All around the US, temperatures are dropping and all around the US people are still walking around in shorts.  Come on people, be smart.  If you’re having an unusually warm day in your area, go for it, wear the shorts, but even on an unusually warm day, it will get cold at night.  When it’s cold, dress warm.  Not only are you at risk of catching a cold (or maybe even the swine flu) but you just look ridiculous.  Here are some tips to keep yourself in check.

First, the best way to keep yourself cool when it’s warm and warm when it’s cool is to invest in some technical outerwear.  Textile and fashion technology has gotten so advanced now.  You can buy what looks like a light sweater but actually keeps you warm on a cold night.  Some pieces will keep you more warm the colder it is outside.  Incredible.  North face is getting a little tired, but they make some pretty good technical articles of clothing.  For outerwear, look to sports brands (like Nike, Adidas, Reebok) for functional sweaters, pullovers and jackets.  A few years ago, Levi’s created a line a jeans that would feel cool to the touch when the weather is hot and would keep you warm in the winter months.  These things exist and they are super-cool.

Second, the old-school form of layering.  I’m not talking about fashionably layering, although that can be used in this situation, but just wearing a shirt, then a sweater then a jacket.  You can add or remove at will ad be warmer or colder.

If you’re not sure if it’s warm outside, put on a pair of jeans, I wear in jeans in the dead of summer and I’m still fine.  It’s not that uncomfortable and if you want to pursue any professional career in your life, you’re going to have to get used to wearing long pants in the summer anyways.

Flip-flops are also a no-go.  Just put on a pair of shoes.  People, if you’re wearing rainbows in the snow, you don’t look cool, you look like an asshole.

Just do yourself a favor and save everyone else the trouble of looking down on you and stay warm when it’s cold outside.  Moral of the story, do what makes sense.

We’re all guilty of buying something new and immediately wearing it.  Nothing wrong with that, but we’re also all guilty of over-wearing a new piece of clothing or an accessory that we’ve purchased and scoffing at our friends for doing the same.  Don’t fall into the trap.  I know that new pair of boots or that new shirt seems to be singing to you from inside your closet but show some self-restraint.

Now, to help you with this problem, I’d like to outline for you what you can over wear a little bit, what you just straight can’t and how you can avoid the problem forever, easily.

The key to deciding what you can and can’t over wear and to what degrees is all about how noticeable, loud, or special the piece in question is.  If you normally wear flip-flops on a normal day, and you purchase a pair of cowboy boots, you absolutely cannot over-wear these.  Come on, you need to get a hold of yourself and look at what you’re doing here.  If you wear those cowboy boots more than once a week, and if it’s not when you’re going out at night, you’re guilty of trying too hard (read previous previous article).  If it’s a pair of very pretty earrings you’ve just purchased, not as big a deal.  If it’s a new t-shirt, at least wait until you’ve washed it and then wait just a little bit more.  Variety is a big part of how people think of the way you dress.  If you think you may be wearing it a bit too much, then you’re wearing it too much.

Now the answer to never having this problem again.  It’s simple and effective yet painful and probably not practical.  The answer is to buy more of whatever you are over wearing.  If you have a few pairs a of cowboy boots, you’ll look like you’re going through a cowboy phase and that your style is changing, not that you are unattractively attached to one pair of boots.  If you buy a very nice v-neck shirt (read previous previous previous article) and you’re tempted to wear it all the time, having more will probably wear away the novelty for you.  So, there’s actually a good answer to solve this.  Just avoid it.  For your own sake.  Repeat Smartly and Live Sexy

Everyone in the world belongs to a tribe, a socioeconomic class, a frat that decides the way we look and act.  There’s nothing wrong with this.  We normally associate ourselves with people who are like us, so looking and acting like our friends is not because they are our friends, they are our friends because they look and act like us.  May not always be the case, and many of you may disagree with me, but let’s just get past this.  Regardless of the reason,  many of us are lost in a see of peers who are indistinguishable (especially in dress) from us.  So how do we fight the mundane without losing who we are or compromising our personal tastes in dress?  It’s a great question and I don’t know if I have a great answer.

In the southeast, every guy everywhere wears polo shirts with khakis or jeans and they all have just about the same haircut.  Everyone, but especially frat guys.  How do they differentiate themselves from others?  Well, some of them go the outdoorsy way and sport technical jackets and backpacks.  Some try to get super classy by wearing very expensive things and looking very refined, but even these groups are large and honesty not that different.  That’s just one example of the rampant homogeneous style in the country.

