New Year, New Material: Bringing Dapper Back

Okay, your Wingman has been a Bad Human. He's neglected you, his faithful readers. And you not-so-faithful readers. And the new readers, and people who just accidentally wandered here by mistake in a drunken stupor looking for octopus porn or something equally as asinine.

I do have new material to share with you. I have new questions to answer for you. It's what I do.

dap·per (ˈdapər)

adjective: dapper; superlative adjective: dapperest

    1.(typically of a man) neat and trim in dress, appearance, or bearing.
    synonyms: smart, spruce, trim, debonair, neat, well-dressed, well-groomed, well turned out, elegant, chic,  dashing;

It's 2014 and the new focus is Bringing Dapper Back. By dapper, I mean, hell, take a look around you. Men are no longer giving a shit about how they look. Wearing an Ed Hardy t-shirt is not dapper. Wearing Crocs in Mossy Oak with socks and shorts isn't dapper. And just because you coordinated your flat-brimmed ball cap in the same MMA theme of Old English script and a Celtic cross with a dragon and a tribal to match your shirt, it's still not dapper despite your protests that the shirt has a collar and buttons. So does a bowling shirt, chummy, and that is decidedly NOT dapper.

I'm not saying that we as men need to be stuffy and formal and never dress casually. Far from it. In summer I live in shorts and t-shirts, because where I live it's roasting-ass hot and I don't attend many dressy functions. But if you're going out on a date or out "on the prowl" so to speak, you need to look presentably dapper without looking like you just left a board meeting and without looking so relaxed you could pass as an extra from The Big Lebowski.

How many things are wrong with this picture?

Take pride in your appearance, from your style to your grooming. Don't look homeless on purpose.

Looking this disheveled is bad enough but to pay hundreds of bucks to do it is just stupid.

Don't be stupid about it either, thinking because you paid $60.00 for a plain t-shirt from a famous designer a size too small for you to show off your gym rat pecs that it's cool. I may not like that song from Macklemore all that much (it was played TO DEATH) but the man had a point about getting swindled by designers. If you pay more than 15 bucks for a plain t-shirt of any color, you should be slapped with a semi-frozen cod fish. It's possible to look decent without spending a ton of cash and without popping tags at the thrift store & getting a used garment that reeks of pee and mothballs. Any savings you garnered will have been squandered at the cleaners trying to make it wearable, vintage chic be damned.

In the words of the immortal Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket, "You will not laugh, you will not cry. You will learn by the numbers; I will teach you...".



Who's got your back? I do.