0:00 [Music] who are you and where are you going what do you want together we'll find the ideal path on the way to wow show with your host kevin bemel so irene thanks so much for hosting us on our first location shoot for the way to wow it's my pleasure i'm gonna give you a little introduction right okay so irene becker is the owner of allen dales irene has been in the men's men's clothing business for more years than we're going to talk about okay because she can hit me from
0:35 behind well so she started out at bullock's which is a now defunct department store she was the first female head of the men's suit department and then from there she kind of bounced back and forth between the retail and wholesale side the men's closing business ended up at hugo boss really the pinnacle at that time and then in 2008 irene bought allendale's and since then she's been educating men on how to express their identity through
1:10 their wardrobe you're really gonna this is gonna be so exciting yeah absolutely absolutely hey ian hey kevin great to see you man to see you thanks for coming out my pleasure so please meet irene becker she's the owner of allendale's this is ian welcome ian recently got promoted at his company uh he's in the fintech industry so he's going to be more customer facing now and really needs to you know kind of up his game right and you were telling me something about what you're looking to do you know uh finance is a more traditional industry
1:46 technology is a younger industry so it can be hard to skirt that line of like do i want the suit and tie do i want the jeans and the t-shirt so i need something in between happy medium yeah that's what we exactly we love to do we'll fix that for you right up wonderful let's get started huh yes awesome so you know one of the nice things about working with clothes here at allendale's is you can have a little drink while you're doing your thing so i'm going to go grab some you've got you two go ahead and get started i'll be right back great thank you so ian i know that you just got a
2:21 promotion at work right so you're looking to step up your wardrobe a little bit yeah i'm going to be moving into a more client-facing role so i figured i'd better get some threads to match it no more t-shirts yeah we're just leaving it up a notch this is about as fancy as it gets we're not gonna do that anymore so i try to lay out a table for you that i think will balance out or maybe start sort of a capsule wardrobe for you so you could start building a little bit more than just a t-shirt collection in your closet right so i thought maybe a sport coat we could start with a nice sport shirt that you could mix and match with jeans if you don't wear
2:56 the sport coat and then a nice pair of slacks that are actually not like a typical slack they're cut like a jean it's called a five pocket cut so it sort of gives you that younger feel with a dressier fabric yeah so it's nice nice middle ground it is a nice middle ground and then what's nice about this combination is you could wear either a brown shoe or a black shoe and of course you have to coordinate the belt as i'm sure you know that for sure right okay okay so um i think what we would have to do is basically get you into some clothing and see what works
3:31 and then i can just show you um what else you need to know sounds great going forward yeah let's try something on all right you want a little whiskey oh my goodness and uh tequila right yes so cheers here's to a new ian yes cheers cheers oh that's a nice start yeah absolutely delicious so here you're going to go turn try some things on yeah yeah okay what am i starting well i think we should start off with this look first because then we can build from it so right all right so let me put you in the fitting room and when you come out i'll put the jacket on you
4:06 all right all right all right you got it on that's great okay how do you feel it feels great honestly so let's start with with what you've got on here before we put on your jacket what i think you need to know really my philosophy is it's all about alterations you can buy something from banana republic but if it's ill-fitting it's not going to look good either yeah and nothing i've ever bought off the rack has really fit well so then you understand if you wrap your brain around the fact that men need alterations just like women you've already won half the battle there so to make this shirt look even
4:41 better your wife will tell you the same thing but for a different reason so for the first thing we would do is we would shorten the sleeve okay where would we take it up to well it depends we'd have to put on the jacket okay but usually what i like to do is to have a little bit of a cuff showing not too much and that's something that you can decide it's it's you know it can't just be my opinions it has to be your personal style too and i think over you know time and you you'll learn what your style is right i'm here just to help you get there i don't think you want too much of my style right now not right now i'm letting you take the leap okay that's
