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  • Shucks
    Senior Member
    • Aug 2010
    • 3104

    Originally posted by Johnny View Post
    they must at least make you look good (or make you feel like you do) otherwise there really is no point.
    wow i really don't agree with this. if i wanted to feel like i looked good, i certainly wouldn't wear the things i do. i would say without exaggerating that there is exactly ZERO percent of people in my immediate vincinity whom i might impress with the way i dress.

    in fact, the result of dressing how i dress is often that i am made to feel quite awkward. but since looking good is not my first priority, and sometimes not even a consideration at all - i don't adapt my behavior according to this. i acquire and wear the things i do because of several other reasons as well, as stated above, and i feel that my motivation is much more multi-faceted than how i understand yours to be.

    naturally it is nice to hear if one looks good in a waywt (it caters to that need) but it does absolutely not reflect my everyday experience nor what my priorities are. there are much more interesting things to spend my time on than being beautiful. developing my thinking, for instance.

    Comment

    • huckleberry
      Senior Member
      • Jul 2009
      • 361

      Surely you yourself must think you look good, in the fact that you appreciate the aesthetic of the clothes you are wearing? Even if you are made to feel awkward by others you surely then don't believe you look bad, rather you believe they have different tastes or interests? If you do it would pretty much lose a large point of dressing in the clothes you do. At the end of the day a part of you is buying the clothes due to the way they look. You wouldn't buy something that you thought looked terrible just because there was some artistic vision behind it or the materials were nice.
      I think Johnny meant looking good from his own point of view, and therefore its hard not to agree with him.
      You are practically saying you buy clothes regardless of how you look in them, which makes no sense because they are to be worn.

      Comment

      • Faust
        kitsch killer
        • Sep 2006
        • 37852

        Originally posted by Johnny View Post
        I'm not saying that the only thing is for them to look good; just that they must at least make you look good (or make you feel like you do) otherwise there really is no point. It is in that sense that I think it's the most important consideration.
        Ah, ok. Yes, I agree, of course :-)
        Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

        StyleZeitgeist Magazine

        Comment

        • Shucks
          Senior Member
          • Aug 2010
          • 3104

          Originally posted by huckleberry View Post
          At the end of the day a part of you is SOMETIMES buying the clothes due to the way they look. You would buy something that you thought looked terrible just because there was some artistic vision behind it or the materials were nice.
          You are practically saying you buy clothes SOMETIMES regardless of how you look in them, which makes no sense to me because they are to be worn.
          FIXED.

          Comment

          • huckleberry
            Senior Member
            • Jul 2009
            • 361

            I Don't see the point of buying something you think looks terrible. it seems stupid. When I say terrible I don't mean an alteration upon normal standards of clothing, I mean something that fits awful. Like wearing a teepee. There would be far better offerings with both background and functionality, to choose the other is beyond me.
            Each to their own.

            Comment

            • Johnny
              Senior Member
              • Sep 2006
              • 1923

              Originally posted by Shucks View Post
              wow i really don't agree with this. if i wanted to feel like i looked good, i certainly wouldn't wear the things i do. i would say without exaggerating that there is exactly ZERO percent of people in my immediate vincinity whom i might impress with the way i dress.

              in fact, the result of dressing how i dress is often that i am made to feel quite awkward. but since looking good is not my first priority, and sometimes not even a consideration at all - i don't adapt my behavior according to this. i acquire and wear the things i do because of several other reasons as well, as stated above, and i feel that my motivation is much more multi-faceted than how i understand yours to be.

              naturally it is nice to hear if one looks good in a waywt (it caters to that need) but it does absolutely not reflect my everyday experience nor what my priorities are. there are much more interesting things to spend my time on than being beautiful. developing my thinking, for instance.
              good for multi-faceted you.

              Comment

              • Shucks
                Senior Member
                • Aug 2010
                • 3104

                Originally posted by Johnny View Post
                good for multi-faceted you.
                yeah. but i bet you're real pretty...

                Comment

                • Shucks
                  Senior Member
                  • Aug 2010
                  • 3104

                  Originally posted by huckleberry View Post
                  I Don't see the point of buying something you think looks terrible. it seems stupid. When I say terrible I don't mean an alteration upon normal standards of clothing, I mean something that fits awful. Like wearing a teepee. There would be far better offerings with both background and functionality, to choose the other is beyond me.
                  Each to their own.
                  again, i refer back to fuuma's list of questions. it can be a way of exploring what guides my preferences and my decisions. i like to challenge my own way of thinking on occasion. to see if it is really my own - for example.

                  Comment

                  • BeauIXI
                    Senior Member
                    • Nov 2008
                    • 1272

                    This is becoming an antagonizing and essentialising discussion. Let's stick to personal stories, perhaps? I was enjoying the bildungsroman type myths...
                    Originally posted by philip nod
                    somebody should kop this. this is forever.

