Hi friends. Pascal Grob (PascalG), one of last month’s Style Icons, is climbing the ranks of male style inspiration and becoming an instant favorite, definitely someone we wanted to hear more from. With his impeccable taste and mature sense of self, he has become a constant source of inspiration both in the fashion and photography regard. His outfits are both relaxed and crisp and are arguably timeless. The same can be said about his vibrant photography of friends, events and street style.

We’ve asked Pascal, what inspires you?

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Many things can inspire you. People on the street, fashion blogs, fashion magazines and their editorials, friends, single garments – this list could go on and on. I was asked to write an article about what inspires me in terms of fashion as a guy. I’ve actually never really thought about this question or even realized what it was, that inspires me to dress the way I do.

My interest in fashion developed about 8 months ago. Basically, it means I started to care what I was wearing and spent more thoughts about clothes than before. I don’t remember where that interest suddenly came from. I can only assume that I was thinking (and still do) that well-dressed people just look more interesting when you see them on the streets at first sight. I admire them and it even makes me kind of happy to spot such people. And I’m not saying that not well-dressed people aren’t interesting, it’s just the first impression for me when I see someone. On the other hand it could also be that some fashionista bores you to death when you get to know them.

Switzerland isn’t really known to be a fashionable country. Actually, fashion isn’t big at all in our small country, so I need to get inspired somewhere else than by the people on the street. All the fashion and streetstyle blogs are definitely my number one source of inspiration. I’m currently subscribed to over 160 blogs with my Google Reader and I’m adding more every month. While streetstyle blogs also feature looks by guys, they often have many more entries about looks by women. But it’s not like I’m only looking for pictures of guys on their blogs, I also take a close look at women if their outfit appeal to me. It’s more about the colour and type of fabric/garment combinations of their outfits. The combination of the right colours is an essential key to a good outfit and you can give it all a twist by playing with different kinds of fabric. Since I’ve already developed an own style more or less, that I’m feeling really comfortable with, I obviously can’t just exactly copy an outfit and no one should do that.

I probably spend one or two hours a day just to read all the new entries of blogs in my reader. In addition to that I’m often just looking fashion-related things up on the internet (collections, archives of streetstyle blogs, information about certain brands, etc.).

Other sources of inspiration besides blogs could be fashion community sites (like this one) or fashion magazines with exceptional fashion editorials. To give you an example: I’ve recently discovered a fashion editorial in an issue of Vogue Hommes Japan called “Story of an Eastern Dandy”, where I spotted the idea of using old book pages as a pocket square in your blazer instead of the usual ones.

I’m sharing photos of my looks on this community and my blog to be part of this big source of inspiration. There are so many more girls than boys active on the internet, that we can be happy about every male person trying to contribute something as well. But actually, there was another personal reason why I started posting looks of mine: Swiss can be fashionable too! Haha.