Attention poor people: Hide your poorness. Advice within.

Tip: Never, ever tie your necktie using the four-in-hand.

Notice the asymmetry and relative tininess of the knot.  You can also see the top of the second fold. Why? Because the four-in-hand screams "I don't know shit about proper dress and bought my first suit off the rack two days before I interviewed for this job."

Compare with the more robust full windsor:

Symmetrical. Sizable. Better dimpling of the tie. The knot's extra real estate is incredibly important when wearing wider-cut European collars. However, it's never so wide that it looks ridiculous. Balanced and timeless, this is the knot you should be wearing.

Cuffs and collars.

As the seasons change with the leaves, seersucker and summer pastels are tucked away for hibernation while the argyle patterns of winter once again breathe in the cool city air, often protected by cashmere or wool coats. But something is horribly wrong. Lost and misguided, young people mismatch what shirts to wear with their sweaters. Spread collars are worn with crew-neck sweaters. Undershirts protrude from v-neck sweaters. Hipsters persist with their general ugliness.

I'll be generous and chalk it up to the recent financial crisis. We can't all work at Blackstone, Lazard, or Citadel. Those who haven't lost their jobs yet are worried about the future, and those who already have get a pass--grudgingly. Maybe everyone else is despondent over the deathblow that has been dealt to high finance, realizing the glory days of excess are over for now. More likely, though, is that they don't know any better. And ignorance, my friend, is the worst shame of all.

Thus, a recap of what your parents should have taught you (assuming they loved you).

 

Button Collars - referred to as "button-down" or "sport shirts," these hail from a time when people dressed respectably for athletic events. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia were elite football schools, people actually played polo (rather than merely wearing shirts bearing an insignia of the sport, now sported by outlet shoppers making <$40k/yr), and worthwhile professions were still WASP-dominated. In those halcyon days, people had to button down their collars to keep them in place while engaging in those activities. Today, the look lives on, but often begs to be put out of its misery by the tactless, public-school educated boors who complement it with a tie.

The correct way to wear a sport shirt is without a tie. It should be worn with chinos, and sometimes with a sport jacket. Problematically, people have tried to blend this look with proper dress and wear ties with these button-down collars. I'm sure this is perfectly acceptable in St. Louis. If you sell used cars. To anyone else, though, this decision belies the image of sophistication the wearer seeks to present. 

Spread Collars - broadly, all collars without buttons. These collars come in a variety of cuts, mostly european, and most popularly Italian and French (but with a substantial number of Oxford collar holdouts). These are to be worn only with a necktie. Wearing a sweater over one is acceptable, but a necktie is necessary.

On the other hand, you can wear a spread collar without a necktie. But then you'd just be guido trash. It could be as innocent as slipping up one day before going to class, or relaxing after a day in the office, but the instant the necktie fully comes off, you move from being a respectable member of society to being a blowout haircut, exposed-chest, glowing orange, roided out parasite. Anyone who matters will watch you, know this, and end your career upon seeing such behavior.

Now, for something more advanced -- the 300-level course, if you will.

Barrel Cuffs - Sleeve cuffs that end with a button. While two buttons are often employed to let the user select cuff tightness, there should be no more than two button holes. The only time you need multiple button holes on a sleeve is when you're wearing a sport coat or blazer. (Yes, your coats should have buttons that button, not the pre-sewn crap most class climbers buy, untailored, from Macy's. Breeding tells.) These are acceptable in any environment, although generally out of favor for business dress in London and Paris. I prefer these for interviews as well, since it's more conservative and puts focus on you. As an aside, when I remember someone on the basis of what they wore, it's a bad sign for the interviewee.

French Cuffs - Only wear these when donning a tie. French cuffs will only be mated with a spread collar. As for cufflinks, I prefer silk balls that hold the cuff together, as opposed to cufflinks. The links look better, but the sound of endless clanking against a keyboard can get old when modeling in excel all day. Clearly, standards change if you're management, or meeting with a client.

Wearing this cuff without a tie, and worse yet, with an undone top button, revealing a crew-neck undershirt, is inappropriate. While I'm sure the sophistication of French cuffs alone are sure to make the ladies who struggled to break four digits on the (old) SAT swoon, nobody worth fooling will be had.

As a final plea, in the tenor of the recent election and its undertones of "hope" and "change," please, for the good of the country, buy bespoke shirts. And if you don't know what they are, get the hell off this blog.

An acceptable companion.

Some like minded friends and I were discussing the possibility of pet ownership this past week. I never really had much use for animals, but I can see the merits in owning one before you decide on your long-term home, and possibly after your children (if any) have moved out.

