Self-Aggrandizement: Style Archives

Suiting Up
Filed March 31, 2008 1:04 PM.

Last Friday, with a lunch scheduled at the University Club, I came to Cyan's office in a suit. Which, in turn, prompted unexpected jealousy from my colleagues. Apparently, wearing a suit is actually fun, assuming you're not required to do it every day.

So, with consensus of the Cyan team, I've now re-instituted Anti-Casual Fridays, our old policy wherein we dress to the nines the one day each week that the rest of corporate New York (or, at least, the bankers with whom we've been dealing these days for our hedge fund) dresses down.

Of course, we're not a perfect converse of those bankers' schedule, as what qualifies as 'dressed down' in that world is something so Brooks Brothers catalog as to make even my CFO, a sailboat-owning WASP, cringe.

No, our casual still permits jeans and flip-flops. At least once the weather warms. But, even then, come the height of August, on Friday it should still be full-on Anti-Casual. Who doesn't love a khaki or seersucker suit?

Guy Opinion
Filed January 28, 2008 5:59 PM.

One beauty trend I really don't understand is tweezing off all your eyebrow hair, then penciling your eyebrows back in as a thin, surprised-looking line.

That's supposed to be attractive?

Look Ten Years Younger!
Filed December 24, 2007 11:50 AM.

In my case, apparently, all you have to do is shave off the beard.

Wish List
Filed December 3, 2007 5:55 PM.

What I really want for Chanukah:

Ask your Doctor if Getting Off your Ass is Right for you

High Art
Filed May 14, 2007 4:01 PM.

Although we've now been in Cyan's new offices for a couple of months, the place is still, sadly, exceedingly barren. We have desks, chairs, and a conference table. And that's it. No art on the walls, no extraneous seating, not even a table for our printer, which instead sits in the corner on the floor.

While we've grown increasingly accustomed to this minimalist chic, visitors persist in giving us a hard time about it. So, as of this week, we've started a half-assed decorating campaign - buying up reception seating and side tables, and strategizing about art options.

Unfortunately, the standard approach for production and distribution companies' wall art is more self-aggrandizing than this site, and without any hint of tongue-in-cheek: framed movie posters from the company's releases, organized in as looming an assortment of star power and combined theatrical gross as the company can muster.

Companies short on egotism, or at least short on films they can brag about, sometimes veer towards a more idealized approach, instead framing classic posters from film's better eras.

We however, think it would be funnier to instead frame posters from really, really bad films: From Justin to Kelly, Glitter, Anaconda, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, Battlefield Earth.

Toss in SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2, for which I was for some time erroneously listed as Art Director on IMDB, and we're pretty much good to go.

Footsie
Filed January 25, 2007 5:12 PM.

For the past year or so, I wore and loved a pair of Kenneth Cole boots. They were comfortable. They made me tall. (Or, at least, as close as you can get to tall from a 5'6" starting point.) And they looked good.

Or so I thought.

A few weekends back, however, over pizza at our apartment with our siblings and all their significant others, Jess and the other females went on an extended diatribe, tearing to shreds 'man boots' - what I and three out of the four other guys in attendance were wearing.

And, in short, it turned out that, while we guys all thought we looked good, the girls thought we looked like idiots. Worse, in subsequent polling, I universally reconfirmed that initial split: guys, pro; girls, very, very con.

So, continuing further the field-research-driven footwear rethinking, I polled on replacement ideas, and ended up with a pair of navy Converse Chuck Taylor's and another of tan suede Campers.

Which, on the one have, have elicited such male responses as my brother's, "who's your stylist, Ray Charles?" But, conversely, have been a hit with Jess and every other lady I've come across.

Given my demographic preference, I'm pretty sure that's trading up.

Day Two: Small Victories
Filed January 19, 2007 12:49 PM.

God bless you Sorel and North Face, makers, respectively, of my new low-top slip-on and high-top lace-up winter boots.

