Closet Essentials: Men’s Fall Casual Wardrobe

In the last post, I shared with you the staples of my husband’s professional wardrobe. His style is also simple and classic for his casual clothes. Like every wife, I interfere with his wardrobe choices every once in a while but for the most part he does his own shopping and sticks to choices that are comfortable but not frumpy.

Men’s fashion generally changes at a glacial pace.  The classic men’s fall casual wardrobe is very easy to assemble and consists of just 2 types of pants and 3 types of shirts.

Pants

The only pants in my husband’s fall casual wardrobe are cargo pants (khaki-style pants but with a huge pocket on the side) and straight leg jeans. While the cargo pants look a lot like his work pants, he goes a bit more wild with the color selection (olive green . . . Gasp! or dark brown for example).

Shirts

The three types of shirts my husband wears with his cargo pants and jeans are: long-sleeved T’s, plaid shirts and polos. All of these shirts have the advantage of making the wearer look very warm and huggable.

	Plain is OK in a long-sleeved tee but even better is a printed shirt that expresses some personality. This is a great item to pick up as a souvenir at your favorite vacation spot or receive as a gift for the holidays. My husband tends to have “geek shirts” (with references to computers) or motorcycle shirts. Other common choices are sports shirts, shirts with quotations, or art and photography shirts.
	The button-down plaid shirt has been a staple of the men’s fall/winter wardrobe forever. My husband still sticks to his standard work color scheme when choosing his plaids (black, brown, grey, navy, brick red, burgundy, forest green, etc.) and when you stick to these colors you generally can’t go wrong. There are some very interesting plaids out there with primary or pastel colors but you need a good fashion sense to know whether these will work for you.
	The long sleeved polo/rugby shirt is another staple. The best ones have colorblock patterns in primary colors or have a plain background with small stripes in a contrasting color. These are the shirts my sisters and I shamelessly stole from my dad’s closet during our teenage years. (I am not sure if he ever got to wear them himself. Thanks for sharing, Dad!) There are a lot of these polos out now with embroidered logos and other “stuff” printed over the stripes. These are not as classic but I’m sure the right person could carry them off. For most people, the plain stripes are the best choice.

Shoes

For my husband, Dr. Martens boots are the classic fall/winter footwear choice. They look rugged and go well with both the jeans and the cargo pants. It has been funny to see over time how Dr. Martens boots are a signature style and people who love them bond instantly. A few years ago on a job interview, my husband was told, “I didn’t have much time to spend with you but you wear Doc Martens so I know you would fit in just fine.”

That’s it! Seriously. It’s just that simple. You may be thinking that I must have left something out.

Let’s see . . .

Fall/Winter Dress Clothes

See professional wardrobe. The clothes and shoes are exactly the same.

Sweaters

Sadly, my husband’s fall/winter wardrobe lacks sweaters. He doesn’t like wearing them and says they are too hot (despite my desperate attempts to get him to wear them). A man in a sweater is extremely handsome and I think I would say that even if I wasn’t a knitter. In my humble opinion, every man should own at least one classic sweater or sweater vest.

My trendy pick for fall

This is probably not even a new trend but for my husband’s closet this will be a revolutionary change. I have seen so many cute thermal shirts (the same waffle-weave material they make long underwear out of but thicker and designed to be worn as outerwear) for men this fall. I picked up one for my husband to try (round neck with simple stripes) and to my great surprise, he didn’t hate it! We’ll see if this trend sticks around to join the other time-tested classic pieces.

Men, what are your fall casual wardrobe staples? What trends are you wearing this fall? Women, what are you buying for the men in your life? Please share in the comments.