> Now a global pandemic had hit. He couldn’t foresee that. No one did.
Some people did. Taiwan prepared after SARS. Of course nobody forsaw all possible consequences but it would be better to say that not everyone has the capacity to account for all possible tail risks.
"When the next pandemic occurs (and make no mistake, it will) and the federal government is unable to respond in a coordinated and effective fashion to protect the lives of US citizens and others, this decision by John Bolton and Donald Trump will be why."
-Stephen Schwartz, on Twitter, May 2018
People knew. Also, Americans don't really have the habit of factoring in major events outside of their control into their long term strategy. It will be ok. The danger is "over there". The oceans will protect us.
Alternatively, this was Trump's 9/11 -- the threat the President+Cabinet knew was coming and intentionally unprotected the nation from, in order to manufacture an excuse to retaliate against a tangentially connected enemy.
Why was information suppressed by congress concerning Bandar sending $130,000 to the two 9/11 hijackers? Why has the Bush family never been questioned about their close friendship with Bandar?
They knew that there was a continuous risk of a pandemic and prepared for one happening eventually. Just like we know there's a low risk of an entire server room going up in flames/water damage/lightning/getting hit by a truck driving into a building and that's why we have offsite backups even though we won't know when something is going to happen.
> They knew that there was a continuous risk of a pandemic
But I think so did every country.
Wasn't global pandemic at the top of almost every country's national security risk register? They knew it was likely, and they knew it was high-risk. I know for a fact it was at the top of the UK's public national security risk register.
You're perpetuating a silly myth that major western countries didn't know this was coming and didn't know it was a big risk.
They (or someone within the government at least) may have known, but they did not act on it. On the contrary, for example California defunded its emergency stockpile.
There basically wasn't a proper "modern day" pandemic before this. The previous one was the spanish flu in 1918 which was very quickly forgotten due to a much larger pointless massacre (world wars)
Air travel increase is a big factor why it got so bad so quickly, even in the past two decades basically everything has changed. We have hundreds millions of people basically teleporting between continents every day.
> We have hundreds millions of people basically teleporting between continents every day
That's hyperbole. In 2019 there were 4.5 billion passengers boarding a flight[1]. Divide by 365 days and you get on the order of 10 million per day, most of which will not be intercontinental.
I don't disagree about the amount of air travel nowadays facilitating pandemics, just wanted to get the numbers straight.
I appreciate the feedback, it feels better than getting only downvotes. I thought it was an important point because the number was off by at least an order of magnitude, maybe two. But I can see how my response might have been seen as pedantic.
There have been 3 flu pandemics since 1918: 1957, 1968, 2009. In addition, cholera and AIDS have had non-influenza pandemics in the same timeframe, and there's a clutch of infectious diseases with little spread that qualify as pandemics by the definition of sustained spread in two countries in different regions of the world (e.g., mumps). MERS might also qualify by the definition.
Yes you're right - misinterprering by responding to part of a thread is rude.
Which is what you're doing - because the context of the thread is more specifically that anyone foresaw it - 'He couldn’t foresee that. No one did.' and the person I'm replied to that saying that they thought just some like Taiwan foresaw it.
Both are demonstrably false claims - you can look at public national security risk registers to confirm to yourself that many other countries foresaw it.
I believe the 2009 swine flu is responsible for this times weak response. I remember last time a lot of fear was stoked up in the media and a huge amount of tamiflu bought by the government, and almost nothing happened in the end, apart from public scepticism and unhappiness about the squandering of funds. I think politics didnt want to repeat the mistake
Why are you wording this like you're suspicious? Disaster preparedness is not some big conspiracy. Just because America is doing a shit job at this doesn't mean other countries are out to get them.
I think plenty of people said that a global pandemic is just a matter of time. Countries had made preparations with varying degrees of success. E.g. Switzerland back in like 2014 did a nationwide preparedness test, identified numerous problems (e.g. insufficient stock of PPE) and created a pandemic strategy. We still ended up in 2020 with doctors having to go to home depot to buy protective glasses because the states, responsible for implementing parts of the strategy did absolutely nothing.
Few like to prepare for something that might happen, but nobody can tell you when. But as a private citizen or small to medium business, what you can do to prepare for an event of this scale and duration is also fairly limited. It has to happen at broader societal level.
Imagine being the Democratic party and the best candidates you have are:
- a warhawk psycho who has seizures and faints often. "Women were always primary victims of war because their husbands and sons died" my ass.
- a guy whose most remarkable achievement is falling asleep on the TV when reading sentences from paper
- an angry woman with the visage of a school teacher
- a billionaire mogul who tried to pay his way into becoming president
- an ultra-borderline communist leftist
to the dead comment, i agree! except i don't really see bernie being an ultra-borderline commie. but i guess that's how you would view someone when the entire "right" calls joe biden a socialist. man if only those labels were actually true of those people.
the entire us system is broken because there are basically only two parties, and the democrats have decided to keep pushing further right because they assume actual leftists will have to vote for them. so i don't really give a shit that you bag on them. they suck.
trump probably would have had the election in the bag if he didn't muck up the pandemic so badly. and that's not my opinion. the polls show it happening. now will trump get a big enough bounce coming back the other way come november? i don't see it, and neither does trump and the gop considering the ways they're trying to basically suppress the general vote. the democrats suck, but the gop are straight up using fascist tactics. he already tried to "suspend" the election so can't wait to see what happens when he loses and he decides that, no, he actually didn't lose. (again assuming polling is right, i guess we'll find out in 2.5 months)
People have also been warning about the next market crash for many years. Finally, one happened because of pandemic, and it's over in a blink of an eye.
I'm still expecting an even bigger crash, but I've learned my lesson against timing the future.
"We don't know when the next pandemic will come, but it will come, and we should be prepared for it" is a perfectly reasonable statement. Any pandemic is likely going to require PPE, PCR testing reagents, BSL labs, etc.
