How did your style evolve?

[Mikevigar]

/\ you are reaching a point of no return.

I fear as much, at least with a slowly improving exchange rate though...

[Shucks]

/\ you are reaching an event horizon.

fixed

[thehouseofdis]

I'll try to make this short.

I've always been a visual person and have been interested in clothes since I can remember and especially since second grade when my mom let me pick out my own back-to-school clothes.

In grade school I was really into brands like Generra, Polo, and other preppy stuff but I also really liked "rocker" clothing (think Mötley Crüe when they still wore leather and studs). Obviously those things were hard to find for someone less than 4 feet tall.

In middle school I still wore mostly Generra and preppy stuff but also was listening to a lot of punk music so I started wearing army coats and vintage suit vests as well as band t-shirts. Later, I wanted something more "European" and higher quality. I found out about Benetton, so a new obsession began.

By high school I was wearing mostly Benetton stuff and had not owned jeans for a couple of years. I sort of continued on this path until I started listening to "alternative" bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Jane's Addiction, Sonic Youth, The Pixies, etc. and started looking for more "alternative" and black clothes. I got a well worn leather motorcycle jacket from my sister and started wearing Doc Martins and NaNa boots and shoes. I still was wearing a lot of Benetton things as well and would dress very straight one day and the next I'd wear something much more gothic.

My junior year of high school I spent in Graz, Austria and mostly took my Benetton things with me "to fit in" but I still didn't fit in at all. I found a little shop that sold small French designer stuff that was much more avant garde than what I'd seen in the States and I made a friend who was into a lot of the same bands as I was. During my year abroad I was able to travel a bit and see more of Europe including Paris, Rome, Venice, Munich, Salzburg, Budapest and Florence. I went Vienna for the first time and and found a shop called SKAF where I bought a fantastic "gothy" pair of handmade shoes by Patrick Cox and some sort of designer punk clothes. He introduced me to "high fashion" with designers like Jean Paul Gaultier, Yohji Yamamoto, and Comme des Garçons (this was '89). I couldn't afford any of these designers but I really liked what they were doing and knew I had to move in that direction.

I went back to my home town (outside of Portland) and started looking at and shopping sales at the higher end boutiques. So, I found out about Paul Smith, Hugo Boss, Katharine Hamnett, Byblos, and Betsy Johnson etc. I also started shopping more at the local alternative and punk shops. So my fashion sense was still split in two, one day jacket and tie, the next day velvet leggings and combat boots. I was also really into Jane's Addiction by then so anything was game. I took a trip to LA and bought my first Yamamoto item (a hat I still have) and some other designer pieces from Maxfields. My style continued into my first couple years of college with the addition of some grunge influence of mohair cardigans, jeans (finally), and the occasional designer flannel shirt.

In '93 I moved to Seattle where they had a Barneys and a great little boutique that carried all the big Japanese designers (Miyake, Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons, Matsuda). I was a student with a scholarship but no student loans, so for the first year I just looked. In my second year there I started looking more and talking with the staff and learning more about the designers, fabrics, etc. I was an interior design student so the fabrics and treatments were what really interested me. I also started finding out about the pre-sales. By this time I had a part time job so I was able to by things on sale and I also "discovered" Belgian designers! At the time Barneys in Seattle carried Dries van Noten, Maison Martin Margiela (for women) and Ann Demeulemeester (for women). I really loved Dries van Noten's fabrics and designs because it fit in with my preppy/goth style. That was pretty much my true Event Horizon. I really loved what Ann was doing with her women's line and did buy some things from her like her shoes (back when they wear $400 full price and came in a white box) and the original holy tanktop. I also was buying vintage clothing (suits, hats and outwear, along with a closet full of Fluevog shoes. The little shop across the street closed and I got some Miyake ties and shirt, but then Barneys started carrying more Japanese designers, so I was able to get some Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons pieces.

By 1996 I was fully immersed in "high fashion" and I had credit card bills to prove it! It was then that I found out about Demeulemeester's new mens line which was a prayer come true but also a curse. With the remaining balance on my 4 credit cards I called Charivari in NYC and ordered three pieces from the debut collection. Then I called the credit consolidation company and went into repair mode.

I graduated and got a job (well a few jobs) and for the next four years I paid off my debt but continued to shop the sales and continued to focus on Belgian and Japanese designers.

