My Personal Style

Like anything worth doing, dressing well takes some effort and time. I didn’t build my wardrobe by buying a bunch of expensive clothes all at once; I did it by being very selective and watching sales.
I’ve built my business/formal wardrobe up slowly over the last few years. Before that I mainly wore the t-shirts, hoodies and sweat pants that a lot of younger people favor. I still like hoodies and sweat pants for their convenience, but they are rarely seen outside my house.

Spending my day in a wheelchair has created some obstacles in my pursuit to dressing well. These obstacles include my neck size, the braces I wear on my feet, dressing difficulties, and the whole issue of look vs. functionality.
Proper Shirt Fit – Neck
Like some men my neck size does not fit my body type. For the top button on a dress shirt to fit the shirt measurement needs to be at least 17.5-18 inches, but most of these shirts are extra-large or extra-tall.
Even with a couple extra pounds I have a smaller body type and there’s no getting around the fact that I’m pretty short. Some of these extra-large shirts go down to my knees and almost look like a dress. When I tuck them into my pants I end up sitting on half of the shirt — not the most comfortable fit in the world.
I also found that these extra-large shirts were way too wide. I could gain 50 pounds and they would still fit my chest. I’ve since switched to “Slim Fit” (also sometimes just called “Fitted” shirts), and I recommend them for anyone that doesn’t have a broad chest. Even if you’re just a normal, athletic build most dress shirts are cut loose enough that you’d benefit from a slimmer fit.
Dress Shoe Fit
Another obstacle that I face is most dress shoes don’t fit with the braces that I wear on my feet and ankles. These braces are made of hard plastic and increase my shoe size by about 2 sizes. Because of the shape of the braces the only type of shoes that work are soft skateboarding shoes. Day to day I can look pretty good around the time in skateboarding shoes, but they don’t go over well in a boardroom.
My solution was to purchase a high-quality pair of skateboarding shoes that were entirely black with black laces. I keep them set aside for business occasions and make sure they stay dark and clean so that they can fit in with everyone else’s black leather oxfords.
If you’re someone else that has trouble finding shoes that fit and prefers to wear soft cloth shoes most of the time, my advice is: spend the money for one pair of comfortable dress shoes and set them aside for business and formal occasions only. If you can’t wear leather because it’s too stiff look for an all-black or all-brown cloth shoe with matching laces, sole, and stitching so you’re not drawing attention to your shoes.