The anonymous Mr London Street is one of the most insightful writers on the blogging scene. I often take some time to stake out the competition, and I’m frequently quickly bored with the standard offering, but not with Mr. London Street. His inimitable style always gets his message across and his stories of everyday life can be extremely transferable and engaging. Being so astute and observant, I simply asked him to write about what men get wrong, and here is what he had to say

Do you remember non-uniform day at school? I do. There were always a few children – you could count them on the fingers of one hand – who turned up in their school uniforms, and I was one of them. My dirty little secret was that I hadn’t forgotten like the others. It was just preferable to pretend I had, rather than face a jury of my peers clad in a patterned sweater that even Jehovah’s Witnesses wouldn’t have been able to look at with a straight face. It predated magic eye pictures, but if you looked at it for long enough your eyes would defocus and the word “loser” would loom huge in the foreground. Though in all honesty, it probably did already.

Now I pretend to be a grown-up, I appreciate the conformity of the uniform of working life more still; even within those relatively narrow parameters it’s easy to do little things that go badly wrong, and watching men who don’t understand those rules can bring little joys to meetings, add a tiny frisson of fun to encounters in corridors and lifts. To graduate from my secondary school sartorial horrors to one day writing a piece for Style Sage suggests a  style journey I probably haven’t made, but just as being unable to sing has never stopped Simon Cowell I still feel perfectly qualified to judge mistakes from the relative discomfort of my tired foam-backed chair. And, in my office at least, you see rather a lot.

I’m not talking about the advanced nuances of style like a well or badly cut suit jacket. Would that I were qualified to hold forth about that. No, I’m talking about the basics: wear a jacket. If you work in the sort of office (like mine) where, when you wear a jacket, people say things like “job interview?” it will stand you in good stead. Similarly, wear a tie. Not regularly – because that says that you don’t understand the chain of command, nobody important wears ties these days – but about once a month. Never give any reason for it. People need to sense that you exude an aura that you could do better than this job, if you really wanted to. Wearing a tie every day says that your employer is doing you a favour. Wearing one once a month says quite the opposite.

I only have a few suggestions on shirts, which ought to go without saying but – as I have realised to my horror over the past couple of years – don’t. Cufflinks, for instance. Either wear nice ones or don’t wear them at all. There is no place any more for the hot and cold water tap motif, or Scrabble tiles. They are the equivalent of a tie adorned with cartoon characters. And if you bought “groom” cufflinks for your wedding day they, like your wife’s dress, should never be dusted off again. The wedding ring is sufficient proof that you are married, though even then I sometimes find myself wondering in exceptional cases.

Perhaps what should be the most elementary tip of all – only wear them with French cuffed shirts. I know, I know, but believe you me, I’ve seen people failing to follow this simple rule many times. At first it prompted that laugh which, halfway through, you desperately attempt to pass off as a cough. I’m more used to it now but it’s still embarrassing; to see cufflinks foisted on a single cuffed shirt is to witness the saddest de-coupling of perception and reality. The wearer thinks Look at me, look at the effort I am making, the viewer simply thinks Look at him, that’s what he classes as making an effort. You’ll have to fend for yourself on shoes. My feet are enormous and consequently I only have tips for men with size 12 feet, well, one tip: keep your feet under the table at all times. Always get to a meeting room early and ensure you are seated before anyone arrives, and try your hardest to be the last to leave. However boring it gets. With luck, people might mistake it for a work ethic.

- Mr London Street

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