from becoming to being wasn’t enough. He instead had to look as if he had always been.

This reveals another major aspect of the cringe-to-cool pipeline: that to possess social capital is one thing, but to look as though you have always possessed it is quite another.

To illustrate this, let’s take the accumulation of wealth. A man first reveals his social position by embarking on the pursuit of wealth and striving to earn more. He is most vulnerable to criticism while in the process of becoming, ie., accumulating his wealth. Once he possesses it, he is now being, and exempt from much of the criticism he endured while becoming. But because he is new to wealth, he still lacks the prestige of having always been, which constitutes the highest rank in the social hierarchy.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to invent a fake origin story in order to make it seem like you’ve always been and be accepted by your peers. There’s another way to spin the narrative of your success once you’ve made it to the top. In fact, this is the key to making everyone forget you ever did anything “cringe” in the first place.

Retroactive Legitimization

So, what’s the secret to transforming your cringe into cool? The answer is simple: success.

While trying is unforgivable as it happens, your arrival at the top suddenly changes everything. The class signal flips, and the narrative rewrites itself. Now, instead of calling you a try-hard, people say “he was always going to make it”. Once your success appears like it was inevitable, all of your effort and trying is forgiven.

Let’s return to the example of new money: even if you haven’t always been wealthy, your new position of being wealthy is justified because the always been applies to something else: for example, your character and work ethic. You have always been a winner, it just took time for that to become evident to all. Where you were once criticized for trying, you are now lauded for your perseverance and vision.

But why? Why does success legitimize everything? The reason is that once your success appears as though it were inevitable, that sense of inevitability makes it seem like the trying didn’t have to happen. It was just someone becoming who they were always meant to be, not someone striving to become someone they are not. Order is restored to the social hierarchy, and the world is safe and predictable again.

Of course, this is all nonsense. No success is inevitable, nor does it come about without great exertion of effort. But people love to live under their comfortable illusions.

You don’t have to agree with the rules of the game to play by it. Simply by knowing how people will react when you begin to strive for something greater, you can feel more confident in shrugging off their early criticisms. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. Remember, all will be forgiven once you achieve success.

My hope in writing this is that by helping peel back the curtain on how this aspect of human psychology works, you feel more empowered to pursue your higher calling. Start dressing better, working out, or studying French in your free time. Don’t worry about what others think, or about feeling like an imposter. By simply persevering in your course, you’ll eventually become the man or woman you seek to become. And when you do, everyone will celebrate your success and claim it was inevitable.

“I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.” May it be the same with you.

Now, don’t get me wrong: a well-fitting suit with classic proportions can be extremely elegant. Worn properly, it surpasses practically every other type of men’s garment. However, these are not usually the suits you buy off the rack in the department store.

Recently, I came across a video of the Christian apologist Wesley Huff presenting a lecture series for Peterson Academy. Unfortunately, his outfit was a textbook example of how not to wear a suit. It made him look unserious, and many viewers even joked about his appearance in the comments.

Here’s a still from the video:

The fact Wesley’s attire garnered so much negative attention is unfortunate, because it distracts from his message about the historical reliability of the Bible. But it also proves a point we’ve harped on much here at Letters from the Old World, namely that your appearance plays a role in how your ideas are received.

As we wrote in our article God Wants You to Dress Well:

If you hold to a conception of Christian faith, then you are called to evangelize to the world. The best tool of evangelization you have is how you lead your life. You can talk about how you’ve given your life to something greater and how it has transformed you, but if your appearance is immature or unkempt, then your clothes work against what you’re trying to convey.

The point of this article is not, however, to simply critique Wesley and leave it at that. It’s to show what you can do to avoid these same mistakes, and specifically what you can look for in a suit to make sure it enhances your authority, instead of undermining it.

To see what I’m talking about, check out the image below. I sat down with ChatGPT and requested it make 5 simple changes to Wesley’s attire. The result? He looks like a totally different man:

Now before we proceed, I must first apologize to Wesley for not taking the time to snag a more flattering screenshot/facial expression. Objectively speaking, Wesley is a good looking guy and (for all I know) a man of character, so I don’t want anyone to think this email is about tearing him down. For that reason, I’m including the photo below, which is a much better representation of what Wesley actually looks like:

With that preface out of the way, let’s now dive into the five things I changed in Wesley’s attire so you can see exactly how, and how not, to wear a suit…

1) Color

In my first edition of What’s In a Fit, I wrote about why clothes should be an extension of your facial features:

Contrary to popular belief, dressing well isn’t just about learning which colors and fabrics go well together. It’s about learning what actually looks good on you: it’s intensely human and personal, because no two people are alike. “Just buy a suit” is awful advice. Instead, you ought to focus on things like picking colors based on your skin tone, and mirroring the degree of contrast in your face with the degree of contrast in your clothing. In short, your dress should be an extension of your natural features.

The colors of Wesley’s shirt, suit jacket, and tie aren’t working out for him because they drain the color (and life) from his face. If he didn’t change literally anything else about his outfit except for the color, he would still look 10x better. Either of the two options below beat the original washed-out gray:

But you don’t even have to go so far as to change the color of your suit and shirt. Simply by wearing a tie that mirrors the natural color in your face (instead of draining it) you can make a world of difference. Check out what happens when you replace Wesley’s gray tie with a warm red one:

If you want to learn more about how to dress for your body type, check out my intro to classic style article, as well as my menswear's guide to color. In the meantime, we’ll proceed to outline the other four things I changed in Wesley’s outfit.

Because once you’ve masted color, you need to look to the details. These are the things that you might never consider, but which once you see, you’ll never overlook. Of these, nothing makes more of a difference than the next item on our list.

For most guys it’s afterthought, but it has a disproportionate impact on how you appear to others…

Read more

Last week, we shared an article about the nature of feminine elegance. In it, we explored the idea that elegance is “not merely a question of appearance, but the outward expression of an inner order.”

This inner order is principally established by living in harmony with the three main parts of your being: body, mind, and soul. But, of course, harmony isn’t limited to the interior life. No less important to cultivating elegance is living with consistency across the different aspects of your “exterior” life.

Today, we explore the three main elements of your public persona, which aspects of American culture make it difficult to live a harmonious public life, and the role of clothing in helping you cultivate both interior and exterior elegance…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

Specific vs. Diffuse Cultures

In 1993, Dutch organizational theorist Fons Trompenaars published his landmark book Riding the Waves of Culture, in which he introduced a model of seven cultural dimensions for understanding how societies differ. Building on earlier work in cross-cultural studies, Trompenaars argued that nations and peoples can be understood according to where they fall along these seven dimensions, offering a practical framework for interpreting differences in values, relationships, and social behavior.

One of these dimensions is Specific vs. Diffuse, which describes the extent to which people either compartmentalize or integrate the different spheres of their lives.

In a “specific” culture like the United States, a doctor is expected to be a doctor at the hospital, but simply another person at the grocery store, the gym, or a neighborhood barbecue. In a more “diffuse” culture such as Germany, the status, authority, and expectations associated with being a doctor tend to extend beyond the workplace. These shape not only how others relate to the doctor, but also how the doctor comports himself across a much wider range of social settings.

All of this results in the fact that, generally speaking, an American is more comfortable with being a different person in different scenarios. What’s more, he often takes pride in it. Many a university professor, crossing paths with a student at a barbecue, would secretly be flattered if the student went back to report how cool and laid back — practically a different person! — the professor is outside of the classroom.

That is not to say there is no virtue in cultures that are more “specific” than “diffuse”. But at the very least, having an awareness of your default position within this cultural dimension can provide you the opportunity to ask: what if you are too specific in how you present yourself? And what good might come of being more diffuse?

A Leader On & Off the Clock

For many people, the act of pushing themselves to be more consistent in their public persona often facilitates a major leap forward in personal growth. It is easy to be the leader at work or the pious man at church — but what does it look like to be those things at the gym, the barbeque, or the football stadium?

Living with consistency across all domains of your life can best be achieved by focusing on three things: harmony in your speech, action, and appearance. Let us look first at speech and action, and then return to the topic of appearance.

George Orwell wrote that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought”. Previously, we wrote about the importance of beautiful speech in our article about why language is one of the most profound ways of shaping yourself. When you seek to be consistent with how you speak in diverse social circles, you directly reinforce the integrity of your public persona, and thus live in greater harmony with yourself.

But while consistency of speech is relatively straightforward, consistency of action is much harder to master. For starters, it appears to be an impossible task: how are you supposed to act the same when your status and authority are directly conditioned by your environment? A surgeon might call the shots in the operating room, but he’s a nobody in a professional kitchen.