It's eight degrees here in Park City, and, for once, I'm not about to lose my toes to frostbite. Which is, perhaps, the best news of the fest so far.

Sega!
Filed December 4, 2006 4:14 PM.

Spurred on by an Israeli clinical study citation from my father, I returned this morning, albeit with much ribbing from Jess, to the nostril blow-drying. Being immediately out of the shower when I did, I decided to see what I'd look like with my hair blow-dried as well.

In short: like Sonic the Hedgehog. Should make for an interesting business dinner tonight.

A Tale of Two Showers
Filed October 16, 2006 7:36 PM.

Right: Redken Pommade
Left: Neutrogena Shaving Cream

Guess which one I smeared through my hair this morning after shower number one, and, resultantly, before shower number two?

Eyeshot
Filed September 18, 2006 1:32 PM.

This morning, I took my first trip on New Jersey's PATH train, out to Hoboken, where my uncle Robert runs an optometry practice. A quick look at my glasses - whose super-glued right arm evidences their seven year age - reminded me I hadn't had my eyes checked in three-quarters of a decade. So, Jersey-bound, I contemplated the possibility that I might actually be far blinder than my outdated, rather pansy prescription would otherwise indicate.

Fortunately, after much consideration of number one vs. number two random letter line readings, it seems my eyes are still pretty much exactly where they were before (a piddling -1.75 diopter), though with just a touch of newfound right eye astigmatism.

So, this morning, after forty-five minutes of letter line comparisons, I spent at least as long considering frame after frame after glasses frame. There are few accessories as omnipresent as a pair of glasses, and so I tried to balance out the demands of indie film cool with the need for something I could wear, day in and day out, for at least the next year or three.

The pince nez, therefore, fell by the wayside, as did a number of other options that seemed the optical equivalent of a joke that's funny the first time, but gets painfully old when frequently retold. In the end, I settled on two frames, aiming to switch back and forth between them as whimsy might dictate: one slightly retro, the other a touch fashion-forward, though neither so bold as to become the first (or only) thing one might notice upon my entering a room.

Doubtless, the girl, my mother, and any other style-conscious female friends and family will disdain both choices. But, fortunately, as I can still glasses-less pass the driver's license vision test, at very worst, I can always drop the glasses (and the faux-intellectual air they lend) entirely, and stumble through life only a short squint away from seeing things exactly as they are.

Shiner
Filed July 9, 2006 7:05 PM.

Watching the sixth season of the West Wing on DVD last week, I was struck by a scene in which White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman heads over to the office of Republican Senator Arnold Vinick, to find the Senator enrapt in shining his shoes.

"Mr. Chairman."
"Shine your own shoes, Josh?"
"No. I can't say that I do."
"My father used to say, you can't trust a man who doesn't shine his own shoes." Looks down at Josh's feet "Does anyone shine those things?"
"Not really. No."

At this bit of dialogue, I flashed on my own shoe rack - brown boots and black oxfords slowly descending towards the same scuffed blur of grey. And I thought, perhaps it's time to start shining.

So, earlier this afternoon, I picked up a brush and a stack of polishes at the local Duane Reade. And, in between chipping away at the huge stack of emails in my inbox (Oh in Ohio, T-minus five days), I set about shining my shoes.

Thus far, I'm hugely pleased, both by the finished shoes - which look surprisingly good considering my rookie shiner status - and by how I feel. Perhaps it's just the inhaled polish fumes talking, but, in a line of work that seems always a nebulous, swirling mess, there's something remarkably gratifying about getting something finite, real, noticeable and concrete accomplished, just within the space of a single afternoon.

Explanation, Please
Filed September 30, 2005 5:18 PM.

Do any of you guy readers wear tank-top undershirts? And, if so, can you explain what the hell that's about?

So far as I've always understood them, undershirts are meant to keep you from sweating through into the outer shirt. But I - and I think I'm not the only one on this - mainly sweat from the armpits; that's why we put deodorant there.

