Your Style Philosophy

[laika]

Re: Your Style Philosophy



I suppose it can be meaningful in lots of different ways, depending on
the register in which one is thinking. I was just taking a guess that
the assumption was there in what becoming-intense posted.



To be a bit less airy about it....if we are talking here about style,
we are talking about how someone wears their clothes, and not just
about how they select them--as discrete objects-- to protect, cover
and/or decorate the body. When we experience clothes--whether by
wearing them or perceiving them being worn--we experience a total
sensation or expression. Perhaps before they are worn, clothes appear
merely as hollow shells waiting to be filled, but the moment we put
them on they become something different altogether. They change shape,
whether because of fit or with movement, or with duration of wear; and
they suddenly possess the potential (or release it, depending on how
you see things) to make new hollows and folds and creases, etc. The
body meanwhile, doesn't "interact" with clothes so much as it gives
them a particular form and expression; and is given a particular form
and expression by the clothes. If you are wearing a tight and scratchy
sweater, you're not interacting with tightness and scratchiness, so
much as you are manifesting constraint and itchiness in in your
gestures, movements, and even mood. Conversely, when you feel
comfortable (and presumably the most "stylish), it's because you're
wearing clothes that have conditioned and been conditioned by, your
body; and that extend and expand your person rather than merely
covering you up. I say "conditioned and conditioned by" but I don't
think they are separate or distinct processes....just what goes on
whenever we are dressed.

[Uncontrol]

Re: Your Style Philosophy

I don't really want to post in this thread until I've had the opportunity to post some fits so I can illustrate what I mean, but I just wanted to say that this is maybe the best thread here. Awesome idea.

[Fuuma]

Re: Your Style Philosophy

[quote user="laika"]


I suppose it can be meaningful in lots of different ways, depending on the register in which one is thinking. I was just taking a guess that the assumption was there in what becoming-intense posted.

To be a bit less airy about it....if we are talking here about style, we are talking about how someone wears their clothes, and not just about how they select them--as discrete objects-- to protect, cover and/or decorate the body. When we experience clothes--whether by wearing them or perceiving them being worn--we experience a total sensation or expression. Perhaps before they are worn, clothes appear merely as hollow shells waiting to be filled, but the moment we put them on they become something different altogether. They change shape, whether because of fit or with movement, or with duration of wear; and they suddenly possess the potential (or release it, depending on how you see things) to make new hollows and folds and creases, etc. The body meanwhile, doesn't "interact" with clothes so much as it gives them a particular form and expression; and is given a particular form and expression by the clothes. If you are wearing a tight and scratchy sweater, you're not interacting with tightness and scratchiness, so much as you are manifesting constraint and itchiness in in your gestures, movements, and even mood. Conversely, when you feel comfortable (and presumably the most "stylish), it's because you're wearing clothes that have conditioned and been conditioned by, your body; and that extend and expand your person rather than merely covering you up. I say "conditioned and conditioned by" but I don't think they are separate or distinct processes....just what goes on whenever we are dressed.

[/quote]

Basically you're saying there's often no practical point in distinguishing the canvas from the painting on it. Or that, like in a sculpture, everything is molded into one "shape" that delimitate the contours of an individual that is experienced as a whole.

[laika]

Re: Your Style Philosophy

[quote user="Fuuma"]

Basically you're saying there's often no practical point in distinguishing the canvas from the painting on it. Or that, like in a sculpture, everything is molded into one "shape" that delimitate the contours of an individual that is experienced as a whole.

[/quote]

Basically you're saying I should be more succinct. [86]

That's kind of it. Except, with a "work of art," like a painting or a sculpture, there is a sense of finality or completeness to the whole. Whereas with clothes and bodies, there is a very real and dynamic sense of continuous potential and unfolding. That's why I dislike attempts to reduce (or "elevate," as some would have it) fashion and clothing to "Art."

It's certainly meant as a practical point rather than a philosophical one though. I leave the poetic philosophizing to becoming-intense.

[matthewhk]

Re: Your Style Philosophy



Fuuma nailed it. Clothing works best on the wearer when, as Hedi Slimane once put it (paraphrased since i don't remember exact quote), "nobody notices the clothing on you because it's already you"

similar to what i once read about how it's not really a compliment on one's style if someone goes "oh, nice jacket" because it implies that the jacket itself looks good, and stands out in a way that is usually not expected of your personal style. I've always preferred it when people told me "you look great" instead of complimenting a particular piece i'm wearing.

[Faust]

Re: Your Style Philosophy



[quote user="Uncontrol"]I don't really want to post in this thread until I've had the opportunity to post some fits so I can illustrate what I mean, but I just wanted to say that this is maybe the best thread here. Awesome idea.
[/quote]

<fail>Unable to process any thoughts after seeing the avatar</fail>

[Faust]

Re: Your Style Philosophy

[quote user="matthewhk"]

Fuuma nailed it. Clothing works best on the wearer when, as Hedi Slimane once put it (paraphrased since i don't remember exact quote), "nobody notices the clothing on you because it's already you"

similar to what i once read about how it's not really a compliment on one's style if someone goes "oh, nice jacket" because it implies that the jacket itself looks good, and stands out in a way that is usually not expected of your personal style. I've always preferred it when people told me "you look great" instead of complimenting a particular piece i'm wearing.

