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.