14 Style Rules GQ Editors Learned From Their Dads

See? We really were listening all that time.
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Photographs courtesy of GQ Staff; Collage: Gabe Conte

Happy Father’s Day! This year, we asked our staff to pay tribute to the dads, granddads, and father figures in their lives by relaying their most steadfast rules for getting dressed. For more GQ fatherly wisdom, including our series of counterintuitive advice for dads, click here.


Let Yourself Evolve

At first glance, it’s astonishing how closely my father’s youthful style trajectory follows the simplistic gauzy cartoon of the ’60s—the photographic evidence goes from mischievously grinning former altar boy in Ivy League skinny ties to plaid-clad mountain man with shoulder-length curls perched on a boulder at Big Sur seemingly overnight. Like the Summer of Love flipped a switch. But the truth is that his style evolution was gradual, and he was definitely attending a lot of those free concerts in Golden Gate park wearing an Oxford button-down. The core tenets of his Ivy style stayed consistent across the years—but the enormous hair, the leather vest, and the mustaches were incorporated one at a time, and always in conversation with his prep staples, like chinos and blue oxfords, rather than displacing them.

So I guess what I’ve learned from him is that experimentation shouldn’t come at the expense of core style beliefs—you’ve got plenty of room to riff on top of a consistent foundation—and that there isn’t anything inauthentic about the act of changing or evolving your style. “As I moved beyond the Ivy look, I was into leather coats. I’d wear a lot of jean chambray shirts, and wider belts,” he recalls. “I liked having Red Wing boots, I wore those a lot in those years. The key to all of this stuff was that you had to make sure it was comfortable and you could move around okay.” —Martin Mulkeen, global commerce category director


Invest In Things That Last

I blame credit my dad for my love of fancy stuff. To this day, he still gets excited about new brands I tell him about (he now wears Lady White Co. tees) or skincare products my wife puts him onto. “I really love finding beautiful pieces that will endure,” he says, when I ask for his sage style wisdom. He calls out Zegna sports jackets, shirts from Corridor, and shoes from Church’s as his go-to pieces. “Of course,” the father of GQ’s watch editor adds, “I always wear a watch to match the mood or occasion, too.” —Cam Wolf, watch editor


Accessorize, Accessorize, Accessorize

My dad has always been all about his accessories. Whether it be a gold watch, a long chain, or even a single diamond earring, he always had on a big fit. I would see old pictures of him dressed in the loudest pieces, and whenever I’d ask him about it, all he’d say was, “Look good, feel good!” or “That’s what was hot!” I definitely inherited my love of signature jewelry pieces from him. I can always tell what era a picture of him is from based on what watch he was wearing. —Tyler Austin, assistant fashion editor


Dress Deliberately

My dad is both the most stylish man I know and the least likely to remind you of it, an unusual combination among clothing buffs of his caliber. He chooses his words carefully, like a sommelier plucking just the right Beaujolais for a mild Gouda, and dresses himself with equal intentionality. That’s by principle. “Whenever you’re getting dressed,” he says, whether you’re headed to work, the grocery store, or the couch in your living room, “do so with deliberateness. This is the chance to wring some creativity out of the day, to project some expression of self, to inject a sliver of aesthetics into the graying miasma of quotidian mundanity.” Occasionally, he warns, “this might mean you will need to be the best-dressed in the room—the polo shirt amongst the tees, the cardigan apart from the hoodies, the necktie in the forest of barren, wilted necks.” (He would demur, but I know he’s speaking from experience.)

If all that sounds a shade philosophical, his next bit of advice is more straightforward: wear socks. “Socks allow an inexpensive and inconspicuous conveyance of color, hue, and texture,” my pops says. “They also keep your feet warm and dry.” —Avidan Grossman, senior commerce editor


Grooming Is Style, Too

My late father drove for a living: trucks, buses, cabs, even dragsters—anything that had four wheels and could put dollars in his wallet or a thrill in his heart. He was slick and he was suave, and I’d have been silly not to emulate his style when choosing my own grownup uniform. Though I never developed the follicular strength to cultivate my dad’s ’stache and soul patch combo, I could reflect his 1960s-honed short-sleeved button-down shirts and pressed Levi's that marked him as ready to get some wind in his neat Afro—or, during the ’80s, in his Jheri curls, the one road I did not follow him down. —Gaylord Fields, copy manager


Cleanliness Is King

My grandfather, Dr. Alfred Mutchnik, has always had beautifully manicured hands. At 101 years old, he still keeps a standing weekly appointment at the nail salon. Born in 1924 in Winnipeg to Jewish immigrant parents of very limited means, he says he didn’t consider fashion much growing up—but “modesty and cleanliness" were always priorities. This emphasis on neatness was reinforced in his years in the Air Force and later in medical school in Dublin, where he trained as a surgeon: “Imagine you’re going in for a job interview,” he says. “If you’re dressed smartly, but modestly and neatly, it speaks to the work you’ll do.” Despite this understated philosophy around his self-presentation, every photograph I’ve ever seen of my grandfather at any age radiates immense elegance and, frankly, a lot of swagger. When I tell Grandpa Al this, he posits that perhaps it’s not so much about the clothes themselves, but the way you wear them: “It depends on your stature! If you stand tall and erect,” he says, speaking just like a doctor, “you can wear clothes well.” —Sasha Mutchnik, senior director of social


Pack Light

For most of my childhood, my dad’s closet featured exactly two hues: black and gray. “When you travel for work as much as I did, seven or eight months of the year, you have to match your clothing,” he says. “Everywhere I went, I had a wardrobe of black and gray. It’s just practical. You never have to think.” I’m far more prone to overdosing on color and pattern than my old man, but I did inherit his passion for packing efficiently and his absolute distaste for ever checking in luggage. Just about everything that makes it into my carry-on can be mixed and matched at least a couple of different ways. —Yang-Yi Goh, senior style editor


