Fluid Dynamics

[smiles]

Thinking about the nebulous world of authenticity and flintstone vis a vis forum/people/ media(if you want to broaden it)

- thinking about trends - who started it. Who started it isn't always who makes it popular.

- thinking about disby. Poor disby. Popularity contest/context or legitimate fashion choice.

- thinking about flintstone. Show me a person who puts together a collection of 50 images and dresses like that in reality. What's the point of flintstone except in an abstract way.

-thinking about concepts of 'fashionable' 'taste' etc. in relation to different in group aesthetics.

- thinking about the creation of personas and the inability to dictate an outfits 'suitability' (no pun intended)

- thinking about obsessive planning and subsequent declaration of that planning ( need/want thread on Mfa, frequent discussions of upcoming season ) as a method to declare/define/designate taste and those who generate it.


Not really looking to have a discussion about Mfa because that's dumb. More about how talking about clothes affects our desire or susceptibility to purchase certain things. I'm thinking, candid confessions. Ie. ensnaring something impossible to pin down - cool. Who has it, who fakes it. , who wants it.

[germinal]

Lately i have been thinking a lot about vans slip-ons and their rampant popularity at present. when i was growing up the only people who wore them were Emos who wore the classic checkerboard ones. As a result i developed a distaste for them, and i have a half-memory (perhaps i made it up) of myself aged 13 or something saying i'd never, ever wear them. Yet lately i have found myself more attracted to them, which makes me question how susceptible i am to the tugging of the invisible hands of trend (and whether this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing or just an unavoidable universal constant). I have also been thinking about who started it. Was it: Vans (did they ever go out of style)? Celine? Louboutin? CP, Diemme, Buterro &c? JohnUndercover? unstoppable 90s revivalism? unstoppable early 00s revivalism? Tumblr? Forums? and so forth. Also: am i more slave to fashion if i buy shoes because they are trendy or if i don't buy shoes because they are trendy? Similarly, what if i buy shoes precisely because they are not trendy?

[adhi]

flintstone works in a very very practical way for me. if i see a fit online and it meets two criteria 1. 'fuck that's good' and 2. 'i can see myself wearing that' i add it to my folder. if something meets (1) but (2a) which is 'i'm not cool enough to pull this off ATM' it goes into a different folder.

this way, my flintstone folder is something i go to when i feel kind've more uninterested in the fashion thing to remind myself that you can looks sweet. so that's my take on 'flintstone'. i have never chosen a topic and collected pics on it just because of that topic... it's a strictly personal improvement thing.

[lanky]

[can-]

sick of talking about talking about Internet fashion. fashion and Internet fashion are two different systems of discourse and they obviously talk to each other but one is obviously king.

Internet fashion is a mode of relating to oneself. real life fashion is a mode of self expression.


about slip ons, to me they've been so 'unfashionable' for so long that they are now naturally coming back into coolness. I've considered a pair but I don't need them and i would probably start w a pair of authentics.

[smiles]

do you have an actual folder of flintstone adhi? doesnt that seem constricting? I would prefer to just have the image of it in my head as a reference. stray too far down the path of 'flintstone' and you could end up as a pastiche.

internet fashion and fashion fashion are different for sure, but only in direction, both are confining. kind of the whole descriptive/prescriptive thing. Internet fashion falls on the descriptive side but with a very rigid codification, i.e generation of certain 'looks' for forums like sufu or stylezeigest. There's also nauseating terms like dadcore, gothninja, techwear etc. In order to be accepted you have to conform to certain parameters that have decided. So i guess its more of a tiered, bottom up approach to fashion. themes are identified and then placed within certain boundaries. Real fashion (at the consumer level) is certainly more prescriptive, top down. buy this, this seasons top trends, gq, sartorialist, fashion blogs etc. Theres also subcultures with prescriptive dress codes of course, though thats not quite about fashion anymore.

I guess it all boils down to acceptance, either irl or online. relating to oneself is a fantasy imo, the internet (being a very personal experience) gives the illusion of greater freedom, but your floral shirt or whatever had to come from somewhere (assuming you consumed the requisite content). Theres also the tricky bit about online persona, the 'oneself' online may be quite different to the one clicking the mouse.

[adhi]

i have a folder of fits i think are cool and try to emulate but not copy. the difference is that i would take elements of a fit and use it on myself. i won't see a fit and think i'm going to wear every single piece of that. i would see a fit i like, try to identify what it is about that fit i like, and then try to incorporate that element. i actually edit the title to note what part of the fit i like so i can remember later

[earthonator]

[adiabatic]

[Copeland]

In those cases I've always just believed that whichever decision leads you to not buying instead of buying makes you less slave-like.

I try to fight the outside influences just a tad, but not too much, would probably fight more if I was pushed and critiqued irl. Though being countercultural in general is exhausting and unrealistic to a certain extent as to how much of self-expression is real.

I don't know what flintstone is

Was reading about something that may be relevant to fashion. A TV showrunner was saying that one should always have a strong aesthetic to differentiate themselves, I couldn't understand how that's not totally corrupt. Why should anyone forcefully cultivate a strong aesthetic to be different or even for its own sake? I'd like to think that it should evolve naturally and through some other goals like expanding one's palette, creating a bricolage of influences, etc. And also that confining oneself to be specific deprives the necessary experience of trying stuff out, and also that people change and so do their expressions.

[adiabatic]

[Bobbin.Threadbare]

Fashion choices entirely depend on the consumer group the buyer is in - there's lots and lots and some overlap but in my line of work its the only way to group buying and dressing habits.

Sometimes I work with companies that are targeting one or a group of them, and the way in is always different. You may be selling to people who buy because of celebrity, others who buy to augment their wider lifestyle, some buy strictly for function and some are just price conscious.

If it at all adds to this conversation I'd say that a lot of the work I do around millennial (and below) mindsets shows that brand, style and identity is increasingly promiscuous. People turncloak quickly now and explore things with less stigma and more ease - and global brands that work play to that and don't tend to try and enforce loyalty. I think in very basic terms our fashion choices are still problem solving excersizes based on our lifestyles - you may work in an office this year and really get into shirts, then you buy a bike to get healthy and look into tech clothing, then you work a few less days and start going away more and go full into outdoor gear, then have a baby and look into whatever that world is, then, then, then.

Re: slipons

Slipons are a black swan as far as I'm concerned. They were born as a skate shoe, became an emo/grunger/greebo staple and returned truimphant as these things do as a perfect commercial product of rebellion that made cameos in several generations a la denim, ray bans, etc. They're also simple, a sign of youth, cheap to make and easy to repurpose.

[CheerUpBrokeBoy]

[Bobbin.Threadbare]

A lot of what you're talking about would be covered by the consumer group approach - groups are defined by lifestyle, social status, age and location*.

*The internet has allowed niches that would have otherwise been geographically isolated to reach a global remote audience so location is now not only about where you physically live but digitally exist too.