Random Rhetorical Hypebeast Fashion Thoughts

[iamacyborg]

[hirokinakamura]

[iamacyborg]

I wish more fashion companies produced product videos like this.

[greggy]

[nick]

pointing out logical fallacies doesn't win you arguments either. come on man.

I do absolutely agree that the articles tone of 'people who buy stuff to be recognized are giant infants we should take pity for' is absurd. but you can't say anyone buys LV because they just really love how the letters LV look for some intrinsic reason and that warrants a massive premium over comparable garments. clothing is absolutely about being seen. if you are spending so much time researching and looking into this art of presenting your exterior just to say 'oh I exclusively just want nice things I don't care how other people see me', you're kidding yourself.

edit: looking back this is a bit too hostile. I am taking this stuff way too seriously - I'm sorry for the negativity :(

[greggy]

[maj]

Hobbyists are a tiny part of the spectrum and the brands/ argument the article is directed at is not hobbyists. You've not seen wealth till you've seen people waltz into stores and buy 5 jackets some guy on the internet has posted on 9 different grail threads and go cruise the riviera. The way brands are structured, priced and marketed are not consumer friendly In any form and targeted at those where 1k is drinks with friends. When you have that level of wealth you need the lifestyle to match it and buy from those who provide it, do you like the design? Yes. Do you develop brand loyalty? Yes. Would you be shopping there if it didn't have a facade of wealth and cool? Likely no.

This can be seen at all levels from people who will shop at reiss under the facade it's a huge step up from that of h&m and worth the tag, or the house of Fraser Middle class demographic. Even those who shop at top man over primark even tho the styles are the same. Brands diffusion lines highlight this fact even tho they lack the design of mainline and are heavily branded people lap it up just to be associated.

Victim is a strong word, but the point the article makes is fair.

Then again I'm not mega rich and couldn't possibly tell you further than a few huge generalisations. Also talking about money and clothes is one of the most banal things and is like talking about religion or politics.

[teck]

went to dover street market today. just want to say: i apologize to everyone for doubting how awesome it is there. it is one of the best boutiques ive seen ever, and clearly one of the best stores in nyc. some thoughts:

-its huge. im thinking of writing an article comparing my descent down its 7 floors to dante traversing the layers of hell.
-the best way to compare my fervor for CDG after seeing all the collections in one place is to relate it to falling in love with a crazy, beautiful person.
-its in a weird neighborhood. great indian restaurants tho.
-sorry i missed seeing it with the rest of the CTers. looking back at the meet up photos, its bizarre that so much attention was on the Supreme stuff since its a relatively mundane part of what is offered

[can-]

[odradek]

there was a discussion on denim-specific mundus vetus about "brand personality," what that meant and who had it. though that discussion referred specifically to brands like momotaro and oni (generally agreed to have no brand personality), i think as a measure of "victim-hood" or whatever perjorative we're throwing out it works pretty well. if a buyer is philosophically aligned, be that economically or theoretically, with a brand, i'd say their "right" to buy and wear their products is given a pass. for the very, very rich, buying a ferrari works. this [half-baked] mechanism allows for the "i like this brand" attitude and the "this brand is cool and if i buy it i'll be cool" disconnect that can come up from that. this is really superficial and i'm not in the mood to really tease this out.

[rudy]

talk about brand identity reminded me of this paragraph of DFW's Fictional Futures. Second half seems to kinda be what we're getting at.



Kleider machen Leute

[navin]

Maybe i can add my perspective on this.
I hang out with a lot of "high class" people and i go to a "high class" school and i cop clothes so i can look the part too, i also try to avoid clothing the is associated with "chavs". I passed on a lot of clothing because of this.
I know its fucked up but what can I do?
Sorry rambling and for grammar mistakes English is not my first lenguage.

[starfox64]

[SCATHINGSOCIALCRITICISM]

the senior design students at my university recently did a runway dealio to showcase some items they've made. there was some pretty rad stuff including a few bridal lines and a children's line.

i thought one look was particularly cool



you can check it out here if you want to. unfortunately the site only shows one outfit from each designer.

http://fashionshow.design.umn.edu/

[smiles]

...shit

[bels]

We're meant to be doing a recruitment fair today so I wore my incos and my aldos and then I get an email from HR telling me to wear my branded black polo shirt and if mine isn't around they have a spare one.

[bels]

Super mad about it.

[can-]

can you get me one of those in XL?

[bels]

I'll look into it.

[can-]

it's my birthday next Friday.

[eskdc]

I like wearing sweatpants with boots

[iffe]

I've been wearing spring jackets for the last month or so. What a fucked up winter.

