Dude, buy it. You can always justify a good jacket.
Dude, buy it. You can always justify a good jacket.
N
nomadologist
Guest
it's marc jacobs on ebay all the way
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Mr. Tea's Fact Of The Day: being militantly anti-pretentious is just another way of being pretentious!
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
My two clothing pet hates at the moment are 1) tee-shirts with stupid pseudo-retro shit printed on them - NO YOU WERE NOT A LONG BEACH LIFEGUARD IN 1972, so stop pretending to be one! and 2) jeans with a button fly. Whoever invented this abomination deserves to be publically raped to death by a squadon of horny baboons.
It wouldn't be so bad if these trends were restricted to stupid expensive trendy boo-teeks where stupid rich trendy people shop, but it's the same in H&M these days.
Seriously, they no longer sell zip-up jeans and it's quite hard to find plain tee-shirts these days.
It wouldn't be so bad if these trends were restricted to stupid expensive trendy boo-teeks where stupid rich trendy people shop, but it's the same in H&M these days.
Seriously, they no longer sell zip-up jeans and it's quite hard to find plain tee-shirts these days.
N
nomadologist
Guest
H&M is a good place to shop if you're a seriously thin guy. my bf is 6' tall and weighs 140lbs soaking wet, and he can find things that fit there.
fuck being pious about looking bad, i love clothes. the only thing that annoys me is when people who can afford decent-looking clothing wear tattered crap because they think that makes them righteous or something.
http://cgi.ebay.com/14-New-MARC-MJ-...4QQihZ004QQcategoryZ55612QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
ebay keeps me in designer clothes for the same thing it would cost to go to the Gap
fuck being pious about looking bad, i love clothes. the only thing that annoys me is when people who can afford decent-looking clothing wear tattered crap because they think that makes them righteous or something.
http://cgi.ebay.com/14-New-MARC-MJ-...4QQihZ004QQcategoryZ55612QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
ebay keeps me in designer clothes for the same thing it would cost to go to the Gap
how do you buy things from e-bay that you cannot try on?
a few issues:
ties: I wear them casually all the time. to the office, to bars, to parties. who else does this? not brave enough to wear them with anything other than a collared shirt though - saw this guy with T-shirt and tie once, actually looked really good - and surprisingly not like a male stripper. who was it that said about the v-neck / shirt thing - minus the tie? what is your problem with ties? the tie-vest-jacket combo is usually kept for special occasions though.
form fitting: in America all the dudes wear sloppy, ill fitting baggy shit. and if you wear semi-tight pants / shirts / jackets you appear atleast a little faggy. to the point where women prefer the slob look on guys. fucking ridiculous. it is very different in Europe I guess... what all my european friends tell me.
beautiful AND comfortable men's dress shoes: do they exist AT ALL?????!!!!!!!!! if anyone knows of a brand which does this, please do let me know...
and on the hating tip:
white T-shirt inside collared shirt with top button(s) undone - this is a commonly accepted practice, even among people who otherwise look sensible (even saw it in a 1950s film recently), but don't people realize that it looks terrible?
white socks with black shoes: unless you are Michael Jackson, this should be avoided. agree or no?
"edge-y" fashion - so fucking over it. anyone over the age of 17 who wears punk-y stuff is a drooling moron. recently did a week stint at a design shop owned by a black guy with dreadlocks and tatoos and all attitude who was a clueless republican. and the art director there was a white dude with a mohawk and the most punked out clothes ever - also hardcore born-again. end times, man, end times.
a few issues:
ties: I wear them casually all the time. to the office, to bars, to parties. who else does this? not brave enough to wear them with anything other than a collared shirt though - saw this guy with T-shirt and tie once, actually looked really good - and surprisingly not like a male stripper. who was it that said about the v-neck / shirt thing - minus the tie? what is your problem with ties? the tie-vest-jacket combo is usually kept for special occasions though.
form fitting: in America all the dudes wear sloppy, ill fitting baggy shit. and if you wear semi-tight pants / shirts / jackets you appear atleast a little faggy. to the point where women prefer the slob look on guys. fucking ridiculous. it is very different in Europe I guess... what all my european friends tell me.
beautiful AND comfortable men's dress shoes: do they exist AT ALL?????!!!!!!!!! if anyone knows of a brand which does this, please do let me know...
and on the hating tip:
white T-shirt inside collared shirt with top button(s) undone - this is a commonly accepted practice, even among people who otherwise look sensible (even saw it in a 1950s film recently), but don't people realize that it looks terrible?
white socks with black shoes: unless you are Michael Jackson, this should be avoided. agree or no?
"edge-y" fashion - so fucking over it. anyone over the age of 17 who wears punk-y stuff is a drooling moron. recently did a week stint at a design shop owned by a black guy with dreadlocks and tatoos and all attitude who was a clueless republican. and the art director there was a white dude with a mohawk and the most punked out clothes ever - also hardcore born-again. end times, man, end times.
