Some guys may think that accessorizing dress shirts is a “woman’s thing,” but they are definitely limiting their look by looking down on this fashion trend.  If you’re trying to look fashionable and smart, add more flair to your image with a sexy scarf, a trendy watch, a funky tie, or even some hot new shades.  The secret about looking fashionable is taking a trend, and evolving it to match your unique personality so that you are really expressing yourself.  This shows the world that you are confident, and that you have substance and character. 

 this cool pic is heralded from NicoleL.

Dress up your dress shirt and professional outfits with a sweet pair of sunglasses.  They may seem inappropriate to wear in the colder weather, but that’s not true at all.  Even though the days aren’t warm, the sun can still be very strong in the winter and no one looks professional when they’re squinting their eyes while walking down the street.  A nice pair of stylish aviators like the ones seen above can really enhance your look by making you appear extremely bold and confident. 

 We have SmittenkittenOrig to thank for this one

Scarves are very in right now, not only because it is winter, but also because they make a professional outfit look really trendy.  Find a scarf that brings out some of your personality.  If you like wearing white dress shirts, wear a bold forest green scarf.  If you enjoy stripe patterned dress shirts try to match your scarf to some of the stripe’s colors.  For a bolder look try a fringed long scarf, instead of just a comfy knit. The more creative you get with customizing your dress shirt online, the more creative you can get with your scarf choices. This will give you character and personality, making people want to get to know the great looking guy behind the scarf.

 Kudos to Jayjay402 for this

One thing that many men overestimate is how much a watch says about them.  A man’s watch is his staple accessory for expression.  It’s a very subtle way to learn all about a man.  Just think about it, not only can you tell a lot about how much money people have - probably the least important indication of self-worth, but you can also tell all about their personality.  If they are bold, their watch will most likely be an odd chunky shape or metal.  If they are more conservative they will most likely try to project this image by wearing a very trendy named watch, something expensive and standard that shows they stay in that conservative box.  Wear your watch to show people how confident you are about your appearance.

For more style tips, see our dress shirt style guide.

You never need a perfect match when pairing your collared dress shirt with a tie, but sometimes it helps to have a few tips so you don’t create a visual disaster. 

It turns out that a lot of guys are afraid of the bold tie.  They are unsure how to match it.  When to wear it.  If it will offend people.  But we’re loving bold ties especially the new wool, plaid tie trend. 

 awesome visual courtesy of Rigmarole

Bold Ties & Neutral Shirts

Bold ties go with neutral dress shirts. Remember that! If you want to be daring and try out a bold, plaid tie, understand that matching it with a bold shirt can be an eye sore.

A bold striped tie is good too. It’s dashing for a subtle, but sophisticated look.  But again, it’ll only be flattering with a neutral shirt. Otherwise the boldness of a crazy dress shirt and tie can be a real dressing disaster. 

The most important thing when matching bold ties with shirts is to try to pick up on the tones of the tie.  If the tie has any color in it, you should take this into consideration when matching it with a shirt.  A simple pale gray shirt will look great with many bold ties, but sometimes it’s nice to pair a bold blue tie with a pastel blue button-down or sweater.

Bold Shirts & Neutral Ties

Bold shirts are great, especially for the party scene.  If you’re trying to celebrate in a hot plaid print but still want to look formal, check out a laid back tie.  Bold printed shirts and bold printed ties are too much of an eye sore, think about them as too much of a good thing.  If you want to wear a bold striped shirt, or a loud colored shirt, you should think about wearing a toned down tie.  Some great toned down ties this season are charcoal tie options, matte on silk striped.  Charcoal is a great color for a colder season because it’s a change from simple black tone, but still dresses up an outfit. 

Neutral Ties & Neutral Shirts

There’s usually no such category as bold tie with bold shirt.  But, if you can pull off that look than you are one very lucky man.  However, pairing a neutral tie with a neutral shirt can work out well.  Some of our favorite neutral ties include a dark charcoal wool tie, dark forest green silk, and dark purple silk tie.  The dark charcoal wool tie will look good with any pastel colored, neutral button-down you pair it with, that’s why this tie is a hidden gem.  However, if you want something more exciting, try a dark forest green tie with a pale beige, green or gray dress shirt.  The green tones match best with beige-brown, pale green, or pale gray tones and complement each other.  Another option is to match a dark purple silk tie with a pale purple, gray, brown or even pink dress shirt.  Purple tones match best with lighter purple, pale grays, browns, and light pink tones.

