What men are actually wearing right now, and what to skip

The short version: trousers got wider, jackets got shorter, brown pushed black off the shelf, and almost nobody is wearing anything tight anymore. That's the whole shift. Everything else you've seen on a runway this year is a costume with a press release attached.

What follows is the version that shows up at work, at church, at a friend's back yard in October. Specific garments. Specific fixes. Nothing you need a stylist to pull off.

Trousers are the actual story

If you change one thing, change your legs. The skinny-through-the-thigh chino that everybody bought for a decade now reads instantly dated, and it's the single clearest tell that a man stopped shopping in 2016.

What's replaced it isn't the enormous skate trouser. It's a straight leg with a mid-to-high rise, sitting closer to your natural waist than your hips, with a leg opening somewhere in the 7.5 to 8.5 inch range. Flat front. A single pleat if you're built through the thigh, because a pleat gives you room where you need it and drapes cleanly instead of pulling.

Go try a pair on. The feeling you'll get the first time is that they're too big. They aren't. You've been wearing trousers that were too small, and your eye needs about a week to recalibrate.

The trade-off is real, though. A wider leg needs a longer break or a shorter hem, and it needs some weight to the fabric. Lightweight poplin in a wide leg flaps around and looks sloppy. Cotton twill, wool flannel, corduroy in a mid-wale, heavy canvas. Weight is what makes volume look intentional.

Colors doing the work right now: olive, tobacco brown, oatmeal, charcoal, and a grey wool that reads dressy without a suit attached. Navy chinos are fine and always were. Stone chinos are having a genuine moment and look better with brown shoes than with white sneakers.

The overshirt is beating the blazer

The layer most men are actually reaching for is the overshirt — shirt-jacket, chore coat, shacket, whatever your store calls it. Heavy cotton or wool, patch pockets, worn open over a tee or a crewneck, sometimes buttoned as the whole shirt.

It works because it solves a real problem. Most offices don't want a sport coat anymore, and a hoodie under a puffer looks like you're between things. An overshirt sits precisely in the gap.

Buy it one size up from your shirt size, not two. It should close if you want it to. The sleeves should still end at your wrist bone. A chore coat that swallows your hands looks borrowed.

The wool overshirt in a check or a solid charcoal is the dressier version and will carry you through a whole winter of casual Fridays. The cotton canvas one in tan or olive is the weekend version and gets better as it fades.

Blazers aren't dead. They've just moved. The ones being worn are unstructured, no shoulder padding to speak of, a touch longer in the body than the shrunken cut everyone wore to weddings for years. If your current blazer has a pinched waist and a hem that stops at your wrist, it's the reason you feel like you're in a rental.

Knitwear, honestly assessed

Three things are everywhere, and all three are worth owning.

The half-zip in merino or lambswool, worn over a collared shirt with the collar out. It's the most useful upper-body garment a working man can buy. Dress it up, dress it down, nobody ever looks wrong in it.

The heavy crewneck in cream, oatmeal or a deep brown, thick enough to hold its shape. This is the one people mean when they talk about clothes feeling substantial. Cheap thin knits pill in three washes and hang off you by February.

The shawl collar cardigan, which had gone quiet for years and came back. Wear it instead of a jacket at home and on the school run.

Fiber trade-off, plainly: merino is thin, warm, travels well, and wears through at the elbows eventually. Lambswool is fuzzier, warmer for the weight, and itchier on bare skin. Cotton knits are the most comfortable and the least warm. Cashmere is soft and fragile, and a mid-price lambswool sweater will outlast a bargain cashmere every time.

Feet: brown, suede, and less chunky

The heavy white sneaker has thinned out. What men are actually wearing is a low-profile leather sneaker in white, off-white or brown, plus one pair of proper shoes that aren't black.

Suede is the season's material. A suede derby or chukka in snuff or dark brown goes with every trouser color listed above and looks better slightly scuffed. Treat it with a protector spray when you buy it, brush it when it dries, and stop worrying. Suede in wet climates survives fine if you own a second pair and give each a day off.

Boots: the moc-toe and the service boot are both still right. The dress boot in brown leather is the quiet one that does the most work.

Black shoes are for black-tie, funerals, and dark suits. Everything else in your closet looks better on brown.

The fixes that matter more than the shopping

Almost every man reading this has three garments hanging up that would look twice as good after twenty minutes at a tailor.

• Trouser hem. Cheap, fast, transforms the garment. For a straight leg, ask for a slight break — the fabric just kisses the top of the shoe. For a wider leg, a touch longer.
• Trouser waist. Taking in the back seam an inch is routine work. Letting out is possible only if there's fabric in the seam; check before you buy something snug.
• Jacket sleeve length. Should end where your wrist meets your hand, with about half an inch of shirt cuff showing. Shortening from the cuff is easy unless there are working buttonholes.
• Shirt body taper. If your shirts billow at the waist, a tailor can take in the side seams. This is the difference between a shirt that looks tucked and one that looks stuffed.
• Shoulders. Don't. Reworking a shoulder costs more than the jacket's usually worth. Shoulder fit is the one thing you buy correctly or walk away from.

The seam at the top of a jacket shoulder should sit on the edge of your shoulder bone. Not past it, not short of it. Check that first, in the store, before you look at anything else.

What to skip

Skip the enormous cargo trouser with eleven pockets. Skip anything with a logo larger than your thumbnail. Skip the technical shell worn over tailoring unless you're genuinely cycling to work in it. Skip the trend for very short hemmed trousers with visible sock; it dates fast and it's cold.

And skip the idea that any of this requires money. A flannel shirt off a clearance rack that fits your shoulders beats a costly one that doesn't, and everyone can tell which is which without knowing why.

Go stand in front of a mirror in whatever you wore yesterday. Look at the shoulder seam, the trouser opening, the sleeve length. You'll find one of them wrong, and fixing it will cost you less than lunch.