[bueno]

'normcore' ...lol...
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/02/normcor ... tter_nymag

[teck]

Normcore post reminds me of this circle of friends my gf hangs out with. They're generally art students/artists. One of the guys has (illegally) turned his loft space into a gallery. Whenever I hang out with them I want to have a live feed so everyone can see what a hipster "really" looks like.

To my point normcore and these arts folks seem to be able to leverage their very youth into coolness. of course, a lot of young people movements are cool (hip hop, punk, etc), but normcore tries to slice away all extraneousness until you're staring at naked coolness/nonchalance. As if normcore folks are saying "hey i'm so cool that i can wear stuff that is generally considered ugly or plain and make it cool". You can't point out to a particular look (or non-look) that exemplifies the coolness of normcore.

That said I do think that these normies are also leveraging a bit of their privilege (class, race, circumstantial) to exclude others. a lower class person can't do normcore because the sneaker she thrifted was done out of necessity, not choice.

[teck]

Normcore post reminds me of this circle of friends my gf hangs out with. They're generally art students/artists. One of the guys has (illegally) turned his loft space into a gallery. Whenever I hang out with them I want to have a live feed so everyone can see what a hipster "really" looks like.

To my point normcore and these arts folks seem to be able to leverage their very youth into coolness. of course, a lot of young people movements are cool (hip hop, punk, etc), but normcore tries to slice away all extraneousness until you're staring at naked coolness/nonchalance. As if normcore folks are saying "hey i'm so cool that i can wear stuff that is generally considered ugly or plain and make it cool". You can't point out to a particular look (or non-look) that exemplifies the coolness of normcore.

That said I do think that these normies are also leveraging a bit of their privilege (class, race, circumstantial) to exclude others. a lower class person can't do normcore because the sneaker she thrifted was done out of necessity, not choice.

[teck]

Sorry to blast this thread:

I went and interviewed the guys over at The Firm, a shoe repair shop that's known as THE shop to fix designer footwear. The guy was very nice, and talked to me at some length about his story, his shop, and what he thought about Rick Owens.

The only thing is he didn't want it to be a podcast/radio thing. I did record it but I'm going to transcribe instead. I'll probably write up an article and post it to my blog, but if folks have any thoughts/connections to other fashion/culture publications that might be interested in the story, please holler.

[rudy]

So every so often I will browse the Mr. Porter website, despite never having purchased anything from Mr. Porter, simply because I like pretty pictures that tell me how to spend my money. Regardless, I was checking out the journal section and came across this “article” on a young man who uses “$” as a substitute for “S” to spell his name, after which I think I probably lost 1mm from my molars.

This is about where the teeth gritting hit its peak:

"I just hate stuff that's not fresh," says Mr Scott on his most frequent sources of chagrin. "Fresh is about maintaining an ill aesthetic at all times."

I guess this isn’t really a fashion thought, but it is in the sense that this dude is being masqueraded as some sort of up-and-coming hip-hop (now synonymous with fashion) icon. And I suppose my issue really lies in the fact that, despite all of this obnoxious braggadocio, I can’t really hate him for that because I don’t even know if it’s sincere. Hip-hop (and in my opinion fashion to an extent) seems like it is always veiled in at least three layers of facetiousness so that you can hardly ever uncover any real meaning in the messages that are being pushed. It’s always so much easier to say “you just don’t get it.”

Maybe I’m reading way into the lines for shit like this and should write it off as some young pop-star simultaneously comparing himself to Sid Vicious and The Beatles out of sheer ignorance. It just frustrates me to see so much effort go into abstracting a meaning instead of say, actually having meaning and purpose. I think the word I’m looking for is “vapid.” And this has been my first internet rant.

[teck]

its a bit cringey but hip hop has ALWAYS been about freshness and aesthetics. in the 80s it was having the right shoes, in the 90s about having a benz, in the 00s about a yacht, now its about givenchy (well and having the right shoes).

fashion and hip hop have always been strange bedfellows. dudes have been wearing polo and tommy forever, only to have the designers themselves shun the attention. but recently high end fashion has really embraced it, i would argue almost entirely because of Kanye "El Savior" West. He's bridged this crazy gap and has such wide appeal that fashion folks can't just tuck him away into some defusion line. Dude fux with APC for god's sake.

It does worry me that what might be happening to mr. scott is going to be what has always happened to him: he's a young cool black man, he'll be welcomed, but ultimately wrung out of his usefulness, then discarded. how many rap stars really even "make it", you know. guy will probably fizzle out (just statistically speaking) but mr porter got what he wanted.

that said, i really really like mr porter's content

[eufemism]

flyknit soccer cleats too good
http://imgur.com/a/SGoDh

[IsaiahSchafer]

Am I victim for wanting to save up for the milk and bone RO geobaskets?

http://www.rickowens.eu/en/men/products/ru14s1894lms-21