Upon reflection, what soon becomes clear is that harmony of action has much more to do with internal disposition and locus of control than it does about visible hierarchy and chain of command. A high-agency leader should be able to apply his initiative to whatever situation in which he finds himself, not just when he’s making decisions in the boardroom. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?”, asks Christ. He could just as well have asked, “if you lead when leadership is easy, or if you act when action is easy, what credit is that to you”?

All this said, it is easy to comprehend the importance of being “diffuse” in your actions and words. But your appearance? Why such an emphasis on this?

A Conduit to Character

While everyone agrees that dress is not a substitute for character, few acknowledge the degree to which it can be a channel to it.

Anecdotally speaking, when I consider my career up to this point, I realize that many of my greatest leaps forward came when I began to take how I dressed seriously. But that success didn’t come simply because I impressed a wealthy businessman with my outfit. Instead, it came because I started A) dressing like the man I wanted to become, and B) challenging myself to live up to that man’s standard.

Baldassarre Castiglione, in his 16th century Book of the Courtier, discusses precisely this, and he elaborates on the powerful influence of clothing on both wearer and observer. My friend once summarized it as such:

[Clothing] has the power to draw and to avert the eye, and subconsciously shape our fundamental assumptions of the wearer, from their social standing and wealth to their competence, regardless of the truth.

This point, “regardless of the truth”, is a double-edged sword. Clothing can be used to deceive, but how and who you deceive makes all the difference. Deceiving others is certainly immoral, but deceiving yourself? Now here’s an idea that can lead to virtue!

This is the secret that Baldassare, writing nearly 500 years later, knew long before it was confirmed by science. As we wrote in our article on the symbolic power of clothing, “enclothed cognition” — the persistent influence of clothing on a wearer’s psychology — can be used to influence not just others, but yourself:

One series of experiments gave participants lab coats that were described as either doctor’s coats or painter’s coats, and instructed them to complete visual search tasks. The participants who were told they wore doctor’s coats performed better at their task than those wearing painter’s coat, despite the coats being exactly the same. Another finding was that actually wearing the coat had a greater impact than merely seeing the coat nearby while performing tasks.

Intentionality in what you wear can bear major fruit in your life, as your clothes help you become the man or woman you want to be. Of course, this isn’t to say that a nice suit or dress keeps you from being a jerk. But when you intentionally dress as a gentleman or a lady, the disparity between your appearance and your words/actions becomes more obvious when it is violated. In other words, your dress allows you to better self-police.

For this reason, the clothes you wear have a disproportionate impact on how you live with integrity and consistency in your public persona. If to be elegant means to cultivate an interior harmony in mind, body, and soul, as well as an exterior harmony in speech, actions, and appearance, then a thoughtful approach to what you wear can work wonders in helping you become the person you want to be.

Your dress, after all, doesn’t have to be an impediment to your pursuit of virtue. When considered carefully, it can indeed be a powerful tool in cultivating it.

Much noise has been made online about the multiple heatwaves ripping through Europe this summer, leaving many Americans in disbelief at their European brethren’s lack of air conditioning.

Although there are several reasons why Europe hasn’t yet embraced AC to the same degree as the U.S., this article isn’t about Old World apologia. Instead, it’s about a very practical reality: how do you live in the midst of such heat?

Growing up in the U.S., summer heat was something I never really considered. I can’t remember ever planning my day around the weather in the same way I do now. In America, my list of considerations was short and simple: basically, as long as you don’t run around outside between 1-4pm , you’re set.

In Italy, however, it’s an entirely different story. Here, the weather can feel like a tyrant dictating your every action. You have to call ahead to see if a café or restaurant has AC. You have to go to the earliest Mass you can get to. If you want a respite from the heat, you have to drive up into the mountains for the weekend — but everyone else has the same idea, so everything’s overcrowded and expensive.

In my home, we have one AC unit in the main room of the house. Albeit imperfect, this provides at least a minimum respite from the oppression of all the heat out there. But of course, you can’t spend all day cooped up inside, so what do you do when you finally have to venture out into the humid Lombard summer?

Today, we look at the five things I’ve been leaning on as lifelines, and how they can help you stay cool and elegant wherever you are this summer…

1) Linen Socks

In a previous article, I wrote about coolest fabrics you can wear for summer socks. Of the entries on that list, linen has come out as my overwhelming favorite.

Without sacrificing too much in durability, linen socks remain surprisingly breathable. More impressively, however, they stay dry throughout the day, which is a major win on long afternoons spent outdoors. Even if you wear them knee-high like I do, you almost never notice them trapping heat on your body.

On top of all of this, the vibe of linen socks is simply unrivaled. I’ve been told that if you pair them with linen trousers, carbonara and Chianti taste 10x better.

P.S. —Want to know what shoes to wear with linen socks? Check out my article below:

2) Linen/Cotton Blend Shirts

These have been a real lifesaver for me this summer. We first covered linen/cotton blend shirts in this article, and since then I can’t help but repeat how much of a magic bullet they are.

In that first article, I provided the example of a short-sleeve camp collar shirt made of 55% linen and 45% cotton. Personally, I find this ratio strikes a great balance between structure and comfort in the heat. It works well in both casual and “formal” settings, too. I wear it as a dress shirt in the photo below:

When things get really hot, though, you’ve got to change the ratio a bit. The lightest linen/cotton blend shirt I own is 61% linen and 39% cotton, and it’s a lifesaver in the heat. It certainly wrinkles more, but that’s not your biggest concern when it’s 100°F outside.

Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from going 100% linen, but in my experience linen/cotton blend shirts are always the winning option. By making a small trade-off in breathability, you get more structure and versatility. That latter aspect lets you pair it with more garments in your wardrobe and wear it in a wider range of contexts, which often results in it being the more economical option as well.

But so far, neither of the first two articles on this list compete with the next one, which is easily my favorite sartorial discovery of 2026. The reason I love it is that it’s so paradoxical: despite adding another layer to your outfit, it helps you cooler in the summer heat…

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How can one become more elegant today? It is probably not the question you ask yourself on the eve of your summer engagements. Yet if you are a woman, you still take particular care to match your shoes to the ribbon of your hat, hoping to present the most elegant version of yourself. And if you are a man, you will no doubt find yourself admiring the elegance of your companion at that same event, even though she has followed rules quite different from those that guided the composition of your own attire.

What, then, is feminine elegance, and how does it differ from masculine elegance? You may also ask how a woman can apply this notion of elegance to her everyday life in practical terms. Much ink—and, at times, many tears—has already been spilled over the subject. Yet there are certain questions one never tires of asking, and so here we are once again.

The answer, I believe, begins with a single idea: harmony. In truth, everything is a matter of harmony. Elegance is not merely a question of appearance, but the outward expression of an inner order. Wherever harmony exists, beauty naturally follows.

Saint Augustine offers a helpful starting point. He observes that man is composed of three parts: the body, the mind1, and the heart. Let us resist the temptation to divide our discussion into three corresponding parts, for that would be to misunderstand his point. These three are not meant to exist independently of one another, but in harmony. We could even stop here and tell our dear readers that elegance is simply the free interplay of body, mind, and heart—but while that would not be false, it would not tell the whole story.

For harmony does not concern the individual alone. It also governs the relationship between man and woman. The notion of polarity, to which we shall return, belongs precisely here: each finds its proper fulfillment in relation to the other, and together they become one.

Let us therefore begin with the fundamental idea of balance, which lies at the heart of every harmonious result. We shall first consider the relationship between Beauty and Truth, then the harmony between man and woman, and finally the way that harmony is expressed in the body, the mind, and the heart.

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

I. Elegance as a Form of Beauty

Let us consider, as a practical example, a woman who seeks elegance in every aspect of her life: in the appearance of her home, in the buckles of her shoes, in the grace of her smile, in the meals she serves, in her love of work well done, and in the care she devotes to the different circles of those around her.

If she truly wishes her life to be governed by harmony, she will not deliberately present a sullen countenance to others in her daily life while at the same time displaying sure taste in the way she dresses or keeps her home. No doubt a thousand counterexamples could be offered to what I have just said. But once again, our concern here is harmony in Beauty, not aesthetics in isolation.

To understand this, we must first return to what we mean by Beauty itself. For the remainder of this essay, you will permit me to give the word a capital letter and to step away from my practical example. We are, after all, dealing less with a commercial catch-all than with an idea that touches the soul.

I borrow the emphatic words of John Keats, who had no doubt read Plato, and who tells us:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Indeed, Truth is the condition of harmony between our body, our mind, and our heart. None of these three parts should deceive the other two—or itself. Whatever arises from that harmony will necessarily be beautiful. This is precisely what we commonly mean when we speak of being “aligned with oneself.”

