Mix Patterns? No, Not Like That! A Style Guide for Ambitious Men.

HECTOR TORRES, 41, a dapper Chicago investment banker, wears a riot of patterns to work. In a typical office look, a pinstripe suit consorts with a finely striped shirt and jams with an orange, geometric-print tie. A polka-dot pocket square is never far away.

While this sounds a bit much, the result coheres smashingly. No Gordon Gekko throwback, Torres has a very-2023 penchant for prints. With shifting dress-codes no longer browbeating men into wearing a suit and tie to the office, weddings or most any occasion, “there’s more freedom to experiment when dressing up,” said Michael Hill, creative director of London brand Drake’s. Now’s “the time to inject personality into smarter clothing.” 

Both prints and colors are key agents of playfulness. Torres sees patterns as “essential to an interesting outfit.” Hill reports that Drake’s customers can’t get enough of paisley ties and rascally shirts with colorful stripes as thick as a beach umbrella’s. At e-retailer Farfetch, shoppers are grabbing blazers in checks or jacquard florals, said senior menswear editor Luke Raymond. And at Chicago store BLVDier, striped blazers are enjoying a revival after a decadelong lull, said founder Zach Uttich. 

The dilemma: What goes together? Younger guys who came of age in a casual era are poorly versed in the art of formal pattern-matching. And older folks might have forgotten the rules, too. You don’t want to get your combos confused or prints clashing. “It can be an eyesore or, at worst, a kaleidoscope of disaster,” warned Torres darkly. 

But combining patterns in a fun and sophisticated manner isn’t beyond you, said Hill. “You don’t have to look like a clown.” Here, four on-trend combos too handsome for any circus. 

The Easy-To-Nail One

Fine-stripe shirt + stripe tie + big-check jacket

A classic tip when pairing any patterns: Mix large-scale prints with smaller ones. Chunky-check jacket? Don’t team it with a bold, thick-stripe shirt, said Torres. Consider this winning, tough-to-botch combo. A blazer in a sizable, windowpane-like check meets a button-up in the finest stripe. Keep colors in the same family or go for harmonious shades, said Uttich: Think blue on blue, on brown, on gray. He’ll slip his navy windowpane-check jacket over a striped blue shirt and chocolate tie. Because the base in our example is subdued, you can get away with a bolder accessory, said Hill—like a preppy repp tie with diagonal stripes.

The Sneakily Subdued One

Fine-check shirt + pin-dot tie + glen-plaid blazer 

The trick to this merger? It sneaks in multiple patterns without braying. It starts with a versatile glen-plaid blazer. (Glen plaid, aka Prince of Wales check, comprises small and large grids.) Stephon Carson, assistant manager at New York tailoring store the Armoury, teams his glen-plaid jacket with a pin-dot tie and a finely striped shirt (a similarly subtle check will also do). Since each pattern is detailed but not loud, the vibe is subdued. While each print looks intricate up close, “from faraway everything almost looks solid,” said Carson. He recommends quiet, sympathetic colors—brown, purple, olive, navy—so “it’s like one band playing together.”

The ‘This Old Thing?’ One

Bold-stripe shirt + paisley tie + gun-club jacket 

If you cringe at matchy-matchy outfits, consider this “thrown-together” winner. A jacket in gun club—a small, fairly sober check—lets bolder prints—like a thick, awning-stripe shirt—step up. Although wide stripes are tricky, they can play nice with jackets in much smaller patterns, said Uttich. Carson spices up his gun-club-check jacket with a fine scarf in a circular “medallion” print, one that shares shades with the shirt or jacket. (An equally strong paisley tie, as shown here, works great too.) According to Raymond, a well-executed patterned look, like this one, can suggest, “I just chucked this on and these prints happen to go well together.”

The Fun-But-Not-Obnoxious One

Stripe shirt + graphic tie + chalk-stripe jacket 

Easy to find now: jackets with slightly wider stripes that feel less formal than the “narrower stripes you might see in a courtroom,” said Uttich. This meatier chalk-stripe, for instance, doesn’t skew prosecutor. It’ll look especially modern with a striped shirt, said Hill, who swears by medium, evenly spaced “Bengal stripes”—supposedly named after troops who wore them in the British Indian Army. You could safely do “stripes with stripes with stripes,” said Hill, but this fairly quiet jacket-and-shirt combo also accommodates a louder accessory. Just match its shade to the shirt. “A paisley tie will look absolutely mega,” said Hill. Also mega: this geometric beauty.

Styling Assist by Christina Middleton; Talent: Derek Chang

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