Contrast this with the women’s section. Women have an expectation to express themselves and their personality. There are all sorts of “impractical” cuts, flairs, colors, layers to choose from. There’s a shoe for every occasion. You can get dramatically different fabrics, feels, and touches. Not even going into accessories.
There is certainly a sea change happening in fashion retail, but it’s more that like everything else it’s accelerating things that are already going on. People were trending less formal almost everywhere in the workplace, except NYC, SF and LA (or in high touch industries like real estate or law). Your H&Ms are best positioned to survive, where everyone already knows that Macy’s is on its last legs.
This is so true, and it annoys me for reasons I'll mention later.
> Contrast this with the women’s section. Women have an expectation to express themselves and their personality.
I'm a young man, but I also like to express myself by dressing a certain way, which is why I'm especially disappointed when literally three whole floors of a relatively mid-high-end department store are dedicated to women's fashion, while half a floor is dedicated to men's.
I enjoy shopping for clothes in person - this way I can feel the clothing I'm actually going to put on, I can try different sizes on, see how it looks with my jacket, etc. So it also annoys me when a greater variety of men's fashion is found online, where I can't observe the physical quality of the clothes I'm about to buy, making it a hit-or-miss in most cases.
Women’s fashions are much shorter cycle, so they are often made with terrible quality fabrics that are quite uncomfortable. Worse, custom clothing is very expensive and by time it arrives, the season is changing.
If you get it made in India or Asia this is the norm.
Long sleeved shirts from a good tailor in Saigon or Bangkok are 15-25 EUR p.P. for the tailoring. Then add 3-20 EUR for fabric – depending on what material you choose.
Once the tailor has your measurements on file you can either send your fabric of choice there and have the shirts be in your mail three weeks later or they send you pictures of fabrics they stock and you choose.
20% of my shirts are off-the-shelf (but all of them have been adjusted to fit me bette). The rest are tailor made.
100% of my trousers are tailor made. I never understood why any sane man would pay for pants that are pants (pun intended). Too tight, too low waist and too short at the ankles. It makes you look like you are the younger sibling from a poor family who inherited the clothes from the elder, taller brother. And you even paid for that eye-cancer-inducing disaster. ;)
I have a tailor in Berlin who charges 70 EUR for tailoring a pair of trousers. With fabric that means I pay less than 100 EUR usually. Which is totally competitive with off the shelf pricing. He charges 40 EUR for a new cut. Aka: if I show him a picture of a cut or photo he will make it for my measurements. This is a one-time cost though.
As an added plus I have extra pockets for change/coins and invisible pockets under the belt line which are great to stash anything pointy that will distort the shape of your leg if put into the normal pants (I e.g. put my keychain there when I go dancing tango).
And the craftsmanship (seam look/quality/longevity) is superior to anything I can buy off the shelf. Even expensive brands are commonly produced with lower quality nowadays. You pay for the better material and the brand but the seams and button stitching are still sub par.
The owner is a bit all over the place but the work he does is outstanding. Also for ladies. If you need a tailored evening dress or costume: this is the guy.
Make sure he writes down any instructions and after agreeing for some pieces, you confirm them again yourself with him, written, by WhatsApp.
My Bangkok tailor is Dino Suits[2].
Dino is one of the few real tailors in Bangkok. Most 'tailors' there are just fronts for tourists that sell fabric with a suit pattern that gets adjusted to your body. That's a pattern of /their/ choice "made to measure" which is not the same as a pattern of /your/ choice "tailored".
Usually it's a sweatshop in the countryside doing the labor. In that place you have a 1-2 dozen half-trained people doing the grunt work and 1-2 real tailors checking on them/doing the occasional difficult section. That's why they can only do the one pattern.
Dino is known in Bangkok because if one of these other 'tailors' fucks up the last resort to fixing/saving a piece is often Dino. ;)
This is always a good litmus test for a new 'tailor'. Ask if you can bring your own fabric and ask if you can bring your own pattern. If either is a no look for another, real tailor.
