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The Essay to Read If You Even Think About Wearing Clothes
- ggm 7y agoI recommend it's a small, medium and outsize world, by John Taylor which is probably out of print, but is a fantastic history of fashion written in 1966. Its wry, satirical but informing. Eric Newby also wrote about his family fashion business pre and post war in something wholesale
- zaroth 7y agoChiuri (Dior) sure knows how to make a peplos look amazing. The best fabric, lighting, makeup, and photography in the world probably don't hurt. It could do without the typography though. This book review of Bernard Rudofsky’s “Are Clothes Modern?” is about as close as something could get me to being interested to read a treatise on fashion.
- Spearchucker 7y agoFashion has fascinated me for 35 years. All that time has resulted in two observations - The first is that nobody knows fashion like the Italians do, so get your advice there. The second is a result of the first - some basic rules will get you an ageless but very fashionable look for very little money. And so positions you well for a future focused on wealth rather than status. This applies everywhere. Buying a car? Look to the best car manufacturer. Don't buy new, never lease, always go for reliability.
- high_5 7y agoAgreed. Since the advent of SaaS and mobile apps the software industry has become more like fashion industry. That's why I stubbornly try to stick to FOSS in order to avoid all the nonsense of the commercial software.
- epiphanitus 7y agoAnd what are these 'basic rules' exactly? Asking for a friend...
- coldtea 7y agoThere are tons of websites to get those: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCKVxGbZpMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCKVxGbZpMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSw9ZdxQIiU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSw9ZdxQIiU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQGibb8iv-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQGibb8iv-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEKEdA-tjEw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEKEdA-tjEw P.S. Just don't go too deep, after a few videos, it's all just salespeople selling whatever BS sponsors them, even total crap like shirt garters for men (an item meant for military personnel on inspections and official parades, that they market to people who don't even have 2 suits in their wardrobe as some kind of essential item).
- naasking 7y ago"Essential" is too strong, but if you think about how much time and irritation you save by not having to retuck your shirt all day or night, it's not far off.
- coldtea 7y agoAs a shirt wearing guy, I'd call it the epitome of contrived solutions in search of a problem... Yeah, I might retuck my shirt 2-3 times a day, in a procedure that takes like 10 seconds each. Still beats buying and wearing garters (and their own adjustments, which cancel out the tucking times).
- inlined 7y agoI’ve used the same pair since high school when “shirt stays” were mandatory for JROTC. Luckily I’ve grown so the longest setting is the right setting. I think it’s the best $10 I’ve ever spent; it doesn’t just keep me from re-tucking shirts, it makes me look sharper by not letting my shirt ever sag as it loosens. Re-tucking a shirt just seems indecent to me since I was raised that to do it properly without shirt stays requires unzipping your pants, reaching through, and pulling the shirt down to remove any lack of trim to the front of your shirt.
- close04 7y ago> Look to the best car manufacturer. Given the subjectivity involved and the myriad or factors to consider, being able to decide which one is the best is not a foregone conclusion. Fashion is even more fluid than that, with a lot more subjectivity involved.
- detritus 7y agoI don't disagree with your view on Italians and fashion however I do often find myself amused by the compliant uniformity of fashion in Italy. I vist two or three times a year and as someone old enough to not obsess so much about my own fashion anymore, but not so old as to have given up entirely, I'm invariably impressed by dapper old men holding on to youthful exhibition. However, the flipside is that 'whatever mode is in fashion that season' is draped off everyone - be it the particular type of puff jacket, or particular brand of trainer or hoodie or size and volume of scarf, there it is in consistent multiplicate, over everyone. It becomes less, to my eye, individual expression than blinkered social compliance. Not that I'm not entirely without some envy, especially where my father in law is concerned, he being very much more fash than I!
