We need more menswear designers

Loose-fitting untucked shirts and jackets! Open-front button-down shirts, baggy henleys, long-sleeved t-shirts, wrinkly cotton jackets, you know, the sort of casual autumny clothing men wear in RL and might find at Eddie Bauer or somesuch.

...seriously, i wear mostly men's clothing in RL and while my avatar can get away with the cute 'wanna make out?' exposed-belly look in SL, i wouldn't be caught dead wearing anything like that in RL...i know SL's clothing engine makes such realistic cuts extremely problematic but i've seen torrid midnight, for example, work wonders by putting a t-shirt on the undershirt layer and decently blooming out an open jacket with an alpha-masked 'shirt' hidden underneath in tandem with a blended skirt attachment...right now, unless one's a brutish hulking male, the selection of skin-tight tucked-in men's casual clothing just doesn't look natural on any other body type...

...if someone were to offer a line of men's cotton button-down shirts which included in every package both tucked and untucked versions of the same shirt in buttoned-up, open-collar, and unbuttoned versions, they'd likely make a mint selling them to male avatars as that's exactly the sort of thing men buy and wear in RL with equal versatility...ditto loose henleys and t-shirts - heck, once the basic template's been worked out there's no reason not to run riot with mix-and-match selection and let the layering freely ensue...

...for realistic styles, pants are easy to find and modify, but realistic shirts are a scarce commodity indeed...

I am currently working on a line of untucked shirts... (due out by end of month... sneak peeks coming soon.)
one question I have is what you all think... the common method of making untucked shirts is simply to make a shirt into a jacket and add extra material to the bottom... however, doing this means you cannot of course wear a coat over it...
the other method would be to attack a prim of the bottom of the shirt to your body... doing this would of course mandate the wearer to size themselves into the shirt before it appeared correctly, but would allow a jacket to be worn over it...
any ideas out there?

...i've attached pictures in hopes of clarifying my vague description from above...granted, this is women's clothing, but it shows the sort of thinking-outside-the-box scheme which could be easily applied toward making awesomely realistic men's shirts...

...the first picture is the shirt, done on the undershirt layer (hate the shirt, but it's the only shirt-as-undershirt that i own)...the second picture is the sleeves' alpha-mask on the shirt layer, just to allow for some body and looseness while still keeping things clean where they need to follow the body's contours a bit more closely than SL's clothing engine allows, as seen in the third picture of the jacket layer...the fourth picture is the blended skirt attachement, and taken together with everything else it makes a for a wonderful loose-fitting open jacket...

...now i'm not a clothing designer, myself, so i may be using the wrong terminology and skimming over some immense technical hurdles, but i so no reason why these same techniques couldn't be adopted toward much more realistic-on-nonbrutish-bodies loosefitting untucked mens' shirts and such...

(by the way, that attached-to-the-jacket scarf is tremendously limiting: think versatility, designers - we don't all want to look like paint-by-numbers barbies!...also, this is my first time posting images to the forums, so please be gentle if i've commited an attachement faux pas, as i searched and searched but couldn't find any image-attachment guidelines)

I will certainly take these ideas into mind as I design... thanks for the post!

...sure!..make it a premium product which includes multiple versions of the same shirt within the bundle, one as an untucked shirt-jacket-skirt amalgam, another as just a simple one-layer-shirt to be worn underneath the jacket of the user's choice...

...there's always the option of creating a bonus shirttail-painted-over pants if you want to get particularly ambitious with a complete outfit, but that somewhat limits its mix-and-match versatility and isn't nearly so liberating an addition to the basic three-piece-untucked/one-piece-tucked shirt package...

...i'm just babbling about what i'd love to see and buy by the truckload, here, but i'm sure that a lot of men would appreciate the same sort of thing...

edited to add:

...somehow i overlooked the picture you'd posted when i first read through this thread, costus, but now having seen it and read your preview just mentioned above, i very much look forward to seeing your offerings!.. ^_^

I've done quite a bit of shopping lately, as I'm a newbie with a few thousand lindens (and then I spent it all). I was actually starting with skin/shape first, then hair and finally clothes. I've grown tired of finding one or two things in the back of a big store that takes ten minutes for all the images to rez in. So now I look for shops that have only men's clothing, not women's stuff. A few malls have men's items as a specialty, that helps... even if they sell guns and armor and stuff instead of just clothing.