In Asia/India in general: if you want a jacket w/o padding in the shoulders (Napoletanean style/pagoda shoulders) be sure to bring a well fitting (better: fitted/tailored) sample jacket from home for them to copy from.
> There are 5 genres of men’s clothes - business (pressed shirts, suits), casual, workout, skater, and comfort (hoodie).
Only 5 of them and one of them includes "skater"? I mention confidence because you name them off with some authority when it looks like it should be "There are 5 categories of men's clothing for me".
You leave off streetwear [1] which is a gigantic category in men's clothing and reinforces the personal / arbitrary nature of the list.
Also, while they used the term "skater" (which I also find oddly specific) I think "streetwear" would be a better label. This would cover more specific styles like "skater" as well as other types of streetwear.
As a disclaimer, I know next to nothing about fashion and am just going on my own limited perception of broad categories.
About half of my daily wardrobe is stuff that's advertised as "tactical", but the reason why I actually wear it is because it's comfortable (relaxed fit, stretchy fabric where needed etc), and because it has plenty of large pockets to carry all the gadgets and random items.
I still hold that men's clothing is more like the menu at taco bell, whereas womens clothing covers both much more nuance and opportunity for expressiveness. Mens styles are broadly muted in contrast. More than happy to argue that point!
I think Japanese fashion is less about the clothes themselves than the acceptance to let people wear what they want and and not judging. I think it’s more acceptable to match different colors and styles.
One strap shoulder Man-bags are all the rage. They are pretty practical, especially when you can’t fit your checkbook-sized wallet in tiny pockets. But in the US it looks like you’re wearing a fanny pack.
If you saw someone wearing an all yellow track suit it would look OK, partly because someone wearing an all green version is 20 feet away.
Or business slacks tapered and cropped above the ankle — in the US they’d ask, “is there a flood?”
While the clothes themselves don’t seem much different, I prefer slimmer cuts. The US is too baggy and loose.
Usually I go through Harajuku (excluding Takeshita-dori), Shibuya, Omotesando, and Shinjuku and go through the various stores. Especially in Harajuku stores tend to close constantly and are replaced, but theres always something good to find.
Especially true in SE Asia. I resisted the trend because it looks effeminate, like you're wearing a purse. Asian guys love them because they're super practical if you ride a motorbike or scooter tandem style. I think it works better for more masculine types to go for a bigger bag. I have a black Crumpler bicycle messenger bag (not super big, just a normal-sized bike messenger bag) and it works great for me down here.
This is probably also because so many clothes are made here, its demystified.
To be honest, it seems that in the most of US, merely being stylish is perceived as "effeminate" (for a man).
As a straight man who is into fashion for quite a few years now and who moved out of Brazil to Sweden: that culture is pretty stupid, I feel so much better and more myself when I'm able to express my personality with my clothes without the fear of being judged by someone's else prejudice... Even better that it's a common thing in Western Europe for people to be more fashionable.
I've bought some pieces that are pretty bold, I love some avant-garde male fashion pieces and being able to wear that without people batting an eye (and even getting random compliments) makes me feel pretty good, hope the Americas can get to this point because it's a very toxic masculinity trait for a whole continent to have and perpetuate.
I'm a Norwegian guy, and I love how tolerant we turned weirdly quickly. Even the anti-abortion Christian™ Party walks in the Pride parade now.
Frankly I think most people here would still think of the random guy in a dress as non-straight, but since "nobody" cares about that here anymore, nobody cares about clothing in a negative way either.
>I think Japanese fashion is less about the clothes themselves than the acceptance to let people wear what they want and and not judging.
In my experience this mostly applies if you are young. At a certain age you are more or less expected to start fitting in the mold.
Tote-bags also work, I've started using one for the last two summers.
