Pardon me, but I love using personal experience to elucidate my appreciation of grooming and fashion.
Growing up, I was meant to understand that a short-sleeved shirt is one that lets your arms free. A long-sleeved shirt was a classier way of being dapper.
However, I assumed that rolling up the sleeves was only for emergencies. Thus, I was taught that gentlemen should have no emergencies that require taking off parts of or adulterating their clothes.
And so, one occasion I got offended when I found fellow journalists wearing shirts with long but rolled-up sleeves all the time. Many I asked, rather angrily:
“Why did you not buy a short-sleeved shirt rather than abusing the standard set by the long sleeves? Or better still, why not take this shirt to the tailor and amputate the sleeves?” I wasn’t consoled a bit when some replied: “Haven’t you seen the US president in this style?”
On countless times, I could bump into a CEO or manager and find them with folded sleeves in their offices, usually on a hot afternoon. Sometimes, they showed up to office drink-ups in such free style. But honestly, those were the flamboyant ones.
Today, I seek to find out when to roll one’s sleeves up. I have found three plausible reasons, which may then tempt me to drop this conservative stance and occasionally roll my sleeves up too.
On hot days, as the temperature rises, so should one’s sleeves! You will need to aerate those arms. Sometimes you may have to do some practical work.
For example, a doctor who has to examine a patient may not let his sleeves get into his way. When you have a tyre to change and you just cannot get help from anywhere, rolling up those sleeves is the natural thing to do. I have done it a couple of times. But after this need is sorted, the struggle is how to roll back the sleeves without wrinkling them badly.
There are moments when you have to cut a casual outlook and the sleeves should not stay down. Roll them up. This is normally how you will find corporate lads on an evening out on a formal day like Tuesday. If you find the boys in that state at the local pub, then it’s a ‘happy hour’ with no formalities. Neckties could still be on, but loosened. The only thing that stays firmly fixed, I bet, is the belt!
Nonetheless, like many dress maneuvers, rolling up sleeves is not as conventional and easy as it sounds or as you have been doing it. It could require a rare art. You might have no clue when an abrupt need to roll them back down presents itself, yet you don’t have to wrinkle them.
Better yet, it’s not advisable to have a meeting with a top client or company top executive with your sleeves rolled up. For many organisations, that could be a career-limiting move. So, how do you get your comfort of rolling the sleeves up and back down without wrinkling them?
Let’s look at this next Friday.