The pursuit of such balance therefore stands opposed to every form of excess. To neglect, for example, the life of the mind in favor of the body, thus pursuing an ideal of beauty that is purely physical at the expense of the intellect, is to break that harmony. One will surely say of such a woman that she is merely beautiful. Or one’s attention will linger upon a purely visual attribute. But the word elegant will never arise.

The converse is equally true, and here I rely upon a well-known remark by Gabrielle Chanel:

If a woman is poorly dressed, one notices her dress; if she is impeccably dressed, one notices the woman.

Once again, the celebrated couturière, who abhorred anything “too much,” points us toward the necessity of harmony, here in the composition of one’s attire.

II. Elegance in the Polarity of Man and Woman

If we are to speak of elegance today, however, we must avoid the following mistake: considering woman exclusively in relation to herself.

Since we are, after all, social beings, we must broaden our discussion to encompass a woman’s relationship with the world. She was not alone in Eden. Her first encounter with otherness was man. Whether that man is her husband, her father, her brother, her son, her colleague, or the neighbor across the hall is not the essential question. Above all, he represents the Other.

I believe profoundly in the harmony of contrasts, and I want no harshness in it. Consider the painter who handles light and shadow so masterfully that the scene before us comes to life. Consider the color wheel, where colors begin to vibrate when placed side by side. So it is with man and woman.

Let us therefore free feminine elegance from the prejudices so often attached to it. An elegant woman is called neither to eclipse man nor to efface herself before him. The two should be in conversation, not at war. The same is true of their respective forms of elegance.

You will no doubt notice, at a Viennese ball, the abundance of shimmering colors displayed by the ladies in all their finery, while the gentlemen are dressed in black and white. Are these men any less elegant than their partners because the uniformity of their dress attracts less attention? Do the ladies, by contrast, appear frivolous because their muslin gowns are less codified, less stratified, we might say? Or does it not seem, rather, that together they create, year after year, the enchantment for which the Wiener Staatsoper is renowned?

See for yourselves: the elegant man and the elegant woman dance together, and the result belongs unmistakably to the realm of Beauty. This is what we referred to earlier as polarity.

Let us now return to our practical example…

III. Elegance of the Body

We have established that Truth is the condition of harmony, and harmony the natural source of Beauty. Let us also remember that elegance is an ideal toward which one ought to strive without obsession. We have already seen that there is nothing good in excess, as is demonstrated once again by the proper accord between our body, our mind, and our heart.

With this in mind, it becomes easy to answer the following question: how does feminine elegance extend beyond clothing and into other areas of life?

To begin with, the primary purpose of clothing is to protect both your health and your modesty. The quality of a fabric matters at least as much as its quantity or its cut. We often forget that our body speaks just as eloquently as our sense of dress. Let us therefore offer our skin natural materials such as cotton, wool, silk, linen, or leather, even if that means owning fewer garments. Better to have a smaller wardrobe composed of pieces chosen with as much care for our well-being as for our aesthetic sensibilities.

Natural materials, however, belong not only in our wardrobe, but on our plate as well. What a pleasure it is to know how to delight one’s guests! Nature, which has little regard for equality, does not bestow that talent upon everyone. Yet even if you cannot prepare a boeuf bourguignon, you can surely choose a simple ribeye with care, preferring to support your local butcher—even if less often—than your neighborhood supermarket.

As we have seen, the elegance of the body begins with the desire to preserve good health, sometimes preferring the certainty of simplicity to the uncertainty of abundance. In a word, choosing quality over quantity is not a matter of asceticism. It is the desire to give our body what is truly good for it.

IV. Elegance of the Soul

The same is true of the intellect. As with the body, elegance consists in giving it what is proper to its nature. If elegance ultimately consists in what is fitting and just, then to be elegant toward oneself is to cultivate the talent one carries within.

Sometimes, by grace, that talent finds expression in the world through what we call work. Aristotle expresses the idea well: “Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.”

Nor should we reduce the elegance of the feminine intellect to the forced accumulation of knowledge. If the great salon hostesses of earlier centuries became patrons of the arts and letters, it was because their natural inclinations led them there. That was their talent.

In France, people once admired the celebrated esprit Mortemart of the Marquise de Montespan. Yet did she therefore possess the elegance of heart more readily associated with her successor, Madame du Barry?2 In practical terms, feminine elegance in matters of the intellect is more readily found in the woman who knows how to cultivate her natural gifts and continually seeks to bring them into harmony with the world than in the one who pursues excess, as we have already seen.

The same principle governs a well-turned phrase as a well-composed outfit: it is never the most sophisticated that succeeds, but the most appropriate.

As for the elegance of the heart, we shall be careful not to presume the role of spiritual director. The heart—or, if you prefer, the soul—is the sacred messenger of this human trinity, and the bond that unites its constituent parts. To put one’s heart into everything one does is already an excellent beginning in the school of elegance. The heart, perhaps more than anything else, protects us from the excess and obsession that isolate us.

Indeed, if we were to define feminine elegance simply as a collection of rules, there would be very little left to say that had not already been said. Elegance, then, does not consist in following those rules without exception. It consists in knowing them as well as one can, interpreting them, embodying them, and allowing oneself, when appropriate, the freedom to depart from them. The heart seems to be precisely what makes such departures possible. In this, you may recognize the spirit of both the Holy Scriptures and the great Romantic movements of Europe.

Each of us carries within the heart a harmony all our own, like a different instrument within an orchestra. Let us not forget that it is the variety of those instruments, joined to their ability to play in tune, that gives a symphony both its substance and its depth.

You will perhaps allow me one final comparison, likening elegance to music or to perfume. After all, both are composed of notes, and one need only avoid the false one. Yet a piece performed by the most virtuoso of musicians, if he pours none of himself into it, will never equal the first waltz by Chopin played on the piano by your own child. Nor will the finest perfume in the world, if it awakens no memory, ever compare with the familiar scent of the person you love.

That, perhaps, is the final word on this question of true and false notes as it relates to feminine elegance.

To conclude, let us consider one last example. In these summer months, feminine elegance will lead you to choose the blouse that flatters your figure, allows your skin to breathe through the softness of its fabric, and is suited to the job interview you are attending that very morning. In a word, it will lead you to choose whatever speaks to your heart while satisfying both your body and your mind.

Last week, PJ and I shared an article about trading your body for beauty. In it, we paid particular attention to the way in which many traditional shoe shapes — such as pointed oxfords, loafers, etc. — can easily deform your feet.

This leads to an important practical question: how are you supposed to simultaneously dress elegantly and ergonomically? Is it even possible to do so? And what about the shoes we ourselves wear? One reader picked up on this latter question in the comment below:

Fortunately, there are indeed ways to wear elegant footwear without sacrificing the health of your feet. You don’t have to throw out all your loafers and resign yourself to sporting sneakers with suits for the rest of your life (in fact, we plead that you don’t do that!). But where do you begin?

There are several approaches, ranging from relatively inexpensive changes to fully bespoke footwear. Today, we outline the best options for you to choose from, so that you can still dress with elegance without sacrificing your body in the process.

More Than a Question of Comfort

But first, let’s reframe the situation at hand. Previously, we’ve written about the importance of investing in your wardrobe: not simply spending more for the sake of spending more, but investing in quality materials, construction build, etc. Our article on the difference between $50 and $300 shoes, for example, highlights why the latter is always a better investment (assuming you’re not simply paying for a name brand).

We’ve also written about how investing in made-to-measure or bespoke suiting is often worth the extra price as well: high-quality garments that are made for your specific body type and lifestyle needs inevitably have a far longer lifespan and get far more wear, thus making them a better choice not just for your wallet, but for the environment too.

But while it feels great to invest in a properly-fitting jacket or pair of trousers, it’s worth pointing out that a poor-fitting version of either won’t necessarily destroy your body. Sure, a poorly-proportioned jacket looks odd. An ill-fitting shirt or trousers are annoying and, in professional contexts, can undermine your credibility. But for as uncomfortable as they are, none of these will change your skeletal structure.

A poorly-fitting pair of shoes, on the other hand, can permanently change your body. Starting with the shape of your feet, their impact can extend to your gait, and later your posture. They can lead to bunions, hammertoes, and even knee or hip problems.

If there is one place to spend money for reasons beyond aesthetics, therefore, it is in your footwear.

This, however, is often the reverse of how most people think. It’s easy (and fun) to obsess of tailoring, fabrics, and proportions, all while your shoes remain an afterthought. But the truth is, they arguably deserve the biggest chunk of your time and attention. If you’re going to splurge on one part of your wardrobe, it should be on the part you can’t go a day without.

But of course, it’s easy to say that you should simply allocate more of your budget to footwear. The real question is, how should you go about it? Where do you go to get good-fitting shoes in a classic style? And with shoe sizes being so inconsistent, how do you avoid the constant trail-and-error of online purchases and returns? What, in other words, is the key to wearing classic footwear that doesn’t destroy your feet?

