The State of The Basic Bastard - Topic of the day 9/22/25
Once upon a time the Basic Bastard was conceived as a guide for the unaware on how to dress well. Given the current state of the world, of clothes, of our lives, how effective is it? If there were a Basic Bastard 8.0 what would be in it? Is there even a need for it?
67 Replies
Feel like the prep influence has ebbed a bit but it's still a pretty safe, albeit prescriptive, wardrobe guide
I don’t know about the questions of effectiveness or changes, but I think things like this have value as a way to start collecting your thoughts about clothes
Mixed bag, we've mostly moved away from prescriptive advice like this because it tends to stifle/inhibit creativity/personality in one's wardrobe. On one hand, it acts as a foundation, on the other, it becomes a bit of a trap
I think it can be handy to have a list of things to buy just as like an entrypoint to thinking about clothes but certainly it does absolutely nothing to teach you how to think about clothes
Like, if someone's mental barriers are so great that the first step has to be being told what to buy, then it's handy to keep around. or for people who truly do not want to engage more than "these things look alright together". but yeah, it's like the entry level of all entry level things.
Yeah, I think the appeal is largely to people who don't want to think about clothes and want a definitive answer to something that doesn't really have a definitive answer.
It also prevents further thoughts on clothing as well, so ideas tend not to nucleate and end up cookie cutter uniform
graphic tees in the branching out section seems very funny to me given the current meta shift
i feel like we've handily moved away from the nondescript scandi minimalism from 22
we need to bring graphic tees back
basic bastard is so funny because its built for such a specific type of dude and literally that's it
like realistically this entire section of the branching out shit is just what's shifted into basic now
if anything the cooler thing to do around this stuff would be to make a couple other basic bastard variants
call this one the basic ivy bastard and make a few more options
the absolute state of modern politics:
if people have to pick between a couple of options they're already having to engage their style preference brain
just slap YOKE Aoyama and Yohji labels on it and its ur style...
stfu
make the performative male one again ppl will love that
I think guides are worthless tho. Nothing beats being bullied about how your fit looks like ass and shitting all over the thing u were so excited to put on
the supreme x yohji???
@Gazoo i have bad news...
hooking up carrion to an LLM and replacing the basic bastard guide with whatever comes out
call me da grok plug
yeah I could see carrion doing Live Laugh Murder
I think the basic bastard guide now should be how to engage with WAYWT > Q&A and iterate through that to find your style over time.
Infographics are cool and all but unfortunately you do have to put that shit on and have it look bad
isn't the entire point that people wanted a baseline
i think it's still a necessary evil
There are no easy answers to finding a personal style and people should be encouraged to do that rather than slot into a bland wardrobe that expresses nothing.
well some people want that
do they count as people?
If people want that then MFAD might be a bad fit. I don't think the tastes here are tuned with something as generic as the BB.
:icannae:
basic bastard also sucks because its a flat lay checklist.
Visual how to dress guides have existed forever they're called lookbooks and they unfortunately require the viewer to think about what they like or don't like in a fit
What if I don't have an internal monologue
Then u are internally broke i fear
I'm broke in more ways than one unfortunately
i cant count the amount of shit i bought based on flat lay recs when i was young and dumb and they ended yp lookin like shit cuz i had no idea how to wear them or how they should look/fit
Flat lay recs are why I own a pair of Achilles lows
@grok give me basic bastard 8.0
I find the BB so funny because as a revolving door of people who updated it moved on... it never got updated. Like where's the Tyrolean shoes and long coat, etc.
In all it was a reflection of its time. It still can be helpful for some contexts. It's just a cookie cutter guide. Basic guides are basic. It relies on the person reading it to tweak to their own context. Which can be a tall ask depending on the weenie puff junior disposition of the reader.
I think you're exactly right, I see it as almost like a period piece
I also feel like at least personally it takes all the fun out of dressing for me
I always liked having a basic bastard setup as a safe backup option. As someone with zero fashion sense, I tend to scare people off when I wear what I like, so it's nice to have a uniform to just blend in and look like a sensible adult, something I wouldn't be able to work out on my own
I agree. I still go to it for those weird business casual adjacent dress codes for work or social events, but just tweak to my prefered colour palette.
