Ricardo Mon­tal­bán is unim­pressed with your efforts.

At risk of sound­ing like a pompous ass, I have style. I believe this because I get a lot of com­pli­ments on my choices in dress. Walk­ing down the street I get asked for my advice a lot, or asked where I buy things, and do I always look this way? I’ve been caught on the street a hand­ful of times by Asheville Street Style, inter­viewed by the Urban News, and reg­u­larly advise my friends on what to wear to meet For­tune 500 exec­u­tives in China or on a first date. Fine, I sur­ren­der already — I have style.

And I’m into that, I’m into what is styl­ish. But — I’m not into fash­ion. I don’t have a well thumbed copy of the Sep­tem­ber Vogue on my night stand, and though I sub­scribe to the Sun­day edi­tion of the New York times, I don’t luridly gaze at the lat­est offer­ings of the major design­ers in the Style Mag­a­zine. I don’t care what’s in or what’s out, if it’s past Labor Day or if it was recently seen being worn by Lady Gaga at Occupy Wall Street. Those are use­less ways to think about what will make you look awesome.

What’s the dif­fer­ence between style and fash­ion? Style is for­ever, fash­ion is for today. Style is acces­si­ble for every­one, fash­ion is passé by the time every­one iden­ti­fies it. Style belongs to you, fash­ion belongs to wealthy hair­less eccentrics in Milan that feed caviar to tiny inbred dogs.

I’m not a racist or a sex­ist, but I do believe in judg­ing peo­ple by their appear­ance because I expect to be judged on mine. And by appear­ance, I mean the things peo­ple have a choice about, namely one’s choices in cloth­ing and groom­ing. So I’ve writ­ten up five things to help you make choices in your cloth­ing that will bet­ter rep­re­sent you the per­son, rather than you the guy who hates doing laun­dry and ends up look­ing like laun­dry. Why five things? Because it’s my favorite number.

1. It should fit you. It should fit you almost per­fectly. If it doesn’t fit you per­fectly, it should be damn close. If the sleeves aren’t the right length on a shirt, roll them up. If the pants are a lit­tle too short, get a tai­lor to let them out. If you haven’t used a tai­lor or seam­stress before, it’s not that expen­sive. If you got a good deal on some­thing that almost fit you, it’s prob­a­bly worth another $10 to take it from “meh” to “oh meh god.” Seri­ously, you can see some ridicu­lous shirt, all sorts of weird col­ors, pat­terns, stains and tears but if it fits you like it was made exactly your size by some strangely psy­chic exploited Indone­sian child, wear it.
2. Brand means noth­ing. Brand is some­thing invented by peo­ple who pro­duce gar­ments to make their prod­uct more valu­able. You don’t need to show­case the brand you’re wear­ing. You’re not a Hol­lis­ter bill­board. You’re a per­son with style that’s adver­tis­ing your­self, not the Gap. Peo­ple with logos on their shirts are Nascar dri­vers. Bot­tom line is if it looks good and it’s well made from qual­ity mate­r­ial it’s a nice gar­ment. How­ever, some brands are usu­ally well made. Levi’s, for instance, is almost always a safe bet. And I’ve got some pants from Express that are nearly bul­let­proof after years of abuse. Any­thing that’s mil­i­tary issue will also stand up over time, and usu­ally has a very hand­some mas­cu­line cut that will bring out your inner Rambo. Or at least your inner Bradley Manning.
3. Don’t demand to be com­fort­able. Shorts are for the beach, the gym and the ten­nis court. If you’re not at the Y sweat­ing away the carbs you just crammed into your body at your fifth visit to Mamacita’s this week, wear long pants, jeans or trousers. And flip flops are right out. Your feet are hideous five headed crea­tures that smell like some­thing a dog wants to roll in. Any­body who dis­agrees is a fetishist. Wear shoes or boots unless you’re at the beach. At least in the Asheville cli­mate. When you’re sip­ping piña coladas in Havana and it’s 110 in the shade, there are other rules which don’t apply here. May we all be so lucky to explore what’s stylin’ in Havana, but so far that’s beyond the scope of my expe­ri­ence. Ask Ricardo Mon­tal­bán. He’s still alive, right? Oh, Wikipedia says no. Womp womp.
4. A good out­fit makes you more con­fi­dent. If you get ready and look in the mir­ror and you say DAAMN I’d ask for my num­ber, then you’re doing it right. Even if you’re mis-matching pat­terns and col­ors, if you do it with pur­pose and like you mean and it makes you feel like a rock­star, then you’re doing it right. You should feel like the clothes are wear­ing you, like the whole pur­pose of this shirt was to find you and be worn and thus ful­fill it’s destiny.
5. Over­dress­ing is ok; under­dress­ing is not. Always err on the side of over­dress­ing. As Mark Twain said, “Clothes make the man. Naked peo­ple have lit­tle or no influ­ence on soci­ety.” The other adage to keep in mind is “dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” It’s true. Trust me. Not that I have a job or anything.

So please fel­las, dress nice. It mat­ters to those who mat­ter, like your­self, your boss, and that cute girl over there. Or dude. If that’s what you’re into. But if you’re gay you already knew all of this any­way, so what are you doing, get off the inter­net and go be fabulous.