In 2001 I moved to Portland and was really disappointed that the stores had not really evolved. Luckily by then I had been to NYC and SF a few times and discovered stores like IF, Wilkes Bashford and Neiman Marcus where I really started to focus on Belgian designers like Demeulemeester, van Noten, Schönberger, Delcour, Margiela and Branquinho. Also the internet had been born and I could find people, shop numbers, photos and websites that I hadn't known about.

In 2005 I started working for a company in Portland and got asked by Adidas if I'd be interested in designing the Y-3 shop which blew me away. I got to design the shop and make 3 trips to Tokyo during the process! It was there that I really saw what I had been missing. Not only that, but everything in the shops fit me! I was overwhelmed. I loved looking at the clothing as well as the stores and all the people walking around that were actually fashionable (even of they weren't wearing designer clothes).

Later in 2006, I did a soundtrack that was part of group art show in Belgium and was invited to Antwerp. By this time I was really only buying Belgian designers (mostly Margiela and Demeulemeester) but I visited all the shops I could find and saw the Yamamoto exhibit at MOMU. I also happened to get invited to a very small party that Dries was at but I was too ashamed to talk to him because I wasn't wearing any of his clothes.

Since then I have made a few more trips to Japan, NYC, SF, and LA as well as living and working in Antwerp for three months (for Theo Eyewear).

Since 2008 I've continued to focus on Demeulemeester's clothing because it speaks to me the most and I relate to it the best. There are classic elements, there are dark elements, I love her textiles her influences (music, art, literature) and since I don't have unlimited funds, it helps to narrow the scope of what I should or want to buy.

Now it's nearly 2011 and I still have some older pieces floating around but I pretty much have only been wearing the things from my Demeulemeester collection including the pieces I bought before there was a men's collection!

OK. It's not short at all but it is as short as I can make it.

[Mail-Moth]

From the cradle to my 16th birthday : nothing. I wasn't even the least interested in the question. I spent some years living in a very rural area and was outside most of my free time, wearing rubber boots and clothes plastered with mud. I assume that a hunter's loden jacket was something like the pinacle of elegance for me at that time (now it would have to be a designer's hunter jacket).
Even after we moved to the suburbs of Paris, I didn't even try to follow one of the trends from the late 80's. My mother was chosing for me, she wasn't very well-learnt about the incidence of dressing codes in teenage social life, and she honestly could have dressed me in acid green and rose bonbon, for what I cared. I was roleplaying with some other nerds and listening to Judas Priest, but nobody could have guessed. I was translucent, and I sort of liked that. I still do.

Then I read that french comic book from Florence Magnien, L'Autre monde. The story was nothing exceptional, and the graphisms were clumsy, but I liked the colours in it - pastel colours -, the dusky, deserted atmosphere (for it was about a small closed world with very few people) and the way the characters were dressing, in a mix, as far as I remember, of late XIXth century and odd XVIII.

I tried to look like that for about five years after that, (already) wearing huge wool coats and grandpa's caps - but hopelessly unelegant ones. I was looking much older than I do now, I guess. And I was already growing a beard.

I tried other things in my 20's : cheap suits and lame ties with fake english shoes, then camper shoes and diesel denim with technic outerwear because I was listening to post-rock and electronica and was trying so hard to live with my time or what I understood of it ; I wore Trippen boots, had six pairs of them... Curiously there were people around me to like the way I was dressing. But most of them were coming from the same suburb where i spent my teenage years and they were dressing far, far worse.

Then I discovered Anatomica, Paris - because the store was a retailer for Trippen. And they were selling the exact things I had been looking for for years : reproductions of work and military clothing from 1840 to 1920. That was seven years ago, and I still wear some of the stuff that I found there.

Three years ago I wanted to try made to measure, hoping that this way I would get the ultimate country clothes, since I was already living in Provins (a closed, small town with not so many people). It was an utter fail, and I ended up going to work dressed like a corporate in brown shoes polished like des miroirs de bordel ("mirrors in a whorehouse"), wearing Charvet ties and bespoke shirts. My students were calling me the Hitman ; to them I was at least as elegant as a soccer player on a talkshow, and that was a great compliment if there ever was.
I was in a sartorial nirvana and quite certain that I would never do better ; in a sense I was right to be satisfied, because it was clearly a progress compared with everything I had tried in the previous decade. My interest for colour combinations takes its origin from that time. That was the best part of the thing.