I wear all kinds of things and so my general look changes from day-to-day.  I don’t do this so that I look different from other people, but it just sort of happened that way.  That’s the only answer I have for trying to be different…never looking the same.  I really don’t know.  I don’t even know if this is even a problem.  What do you guys think?

I think I figured it out.  As a big fan of fashion and clothing, I like to look at the way people dress and I love to tear it down and figure out what I like about it.  After years of doing this, I have come across the one thing that I believe to be the deciding factor between whether I approve or reject an outfit when I see it.  The Jason Lee, Live SEXY, secret to dressing in public is effort.

A little anticlimactic I know but it gets better and more complicated, I promise.

I’ve said it before a million times, wear what is physically and mentally comfortable, and so you must wonder what the hell happened to that.  Well, think about it like this, comfort is your primary concern in the choosing of pieces to wear.  Your attention to effort is in the application.  What I mean is that you don’t want to look like you slapped something on, an you don’t want to look like you spent forever figuring something out.  Just bear with me and you’ll get it.

I guess the easiest way to do this would be to describe people who do it wrong. So let’s analyze the extremes.

People who try too hard

You know exactly what I’m talking about.  You see these men and women dressed in things that may be similar to things you own, but the look seems contrived, unnatural.  These same people wear things that are almost like the things in your sexy closet but are just slightly off.  So, while you look beautiful or handsome, these others look annoying, confused, aggressive and obscene.  See, they’re trying to hard, or at least it looks like they are.  That’s a important point.  No matter how hard you are actually trying, if you look like you’re trying too hard, there’s no difference. Things that can make you look like you’re trying too hard include:

• obsessive color coordination
• over-dressing for your situation
• too much make-up or hair product
• over-accessorizing
• generally dressing too damn loud

People who don’t try hard enough

The other end of the spectrum looks just as bad.  It may actually be even worse because while you may not annoy people with your look, you may turn people away because you just look dirty and slobbish.  The best example of people who don’t try hard enough is the guy or girl who goes to class in a loose t-shirt and sweatpants, who looks like their shower is being seriously underutilized.  Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothign wrong with bumming it, but  there’s a right and wrong way to do it.  For instance, a pair of glasses (if you normally wear contacts) is a great way to excuse your look.  You just look like you had a long night in the library and you didn’t have time to get ready.  Now, if you’re going to dress like that to class, at least make sure you shower ( and dry off, wet shower hair looks slobby when you’re dressed like this) and do something about your hair.  For girls, a simple ponytail or whatever, done neatly can also save this look.  Things that make you look like you’re not trying hard enough include:

• greasy hair
• dirty clothes
• clothes that fit just TOO loosely
• mixing bum clothes with nice clothes or accessories

You’re effort is Just Right

So, what have we learned?  You need to choose and buy clothing that you are comfortable with, but keep your mind open and experiment in the dressing room a bit.  When you dress yourself, don’t try too hard and don’t just throw some stuff together.  Try as hard as the people who look like they’re trying too hard, just don’t look like them.  It’s sort of difficult to describe what the right amount of effort is, but hopefully with the previous examples, you’ll be able to figure it out yourself.  It’s especially difficult because this does not exclude any look that you may go for.  Whatever your personal style may be, try just enough, or at least look like it, and walk around confident in the fact that you LIVE SEXY.

It seems that a perfectly acceptable form of dress for men in large cities in America goes completely unused and, in fact, is looked down upon by the rest of the nation.  I’m speaking of the v-neck.  Now before you go and judge the v-neck, hear me out, I may be able to change your mind about this very handsome and, contrary to what most of you will say, normal style of shirt.

Before I start talking about why I think the v-neck is perfectly acceptable, notice how I’m not saying it’s something everyone should wear…more on that later, I will address the differences in fashion between large cities and the rest of America.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand that fashion is much more forward, loud and individual in cities like Chicago, New York or LA.  Some things that you might see in those cities just wouldn’t work anywhere else.  See, when you have a whole bunch of people tightly surrounding large pockets of money and fashion, you end up getting a lot of people who wear things that are considered to be fashionable in the world of high fashion.  This has no place in middle America and I’m not advocating people in Montana, Ohio or South Carolina to start wearing very fashion-forward outfits, but I do believe that those people can still be fashionable.

