Fashion Choices That Can Make Men Over 40 Look Younger

How much apparent age can a man actually remove with clothing? The answer is about 5 to 8 years, and it’s all a result of a few small choices that aren’t necessarily about the amount of cash you spend. Just a few creative selections can also help him maintain a more contemporary look, making it an advantage when introducing a new person to him or when going on a date.

Those decisions can also become a shared habit for couples developing a life together, and they will influence how they plan, prioritise, and care for what they value. The majority of suggestions for this age group are to dress as if 20 years younger, which creates the opposite effect and does it in a flash. Few decisions are actually successful, inexpensive, or uninteresting, and each of them has a reason to be that is expressed in a sentence.

Fit Before Everything Else

Fit accounts for more apparent age than fabric and price combined. The specific failure in this age bracket is a garment cut for a body from 10 years ago, worn long after the body moved on, and the tell is always the shoulder seam. A jacket shoulder that overhangs the actual shoulder by 2cm looks borrowed, and borrowed clothing looks old. Trousers are the second offender. The default male error when over 40 is to purchase to a waist number that is no longer accurate, and then to just use a belt to keep the result in place. The seam at the waistband shows through a shirt and can’t be taken off with any kind of cut.

Alterations cost a fraction of the garment. Taking in a shirt body or shortening a sleeve costs under $30 in most cities, and one of those does more for a man’s apparent age than a new jacket at 4 times the price. Speed is the other advantage. A tailor returns 3 garments in a week, which is faster than any diet and considerably more reliable. There is a test for this that takes 10 seconds. Stand sideways to a full-length glass with both arms down. If the shirt fabric hangs in a vertical column away from the torso, the shirt is 2 sizes too large, which is the single most common error in this age group and the easiest one to correct.

The Trend Half-Life

A current item has a useful life of roughly 3 seasons with strategy, and the risk appears at both ends of that window. Owning nothing current makes a wardrobe look preserved, which is the specific way clothing signals age. Owning too much of it makes a man look like he is dressing against his own birth certificate, which signals age louder still. One current item per season is the working ratio. A jacket shape or a trouser width that has arrived recently, added to a wardrobe that is otherwise settled, produces the impression of a man paying attention without appearing to try.

The items to retire are the ones from a trend that has already passed. A wardrobe looks dated through its most recently expired purchase, and that purchase is usually something bought enthusiastically six years ago and worn with pride ever since. Nobody tells a man about this, because there is no polite way to raise it. A fresh perspective can help, especially when dressing for dates or social occasions where an updated look can make a stronger first impression.

Colour Near the Face

Perceived age is partly a matter of contrast. Research on facial contrast found that the difference between the features and the surrounding skin decreases as people get older, and that faces with higher contrast are judged significantly younger. Mouth redness and eyebrow luminance both fade, and observers use the fading as an age cue without knowing they are doing it.

Clothing near the face pushes contrast up or down. A crisp white or pale collar raises the apparent difference between skin and background. A washed-out beige sitting directly under a lined face flattens everything and lets the skin tone win the comparison. The gain here is real and also modest. A collar choice is worth a couple of years of apparent age, and no more than that. Surveys asking what women want in a man return a short and stubborn list. Grooming and fit are on it. Shirt colour is not, which is why this section is worth 10 minutes rather than an afternoon.

The Footwear Decision

Footwear is an aging factor that is more effective than any other, as shoes are a good indicator of a man’s age, as most men wear a similar set of shoes for ten years. The shoe with the square toe is the most obvious of the shoes that remain today. It is part of a thin slice of the early 1900s and pops up every time it is placed under a table. The category has moved considerably. As sneakers take over the workplace, athletic shoe imports climbed 29% in a single year, and clean minimal trainers now appear in rooms that would have refused them in 2015. The change works in favour of anybody over 40, since a plain leather trainer looks current without looking adolescent.

There are two rules to this. However, it is important to keep the sole thin, as a chunky sole on an older man can seem like a costume, particularly on the date or out socially when a more classic silhouette may be more appropriate. Keep them clean; a scuffed trainer ages a man, a scuffed boot does not, and a man’s history is not up for grabs.

Grooming and Eyewear

Clothing has its limits and the other years are in grooming. The shorter the hair, the younger the man, especially up to the age of 40, and looking great after 40 has more to do with the hair length and frame selection than with anything else in a closet. Hair length is the more common mistake. Men tend to keep the cut they had at 30 and thin it, and a length that worked over a full head emphasises the loss once the hair recedes. A shorter cut costs nothing and removes 3 or 4 years the same afternoon.

Frames matter as much. Lines around the outer eye are covered with heavy plastic and a frame that is movable at the temple creates an upward line over the entire face. Rimless frames do the opposite; they leave all lines open on a bare face, and nowhere else. Colour of frame is another variable, typically badly selected. A frame darker than hair creates an intentional look; a lighter one than hair vanishes and only the hair lines remain to be seen.

The Cost of Dressing Your Age

A man who ignores all of this looks like somebody who stopped making decisions around 2012, which is a considerably worse impression than looking 45. It also travels a long way past clothing. It reaches assumptions about his energy and about how recently he learned anything at all. Ipsos research found young women ranking kindness and humour above attractiveness and financial status, at 53% and 60% respectively, which is the good news buried inside all of this. The clothes are there to prevent the wrong impression from forming prior to anyone hearing him speak, which leaves room for his personality and discussion. That’s important on a date, a natural, well-groomed look is perfect; it won’t be noticed as much in the interaction.