These are the questions we answer in the rest of this article, by sharing three solutions you can choose from according to the constraints of your time and budget…

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You may not think of yourself as a patron of the arts, but you probably should. If you pay for any form of content, whether it’s a Substack subscription, a streaming service or a music app, you’re likely providing continuous funding to some form of artistic endeavor. Whether it’s government grants for the arts that come out of your tax dollars, or the ad revenue generated by your eyeballs for YouTubers, it all goes towards people making art.

In so many ways, patronage didn’t end with the last of the Medici during the Renaissance, it’s simply been transmuted into forms that don’t carry the same prestige. The problem with these new forms is your contributions to the arts have been made invisible. This passive patronage has made you unaware of how much power you have to change things for the better.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Today, we look at the history of patronage, how its expression has transformed in the modern era, and why you are already a patron yourself — whether you know it or not…

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

The Artists Aren’t Starving… But It’s Close

Artists have never been known for raking in the cash, and according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual income for craft and fine artists in the U.S. in 2024 was $56,260. The bottom ten percent earned less than $29,120, which is not a living wage in any state, and even for those who can live from their work, things are getting worse. One report from 2025 found that most categories of artists lost purchasing power in the last decade, with fine artists in particular losing more than 12 percent of their purchasing power over the last ten years.

This explains why artists are nearly twice as likely to hold second jobs as compared to the general population according to data from the National Endowment for the Arts. In fact, a study from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that more than 1 in 3 artists worked two or more jobs, and those who held at least one job, less than 1 in 4 made more than $50,000 in the last year. That same study found that 37 percent of artists were on some sort of social assistance.

The reason for this economic predicament is that consuming art is cheaper than ever, but it is still costly to make great art, either in time and materials, and often both. Writing a novel, painting a mural or composing a symphony are not overnight affairs, and often require years of study and practice before producing anything remarkable. This runs contrary to the algorithm-driven entertainment economy that demands consistent output but offers mere seconds of attention from its audience. This divide between the reality of the creative process and the expectations of the public is often unbridgeable for lone artists. This is where the patronage system comes in.

What Patronage Was

The system of patronage is simply a wealthy benefactor commissioning and subsidizing a particular artist’s work, often taking an interest not only in the creations, but in the person behind the pen, chisel or brush. The greatest example of this style of relationship is undoubtedly the Medici family, who famously funded many of the Renaissance’s greatest artists, everyone from Michelangelo to Leonardo Da Vinci. They did so not purely out of love of art, but also because of the influence and prestige which they accrued through being associated with the great art they helped produce.

It’s why, centuries later, the Medici, despite not being artists themselves, are still associated with some of the greatest artworks produced by man, a level of renown almost unheard of for families from the mercantile class. By promoting what they loved and valued, those things in turn promoted them, making their name synonymous with loving art.

Despite what you may think, this form of elite support wasn’t relegated to centuries past. Consider Charles Saatchi, a businessman who some claimed singlehandedly kept the young artists of London afloat through the later part of the 20^th century. Matthew Collings of Artscribe Magazine describes his influence in the 1990s thus:

And really you have to admit he’s been an amazing force in the London artworld. At this moment the whole thing more or less depends on him. He just goes round all the shows buying them up. […]

All the young artists go around scratching their heads and wondering what would happen if he just stopped doing it. Would the curators at the Tate Gallery go around buying all that stuff, or the BBC, or the Arts Council, or the Queen, or Sting? No. Hey, the young artists would be broke!

-Matthew Collings, Blimey! from Bohemia to Britpop : the London artworld from Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst

While people like the Medici or Saatchi undoubtedly had an outsized influence on their contemporary art scenes, their method of influence has slowly turned into something far less individual, yet far more powerful…

The New Renaissance

Though the idea of patronage still carries a musty sense of ancient history, the truth is it’s back, bigger and more accessible than ever. Patreon, one of a number of sites that allow “patrons” to support creators they love, says it has more than 10 million active members supporting nearly 300,000 creators.

On Substack, writers earned $450 million in 2025, with more than 50 Substack publications taking in more than a million a year from their paying subscribers. These massive numbers are all the more impressive when you realize that, unlike the artists supported by the Medici, most of this comes from average people. These readers care enough about the work they’re seeing on the platform that they’ll chip in a small amount every month to ensure it continues. It’s a democratization of the patronage system, giving you the opportunity to affect what sort of art makes it into the world, something that was once reserved to the wealthy well-connected.

That doesn’t even take into consideration the vast majority of users on social media platforms who help fund their favorite artists by sampling, promoting, enjoying and sharing the work they love. For example, advertising revenue for YouTube accounts for more than two thirds of the site’s $60 billion in revenue for 2025, a number that got ever so slightly larger with every ad you sat through last year. This means that even if you haven’t paid a cent, your passive online habits are still contributing to the art you want to see in the world.

So while there are a significant number of people patronizing artists in the strictest sense of the word, the majority do not. But going from a passive consumer to an active promoter of the arts is not as difficult as you may think….

Taking the Leap

In case you missed it, last week Evan published a piece in The Culturist about his latest project: the commission of a large-scale portrait to shine light not just on a talented young artist, but on the art of patronage itself. Over the course of the coming weeks and months, the team at The Culturist will be documenting the ins-and-outs of the creation of a beautiful portrait of Saint Catherine of Sienna by Carl-Nikolas von Tiedemann, a 25-year-old classical painter based in Florence.

Though the project has many goals, one of the more unique ones is the promotion of the concept of patronage itself. The idea is to demonstrate that supporting great art is no longer the provenance of the 1%, but in fact a critical component of what you can contribute to the coming new Renaissance of beauty in art and culture.

In pointing out the small contributions you’ve already made to the things you love, the hope is this seemingly lofty endeavor can seem as down to earth as it should be. If you’re on here, odds are you have the ability to support the things you want to see more of. The barrier for entry into the world of patronage, where you can promote the art and values you believe in, has been smashed to pieces thanks to the internet. You can find any number of artists online who want to make the work you want to see, if only they could afford the time to do so. Whether through personal Patreon, app subscriptions or direct commissions, there’s never been an easier time to help get art made.

To put cash behind your convictions sends a universal message, one that says “this needs to exist, and I am willing to sacrifice for it.” Whether it’s buying someone a coffee or commissioning a full piece, there are countless ways for you to make the shift from a passive to an active supporter. The great patrons of bygone eras knew that beauty needed supporters to help bring it into the world, and acted accordingly.

The question is: will you?

John F. Kennedy is one of the most famous American style icons. Tied in popularity only with characters like James Bond and Indiana Jones, JFK stands apart primarily for being a real person.

It’s easy enough to curate a style and uniform for a character who only has to appear for 120 minutes in a film, but what JFK did was far more impressive. He consistently met and exceeded style standards in an era when the current dominant casual norms were starting to gain ground.

According to those who knew him, Kennedy’s style wasn’t carefully planned or considered. Kennedy family insider William vanden Heuvel said: “He didn’t spend any time trying to figure out [his appearance], but he had it naturally.” Kennedy had the quiet, understated confidence one would expect of a man of his stature. Whether JFK’s style was planned, natural, or the natural result of the culture he was raised in, there are many lessons you can learn from studying his look.

When you look at photos of the late president, there are consistent features across his outfits. They are conservative, generally in color and cut. They are sufficiently modest and formal, but he always looks cool and effortlessly confident.

But how can you replicate these feelings and attributes without looking like a schoolboy or overly anachronistic? That’s exactly what we dive into today, as we examine some of the standout characteristics of JFK’s wardrobe, and how you can incorporate them into your own.

Less is More

JFK’s style stands out in its simplicity. Rarely is a style so iconic with so few colors and accessories. This becomes especially clear when you look at his formal wear. As President, he wore suits only in blue and grey. In his casual outfits, he would branch out into shades of khaki and, even more rarely, brown.

A closet full of a wide range of colors can benefit a man with a particular flair or confidence. Average men are often better suited to a limited color palette. Personally, I prefer a variety of earth tones and tonal blues. Sometimes I wear an outfit entirely composed of complementary shades of indigo.

Kennedy’s style was an extension of his personality as a man. His clothes were a complement and a support to his actions. This is a boon for men who want to communicate a clear message with their style and clothes. In serious moments, his solid dark suits said, “I am ready.”In lighter moments, out on the ocean yachting, a light colored outfit says, “I too am ready… for fun.”

Don’t Be Afraid of Trends

The monoculture of the past is dead, and with it also died our innocent love of trends. In the past, hating the mainstream was the domain of the rejects or those who chose to live on the margins. But today, nothing is as cool as being different from everyone else.

