Member Focus: Claghorn

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Claghorn is another Styleforum member who plies his trade in the Classic Menswear “What Are You Wearing” thread. He’s known for pleasing combinations of solid colors that are sober without being boring. Add to that some very solid selfie skills, and you have a recipe for a much-beloved poster.

I joined Styleforum in the fall of 2012. I was 26 and had just left a very conservative office job in Seoul, South Korea. There I had to stick with a pretty strict uniform: gray, blue, or black suit, white shirt, and a necktie. I don’t think my wardrobe was particularly interesting: the suits were all Hugo Boss or brands along that line. I did have a number of ties, mostly from Thomas Pink, that I really liked, and after moving to a job that didn’t require a suit, I wanted to learn how to wear a tie with odd jackets. I really didn’t have a clue where to begin, so I registered on Styleforum.

Though my colleagues and friends were fluent in English, I was feeling out of touch with my language and my culture. As (questionably) useful as the information on SF was, I think what really drew me to the forum was the opportunity to interact with Westerners more regularly, even if it was through a virtual medium. Nevertheless, it was also through Styleforum that my sense of style developed. Where else but the internet would this occur? I didn’t want to dress like a Korean salaryman anymore, and “My dad taught me everything I knew about clothing” wasn’t going to work for me: he’s a solar physicist and dresses as I suspect most people imagine solar physicists dress.

For the first few months, I sort of blindly fumbled around, trying to figure out what spoke to me. At one point, I thought I liked loud jackets. I didn’t. I wasted a lot of money. It took probably a year for me to really figure out what I wanted to look like in terms of what I wore. The result is one that I am happy with, but I have also seen it called boring a derivative. I own a lot of blue jackets of varying colors, textures, and fabrics, because I like blue jackets. I own a lot of brown ties because I like brown ties. I am happiest in a blue jacket, a brown tie, and gray wool pants. There was once a “Dress like Claghorn” Friday challenge [Editor’s note: Claghorn did not win the Claghorn challenge], and I think that most, if not all, the participants played on some variation of that theme. My Instagram handle is @bluebrownandgrey.

Of course I don’t only wear blue jackets. Or brown ties. Just over half my wardrobe is made up of jackets and suits that aren’t blue, and though I probably wear brown ties more often than any other color, I wear green and blue ties pretty regularly. But I am pleased to be associated with that combination. It is simple and pleasing. When I go back and look at many of the images I saved as exemplars in my early days on Styleforum, they are just that: simple and pleasing.

 

 

 

 

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Styleforum Editors

The Styleforum editors are a group of gnomes that actually do all of the work running Styleforum. Ari, and Jasper play air hockey, drink artisanal iced teas, and debate whether it's harder to get bolognese or bechamel out of grenadine ties, and whether either can be used to polish shoes.