- thrav 7y agoIn my opinion, that is doing fashion right. Fashion has the power to create separation and distance between 2 people, or to bring them close together. Some people want to create distance, but most people should want to be closer together. Having similar style makes that much easier, than having to constantly fight an uphill battle against bad first impressions. There’s massive utility in a bit of effort, and these days that level of dress can be achieved without a huge cash outlay.
- coldtea 7y ago>It becomes less, to my eye, individual expression than blinkered social compliance. There's no real "individual expression". The "relaxed" trainers/jeans/tshirt in the US is no less a "blinkered social compliance" than wearing a suit. It's just the norms of the country, and of a certain class. Heck, punks in the 70s dressed in safety pins and tons clothes all looking alike (and same for hippies in the 60s, which even made their "own clothes" still all looking alike). That said, the Italians have a lot of ways to personalize their fashion (sprezzatura goes a long way).
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoI am Italian (living in San Francisco though), and I pretty much agree with your observations - in general, and also specifically about Italy. On a side note, I find the brand "Uniqlo", which sounds very much like the word "unique", to be the ultimate oxymoron. You can see people wearing "unique" dresses dozens of times a day, everywhere in the US.
- coldtea 7y ago>This applies everywhere. Buying a car? Look to the best car manufacturer. Don't buy new, never lease, always go for reliability. People with tons of wealth often buy new, often lease, and not always go for reliability (but instead for looks, beauty, vintage, etc.), so not sure what this middle class idea of what wealthy people do is supposed to convey...
- AQuantized 7y agoI believe he's talking about acquiring wealth, not about how to act once you already have it.
- coldtea 7y agoWell, do you think that people who go acquiring wealth don't "buy new" or "don't lease"? Nobody ever acquired wealth by thrift (or very few cases, and with a low cap on that wealth, like those cases occasionally finding out that some guy sleeping on a slum and working as a clerk had saved all his life and had 10 million dollars in the bank when they died and were found half-eaten by their cats).
- thinkingemote 7y agoOne aquires wealth by not losing it.
- coldtea 7y agoThat's just a basic precondition, not enough to acquire wealth. You could "not lose wealth" all your life, spend the least you can, save money in the bank whenever you can, work your ass off until your 70s, and still be pretty poor. Wealth is created by creating new businesses and spending wisely to invest in opportunities, not by being frugal.
- perl4ever 7y agoPeople I have known who "worked their ass off" all their life and ended up poor, if they weren't handicapped, it was because they could not give up running a struggling business or change it to make more money. It's my impression that because of the sense of pride and ownership, people will end up worse off sometimes when they have their own business than if they were an employee being exploited by someone else. That kind of seems like the foundation of the system of franchising, now that I think of it.
- maroonblazer 7y agoIs it just the Italians? My observation is that it's most Western Europeans. Be they British, Spanish, French, Swedish, what have you, nearly everyone is just markedly more buttoned up than your typical American (btw I'm American). Especially older men, say mid-50's and over.
- bane 7y agoOn the axis of best=reliable, the most reliable cars are usually second (or greater) year models of new Hondas or Toyotas.
- perl4ever 7y agoWell, that's what everybody believes, which is why late model used Hondas and Toyotas are overpriced. Sometimes I've seen them advertised for more than brand-new. In theory, you should be able to save money by buying a car from an unreliable, unloved brand, because by the time it's a few years old, any fundamental design flaws should be well known and you can avoid them. For instance, Ford has a bad reputation because of certain cars that were flawed from the beginning, but that doesn't mean you can't find one that isn't, and it might be half the price. I find Hondas and Toyotas more attractive usually, since I like cars and I don't economize more than I have to. But I know people that have had good luck with domestic brands that have terrible reputations in general. If they sell to rental agencies and taxis, then they can't objectively be that bad as appliances.
- Freestyler_3 7y agoAnd after that you can watch The True Cost.
- spodek 7y agoAvailable free online: http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost Highly recommended if you even think about wearing clothes.