Just Do You

It’s a bit tough for me to hone in on how my dad influenced my style, because he’s influenced everything about me. But perhaps that’s the answer to this question. My dad taught me to always be myself—and that from there, everything else would come naturally. Aside from what to wear to soccer practice, we never really spoke about clothes. But if one’s style is a reflection of who they are, then I suppose we spoke about them all the time—and still do. I can’t wait to tell him about how some kids are wearing soccer cleats walking around the city as a fashion statement. I'm sure he’ll get a kick out of that. —Keir Novesky, global design director


Your Belt, Socks, and Shoes Should Match

Growing up, most times when I’d see my dad leave for work, he was in a suit and tie. As a defense attorney, he often had to present a compelling and convincing argument to a judge and jury, which meant he had to look the part. No one’s gonna listen to a disheveled lawyer in brown shoes, a black belt, and white socks. —Matthew Roberson, staff writer


Never Imitate Celebrities

I’m going to step aside here and let my dad speak for himself:

“Always listen to your kids. Their blunt, unfiltered, take-no-prisoner reactions to whatever you’re wearing may sting, but hey, the truth hurts, and let’s face it, you have been known to over-accessorize. Plus, you never know, they just might end up working for GQ.

“Also: Never, ever try to mimic someone else’s cool. Yeah, it all looks good on Pedro Pascal, but hey, you ain’t Pedro Pascal. And while we’re at it, you don’t have Jon Hamm’s shoulders, and don’t even think about inking your face like Post Malone. You’ll just embarrass your kids at back-to-school night. And if your life goal is to cloak yourself in some of that Timothée Chalamet hipster geekness—look in the mirror. Do you see Timothée Chalamet? And whatever you do, never get dressed up and then leave your house without socks. Pedro can pull that off. You? You look like a schmuck who forgot his socks.” —Roxanne Behr, global creative director


Stick With What Works

When it comes to style, my dad keeps it casual and layered. After years of corporate dressing, he’s loving his new work-from-home era, where “a nice shirt is a clean shirt” and his dry cleaning bill is almost nonexistent. Over the years, I like to think I’ve taught him more about style than the other way around—or at least offered my unwarranted suggestions. But in true dad form, he will always fall back on his go-to look: cargo shorts and New Balances. —Haley Gilbreath, fashion editor


Wear Your Clothes Hard

The biggest lesson in dressing that I got from my dad is this: If you really like a piece of clothing, you should wear it until it completely falls apart. Hanging in my parents’ garage is a duck canvas Carhartt onesie that’s probably seen about two miles worth of snowfall in its lifespan. It doesn’t even snow where my parents live now, but it’s so perfectly broken in at this point that it would be a crime to get rid of it. —Gabriel Thomas Conte, senior web producer


Find Peace in Uniform Dressing

There’s this great photo of my dad, Matt, and his younger brother, Chris, outside of my dad’s freshman dorm at Wesleyan University in the fall of 1972. My dad’s wearing this tan safari jacket, dark-rimmed glasses, and dark blue jeans; my uncle’s in a bright checkered plaid flannel and brown cords. Both of them have more hair than I’ve ever seen them have in my lifetime. This week, I FaceTimed the two of them to talk about the photo and how their sense of style has (or hasn’t) changed.

My dad and his brother grew up camping, hiking, rock climbing, and canoeing, and, as my dad put it, “My approach to style was to create a sense of being outdoors.” When they started their careers, they had to adopt new uniforms: My dad, a physician working in public health, had a working wardrobe of Oxford shirts, sweater vests, ties (when necessary), and Lands’ End trousers; when he got home from the office in the evenings, he’d swiftly change into an earth-toned T-shirt, cargo pants, and hiking shoes. My uncle Chris, who founded a web-based company during the ’90s dot-com era, was an early adopter to the “tech disruptor” uniform and only ever wore jeans (“nice-looking jeans, no holes!”) to investor meetings. “It’s the only time in my life I’ve actually been conscious about image,” he said. “I needed to portray that, ‘I’m not one of you, and if the company wants to do anything on the internet, this is what it looks like.’”

Now that my pops and my uncle are both several years retired from their office jobs, they’ve each managed to condense their respective wardrobes—utilitarian, comfortable—into about 18 inches of closet space. Chris, who lives on a farm in rural Vermont, wears threadbare T-shirts, Darn Tough socks, and pants treated with tick-repellant permethrin. My dad, who loves exploring the walking trails of my hometown, wears plaid button-ups, cotton tees, and flannel-lined L.L.Bean jeans. Looking back at this old photo, my dad realized that he’d spent “the first 20-some years of my life being able to dress how I wanted to dress. Now, as a retired person, I’m able to dress more like I dressed then all the time.”

Relative to my dad’s zen practicality, I’ve always worn clothes more like my mom; our respective closets are exuberant, abundant, and overstocked with consignment gems. But whenever I can’t figure out what to wear, I think about my dad’s (and my uncle’s) approach to uniform dressing: Pick out whatever shirt makes me feel most grounded and go from there. And, if I must, I’ll wear practical shoes. —Eileen Cartter, staff writer


Don’t Overthink It

My dad’s style motto has always been K.I.S.S.—keep it simple, stupid. He follows that philosophy by steadfastly committing to the wardrobe staples he loves most: Vans Authentics, all manner of vests, and the Brooks Brothers shirts he buys on eBay. —Bowen Fernie, visuals editor