Same thing for recessions; predicting the specific timing of one is difficult. Advocating preparations for one - economic, fiscal, social policies etc. to mitigate, for example - is not a bad idea even if we don't know the timing.
Prepare? Absolutely. I can't speak to the state of California's earthquake preparedness, but there should absolutely be supplies and equipment stationed throughout the state in preparation for it. It is my understanding that San Francisco, for example, has water cisterns throughout the city for fighting fires in such a scenario.
It is dumb not to prepare for disasters we know will happen.
California absolutely can and should prepare for the eventuality of a large earthquake in the area (and they are, as another replier pointed out). Permanently evacuating the whole area maybe not.
Why is disaster preparedness at all controversial?
It wasn't at all clear in advance that all of those things were going to be needed. Mass PCR testing is not part of the standard pandemic response. Neither is the amount and kind of PPE used in this pandemic. I know the UK, for example, had trouble with there being no full-body disposable suits in the pandemic stockpile because they're not usually used for one. Whilst all half-competent countries have systems in place to PCR test, trace, and isolate, they're aimed at high-death-rate diseases like SARS which can't spread undetected because the infected rapidly start showing up at hospitals and which need to be immediately contained once they do. None of this is part of the normal response to a respiratory infection with infectivity and death rate in the same ballpark as a flu pandemic.
That's the whole point. The thought process "what would we need to combat a 1918 style pandemic if it happened today" does not in fact lead to stocking up on the things you're suggesting every country should have because they're supposedly required for any pandemic, since in reality those things weren't part of the plan for a 1918 style pandemic. If the political landscape was different it's entirely possible that (for example) mass PCR testing wouldn't be part of the plan for this pandemic. Most Western countries have the ability to use it for surveillance and estimation of disease spread during a pandemic, but trying to test everyone and use that to stop the spread is not a normal part of the plan for a disease like this.
If you play Russian Roulette, you'll eventually kill yourself. You might not be able to predict exactly which trigger pull will do it, but one of them will.
Don't try to time the market. Do try to prepare for a crisis.
I don't think they suggested people were able to predict the timing, just that some countries chose to have preparedness strategies and some didn't.
In all fairness, the US did actually think to create a preparedness strategy, it was just ignored when the time came.
In your market comparison, it would be like having a safety net of cash stashed in case of a market crash, and when the market crashes you spend it all immediately on a new car.
I agree that the pandemic was not a "black swan" - there were enough warnings that it's occurrence was more a "when" than an "if" question.
I wonder though if the events in the second half of march could be considered a black swan. Starting from mid-march, we saw first Europe, then a significant part of the world shut down most travel, large parts of its economy and almost all of its public life.
I remember the shift in the overton window to be particularly salient (from my pov in Germany):
Before March 15, the pandemic was one news story among many, even if a particularly worrying one. There were spirited public debates about whether travelers should go through temperature checks at airports and whether or not a city should take the unprecedenced step to chancel one particular trade fair. Some experts were proposing to close schools for a week or two and to conduct soccer games without audience - but those ideas seemed mostly academic and without any hope of becoming real policy.
Fast forward one week later and all trade fairs are canceled, as are any other kind of mass event; schools are closed indefinitely, borders are closed, global air travel comes to a full stop and the discussion of the day is whether or not to expect a nationwide, permanent curfew in the coming days.
The measures were clearly justified, but I have my doubts if anyone could have expected that countries actually pull through with this extreme kind of reaction.
They probably wanted it to look good on their insane high resolution screen judging by the font... They shoulda sized it in em and not pixels specifically.
OTOH reader mode on firefox fixes any of that nonsense.
The em unit is relative to the inherited font size. If you don’t specify an absolute font size or inherit one then you inherit the user agent default for the <body> which is 16px.
It gets worse, I had to follow up[0] on what you've said, but if the parent element is also using EM the size keeps increasing.
Namely according to the MDN docs I read:
> To recap, the em unit means "my parent element's font-size" in the case of typography. The <li> elements inside the <ul> with a class of ems take their sizing from their parent. So each successive level of nesting gets progressively larger, as each has its font size set to 1.3em — 1.3 times its parent's font size.
So REM is what you probably want if you intend to do some nesting and use the parents root font-size, set it once, apply it everywhere. TIL what em really does, versus what rem does.
The collapse of the fashion industry does not mean the clothing industry will collapse.
People still need clothing obviously (cheap and of good quality preferably).
Also, what do we consider the fashion industry exactly? Most long term clothing trends seem to be dictated by a couple of factors. Consisting of:
- practicality. Jeans are good example of this. It's cheap and practical clothing that lasts a long time.
- cultural "requirement": clothing that is required to fit into social circles. The shirt would be a good example of this, aswell as the tie.
- Enviromental requirements: This one should be obvious ofcourse, No one wears a wool jacket in abu dabi.
Fast fashion and the fashion industry as a whole seems incredibly wasteful to me. Buying new clothing because of yearly trends is way to damaging to the enviroment for what it's worth.
That's true. But, even allowing for specialty clothing that they don't wear all that much and clothing that doesn't fit quite right, etc. but they haven't gotten rid of, most people have way more clothing than they really need. Even for generous values of need.
yes, it is fashion. But it has a far slower pace of change then the fashion industry.
Formal attire for males got out of style a couple of decades ago, but besides the suit (and tie) mostly dying, most people still wear shirts to work.
(All comments on culture US centric) - This thinking is why the men’s section is 1/4 as large as the women’s in most stores. Culturally for men clothing is supposed to be above all practical. There are 5 genres of men’s clothes - business (pressed shirts, suits), casual, workout, skater, and comfort (hoodie).
Contrast this with the women’s section. Women have an expectation to express themselves and their personality. There are all sorts of “impractical” cuts, flairs, colors, layers to choose from. There’s a shoe for every occasion. You can get dramatically different fabrics, feels, and touches. Not even going into accessories.
