Supersize your style this Fall with a cape worthy of a style superhero.  Deliciously dramatic, the cape delivers an exaggerated silhouette to play with - and keeps you warm all the while.  Do as Sofia Coppola does and have some fun with the dramatic cape with an equally exaggerated silhouette.  We love how she pairs her voluminous cape with something super skinny on the bottom, juxtaposing an elegant "uptown" cape with a "downtown" pair of leggings.  Here’s how to get the look:

1. Start with a tailored white button down shirt and a pair of skinny black leggings or trouser pants.  Bonus points for picking a pair that hits just above the ankle.
2. Layer on your voluminous cape, creating a gorgeous big-over-small silhouette.
3. Finish off the look with a structured bag and a pair of ballet flats, which pair perfectly with the cropped pants.

Proper layering is absolutely foundational to a man’s style.  Whether you live in snowy Boston or sunny Miami, whether it’s the peak of summer or the valley of winter, the principles of layering will help you craft the right look for whatever your day brings you.  Presenting our five golden rules for layering:

The dress shirt and tie is one of the most foundation combinations for men, but it doesn’t have to be boring.  Sure, you can mix your solid colored ties with solid colored dress shirts - or even your striped tie with the colored dress shirt - but you needn’t limit yourself to a single print or pattern.  We love the look of mixing and matching patterns with shirts and ties, especially now that mixing and matching different prints in the same outfit is no longer reserved for the fashion forward.

But when you’re mixing and matching different prints, how do you make sure they work together?  The key is to tie the prints together with a motif - be it size, pattern, and/or color.  

Size: If you have two different prints, they’ll work together if the scale of the print is similar.  Two small prints will complement one another, as will two oversized prints.

Pattern: If you have two patterns of the same style, such as two plaids, you’ll do best by mixing up the scale of the print.  A small plaid with a large one, for example, will create visual interest.  Otherwise, the look can come out feeling too matchy-matchy.

Color: Sometimes all you need is a shared color to make two wildly different prints work together.  Color can work its magic to synchronize even multiple prints in an outfit; it’s the motif of choice to leverage when you’re combining three or more patterns in a single look.

(2) When you wear a dress over leggings, the rule is that your dress should fall at or above your knee.  If your dress falls below your knee, you run the risk of visually cutting off your legs.  Not very flattering.

(3) The key to wearing leggings in style is to get the big-over-small silhouette.  So when you choose a shirt to pair with your leggings, look for a roomy shirt that’s anything but skintight.  Skintight top + skintight leggings = Minus points for style.

(4) When you look for shoes to pair with your leggings, look for three styles: flats, boots, and pumps.  Other types of shoes tend not to work as well as these three styles.  Our personal favorite is booties with leggings for a rocker chick inspired look.

A: Boston living is particularly extreme.  Outside, the winter weather can be brutally frigid,  and inside, the buildings tend to be highly overheated – so we feel your pain!

How do you keep warm in super cold weather? The key is to keep your core (e.g. your torso) warm.  If your core, head and feet are warm, your body will keep your extremities (arms and legs) warm too.  So—to keep warm in cold weather, you need lots of layers over your core, but you don’t need as many layers over your arms and legs.  This insight helps you stay warm without looking like you

The key to layer your clothes without looking bulky is alternating the length of your sleeves through the layers. Wearing a long sleeved sweater over a long sleeved shirt, with another long sleeved jacket on top, for example, can really bulk you up.  Here’s how to put together a chic layered cold weather outfit:

1.  Start with a solid base: a turtleneck sweater and a pair of jeans.  To give your waist some extra definition, try a belt over the sweater.  This waist definition is key to not looking bulky– especially if you’re wearing underlayers for extra warmth.
2.  Next, add one of my favorite layering elements: a puffer vest (preferably stuffed with down feathers). Down keeps your core very warm, and it gives you more options for your overcoat.
3.  Over the down vest, bundle up in a long wool (or wool cashmere) coat.  The wool coat will give you a more urban look than a more outdoorsy looking down coat—and it traps the heat generated by the down layer. As for warmth, the wool coat without the down layer would generally be less warm than a down coat. But by layering the down vest under the wool coat, you get the best of both worlds: the warmth of down, but the sleeker, more stylish look of wool.
4.  Accessorize for the cold.  180s earmuffs are a part of any stylish woman’s cold weather wardrobe.  Note that the faux fur lined hood on the puffer vest will also act as a hat/wind-blocker, which gives you an additional layer for your ears and head.