5:16 good that's good okay so what i would do with this i would shorten the sleeve and if you want to wear this shirt in or out tucked in or out we would probably consider shortening it just a hair which is very easy to do it doesn't require a lot of work so that's easy and you can have the option of wearing it in or out tucked in around the other thing we would do with the pants is just to hem the bottoms and of course because we don't sell shoes here i can't try them on with some shoes i apologize no no no no it should have brought my dresses yes next time next time okay so let's get you in the jacket so you get the whole look absolutely okay and then i'll show you
5:52 what we'll need to do all right so one of the things i've learned over the years is that over the years you learn more and more about how you want to dress how you want to look right and so then you that's how you develop your style so you know rome was not built in a day right and neither is a wardrobe i mean i've i've built my wardrobe over literally 30 years so you know some of the things i have in there are are that old but when you buy good quality which is one of the reasons why irene and i are friends right is you you can literally buy something
6:27 well you can't wear it for the rest of your life you're young but i can buy something and and i'll i'll be able to wear the suit for you know probably the rest of my life right and yeah and that's what's so great about buying a bunch of versatile items right as you can mix and match you can and you're building like i said a capsule wardrobe for yourself i mean off this table i can make 10 15 different outfits you'd be surprised how many different looks you can get but so let's start off with this one first so the sport coat does fit you well but we do need some alterations so when you're shopping for a suit or a sport coat the main thing you need to look at is the shoulder if the shoulder fits anything else can
7:03 be adjusted because once you start doing alterations on the shoulder you just don't want to go there right you don't want to go there so here when i look at you i see that it needs to be opened up a hair it needs to be opened up maybe a little bit under the arm and a little bit on the sides but other than that it's a great outfit for you yeah this is a great look so great yeah that's great yeah the shoulders the shoulders fit well and and like lift your arm just a little bit see there's the shoulder is still pretty smooth right there's no breaking exactly exactly right and that's what you want it to be it's not bunching up and also you know because we live in la uh we've got
7:38 it's it's hot so we do a lot of soft dressing there's not a lot of padding on the shoulder you don't need that we do an open weave fabric so it's breathable you can wear it year-round so that you have to consider that as well because i i can't imagine you're going to buy five different sport coats you're gonna have one or two that are versatile right yeah okay so what's great about this is for example if you're not going if you don't want to wear like a a slack look you want to wear denim you can throw that together and then you've got another look oh that looks really good right yeah and then you know you can switch shirts around you can do a crisp white dress shirt which i personally always
8:14 love you can throw a pocket square in the pocket and put a pair of jeans with it you've got a whole other outfit yeah right that's amazing when i was more involved in the film business my standard uniform was jeans white shirt blue blazers well it's the california look right back and honestly you could go anywhere from a meeting at a studio to whatever i mean so you're you're fintech so it's not quite the same thing nobody's similar giant meats but i'll generally be meeting people on the technical side and they tend to dress down a little bit so something like jeans might actually work very well absolutely absolutely yes but again
8:50 you're you're a level above right so you want to present yourself that way absolutely right so that's just taking it up a notch i mean it doesn't kill you to put on a collared shirt right because it just takes the look to a different level yeah right definitely okay good well and and i mean i hear this frequently from young women they're they're they say well you know this this guy comes to pick me up on a date he's wearing jeans and a t-shirt shirt it's the worst thing i mean in my day you just you wouldn't you wouldn't have done that it would be
9:25 considered disrespectful but that young men today wear jeans and a cheek because you can wear it to work right so why would you necessarily wear anything different but young women want to see something at a higher level yeah um and so you know this kind of look i mean you would literally blow them away absolutely i think a lot of young men tend to you know not want to appear to be trying too hard sometimes you know with their tracks and i think you know as you get a little bit older it becomes a little bit more important to put that energy in you know i think so i do and i also
10:00 think a lot of men don't know what to do so it's my job to educate and that's a lot of what we do here we t we teach you you know from alterations to um taking care of the garment dry cleaning what you need what you should and what you shouldn't do we help you with that we help you match the shoes even though we don't carry them here you know i i'll you know send me a picture on the phone and i'll take a look at it say yes or no so it's it's a whole top to bottom you know look full service yeah so we try to get you you know to start off the right way in your in your fashion journey whatever that may be right so yeah and