There is certainly a sea change happening in fashion retail, but it’s more that like everything else it’s accelerating things that are already going on. People were trending less formal almost everywhere in the workplace, except NYC, SF and LA (or in high touch industries like real estate or law). Your H&Ms are best positioned to survive, where everyone already knows that Macy’s is on its last legs.
> There are 5 genres of men’s clothes - business (pressed shirts, suits), casual, workout, skater, and comfort (hoodie).
There’s quite a bit of variation within those. Where I live, “casual” these days is usually something like Columbia PFG - the epitome of “dad clothes”, as my wife tells me. I tend to wear that pretty much exclusively. I substitute jeans for the shorts in winter and buy a new leather jacket about every 3-5 years. I pass my old one on to someone else.
Your point stands, though. As a man, my clothes are 100% based on practicality, and I often only discard them when they’re too worn to be presentable.
To me all of these are the same: clothing to show off. I think the make equivalent would be a suit. Or alternatively, an incredibly toned body, but I don't think they sell that.
Men's fashion currently has no mainstream style that shows off athleticism. Sleeveless crop-tops, with abs and shoulders on display! Shorts with flare for muscular thighs, allowing them to be shorter! Semi-sheer panels, allowing for pecs to bulge! Mesh sections in pants! What's wrong with men showing a little skin for once?
Not exactly the same thing, but at least where I live, going shirtless is a pretty common way for athletic men to show that off. Obviously not in the office, but it's very socially acceptable to jog, play basketball, sit on a park bench, or grill shirtless. People then build the rest of an outfit/look around that as a core component. There's a certain amount of explicit catering to that in a section of men's fashion too, judging by their model shoots.
What men are you seeing? Buff shirtless men in 3” inseam shorts and a bulging groin are a staple of every American city in the summer. I see more and more mesh clothing in this heat, although I do live by west hollywood.
Not really. Are you thinking this through, or just making some kind of lazy "women's clothes = gay" connection? Most revealing/sexy clothes for men are much more casual than these styles.
I will tell you my thinking, and you can decide whether to call it 'lazy'. The styles are 'revealing/sexy'. There exist clothes for men that fit that description, but they are less popular. Because they send out a message most men don't want to be sending out. (I guess most women don't either, at least not all the time.)
Between business and casual, there's definitely "business casual" which is pretty standard uniform for many business people these days--think khakis + button down for men and either boating shoes or loafers of some sort. Which is very closely related to a lot of "preppy" outfits going back to the 80s. [1]
This kind of thinking is why I tend to buy as close to a full years worth of clothing whenever I make a trip out to Tokyo. Even in Chicago relatively fashionable men's clothing shops are few and far between
What do you find so interesting and where do you shop? I like Uniqlo and Muji but now that Uniqlo is available (in-store) in Chicago theres no need to buy it in Japan. I’m not particularly into fashion but I like mainstream but trendy clothes.
I think Japanese fashion is less about the clothes themselves than the acceptance to let people wear what they want and and not judging. I think it’s more acceptable to match different colors and styles.
One strap shoulder Man-bags are all the rage. They are pretty practical, especially when you can’t fit your checkbook-sized wallet in tiny pockets. But in the US it looks like you’re wearing a fanny pack.
If you saw someone wearing an all yellow track suit it would look OK, partly because someone wearing an all green version is 20 feet away.
Or business slacks tapered and cropped above the ankle — in the US they’d ask, “is there a flood?”
While the clothes themselves don’t seem much different, I prefer slimmer cuts. The US is too baggy and loose.
not op but brands like visvim are way more affordable if you are in Japan.
Less expensive brands like OrSlow or TCB are also more affordable in Japan (there is a wealth of fashion brands in that country).
>I think Japanese fashion is less about the clothes themselves than the acceptance to let people wear what they want and and not judging.
In my experience this mostly applies if you are young. At a certain age you are more or less expected to start fitting in the mold.
I actually rarely shop at Uniqlo unless I'm getting something like underwear or socks. The style is better than Old Navy but I wouldn't say that much better.
Usually I go through Harajuku (excluding Takeshita-dori), Shibuya, Omotesando, and Shinjuku and go through the various stores. Especially in Harajuku stores tend to close constantly and are replaced, but theres always something good to find.
One strap shoulder Man-bags are all the rage. They are pretty practical, especially when you can’t fit your checkbook-sized wallet in tiny pockets. But in the US it looks like you’re wearing a fanny pack.
Especially true in SE Asia. I resisted the trend because it looks effeminate, like you're wearing a purse. Asian guys love them because they're super practical if you ride a motorbike or scooter tandem style. I think it works better for more masculine types to go for a bigger bag. I have a black Crumpler bicycle messenger bag (not super big, just a normal-sized bike messenger bag) and it works great for me down here.
Not effeminate at all. Look up reporter bags, smaller than a messenger bag. Classy, not effeminate. Mostly older men wear them in the UK (I’m on my third) whereas the younger men wear cross-body sports-type bags. Most majors make them. I can completely under the rise because of the increase in phone size. Phone + wallet + headphones + tissues, sanitizers, and a mini Fulton umbrella. Then I’m set :)
Well, I know what a reporter bag is but that's not what I'm talking about. I didn't describe it very well. Usually they're "fanny pack" size, but with a shoulder strap. Very popular in the Philippines, for instance. Not worn so much as a fashion statement, but more as an anti-theft contingency when travelling in crowded spaces or public transportation because they are small enough to swing around and wear the bag across your chest.
I think I know what you mean - the cross-body bags. Do they run diagonal with the bag somewhere across the chest? They're popular among teenage males in the UK these days.
as an expat living in SE Asia (KL) I think it is because masculinity is not defined by ones clothing here. I mean, you are a masculine he-man if you have a good business, if you have big family, but the clothes you wear are no more about your masculinity than your phone wallpaper is.
This is probably also because so many clothes are made here, its demystified.