This post was written by Danielle Bentz, marketing maven and custom men's dress shirts co-creator for Blank Label.

Ever since I got involved with this custom men's dress shirts company, my friends consider me an expert on men's dress shirts. Not just styling, but how to iron them, how to fold them, even how to care for them. I wish we had all the answers. But my answer is probably just as good as their's.

But here are 7 humorous ways how NOT to wash men's dress shirts:

1. Spray it with Febreeze and hope that funky smell will go away so you can wear it again without anyone noticing. I don't even recommend this in emergencies.

2. Applying a bleach pen to stains, and then just wearing the shirt again because it's odorless and now without visible stains. Come on man, throw it in the washer!

3. Only handwashing that one part of your dress shirt where you spilled spaghetti to get the color and smell out. If you're going to go through the trouble of washing one part of your dress shirt, wash the rest of it while you're at it!

4. Dunking it a few times in hot or warm water mixed with deodorant soap. First of all, please use laundry detergent if you're really going to handwash for clothes. I've seen men make this mistake this before. It's sad how many guys I know who don't know how to properly do laundry.

5. Excessively steaming it instead of just throwing it in the wash or taking it to the dry cleaners. Sure, the dry cleaners puts harsh chemicals on your shirt and can damage the shirt overtime, but steaming your men's dress shirt is not a proper way to clean it.

6. Washing it with your other favorite dress shirts. This is a HUGE faux pas. It's true that your dress shirts get jealous of each other. You never know which shirts will come out of the wash, and which will never return (no, I'm just kidding about this one).

7. Waiting until the last minute when you run out of dress shirts, and clothes for that matter, to hit the laundromat.

 courtesy of dobenjamin

Anyone else have funny recommendations for how NOT to wash your men's dress shirts?

Suggestions for how to properly wash a dress shirt? Might be an idea for a follow-up post.

This dress shirts article was written by Danny Wong for the co-creation blog.

Most men do not know how a dress shirt should properly fit. Also, most off-the-rack men's dress shirts never fit right because standard sizes are set up to fit 'well enough.'

Here are a few ways to tell if your men's dress shirts fit:

1. You can comfortably button up your collar without choking yourself. The collar should be big enough for you to slip in a finger or two, and should not feel tight. It should not feel loose either.

2. The sleeve length is perfect when your dress shirt's cuffs just end at your wrists when your arms are at your sides.

3. The dress shirt's cuff is only a little bit wider than your wrist, but not wide enough that you can pull your hand through your cuff without unbuttoning.

4. The chest circumference of your men's dress shirt fits right if you can comfortably move your arms without too much restriction, and the seams connecting the body of the shirt to the sleeves are resting on your shoulders, not above your bicep.

5. The girth (waist) of your dress shirt is only a few inches larger, circumference-wise, than you are. This way, there isn't excess baggage from your dress shirt around your waist when your shirt's tucked in, and that it's not so tight that your seams are close to splitting. When baggy dress shirts are tucked in, they give the impression that you have a muffin-top, regardless of if you're an athlete at 170lbs or a lean 135lb man.

6. The dress shirt is long enough to fit your preference, whatever that may be. There are special dress shirts that are meant only to be worn tucked in, others that are only meant to be worn untucked, while some are long enough but short enough to wear either way.

Most dress shirts you buy at your normal retail store will not give you the fit that you need. For me, I would never buy a dress shirt unless it was slim fit with a 14-14 1/2 collar size. Finding a shirt with those size preferences was a nightmare though. The market was 'too small' for all big retailers to serve. A slim fit dress shirt with a 14-14 1/2 collar would fit perfectly in all areas except the collar. I truly needed a collar that was 15-15 1/2, but shirts that came with that collar size were too big in ALL other areas. In my old shopping days, I had to compromise the fit of my collar to have a fit that worked on every other part of my dress shirt. But you shouldn't compromise your comfort and style (I was never able to button the top button without feeling like someone was choking me, and I couldn't comfortably wear a tie this way either) by buying just any dress shirt off-the-rack. Shoot for bespoke tailoring, or get custom men's dress shirts that you designed with the perfect fit in mind. You can start designing your own dress shirts online with our dress shirt design app now.

This post was written by Danny Wong for the co-creation blog, trying to convince men to adopt co-creation and forget about buying off-the-rack.