So, if a tank undershirt specifically doesn't cover your armpits, than what, exactly, is the point?

The Skinny
Filed September 29, 2005 2:06 PM.

For the past four or five years, I haven't bought a pair of jeans. Instead, I've shopped in my younger brother's closet. Unable to resist buying new pairs, my brother David has happily passed along his 'hand-me-ups' as they've been displaced by newer editions.

The problem: my brother's waist is about an inch and half larger than mine. And while I've taken to simply cinching down the excess with belts, a slew of female friends have recently pointed out that, in short, it looks retarded.

So, I set out to buy a pair or two of new jeans. And, in the process, I discovered I'm no longer really a 30-30, and closer to a 29-30 instead.

After extensive searching, I made a second discovery: while 30-30 jeans are easy to find, 29-30's don't seem to exist. Drop to a 29 inch waist and everything comes solely in 32 inch length. So, realizing I'd already spent embarrassingly long on the jean search, I quit while I was ahead and picked up two 29-32 boot cut pairs from Banana Republic.

Which sent me, after washing each pair twice to counter initial shrinkage, off to have the jeans tailored.

Previously, I'd simply taken any about-right length as good enough. Now, faced with the chance to trim to perfect size, I could angst about a whole brave new world of jean fitting concerns.

Shorten them to fit with a pair of oxfords, and a set of flat-bottomed sneakers drags the back of the jeans an inch and a half underfoot with each step. Flip things around to fit the sneakers, and the jeans look like high-waters with anything else.

So, after a week or two of serious consideration, I simply gave up, had them tailored at some arbitrary length mid-way between the sneaker and soled-shoe ideal, and set about re-convincing myself that the whole thing isn't even vaguely important in the broader scheme of my life

For borderline obsessives, too much choice is a dangerous thing.

Vestmented
Filed May 10, 2005 5:35 PM.

[As running two companies seems to have been eating into my writing time, blog entry ideas have been piling up, unposted, for the past week. I'm hoping to start chipping my way through the list over the next few days. To wit:]

Mark Twain once famously observed, "clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." Which is the primary reason I get dressed in the morning. And, more to the point, why I try to do it well.

As countless studies have shown, the way we dress deeply impacts what others think of us, how likely they are to listen to us or to do what we ask. Sure, we all occasionally chastise ourselves for so blithely judging books by their proverbial covers. But, whether or not we should, we most certainly and subconsciously do. Which makes pulling clothes from the closet a strategic exercise. How does a given shirt make me feel? How does it make me appear in the eyes of others?

It's important enough that, spending my days the past week bouncing between meetings with filmmakers and meetings with investors and corporate execs, I've even stooped to mid-afternoon changes, pulling from two disparate subsets of my wardrobe.

Most business books, on the subject of clothing, advise that you dress to match the people with whom you're meeting. Which, like most advice doled out in business books, is hopelessly misguided. Far better, instead, to dress to match their expectations of how someone in your position is 'supposed' to look.

The jeans, blazer and vintage button downs, then, come out not for the filmmakers, but for the staid execs, a group for whom sunglasses worn indoors bespeaks a certain desirable level of cool, rather than suggesting total douche-bagdom, as it would to fellow filmmakers. Similarly, then, the suits come out for meetings with screenwriters or prospective key cast. Without a tie, certainly, and perhaps erring towards DKNY shirts rather than Polo Ralph Lauren's, but still formal enough to say, "yes, I'm intimately familiar with the finer points of GAAP and SEC filing laws."

This 'dress like they want you to' rule is not a recent discovery. Instead, it's something I stumbled across my freshman year in college. Having just launched SharkByte, I quickly found that the odds of success in a new-client sales pitch were directly proportional to the number of electronic gizmos I clipped to my belt for that pitch.

Or, as I so tastefully summarized the idea to the Wall Street Journal: "show them a laptop and they'll wet their pants."

like zz top
Filed December 4, 2004 12:32 PM.