[/quote]

Agree with you here. The moment I notice the clothes, I immediately shift my attention to the wearer. That is in cases where I feel like I can relate to the person. I saw a woman in a leather Rick Owens coat yesterday, on Wall St. no less - I immediately wanted to find out more about her. Of course, most of the times it doesn't matter - do you really give a shit if Paris Hilton shows up in a Ann Demeulemeester coat? I don't. Same goes for everyone else who does not make their own sartorial judgments.

[philip nod]

Re: Your Style Philosophy

[quote user="Faust"]

[quote user="Uncontrol"]I don't really want to post in this thread until I've had the opportunity to post some fits so I can illustrate what I mean, but I just wanted to say that this is maybe the best thread here. Awesome idea.
[/quote]

<fail>Unable to process any thoughts after seeing the avatar</fail>

[/quote]

sorry, what did you say?

[Uncontrol]

Re: Your Style Philosophy



[86] Here's the original of that picture if you're interested:

http://i26.tinypic.com/a1rcki.jpg

[philip nod]

Re: Your Style Philosophy

sorry, what did you say?

[BECOMING-INTENSE]

Re: Your Style Philosophy



[quote user="laika"][quote user="Fuuma"]


Basically you're saying there's often no practical point in distinguishing the canvas from the painting on it. Or that, like in a sculpture, everything is molded into one "shape" that delimitate the contours of an individual that is experienced as a whole.

[/quote]

Basically you're saying I should be more succinct. [86]

That's kind of it. Except, with a "work of art," like a painting or a sculpture, there is a sense of finality or completeness to the whole. Whereas with clothes and bodies, there is a very real and dynamic sense of continuous potential and unfolding. That's why I dislike attempts to reduce (or "elevate," as some would have it) fashion and clothing to "Art."

It's certainly meant as a practical point rather than a philosophical one though. I leave the poetic philosophizing to becoming-intense.
[/quote]

"philosophy, nothing but philosophy" Of a bastard line.

[79] ...

Some might suggest that the succinct has a reductive quality.
For the sake of sounding repetitive, you should take comfort,
in the words of Judith Butler ...

It?s not that I?m in favor of difficulty for difficulty?s sake; it?s that I think there is a lot in ordinary language and in received grammar that constrains our thinking ? indeed, about what a person is, what a subject is, what sexuality is, what politics can be ? and that I?m not sure we?re going to be able to struggle effectively against those constrains or work within them in a productive way unless we see the ways in which grammar is both producing and constraining our sense of what the world is.

Your assumption is not fare fetched, your words are of magnitude, miss Laika [51] ...

I would find it problematic if we reduced clothing as merely decorative and functional
objects in relation to the body, and as you already have implied, we are talking about "style" here, expressiveness, sensations, intensities, matter, etc. If the assumption establishes or creates a unity, it does so first of all in extension, each part tending to be prolonged and even to be prolonged into the next, which exceeds the one before. The unity doesn't suffice to contain the mass but it spills over its frame. It's a development of a continuity, in breadth or in extension: an interlocking of frames of which each is exceeded by a matter that moves through.

One thing I do find problematic, is the distinction you create between art and design,
"a sense of finality or completeness to the whole", because, as I've elaborated on somewhere else, there is a difference in kind between the materials that support a work of art, such as paint, canvas, film, stone, sound-waves, textiles etc. and the work itself. Art only attempts to fashion a material object, having a finite duration, so as to create being of sensation, which is preserved in itself for an eternity that coexists with the short duration of material. This bloc of sensations, standing up alone or positing itself, contains the working, sensation, and forces of the work. Even with the suggested finite materials that supports paintings, sculptures, etc., they can indeed become "a very real and dynamic sense of continuous potential and unfolding".

[Faust]

Re: Your Style Philosophy

Oh, please not her, please...

[BECOMING-INTENSE]

Re: Your Style Philosophy



[quote user="Faust"]Oh, please not her, please...
[/quote]

Judith Butler or Laika? [^o)] ...

[74]

[Faust]

Re: Your Style Philosophy

[quote user="BECOMING-INTENSE"]

[quote user="Faust"]Oh, please not her, please...
[/quote]

Judith Butler or Laika? [^o)] ...

[74]

[/quote]

[86] Judith, of course.

[BECOMING-INTENSE]

Re: Your Style Philosophy



^I know! [83] ...

You have to blame my sister for Judith, she forced me to read Judith Butler while she was studying philosophy, and German language, literature and culture, in Berlin! [79]

I do find find some of Judith writing on gender interesting, but of these, what we might call "feminist" theorists, I prefer Irigaray [51] ...