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!

Art of Coordination. Lesson 3: mixing three different patterns

Today I’d like to throw some new light on how to mix three different patterns and look stylish and fashionable. Sure thing, it is more difficult to combine three different patterns into one ensemble than two ones.

While coordinating three different patterns, you should also pay attention to the scale and pattern itself. Whenever there is involvement of larger patterns starting out from the suit, the choice of the other patterns should naturally be preferred to be of the same scale. If you feel like coordinating three different patterns, they’d better all have large sized patterns. This will result in complete perfection of your style and won’t allow one pattern to overwhelm another.

f you have a look at the following example, you’ll notice that all three pieces of clothes have large scaled patterns, thus, this combination creates a complete thought-out ensemble.

Using similar hues color coordination between the three patterns makes the blend well-balanced and enhances the classiness of the overall combination without making it look too trying.

For simplicity in mixing three patterns where all are different, it is always good to play around with different scales between the patterns when one of them is smaller scaled or spaced.

Using wider scaling or wider spacing for the other two patterns helps to make the patterns visually compatible.

Sure thing, it’s not quite easy to mix three different colors and many men fail to do it correctly. But if you manage to get your hand in this sphere, nobody will ever dare to say that you have bad taste!