After shaving off my beard for the Homecoming '96 photos, I went for about a week clean-shaven. During that week, I was carded more than I had been over the rest of the last two years. Which, together with interested looks from middle school girls, convinced me that, in an effort to look old and wise and vaguely capable of running a company, perhaps it was time to regrow.

So, last Sunday, I put away the razor and let my facial follicles follow their course. As I hadn't grown a beard in from scratch for quite some time, I was surprised to rediscover that - likely due to my fast metabolism - I can go from zero to past seriously scruffy in well under a week. Normally, at the one week point, I'll then start whipping out the beard trimmer every few days, evening things out and keeping purposefully at the at-least-sort-of-indie-hip short length. This time through, however, my beard trimmer is boxed away amidst plates and CDs and spring sweaters, stored somewhere out in the far reaches of Brooklyn by the crazy Israeli moving company that won't be delivering my things back to me until I move into the new apartment on the fifteenth.

Which, basically, leaves me with two solid weeks of unchecked growing ahead. By which point, I'm fairly certain, I'll have passed well past 'scruffy', through 'full', and into the early reaches of 'polar expedition'. Santa Claus, look out.

monkey suit
Filed October 15, 2004 3:40 PM.

Over my pre-film years of running companies, I managed to accumulate thousands of dollars of dress clothing, most of which now hangs full-time in the back reaches of my closet. Every so often, however, I have occasion to whip some of it back out, to don suit, tie and cufflinks for a serious meeting or three.

Usually, it's for meetings with corporate lawyers or investment bankers - people who don't trust a CEO without a power tie. But, while I suit up intending to have the world view me differently, I find it leaves me viewing the rest of the world slightly differently as well. In pinstripes, I can spout legalese, discuss exit strategies and negotiate sticky deal points. But I can't, for the life of me, brainstorm new, exciting, outside-the-box ideas. The tie around my neck, it seems, strangles blood-flow to the right half of my brain, letting the left take over completely.

Judging by the attire at companies I admire most, I don't think my be-suited experiences are unusual. All the world-changing, gee-why-didn't-I-think-of-that? ideas of the last decade or two have all sprung from a jeans-wearing crowd. Even at stodgier companies with standing dress-to-the-nines policies, the real thinking happens once people toss of their jackets, roll up their sleeves, loosen their ties, and get down to work.

I know that runs counter to today's trend, where companies that once went 'business casual' during the go-go nineties are ramping back up to stricter dress codes. But I can't help think those companies are making a mistake. Sure, take the foosball table out of the conference room. Confiscate the Nerf toys. And, for god's sake, repaint the pipes to normal, non-primary colors. But don't make people get dressed up. Or, maybe, do. It leaves all the more room for those corduroys-clad innovators to start taking over the world once again.

natty
Filed June 4, 2004 4:03 PM.

Combining my penchant for bucking tradition, and my closet full of excellent, rarely worn suits (a vestige of my finance days), I've officially decided to implement 'anti-casual Friday', in which I'll be donning suit and tie weekly, for no reason other than that I can.

Though, also, because it looks damn good.

back pocket
Filed May 18, 2004 10:56 AM.

Dear fellow men:

In case you have not already realized it, women are checking out your ass. And, frankly, if your wallet is so overstuffed as to appear that you've developed a large, cancerous ass-cheek growth, you're probably not helping your cause.

So, if you're looking for love, or simply looking to not be labeled 'ass-cheek growth guy' by the group of cute girls at the end of the bar, it might be time to slim down your billfold.

Thus convinced, start the process by examining the wallet itself. If it is made from cordura (or, really, anything other than leather), you will not have even the vaguest of chances of sleeping with any woman who sees you remove it from your pocket. (In fact, this applies even if the woman in question is a member of PETA; I am fairly certain there's a special exemption to their animal cruelty platform that allows the purchase of leather wallets to keep guys from looking like complete doofuses.)