It’s interesting how much everyone loves JFK’s style today, considering he was the figurehead for many of the biggest trends of his age. JFK is praised more for his casual fashion than his suits, and that’s a shame. An assessment of Kennedy’s style is incomplete without an overview of his personal take on formal style. His suits were emblematic of the era in which he lived.

Leaving the 1950s behind, the designers at Brooks Brothers noticed that the generous fit common to that decade wasn’t suited for Kennedy’s slim frame. Brooks Brothers took action by making a slimmer cut available to fit his frame better. This pivot towards slimmer cuts, lapels, and ties would be emblematic of the mainstream style of the 1960s, and Kennedy led the way.

It’s interesting to note, however, that he never went too extreme in the slimness of any piece. If you look at his suits, they are always cut with enough room in the chest and throughout the leg. In some ways, Kennedy was a leader and also a participant in the defining trend of that decade.

This conservatism was likely a conscious reaction due to his young age in assuming the presidency. The moderate embrace of his era’s trends, while maintaining a fundamentally conservative foundation, allowed JFK to look “cool” while still looking serious and respectable.

This is a lesson in how to authentically embrace a trend. The slimming of suits in the 60s wasn’t just a fad for Kennedy. It was a style that better suited his trim build, and it was a symbol of his youth. Slimmer tailoring leaves less room for a sloppy physique, and Kennedy’s active lifestyle made him the perfect figurehead for the 1960s slim trend. With all the changes in popular style in the last 60 years, JFK’s slimmer suits still look timeless.

Ivy Never Dies

JFK is the Ivy League president. By that, I’m not only referring to the fact that he and his family were perhaps the quintessential Harvard men. In an aesthetic sense, his style was defined by the casual sports-influenced culture of the Ivy League campus that would influence the man he became. JFK was known for being active. He participated in sailing and often played golf. This preference was apparent in the clothing he wore.

Oxford Cloth Button Downs, Polo shirts, chinos, and canvas deck shoes often appeared when JFK went away for a weekend. He was not afraid to fully embrace the sporty casual climate of his preferred activities. It’s important to notice that even in these less formal environments, he always maintained a basic level of formality and decency.

Rarely did he default to the T-shirt and jeans that were becoming ever more popular in the 1960’s. Instead, he would choose a polo or an OCBD without a tie and white canvas pants. This dignified sporty aesthetic is one of the pillars of Ivy League style.

Another interesting detail to note is that he maintained his limited color palette even in his more casual ensembles. Ivy League style is often known for embracing bright colors, especially in its later iterations in the 20th century. But Kennedy maintained his limited palette, whether in a formal or casual environment. Blue, grey, white, and khaki were the foundational colors in every outfit he wore. This made his wardrobe very flexible and versatile.

JFK embodied Ivy beyond specific items like the sack suit, slim tie, and button-down shirt. He embodied its ethos. He lived the life of an educated, hardworking, yet playful aristocrat. He wore his clothes often, and it showed in how naturally each item complemented his body and lifestyle. Clothes showed signs of wear but were neither sloppy nor disheveled.

In the current menswear conversation, men love to talk about how not to look like a try-hard, LARPer, or poser. Everyone wants to cultivate sprezzatura. But back then, JFK had the secret knowledge, and he lived it every day: simply buy clothes that fit your lifestyle, and wear them often.

JFK’s style was an outward sign of who he was and the life he lived. The real value of his style cannot be summed up solely in his embrace of the Ivy League Culture or his limited color palette. The most unique aspects of his style run much deeper than that.

His time as in the United States Navy left a major impact on his personal style, but he never got too bogged down in the particularities of any of his influences. He was never just Ivy, just sporty, or just nautical. Instead, He prioritized the classics and made everything his own.

Mastering this balance is what opens up the potential of a true classic wardrobe. Learning to navigate your own influences using JFK’s playbook is the most valuable lesson you can take from his style legacy, for this is where the real magic happens….

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Photos of the Kayan women of Myanmar always make an impression.

Their culture coils brass rings around the necks of girls at a young age, replacing them as the girls grow. The result is that their women have the appearance of an elongated neck, which is a sign of beauty and femininity within their culture.

What they’re actually doing though, is not elongating their necks, but pushing their collarbones and ribcages downward, which results in reduced pulmonary function and higher cortisol, among other issues. In so doing, they are, knowingly or unknowingly, sacrificing parts of themselves at an altar of beauty.

While their example seems extreme in a Western context, the truth is we are all doing some version of this. The things you wear are rife with articles that demand trade-offs, small sacrifices that seem normal because everyone is doing it, but actually have real consequences.

That’s why today, we look at the accessories that are eroding your health, the difference between right and wrong bodily sacrifice, and why you are called to something greater than what the world expects.

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

What Are The Problems?

Cutting straight to the chase: a lot of what you wear causes you health issues and deformities. The issues with your shoes alone could be their own article. The shoe has a 50,000 year history of shaping feet, so its unsurprising that modern shoes draw their design from ancient forms whose benefits are lost, yet whose trade-offs remain.

Consider that the tapering of shoes today stems from a combination of ancient European preferences for pointed shoes, and the benefits of tapered points to horse riders wanting to easily slide into stirrups. Neither of these considerations are alive to you today, yet their influence is still squeezing your feet into too-tapered shapes that are painful, unnatural, and cause weakness and deformity. Elevated heels, an innovation meant for stabilizing horse archers as they shot from the saddle, today are responsible for changing the pelvic tilt and spine of their wearers, causing back pain, and placing additional stain on knee and hip joints.

If you wear heels for long enough, they’ll even shorten your calves and Achilles tendon, making it painful to walk without them. It’s no exaggeration to say these ancient preferences are causing millions of hammertoes, bunions, and chronic pain conditions that could have been prevented if we’d only update our shoe preferences.

This isn’t limited to shoes, though. A preference for tight bras or corset-like wear creates indents in the skin, prevents lymphatic drainage (which helps rid the body of toxins) and compromises your ability to breath properly. The skinny jeans trend, though now thankfully behind us, left a trail of damaged nerves, numbness and pain in its wake, albeit temporarily. Studies show the preference for cheaper synthetic fabrics in the late 80s and 90s may have caused lowered sperm counts and shrunken testicles, an issues that becomes increasingly important as fertility rates continue to plummet worldwide. Tight rings can lead to embedded ring syndrome, constricting nerves, damaging tissues and at its worst causing necrosis.

The list goes on and on, but the takeaway remains the same: you are likely wearing something that trades your health for looks.

But your body was not meant to traded off piecemeal like this. It has a greater purpose.

Your Body: Tribute or Temple?

In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul warns the church there that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, given by God, and that they should honor God with their bodies. Your body, in other words, is not a series of objects to be molded and transformed by the whims of culture. It’s the greatest gift you’ve received, a hallowed space in direct connection with the divine.

Just as you shouldn’t alter a church for the sake of cultural trends that will soon fade, neither should you trade the natural beauty of the human form for masks that not only hide this beauty, but deform it into something no longer fit for purpose.

By the time your calf muscles shorten from wearing heels everyday, for example, you have made a permanent change to your temple for the sake of appearances. Rather than a home for the Holy Spirit, you make it a home for the spirit of vanity instead, because that is who is receiving your bodily sacrifice, your worship, day in and day out. Whereas typical clothing only layers on top of the body and is mere addition that can be removed without consequences, restrictive pieces that cause both temporary and long term discomfort subtract from the body. The result? “Offerings” of health and mobility, a modern take on an ancient form of worship, one that mortifies the flesh in exchange for favors. Or in this case, trading a God-given gift for a short term aesthetic improvement.

But a sacrifice, and worship, implies a recipient. Who – or what—is accepting these offerings of flesh and life?

Idolatry of Our Age

A great many Chinese monks right down to the middle of the twentieth century followed the practice of burning off one or more of their fingers as a sign of dedication and devotion.

–The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p 243-244

Worship in the sense used in this piece doesn’t need a rigid set of rituals or rules to exist. It only needs to continuously demand a cost of you, one paid without hesitation when asked for. Daily, unexamined repetition is the key, and the object of worship need not even be consciously named.

Likewise, idolatry is not limited to tree worship of golden calves. It is a misdirection of worship, attributing to something unworthy the reverence reserved for God, and reshaping your life towards that thing. Even within religious devotion, we find this genre of sacrifice. Some Hindu ascetics practice devotion by raising their arms to the point that they atrophy, a sacrifice to Shiva. The cult of Cybele had priests who would ritually castrate themselves for their goddess in emulation of the fertility god Attis.