In the next 5 years, we're looking to make co-created custom men's dress shirts as popular as custom t-shirts are today. We're certainly not sure if co-created dress shirts will ever be as big an industry as custom tees, but heck, we're going to try.

But if that doesn't work out, maybe we'll move onto pants, suits (again), or even men's underwear. If it does work out, we're still going to look at how we can continue to revolutionize men's fashion through co-creation.

The purpose of our existence (aside from making money, which certainly is not our main goal) is to change the way men consume. First, we're starting off with men's dress shirts online by using our dress shirt design app to put the power in YOUR hands to create and design something that you wanted, something individually made, tailored with the exact details you wanted.

At Blank Label, we're hoping to revolutionize the men's fashion and retail industry. Maybe we won't be the company that is the be-all and end-all of co-creation, but we still envision a world in which consumers have an actual say in what retailers are creating. I'm personally tired of shopping for things that I want, and never being able to find the product that fits my exact specifications. Isn't it also incredibly frustrating when that awesome dress shirt you bought, which you thought was totally unique and funky, was bought by 70 other guys in your town? I experience this a lot in my hometown of NYC, where 8 million people live and where many others travel to. I'm very likely to pass by strangers wearing clothes that I have in my wardrobe. Sometimes, I see guys wearing the same thing that I'm wearing that day!

That's part of the reason why I love Blank Label, because the clothes that I wear were created by me, designed to my exact specifications, and were made only for me. Therefore, out of the 6+ billion people in this world, I'm the only one with my individually made custom dress shirt.

Since mass-production and mainstream retail have failed consumers by providing product that is one-size-fits-all and one-style suits many, uniqueness and creativity are out of the question, so we're leading a revolt!

We're fighting against mass-production, lack of individuality, and being a slave to the all-mighty retailer. We're fighting for co-creation, personalization, and consumer empowerment.

Here are several ways for you to join the revolution:

1. Tweet this post and mention @blanklabel

2. Share this post with your friends on Facebook

3. Spread the word about co-creation and convince people to turn away from big retailers if there's some company out there that can provide product you're looking for that you can personalize and is affordable too (we're not in the best economic situation, I know)

4. Email a link to this post to your friends to get the word out

5. Link to us and this post on your blogs, tumblr posts, websites, etc.

6. Consider buying any co-created products, perhaps a co-created men's dress shirt (if you're female you can snag a shirt for a male friend or family member), to support companies looking to be a little disruptive to mainstream retail. For other co-creation companies, see my post on mass-customization, co-creation and fashion 2.0

We'd appreciate your support of this movement. We're not entirely looking for you to give us money so we can make you dress shirts (naturally we're not against the idea either). That's definitely not our biggest motivation. We're looking to really push the co-creation movement. Regardless of if we're the bigger co-creation company in the next 5 years or not, we just hope to convince traditional retail to adopt co-creation or to support co-creation companies in their initiative to crush the stubborn traditional retailers. But the only way that can happen is if YOU the consumer adopt and support co-creation too.

This post was written by Lead Evangelist Danny Wong, pushing the co-creation movement each and every day on the co-creation blog.

So we get a lot of customers and visitors to our website noting their concern that because we sell our custom men's dress shirts online only, they don't have much of a chance to try on our dress shirts like they would do at normal retail stores to see if the fit is right and if it even looks good on them. Personally, I love shopping and trying on clothes to see if they fit me right and look good, as well as if I might have any other clothes that would go well with them.

Things like this make us think about if we had physical stores in all the premium locations within the urban cities across the country, but frankly, we're a startup and we don't have the capital to pay for rent at most metropolitan cities, nevermind build the store and stock it with shelves of inventory. But that's not our style either.

If the customer can't try on his dress shirt, how can we make sure that the guy who's normally a Medium because he's slender, will have a dress shirt that's long enough to cover the top half of his 6'2" body? What about the guy that likes to hit the gym - so he has broad shoulders and an iron-plate chest who unfortunately has disproportionately shorter arms but needs the chest size of a Large?

This other guy also has a problem that we have to address that most men probably have as well, which is, most men's dress shirts you buy off-the-rack always have a baggy waist that doesn't compliment your truly slim figure. It even makes you look like you have a silly muffin-top when you tuck your shirt in even though you're only 160lbs of fit male.