In Romania we used to call them "sacoșă" back in communist times, and almost everyone used to have one in hand while going around town, you never knew what store could you stumble upon which might have brought in fresh supplies, in which case of course that you needed a "sacoșă" to carry back home the stuff that you purchased from there. I think that was a common sight in other communist countries too, that's why the Tiananmen guy actually had not one but two "sacoșe" in his hands while confronting those tanks (I'm curious what the term for "sacoșă" is in Chinese).
Unfortunately the late 1990s-early-2000s saw that phenomenon disappear, as the new middle classes used their newly purchased cars to bring stuff home from the super-market while "sacoșe" were "relegated" to old pensioners, but fortunately they made a comeback re-baptised as hipsterish and trendy tote-bags.
Jesus... I never thought I'd ever read that Finns could be someone's idols when it comes to elegance. But if you fancy wearing sports overwear [0] fitted in your rubber boots, after all...
----
[0] don't forget to buy the exact same model for your partner, and wear it at the same time, if you want to pass as a true Finnish couple.
If you keep up with current events you might have noticed that Finland has become a prominent country in the worldside design and fashion world.
I for example have never heard of this kind of joke being said or written anywhere.
For example the Aalto University in Finland is currently one of the best ranked universities for art, design and fashion. None of the other nordic countries are even in the top ten. Sweden is not even in the top 25.
That is a pretty different picture than the academics side of fashion...
Like I said, there is a lot of objective evidence to point to the contrary of what you are purporting. But hey, up to you if you want to beleive it or not.
I think you would do well to seperate the clothing/availability of the capital Helsinki, vs. rest of Finland.
Yes, outside of Helsinki and with the older population clothing is very utilitarian and wind-resistant sportsy clothing worn all round the year is common. The biggest seller of clothing items in Finland nationally is a supermarket chain.
I think that men have the same expectation. What's different is: Men are working with a relatively stable means of expression. They're working with clothes that are naturally more multi-season (both in terms of utility and in terms of aesthetic norms.) And it's more socially acceptable - even required in some contexts - for them to wear basically the same thing every day.
Whereas women are expected to take part in a sartorial red queen's race where everything is changing so rapidly that the statement you make by wearing a particular piece of clothing in summer 2018 might be markedly different from the statement you make by wearing it in winter 2019 or summer 2020, so it only serves to express your personality in the way you intend for a desperately short span of time. Worse, even within summer 2018 it might make one statement on June 18, and a completely different statement if you dare to wear it on June 25, because, even if nobody at your office actually will notice and judge you for wearing the same outfit on two consecutive Mondays, you've likely been conditioned to expect it to happen.
The amount of online discussions I have seen for a single item in male fashion makes me think nothing is ever simple.
There’s quite a bit of variation within those. Where I live, “casual” these days is usually something like Columbia PFG - the epitome of “dad clothes”, as my wife tells me. I tend to wear that pretty much exclusively. I substitute jeans for the shorts in winter and buy a new leather jacket about every 3-5 years. I pass my old one on to someone else.
Your point stands, though. As a man, my clothes are 100% based on practicality, and I often only discard them when they’re too worn to be presentable.
https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1AawYy29TBuNjy0Fcq6zeiFXaW/Off...
https://patternshub.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Tube-top-...
http://images.asos-media.com/products/asos-cut-out-sleeve-on...
https://cdn.tobi.com/product_images/lg/1/teal-kayla-ombre-ma...
(That last one is a bit of a cheat because manufacturers are starting to produce rompers for men).
But here are some things I think are equivalentish..
https://www.asos.com/au/asos-design/asos-design-regular-fit-...
https://www.asos.com/au/one-above-another/one-above-another-...
https://www.asos.com/au/asos-design/asos-design-t-shirt-in-b...
[0] https://www.rickowens.eu/ as an example
[1] https://theshopyohjiyamamoto.com/shop/r/r10/?h1_text_prm=Yoh...
https://a.suitsupplycdn.com/image/upload/b_rgb:efefef,bo_100...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Official_Preppy_Handbook
Male fashion is on something like a 10 years cycle and you can find tons of brands focusing on quality or durability.
Female fashion seems to obsess about the latest trend and change dramatically every 3-months to a year.