A: Just as dark colored clothes are more versatile than their light colored counterparts, shoes are also more versatile when they are dark.  Darker shades of brown, for example, work with many more colors than do lighter shades of brown.  Because of this versatility factor, I’d recommend that your shoe wardrobe include a few good pairs of black and darker brown dress shoes in a variety of styles (captoe, bucks, wingtip, etc.) before expanding to lighter colored shoes.  

Even though light brown shoes aren’t super versatile, you still have a few good options.  As you mentioned, light brown shoes complement navy blue nicely.  And they also work with light sandy colored pants.  Beyond that, you may also want to try dark olive green dress pants with your light brown shoes.  Other than these three options, however, it’s going to be tricky.  I’m not saying light brown shoes and other colors can’t work; I’m just saying I haven’t seen it done that well (at least, not yet).

by Colleen Geary, fashion stylist and image consultant

A: To understand how to pair shoes with clothes, you first have to look at silhouette.  Shoes should complement the lines and proportions of an outfit, particularly the bottom that you’re wearing.  We’ll start with the basics—regular trouser pants and a knee length skirt—and then we’ll expand out into other options:

Regular Trouser Pants
For regular width trouser pants, the classic choice is a medium height (approximately 2” tall) shoe.  You can wear pumps, loafers, two-tone shoes…and you can also experiment with different toebox styles.  For a sophisticated look, try pointier toed shoes.  But for a more chic, casual look, you can try a round toe.  If you’re not a fan of heels, you can also try a more subdued kitten heel (usually around 1.5” tall).

Knee Length Skirts
The perfect shoe for a knee-length skirt is a heeled shoe.  Most women prefer to wear a medium height heel to visually elongate the leg, but a shorter kitten heel is also a common choice.  Women who are blessed with extra long legs can also get away with flats, but the rest of us should steer clear of them. 

Wide Trouser Pants
To balance out the width of a wide trouser pant, you’ll need to wear a high heel (3” or taller).  The high heel visually (and physically) elongates your leg line, and it gives your bottom half balance.  If you’re blessed with long legs, you can also try a medium height heel.  But for optimal figure flattery, no low heels or flats allowed!

Skinny Pants
Channel Audrey Hepburn when pairing shoes with skinny pants.  What did Audrey wear?  Ballet flats, of course!  When you’re wearing tight pants, you want a shoe that’s not overly sexy.  So steer clear of high heels and shoes with “toe cleavage.”  The ballet flat (or even really short kitten heels) will do the trick.

Short Skirts
Short skirts are best paired with a kitten heel or ballet flat at work.  If you’re wearing a revealing skirt, you don’t want to go overboard with an overly sexy shoe.  That said, the woman in the miniskirt pictured above made the sexy shoe and miniskirt look work.  How did she do it?  She wore tights to cover up her legs (and tone down the miniskirt), and she wore a heeled bootie.  Because they provide more coverage, booties are a less risqué shoe option than an equivalently high heel.

Long Skirts
Because long skirts and wide trouser pants share similar characteristics (length and width), long skirts require the same shoe options as do wide trouser pants.  So the same rules apply: high heels are best, and no flats are allowed.

A: If you’re reading blogs like this one, then you must be dressing much better than a typical government man in a sack suit, in which case, you’ve already won half the from-work-to-a-night-out battle.

First, if you’re going to more…intellectual…events such as museum exhibit openings or galas, feel free to keep wearing the suit.   Chances are most guys will be wearing one, too (well, at least I would hope they would be).

There are also a few quick things you can do to “casualize” your suit.  Go ahead and loosen your tie to add a nice bit of sprezzaturra to your look.  You could always just lose the tie (and belt, perhaps) altogether.

If a full suit is too formal for you, you could try the dark denim and suit jacket look, with or without the tie.  Make sure you tuck in your shirt though.  Warning: this look is rather cliché, but at least you’ll fit in, right?

If you wear a three-piece suit to work, you can lose the jacket altogether, so you’re just sporting a waistcoat over your shirt and tie. Or, replace the jacket with a sleek, leather bomber jacket, with or without your waistcoat.  Black leather jackets make for very sophisticated, urban nightlife wear, and when they’re done right, you look great.  Switching out your trouser pants for jeans (and keeping the waistcoat) will give you a refreshing take on the dark denim look (and one that I favor at the moment).  You may look like you stepped out of a Spurr catalog, but that’s really a good thing.  Keep the tie in all these outfits.