Then Christian found me in some virtual limbos, and I saw the light. I slowly began to understand that fashion was not a bad thing, and became poorer and poorer while bearing on my face the happy smile of the Blessed ones.

[Johnny]

A slightly different approach to the story.

Age/ Brands
14 Addidas/Reebok/Pringle/Farah
15 Sonetti/Levis/Benneton/Chippie
16-17 John Smedley/CP Company/Stone Island/Comme des Garcons SHIRT/Armand Basi
18-19 Sisley/Emporio Armani/Paul Smith/Dries Van Noten/Byblos/Nicole Fahri/Katherine Hamnet
20-22 Jigsaw/Uth/Comme des Garcons Homme Plus/Yohji/SO
23-24 Agnes B/Jigsaw/Reiss/Prada
25-26 George at Asda/Gap
27-30 Comme des Garcons Homme Plus/Margiela/Dries/Junya/Stephan Schneider
30-31 Comme des Garcons Homme Plus/Junya/45rpm
32-34 Comme des Garcons Homme Plus/Carpe Diem/Paul Harnden/Junya
35 CCP/Thom Browne
36 Lanvin
37 Burberry Prorsum/Comme des Garcons Homme Plus/ Comme des Garcons Homme/Junya/Visvim
38 Junya

I found it interesting doing this. It’s obviously not exhaustive but those are the main brands that I remembered. Some conclusions:

1 Different factors have shaped what I’ve tended to wear – peer group (initially), trends, what products were available in the local market, what the fashion press were pushing at a particular time, the Fashion Spot (Faust and Runner in particular), and, certainly, available disposable income.

2 There’s no real common thread, or any "purity", through any of this – just perhaps a tendency to come back to certain brands or looks, after flirting with alternatives. For me, fashion and clothing has always involved aberrations, mistakes, embarrassments, but I don't see it as a problem. You get bored with what you have and try to "move on" to some degree all fo the time. I think most people do this, even within stricter confines.

3 Pretty conservative on the whole, and becoming more so.

[eat me]

Mail-Moth, wonderful story that gives an insight into why you dress the way you dress. And even if it (the story) gives an impression that it wasn't until Christian that you saw the light, I can see what influenced you to have such a unique style, and after so much trial and error you really nailed it down and there is no one I know that dresses quite like you. And I'm sure it's exactly your background and the places you grew up in that played the biggest role.

[ES3K]

(...)

16-17 John Smedley/CP Company/Stone Island/Comme des Garcons SHIRT/Armand Basi
18-19 Sisley/Emporio Armani/Paul Smith/Dries Van Noten/Byblos/Nicole Fahri/Katherine Hamnet
20-22 Jigsaw/Uth/Comme des Garcons Homme Plus/Yohji/SO

(...)

So funny, replace CP Company with Iceberg (and I don't know Jigsaw and Uth), add Momentodue and Gigli, but apart from that /\ is an exact match with me at the exact same age.

Reading Arena and wearing CDGHP... felt so great!

[Johnny]

Shit I forgot about Romeo Gigli - or at least G Gigli, his short lived diffusion line. Loved that stuff.
Loved arena too. All of my back issues now long destroyed, which I absolutely regret.

[Faust]

Some lovely and genuine stories on this page - thank you for posting. It's really gratifying to hear that there are people for whom clothing has a deeper connection than the usual fashionista superficiality.

[thehouseofdis]

While writing my post, I realized that there is a direct correlation between the main music I was/am listening to and the clothing I was/am interested in.

I started off with pretty much pop or radio music and worked my way through popular but less well known bands and have ended up primarily listening to very obscure or extreme music that has a small but loyal following.