- AgentME 7y agoI'm going to be that guy and complain about the webpage's formatting. When I opened the page, a modal dialog was covering everything asking me to sign up for some newsletter. I closed it to get to the article, and I ended up with this: https://i.imgur.com/sV9hfOA.png https://i.imgur.com/sV9hfOA.png. The actual article makes up less than 4% of my screen. I've never seen a page this bad before. There's two different types of pop-ins from different directions I have to close before the article becomes readable. It's like playing whack-a-mole. Is anyone working on the site proud of that? Who looked at the site when it had just one of those pop-ins (and a modal) and made the decision that it needed another one? I don't want to be too ranty, I'm actually baffled.
- ackfoo 7y agoSonofabitch! I'm sitting on about 3000kg of clothes from the last four months of our clothing donation program in one small apartment building. Fashion? Are you people insane? Wear clothes for decorum, not decor, and to keep you warm. Fashion is just another horrendous excuse for waste by the ton. Haven't you noticed that our planet is dying from human activity multiplied by our numbers, rapidly approaching 8 billion? How are we writing and reading articles about fucking fashion in the midst of a fire?
- dec0dedab0de 7y agoAfter a certain level of cleanliness, the more effort someone puts into their appearance, the less respect I have for them. I have tried to look past this in some situations, but I cant help but think they're lying to me in some way.
- raldi 7y agoBasic Bayesian analysis.
- psychometry 7y agoYou're free to hold such opinions. The rest of us thank you for making us look better in comparison.
- kuzehanka 7y agoTech is a field where skill is self-evident and verifiable to a much greater extent than most traditional business. And while it's not a universal rule, I have found that people at the top of the top of their respective tech/nontech industries, tend to not put any effort into how they dress unless they have to impress a client etc. I've adopted a heuristic of looking for the worst dressed guy to identify the decision maker when meeting new client groups in my line of work. If the way one dresses, or the cost of one's watch, or the firmness of one's handshake is the best signal they have to communicate their stature to a group, it's because they don't have anything more tangible.
- criddell 7y ago> If the way one dresses, or the cost of one's watch, or the firmness of one's handshake is the best signal they have to communicate their stature to a group, it's because they don't have anything more tangible. What other ways are there to communicate stature to a group? For one-on-one interactions there are lots of ways, but when you walk into a room, appearance is about all you have.
- perl4ever 7y agoWithout getting into specifics which may be debatable, "trying too hard" always counters other means of communicating stature. I can't help thinking of the recent news articles about Patagonia reacting to the popularity of its fleece vests: https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-investors-love-fleece-vests-2016-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-investors-lov... "I think one reason for the popularity is: Patagonia represents quality without being pretentious" ...so all the rich people wear the same thing in order to not look like rich people, but now it's a stereotype.
- mises 7y agoI'm not sure I understood this article at all. Part of it may be because I don't understand fashion, but it was written in an overly-grandiose prose which is a bit misplaced in an article such as this. I don't want to have to give an artcile the same kind of thought I give Dickens. With that said, can any one fkll me in on exactly what this is supposed to mean?
- nickhalfasleep 7y agoThe book in question from MOMA: https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_3159_300063439.pdf https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_3159_300063439...
- hi5eyes 7y agohttps://loosethreads.com/podcast/2016/09/27/loose-threads-podcast-building-the-future-of-clothing-and-unlocking-social-mobility-with-abe-burmeister-of-outlier/ https://loosethreads.com/podcast/2016/09/27/loose-threads-po... podcast with the creator of outlier.nyc one of the more interesting workwear/techwear brands 'Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear' is also good read
- cafard 7y agoThere is an essay of Ortega y Gasset's from the 1920s or 1930s, in which he wrote that British men were the worst dressed in Europe, because they had real things to think about. I was pretty slovenly when I read this, and took some comfort in the notion. (I have long since married a woman whose eye for clothing is as sharp as mine is dim, and am usually presentably dressed.)