Grim as these examples are, at the very least they were done with an idea of pleasing their conception of the divine or the highest good. When 19^th century women mutilated their bodies with corsets, something which anthropological studies suggest caused lasting skeletal deformations, that sacrifice was done at a lesser altar, to a false god they did not recognize they were worshipping.

This is because it is an idol that hides its cult within culture. Its rituals are “just what people wear” or “what everyone does.” This makes its worship all the more insidious, because it never asks you to name it, only to pay your daily tithe of flesh or bone to it. This is the difference between properly ordered worship and idolatry; the ascetic names their worshipped god, the idolater does not necessarily even know their idol exists.

There is, of course, a difference in scale and kind between castrating clergymen and constricting corsets, but both ultimately engage in a kind of bodily trade for something for which they are willing to suffer. This is not to say, however, that all such suffering is bad…

Sacrifice: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

As with other religious practices mentioned above, Christian tradition has its share of ascetics, people who welcomed discomfort for the sake of piety through self-denial, mortification or fasting. The difference here is both the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice, as no person’s blood can atone for sin the way His did, and the direction of personal suffering towards a God worthy of receiving any sacrifice for His sake.

By contrast, even something as simple as slinging your backpack over one shoulder because it’s cooler can affect musculoskeletal health and ultimately trades well-being for style.

When you allow your body to gradually misshape itself over time, ask yourself if you would do the same for a higher purpose than vanity? If not, why not? The point is not necessarily to encourage your ascent to asceticism, but to have you consider how you treat or mistreat your body, why you make the choices you do, and what they say about your values.

Consideration as the Core of Care

For some of these issues, there are quick fixes. Making sure your clothes aren’t restricting your body, fashion be damned, is an easy first step. Fixing feet that have spent a lifetime being mishappen by bad shoes is another endeavor. There are practical steps, of course. You can look into foot-shaped shoes, go barefoot more often, and do strengthening exercise.

You might even decide that the foot pain is worth it to wear your heels every once so often, while still looking to minimize the negative side effects. Whatever you do, the important part is that you make it a conscious choice.

Perhaps more important than practical changes is to rethink your relationship with your body. Once you decide that a healthy functional body takes priority - both metaphysically and literally - over the cause of looking good, the other decisions become easier by virtue of this guiding principle. A temple, after all, should be maintained and kept beautiful, not sold off piecemeal for lesser idols.

When you consider what to wear or what you have worn up until now, ask whether you are or have been a good steward. In this way, consideration is the great act of care and worship that you can offer in day-to-day dress. What you decide to worship with that act is up to you.

As the West became civilized and noticeably less wild, it developed a complex culture of style, music, and art. The canon of Western style is clearly established: denim, pearl snaps, silver, turquoise, and big felt hats. But it’s not easy to wear these items without looking like a pretender.

Personally, I love Western style. I have a small collection of western wear, and I’d like to think I integrate it well into a general Americana wardrobe without looking silly. Some people claim you need to own cattle or play the guitar on stage to justify dressing in a western style, but that’s false. If ranchers, rodeo stars, and country music artists were the only people allowed to dress western, there would be no industry, and the brands would go bankrupt.

So if you want to try out a little bit of Western style, this article is here to help. We’ll outline the foundational elements of Western style and show you how to integrate them into your wardrobe, even if you’re a city dweller. From shirts to suits to boots and bolos, it’s all in here. Let’s dive in…

Part One - The Basics

Western Shirts

Most western shirts were designed for ranch wear. They are made in tough cotton fabrics like chambray or denim. Some shirts come in plaids, be it actual wool flannel like the Pendleton Board shirt, or a regular “Cotton Flannel.” All of these styles are a part of the shared canon of American workwear materials. They’re hard-wearing, affordable, and most importantly, they look good beat up.

The most Unique and iconic Western detail in shirting is the pointed yoke. The yoke is a shaped piece of fabric located at the back of the shirt, just below the collar, that fits over the shoulders. It provides support and helps the garment hang correctly, contributing to the overall fit and structure. On Western shirts, it is often a second layer and can occasionally be in a contrasting fabric.

If you want a low-stakes way to explore Western style, opting for a Western yoke shirt instead of a traditional one is a great option. The easiest way to do this is with a casual denim work shirt or a flannel shirt. Casual options lend themselves more easily to experimentation and can be comfortably mixed with tweed trousers, chinos, and derby boots.

If you’d like to try out a western yoke but prefer a more elevated formal style, western suits are a great option. The best overlap in quality and aesthetics in a Western suit I’ve found is from Thomas Farthing. The UK-based maker released an entire collection of Western suits, and this brown tweed option is a handsome choice. Western suits can be paired with cowboy boots, but would look just as good with brogued derbies.

There is one other aspect of Western shirting that is a bit more unique: pearl snaps. Snaps as an alternative to buttons are a major convenience. They make dressing a quicker affair, and they easily come undone if a cowboy finds himself caught in a snag or on barbed wire. Today, they’re the most striking detail on Western shirts.

If you feel a bit timid looking into a western shirt, look for an option with a western yoke but normal buttons. If you want something a bit more exciting, a white pearl snap, or even a turquoise snap can be a good next step.

Cowboy Boots

The most obvious item of Cowboy clothing is the eponymous cowboy boot. A tall shaft, a high tapered heel, and a pointed toe maintain comfort and safety when riding a horse. Aesthetically, those details result in boots with a sleek, aggressive look.

Cowboy boots with these details, especially a high heel of 1.5-2 inches, can work with all levels of formality depending on their leather. While most exciting options for casual wear come from lightly colored exotics like alligator or ostrich, the most formal dress boots are made of pristine soft calf or goat leather.

If the big heel typical of proper cowboy boots is a bit too far out there for you, a roper might be a better option. Ropers have a lower shaft, a more blunt round toe, and a shorter walking heel. They tend to be less distinct. If you want a western look without too much pomp and circumstance, a roper is the way to go.

There is a lot of buzz these days about square-toe cowboy boots. They usually have a wide square shape, a lower walking heel similar to a roper, and a roomier shaft. They were initially designed as a more comfortable option for Cowboys who were spending less time in the saddle. This extra comfort has made them the most popular boot style in the last few years, but personally, I would steer clear of them. The most striking look comes from wearing boots with a slimmer toe and a higher heel. If you need comfort, the lower roper heel is the proper compromise. But if you’re choosing to wear boots for the look, this is worth prioritizing.

Before we conclude this section on boots, there is an important detail you might not have considered. The tall, wide shaft of a pair of cowboy boots is going to interact differently with your pants than you might otherwise be used to. While most shoes wrap closely around your ankle bone (even equestrian boots from other cultures, like the Chelsea or Jodhpur), cowboy boots sit away from the ankle.

This means they require a sufficiently sized knee, calf, and leg opening measurement from whatever pants will be paired with them. If your pants aren’t generous enough, they’ll either sit on top of the boots or cling to the shaft. Both are immediate signs of a poser. Make sure you wear pants that fit over your boots with ease.

To clarify, this doesn’t mean that pants have to be wide or baggy to be worn with cowboy boots. In fact, excessively wide pants can look quite bad due to the contrast with slim toes. The Wrangler 13MWZ, the most popular western jean in the world, is a slim-straight fit with a moderate taper below the knee. I prefer to wear wider straight-fit jeans with my western boots, as I prefer a classic mid-century look.

All things considered, though, Western shirts and cowboy boots are easy enough topics to understand. As long as your shirt is tucked into your pants, and your pants aren’t tucked into your boots, it’s hard to go wrong.

But the real secret to embodying an authentic Western style without looking like you’re LARPing comes down to one key skill: formality mixing. Knowing how to pair a dinner jacket with jeans, or boots with a button down—not to mention a cowboy hat!—isn’t something that comes naturally to most.

But fortunately, there are a few rules to follow to make sure you don’t lose your way…

Read more

At Letters from the Old World, we highlight the things that make life beautiful and worth living. Part of that mission involves digging through archives, literal and metaphorical, for hidden gems.

Today, we’re looking at one such gem, a book Charles Dickens wrote for his children and didn’t want published during his lifetime. Luckily for us, though, his descendants would eventually allow the world to read it: it’s called The Life of Our Lord, and is Dickens’s personal retelling of the Gospel narrative.

More than a mere curio, this book has a lot to say about Dickens the man, fatherhood, and handing on your faith to your children. Today, we look at why this short classic is still worth your and your children’s time, and what it can teach you about passing down your values with love.

The post is the first entry in our new segment Old World Reads. In these articles, we’ll look at the hidden and forgotten gems of European literature.

Our hope is that by stepping into the world of these books, you’ll be able to immerse yourself in the artistic currents that shaped Europe’s great cultural tradition, and draw on that inspiration in your own life.