10:37 and i i think too that um i completely lost my thoughts it sounded very profound it inevitably was because it was coming after a you know a little bit of scotch oh so i mean i i even these days will wear a tie most days and i remember um when you could you know when you could do such things i met an accountant friend of mine for lunch and show up in a tie right and he's looking at me because i the man hasn't worn a tie in 40 years
11:13 probably he says he's why are you wearing a tie i said well bruce you know me i said i'm coming to meet you for lunch i mean i i should show up you know in in in jeans and a t-shirt that's not respectful to you you've agreed to take your time to to meet me for lunch i mean frankly i was going to get some free accounting advice from him right but you know i'm saying so there's there's a respect that we give by the way we dress so it's the way we dress isn't only about us i think we want to
11:49 be comfortable in our clothes but i think that we need to be conscious of of who we're meeting and and how we're reflecting them as well so somebody sees you see the friend of theirs sees you with them you know imagine this scenario you're out with you're out of the young woman restaurant one of her friends comes by and you're sitting there in your jeans and t-shirt right and later her friend is saying who is that schlub with you right or you're dressed like this right what is she going to say when she talks to your friends she's going to say who is who's that guy with you wow i mean he really you know
12:27 i took it up a notch he's a you know he's just really good testified you know he's saying so i think there's more to it than we than we think i mean it used to be you dressed this way because that's how you dressed right now i have a choice it's a conscious choice absolutely and but then we that means we have to think about what choices we're making and that's where that's where it becomes a little more difficult and that's what we're here to help you with yeah exactly and i mean to have to have someone like irene on your team makes a big difference because she's been doing this i mean since she
13:03 was five well certainly for someone like me who doesn't doesn't know to match their shoes with their belt [Laughter] we've got a lot of work too yeah but it's okay i will get you there don't worry i'll tell you a little secret you actually can wear a brown belt with maroon shoes okay i'd need to get some maroon shoes don't let him tell you that you can't it's true from good authority otherwise you know black with black brown with brown [Laughter]
13:38 well you got to learn the rules before you break them that's right well that's it see now now you're talking you know g bruce boyer and alan foster now you're really getting into this boy that whiskey has really taken it's really taken you up a little bit yeah i like it i like it a lot so um do you want to talk about like some of the socks you have that those are so great so yeah so you know it used to be a rule that you had to sort of match the bottom you know the pant to uh the sock or you match the shoe to the sock this stays it's all about socks because i mean how many things can men use to accessorize with right you can do a
14:14 pocket square and you can do socks yeah basically so i like to what i like to do is just pull a color out of the pants sometimes and just put a fun sock whatever whatever represents you i mean you're in the tech industry yeah pac-man's would be great for you and i know you you play rugby but um i i like hockey so i have some hockey socks so i pulled some of those out but it really could be anything i mean it's just whatever kind of grabs you that speaks to you because fashion is it's about passion too it's about what speaks to you what you know how something feels like
14:50 i'm very tactile i like to wait the way a fabric feels on my skin and in my hand you'll get you'll get to appreciate all that as you learn what your style is so when you implement when you say you want to pull a color out of the pant here so what what what is this the color we're matching well i well here it's a little bit more difficult but here i'm doing sort of a yellow like creamy look it doesn't you know it doesn't necessarily have to be something like this you could always do a solid yeah so if you look i see you probably can't get this on camera but so you can see here i've got um
15:27 right so the gray is coming from the pants the brown is coming from the shoes the black and this is so you know this is how obsessive you can get so if you notice i'm wearing this this leather bracelet so it's brown and black which is actually what i was matching the socks to was was this it's just a little accent piece there you go and it's almost like your subconscious notices it you know i didn't pick up on it but the whole look comes together so well well right and and i mean if you were to talk to you know sort of the great you know male dressers of the last you know century fred astaire terry grant carrie cary