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My two clothing pet hates at the moment are 1) tee-shirts with stupid pseudo-retro shit printed on them - NO YOU WERE NOT A LONG BEACH LIFEGUARD IN 1972, so stop pretending to be one! and 2) jeans with a button fly. Whoever invented this abomination deserves to be publically raped to death by a squadon of horny baboons.
It wouldn't be so bad if these trends were restricted to stupid expensive trendy boo-teeks where stupid rich trendy people shop, but it's the same in H&M these days.
buttons on mens trousers are a shocking idea.
h and m, it's good for something like a grey plain hooded top to wear under a jacket but as far as mens clothes go they're nasty.
buying clothes on ebay is ok for women as they have specific sizes whilst mens sizes are large medium small x-large.
other than the fact that they may take a little longer to open, (in the case of desperately having to pee a bad thing, and in the case of getting it on can actually be fun), what exactly is wrong with button up jeans and trousers? I've only had the extremely painful caught-in-the-zipper experience once or twice but it's enough to make me always go button fly when it's an option.
well they come off easily and i'm often looking down to see the bastards aren't actually done up like i thought they were.
Guybrush
Dittohead
Agreed and agreed. Actually, there is no reason using white socks at all (unless with white shoes or trousers).
I get a similar feeling when browsing through these pictures: most of the outfits look very personal and quite cool, but when lined-up against each other there is a weird whiff of uniformity about them; they appear bland and generic, somehow. The most protruding thing to wear in a crowd like this would probably be boring business clothes or something.
The trick with t-shirts is to buy a bulk of them when you do find a model that fits like a glove. I hoarded up about 15 t-shirts in almost as many colours last spring when I found a model that suited my body as well as my wallet. Now I won’t have the need to buy new ones for a long while, a great thing if you are a shopping-hater like me.
Regarding the ‘looking too good’ argument: I can think of many situations where it’s advantageous not to look your absolute best. Beauty and stylishness can be equally as intimidating as it’s alluring, it’s all in the mind of the beholder.
someone needs to do an addendum to the history of dandy-ism: these days everyone is a dandy (read: hipster), and the lifestyle does not signify any kind of position, the gesture is empty, the looks hold no political water, and the whole thing has become largely meaningless.
funny you mention boring business clothes... I've been heading in that direction for a while now - albeit with healthy doses of designer chic.
funny though, as style wise these kids are propped somewhere between a parodic kind of dismantling of school uniform, absolute casuals, old fashioned punky stuff, or a kind of parodic dismantling of stiff middle age clothes. not really anything particulary modern.
me and edward talked about starting a club with an ultra futuristic dress code last year, but not sure if people would be up to it.
what do people think makes up an imaginative leap in style?
most of the people involved have very little money, but still manage to pull it off.
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
It's entirely acceptable to do this sort of thing because you always have done and you simply aren't aware that things have moved on or that you should probably have grown out of it at age eighteen, it's just that as soon as the slightest trace of self awarenes, early mid-life crisis, irony or whatever start to creep in it becomes shit.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I just find them annoying. They take so much longer to undo and do up. I think the zip fly is just one of those things that people got right first time. Also, I've never had the misfortune to 'catch' myself, but I avoid this by paying attention to a part of myself I care quite a lot about!
N
nomadologist
Guest
Zhao, I can buy things on ebay without trying them on because I know my size in different brands. Also, one of the reasons I like ebay is because I can get MJ stuff made for the Japanese/Chinese market, so it's narrower in the shoulders and sleeves, since I'm 5'7" and I weigh 115, American clothes are pretty boxy on me. Especially designer/mid-retail stuff here--they size it down so American fat women feel ok about themselves. A size "4" at the Gap should not be big on me, but it is.
Second, before we go off on the whole "there is no aura anymore" trip (funny but Benjamin was saying this how many years ago? not even your complaints about there being no aura anymore are new...), consider that
1) hipsters aren't exactly "dandies", in the sense that Des Esseintes was a dandy, unless you think a dandy is simply a decadent narcissist. Hipsters are far from dandies, because hipsters trade in kitsch and camp. Dandies would never be caught dead doing so.
2) if you're going to lump all hipsters in one category in terms of style/dress with the douchebags who frequent Misshapes and have Merlin Bronques take their photos, you have no idea how broad the "hipster" category actually is. Those kids at Misshapes are like a handful of good friends in art schools and design programs in one city. They're not the sum total of American hipsterdom. Like I've said before: hipsters are just hyperconsumers of the highest order. They're what advertisers and business analysts call "early adapters." From a certain age demographic (18-40).
Style in the west has always been about recycled ideas. When new technology is introduced--for example, new fabrics--the accerlated accumulation of "new" fabrics or ideas results in a surge in forward-thinking trends. (I hesitate to say "futuristic" because futurism or the consciously futuristic is always more about now and the past than anything..)