Probably lots of cultural bias there, not sure how much this applies in all countries.
I kinda hope that fast fashion is not what's going to survive, between ecology and employment practices, they are not really my favorite.
So I used to have 8 pairs of pants, 2 colours total. Black and beige. Then, once a year, I'd go buy 2 more pairs of each colour. On a 'bad' year, I'd buy 4 pairs. EG, I'd rotate the worn out, always only having 8 pairs.
This persisted until, 20 years later, the company that sold them went bankrupt. As my gut and ass had literally grown to into the form / shape of these pants, drooping and expanding to perfectly fill these specific pants, no other pants I tried seemed even remotely comfortable. Or to even fit well!
So I tried to find the company that made them... note, this was very early internet, and I had to go old-school. Finally called the trustees handling the bankruptcy, eventually found out where the pants were made, called them, and?
It was in Mexico, and they made custom for a variety of retailers. And none were left, no matter how I begged.
Two things:
1) Don't wear the same pants for 20-30 years, while you gain your middle-age gut and ass. Just don't.
2) Always have a pants fallback plan.
> As my gut and ass had literally grown to into the form / shape of these pants
It sounds a lot like you are wearing clothes that are too small for you :)
Regardless, I would be very surprised if there were no equivalent. There are even many brands dedicated to reproduce old garments (off the top of my head, TCB denim does that for jeans)
I'm 60 and absolutely fine with the same sizes and basically the same cuts that I've worn for more than 40 years. If something starts squeezing, it's a timely reminder that I need to adjust some behaviour, not a signal to give in and upscale my wardrobe.
The problem isn't the pants, its your lack of fitness. You act like becoming overweight in middle-age is an acceptable thing.
Nobody wants to look bad, but there are different degrees of effort people put into it.
That aside, I think retail will still suffer greatly compared to online sales since most have a service to send back clothing for free.
Sorry if this comes across as nitpicking but I'm curious what makes you think SF remains formal outside of high touch industries? AFAIK tech is the biggest industry in SF and formal clothes are far from expected there, you would not look out of place in a hoodie and shorts in an SF tech office (or even in some reasonably nice restaurants). In most tech offices you'd look like a bit of a weirdo dressed any more formal than business casual.
Personality is expressed through choice of cut, material, and color of cloth?
A simple example of this might be a haircut. Whether accurate or not, a mohawk often signals something to other people (and sometimes signals something the person that wears it, like "I may be ties down with more responsibilities, but I won't let that define me").
I like to think most my clothing choices are made because of practical matters such as comfort and fit, but even within my normal range of jeans to shorts and t-shirts to polo shirts (and maybe the less formal button-up shirt), there's definitely things that fit that criteria that don't feel like they fit how I think of myself. And that's as a man, where I think expectations to do with style and clothing are much simpler.
For what it's worth, they develop a loyal following.
The same with clothes: the choice of textures say something about you, the choice of cuts say something, the choice of colour the same. The thing is: the clothes you wear need to resonate with you to become part of your expression.
It's not that your clothes = your personality, but the choices you've done consciously will tell someone else about you, the same as looking around your book shelves at home. The thing is: you need to care about you are wearing for it to become something expressive.
With my clothes I can signal a lot of stuff to others that are into the same things I am, I can signal hobbies, I can signal that I care about a particular type of material or cut, and so on.
If not then you are just being practical and wearing what is expected from you, nothing wrong with that but don't judge and put others down because they take this more into consideration than you do.
It's just a cheap way to signal something that you might or might not be, and only superficially at that.
But be realistic. Someone that wears all black has made a choice just like the person that is always fashionable with lots of clothing. Some beard and hairstyles take more work than others. These are lifestyle choices people make. Someone knowing how to do 20 hairstyles to get their hair off of their neck decided to learn that instead of something else. A man with a complicated beard style probably spends some time daily on it to keep it up. A person with nails half the length of the fingers they are attached to probably eshews some practical things simply because the nails are in the way. A person that wears traditional clothing due to religion probably isn't a good candidate to date me.