16:02 grant um gary cooper um so it was always about dressing in a way that it didn't look like it was completely studied and manipulated it was about adding a little bit of a sort of a carefree aspect to it right and so some of the stuff that i do is is i have a whole bunch of these things they're just fun um they have them on the wrist and they and they're just sort of an accent piece right um and they're also um pocket squares yeah pocket square same thing but people will sometimes and say oh what's that right and now you have an opportunity to
16:38 just talk to somebody and um you know may not be as important in what you're doing but in my business i want to be able to connect with people so i want to do something that might give them the opportunity to go oh what's that about you you know kind of thing oh and we strike a conversation then you know wherever it goes from there yeah so you know your wardrobe gives you an opportunity to do that kind of thing absolutely absolutely well and just like putting on a collar you know accessorizing is another way of showing that respect and putting that effort in you know it's the next little level absolutely absolutely i mean
17:13 in the end that's that's really what a tie is it's just one other way to decorate yourself i i realize you know i'm i think i'm the only person who wears a tie anymore i'm going to start slow here yeah yeah absolutely i mean you don't want them throwing you out of the office that won't do us any good but you know it ties the same way or you know you wear a tie with a tie bar something like that right so there's little things that you know you can play with i mean when i was in business before you know i didn't wear ties because if my father caught me wearing a tie he would have you know beaten me up but and i it doesn't necessarily have to be your
17:49 style you'll figure out what your style is yeah as you go as you learn because really i mean if it's it's it's about educating like in any other area you don't know so you need to learn yeah and that's what we're all here to do and that's why it's so important to have a stylist and now you have one so so i mean tell us again the two principles that you mentioned at the beginning because i think this is really the important takeaway right is is what do we want to remember when we're out shopping well i think for somebody
18:24 that's just starting to build their wardrobe i think it's very important to understand that you don't have to drop a lot of money all at once it's not necessary what you need to do however is understand that you're not nobody's a 40 long runway model except for that runway model that you see and none of us have perfect shapes and we always need alterations when you've got a tailored suit or sport coat or slacks on that changes the whole look whether you got it at banana republic or neiman marcus or here it's irrelevant right you can still clean it up the other thing i like to to teach
19:00 people is really education i like to educate my clients on why i'm giving you this clothing why it goes with this what this fabric is and so hopefully when you know you decide you're going to move or you're going to you're going to go to another store without me you'll know what to look for you'll understand that yes oh gosh that shirt looks so great oh wait i have this jacket in my wardrobe and i've got these pants in my wardrobe that i can mix and match and i can have a whole new outfit so that's really what i'd like to do yeah it's not about filling you with tons and stuff you know tons of items and then sending you out
19:36 the door it's not about that it's about building a collection for you that you could live in for a long time and just move you know in your career and in your life with so that's really what i believe great wonderful okay i think so there you have it yeah i'm looking forward to my new work life with these me too me too and shopping some more so i have to thank irene for letting us invade her store and do our episode of the way to wow show really the first first location episode so i'd be really curious to hear what
20:11 you think about bringing the way to wow show out into the community i want to remind you of irene's two principles for figuring out your personal style one is alterations right we're all shaped differently and off-the-rack clothes are just made for that standard person we're not that so don't be afraid to get your clothes altered find yourself a good tailor and and and that person will help you out and the second thing is learning to dress well and learning your
20:47 own personal style is a process it's an educational process i still read books on it all the time learn more things to try and play around with and i'm going to add my own principle and that is have fun with it i mean if you're not having fun with the way you dress i think you're doing something wrong friends if you would like to be a guest on the way to wow show or you know someone who you think should be drop us a comment or go to our website thewowshow.com send us a message maybe you'll show up in front of this
21:24 camera soon courage at all times my friends marie you're still my bell darling [Music] so
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