Art of coordination. Lesson 5: mixing three different patterns

For the majority of men mixing three similar patterns seems to be the most difficult. The main difficulty here lies in failure to understand about scales, and in identifying which piece of clothes is the most important in this ensemble.

While coordinating three different patterns, the first pattern should be the outfit that is considered as the inner one. Start with the smaller pattern (let it be a dress shirt) and constantly increase scales in the second and third similar pattern. To coordinate three similar patterns creates strong tension between the patterns. Without proper scaling base on the sequence of the clothing will create confusion and discord to the viewer’s eyes. You should keep this in mind while coordinating both striped and checked patterns.

In this example we put together a gray plaid suit and a small blue check wide spread collar dress shirt, and a plaid tie. The difference in scales sets up nicely for this combination. Start from the small check dress shirt, then working outwards we set up a nice large plaid suit as well as a large check pattern tie.

This example shows how three different striped patterns may be mixed. It once again shows the play of scales focusing with smaller scaling from the first pattern on the inside then graduating the scales outwards. The large stripe and wide scaling of the tie takes away the possible strain involving the closely scaled stripes of the dress shirt and suit.

It goes without saying that mixing three similar patterns is rather difficult and demands much practice and a good feeling of taste. But unless you try it and probably even make mistakes, you won’t learn to mix any patterns. So do not be afraid of making mistakes – it’s all natural, be yourself and do not allow different stereotypes influence you!