A well-written thoughtful article that I totally disagree with. “Fashion is a mode of display that enriches public space and a culture’s shared meanings” “… f

A well-written thoughtful article that I totally disagree with. “Fashion is a mode of display that enriches public space and a culture’s shared meanings” “… fashion conveys not just specific trends or an individual’s personal style but a sense of the public itself, of shared space. Fashion implies a desire to see and be seen while affirming the need for public spaces and occasions where that seeing can occur. The manner in which fashion circulates and evolves speaks to the kind of shared reality that we are constituting for one another.” I never met a grad student in STEM who subscribed to these principles in their day-to-day public dress. Why should they follow them in the real world, whether “elite” or not? The author may actually be delineating a distinction between STEM culture v. non-STEM, or perhaps academic culture v. non-academic post WWII after the GI bill. The STEM experiences in the academic world “inoculate” them from the tribal pressures that drive fashion for typical mall-crawlers. Would make sense for managers of STEMs to mirror those norms in their own dress — norms that value comfort, efficiency, modesty over fast-fashion tribal signaling. “The tech industry would like to reimagine it as a series of fully instrumentalized status signifiers that attest to our social rank and are always already integrated into branded “universes” of intellectual property.” Replace tech industry with fashion industry and I’d agree with the statement. Then replace intellectual property with cultural hierarchies and you describe the fashion industry’s raison d’être since the dawn of time. This isn’t tech’s problem, it’s fashion’s problem. If there’s a Zeitgeisty issue that fashion faces, I’d ascribe it to the valuing of comfort, affordability and stability over cultural signaling by today’s workplace generation. One of their more endearing qualities, I’d say.