Funnily enough my bf and I were just talking about how the same principle applies in popular music. Think of how all the booms in creativity (as we see them with hindsight) were precipitated by new technologies becoming available. The electric guitar turned folk into something new. The moog created new modes of tonal abstraction that never existed before. Hell you can even look back; string instruments were the invention that spawned the "classical" era in western music.
Second, before we go off on the whole "there is no aura anymore" trip (funny but Benjamin was saying this how many years ago? not even your complaints about there being no aura anymore are new...), consider that
1) hipsters aren't exactly "dandies", in the sense that Des Esseintes was a dandy, unless you think a dandy is simply a decadent narcissist. Hipsters are far from dandies, because hipsters trade in kitsch and camp. Dandies would never be caught dead doing so.
2) if you're going to lump all hipsters in one category in terms of style/dress with the douchebags who frequent Misshapes and have Merlin Bronques take their photos, you have no idea how broad the "hipster" category actually is. Those kids at Misshapes are like a handful of good friends in art schools and design programs in one city. They're not the sum total of American hipsterdom. Like I've said before: hipsters are just hyperconsumers of the highest order. They're what advertisers and business analysts call "early adapters." From a certain age demographic (18-40).
Style in the west has always been about recycled ideas. When new technology is introduced--for example, new fabrics--the accerlated accumulation of "new" fabrics or ideas results in a surge in forward-thinking trends. (I hesitate to say "futuristic" because futurism or the consciously futuristic is always more about now and the past than anything..)
Funnily enough my bf and I were just talking about how the same principle applies in popular music. Think of how all the booms in creativity (as we see them with hindsight) were precipitated by new technologies becoming available. The electric guitar turned folk into something new. The moog created new modes of tonal abstraction that never existed before. Hell you can even look back; string instruments were the invention that spawned the "classical" era in western music.
N
nomadologist
Guest
Another way of framing this: is novelty or "originality" actually essential to creativity or ingenuity in some way where singularity qua newness is antithetical to the corrosion of culture under capital? or is this need for originality and newness in clothing styles (and creative production in general) a result of the corrosion of culture under capitalism, where the reduction of the thing to its utility in a marketplace full of the illusion of choice that is based on this kind of "singularity" or novelty has made us deluded enough to believe that singularity is a creative merit?
N
nomadologist
Guest
class vs. trash.
dandies were not punk rock.
what's that famous quote from beau brummel? or one of those. he said something like "the best dressed man in a room is never noticed."
pessimistic reading: hipsters dress outrageously because we live under capital, where it makes people a lot more money to create fetisch objects out of even the ugly cast-offs of the working class, so they can be resold at urban outfitters on the "vintage" rack at a 3000% markup. in order to keep them in the right frame of mind for consuming fetish objects, we suspend consumers in adolescent limbo well into middle-age, just so they will be living above their means in a cosmopolitan consumertopia instead of starting a family and cutting coupons at 25.
less pessimistic reading: after the agrarian era, when the "traditional family" structure was no more than the most convenient mode of social control, and more simply, the most efficient mode of dividing labor under certain economic/cultural conditions, came the industrial- technological era(s). it no longer made sense for families to build up a homestead and raise pigs and chickens in perfect self-sufficiency. nope. machines replaced men tilling the fields. we had factories that needed tending and assembly lines that needed workers whose sole qualification was that they could see and had normal hand-eye coordination (women actually have better, so they went to work on looms and etc.) this radically changed the way families would be able to live, since more workers was always better, given the rapid expansion of industry during this time. the traditional model--where men were the "authority" figures in the home, and women and children existed solely for domestic purposes--was no longer practicable. in response to this change, especially after WWI and WWII, when women entered the work force in droves, something called "feminism" arose. this movement sought to bring cultural mores up-to-speed with basic economic and cultural realities. somehow, it is even now still accused of "causing" the tragic demise of biological determinism. hipsters fit into this picture as part of a new leisure class that is emerging as the middle class disappears as industrial expansion declines.
PS Misshapes are a joke to Brooklyn hipsters. They're far too sterile in their simulation of "rock and roll"--down to the freshly washed and coiffed black hair, cut by a stylist for a mere $250-300. They're also young: I know Leigh (the girl) is barely 20 if that. None of the real working artists and musicians think the Misshapes kids are hip...
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N
nomadologist
Guest
i bet people would be, but techno-fetishism is still fetishism. plus, that'd be so 80s retro *WINK*
Guybrush said:
Or, looking natty and ragged can be just another fashion statement, or set of signs that are distinct to an existing/well-established subcultural movement. Grunge, for example.
The truth is, no matter what you wear, your clothes relay certain information about you that others are called upon to read. This info is, of course, all tangled up in consumerism and fetishism and social politics. Even if you're just wearing your boxers and an undershirt. And I don't mean read in the sense of "judging" necessarily, but on the general level of assessment of another creature and their intentions. Like dogs sniff one another. We're not so special after all, then, are we. Just typical primate behavior, all of the codes and signals.
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