You Can’t Sandwich Method Your Way To Good Style

If you have ever struggled to assemble disparate items of clothing into a complete outfit – do not worry! There is now a miracle cure, a “genius” strategy that “every fashion insider” knows will “make all of your outfits look 10 times better”. That is, the Sandwich Method: the wearing of two colour coordinated items (a navy sweater and dark blue sneakers) with a contrasting layer in the middle (white jeans). The term was first coined by the British influencer Lydia Tomlinson in 2022, and is currently, for some reason, enjoying a revival online – which, to be honest, is a big part of the reason I’m writing about it now. Gosh – if only Isabella Blow and Diana Vreeland had lived long enough to have received this golden nugget of advice.

“I often think about sandwich dressing like architecture or interior design,” Tomlinson said in a now three-year-old YouTube video. “Everything has to be balanced.” Sure: harmony, symmetry and proportion are fundamental principles throughout the visual arts, and people will often dress according to those tenets without even thinking – matching a hot-pink blazer to hot-pink heels, a red silk blouse to red ballet flats, a black leather jacket to black loafers. Whatever. There is nothing (visually) wrong with this formula, and if it frees up space in the brain for more important things than getting dressed in the morning, then, well, fine. The Sandwich Method looks sensible, considered, pulled together. But also, potentially: soulless and flat, depending – and this should be obvious – on the items of clothing you happen to be using. Here’s a style maxim even more time-worn than whatever comestibles (cortados, lattés, tomatoes) people have been taking inspiration from: you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Culture is full of these quick fixes – the “one and done” dress, Ozempic, the wrong shoe theory, a recent Apple update which saw people waking up to AI summaries of their emails – each new thing promising to help you cut corners on your way to a life well lived, without needing to do anything effortful. The problem is: it is impossible to hack your way into good style – something which is developed gradually through cultivating likes and dislikes, discovering something interesting through making a series of embarrassing decisions – let alone life itself. To quote the late Vreeland on the subject of dress: “I don’t think you can have it one day and not the next,” she told American Vogue in the February 1976 issue. “You have it getting into bed. You have it when you have a temperature of 103 degrees and are moaning. It’s you – that’s all your style is… You maintain it. You radiate it. There are many things in this world that you can’t corral.”