One Button Stands Between You and Your Best Look Ever

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Learn and grow from Leonardo DiCaprio doubling down on one bad style mistake.

Menswear is an inches game. Make a lapel slimmer or a widen a trouser's thigh by just a little bit, and you can change the way guys dress for years.

But the advantage that allows us to get a big impact out of small changes is the very same thing that can help our looks fall apart really quickly. Case in point: the two single buttons that took down the outfit Leonardo DiCaprio wore to a screening of his new documentary, Before the Flood.

Let's start with the shirt: The whole point of undoing a button on a dress shirt is to look more casual than you would wearing a tie. And yet here, DiCaprio doesn't look particularly relaxed. His shirt collar looks stiff, and is still standing up pretty firmly. And it's all because that second button is still closed, cinching the fabric so that the collar has no choice but to thrust itself heavenward. So how do you prevent yourself from looking like an extra from The Flying Nun? Unbutton that second button! It's not only the exact number of closures women want you to open, but it also takes some of the formality out of your look, which is precisely what you're trying to do when you unbutton your shirt in the first place. (Just make sure you don't open your shirt all the way, and you should strike exactly the right note.)

The other button that thwarted Leo from acing this professional-but-not-uptight outfit was the bottom button of his tailored jacket. We feel like we've said this to Leo before, but on a two-button suit you always button the first button and never button the second button. It's one of those menswear conventions that seems idiosyncratic but isn't: there's not a man alive who looks good with that second button securely closed. The sooner you start thinking about the last button on your blazers as purely decorative, the sooner you'll become the stylish individual the universe has always wanted you to be.

Up next: How to Tuck in Your Shirt the Right Way

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