Ive never owned one before. Anything ya’ll would recommend? I just want something that looks professional. Do people get sports coats tailored, like they do suits? I’m willing to spend up for one but would rather spend as little as i can if there are no noticeable differences. No more than 1k, preferably much less. Thanks in advance.
Go to Nordstrom and have the suit guy size you up. They seem quite good. It will probably cost about $300.
Lesson 1: don’t buy a sports jacket
Lesson 2: Ignore Lesson 1 and buy a sports jacket.
Decide what color pants and shirt you wear most often, wear that to the fitting, and have a reputable store size you. Navy is the standard, but not the only one you should have.
as stratman says, what do you plan on wearing it with? soem people have the wrong idea about sportscoats and it doesn’t work because they can’t match properly
I wear black and tan slacks usually with shirts that are sometimes solid and sometimes patterned.
Is it a fashion faux pas to wear a navy sports coat with black pants?
More importantly, can you wear a sports coat with a short-sleeve button-down?
Are you guys taking the piss?
I usually wear brown, tan or grey pants to work often so I have a navy blue sports coat.
Also goes well with jeans if looking to wear casually.
Heathens, all of them.
Let’s include blazers in this discussion. I’ve always wanted one but don’t know what to look for.
Yes, as long as you don’t remove the sports coat and expose the short sleeve button down, which is considered the biggest fashion faux pas of the 21st century.
In order of dressiness, it goes sport coat, blazer, suit jacket. Sport coats have a place in a modern man’s wardrobe, but they do have a tendency to appear more “professorial,” even without elbow patches. If you are going to go that route, make sure you keep the colors tending toward neutrals with subdued patterns and flatter textures, and add other colors of trousers to your wardrobe to add versatility. Appropriately-patterned pocket squares and ties can help dress the sport coat up as well.
Perhaps what you are really looking for is a blazer. You should take the cue of my friend, Craig McDermott, on this matter. For instance, the other day, David Van Patten, McDermott and I were sitting in the dining room of the Yale Club at lunch. McDermott is wearing a lamb’s wool and cashmere blazer, worsted wool flannel trousers by Ralph Lauren, a shirt and tie also by Ralph Lauren, and shoes from Brooks Brothers. Now that’s how to pull off these jackets.
Here’s a quick article on the diff between a sportscoat, blazer, and suit jacket, in case if anyone else besides me didn’t know.
does anyone here actually wear blazers with gold sleeve buttons???
In my experience it goes well with gray hair
I can’t decide if there is serious trolling occurring in this thread or people are just clueless about fashion sense. Navy with black? Try to be serious here. Don’t mix black with brown, either. Generally you have black/black, navy/brown, brown/any other earth tones, charcoal, charcoal/black, etc. as viable combinations. Figure out what works best with your skin tone and go from there – if you are white like me you are going to look bad in most lighter colors (no yellow sweaters or anything ridiculous like that unless you have brown skin and can pull it off, and even then probably not).
You can’t be a professional if you don’t even know how to do basic matching colors. Standards are low around here but we do have some basic minimum expectations. Try to keep up.
Nordstrom is a good option but a little spendy. BR and J Crew have some good sports coats for younger guys (no giant shiny gold buttons with boat shoes, you’re better than that). If you’re in a more fashion forward office and younger you can push the envelope a little with the colors but don’t start dressing like you’re an artist or something, ain’t nobody got time for that.
Most of these are acceptable for most office environments:
http://www.bananarepublic.com/products/mens-blazers.jsp#department=75
https://www.jcrew.com/mens_category/sportcoatsandvests.jsp
My comments are directed at both sport coats and blazers which I’m using interchangably but mainly referring to blazers since that’s what you should be targeting anyway as a young professional. Sport coats are basically the same thing but typically more casual and often with slightly different fabrics.
Thanks for the links bromion. I’m trying to learn how to dress more professionally. I’d personally wear a whtie/blue shirt and black pants 7 days a week if I could get away with it but I know it’s important to put some thought into how you look.
With black trousers (and also with a black jacket), one either has to stay black throughout the rest of your clothes, or you have to have a high contrast color to go with it. The problem with black/navy is that they are too close without actually matching. A lot of browns have this problem when matched with black, though some of the lighter ones are ok. A quasi-exception, denim also tends to work with black for casual looks, even some of the darker ones.