GQ Magazine How to Find Your Personal Style

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It's Monday. Sharpen your style for the week.

Resolved to dress better in 2025? Here’s all the guidance you’ll need to make that a reality. —Yang-Yi Goh, style editor

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How to Find Your Personal Style, According to Menswear Experts

By Jeremy Freed

The most stylish guys in the world don’t all dress the same, but they do share one important thing in common. Whether it’s Chris Pine’s West Coast boho, Tyler, the Creator’s freaky streetwear edit, or Bill Nighy’s wardrobe of perfectly tailored suits, the thing that bestows each of these style icons their gravitas is a unique sartorial point of view that reflects their taste and personality.

The hitch? Personal style isn’t something that can be bought or taught. “Style isn't for sale in the shop window,” explains veteran menswear writer Bruce Boyer. With some keen observation and a little trial and error, however, anyone can create a signature style for themselves. “Style is something that you create through the will of your personality,” Boyer continues. “You take what's out there in your world and you try to mold it and bend it and turn it to fit you.”

With that in mind, we polled a few of the most stylish guys we know to weigh in on the topic, and distilled their collective wisdom into a few essential points.

Style isn’t fashion

Style is about liking what you like, and fashion is about liking what other people want you to like. That’s because fashion is created by designers and brands who need to sell a certain amount of new clothes every season to keep their businesses going. There’s nothing wrong with this in principle—clothing is a basic human need, after all—but style is less about what a designer or brand is pushing this season, and more about what resonates with you on a personal level.

“Personal style is an expression of your true self, and tends to reflect how you feel most comfortable and most natural, and fashion is reacting to a marketplace impulse. One is internal, one is external,” says Mike Belgue, the brand director at Reigning Champ. “Besides not needing to pivot every time the marketplace sneezes, personal style is a reflection of your most confident state.”

Style is identity

Your life, your background, the places you’ve been, and the experiences you’ve had are the building blocks of personal style. Ask anyone whose style you appreciate and they’ll likely have a story about an experience that influenced their taste and shaped their wardrobe.

“I went to an all boys Catholic school and we wore a uniform every day, a navy blazer, a white shirt, a navy tie, and grey trousers,” says Steve Knorsch, the managing director of Cad & The Dandy in NYC. “I still wear some version of a navy blazer and grey slacks at least once a week. It’s such a perfect combination that never looks outdated.”

Inspiration can come from unexpected places

Celebrities are an easy source of inspo, but their red carpet fits are just as likely a result of their stylist’s taste as their own. Regular people, on the other hand, can offer more authenticity (and often bolder choices).

“Little kids are fucking anarchists, they don't give a shit,” says Jeremy Smith, the co-founder of Berkeley menswear mecca Standard & Strange. “I always try to remember that. When you're a little kid, you're wearing your yellow rain boots and a skirt and, like, half a Halloween costume. It’s beautiful.”

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