I think the one strap shoulder bag also is more comfortable when it is extremely hot and humid: a backpack would make your entire back soaked in sweat.
Yes! I'm in the Philippines and I can't bear to wear a backpack down here at sea level, in the tropics...maybe in the mountains, but not for everyday use.
Not only in the US, that is pretty typical for the whole American continent, even worse in Latin America as it's seen as a "gay" trait to be into fashion.
As a straight man who is into fashion for quite a few years now and who moved out of Brazil to Sweden: that culture is pretty stupid, I feel so much better and more myself when I'm able to express my personality with my clothes without the fear of being judged by someone's else prejudice... Even better that it's a common thing in Western Europe for people to be more fashionable.
I've bought some pieces that are pretty bold, I love some avant-garde male fashion pieces and being able to wear that without people batting an eye (and even getting random compliments) makes me feel pretty good, hope the Americas can get to this point because it's a very toxic masculinity trait for a whole continent to have and perpetuate.
I'm a Norwegian guy, and I love how tolerant we turned weirdly quickly. Even the anti-abortion Christian™ Party walks in the Pride parade now.
Frankly I think most people here would still think of the random guy in a dress as non-straight, but since "nobody" cares about that here anymore, nobody cares about clothing in a negative way either.
Tote-bags also work, I've started using one for the last two summers.
In Romania we used to call them "saco?a" back in communist times, and almost everyone used to have one in hand while going around town, you never knew what store could you stumble upon which might have brought in fresh supplies, in which case of course that you needed a "saco?a" to carry back home the stuff that you purchased from there. I think that was a common sight in other communist countries too, that's why the Tiananmen guy actually had not one but two "saco?e" in his hands while confronting those tanks (I'm curious what the term for "saco?a" is in Chinese).
Unfortunately the late 1990s-early-2000s saw that phenomenon disappear, as the new middle classes used their newly purchased cars to bring stuff home from the super-market while "saco?e" were "relegated" to old pensioners, but fortunately they made a comeback re-baptised as hipsterish and trendy tote-bags.
On the Europe side of the map, I find the same practicality in clothes when I shop from Finland. They too have all the brands one expects to see, but Finnish people (please any Finn comment/suggest) are super practical when it comes to clothing. Finns and Danes are my idols on simplicity, practicality and a hint of elegance.
> Finns and Danes are my idols on simplicity, practicality and a hint of elegance.
Jesus... I never thought I'd ever read that Finns could be someone's idols when it comes to elegance. But if you fancy wearing sports overwear [0] fitted in your rubber boots, after all...
----
[0] don't forget to buy the exact same model for your partner, and wear it at the same time, if you want to pass as a true Finnish couple.
Not sure why this is being downvoted: Finns themselves joke about having no fashion sense, and the stereotypes is guys in sweatpants with a flask of vodka in the back pocket and women with no makeup. Things have improved over the last 20 years, but the contrast to Russia in particular is very noticeable.
As much as I like Finns I will say that in the Nordics the stylish scale for me goes: Sweden - Denmark - Norway - Finland. Not sure where I would put Icelandic fashion sense in there as I had very little contact with Icelandics living here in Sweden.
Yes, most likely your scale is based on the pieces of media that you received when you grew up, and not what is actually happening.
For example the Aalto University in Finland is currently one of the best ranked universities for art, design and fashion. None of the other nordic countries are even in the top ten. Sweden is not even in the top 25.
Okay, well then you can just open up HEL LOOKS (Helsinki looks) and get a glimpse of the huge amount of different styles, designer clothing and use of vintage garments that is going on in the streets of Helsinki right now.
-->https://www.hel-looks.com/20200603_10/
Like I said, there is a lot of objective evidence to point to the contrary of what you are purporting. But hey, up to you if you want to beleive it or not.
I usually work for mega-large corporations and I have been for the past 15-20 years. How can I phrase it... I HATE wearing suite & tie. I work from home in any chance I get, I dislike the 'uniform', and I prefer casual/sport/comfortable clothing. This is why I like Finns.. they don't give a crap about 'norms'. The go for comfort, whatever feels good, and rock on!
I think you would do well to seperate the clothing/availability of the capital Helsinki, vs. rest of Finland.
Yes, outside of Helsinki and with the older population clothing is very utilitarian and wind-resistant sportsy clothing worn all round the year is common. The biggest seller of clothing items in Finland nationally is a supermarket chain.
Also, out in the countryside, many, many people simply wear workwear most of the day, even after work. It's much higher quality than the cheap garments available in stores like Prisma or Tokmanni.
Depends what you’re looking for, but there are some pretty good boutique shops like notre and gallery aesthete. those cater to pretty particular styles though.
there are tons more than 5 styles for guys (workwear, techwear, superfuture, dark, etc)
but strongly agree that there are enormous differences in male vs female clothing trends.
Male fashion is on something like a 10 years cycle and you can find tons of brands focusing on quality or durability.
Female fashion seems to obsess about the latest trend and change dramatically every 3-months to a year.
Probably lots of cultural bias there, not sure how much this applies in all countries.
I kinda hope that fast fashion is not what's going to survive, between ecology and employment practices, they are not really my favorite.
I've always believed that the pants are almost meaningless, it's the shirts that need to be different daily.
So I used to have 8 pairs of pants, 2 colours total. Black and beige. Then, once a year, I'd go buy 2 more pairs of each colour. On a 'bad' year, I'd buy 4 pairs. EG, I'd rotate the worn out, always only having 8 pairs.
This persisted until, 20 years later, the company that sold them went bankrupt. As my gut and ass had literally grown to into the form / shape of these pants, drooping and expanding to perfectly fill these specific pants, no other pants I tried seemed even remotely comfortable. Or to even fit well!
So I tried to find the company that made them... note, this was very early internet, and I had to go old-school. Finally called the trustees handling the bankruptcy, eventually found out where the pants were made, called them, and?
