How should I match a sport jacket and turtleneck?
I really don't like wearing dark shirts with navy blazers, but I get the impression that dark turtlenecks could work.
Would a black or wine red turtleneck work with a navy sport jacket?
7 Replies
sure it does
Yep, absolutely. Sweaters are kind of the thing to wear between shirt and sport coat, other than maybe a vest (and I can't think of much other than those two). You have a whole slew of sweaters that work. The turtleneck can be very convenient because, since it obviously lacks room for a shirt collar to peek through or wrap around, you can wear it without a dress shirt / button-front shirt / collared shirt of any sort. With crew neck sweaters, you generally want a collared shirt. Turtleneck, do whatever.
Though obviously you still want to make sure the color combos work adequately. Most reasonable-shade dark turtlenecks should work with a navy blazer. Wine, black, both good.
Yes, especially the wine!
Thank you, Gimp. I have just heard some say that black is a bad combination with a navy blazer due to the lack of contrast. It's like how a black dress shirt would not work with a navy blazer.
Dark on dark absolutely works. I’d just recommend not wearing the same color turtleneck and blazer. So no navy on navy.
Those people are full of it
A black dress shirt with a navy blazer would be more on the trendy-fashionable side than the staid-trad side. It can work, but as with most things of this nature, it probably won't unless you know what you're doing, so I'd never recommend it casually.
IMO the problem is not so much that they're both dark and thus have lower contrast, but rather, that dark dress shirts are a significantly more casual shirt than a white, or very light dress shirt, especially since social context basically says that white, ice blue, and variants of those are the most formal dress shirts, white being the most formal. But then you take a rather more casual shirt, and pair it with a jacket that is relatively less casual -- as a navy blazer is. So the combo is difficult. You make it work, most likely, when you think of a navy blazer in the way of it itself being a fairly casual piece, and wear it more casually, if that makes sense. I've seen it done well, but I don't think I can pull it off, though I haven't tried very hard. Most of the time it's a stinker of a combo because of the formality mismatch etc
The black turtleneck works because it doesn't really have that context of "dark dress shirt = casual or ignorant." There's a weird bit in the whole context of dress formality that goes like this: "You should always do X and never do Y. Except of course if comfort requires it." Well, sometimes it's just too fucking cold to have a dress shirt and jacket on, people want to wear a sweater, so they do, and it's become the accepted thing, bob's your uncle.
(But obviously you wouldn't wear a turtleneck with a tux, so, there's still an element of: well, a navy blazer is still casual enough, wear a turtleneck under it, no problem.)
I never thought of it like that, but that's very insightful.