Also, if you have a crappy five-dollar wallet, every single woman who sees it will instantly know it's a crappy five-dollar wallet. Women spend huge percentages of their adult lives idly searching for the perfect purse and handbag, across thousands upon thousands of stores. They have examined more leather goods in a single afternoon than you have in your entire life. They know the difference. Your five-dollar wallet isn't fooling anyone but yourself.

Additionally, if your wallet is tri-fold, multi-fold, or in any way resembles an origami project, trade it in for a plain old fashioned one that simply folds in half once. Obviously, the more you fold something, the thicker it becomes, and some wallets are a good inch and a half deep even before you start filling them up. If you're still at a loss, just buy this, which I've owned for the last eight years. Thanks to, as you're about to learn, not overstuffing, it still looks new.

Onto what goes into the wallet. To gauge where you stand, remove everything from you wallet, and make four piles: one for money, one for credit cards / id / etc., one for receipts, and one for anything else. These piles are likely rather unwieldy, which is exactly the problem. The goal here is to put as little of what's in those piles back into the wallet.

Start with the money. That's the one thing that incontrovertibly belongs in your wallet. Everything else should be subjected to close scrutiny.

Next work your way through the card pile. From it, place in your wallet: your drivers license, your atm card, one or two credit cards, your metrocard (if you are a New Yorker), four of your business cards, and your health insurance card. That's it. Put everything else in your desk drawer. Seriously.

You simply cannot afford to stuff you wallet full of things you don't truly need. You don't, for instance, need to carry twelve different credit cards all at the same time. At most, you need one for personal expenses and one for business expenses. If you're worried about maxing out your limit (which, frankly, you probably shouldn't be doing in the first place) you can swap the nearly maxed card for another unused one from your desk drawer as necessary.

You also don't need things like your Blockbuster card or your museum membership cards; if they can find you in their computer system given your ID, you shouldn't be schlepping their plastic around. Even if your grocery store doesn't allow you to key in your phone number for rewards club savings, say, you still likely don't need to take your grocery rewards card with you everywhere. If you're just 'stopping by' the grocery store, you're unlikely to buy much; when you head out for a big shopping run, you take the card out of your desk. The rest of the time, you leave the card, and most others, at home.

Now the receipts. Take all of them, put them in a file somewhere, and never, ever again put a receipt into your wallet. Put new ones in your front pocket, then add them to the file when you get home. Receipts are the single largest cause for outlandishly overstuffed wallets. And there is absolutely, positively no reason for carrying those receipts around. Most guys have returned perhaps two items in the past five years. When return number three rolls around, you can damn well pull the relevant slip from the file. The rest of the time, the receipts add bulk, look stupid, fall out everywhere, and generally detract from good wallet housekeeping.

Now the miscellaneous pile. If it doesn't already include it, take a single check, a $20 bill and a $100 bill, and fold them together. Place this in one of the inside pockets of the wallet. This is 'emergency' money, or, more to the point, 'cover dinner after your credit card is declined so that you and your date don't end up in the kitchen washing dishes' money. Not much else from the miscellaneous pile should be added back into your wallet either. If you want to carry pictures, limit yourself to one of your significant other, and one each of any children you have (and know about). Nobody wants to see even the first photo, so please don't torture them with a stack.

That's it. Keeping your wallet organized is easy: aside from cash, and replenishing your stack of business cards, do not put anything new into your wallet. Try it for a few weeks. Then head back to the bar where the cute girls secretly taunted you for your unwieldy buttock-bulge, observe the newfound respect your svelte wallet and resulting slim line engenders, and ask the cutest for her phone number.

And, even then, place the phone in your pocket. Not in your wallet.

close shave
Filed March 20, 2004 7:38 PM.