So, onto the v-neck.  If you were to put on a plain v-neck t-shirt and jeans and ask people, especially men, what they thought, I would bet dollars to donuts that the first word out of their mouths would be “gay”.  In this instance, they are only partially talking about homosexuality.  I think when men describe certain articles of clothing as gay, they really mean metropolitan, fashionable and, to them, uncomfortable.  They don’t know that this is what they mean, but I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what they’re saying.

If those taking my imaginary survey didn’t say gay, I’m pretty sure they would have said “guido”.  This is a much more valid answer than “gay” and here’s why.  The people that we call “guidos” think that they are very fashionable.  They think the overly loud prints, their Nordstrom jeans and massive amout of hair product make them “metrosexual” (I hate this word) and fashionable.  It doesn’t.  They just look gaudy, loud, annoying and they happen to wear the hell out of v-neck shirts.  They’ve legitimately ruined the chances for a normal American to come over to the side of looking good for fear of looking like the “jager-bomb” guy.

Now, please just ignore the guidos.  They wear “nice” (and I mean those quotes as harshly as possible) jeans too, but who doesn’t like a good pair of jeans.  V-necks, like every other piece of clothing you wear, is all about comfort and look.  If you’re a straight American male, wearing a v-neck with a good pair of jeans and sunglasses looks perfectly fine, but only if you’re comfortable.  Take a look at the picture at the top of the pages.  Robert Pattinson, of Twilight fame, is sporting a v-nec and there’s nothing “out there” about it.  It looks normal, it looks good.  If you’re a gay man, (I hope you understand that my previous paragraphs weren’t meant in any offense and that we at the Collegiate Style of course have no issue with the gay community) same goes for you too.  If you’re a guido, send me an e-mail we have some work to do.

Now, don’t wear a v-neck if you don’t like the way it feels or looks.  I think you should give them a fair fighting chance, but after a trial, if you don’t like ‘em, trash ‘em.  You should really try though. There isn’t a better way, in my opinion, to look like you’re casual or relaxed sexy.

Ok, I waited and waited and thought, eventually this thing is going to die off on its own, but I’ve waited too long and now it’s time for me to step in.

This Ed Hardy thing is ridiculous.  You can’t stop at a gas station or Wal-Mart in America and not run into someone wearing Ed Hardy.  Sure a lot of the stuff (well the more expensive stuff anyways) is cut well and fits nicely, but it never looked good.

You know that there’s a problem with a fashion trend when the people who love it most are rednecks, guidos and tweens who are in desperate need of parents who care.  Seriously? You want to wear the stuff that these people do?  They even print his designs on lighters and shot glasses that you can pick up where? At you local skeezy gas station of course.

What makes this appealing? Oh, it’s actually put to together by a real designer you say?  Right, Christian Audigier makes this stuff.  That’s great, because I really want to wear the next thing that the guy who came up with Von Dutch makes.  Do you see a general theme here?  Trucker hats and the official brand of rednecks who want to look cool and edgy, this is a guy to get behind.

And please, don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s cool because celebrities wear it.  What I hope you realize, but you may not, is that celebrities are given a LOT of free stuff so that when the paparazzi snap shots of them and those photos end up on magazines, the clothing that they’re wearing gets excellent exposure.  Just because you saw Brad Pitt wearing it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s cool.  Also, please note that in the image above Britney Spears is sporting Ed Hardy.  You don’t want to look like her do you?  She proves my entire point because she may be a celebrity but she’s also a REDNECK.

I really hope that you take this to heart.  Get rid of anything that you own that has Ed Hardy on it, or if you don’t own any Ed Hardy, please don’t buy any, it would break my heart.  I’m trying to help you live sexy, don’t hurt my feelings by doing the exact opposite.

I love hulu.  Who wouldn’t?  You can watch your favorite tv shows and movies when you want to with limited commercials (you can even block the commercials but I’m not getting into it).  You get your shows on demand, The man gets his money through ad revenue everyone wins (apparently hulu is winning big because they had enough to run a superbowl commercial).  I love it, but this isn’t about hulu, its about a similar, slightly more deviant site called ninjavideo.

