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crossposted from my website [1]
so, how do i begin. last time [2] i talked about my middle school self in relation to fashion (weird sentence, let's move on). now, when i got to high school i no longer had to wear a uniform. i was also figuring stuff out about myself. and i had the completely unrealistic dream of moving out as soon as i turned 18. so i was drawn to both capsule wardrobes / minimalism and menswear fashion websites. it was kind of a dark dark age. but well, i still occasionally poke around these corners of the internet, in part out of curiosity, in part because i still haven't moved out (😔) and still have a lot of stuff that'll be a hassle to deal with. and not much has changed over there. insanely stagnant region of the www.
i'm not sure what i want this to be, as i begin writing it. a rant / discussion on the "classic menswear" fashion scene, or unsolicited fashion advice? both? who knows
ok if you don't really know what i'm talking about, well, i kinda envy you. i'm talking the r/malefashionadvice "basic bastard", i'm talking "men of success wear uniforms", i'm talking fucking OCBDs, i'm talking black and white and navy and khaki. i'm talking listicles of what's the best plain white tshirt to buy, ad nauseum. i'm talking that one specific ftm fashion guide.
my initial plan was just to write something short specifically about the deeply entrenched association between classic menswear and whiteness, because i saw a post comparing "good, timeless" fashion to "bad, trendy" fashion and well. the bad examples felt very... particular. last straw i'd say was a photo of a black man in a really cool lime green blazer as an example of "people often dress flashy to compensate for an uninteresting personality" or whatever. and then on the recommended posts after that one was one titled "how to clean your social media image to get a job" or something. so yeah here we are.
the goal, or promise, of classic menswear is that you'll become like james bond: attractive to women, aspirational to men, never standing out too much, but a perfect example of fitting in, the archetypical gentleman. never will you look back at a photo and think, "damn i dressed so silly back then". nah, you'll just get a vague sense of dressing sharp. this is, obviously, a lie. all throughout history people have been saying "we dressed so silly back then, but now we know what's most sensible to wear". that's just what fashion is.
so yeah, this isn't just a thing with menswear either, there's all the french girl white pinterest mom stuff too or whatever, but i don't really go there. it's all just a cumbersome way to say "moderate dress". and i think moderation might be the enemy of style, and fashion as expression. of course, it is unimportant for the white man to assert himself like that. or one could say being moderate and nondescript is itself the expression of the white man. the average joe as it were.
well, that's where i end my commentary and start the advice i guess. as florence said, do i look moderate to you? — i wanna talk about fashion, style and dress from the standpoint of abundance. or something.
by "ditching moderation" i don't mean we should all dress maximalist, just that i think if you want to dress a certain way you should go all out. you can't really be sheepish about these things. i don't just mean like you need confidence to pull stuff off, but that if you have an outfit idea it's best to go all the way, and own it if it works or if it doesn't. does that make any sense? all the world's a stage, and your character deserves a fearless figurinist.
so, how do you get there? i think i'll start with some arbitrary principles, as one does.
there is no list of essentials
at least no universal one. we've all got different needs and priorities. i consider my red lamé blazer more useful and necessary than my black one. you can most definitely start coordinating what you've got to get a feel for what kinds of elements you like, what you don't, what you'd like to try out
first off, the things that make a garment, and that you should start noticing:
i'm pairing these two concepts together as a sort of opposites, although they're not quite. they're to be thought of together, imo. contrast is how similar or dissimilar elements are, while cohesion (i also considered calling it balance) is about how the garments and elements come together in the final outfit. you're playing a balancing act, so that the individual items contrast enough to be interesting and stand out, but still keep an overall sense of unity.
while matching / combining prints it's kind of its own can of worms, it's also essentially about contrast and cohesion. i recommend you looking that up, because i don't wanna get into it and a lot of people already have. same for color coordination. it all boils down to design in the end, of course. don't think too hard about it. it's alright.
comfort zone, character, creativity
i think instead of starting out by trying to figure out outfits from scratch, it might be easier to deconstruct / analyze your current comfort zone, in terms of contrast and cohesion. pay attention to the elements of your clothes and how they relate to one another. is there enough contrast? is there too much? how cohesive is it? of course, it's rather complicated to have to figure this stuff out on your own, but i'm not sure this can be taught either. i believe it's more a matter of training your eye to notice details. that's the first step, and you don't even have to do much!
then, there's character. as i've said, the line between getting dressed and playing dress-up is fuzzy. just like the classical menswear crowd might be emulating a sort of james bond, it's quite fun to try and come up with outfits for certain characters and archetypes. i don't mean it just in a direct inspiration way, like looking at a ficcional character from a movie and trying to dress like them, but in a more general thematic way as well. a punk elementary school teacher, a vampire in the 80s, a jurassic park representative, a jrpg tank, a wizard on a jungle expedition. i don't know. these might sound a bit like *shudders* micro-aesthetics that sprout from thin air online, but well, it is fun to make up a guy and dress like them, and it helps you consider clothes more closely, the associations you have with different aspects of the garments and the way they combine.
finally, by creativity i mean free-form exploration. trying stuff out, adjusting your comfort zone, dressing as yourself but maybe different. not that dressing as a "character" can't be dressing as yourself. consider your clothes and their possibilities; what would contrast with a certain garment, maybe even entirely oppose it? and what would reaffirm it? for example, a silk shirt would contrast with heavily ripped jeans, but be quite at home with neat dress pants. a cheap plastic spider hairclip is fun and casual with a tshirt, but quite goth with a lace shawl. someone who has a firm grasp of semiotics would probably have something insightful about semiotics to talk about here, i'm sure.
um. let's close off by talking about pinterest i suppose.
looking at fashion is great. i love it. it's really cool seeing what others are doing! it's great inspiration, let's you think differently etc etc we all know this. but sometimes you'll end up with an itch to buy something that you may or may not actually need. and need is a broad word here, strictly speaking you may not need anything else to be clothèd, but that doesn't mean having and wearing a certain piece you don't own wouldn't be nice. feeling nice is a need too. but yeah, ← that is a good way to justify consumerism. it's all complicated.
anyway. if you see an outfit you love but don't really think you have the stuff for, it's good to break it down not into specific garments, but roles played by them, and look for alternative ways to fill those roles. hell, that's a good idea regardless of whether or not you could 1:1 copy the outfit, because it means you come up with something new. for example, bell sleeves might be used to give downwards drapery, which could also be achieved with a shawl. a denim shirt might be there to evoke rugged americana, and a flannel could work instead. it's not a 100% guaranteed method, there's only so much you can substitute and improvise and make do, but hey, it's better than nothing, and a better use of inspiration than turning it into a glorified shopping list.
and on the subject of inspiration, it's also nice to look not only into outfits you'd like to wear, but also past fashions and stuff that catches your eye. but that's basically just me saying it's nice to have an interest in fashion and fashion history lol. which i am saying. because i'm a nerd. also it's different contexts and perspectives, different relationships to clothing. it's a nice rabbithole to get into. as is clothesmaking, construction, sewing etc! it's not just about finished garments being worn on bodies! become a nerd with me!
i most definitely don't mean this as the end all be all of fashion advice. it's extremely general and vague (on purpose), and i can only hope that it's at least helpful or interesting to someone. but at the very least, i hope it's a new perspective and understanding of fashion and dressing. you can take a horse to water etc, right? idk. have some fun! there's so much more than a set of classic reliable garments in four colorways... :)