Keeping it together, Cufflinks and Faux French Cuffs: #30folds30days, Three Ripples Fold, Day 26

Some days, everything is right. Others not so much, and it is all that you can do to keep it together. Your dog died, your girl broke up with you, you lost your job, or you realized the Paul Stuart warehouse sales are never coming back.

There’s a saying: “Fake it til you make it.” Sometimes my outsides can help buoy my insides. Dressing well, and keeping it together on the outside, always helps me work through heartbreak, death, or loss with a bit of a cushion. Even if everything else is falling apart around me, at least I can look nice. It also doesn’t tip anyone else off to the fact that you might be a bit of a mess. Which is great, because no one really wants their boss to ask “what’s wrong” because they’re wearing their pants backwards.

For me, the best way to form a habit is to do it every day for a month. If you’ve been following along with the blog, then hopefully you’ve been paying a bit more attention to how you dress this past month. Stick with it. Even through the hard times. It’ll help you keep it together.

People aren’t the only thing that need help keeping it together, so do the cuffs of your shirt.The french cuff is the fanciest of all cuffs you can have on a shirt. They’re a necessity for any formal event, and should be kept for any important business meeting. What you need for a french cuff shirt though, is cufflinks. By the way, if you think the silk knots you got with the shirt are enough, think again.

Sure, they can be great to add a dash of color to the shirt, but really, cufflinks, made of metal, should be worn. The knots just don’t quite cut it.

With cufflinks, as with other accessories, you want to try to keep the metal consistent with the rest of your outfit. Because of the close proximity, I definitely would not mix metals on your cufflinks and watch.

There are three types of links: the Swivel bar links which are the most common, the chain link, and the straight bar link. Below are the links shown in the order mentioned.

If you’re starting out, go for a simple silver swivel bar cufflink in either a circle, square or rectangle. There are as many types of cufflinks as anything else, and being that they’re a common “oh crap it’s dad’s birthday” gift, there’s a lot of them around. With that being said, wear the crazy ones at your own risk.

If you’re going to get a colored cufflink make sure it coordinates with the rest of your outfit. I wouldn’t recommend heavily patterned or colored cufflinks with a patterned shirt. Definitely don’t put a pattern on a pattern.

A last thought if you want to be really fancy, match the face of your watch to the color of your cufflink at a formal event. If you can do that, you’ve truly arrived.

There’s also a favorite trick of mine that I like to do when I’ve either (a) got a shirt that has contrasting interior cuffs, or (b) I’ve broken the cardinal rules of fit and the sleeves are too long. So I’ve gotta fold them back and secure them. That’s what I call the Faux French. Basically, rather than rolling up your sleeves, or simply folding the cuff back so that it flops around, instead, you button in on the reverse so that it makes a broad cuff-like a french-but it’s simply buttoned.

See you’ve got a cuff that’s a bit long.