Again, we only operate online, and we sometimes do wish we had a hot retail location in the heart of Soho, NYC, but since we only sell dress shirts online, we've had to figure out a way to satisfy our customer to make sure his dress shirt fits the first time around. Again, many men are hesitant to buy shirts online because of their lack of confidence in the shirt's fit, but luckily, because all our shirts are individually made custom dress shirts, we give you the flexibility to tell us how we should cut your shirt so it fits right the first time. No need to flip through racks of clothing at Express or Zara to see if your dress shirt size is in stock.

For those who have already played with our dress shirt design configurator, you've noticed that the first thing we do for sizing is ask your body type (for the guys that fall under 'circle,' please do not be offended, we promise we can cut you a dress shirt that fits so well that it compliments your figure), then we ask your normal standard size, height and weight, and then your fit preferences to give you the dress shirt that you want, without compromising a smaller collar for a shirt that fits everywhere else, or a longer sleeves just because you needed to go a size up since your chest can't fit a Medium.

We also have our 'Perfect Shirt Guarantee' which means you can return your dress shirt for any reason and get a full refund, or if it doesn't fit, you can exchange it (which is similar to returning it) for a better size. You just tell us what was wrong with the first dress shirt and we'll make sure those problems are resolved the second time around.

How else can we make your dress shirt shopping experience better so that you can support the co-created dress shirts movement, and so we can better serve you with a dress shirt that you want and one that fits too?

Drop a comment or mail sayhi (at) blank-label.com

Danny Wong is the Lead Online Advocate for Blank Label. Don't be afraid to tweet him either @dannywong1190. Also, feel free to read more of his musings on the Co-Creation Blog.

As the modern Connected Individual, you're no longer just individual in one way, you're maybe a little moody, possibly a little impatient, and probably have somewhat of a split personality. You're quite on one day, out-going the next, you're happy in the morning, sad in the afternoon.

At Blank Label, we're really about allowing your express your individuality and creativity through what you wear so we've created a Split Personality Dress Shirt. It's a half-and-half dress shirt. Basically, if you split a dress shirt down the middle, you get two sides. And each side is independent of the other, but to really make the concept work, you want the sides to complement each other (naturally). So you've got one color / pattern on one side and a completely different color / pattern on the other. We've mixed a few crazy colors and patterns and came up with some pretty cool combinations.

Unfortunate at this time, our custom men's dress shirt design application isn't able to help you visualize any Split Personality Dress Shirt you create. The only visual help we can offer at this time is pictures of Split Personality Dress Shirt we've created. We're hoping to roll out the functionality and if you want to sign up for an email update just email us with the subject line: UPDATE ME ON THE SPLIT PERSONALITY. 

As we've said along, you our biggest innovators and our best ideas come from you. This one definitely did. If you have any thoughts or concepts you think we should test out on a dress shirt, let us know and if we like it, we're probably going to give you a free Blank Label Custom Men's Dress Shirt. Let the creative juices flow ...

This post was written by Danny Wong, Blank Label's Lead Traffic Controller and guest blogger for our Co-creation Blog

Ever wonder why your gifts suck? That’s because you take too much time thinking about buying your friends and family that expensive cruise to the Bahamas, that new iPod that everyone else already has, that $450 watch he’s only going to wear once in his life.

This year, your gift giving will be at its peak!

Why?

   1. Because the economy’s in a downturn so now, instead of thinking about a higher price tag for a luxury product, you’re going to think more about something really meaningful, not just something that costs a lot of money.
   2. Because it’s the Holiday season! And you’re going to do anything to top last year’s gift-giving efforts.
   3. Because you absolutely love your friends and family and want to give them the sweetest and nicest gift you can think about.
   4. Because Blank Label launched its men's dress shirt customizer on Halloween day, which allows you to create a one-of-a-kind gift (a custom men's dress shirt you designed).
   5. Because “money’s not an issue” but oh, it really is, so we’re giving you $10 off your next purchase (valid until 12/31/09) with this special promocode (10disc).

Now go ahead and start creating your custom dress shirt gift for that friend that you really love. Don’t forget to monogram his name on the dress shirt. That way he’ll know it was specially made for him.

Happy Dress Shirt Designing.

-the Blank Label team

This post was written by Danny Wong, the Lead Web Strategist for Blank Label and a guest blogger for our Co-Creation Blog.

What's the real lowdown in a startup, what do we do to procrastinate, what do we argue about, what causes us to give hi 5's?