                    Comment

                    • trentk
                      Senior Member
                      • Oct 2010
                      • 709

                      a retrospective: stream of consciousness

                      Ignoring the specifics of my younger years, I'll let it suffice to say that I've always harbored an interest in personal style, despite the fact that I now mostly disapprove of my older tastes. I say "mostly" and not "entirely", b/c veiled beneath my ostentatious logo heavy grade school choices was a carefully edited palate of tones that complimented my complexion.

                      My interest in fashion is rooted in, among a multitude of other things, my odd body type. With an unusually light shade of reddish strawberry blonde hair, I always payed close attention to palatte. Being on the smaller/skinnier side for most of my young life, I struggled with fit - pants excessively stacked, shirtsleeves balooned and extended to my knuckles, jackets were too long etc....

                      In grade school, I was a brand whore. Wearing the same label head to toe, I thought combining different labels created an undesirable aesthetic clash - a disharmony of sorts. Living in a norcal surf community, I favored surf brands.

                      Highschool - with the discovery of "the sartorialist", a cultured french teacher, and a morass of online sources - is what I consider my advent of good style. The trajectory is loosely as follows:

                      - american prep w/ a surferish flair. favored collared shirts, white pants, white shoes. brands like ralph lauren interspersed with more expensive pieces from places like context clothing. palatte of mostly blues/whites/browns....
                      - moving away from american prep, and towards my own individual style: grey thin cords that I particularly adored. beachy loose thin blue trovata tshirts. loose grey lightly broken in cotton pants. graphite wool jackets. very thin beachy hoodies. mexican huaraches. Almost solely blue tops and grey bottoms. some jcrew
                      - moving away from my own beachy jcrew thing towards a more tailored sartorialist type aesthetic. especially inspired by old rich european guys. still wear the same color palatte (lots of blue/grey/white, a bit of brown). pants are tailored to no break, jacket sleeves shortened.
                      - moving away from the older traditional european style, and towards one that is a bit younger. i.e. more of tommyton’s gq streetstyle photos and garance dore’s young euro guys than scott schuman’s.
                      - obsession with tailored minimalism: blue slim suits and outerwear, white shirts.
                      - love of mod style: the type of stuff a young bob dylan, jacques dutronc, david bowie, or serge gainsbourg would wear.
                      still wear mod and minimalist clothes, touches of old rich yachtfaring european and younger tommy ton shot european, but moving more towards scandanavian designers like: acne, hope-stockholm, whyred. - - moving towards scandanavian designers = moving towards a drapier more avant garde SZ type aesthetic.
                      - currently introducing black into my wardrobe - a color I’ve avoided for the majority of my life due to my complexion. with the introduction of black comes a shift further towards the SZ aesthetic. I wear almost exclusively black pants, but avoid framing my face with black. My color of choice is a verrrry dark shade of navy, so dark that it appears to be black. Experimenting with monochrome outfits to accentuate form. I tend to wear almost exclusively black waxed cotton pants. I also wear almost exclusively dark brown heeled modish boots, but would like to introduce some drapey grey suede boots. also looking to explore some alternate silhouettes. living in NYC, I tend to buy alot of clothes at OAK. obsessed with the way high collars frame my face. growing my hair out long and straight a la rick owens and iggy pop.

                      EDIT: i should add, I don't see the development of my style as a process culminating in a singular aesthetic. I see no imperative for a univocal personal style, although I do think its important to not slip into incongruity if managing multiple aesthetics.

                      /end monologue
                      Last edited by trentk; 10-31-2010, 10:06 PM.
                      "He described this initial impetus as like discovering that they both were looking at the same intriguing specific tropical fish, with attempts to understand it leading to a huge ferocious formalism he characterizes as a shark that leapt out of the tank."

                      Comment

                      • Adams
                        Junior Member
                        • Nov 2010
                        • 25

                        Mhm, well, I been threw every "alternative" styles we can find, like gothic, punk, batcave, skater, rock, cyber, everything about music periods i listened to when i was a bit younger, like from 13 to 18 yo.
                        At a moment i was much looking like a Mc Queen monster than a human, with blue hair, no eyebrows, tons of piercings, big platform boots and so on...
                        But then I had a reality to face, i'm finally not an alien !
                        So, at 18 (around), I began to discover designers looks, artists fashion, and decided to try to make something with all those endless informations coming to us, like "you must wear this", "this is out", "be thinner"...etc.
                        At first I tryed like some others to follow those big lines drew by fashion marketing: wearing those brands, not this, do diet, look normal... how boring !
                        And then, I decided that all this was f*cked up and just listened to the heart and credit card possibilites, mixed between designers, cheap things, vintage to end where I actually am, completly out of "right styles" and a big weirdo.
                        C'est dans le noir que l'on voit le plus de lumières.

