Welcome back to the Gentleman's Gazette!In today's video, we'll discuss how to combine two of the most classic andiconic colors in menswear, blue and gray.
Blue and gray are arguably the two mostimportant colors in all of menswear, at least when it comes to assembling yourwardrobe.
Both of these hues not only play wellwith various other colors that you might have in yourcloset but they also work very well with one anothermaking them extremely versatile.
When executed properly, a pairing of blue andgray will be able to look stylish in both conservativeand more bold settings.
So today, we'll look at the number of different waysthat you can pair these two colors together.
Perhaps the easiest way topair blue and gray is to do so in a suit and tie combination.
It's often said that when a man first ventures into the world of tailoredclothing or when he gets a job that demands hewear a suit and tie that a navy blue suit ought to be hisfirst choice.
And pairing this blue suit with a graytie is a surefire way to earn style points.
Following along this same line of reasoning, the second suit that a man isoften recommended to buy would be a gray one, either in a darker charcoal gray or a slightly lightermedium gray.
Here then, one could simply take the opposite approach andpair this gray suit with a blue tie whetherlight or dark depending on the shade of the suit.
Blue, of course, is acool color and gray can often take on a cool tone, therefore, blue and gray will pair well together in these circumstances.
And even if a gray that you may be wearing has some warmer brown tones, that's not anything to be afraid of because blue and brownalso pair very well together and you can find more about that in our videohere.
By the way, if you'd like to learn more about cool colors, warm colors, and related terminology, as well as how to leverage these conceptsin your outfits, you can find our video on the colorwheel here.
Meanwhile, if you're curious about why wewould recommend a navy blue or a gray suit as some of the first you should own, you can find our video on how many suits we think a man really needshere.
So while wearing blue and gray together in a suit and tie combinationmay be easiest, it can also be done in a variety ofother contexts.
Let's take, for example, wearing oddjacket and odd trousers together.
If you're just getting started in theworld of menswear and are curious to learnhow to pair jackets and trousers of different colors together starting withthe blue and gray pairing will be easy.
Like the navy suit, the navyblazer is also a staple of menswear so if youtake this and add some gray trousers, you'llhave a natural look that's a little bit sportier than a full suit.
Furthermore, adding some simple accessories to the ensemble, like a linen pocket square in either plain white or something with a bit morecolor will ensure that your outfit won't bemistaken for a uniform.
Also, additional personality can be addedto the outfit by incorporating pattern in some of the other garmentslike your shirt or tie.
Meanwhile, the opposite of thiscombination, which is to say, a gray sport coat withnavy trousers is perhaps seen a bit more rarely.
Still, there's no reason to think you can't pull it offif you follow these general guidelines.
The key here is to have a bit ofvariance in the types of fabrics between your trousers and your jacket.
So for example, if you were wearing more plain blue trousers, you might want to go for a jacket that either has a patternor some texture to it.
Pattern examples for a sport coat might be something likea glen check or prince of wales check and a textured weave like tweed wouldalso be a good choice.
Full suits, as well as combinations ofsport coat and odd trousers, are probably the simplest and most basicway to pair blue and gray together.
Before we goon with any other suggestions though, let's go over some more specific do'sand don'ts to ensure that you're putting the twocolors together properly.
Our first tip here is to avoid extremedifferences in contrast.
Using the example of a darker charcoalgray suit, you might want to avoid an exceptionallypale blue tie.
A bit of contrast in youroutfits is never a bad thing, of course, but when the overall tones of the colorsin your outfits are at almost opposite ends of thespectrum, the cumulative effect for the viewercan be a bit jarring.
Our next tip which we have hinted at somewhat alreadyis to incorporate more pattern and texture into the outfits.
Using the example of a suit, you could, of course, start with what we recommended atthe beginning, which is to say a plain blue suit, plaingray tie, and perhaps a plain white shirt.
This isa bit of a starker outfit though and it will get boring quickly.
Just bychanging out the plain gray tie for a glencheck model in silk or perhapsin wool for winter, you'll already be adding a bit morevisual interest to the outfit.
A medium gray suit might be wellcomplemented by a navy blue tie in grenadine, for example, and ifyou'd like to learn more about grenadine, you can do so in our article here.
And aswe already mentioned, adding some texture, either to a sportcoat in something like tweed or perhaps in a more casual outfit tothe trousers in something like corduroy, might also be a good idea.
Ourfinal tip here is perhaps the most sophisticated method of pairing blue andgray together which is to wear items that contain bothcolors.
Choosing a patterned suit would be aneasy way to do this.
For example, a navy suit with a gray overcheck or the reverse, a gray suit with a blue overcheck.
Also, if wearing a sport coat and odd trouser combination, having a weave that incorporates some blueinto gray could also look smart.
Silk ties with blueand gray geometric patterns or knit ties that incorporateblue and gray fibers are also good choices.
A patterned shirt could also be an option assuming that the scale of thepattern is harmonizing with the overall formality of the outfit.
Bringing all of these ideas together, the outfit i'm wearing todayincorporates a small micro checked blue and gray shirt, also with a bow tie containing a geometricblue pattern over a gray base.
So we've covered the basicsof suiting and wearing combinations of jackets and trousers, as well as our overall tips on pairing blue and gray, let's get back into some more specific examples.
Now, talking first about layering further.
When discussing layering, we mightimmediately think of overcoats and sweaters, as well as other items for coldweather and indeed, these types of garments dopresent more opportunities for pairing blue and graytogether.
You could alternate your layers of blueand gray hues.
For example, wearing a blue tie, graysweater vest, and blue jacket, or you could go with large blocks of thesame color like wearing a sweater, trousers, and tieall in blue and then putting a gray sport coat over top.
