>>18507389
The guides will lead you astray. Just listen to the advice to wear chinos and dress trousers, oxford cloth button downs and dress shirts, and penny loafers with matching belt. This is like the essential core of any trad or trad-adjacent aesthetic like dark academia. Once you have this then you can start acquiring certain sweaters or cardigans, corduroy pants, swapping the button down with a turtleneck, stuff like that. But for now, you literally could not go wrong wearing grey or charcoal trousers with a white button down and loafers every single day. And for the love of god, get some dress socks to match the pants.