                        Comment

                        • Faust
                          kitsch killer
                          • Sep 2006
                          • 37852

                          Originally posted by Adams View Post
                          At first I tryed like some others to follow those big lines drew by fashion marketing: wearing those brands, not this, do diet, look normal... how boring !
                          And then, I ... just listened to the heart and credit card possibilites, mixed between designers, cheap things, vintage to end where I actually am, completly out of "right styles" and a big weirdo.
                          Signature material alert.
                          Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                          StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                          Comment

                          • Adams
                            Junior Member
                            • Nov 2010
                            • 25

                            I'm sorry about my english, but is that about the bad word in it ?
                            C'est dans le noir que l'on voit le plus de lumières.

                            Comment

                            • Faust
                              kitsch killer
                              • Sep 2006
                              • 37852

                              No, no problem at all. It just the combination sounds funny.
                              Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                              StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                              Comment

                              • Lumina
                                Senior Member
                                • Dec 2009
                                • 277

                                When I was a little girl, I used to add a black dot with a marker in my picture books on every dress I liked, so I could spot them easily and redraw them, or try to recreate it with a shawl or old dresses. When I come back to my parent's house and flip through my old child's books, everytime there is a princess or a fairy or anything, there is this black dot somewhere on her dress. So weird.

                                As far as I can remember, I had a few cute clothes in my childhood, like dresses with peter pan collar, flowers, white lace, or cherries, things like that. I would spend hours in my grandmother's attic playing dress up with her old dresses and my mum's, first alone and then even more when my little sister was old enough to join me.
                                Then I skipped all of it for a few years. The teenage time wasn't very feminine to say the least. At that moment, I spent my time reading, and playing video games, wearing shapeless clothes in terrible colors. When I look at the pictures now, it was objectively terrible, let's forget it.

                                Then I lived on my own in a bigger city, discovered shops such as Zara or H&M. It was slightly better but still bad. I started to look at the runway pictures, and at first I've been mostly impressed by designers like John Galliano, Sonia Rykiel, Lacroix, Gaultier.... Seeing the clothes in real life in the shops in Paris was a chock. My first crazy purchase was a pair of gorgeous black and gold Miu Miu pumps that I still have and love, but I don't wear them very often.

                                The biggest turn has been the discovery of japanese designers, 3 or 4 years ago I think. It started with Yohji Yamamoto, my boyfriend took me to the store. It was the first encounter with Yohji clothes for both of us. The materials, the rows of black silk and white shirts... What a shock. I then started to read a lot about him, read interview, watch pictures of the runway... I had already been conquered by the clothes itself, but his philosophy, his vision of fashion, time, beauty, the human body, everything, was an amazing discovery and made me think a lot about how I see myself and how I wanted to be perceived.
                                During the searches, I also discovered Comme des Garçons and Junya Watanabe, more playful, also very interesting in terms of cut and deconstructing the body.
                                At the beginning of my studies, I had started to learn japanese. I dropped it for what I really wanted to do, but my first attraction to the japanese culture was and is still here, and now resonate in their work.

                                The first times after these discoveries were times of frustration. I loved the work of these designers more and more but didn't own anything from them, until ebay saved me. First a pair of black Yohji pants for 9£ (wore it again today and the day before yesterday). And then little by little, first on ebay and then on Yahoo (ah, the day I discovered I could order on Yahoo Japan, amazing...), my closet started to have some nice items by these designers, plus a few Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten.
                                I'm both ashamed and proud to admit that I bought only two of my Yohji garnments at retail price, and only one from Comme des Garçons, everything else is second hand, sales or Yoox. It's a thrill to bid and win an item, and know that you had 4 or 5 items for the price of one in retails. But buying in shop, receiving advice, trying many items in a row, and getting out with the beloved garnment wrapped like a gift is also a great thrill I'd like to get more often, not to mention that it supports the designer

                                Recently, I tried to add some hints of colors in my wardrobe (red, blue, beige, grey), as all black is gorgeous, but somedays you just want something else. I try to be confortable in what I wear, to wear things that resonates within me. I like the volume of a Yohji pant or the weirdness of a Comme des Garçons top, it's fun. I still try not to look like a clown though, my attraction towards dress up could take me to dangerous roads I don't mind looking weird or different, or stand out as long as I love what I wear, but I don't want to look too out of place or inappropriate either depending on the context.

                                I'd also like to start to get some pieces by Rick and a few more Demeulemeester, to have a few different options, closer to the body, some would say more "feminine" (even though I find lots of Yohji and Junya pieces deeply but discreetly sexy), I've already spotted a few pieces that would be "me", but evolving slightly.

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