Ninjavideo streams tv shows and movies without the ads, and it uses the divx web player so the quality is better too.  Now, if you’ve got morals, stick with hulu, there aren’t THAT many commercials I guess.  The real reason i really like ninjavideo is because with divx web player, you can actual set it to save the movies and shows you watch, so you can stream, and watch later.  There’s actually even a download button just above all of the movies you watch.  This makes it so that you can pre-stream or download and watch at your convenience.

Another reason ninjavideo is great is because they have movies on there before they are out on dvd and sometimes even before they are in theaters.  That’s illegal…but nice.  Also, they have pretty much every popular tv show on the air, hulu doesn’t.

So, if you’re just going to watch now and you dont need the video for later, stick with hulu, do the right thing.  But, if you need the movie for later, or you’re just that much of a delinquent, ninjavideo is the kind of place for you.

What’s a kid to do when I’m stuck on campus between classes with nothing to do?  I’m too far away from any of my friends to hang out and there probably isn’t enough time anyways.  I guess I could listen to music on my ipod, but who just sits there and listens to music?  Definitely not living sexy.  I could put some movies on my ipod, but that takes forever and between my music and movies, my ipod’s not big enough for the two of them.  Well, I found a solution and it is excellent.  My solution to boredom is a program called Orb and I use it constantly.

Orb is a program you download to your computer that streams your media files to the internet when you want it.  So, if I have a movie o my computer I just navigate to orb on my phones browser and I can watch the movies anywhere.  It really is great for boredom.

But wait, there’s more.  If you’re in the car and you forgot your ipod or didn’t upload those last few songs you downloaded and you’re itching to jam out, you can stream your music too.  So if you have a headphone jack on your phone (iphones or my LG dare) you can plug it into one of those tapes with the wires or into an fm transmitter and listen to that song right the and there.

I’m not done yet.  Maybe you have some ebooks in pdf, yeah, you can stream those too.  Photos? Of course.

It gets even handier when you have an xbox360, wii or ps3.  Use the internet browser in there to stream anythig to your tv and if you’ve got it, you’re speaker system.  So good.  So easy.  There’s even an iphone app for it.

When you need to be up all night studying or writing a paper, what do you turn to?  I would think that most of you would answer adderall because just about everyone I know has used it to stay focused during aggressive crunch sessions at the library but a recent study says that only 25% of college students have used it.  I’m not in any way advocating the abuse of drugs to enhance academic performance but the stat surprised me. Apparently we’re not the only ones popping the magic concentration pills to stay alert.  I’ve heard that football players use it to better their performance and according to House (the best damn tv show period) soccer moms are using to keep up their perfect lives.

How many of you have used adderall?  I’d really love to know.

For those of you that HAVE used it, a quick blurb from wikipedia to maybe deter you from eating the focus candy (my professors would cringe):

“Adderall has a high abuse potential. Due to the fact that Adderall has a powerful effect of increasing blood pressure, it carries the same risk of sudden death, stroke, and heart attack in patients with pre-existing heart conditions, as does methylphenidate and other stimulants used to treat ADHD, as well as the same risk of seizures in patients with a history of seizures.^[1][25] Studies of long-term use of Adderall and methylphenidate in children have shown a temporary decrease in growth rate that does not affect final adult height.^[26] Stimulant medications also decrease appetite in some people, leading to weight loss, and this effect is more common with Adderall than methylphenidate^[26] or atomoxetine. Changes in vision have been reported with both Adderall and methylphenidate.^[1][25] “In extreme cases, the drug can cause paranoia, hallucinations and heart attacks.”

I think that adderall is used by more than 25% of university students.  I also think that most of us don’t think it’s a big deal.  What do you think?

Every once in a while, I’m going to list a website you need to see.  Most of the time, it’ll be sites that are really pretty famous but that my friends have ever heard of.  So bah bah bah bum, here’s the inaugural post.

TasteSpotting

This is sort of like a blog, more like a catalog, well really just a catalog of blogs (hehe I was unaware that I wrote poetry).  This site is just a series of pictures of food.  Good enough right?  I know you watch the food network without any intetion of firing up the stove.  Well, the pictures on the site all link to blogs that have the recipe for the shown dish.  It’s like window shopping, except for recipes.  Get domesticated, you’ve had far too much cup ramen.

It’s been a slice…Live and Cook Sexy