It was in Mexico, and they made custom for a variety of retailers. And none were left, no matter how I begged.
Two things:
1) Don't wear the same pants for 20-30 years, while you gain your middle-age gut and ass. Just don't.
As one data point, I am pretty tall, relatively slim but do exercise. Good fitting shirts in casual chic styles are extremely easy to find, but pants are very hard (and it seems to be the same for most people).
> As my gut and ass had literally grown to into the form / shape of these pants
It sounds a lot like you are wearing clothes that are too small for you :)
Regardless, I would be very surprised if there were no equivalent. There are even many brands dedicated to reproduce old garments (off the top of my head, TCB denim does that for jeans)
> Don't wear the same pants for 20-30 years, while you gain your middle-age gut and ass. Just don't.
I'm 60 and absolutely fine with the same sizes and basically the same cuts that I've worn for more than 40 years. If something starts squeezing, it's a timely reminder that I need to adjust some behaviour, not a signal to give in and upscale my wardrobe.
The implication is that women are expressing their looks as much as their personality.
However, the two are connected; how one's personality is perceived is dependent on one's looks. If you want people to value your personality, best to exercise regularly, dress well, and keep up with proper grooming.
People definitely attempt to do so, and sometimes do so subconsciously. Some people dress for how they want to be seen or aspire to be, others dress as a reflection of their environment, including those they associate with, and that sometimes reflects the prevailing attitude and beliefs of that group (and sometimes not).
A simple example of this might be a haircut. Whether accurate or not, a mohawk often signals something to other people (and sometimes signals something the person that wears it, like "I may be ties down with more responsibilities, but I won't let that define me").
I like to think most my clothing choices are made because of practical matters such as comfort and fit, but even within my normal range of jeans to shorts and t-shirts to polo shirts (and maybe the less formal button-up shirt), there's definitely things that fit that criteria that don't feel like they fit how I think of myself. And that's as a man, where I think expectations to do with style and clothing are much simpler.
Don't be denser, judging others by their appereance is shallow. The fact that people still do it doesn't mean that when you change your clothes that's any kind of expression proper.
It's just a cheap way to signal something that you might or might not be, and only superficially at that.
You use "cheap" as a pejorative, but it's actually a positive. By signaling that you are X, or believe yourself to be X, (where X can be anything - gender, hobbies, wealth, social class whatever) you gain the interest of everyone who is seeking X without needing to speak to them. And save the time of everyone who isn't interested in X. It's a cheap, efficient way to filter people. Is it perfect? Heck no. But humans are often happy to sacrifice accuracy for speed.
Yes, don't treat people badly (mostly) because of the way they look.
But be realistic. Someone that wears all black has made a choice just like the person that is always fashionable with lots of clothing. Some beard and hairstyles take more work than others. These are lifestyle choices people make. Someone knowing how to do 20 hairstyles to get their hair off of their neck decided to learn that instead of something else. A man with a complicated beard style probably spends some time daily on it to keep it up. A person with nails half the length of the fingers they are attached to probably eshews some practical things simply because the nails are in the way. A person that wears traditional clothing due to religion probably isn't a good candidate to date me.
I understand that being poor might make it so you don't have a lot of choices in these things. I've been there: My look was basically whatever I was forced to wear to work and whatever I could find at thrift stores. At the end of the day, though, I still had choice -and to discount what these choices tell others about you is, in itself, dense - as is discounting that humanity often makes snap judgements based entirely on how things look.
Some companies work hard at convincing the customers that the best venue for expressing their individual personality traits are mass-produced designs of those specific companies (e.g. Hot Topic, Forever 21).
For what it's worth, they develop a loyal following.
Yes, it is. Just like you have a taste in music, doesn't music express your personality somehow? It's all a matter of notes, timing and timbre.
The same with clothes: the choice of textures say something about you, the choice of cuts say something, the choice of colour the same. The thing is: the clothes you wear need to resonate with you to become part of your expression.
It's not that your clothes = your personality, but the choices you've done consciously will tell someone else about you, the same as looking around your book shelves at home. The thing is: you need to care about you are wearing for it to become something expressive.
With my clothes I can signal a lot of stuff to others that are into the same things I am, I can signal hobbies, I can signal that I care about a particular type of material or cut, and so on.
If not then you are just being practical and wearing what is expected from you, nothing wrong with that but don't judge and put others down because they take this more into consideration than you do.
> This thinking is why the men’s section is 1/4 as large as the women’s in most stores.
This is so true, and it annoys me for reasons I'll mention later.
> Contrast this with the women’s section. Women have an expectation to express themselves and their personality.
I'm a young man, but I also like to express myself by dressing a certain way, which is why I'm especially disappointed when literally three whole floors of a relatively mid-high-end department store are dedicated to women's fashion, while half a floor is dedicated to men's.
I enjoy shopping for clothes in person - this way I can feel the clothing I'm actually going to put on, I can try different sizes on, see how it looks with my jacket, etc. So it also annoys me when a greater variety of men's fashion is found online, where I can't observe the physical quality of the clothes I'm about to buy, making it a hit-or-miss in most cases.
As someone who doesn't want to pour resources into a fruitless arms race, I'm glad that a supergovernmental system has unilaterally enacted arms control. ;)
The problem is that the perception is relative, not absolute. As soon as more than a few people on the fringe start chasing it, the average will move up, causing a Red Queen scenario. Victorian court dress is a ready example of what happens when economics and social norms fail to restrain appearance arms races.
Yes, but men’s fashion cycles run far longer than women, so we can buy higher quality clothing that lasts much longer. This also means custom clothing is very practical.
I deal with a guy, his family has a factory in India. All the grades of fabric, styles, etc, all made custom based on my measurements. A few weeks later, it arrives.
Most comfortable clothing available, and looks killer. He travels to me, or I go to his shop. Far better experience than retail and prices are less than off the rack and better quality.