Now that I'm less of a newbie (been playing 3 whole weeks! LOL) I look for stuff that's got its permissions listed on the sign. If you can't tell me before I buy whether it's mod or no transfer or whatever, you're a bad salesperson. Maybe I'll bug you with an IM or maybe I'll just wander off and delete your landmark. With most stuff I prefer copy/no transfer items over transfer/no copy. Clothing is definitely different from other items, it can be no modify or even no copy if it's good. But... list it on the sign anyway! All too often I right click, select 'Buy' and all I see is a box or bag. No way to look in that bag and see if I'm buying a shirt layer or jacket layer, and no way to tell if it's 'no copy' or whatever. And many signs want you to just 'Pay' the sign so you can't even select 'Buy'.

One thing: I want to rename stuff. I'd accept 'no modify' items all day if I could rename them but just not edit them. But as it is now, I need modify. So... maybe that's why I strongly prefer no transfer items.

I'll say this: most of my clothes are bought by my SL 'wife'. Every few days it's 'I got you a white suit' or 'I got you some cargo shorts' or whatever. I figure that's why there's a couple of men's items at the back of each women's shop. Maybe you don't have to figure out what men will buy if you figure out what women will buy for their men!

As the ower of a dedicated men's clothing studio, I understand your frustration.
I am currently in the process of changing all my items over from:
No Mod/No Copy - Open Transfer/Sell

-- to --

Open Mod/No Copy - Open transfer/Sell

from gaining experience in the game, I feel these settings best reflect a true economy...

I also agree with you that I quickly grew tired of the mega-shops... which is why I went with the "Studio" approach.
rather than a poorly decorated over-vendored "store" I went with a highly decorative, few-vendored "Studio"
time will tell how successful it is over the more stereotypical stores... but it sure is alot more fun to hang out in...


Here's a pic of my Baha shop...

I, too design men's clothing (Pheonix Designs). For the question of making the shirts longer (out untucked) I find the jacket just looks more natural than using the skirt. Most men aren't goin to wear the shirt any longer than just above the crotch level, and the skirt makes it look poofy. I also sell men's hats' (Godfather's and Derby's) and men's prim dress shoes.

As requested by a few contributors to this thread, and speaking as a purchaser of men's clothing, here are a few likes/dislikes/suggestions, in no particular order. I goes a bit beyond design.

1. Don't assume we're all huge bald guys with mutton chops and tat-covered arms the size of barrels. Using models like that for your product scare me. Away.

2. In RL, I like the Dockers line sold in many medium-level department stores.

3. Many of us are color-disabled. We're not color blind, we just don't know what goes with what. I like shirts and pants in matching or complementary colors/patterns in one purchase.

4. I'm not going to wait more than about a half a minute for a vendor to show the next (or first) item. If you're displaying your goods in a mega store where that happens, don't expect any purchases from me.

5. As in RL, men don't expect to pay as much as women for their clothes.

6. I really like buying sets, e.g. three shirts of a similar design but different colors in one purchase.

7. NoCopy is OK, NoTransfer is OK, NoMod is irritating. Who would buy a long-sleeve shirt in RL if you couldn't roll up its sleeves? Make sure you SAY what the perms are.

8. I like the vendors that deliver my purchase directly to a folder in my inventory, rather than a box I have to unpack and then throw away.

9. Make sure the price is displayed and easily seen. Some of you have missed a sale to me because I couldn't find out how much to pay.

Hi men.

I know I promised you I'd come up with deisgns and men's clothes but..well..it's not that easy. I made tees with no problem, and pull overs were a snap.

Painters pants, jeans, jean jackets, dress suits, slacks, and dress shirts proved to be impossible. I simply don't know how to do it. I don't know how to make collars, pockets, or buttons. I have no artistic ability so 'painting' them on and getting them to look shaded correctly proved futile.

I couldn't find anyone willing to give me a how to. So, I'm sorry. Aside from simple tees and pullovers I won't be able to make or sell any other type of men's wear. I do apologize, I wanted to satify all of your needs.

Athene

Just please help us find good mens clothes....

In answering to all the opinions here, Costus designs has changed permissions on all our clothing to:
YES Modify
TES Sell / Transfer
NO copy.

atm I am working on a line of courderoy pants, after which I plan to do a line of cargos... stay tuned!

It's just been easier for me as a woman to make women's clothes. But I finally got tired of my male friends bugging me and have started a men's label. This is an ongoing process so it will take a while before I have more than the handful of garments for men that I currently do. At the moment you can find the men's clothes in my Jana's Classic Designs location in Los Altos and Da Motor City. I will be adding to the rest of my stores as time and space allow. Check out my picks and my flagship store in Nauru will be updated today and have the men's line as well. I'm working on a few things to be released between now and the holidays so keep checking back.

We hear your cry men!