I have wasted a genuinely embarrassing amount of time worrying about what to pack for Europe so I don't look like a "typical American tourist." I'm a late-middle-aged guy. I've consumed what must be a couple of hundred blogs, articles, and YouTube videos warning me away from t-shirts, white sneakers, shorts, and baseball caps.
Here is what I have to say about all of that: complete and utter bunk.
Last autumn was unseasonably hot in Lyon. According to everything I'd read, every single person I saw must have been an American tourist: Yankees baseball caps everywhere (there are more of them in Europe than in New York ), heavy-metal t-shirts (Metallica leading the pack), khakis or shorts, and sneakers — mostly white, mostly New Balance or Adidas, with a few Nikes scattered in for the contrarians.
On the train to Switzerland, I shared a car with a guy in a Brett Favre Green Bay Packers jersey, a Packers cap, light-wash Levis, and white New Balances. Speakerphone the whole trip. Loud and insistently obnoxious. Obvious American, right? Nope. French. The Packers fan was French.
Just back from Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. Same deal. Fewer band shirts, but that might be because it was just colder out. There were plenty of polos and sweaters to make up for it. More leather jackets, more nice shoes, more black-on-black-on-black — but the New Balances and the Yankees caps were still absolutely everywhere. Vienna was a touch dressier, but honestly, those guys were just going to work.
The magnificently stereotypical Americans did exist — bucket hats, flag t-shirts, cargo shorts, sandals with socks, the full kit. But they were a small minority. A loud, visually arresting, embarrassing few, but still a minority.
Yes, the scarf-and-man-bag thing is real, I'll give the blogs that. And Americans do wear more athleisure gear. But clothes are not really the tell anymore.
You know what actually gives Americans away? Posture. Gait. The way we seem to require slightly more square footage than everyone else just to stand still. Americans just seem bigger — not only because we're heavier (we are, alas), but because of the way we move and expand into the area around us. And Americans move through space like we own it. By the way, and I can't explain this, Europe has gotten remarkably tall lately — and the tall people are not us.
My personal favorite first-glance giveaway: haircuts. European guys have these short, sharp, almost architectural cuts, like they have a barber with a standing appointment and a strong sense of personal mission. Most are clean-shaven, although I haven't seen this many styled beards and mustaches since the Brooklyn lumberjack thing peaked here about ten years ago.
But the clothes? Let it go. From Glasgow to Budapest, Nantes to Bolzano, global fashion has already solved this problem for you. Every man on earth is buying his kit from the same websites. The playing field is level.
So, if you're a guy, choosing your European travel wardrobe is not complicated. Clean. Neat. Not embarrassing. Comfortable shoes. That's the entire brief.
Go enjoy Europe.