Women’s fashions are much shorter cycle, so they are often made with terrible quality fabrics that are quite uncomfortable. Worse, custom clothing is very expensive and by time it arrives, the season is changing.
Hmm its possible. In India I bought stitched suit for ~350$, and store bought for ~100. The tailor was best in class (two extremely well dressed men who probably made more money than me took multiple measurements and I had to go to the store three times), the cloth was best in class too. But on the other hand I bough tailored work pants for ~7$, and store bought for ~15. This tailor while talented, ran a poor mans store, even his best cloth lacked a little in elegance. I am just telling you my experience, you can guess though that one could find someone in India who can tailor the perfect cloths for you at a price that beats "some" store cloths.
> You get custom made clothing cheaper than store clothing?
If you get it made in India or Asia this is the norm.
Long sleeved shirts from a good tailor in Saigon or Bangkok are 15-25 EUR p.P. for the tailoring. Then add 3-20 EUR for fabric – depending on what material you choose.
Once the tailor has your measurements on file you can either send your fabric of choice there and have the shirts be in your mail three weeks later or they send you pictures of fabrics they stock and you choose.
20% of my shirts are off-the-shelf (but all of them have been adjusted to fit me bette). The rest are tailor made.
100% of my trousers are tailor made. I never understood why any sane man would pay for pants that are pants (pun intended). Too tight, too low waist and too short at the ankles.
It makes you look like you are the younger sibling from a poor family who inherited the clothes from the elder, taller brother. And you even paid for that eye-cancer-inducing disaster. ;)
I have a tailor in Berlin who charges 70 EUR for tailoring a pair of trousers. With fabric that means I pay less than 100 EUR usually. Which is totally competitive with off the shelf pricing. He charges 40 EUR for a new cut. Aka: if I show him a picture of a cut or photo he will make it for my measurements. This is a one-time cost though.
As an added plus I have extra pockets for change/coins and invisible pockets under the belt line which are great to stash anything pointy that will distort the shape of your leg if put into the normal pants (I e.g. put my keychain there when I go dancing tango).
And the craftsmanship (seam look/quality/longevity) is superior to anything I can buy off the shelf. Even expensive brands are commonly produced with lower quality nowadays. You pay for the better material and the brand but the seams and button stitching are still sub par.
My Berlin tailor is Vianko Mode[1]. Don't be fooled by the chaotic look of the place. :)
The owner is a bit all over the place but the work he does is outstanding. Also for ladies. If you need a tailored evening dress or costume: this is the guy.
Make sure he writes down any instructions and after agreeing for some pieces, you confirm them again yourself with him, written, by WhatsApp.
My Bangkok tailor is Dino Suits[2].
Dino is one of the few real tailors in Bangkok. Most 'tailors' there are just fronts for tourists that sell fabric with a suit pattern that gets adjusted to your body. That's a pattern of /their/ choice "made to measure" which is not the same as a pattern of /your/ choice "tailored".
Usually it's a sweatshop in the countryside doing the labor. In that place you have a 1-2 dozen half-trained people doing the grunt work and 1-2 real tailors checking on them/doing the occasional difficult section. That's why they can only do the one pattern.
Dino is known in Bangkok because if one of these other 'tailors' fucks up the last resort to fixing/saving a piece is often Dino. ;)
This is always a good litmus test for a new 'tailor'. Ask if you can bring your own fabric and ask if you can bring your own pattern. If either is a no look for another, real tailor.
In Asia/India in general: if you want a jacket w/o padding in the shoulders (Napoletanean style/pagoda shoulders) be sure to bring a well fitting (better: fitted/tailored) sample jacket from home for them to copy from.
It is, if you choose average fabrics like the department store. You can choose the highest end fabrics and you can easily spend thousands on a suit. Retail margins on clothing are outrageously high and obviously use average quality fabrics. However, after their costs of running the store, discounting/liquidating rack items haven’t moved, their operating profit isn’t very high. Custom menswear operations don’t have this waste hitting their bottom line.
What about Men's work clothes? Heavy-duty stuff. Like a lot of Duluth Trading Co. clothing. I'm not sure these fit into your categories.
I also feel your skater/comfort don't seem different enough. At least, I can imagine skaters wearing hoodies commonly.
To me those fall more into a "uniform". I admit I didn't really think of that in terms of "fashion", but its true that many wear a ton of carhardt and not much else. But it does tend to be hoodies and the like.
I'm female, and want to wear simple clothing. Black pants, black shirt. Short sleeve in summer, long sleeve in winter plus or minus a basic sweater or two. Sometimes, these aren't available or aren't available in black, so I often wind up wearing simply jeans and a t-shirt.
I'd rather not have frills, though I can occasionally tolerate zippers.
I'd really like pockets that have space for things: I used to wear men's pants when I was younger and I gotta say, I've considered switching back. I wish they fit better because the pockets are glorious. (Men's shirts don't fit well at all since they aren't made for breasts).
I can usually find non-athletic shoes in black, but it gets much more difficult to find black or mostly black athletic-style shoes.
I think there will always be a discrepancy. Same with the beauty industry that failed to attract men proportionally. It grows for men, but not to a degree some articles would suggest year after year. Doesn't work anyway, look at people above 60 and the men don't look worse than women.
Nobody wants to look bad, but there are different degrees of effort people put into it.
That aside, I think retail will still suffer greatly compared to online sales since most have a service to send back clothing for free.
> People were trending less formal almost everywhere in the workplace, except NYC, SF and LA (or in high touch industries like real estate or law).
Sorry if this comes across as nitpicking but I'm curious what makes you think SF remains formal outside of high touch industries? AFAIK tech is the biggest industry in SF and formal clothes are far from expected there, you would not look out of place in a hoodie and shorts in an SF tech office (or even in some reasonably nice restaurants). In most tech offices you'd look like a bit of a weirdo dressed any more formal than business casual.