I then succumbed to my compulsion to rank everything. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list. I am still of the opinion that the best pet is no pet at all.

Cats - possibly acceptable if you're a 20-something woman without roommates and a job that allows you to be home on a predictable schedule (i.e. not a good one). I know the LGBTQ community has taken a shine to cats, but felines are often standoffish and passive. If separated from their mother too early, they become reclusive and feral for life, spending most of their time hiding under furniture. Still, whenever I see a cat owner, I immediately typecast them as a 20-something female, living alone and dateless, normally because of severe personality defects. Secretly, or not-so secretly, she watches Sex and the City and wishes she could be one of the washed up sluts depicted on the show. As a side note to the makers of SATC, thank you for turning every single one of your viewers into a whore for anyone with EBITDA >$90,000 (COLA).

Dogs - loyal, but often dumb. If you have a relatively demanding job, there's a certain amount of pleasure in coming home to something full of energy and eager to see you. There's also a certain amount of acute displeasure in realizing it has fouled your carpet or gnawed your furniture down to the stuffing. There's also a size issue. Smaller dogs more suitable to apartments and condos are more intelligent, more energetic, and more predisposed to eating your property. They also have painfully awkward names. Would you want to use your puppy to lure a member of the opposite sex into talking to you, only to say it's a "cocker spaniel"? Dogs less prone to destruction tend to be larger, often weighing in excess of 100 lbs. at maturity. This may make them too big for spaces smaller than 3,000 square feet.

Fish - why? They're soothing to look at, but more work that one would expect. Between vacuuming rocks, installing and changing various filters, monitoring pH levels and maintaining a temperature, you may as well buy a pool, or have your bathroom renovated to accommodate a hot tub. Some fish look impressive, though, all while being inexpensive and low maintenance.  Any kind of tetra--neon or tropical--falls into this category. Still, the capital requirements and relative knowledge needed to begin an aquarium (Glass or acrylic tank? How many gallons? Under-gravel or remote filtration? Natural or painted gravel? Real or fake plants?) may be a barrier to entry.

Rodents - this broad category represents gerbils, hamsters, rats, mice, and ferrets, things too alike to really separate out. I've had the most experience with ferrets, which can be fun, but will get into anything. They're best when you're watching them for someone else, especially because of their unusual diet needs. Gerbils and hamsters are indistinguishable to me, and basically more playful mice. Mice and rats are not pets and should never be owned. Rats gave Europe the plague, and should never be welcomed into the home. You're a person, dammit, not the Rat King character from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon.

Reptiles/Lizards - animals of choice for the savvy ex-convict. Owning anything in this category as a pet--snakes, geckos, gila monsters, chameleons--indicates the same class and grace of someone who would have a tribal armband tattoo (or spider webs on their elbows, which is another level altogether). These are creatures owned by people who aspire to be law enforcement agents because their fathers used to "whoop" them. Avoid.

My trust fund shall not abide an Obama presidency.

I promised myself this wouldn't be a blog about politics. It isn't. I suppose this is more about public education and its unsurprising failure. (Tip for readers: private school, even if religious, pays dividends for life.)

Somewhere in the annals of the last 18 months, the notion of "change" was coupled with the definition of "improvement." The two are not even synonymous. Change could be good, but when it's taking the form of massive wealth redistribution, it's probably bad--at least for this blog's intended readership.

Certainly the hoi polloi are thrilled over this impending victory. It's not every presidential administration that you get a full $1,000 refund just for holding a job, even if your tax liability is less than that. But, remember that the median annual household income in the US is around $45,000, with tax exposure well in excess of $1,000. Let's be perfectly clear about one thing: this refund is going to put money into the pockets of only the most marginally employed.

The broader effect of this wealth redistribution fiat, to say nothing of impending regulation on the financial markets, will be a flat market for the foreseeable future. Good news for people who need to preserve value, but people with things like "goals" and "aspirations" are going to be scuttled. The lack of high-yield investment opportunities in the market proper will just drive the entrepreneurial types underground. The result: New boiler room markets, free from regulation. I imagine the returns would be great on these, but telling my trustee to investigate them would cause some difficulties. Mostly with the IRS.

Obama is a very intelligent man, in as much as someone who decided to pursue a legal career can be, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Putting aside the fact that he probably got rejected from Yale and Stanford, he's a self-made national figure that will define a generation, whether for good or ill. For pure inspirational value, he's easily in the same league as J.C. Watts, Bobby Jindal, and even Bill Clinton. As someone who is advised by Larry Summers and Warren Buffet, though, he has quite a tin ear on tax policy.

Postscript: McCain's selection of Sarah Palin, a complete lightweight, for Vice President ensured I would not vote for him.