The same principle can be extended to overcoats depending whether the garmentis blue or gray, you can try to determine whether itwould look best to wear trousers in a similar color or in theopposite color.
And of course, when wearing a sweater asits own outer layer, the same general color pairing rulesapply as when we discussed sport coats and odd trousers.
Incorporating more accessories like gloves, hats, andscarves also provide further opportunity forpairing blue and gray and again here, you have two broadtheories to follow.
Let's use the example of a navy overcoat, you could go largely monochromatic and select bluegloves and a blue scarf to wear or provide some more contrast with agray scarf and gray gloves.
Speaking of which, theFort Belvedere shop has a wide variety of bothgloves and scarves in blue and gray colors, as well as others to choose fromand you can find them here.
Speaking of our Fort Belvedere offerings, you couldalso go with a double-sided scarf like this one indark blue and gray allowing you to incorporateboth colors or just show one depending on how the scarf is tiedand of course, boutonnieres are a great accessory to incorporatetoo.
You're not going to find many gray flowersbut you'll find various tones of blue such as the veronica persica that i'mwearing today or something like a blue cornflower thatincorporates a bit more of a violet tone.
Though blue and gray are usually some ofthe most conservative colors in menswear in mostapplications, a bolder choice would be to wear either of these colors in yourfootwear.
Dark navy oxfords might be a good choicewith a more conservative suit as they might, at first, look likestandard black shoes but upon closer inspection, doincorporate just a bit of added color.
If you're looking for something bolderthough, you could go for a shoe in a true blue, say for example, a wholecut oxford or maybe a monk strap shoe, thesewould go well with a gray suit.
Polished leather shoes in bluemight look good with a sport coat and odd trouser combinationbut your best bet in terms of wide availability for blueshoes are probably going to be navy loafers insuede.
Pairing blue shoes of any sort with blue trouserscan be a bit trickier but you should be able to pull it off as long as the twocolors are relatively similar in brightness.
Ifyou'd like something that would be maximally versatile with blue and grayoutfits, though a bit bolder, you could try tofind a spectator shoe that incorporates blueand gray.
Solid gray shoes are even more rarewhether in leather or suede and they can be trickier to pair with your outfits.
Gray leather shoes are often going to be on the lighter sideand for this reason, they can be awkward to pair with navy trousersdue to that high contrast principle we discussed previously.
Therefore, a gray shoe that is slightly darker in color, more toward the medium to charcoal end of the spectrummight be more versatile.
For example, the gray suede shoes I'm wearing today aremedium gray, slightly darker than my trousers, and therefore, serve to ground the outfit somewhat.
Of course, if you're not quite ready yet to make the leap to blue or gray shoes, you could also spice up an outfit by adding shoe lacesin those colors.
For example, you might want to putgray laces on a pair of black oxfords to make them a bit less formalor you could put blue laces on a pair of brown shoesto make them more playful and as you might have guessed, Fort Belvedere also offers shoe aces in various colorsand you can find them here.
And on the topic of footwear options, socks are also a natural way to incorporate some blue and gray into youroutfits.
For a more conservative look, try tomatch the color of your socks to those of your trousersand for a more playful look, you could go for more contrast.
In either scenario though, we wouldn't necessarily recommendtrying to match the color of your socks to your shoes.
Again here, wearing socks that do contain both colors, for example, blue and gray shadow striped modelswould be a good choice.
Finally here, though we do focus on classic style atthe Gentleman's Gazette, we would be remiss in this video not tomention perhaps the most commonly seen piece of blue clothingthat anyone owns, denim blue jeans.
For a more casual look, jeans cancertainly be paired with a jacket providing you're hitting some generalbases to make sure the outfit isn't overly casual.
Dark wash denim is bestfor slightly more formality, of course, the jeans shouldn't have any distressingand the jacket should be slightly more casual like something in anunstructured cotton or again, a wool tweed.
And as denim shirts have become more popular too, you might take one of these in a medium wash, pair it with a dark navy jacket, and some gray trousers, as well as perhaps some blue suede loafers and have another goodcasual outfit.
And if you've got questions aboutany of these concepts, we've got videos on pairing jackets with jeans, finding the best denim for your body type, and denim shirts, which you can all find here.
There's a reason why blue and gray are probablythe two most fundamental colors often seen inmenswear, they're both relatively neutral andthey're maximally versatile in combining with awide variety of outfits, therefore, it stands to reason that they should goexceptionally well together.
Those who are new to color coordination can usethem to create fundamentally sound outfits with minimalanxiety and those who are more advanced in theirmenswear journey can come back to pairing them togetheras a constant while continuing to experiment.
And if today's video has inspired you to look intofurther color pairings, we've got an entire playlist on that subjectwhich you can find here.
In today's video, I'm tryingto exemplify many of the concepts we discussed.
Most of my outfit elements have blue and gray in them;the largest of these would be my blue jacket and gray trousers.
The jacket is a bit lighter than a standard navy, probably in something more like a medium to even a royal blue, it's plain in color to ground the trousers which have a bit moretexture in their weave.
As mentioned previously, myshirt features a micro check pattern in light blue and dark grayperhaps even almost black but everything is working harmoniously within the colorpairing.
My bow tie is one of our jacquard weavesilk models from the Fort Belvedere shop in a color that we call battleship grayand it has blue diamond accents also from Fort Belvedereare my veronica persica boutonniere in light blue and my whitelinen pocket square which features a blue contrasting xstitch.
My socks are from Fort Belvedere too, they're gray and feature a contrasting light blueshadow stripe and my shoes are gray suede derbiesfrom Heinrich Dinkelacker.
As an added bonus today, my suspenders are also in a blue color even though they wouldn't normally beseen and you can find all of the accessoriesfeatured in today's video in the Fort Belvedere shop here.
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