Yesterday evening, with my brother in town for one final night, I signed us both up last-minute for a wine tasting class at the Institute of Culinary Education. Getting ready to head out the door to the class, I grabbed my trusty beard trimmer from the bathroom cabinet for a bi-weekly touch up. Passing the trimmer over my chin, I seemed to be shearing off more than usual. "Odd," I thought. "Perhaps my beard grows faster in the spring." Looking at the trimmer more closely, however, I realized the longer cuttings weren't a result of speedy growth; instead, the trimmer was apparently set at the very closest setting.

"Oh," said my brother from the other room at the sound of the trimmer. "I was playing with that this morning. You might want to adjust it back to the normal setting before you use it." A little late for that. I now had a mangy looking beardless patch below the left side of my mouth.

"It probably isn't even noticeable," my brother said from down the hallway, before turning into the bathroom, getting a closer look, and dissolving into hysterical laughter on the floor. Apparently 95% of a beard doesn't quite cut it. So, already slightly late to leave for the wine tasting, I quickly checked the trimmer was still on setting one (a.k.a. 'fragrance model perpetual five-o'clock shadow'), and sheared away.

As a result, I'm back to beardless. Or, at least, nearly so. And while I'm almost certainly growing it back, I can't say I entirely minded the chance to compare, in close succession, the bearded versus unbearded versions of my face. Change can be good. Albeit, occasionally, rather unexpected.

trim
Filed October 1, 2003 9:52 AM.

While up at the Toronto Film Festival, due to popular demand, I decided to regrow my beard. And, for the first week or two, it looked great. Then, increasingly, people began to mistake me for a member of a lost polar expedition. It was at that point I remembered exactly why I had previously purchased a beard trimmer.

So, diving through the depths of my medicine cabinet, I brought forth the trusty Remington Precision MB-30. Clicking the dial to #5 (the setting I had always used), I shore away.

Sure, it looked immensely better than it had moments before. But the next morning, while brushing my teeth in front of the mirror, it occurred to me that I could perhaps even trim down more closely, for a scruffily indie hip sort of look. Whipping out the Remington again, I clicked to setting four and buzzed.

The results were an immense improvement, and, emboldened by that success, I began to contemplate going all the way to setting three.

Of course, beard trimming is a dicey business. Just one perilous step too far and you take on the perpetually five o'clock shadowed look so favored by fragrance and hair product models. So it was with great trepidation that I clicked that one further setting, and took a first trimming pass.

I am exceedingly relieved to say that setting three turned out to be at least as good as setting four, and possibly even better. The resulting look says, without a doubt, "I am an effortlessly cool indie hipster." Or, more accurately "I am as much of an effortlessly cool indie hipster as I can be, considering I don't live in Williamsburg, don't own a trucker hat, and am actually still pretty much just a neurotic little quasi-yuppie Ivy League tech dork."

Still, I'll take what I can get.

Suiting Up Filed March 31, 2008 1:04 PM.

Guy Opinion Filed January 28, 2008 5:59 PM.

Look Ten Years Younger! Filed December 24, 2007 11:50 AM.

Wish List Filed December 3, 2007 5:55 PM.

High Art Filed May 14, 2007 4:01 PM.

Footsie Filed January 25, 2007 5:12 PM.

Day Two: Small Victories Filed January 19, 2007 12:49 PM.

Sega! Filed December 4, 2006 4:14 PM.

A Tale of Two Showers Filed October 16, 2006 7:36 PM.

Eyeshot Filed September 18, 2006 1:32 PM.

Shiner Filed July 9, 2006 7:05 PM.

Explanation, Please Filed September 30, 2005 5:18 PM.

The Skinny Filed September 29, 2005 2:06 PM.

Vestmented Filed May 10, 2005 5:35 PM.

like zz top Filed December 4, 2004 12:32 PM.

monkey suit Filed October 15, 2004 3:40 PM.

natty Filed June 4, 2004 4:03 PM.

back pocket Filed May 18, 2004 10:56 AM.

close shave Filed March 20, 2004 7:38 PM.

trim Filed October 1, 2003 9:52 AM.