> There are 5 genres of men’s clothes - business (pressed shirts, suits), casual, workout, skater, and comfort (hoodie).
Only 5 of them and one of them includes "skater"? I mention confidence because you name them off with some authority when it looks like it should be "There are 5 categories of men's clothing for me".
You leave off streetwear [1] which is a gigantic category in men's clothing and reinforces the personal / arbitrary nature of the list.
Not speaking for the parent commenter, but I imagine "casual" as roughly the same range as "preppy" - not formal, but not sweats or tshirts.
Also, while they used the term "skater" (which I also find oddly specific) I think "streetwear" would be a better label. This would cover more specific styles like "skater" as well as other types of streetwear.
As a disclaimer, I know next to nothing about fashion and am just going on my own limited perception of broad categories.
Agree, streetwear would be a better term. Its more of my upbringing where kids who didn't dress in one of the other ways tended to go to stores like pacsun, zumiez, vans etc which prominently featured skating as a lifestyle.
I suppose it depends on what exactly you mean by "preppy" - but if it's stuff like cargo pants, I would argue that it should fall into the comfort segment.
About half of my daily wardrobe is stuff that's advertised as "tactical", but the reason why I actually wear it is because it's comfortable (relaxed fit, stretchy fabric where needed etc), and because it has plenty of large pockets to carry all the gadgets and random items.
It is arbitrary, and not fully accurate, but was trying to get the point across that there's relatively few cuts and overall styles to choose from in most major department stores. I claim no authority, I'm just a person on the internet making an observation.
I still hold that men's clothing is more like the menu at taco bell, whereas womens clothing covers both much more nuance and opportunity for expressiveness. Mens styles are broadly muted in contrast. More than happy to argue that point!
Nah, dude. The only reason you think there’s “no nuance” is because you haven’t invested the time to learn and research male fashion. And that’s OK! Fashion and being stylish is a hobby like that requires time, energy and money. Not everyone has those or wants to spend them on fashion.
> Women have an expectation to express themselves and their personality.
I think that men have the same expectation. What's different is: Men are working with a relatively stable means of expression. They're working with clothes that are naturally more multi-season (both in terms of utility and in terms of aesthetic norms.) And it's more socially acceptable - even required in some contexts - for them to wear basically the same thing every day.
Whereas women are expected to take part in a sartorial red queen's race where everything is changing so rapidly that the statement you make by wearing a particular piece of clothing in summer 2018 might be markedly different from the statement you make by wearing it in winter 2019 or summer 2020, so it only serves to express your personality in the way you intend for a desperately short span of time. Worse, even within summer 2018 it might make one statement on June 18, and a completely different statement if you dare to wear it on June 25, because, even if nobody at your office actually will notice and judge you for wearing the same outfit on two consecutive Mondays, you've likely been conditioned to expect it to happen.
So very true. My only excuse for failing to even think of that point is that I'm so accustomed - inured, really - to men having a narrower range of acceptable personalities.
I mean I'm not disagreeing with your overall premise but I think you are ignoring other categories: street wear, club wear, and just plain uniforms for service workers.
I worked a good number of years doing tech in fashion.
Figure that there is a 100-1000% markup for a garment at retail. The jeans that cost $3 to make versus the ones that cost $13 will sometimes be durable, but you are basically buying the quality of the seamstress beyond materials at the higher price point.
The prices rise to fit the market. People will pay for the "fashion" and brand name so the retailers sell them. You also have layers of outlets, overstock, discount retailers, thrift stores and more that take up the overflow. a
I guess it depends. I buy levis which are the some of the cheapest decently quality jeans you can find. I'm not big on raw or selvedge denim so I mean decently trendy and ready to wear jeans. I can find a pair for around 100 or less depending on sales and those pairs can last me about 3-5 years. I think 100$ is a fair price for something that will last me that long. I have squatter's legs so the inner thigh grinds to a pulp on most brands but levi's lasts the longest.
> I have squatter's legs so the inner thigh grinds to a pulp on most brands but levi's lasts the longest.
My quads aren't even that big and yet I seem to have this problem. It only started after lifting for a few years and it drives me crazy. I seem to go through jeans every 3 years whereas before it felt like they would last a life time.
But compared to other types of clothes I find that they last a long time. I buy a new pair every year from Nudie Jeans for $140 and they last around four years (with the included free repairs). And when they are worn out you get 20% discount on new ones if you hand in your old pair.
I would add environmental friendliness - more creativity in supply chains so more local materials used. Fashion will always exist and by itself shouldnt be considered wasteful - think deeply about other cultures relationship to it.
Google around for Adam Minters book secondhand on how the rag industry is one of the largest.
I see an obsession with local but would they actually be more environmentally friendly? Specialized higher yield locales are more efficenct for land usage. Efficencies of scale and more optimal environments and container ships of scale as well.
Aside from that more stringent local environmental regulations are the only advantage I can see mattering.
I assume local food is more well-studied than local fashion, and may have similar environmental cost profiles. This study: http://www.iufn.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Making-local-... found that transportation is actually less important than other factors.
On the other hand, local food has other important advantages: resiliency (perhaps less important for clothing), and supporting the local economy.
Yes, but Jeans are part of the collapse now and considered formal for creatives with Levi's down 62% and doing layoffs. I thought "formality" was bizarre as well, but apparently their target demo don't consider the older skinny-jeans, and the new high-waisted mom-jeans to be as comfortable as Lulus... who'd have thunk it?
I suspect that it's a long term trend to reduce cost and quality/durability to maintain sales volumes. Fast fashion was a part of this, but now that people aren't going out to be seen, it doesn't matter what you're wearing (if it looks good on zoom). I suspect this will trend back once we're going out more, but with LA/NY/SF/MIA mostly shut down it won't be this year. What is happening for the Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, but home video?
After buying mostly levi's jeans for 30 years I started noticing huge differences in quality / durability.. upon inspecting the waist seams I noticed the 'made in pakistan / mexico' and other labels of origin.
