Do not overload your suit pockets

Happy New Year, folks! The Christmas holiday has been, for most, a worthy rest. Now it’s back to ‘normal programming’.

I have not heard much about the stuff called ‘New Year’s resolutions’ – perhaps because we are fatigued of promising ourselves so much only for so little to be achieved. But what’s for certain is that we should strive to be more dapper this year. Remember, you are addressed the way you are dressed.

Those who just returned from thee much-deserved holiday, wearing a suit may come off as a burden. If you simply can’t figure it out well, let it just sit on your frame.

Some of you have actually added some girth and fat in some places that formal clothes are a size or two smaller. The choice is yours to either keep your new form or work out to regain the previous one.

As we formally resume work next week (generally), let me remind all of us on what not to carry in our suits. During the Christmas break and the many parties involved, you must have witnessed a fellow or two placing a beverage bottle inside the pocket of their suit jacket. Aaarrrgghhh!

That’s exactly the reaction, but it’s also true that men’s jacket pockets have been used to carry so much to the point of embarrassment. You shouldn’t be part of that statistic this year.

The whole point of wearing a suit is to create a sleek, elegant look for yourself. So, you don’t want to ruin that dapper figure by stuffing your pockets with many things, creating bulges in the wrong places. This makes you look awkward and ‘kills’ the material of your suit.

Try to have as minimum stuff as possible when wearing a suit. That bulky, soon-to-burst wallet should be made slimmer. You place it in the back of the trouser pocket, it risks raising the back part of the jacket.

This will make you walk about like you have an extra butt on one side of your behind! A slim wallet is the way to go and should be carried in one of the inner pockets of the jacket.

In this era of slim smart phones, have your lovely phone on the other inside pocket of your jacket – to counter-balance the wallet. If you have a bulky one or simply three or four handsets each for every mobile telecommunications company in the land, I am constrained to offer a working solution for you.

However, you can make do with belt hone clips and bags. Having phones in the trouser pocket or several in the inside jacket pocket makes you look more than the proverbial musomba byuma [metals carrier].

A pen can also go inside the breast pocket, although some suits have a special slit for it to sit. Men like moving with keys. I have a way I fix my bunch somewhere on the belt because jangling keys from any pocket is simply awful. And as you know, we carry other tools along our keys – bottle openers and Swiss knives, among others. Just don’t pocket those keys!

Your other trouser pocket can hold a plain handkerchief. The deal is to ensure the suit cut comes off as naturally as it was designed; to roll off your frame without much ado!