Leopard Skin Clothing And Blazer

Story By Jesutomi Rotimi

Drop the rulebook and try and forget everything you thought you knew about fashion. Because this season, leopard skin-print is back in style. No matter whether you wear just a touch here or there, or large swathes of it draped around your body, you can’t go wrong with this feline look.

Synonymous with luxury and wealth, leopard skin and generally animal print add a wild, exotic and untamed element to any season. Notice your fashionistas rocking it.

Leopard print is timeless. And so are leopard skin blazers. It never goes out of style. For nearly the past century, women have been wearing the exotic print with no signs of letting up.

Leopard skin blazer goes on a fitted jean for street look, a pant trousers or fitted skirt for a corporate look.

Whether as casuals, office wears or on the red carpet, leopard skin clothing’s and even accessories is considered timeless fashion investments and prized wardrobe possessions.

Trendy lapels

The lapels are the hottest fashion item; they are turning up everywhere, from classic and chic rose-shaped, multi flower and even pins, in every imaginary colours, pattern, design, style and texture, from twinkling sheer fabrics to thick prints.

Daily change in fashion trends have led to a whole lot of change in the wardrobe of the modern man. Peak and shawl lapels are quite haute and in vogue these days. For that formal outings, wear a clean, crisp lapel and look polished, professional and current all year round.

Notch lapel

This is the most common lapel you are going to see out there. It’s on the vast majority of jackets and there’s a reason for this. It’s actually the least expensive to manufacture and the easiest one to get right. This type of lapel is perfectly fine for everything except formal wear. So once we get into formal wear, that’s where you are going to start to see these other types of lapels, although they are not restricted specifically to formal wear.

Peak lapel

This is much more uncommon and it’s a more formal type of lapel, and this is where you are going to have these points that go up right here on the shoulder and it’s a little bit more stylish of a detail. Now, the thing with the peak lapel is it’s the most expensive lapel to manufacture, so that is one of the reasons you don’t see it on a lot of jackets.

Shawl Lapel

The shawl lapel, you’ll see that it’s very rounded, no notch cut in, so rounded, very soft edge, and it’s usually a bit thinner as well, so they’re very thin. This is something reserved for formal wear. It’s an alternative to the peak. It came about a little bit later. It is a little bit more fashion-forward. And on the right type of man, I think on a man who’s well-built who perhaps is a little bit bigger up in the arms and chest area, this type of lapel looks great because if you wear a peak when your chest is built up, it can actually make your chest look even larger, so a shawl does a great job.

The only people I don’t recommend the shawl lapel for is if you’ve got a very rounded face. Then it’s going to complement your face almost too much and by mimicking your face, it actually is going to make it look a little bit larger. So if you have a round face, you’re a little bit large or portly, avoid the shawl lapel and go for the more jagged lines of the peak lapel.

 

Okay, so I talked about other types of lapels out there. In fact, if you look at some of my other videos, you will see that I wear a sport lapel and this is lapel that was actually designed — it’s historically correct in the sense that I can wear my jacket like this, so if you can imagine — whenever you see jackets like — you only see jackets like this that button all the way up to the top and have a neck covering in the military.

 

I know my military dress uniforms were all like that and that’s where you’ll see usually a five or a six-button front, but that’s where historically our jackets come from, from military wear. In a sense, they were derived off of those lines. So when you see that sport lapel that I’m wearing, technically that’s so that I could button this up all the way. I’ve seen a lot of fashion magazines and a lot of very stylish men are starting to actually change the collar under here and whenever they’re out, they will actually flip that collar up.

if you’ve got style and if it looks good and you can pull it off, why not, because it actually serves a functional — I mean, it will keep you a bit warmer and protect your neck from the wind. Other ones you’re going to see out there are going to be where it’s — you’re going to see variations of the notch, so this notch right here, we’re talking not too many — I don’t know, maybe — what? It’s going to maybe 110 degrees to probably 90 degrees is going to be the normal angle we’re going to see here in the notch.

Once the notch starts closing up and we start seeing 60 degrees, 45 degrees, or it opens up considerably and you get a very wide notch, maybe over 145 degrees, then in that case, we’re starting to see a different style. Tailors will play with this. They’ll go for different looks. It’s up to you. If you do something like that, it’s a very slight adjustment and you can only get that usually on a custom suit that you’re having made with a tailor that knows what he’s doing.

Have fun with it if this is going to be your fourth or fifth suit and you are into custom suits. If not, whenever you see that on a jacket, if it looks like it’s a bit extreme there, you probably want to avoid that if this is going to be one of your only suits. It’s just going to make it more of a fashion suit than a classically stylish suit.

So again, notch, peak, shawl, and in that order, in a sense, is going to be your safety net in terms of if you’re only going to own one suit, if you don’t get into suits, go for the notch lapel. If you own quite a few suits, then you can start looking at the peak and maybe even the shawl lapel.