Men.Style.com has their spring ‘07 trend reports up and as per usual they’re filled with lots of outfits you wouldn’t ever wear. (Not to mention lots of accessories like cologne and watches that most guys aren’t going to bother with, especially just to complete a single style.) That’s not the point, though, and it frustrates me how many guys continue to misunderstand the role these sort of things serve.

You know how when you first tried beer it tasted awful? (Me neither—nothing like beer straight from Mother’s teat—but let’s pretend.) You probably had a few sips here and there, slowly giving your brain a while to acclimate to the flavor. Eventually, motivated by the desire to get ripped, you started drinking it in quantity, perhaps even growing to enjoy its flavor.

That’s what these sort of style guides and trend reports are good for: priming your sense of style to accept some of the clothing you’ll be wearing in the months and years to come. Fashion that comes off the runways never filters undiluted down to your local Old Navy, but by taking a few minutes every few months to seed the aesthetic centers of your mind you’ll have some context when you decide you’re going to try something new. Simple as that. Fashion is transient, fickle, and fundamentally unimportant, but it can also be fun and useful.

That said, yes, you’d look like a twat if you tried to pull off that first outfit. Leave that one to the young and the drug-addled.

(If you can’t be arsed to go flip through the slideshows, let me give you the condensed archetypes from Style.com: [from left to right], “Seventies Glam,” “An American Abroad,” “Desert Heat,” and “Marine Life.”)

Update: These pictures are from the “Spring ‘06″ reports. I’m an idiot! (Although my point stands.) The ‘07 archetypes are “Gym Dandy,” “Lounge Lizard,” and “Captain Crunchy.” They’re available at the same link.

Spring ‘07 Trend Report (All the Young Dudes) [Men.Style.com]