Plus, what’s the perfect cuff for a pair of jeans, and how can a tall, slim man dress to avoid looking like a beanpole?.

Generally, being well-dressed involves following a few sartorial rules. These days, though, fashion is moving at such a frenetic pace (see our recent Journal feature on streetwear tribes to see how hard it is to keep up) that nobody is really sure what exactly the rules are anymore. This can be fun or not, depending on where you fall between lawful good and chaotic evil on fashion’s moral alignment spectrum, but we mention it because this week we were asked if the rules of style are made to be broken. Find out what we said below.

We also crack out the rulebook on how to perfectly cuff your jeans, plus what not to wear if you are built like a chopstick. Helpful stuff indeed.

If you would like to pose a question of your own, email asky@mrporter.com or fire away on our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram). As always, we’ll answer three of our favourites on Friday – see you then.

**What are the main mistakes of style for tall and thin men? ** From @arthurbiberin via Instagram

When dressing, the aim is to accentuate your best attributes and thus play down the less flattering ones. In your case, Mr Biberin, you want to celebrate your height, but not look like a beanpole.

The issue is proportion. Off the rack, clothes that fit your torso and waist will often come up too short in the sleeve and leg, whereas clothes that are the correct length may look too baggy and billowy on your frame. Either way: beanpole. (That said, as readers of last week’s Journal will know, the oversized trend is de rigueur right now.)

The lazy answer to your question is to get to know a good alterations tailor who can take in baggy trousers at the waist and reduce the volume in shirts and jackets. However, this can work out pretty pricy.

So, we also advise addressing your proportions via savvy styling. A tall, slim man can play with volume to add shape to his silhouette. Instead of soft-shouldered tailoring, for instance, choose something that has some construction that will give your torso more of a commanding V-shape.

In cooler weather, a chunky knit and boxy outerwear such as a peacoat will also add dimension, making you appear broader. On the bottom half, avoid skinny jeans and chinos which draw attention to lanky legs and instead choose wider trousers, with pleats to add volume.

Also consider the effect of layering. A tall and lean frame can easily accommodate layers which will add bulk so that you don’t look too gangly and awkward. The rule here is to layer from thin to thick, from lightweight fabrics to heavier or more textured ones. This might mean wearing a fine-gauge merino V-neck under a corduroy or tweed jacket. Or a hoodie under a bomber jacket.

A full-length overcoat is a smart way to balance the proportions of torso and legs so one doesn’t appear longer than the other. In the summer, avoid particularly short shorts – choose pairs that finish closer to the knee. Also those with long limbs should be aware of wearing short-sleeved shirts and T-shirts together with shorts which will expose a lot of skin. Better to wear a long-sleeve shirt with shorts or full-length trousers with a T-shirt.

**How do you get a perfect cuff on jeans? ** From @theroyness, via Instagram

To achieve a good cuff, you must first make sure that your jeans are the right length and fall just above the top of the shoe. This works particularly well with selvedge denim jeans (these ones from Neighborhood are a great example), whose contrasting inner side looks great turned up. Roll the jean up twice, but no more than that – the golden window for a good cuff is 1.5 to 2in.

Really, though, good styling exists only in relation to the external factors by which it is surrounded. In other words, “that perfect cuff” depends on what exactly you mean by perfect, and it depends what kind of jeans you’re wearing. Mr Kanye West, for instance, likes to stack his jeans over his sneakers and doesn’t cuff them at all, whereas certain members of MR PORTER’s editorial team are notorious for taking to their jean with scissors for that frayed-ends cutoff look (see these ones from Vetements).

Of course, if you are indeed hell-bent on achieving the holy grail of the cuff, we recommend that while you spend enough time perfecting it so that it looks sharp and stays where it is, the most important rule is that once you’ve done that, don’t obsess over it – you’ll be no fun at parties if you’re constantly diving to the floor to fiddle with your ankles. Even a badly-cuffed jean is better than that.

**Do you feel like once you know the rules of style you can break them at will? Or are there some rules that should never be tested?

From @indigoyeti, via Instagram**

We all have books to live by, those seminal texts that define the rules and spell out the game. The Romans had Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations (despite him writing it in Greek because he was a pain); the Founding Fathers, Montesquieu and his The Spirit Of The Laws; and the Bloomsbury Group, Principia Ethica, that impenetrable work of moral philosophy that led them to lose their marital inhibitions and trousers and culminated in them being described as a group who “lived in squares and loved in triangles”. Indigoyeti, you have something much wiser and finer, and, well, much more to the point: MR PORTER.

We really do aim to bring you the best hotels, the best restaurants, the finest writers, and the best clothes with some hard and fast rules on how to wear them. Some things just ain’t ever going to look right: black trousers and brown shoes; novelty socks will make you look like your weird uncle; and if you fasten both buttons on your blazer you will look like The Fat Controller. These rules are immutable.

There are other rules, which you will find in other style publications, that aren’t really rules at all. They are more the distillation of current thinking. Until Lanvin put white sneakers with tapered trousers in SS13, they would have said not to wear them together; the same goes for over-28s wearing hoodies. Not to mention those louche striped trousers, which would also have once got an imperial thumbs down.

The question is, how to tell the difference between those two types of wisdom? Read deeply, keep an eye on MR PORTER, of course, but also use your own eyes. Experiment, but don’t make yourself look like a clown. If it looks good, wear it. Trust your instincts. Be yourself, everyone else is already taken, as someone clever once said.