[seenmy]

14-16// duffer,evisu,nike,clarks,
17-18// vintage levis,stussy,bathing ape,supreme,quite a bit of thrift and military surplus, nike
19-22// final home,supreme,acronym,visvim,stussy,various jp denim,vexed,tenderloin
23-24// visvim,supreme,tenderloin,wtaps,nike,acronym,junya ,comme shirt,cp company,stone island,undercover
25-26 ccp,visvim,acronym,throup,junya,comme homme,veilance,cabourn,real mccoys,undercover

its interesting reading the older members lists as the time period is greater allowing for more transistion,

I dont really know what to make of my own on paper,I just love products have done and always will do, streetwear took me as a youth as it offered something new and exciting attention to details on early jp stuff was super exciting as a teen discovering these brands and tracking them down,i think same priciples in my head apply now to buying ccp to me it offer the pinnicle product and thats my under lying excitement, the net was a big factor for me and i guess its a generation thing as Im part of one of the first to grow up online, it was/is great being able to connect with other product nerds in what ever field you are in to at a time, not solely relying on your local surroundings to engage in your interest, the funny little network buying a brand like xxx brings you in to is similar to the little world we used to have when we were buying limited nikes and streetwear.

[Fuuma]

14-16// duffer,evisu,nike,clarks,
17-18// vintage levis,stussy,bathing ape,supreme,quite a bit of thrift and military surplus, nike
19-22// final home,supreme,acronym,visvim,stussy,various jp denim,vexed,tenderloin
23-24// visvim,supreme,tenderloin,wtaps,nike,acronym,junya ,comme shirt,cp company,stone island,undercover
25-26 ccp,visvim,acronym,throup,junya,comme homme,veilance,cabourn,real mccoys,undercover

its interesting reading the older members lists as the time period is greater allowing for more transistion,

I dont really know what to make of my own on paper,I just love products have done and always will do, streetwear took me as a youth as it offered something new and exciting attention to details on early jp stuff was super exciting as a teen discovering these brands and tracking them down,i think same priciples in my head apply now to buying ccp to me it offer the pinnicle product and thats my under lying excitement, the net was a big factor for me and i guess its a generation thing as Im part of one of the first to grow up online, it was/is great being able to connect with other product nerds in what ever field you are in to at a time, not solely relying on your local surroundings to engage in your interest, the funny little network buying a brand like xxx brings you in to is similar to the little world we used to have when we were buying limited nikes and streetwear.

What's your opinion on CCP beyond "It is wicked gear a bunch of nerds I hang out with online rep?". Cause I know I can't stop anyone from buying but I know a couple of CCP customers that have, shall we say, a deeper approach to interpreting his work. To be honest I would be sorta disappointed if that is all you got out of a brand that plays with the art canon, borrows from aktionist imagery and promotes a meta-discussion on fashion.

[Enaml]

While writing my post, I realized that there is a direct correlation between the main music I was/am listening to and the clothing I was/am interested in.

I started off with pretty much pop or radio music and worked my way through popular but less well known bands and have ended up primarily listening to very obscure or extreme music that has a small but loyal following.

Interesting thing to bring up in terms of 'style evolution.' Although the two are not tied together, there does seem to be a correlation.

[seenmy]

Fumma

I take things as they come to me,I dont really care for interpretations I like fact, as I said I love objects and things I believe push the realms of what an object can be, and for me ccp delivers that the garments excite me in constuction and finish and I like the way I look and feel in them, any other opinion on them would be based on hearsay as I dont have any first person contact with the designer only his objects they arent for hanging in galleries they are for wearing.

Il leave the theorys to those of us with the writing skills to enjoy them,the only time il take a deeper opinion on the designer will be if I ever sit down with him, at which time my love for the object could be either improved or diminished based on the person I meet and learn about.

[Johnny]

I think the exchange between fuuma and seenmy raises an interesting point. With reference to faust’s post about people having a deeper connection to clothing that fashionista superficiality, I believe it’s entirely possible to have this without getting caught up in any kind of subtext. With the greatest of respect, fuuma’s post is in some respects rather pompous. Clothing has meant a great deal to me over the last 20 years or more, but I don’t think I’ve ever been concerned about playing with the art canon, to use an example. I bought ccp because I liked the product. I was also to some extent seduced by the imagery involved, as I have been with comme des garcons and other brands over the years, but it was mainly about the product – how the thing was made (in the sense of how it ended up), all those details like exposed interlining, the funny shoulders, the hand finishing, the narrow arms. When I tried the stuff on it felt like no other clothing I’d tried before. I stopped buying it when I realised that it didn’t look good on me. As many have commented, ccp looks great on seenmy. Is there a better reason to stop buying, or to continue to buy, clothes, than that? If you are seduced by references but look like a dick, you still look like a dick. When it comes to clothing, I consider that that, ultimately, the most important thing.