Procrastination is a terrible beast, and yes it happens in a startup the same it does anywhere else in life. Procrastination is like masturbation. It's great whilst you're doing it, but in the end, you're just f*^#ing yourself. For us procrastination isn't so much about playing Halo (most often Rockband), but it's a lack of focus. We've got an ideas bucket that is growing faster than we can implement, and that's what causes the real distraction. What do we do today, and what can we put off till tomorrow. We love ideas, comments, feedback, and please feel free to continue dropping them at either sayhi@blank-label.com or in the 'provide feedback' button on our homepage. 

We've definitely had a couple of interesting debates internally this week. An interesting one was about our foxy ladies on our 'online men's dress shirt design store', my favorite one is the first one on the initial load. We've had female friends, users and customers comment, most often negatively about them. We were concerned, because although we're perfectly okay with offending people who we disagree with, we didn't want to be over-the-top chauvinistic a-holes. We finally decided to leave them, because although women have bought custom men's dress shirts for their boyfriends and husbands, we know ultimately we're serving guys, and not that all guys are sex crazed or somewhat turned on by sketches of lewd women, it just feels right to have provocative looks pulling at you.

So what gets us excited enough to generate mountain-shattering hi-5's? We're still early stage enough to get really excited about individual sales. I love speaking to customers. People say you never forget your first time. I'm sure I won't forget our first hundred. People who believe in startups are freaking crazy, and at the same time, their our heroes. It's scary to think that we're getting better at what we do everyday, so practically, we'll never be this bad if we always continue getting better, yet on a daily basis, people are still ordering from us. These people are our true innovators, they know what it's like to be different, to be individual, and for that, we love them for it.

Thanks for the support.

-Fan Bi | Blank Label | Co-Creation Blog

One of the most important, and yet surprisingly overlooked, things in a startup is morale. We’ve got a small team of four, so we're pretty clued-in on know how everyone’s doing work-wise, but also how everyone’s feeling emotionally and motivationally. All four of us are dedicating our lives to this, whilst still doing ‘the day job’ to feed the family, pay the bills, buy the food, etc. Living two lives is tough. Special kudos should be given to Zee, our Chief Interweb Builder, he’s just crazy, hundred hour work weeks are the lighter weeks. And he's got the fam too. As I said, crazy. But it's one of situations where I'm glad he's on our side to help us provide amazing men's dress shirts online. 

Getting the support from friends and family always makes this a little special. I want to take this opportunity for the kind words from our loved ones and those of us who've seen us toil behind the scenes and cheer us on from the proverbial sidelines. But let's be honest, we're decent people, and family and friends kind of have to give you a bit of encouragement every now and again. What's made this week really great is ... you.

It's kind of all worth it when people visit what you've built and buy what you believe in. We invest a lot of time trying to understand users (people who browse the site) and even more time speaking to customers (at least those who reply back to my emails thanking them with a caveat of looking for feedback). We're racking our brains trying to figure out how to enhance the experience for you, so I can say we totally, totally appreciate the people who do go to that extra effort of dropping a few words of commentary. I also want to say a special thanks for those who’ve taken the extra step of sharing us and our launch with their spheres of influence by blogging about us;

Johnathan Bell  from Guy Style Guide – Definitely one of our favorite male fashion bloggers threw us a plug in A FAQ for Finding the Perfect Dress Shirt

Michael  Tornato from the Trendy Dwarf – A true lover of fashion who has supported us for a while wrote this really in depth piece about us Blank Label … Do YOU like the Creative Types?

You can also find us in District Cut, DC’s Premier Men’s Fashion Blog who titled an article Exclusive Report | Blank Label

A post with an interesting twist comes from The Momentum of Failure on Creativity is a privilege, not a right. Blank Label isn’t here to judge. That’s my job

Brandon Crittle from Metro Style Men gave us a good plug on Express Your Individuality with Blank Label and he followed up suit by creating and purchasing a really cool shirt of his own

Serious kudos goes out to Dave Baldwin of men’s fashion and lifestyle megablog Thrillist, who reached out to us well before we were anything really and was in addition was one of the very first to post about us. Can’t wait to give you a hi 5 when we see you wearing your Blank Label custom dress shirt around Boston. 

Stay posted on more updates on Blank Label from Fan Bi and Danny Wong, on our Co-Creation Blog, as we journey beyond our first week and onto a crusade to change the way men shop through mass-customization and co-creation, starting with custom men's dress shirts.