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OP-ED: HOW GRAILED IS KILLING THE MENSWEAR AVANT-GARDE
by Eugene Rabkin
"Buying and selling designer clothing by collectors and fashion enthusiasts on the Internet is a longstanding practice. Fashion forums like Supefuture, Styleforum, and StyleZeitgeist, where these enthusiasts tend to congregate are invaluable assets for hunting down that long-coveted piece, called “the holy grail” in the forum parlance.
The forums, however, are, first and foremost, places for discussing fashion. They can be intimidating to the uninitiated because of the complex dynamics and the learning curve entering such places entails (this is why, despite their immense influence, you don’t see much about forums written in the fashion press). You either need to be knowledgeable about fashion or willing to take some heat during the learning process. But they also reward you with a wealth of information that enriches your understanding of fashion.
One of the things you learn on the forums is provenance of the items in which you initially might have taken only cursory interest, their construction methods, dyeing techniques, and the nature of materials. Most importantly, you learn about the designers’ ethos, philosophy, and his or her cultural influences. That is what gives clothing meaning and provides an emotional connection between the maker and the wearer. In the world full of stuff, forums give enthusiasts a reason to buy without feeling like a mere consumer. Remember, every decision to buy something is also a decision not to buy something else.
Enter Grailed, a website for buying and selling clothes, largely menswear, that at its core works like eBay. It is founded by people who learned the ropes from watching the classifieds sections of the aforementioned forums. Grailed is easy, because it necessitates none of the effort that learning the dynamics of a fashion forum does. For example, on StyleZeitgeist, we require members to have a one hundred post minimum before they are allowed to buy and sell in the classifieds. This is done in order to separate the true fashion enthusiasts from those who merely want to wear “cool shit” and from those who make a living by flipping fashion. None of this happens on Grailed, which is designed purely for buying and selling. A harmless idea on the surface, but by dispensing with discussion Grailed turns all fashion into mere commodity.
Fashion does not simply sell garments but also intrinsic attributes that make them desirable enough to demand a high price tag, whether it’s Japanese selvage denim or a Boris Bidjan Saberi leather jacket. Grailed devalues this by turning itself into a supermarket. That is a serious problem for the menswear avant-grade, which is predicated on creating a connection between the maker and the wearer. Without this connection, a garment is just a garment. And if this is bad for the avant-garde, it will sooner or later be bad for the rest of fashion. Because I know for a fact that members from mainstream fashion design teams, from the mighty Chanel down to the high street All Saints and via the contemporary brands like Helmut Lang and Rag & Bone feed off the ideas of the avant-garde designers in order to simplify them and dish them out to the public."
Full article on StyleZeitgeist Magazine
by Eugene Rabkin
"Buying and selling designer clothing by collectors and fashion enthusiasts on the Internet is a longstanding practice. Fashion forums like Supefuture, Styleforum, and StyleZeitgeist, where these enthusiasts tend to congregate are invaluable assets for hunting down that long-coveted piece, called “the holy grail” in the forum parlance.
The forums, however, are, first and foremost, places for discussing fashion. They can be intimidating to the uninitiated because of the complex dynamics and the learning curve entering such places entails (this is why, despite their immense influence, you don’t see much about forums written in the fashion press). You either need to be knowledgeable about fashion or willing to take some heat during the learning process. But they also reward you with a wealth of information that enriches your understanding of fashion.
One of the things you learn on the forums is provenance of the items in which you initially might have taken only cursory interest, their construction methods, dyeing techniques, and the nature of materials. Most importantly, you learn about the designers’ ethos, philosophy, and his or her cultural influences. That is what gives clothing meaning and provides an emotional connection between the maker and the wearer. In the world full of stuff, forums give enthusiasts a reason to buy without feeling like a mere consumer. Remember, every decision to buy something is also a decision not to buy something else.
Enter Grailed, a website for buying and selling clothes, largely menswear, that at its core works like eBay. It is founded by people who learned the ropes from watching the classifieds sections of the aforementioned forums. Grailed is easy, because it necessitates none of the effort that learning the dynamics of a fashion forum does. For example, on StyleZeitgeist, we require members to have a one hundred post minimum before they are allowed to buy and sell in the classifieds. This is done in order to separate the true fashion enthusiasts from those who merely want to wear “cool shit” and from those who make a living by flipping fashion. None of this happens on Grailed, which is designed purely for buying and selling. A harmless idea on the surface, but by dispensing with discussion Grailed turns all fashion into mere commodity.
Fashion does not simply sell garments but also intrinsic attributes that make them desirable enough to demand a high price tag, whether it’s Japanese selvage denim or a Boris Bidjan Saberi leather jacket. Grailed devalues this by turning itself into a supermarket. That is a serious problem for the menswear avant-grade, which is predicated on creating a connection between the maker and the wearer. Without this connection, a garment is just a garment. And if this is bad for the avant-garde, it will sooner or later be bad for the rest of fashion. Because I know for a fact that members from mainstream fashion design teams, from the mighty Chanel down to the high street All Saints and via the contemporary brands like Helmut Lang and Rag & Bone feed off the ideas of the avant-garde designers in order to simplify them and dish them out to the public."
Full article on StyleZeitgeist Magazine
I'd imagine you'd get a nice letter at least.
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