Let us know what you think, and if you’d like to see more posts like this in the future.

A Book that Almost Wasn’t

Dickens wrote The Life of our Lord between 1846 and 1849, the same time period he was working on David Copperfield. It is a small, twelve-chapter retelling of the narrative elements of the New Testament focusing on the life of Christ. Unlike most of his other works, it’s short enough to be read in one sitting, which was likely the intention, as Dickens read the story to his children every Christmas.

He intended the book to remain a private family story, and directed that it not be published until after he and all of his children had died. The manuscript was passed down through the family for decades and was finally published in 1934, following the death of his last surviving child, Sir Henry Fielding Dickens.

Since then, this addendum to the body of Dickens work has waned in popularity, especially in comparison to his more well-known writings like A Christmas Carol. But it’s precisely because it is such an odd duck when counted among his other works that it should interest you.

A Father’s Story Time

All my strongest illustrations are derived from the New Testament: all my social abuses are shown as departures from its spirit.

–Charles Dickens, in an 1861 letter to Reverend David Macrae

There is nothing in The Life that will surprise anyone with knowledge of the New Testament; Dicken’s retelling is a mixture of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, with a smattering of Acts. What makes this work stand out is its personal qualities, including its intimacy, its comedy, and what it reveals about its author’s convictions.

The intimate nature of this writing is evident from its provenance. This was Dickens writing not for money, but for his six children. For such an esteemed author, this small audience was a change of pace, as he addresses them multiple times in both moral exhortations and pleasant asides. His tone, one that is not one-sided and parasocial but rather genuinely parental, lends the writing a warmth that only a father’s story time with his children could have. Take for example Dicken’s explanation of animals found in the Bible that his English children would not have been familiar with:

You never saw a locust, because they belong to that country near Jerusalem, which is a great way off. So, do camels, but I think you have seen a camel. At all events, they are brought over here, sometimes ; and if you would like to see one, I will show you one.

You can’t help but feel charmed at the paternal nature of this aside, pre-empting both his children’s curiosity and their requests, a sign of how intimately he knew their temperaments. There are other small sections like this, such as explaining what certain outmoded words mean, or comparing foreign lands to ones with which his family would be familiar, that make this piece of writing one that is truly meant for a particular family. While the intimacy of this makes it easy to understand why Dickens wouldn’t want it published, it is precisely this deep familiarity, one earnestly meant to make morals and not money, that makes this story so fascinating.

An Author’s Approach to Paternal Advice

As a wise father and editor, Dickens knew what would be worth communicating to his children and what would not. He writes in plain English (for the 19^th century) which is still distinctively Dickens, both in tenor and focus. He pays particular attention to the poor and downtrodden, which, if you’ve read any of his other works, is a recurring concern for him, often pausing his retelling to make the moral instruction clear to young ears.

In chapter 8, he explains who the twelve disciples were and where they came from, making a point to say that they were chosen from among the poor by God as a sign of His love of them. He uses this as a chance to instruct his children on how to conduct themselves around the downtrodden:

Never be proud or unkind, my dears, to any poor man, woman, or child. If they are bad, think that they would have been better, if they had had kind friends, and good homes, and had been better taught. So, always try to make them better by kind persuading words; and always try to teach them and relieve them if you can. And when people speak ill of the Poor and Miserable, think how Jesus Christ went among them and taught them, and thought them worthy of his care.

The warmth and paternal storytelling refuses to gloss over darker parts of the narrative, like the death of John the Baptist or the killing of children that causes the flight to Egypt. Indeed, Dickens knew that these are the necessary cruelties that make the resurrection story all the more glorious, and he does not shield his young listeners here anymore than he does in Oliver Twist or Great Expectations. This, after all, is the father’s role; make your children aware of great evil and the great and the good.

In this way, Dickens precedes the famous line from C.S. Lewis that:

Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.

A Recommendation from the Man Himself

Why rewrite the gospels? Surely the greatest story ever told had been retold enough in the 1800 years prior to Dickens tackling the task. In an 1868 letter to his youngest son, the Victorian novelist explains why he wrote this simplified account for him and his siblings, because: “it is the best book that ever was or will be known in the world, and because it teaches you the best lessons by which any human creature who tries to be truthful and faithful to duty can possibly be guided.” For Dickens, there was no greater story to communicate, and he used his talents to ensure his children would encounter it in a way they could understand, even at an early age.

Throughout his work, Dickens’ love of God and his fellow man shines through. It is this love, the love of the divine Creator, that he was most concerned with inspiring in his children. Even in his last will and testament, Dickens ends by exhorting his family after his death to hold fast to their Christian faith. He knew this was the key to a good life.

He took the time to tell the Gospel in his own way, to ensure that they would receive their moral instruction as only a father can transmit. It’s a lesson every parent should take to heart. You are in a privileged position to share the Gospel, and you should take the time to tell it right.

Remember! — It is Christianity TO DO GOOD always — even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbours as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful, and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them, or of our prayers or of our love of God, but always to shew that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything.

–Charles Dickens, The Life of Our Lord

Learning to dress well can be a challenge in our casual world. Many men have become so thoroughly divorced from the rules of classic style that they are left without a compass. They don’t feel comfortable in a full suit, so they give up and stick to a t-shirt and sweatpants.

But it doesn’t have to be black and white like this. There are all kinds of ways to learn about classic style, and in fact, there is one specific style influence that almost all men connect to: sports.

Whether it’s baseball, sailing, hunting, or golf, sporting pursuits have influenced classic menswear for well over a century. The wardrobe staples they have produced serve as a natural onramp for men with limited exposure to classic menswear.

In this article, we’ll look at how historic pieces of sportswear can serve as “style anchors”, pieces that establish a natural foundation point and make transitioning into classic style easier.

Because sportswear has built-in utility, it’s easy to understand when and how to wear it. Today, we explore three different classic sports, the garments they created, and how you can use them as a reliable fallback option for dressing well in almost any environment.

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

Lessons from the Court

One of the most obvious examples of this easy understanding and the function of a style anchor is the polo shirt. Upon its invention in the 1920s, the lightweight piqué cotton and an unstructured collar made the polo shirt a much more comfortable and practical alternative to the dress-style shirts that were the norm at the time.

When the polo was created, it was a bridge between the stricter formal style of the time and the growing demands of competitive sports. Today, however, the polo shirt is so valuable and versatile because it can work in the exact opposite direction.

The polo is the perfect anchor for helping men dress classically in informal or uncomfortable situations. A shirt with a collar almost always looks better than one without, and the polo is the easy solution to casual or high-demand activities.

Polos already dominate the golf course and the tennis court. But the real utility is in treating it like the style anchor it is. Allow the polo to be the least formal item in your wardrobe, and in return, dressing in a classic style suddenly becomes that much easier.

But while the polo is the most obvious option to start with, the real value lies in examining cultures where sport isn’t just a game, but a way of life. The styles emerging from these next two sporting cultures offer profound lessons precisely because they demand so much from each garment.

When you need your clothes to function well in a variety of environments and occasions, they must either rise to high standards, or be abandoned. The next three pieces we look at stood up to those demands, and became icons in the process. As such, they are the perfect sportswear anchors for a timeless classic wardrobe.

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It’s easy to assume that how you feel in a given space is mostly about you. Besides, if a certain area makes you feel uncomfortable, uneasy or unwelcome, you can (usually) just leave, right? But there’s actually evidence that you’re being alienated from your environment on purpose and the consequences are more dire than you think.

As made evident by the latest big indie film Backrooms and the online story which spawned it, humans know there’s something eerie about spaces made to be used and not loved that elicits dread. It’s an acknowledgement that just because a space is man-made, doesn’t mean it’s made for man. Today’s spaces and structures are increasingly incorporating anti-human designs and systems, sapping your ability to make your own space and attacking the spiritual vitality of your surroundings.

Fortunately, there are thinkers and philosophers who are sounding the alarm, and their advice can help you meaningfully navigate the minefield of modern architecture without losing your humanity.

Our mission here at Letters from the Old World is to share the secrets of Old World elegance, and our approach is two-fold:

1) Every Wednesday, we send a free article exploring the theology and philosophy of why beauty matters, particularly in regards to decor and dress.

2) Every Friday, we send What’s In a Fit, a members-only article exploring practical tips and guidelines for dressing well.

If this resonates with you, then subscribe below to join the aesthetic renaissance.

Subscribe now

Hostility in the Home (and Everywhere Else)

For all the ugliest and most deadening places in the world are made from patterns as well.

–Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way

Architecture is an art form you witness whether you want to or not. Every space, every design choice and every building communicates something. According to philosopher Roger Scruton, this carries with it moral weight and obligation. In his work The Aesthetics of Architecture, he writes that buildings either attract or repel us, even as they serve their useful function. Part of this distinction is made evident in the distinction between a house and a home, for example. But where a home might embody “welcoming,” and a house may be used as a neutral descriptor, the lack of terminology for a “hostile” house exemplifies how this space in the attraction/repulsion spectrum is underexamined. And yet, once you’re made aware of it, you’ll notice it everywhere.

The concept of disciplinary or hostile architecture should raise eyebrows for anyone who cares about community spaces. These are structures put in place in order to discourage people from using them, like the UK’s Camden bench, a design that sacrifices style and comfort (which were once the priorities in a bench) for something that resists stickering, graffiti, or even laying down.

Another example are the metal ticks, sometimes called “pig’s ears”, that added to smooth surfaces and low walls to prevent skateboarding or rollerblading, or layouts of “decorative spikes” placed close together to prevent people from walking or sitting there. Most of these elements are meant to “deal” with homelessness or delinquent youth, but the end result is filling community space with designs that are explicitly anti-human.

Another aspect of the anti-human in design is, as we’ve covered before, the allergy to ornamentation and decorative touches seen in barren buildings, like those promoted by corporate glass tower standards or brutalism. These emphasize the functional over the spiritual, resulting in plain surfaces that feel alien to humans. Such places are built to be enormous and imposing, the opposite of “human scale”, in order to prioritize other things, like cars in the case of many mid-sized American cities, or efficiency in the case of quick-build skyscrapers built during boom years. Modernists also favored large, imposing structures that allowed them to make use of innovations in engineering and technology to create new forms, rejecting classic, historic styles for novelty. This cohort became so distant from the man on the street that they left their fellow humans feeling alienated and ant-like next to their structures.

As on the nose as it may feel, this picture of ivory-towered experts ignoring the wants and needs of those on the ground is more appropriate than you may think…

A Loss of Language and Intuition

In those buildings that serve purely practical purposes, in which the practical activities have been robbed of their poetry—buildings that are mechanized and depersonalized—technical perfection and pure functionality have nothing to do with artistic beauty.

–Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Aesthetics Vol. II

In designer/architect Christopher Alexander’s book The Timeless Way of Building, he writes of the “quality without a name”, which he says is the “root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness.” He attempts to define it by listing concepts that approach but don’t fully encapsulate what this unnamed quality means, like “alive,” “comfortable,” “free,” “egoless” and “eternal.”

To say a place is “alive” for example is difficult to describe, but easy to recognize. It’s the difference between a thriving European side street’s cozy cafes and intimate evening lighting and the sterility of a grey downtown office block’s monotony and unbroken angularity. In short, you know it when you see it.

For Alexander, much of this quality comes from what he calls a pattern language, which for brevity’s sake can be described as a series of patterns, which can include familiar motifs, languages, cultural and practical innovations, recurring in given contexts.

Alexander says that in the early phases of industrial society, pattern languages die as they stop being common, communal knowledge and instead become specialized and the sole domain of “expertise.” Now engineers, planners, architects and consultants are the only ones able to “speak” these specialized languages. According to Alexander, this problem is exacerbated because experts not only guard their language jealously to make themselves indispensable, but they also gatekeep knowledge from rivals and competitors, further removing the pattern language from organic, communal evolution.

Now, most people don’t think themselves capable of designing their environment, as this once practical skill is seen as specialized. Communicating along these lines is no longer an everyday experience as people lose touch with their intuitions. When architects decide that glass picture windows are good, it’s taken as gospel by the average person, even if something within them says they’d prefer being in a room with smaller windows.

This new expert class has developed its own pattern language, one of plate glass and steel, meant to be divorced from particular times and places (while ironically being very much a product of contemporary mores). As Alexander writes:

So long as I build for myself, the patterns I use will be simple, and human, and full of feeling, because I understand my situation, but as soon as few people begin to build for ‘the many,’ their patterns about what is needed become abstract; no matter how well meaning they are, their ideas gradually get out of touch with reality, because they are not faced daily with the living examples of what the patterns say.

Sad as this loss of pattern language and intuition may be, there’s something more important at risk when we make buildings anti-human, something with much larger implications…

Divine Designs

That beauty leads towards the divine is a given within Christian thought. Thus all art, including architecture, has the potential to direct and reflect the divine as a function of its beauty. While this is most evident in explicitly religious structures like churches, every instance of artistic expression carries this potential. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts this elegantly in section 2501:

Arising from talent given by the Creator and from man’s own effort, art is a form of practical wisdom, uniting knowledge and skill, to give form to the truth of reality in a language accessible to sight or hearing. To the extent that it is inspired by truth and love of beings, art bears a certain likeness to God’s activity in what he has created.

This is why giving over the most prominent works of art in your community to experts trapped in trends and pattern languages is a spiritual risk. Those that don’t account for their works’ potential to touch souls create spaces that may be functional, useful or even interesting, but they overlook something vital.

For Dietrich Von Hildebrand, while a home must necessarily be practical, its real goal should be to host a human being’s real, intellectual and affective life. As he writes in the second volume of his Aesthetics, this is only possible through artistic beauty that both elevates and nourishes your spirit. When this quality is absent, he writes, the consequences are not merely a rejection, but a negation of the soul:

[A] modern building that fulfills all the practical requirements and is perfect with respect to civilization is usually a wretched construction from the artistic point of view. It almost always radiates an anonymous barrenness, a depressing prosaic character.

[…] its absolute barrenness, anonymity, and soul-lessness, and the lack of any charm whatever, form an antithesis to artistic beauty that is just as great as the trivial.

Retaking the Language of Design

If all this seems dire, then take solace knowing that the path back to a more human environment is not as onerous as it might seem. The first step is to rescue the pattern language that’s been slowly drained from you. You can do this by being curious and taking the time to notice your surroundings. You literally have a machine that can tell you the name and uses of everything around you in your pocket 90% of the time. For once, use it to make you more aware of your surroundings, not less. Once you grow familiar with the patterns around you, you can start to question whether they do, or don’t, have that quality without a name that Alexander wants you to notice.

If they do possess it, challenge yourself to figure out why that is. Is it the scale, the lighting, the colors, the materials? Make your intuition for design a conscious process until it becomes second nature. When that “aliveness” is lacking, when the spaces around you are actively unwelcoming, figure out why, and make those responsible for their design and approval justify the decision. This could mean writing your local representatives, or better yet, showing up to council meetings. You may be surprised how effective a few voices can be at the local level; the “experts” aren’t used to being challenged.

Should you find yourself in a position to make real changes, large or small, Von Hildebrand suggests a middle path between the functional and aesthetic when it comes to common work spaces. His advice is applicable beyond the workplace, though, striking at the heart of the issue and offering perhaps the most direct, and beautiful, answer to the anti-human in architecture:

A modest, simple, but noble architecture is appropriate here, an architecture that in its expression and its atmosphere does justice to the fact that human beings work in these buildings: human beings who are destined objectively for a rich interpersonal and nonmechanized world full of the poetry of human life.

During my recent trip to France, I had the opportunity to visit on of the most famous locales on the Atlantic coast. Known as “the Queen of beaches, and the beach of Kings”, this small city was once a humble whaling village before transforming into a glamorous seaside retreat for European royalty in the 19th century.

Writing about the city following his visit in 1843, author Victor Hugo records:

I have not met in the world any place more pleasant and perfect than Biarritz. I have never seen the old Neptune throwing joy and glory with such a force … Gascony’s sea grinds, scratches, and stretches on the reefs its never-ending whisper. Friendly population and white cheerful houses, large dunes, fine sand, great caves and proud sea … Biarritz is amazing.

Now, at this point you might be thinking: “that sounds lovely, but what does it have to do with menswear?”. I’m glad you asked.

My trip to Biarritz only came about because I was visiting my friend Vincent in Bayonne, and we spontaneously decided to head down to the coast for the afternoon. The original goal was to get some shots for this publication — but, as I hadn’t planned for a trip to the coast, I was sorely overdressed:

Fortunately, Vincent has an apartment in Bayonne, so he was able to change into something more appropriate. The result was a simple outfit, but one quite representative of continental summer style. Today, we’re going to break down not just what makes it European, but what makes it French — and, of course, how you can incorporate elements of this unique style your own wardrobe this summer.

There’s far more than meets the eye in this surprisingly straightforward outfit. As always, the magic is in the details, and three of them in particular stand above the rest as staples of European summer style.

Let’s explore what they are, working from the top down…

1) Upper Body

When it comes to summer clothing, few shirts are as iconic as a white linen button-down. It’s a summer staple and a timeless Mediterranean classic. What, then, is so special about the one Vincent is wearing? What makes it stand out from all the rest?

Quite a few things, actually.

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