Into the kitchen

If you want to see what good style is, all you have to do is enter "George Clooney" into Google Image Search and click the button. Unfortunately, this will help you understand good style in the same way that looking at pictures of pavlova will teach you how to make one. Speaking of food, if you want to be a chef, you need a well-stocked kitchen. The time to buy flour and a mixing bowl is not at the moment you're about to start making dinner. There are items that a master chef's kitchen needs to have on the shelves at all times that let him work his magic, and these are called "staples". Your interest may not be the perfect soufflé, but I can promise you that George Clooney's closet has certain staples in his closet which make him the guy your girlfriend wishes you were every time you tuck your t-shirt into your sweat pants.

First of all, let's look and see if your cupboards are well-stocked; as a fashionable man in SL, you need these items in your inventory:

- A good white t-shirt and a good black t-shirt. These should be shirt-layer items and you should use your "edit appearance" function to create underwear to go with them so that there's no gap between the shirt and the belt of your pants. No logos, no slogans, no cute phrases about ninjas, clowns, or mustache rides. Just solid, shirt-layer t-shirts. If you have to make them yourself using "edit appearance", then do it... but there are so many good t-shirt options out there from reputable designers that you shouldn't have to settle for that as anything but a last resort.

- A good pair of classic jeans which flatter your body... and when I say "flatter your body", I don't mean you should crank your Package slider up to the top (unless you like women rolling their eyes at you). No, these jeans should be clean blue jeans. Simple as that. No rips, no tears, no paint splatters, no peace symbols, no gang signs, no patches, no funny dye jobs or any other "custom" work. Just the basics, man.

- A pair of sneakers, a pair of boots, and a pair of dress shoes. When thinking of sneakers, think classic Chuck Taylors or an understated pair of modern Pumas... not so much the puffy kind (no). Your boots should be the kind you can wear boot-cut jeans over and not the sort you put on before going on a mission to raid an Orc encampment. Cowboy boots are fine, desert boots are fine, anything with chains or spikes are not. Finally, your dress shoes can range from a tasteful pair of loafers to something a bit more formal; just make sure you can wear them with a suit. Bookmark On Your Toes and watch the RSS feed; I write a lot of male-specific shoe stuff there and it's a good way to keep up on what's hot.

- A good pair of sunlasses, fitted properly to your head. Features such as being able to change the opacity or texture are a bonus, but a good classic look is more important... so don't sacrifice the latter for the former. If, however, you can change the opacity so that you have clear lenses and they look good as reading glasses, all the better.

- A suit... one that can be edited so that you can increase or lengthen the cuffs and pantlegs to the exact, perfect length (with suits, this matters). You should also have a good prim tie to go with it, though you may or may not always use it. The suit should be in a dark earth tone; if you have a purple or red suit, you can't check this item off yet. Naturally, you're going to need a shirt-layer button-down shirt to go with it.

Here's a list of things you don't need as staples:

- A penis. By the time you get to the point where you think you might conceivably use it, the woman in question isn't going to care. Trust me on this.

Later, we'll get into where you can find these things, what you can expect to pay, and what makes them "good" or "bad". We'll also get into other non-clothing style items (like hair and animation-overrides), and we may even add more staples to the master list.

For now, start thinking about stocking that kitchen. George isn't the only good chef out there.