Clarks Desert Boots though. Smh my head.
they still rock idc
It also serves as a great depression wardrobe, for those days when you don't have the energy or self esteem to engage with fashion
i think it's useful but overall limiting
it's great if it's your style, or if you truly don't care about clothes and just need things to wear when doing other things, or if you're clueless
but in cases where you suddenly feel like wanting to "level up" or "elevate" that then there's no foundation to what you actually like about clothes other than what a infographic told you or the promise of being socially accepted
That guy is me
Somehow
which is fine its just funny that for a stretch of time on r/mfa and here someone would come in and be like "how do I style these streetwear / darkwear / techwear items?" and people would be like ohoho have u ever heard of The Basic Bastard? 😉 😉
thats why i only link #waywt-highlights
The sickest part of bb is that it teaches you colors
once you master green + blue + cream = goode you can really do anything
Gunna start recommending people the rick owens disc
:BB7:
Green, blue and cream/beige is absolutely the cornerstone of my wardrobe and it doesn’t stop giving either tbh
I actually learned that from the basic bastard so it really is good for something!
hell yeah
throw in some brown leather and ooo baby
just getting your colors down makes a big difference in dressing with intention
For the average man (who’s entire need to care about fashion is for their job and dating) I think the BB still works really well. I’ve still recommended it on Reddit a few times recently.
I've always felt that the better solution to this was to simply copy people around you. Everyone wears clothes. If you want to blend in then just buy and wear what other people around you are wearing.
An internet guide has almost all context removed from it and even wearing any iteration of the bb wardrobe can look out of place in some office or coffee shop somewhere. Not to mention trying to get highshchoolers to wear OCBDs and loafers lmao
Even better, steal their clothes.
I think it's funny in retrospect how the guide says a lot about color and almost nothing about fit. Like the average person who knows nothing about fashion walks into a Levi's and doesn't need to be taught what cuts to wear with what outfits. Only that his jeans should be "indigo, black, [or] medium"
My dumb ass buying clothes that categorically didn't fit me for like ten years
Lmao
anything prescriptive is going to be problematic in some way but i found the basic bastard guide to be helpful in terms of branching out of the uniform of high school (hoodie, graphic or plain tee, slim straight jeans, and sneakers)
i guess the big problem is that it gets framed as a flowchart and inherently with its title is giving you an archetype when it should be more like "here's a list of simple starting points for branching out into men's fashion". The most recent version tries to do that but I feel like you'd need to have a much longer preface and put the Q&A first
Also it’s beneficial to have a guide like that that doesn’t rely on affiliate links or subtle sponsored content
Yeah this is a good point. When those guides were originally written it was mainly GQ and Esquire who had a stranglehold on online search results until Reddit kicked off. Styleforum, Fashionbeans, even Dappered, etc were still small or never reached that big scale
It does tho. This visual guide goes with a writeup that specifies straight fit https://malefashionadvice.substack.com/p/building-a-basic-wardrobe-v70
Building A Basic Wardrobe v7.0
Version 7 of the classic MFA post
That being said the basic bastard is STUPID and whoever wrote that and made the visual guide is a IDIOT
My mistake then. I should have said it's funny that the infographic in the OP thinks it's more important to say that jeans should be blue than should be straight fit.
Ok so thoughts and retrospectives now that BB7 is a few years old - still a safe entry point and it's not unhelpful to have very basic low effort advice for people who want basic low effort advice. Not everyone wants to put in the hours and just want to generally not look sloppy and that's chill
I do like that advice givers have pretty much entirely stopped recommending it as blanket advice like the olden days
All that said I have no idea if a BB8 would be beneficial (or if the BB7 was even a good idea in the first place) - basic wardrobes are challenging from an advice giving perspective because IMO the coolest parts of clothing are having your individualistic tastes shine through, and it's impossible to give advice on specific items that's applicable to a wide breadth of people
So yeah nudging people to waywt-highlights and inspiration is a lot more... inspiring than basic clothing in white void 🤷♂️
I view it as an intro list of types of garments to look into for someone new to fashion before deciding what direction they like and want to get deeper into. Like other hobbies a beginner might not want to dip their toes into the deep end. BB fails if the user views it as an end all be all or and any sort of definitive list.
when I was very starting just something telling me "get some nice basics" was already good advice I needed because I was extremely clueless
but then again maybe we can replace the guide with just the phrase "get some nice basics"
I have a friend that puts it as "stop dressing in the clothes your parents gave you"
When I was getting started, the BB guide was useful to learn ideas of clothes I should research - that and the ___ for $__ lists on reddit to learn about clothing brands. But it certainly just a starting point