10 Rules of Style

In this month's Details, they asked Band of Outsiders designer Scott Sternberg to give his rules of style. Be amused:

1. Opening a conversation with "What do you do?" makes you sound like a shifty, social-climbing dickwad. Small talk is for sissies, but if you're stuck with it, you can certainly come up with something better than that.

2. Talking about what brand you're wearing is gay in the bad way. Just keep quiet and play dumb if someone asks. Talking about what a great deal you got on the aforementioned item is worse. If you must, tell your mom, because she has sale empathy and will take your victory as her own. It's sick.

3. I don't think a tie is a relic, not yet. It's purely masculine—that one garment that allows you to go a little outside the box. A tie with a well-cut suit makes you look put-together and confident. It's an auto-chic, easy uniform.

4. Cigarettes are a vile, dirty habit. Joints, on the other hand, are perfectly acceptable.

5. Whenever you start a new project or a new job, don't tell anyone what you're working on, because it can change direction a million times and once you start telling the world about it, you get constrained by your own mouth.

6. That skin-toned paste your girlfriend gave you to treat your pimple is makeup. Don't kid yourself. You're a girl if you use it. Figure something else out.

7. Rabid atheism does not lead to attractive or acceptable cocktail-party conversation. You know who you are and you need to chill. We get it, okay? God is for dummies. Now shut your hole.

8. It's just not cool to fart on a plane, even if everyone's ears are plugged from the altitude and they can't hear where it came from. Heed my warning: Airplane-fart karma is a bitch, and you will find yourself at the receiving end on a sleepless transcontinental red-eye soon enough.

9. Style fills the gap between how you see yourself and how you want other people to see you. It is not a mysterious quality reserved for Cary Grant or Liberace. You have a sense of it in there somewhere. It's just a matter of finding a way to express it without seeming like you're trying.

10. Rules, as they say, are meant to be broken. Don't get too caught up with what I—or anyone else—tell you about your personal style, except for No. 8.