I understand that being poor might make it so you don't have a lot of choices in these things. I've been there: My look was basically whatever I was forced to wear to work and whatever I could find at thrift stores. At the end of the day, though, I still had choice -and to discount what these choices tell others about you is, in itself, dense - as is discounting that humanity often makes snap judgements based entirely on how things look.
I'm female, and want to wear simple clothing. Black pants, black shirt. Short sleeve in summer, long sleeve in winter plus or minus a basic sweater or two. Sometimes, these aren't available or aren't available in black, so I often wind up wearing simply jeans and a t-shirt.
I'd rather not have frills, though I can occasionally tolerate zippers.
I'd really like pockets that have space for things: I used to wear men's pants when I was younger and I gotta say, I've considered switching back. I wish they fit better because the pockets are glorious. (Men's shirts don't fit well at all since they aren't made for breasts).
I can usually find non-athletic shoes in black, but it gets much more difficult to find black or mostly black athletic-style shoes.
This is not where I expected to see the "personality" euphemism today.
However, the two are connected; how one's personality is perceived is dependent on one's looks. If you want people to value your personality, best to exercise regularly, dress well, and keep up with proper grooming.
I read this as I rock along on my Thinkpad x200 and read it on a forum where people regularly defend the use of electron apps and gush over the latest sumptuous macbooks with gobs of memory.
"But, but, I need those for my work"
And so might these people who buy clothes because of yearly trends.
"But that's different!"
No, it's not.
It's not up to me to say anyone shouldn't enjoy your latest laptop, but I think it's good to realise that the large majority of people who work in software are in a precarious position to be handing out edicts about what should and shouldn't be considered "incredibly wasteful" and what is "damaging the environment".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/28/jeans-sal...
I suspect that it's a long term trend to reduce cost and quality/durability to maintain sales volumes. Fast fashion was a part of this, but now that people aren't going out to be seen, it doesn't matter what you're wearing (if it looks good on zoom). I suspect this will trend back once we're going out more, but with LA/NY/SF/MIA mostly shut down it won't be this year. What is happening for the Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, but home video?
Maybe leisure suits will come back?
Whatever happened to practical, well-wearing clothes for gold miners?
They went the same way as the gold miners.
Then they started going all anti-gun / SJW / spending money to reduce gun rights.
I have not bought a pair in a long time, won't buy any of that brand for anyone else, and anytime someone I know is shopping for or discussing jeans I mention my distaste for the brand and those who would support them.
Seeing them go down sparks joy. I'd rather wear a leisure suit made by snuggies than hand them cash. Seems I'm not the only one.
*edit to manual correct seems to seams
I guess fox news is winning that battle.
I will happily re-read this doc any day.
Funny you mention fox news winning the battle, I read an article in the last few hours that says they are. They are crushing every other news group - all of the primetime news - even though they are cable only in most markets and the others have further ota reach.
However I don't celebrate that. They are not my primary news source. I put them about 9th or 10th in my reads.
Nobody cares about your precious guns. We care about mentally ill getting assault rifles. It’s really not that hard to understand.
Citation needed. I don't know how more unambiguous the framers could get than "shall not be infringed".
Setting aside my personal feelings on the matter, this just seems to be a bad argument which is not in evidence. I've read the Constitution thoroughly on more than one occasion, I don't see anything within that makes it seems as if the framers thought ignoring what was written in plain English and skirting its intent was a-okay.
Picking up a gun you’ve found from the larger cultural war and shooting random commenters with it is fun, but quite inappropriate for HN from what I’ve seen of it.
Yes they are, the comment above me has this:
> I don't know how more unambiguous the framers could get than "shall not be infringed".
That's the second amendment, is it not?
On top of that, the 2nd amendment itself is about defending against the government. It says that armed citizens are necessary to be able to form a well-regulated militia. The founding fathers had just broken free of an oppressive government, so they wanted to be sure it was possible for states to break free again if necessary.
The last pair I bought fell apart in 3 months, the ball of my foot eating through the interior material in that short span. I kept wondering "what changed" and then I looked at the label in the tongue. Different country of manufacture than the last 2 pairs I bought (I'd usually keep my old pair as a backup since they typically still had some life left in them, despite the sole wearing down)
As much as I liked the styles, I started to try other brands... then went back when some skechers were on sale and bought the 'wide' versions to see if there was a difference. I have really been enjoying the new balance I've been wearing more than any the past couple years.
You can say this about virtually any hobby/interest that you don’t personally find enjoyable.
Buying any new stuff yearly isn’t great for the environment — with exceedingly rare exceptions. But in the grand scheme of things: owning/driving a car, living in too big a home, eating meat, and having kids are so so so much more destructive that buying a few new shirts and pants every year becomes a rounding error.
Everything more complicated than that is fashion.
Pants are warmer and I don't have to worry about how I sit (am female, and do not enjoy this bit about dresses). Biking is not an issue, nor is extra fabric going to get stuck in a conveyor belt.
I'm also pretty sure the togas would require a decent learning curve if you are wanting sleeves. I certainly want sleeves and a shirt that isn't in the way: Things like ponchos aren't good to cook in - they get in the food.
Togas would be outright dangerous when swimming and I can't imagine them being great for working on a car. They might be slightly cooler in the summer if you aren't using too much fabric.
And I'd argue that no matter what, you still have fashion. You'll see it in the way folks drape the toga fabric and their use of belts and things to hold it together. You'll see fashion in the color and/or print of fabric and whether or not you can keep a white one clean. Like with uniforms, you'll find more emphasis on body shape, hair, and other such things.
But I suppose we could all just let our hair grow out: women and men both should just stop shaving as well. It is, after all, fashion. And not do phsyical fitness more than what is required to be healthy and do your job - excess muscles are fashion, after all.
(Since that's a name I hadn't heard in a while, I had to check to see that they still existed)
gymnos = naked
I don't disagree per se, but I think you could say this about just about any hobby/habit/interest. Is it really necessary? Probably not, but it makes some people happy for whatever reason.
How do you draw the line?
Some people complain that travel is too hard on the environment..but I love travel and will continue to do so (post-covid)
By representing the environmental externalities of fashion, travel, etc through CO2 taxation.
Google around for Adam Minters book secondhand on how the rag industry is one of the largest.
Aside from that more stringent local environmental regulations are the only advantage I can see mattering.
On the other hand, local food has other important advantages: resiliency (perhaps less important for clothing), and supporting the local economy.
So... fashion?
Yeah but that skinny/tight jeans trend really did made some jeans less practical.
Mainstream jeans brands seem astronomically expensive to me.
Figure that there is a 100-1000% markup for a garment at retail. The jeans that cost $3 to make versus the ones that cost $13 will sometimes be durable, but you are basically buying the quality of the seamstress beyond materials at the higher price point.
My quads aren't even that big and yet I seem to have this problem. It only started after lifting for a few years and it drives me crazy. I seem to go through jeans every 3 years whereas before it felt like they would last a life time.
Of course, may be most shoppers simply go after current trends, but that's just true for any art form, from music to movies to books; almost all of these things are just as impractical. Investing your resources into something just because it looks nice is a very human thing to do.
People still need clothing obviously (cheap and of good quality preferably).
Also, what do we consider the fashion industry exactly? Most long term clothing trends seem to be dictated by a couple of factors. Consisting of:
- practicality. Jeans are good example of this. It's cheap and practical clothing that lasts a long time.
- cultural "requirement": clothing that is required to fit into social circles. The shirt would be a good example of this, aswell as the tie.
- Enviromental requirements: This one should be obvious ofcourse, No one wears a wool jacket in abu dabi.
Fast fashion and the fashion industry as a whole seems incredibly wasteful to me. Buying new clothing because of yearly trends is way to damaging to the enviroment for what it's worth.