The same style/numbers from different years had different fabric thicknesses and were made in various places, and they did not last as long. So I started to question this "American brand".
Then they started going all anti-gun / SJW / spending money to reduce gun rights.
I have not bought a pair in a long time, won't buy any of that brand for anyone else, and anytime someone I know is shopping for or discussing jeans I mention my distaste for the brand and those who would support them.
Seeing them go down sparks joy. I'd rather wear a leisure suit made by snuggies than hand them cash. Seems I'm not the only one.
I had a very similar experience with Adidas shoes. For a long time (~15 years maybe) I was pretty much exclusively buying Adidas shell-toes for my daily footwear. They were the most comfortable well fitting shoes and fit my wide feet well. It was nice not having to spend much time looking or trying on shoes - every 2 or even 3 years when they wore out I'd buy a new pair and they fit just like the last one.
The last pair I bought fell apart in 3 months, the ball of my foot eating through the interior material in that short span. I kept wondering "what changed" and then I looked at the label in the tongue. Different country of manufacture than the last 2 pairs I bought (I'd usually keep my old pair as a backup since they typically still had some life left in them, despite the sole wearing down)
Interesting - the past 5 years or so I noticed a similar issue with skechers I had been buying (frequently for more than a decade) - used to be, I could get a couple years out of a pair and retire them to lawn mowing duty from being dingy or worn out.. but the past few years I had a couple pairs bust the seams near the toes in about only 6 months.
As much as I liked the styles, I started to try other brands... then went back when some skechers were on sale and bought the 'wide' versions to see if there was a difference.
I have really been enjoying the new balance I've been wearing more than any the past couple years.
Sad to see that the nuts think requiring background checks is now "reducing gun rights". Reasonable limits on rights has always been constitutional. Perhaps you should give that document a read.
Levi's donated a million dollars to billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who not surprisingly supports the most heavy-handed and disenfranchising form of background checks imaginable. It's sadly predictable how the wealthiest folks tend to be the ones who support the "reasonable limit" of charging someone hundreds of dollars to practice a constitutional right.
> Reasonable limits on rights has always been constitutional.
Citation needed. I don't know how more unambiguous the framers could get than "shall not be infringed".
Setting aside my personal feelings on the matter, this just seems to be a bad argument which is not in evidence. I've read the Constitution thoroughly on more than one occasion, I don't see anything within that makes it seems as if the framers thought ignoring what was written in plain English and skirting its intent was a-okay.
It always strikes me as odd that so many Americans look at the constitution as if it was a holy text from the founding fathers that must be followed and left unchanged, even though they are usually discussing amendments...
Nobody’s discussing an amendment here, at no point did they suggest it should remain unchanged, and concerns over interpretation apply to any future amendments anyways.
Picking up a gun you’ve found from the larger cultural war and shooting random commenters with it is fun, but quite inappropriate for HN from what I’ve seen of it.
Based on the kinds of things I see people posting on social media, I think the attitude regarding amendment #2 stems from fear. Guns make them feel safe. Including feeling safe from the government who they fear will come to try to do things like silence them and destroy their ways of thinking or even cause physical harm. So it causes real conflict for them when the government wants to put limits on guns.
On top of that, the 2nd amendment itself is about defending against the government. It says that armed citizens are necessary to be able to form a well-regulated militia. The founding fathers had just broken free of an oppressive government, so they wanted to be sure it was possible for states to break free again if necessary.
The Bill of Rights is meant to be a declaration of immutable rights of human beings. It always strikes me as odd that people view these as permissions given from some higher authority that can be changed. The reason they are so viciously argued for is because it is the only thing we can point to that enshrines the idea that we have individual rights that cannot be legislated away.
When researching the levis funding and the partnership with 'everytown' - they use words like 'common sense', and 'ending violence' - in the headings.. but when you look at the agenda and what they actually advocate for - it's not background checks - they are actively trying to ban a long list of weapons and putting up other barriers to make it harder for people to bear arms.
(see what they tried to push through in VA recently)
It is not just 'background checks'.
I will happily re-read this doc any day.
Funny you mention fox news winning the battle, I read an article in the last few hours that says they are. They are crushing every other news group - all of the primetime news - even though they are cable only in most markets and the others have further ota reach.
However I don't celebrate that. They are not my primary news source. I put them about 9th or 10th in my reads.
I am friends with an exec that does textile manufacturing and clothes are manufactured against a "#washes" lifetime. Interestingly, brands like Polo Ralph Lauren have straight to outlet products and their #washes will be a lower number than their high-street equivalent.
> Buying new clothing because of yearly trends is way to damaging to the environment for what it's worth.
I read this as I rock along on my Thinkpad x200 and read it on a forum where people regularly defend the use of electron apps and gush over the latest sumptuous macbooks with gobs of memory.
"But, but, I need those for my work"
And so might these people who buy clothes because of yearly trends.
"But that's different!"
No, it's not.
It's not up to me to say anyone shouldn't enjoy your latest laptop, but I think it's good to realise that the large majority of people who work in software are in a precarious position to be handing out edicts about what should and shouldn't be considered "incredibly wasteful" and what is "damaging the environment".
Maybe there are lots of different people on the site who have different opinions and what you’re seeing is not a majority agreeing on an inconsistent opinion but rather many people with different internally consistent (or even internally inconsistent) ideas.
Well said. Aside from formalwear and tattered outdoor work outfits my clothing may as well all be identical. Every morning I reach into my closet and grab a shirt and pair of jeans without looking.
> Buying new clothing because of yearly trends is way to damaging to the enviroment for what it's worth.
You can say this about virtually any hobby/interest that you don’t personally find enjoyable.
Buying any new stuff yearly isn’t great for the environment — with exceedingly rare exceptions. But in the grand scheme of things: owning/driving a car, living in too big a home, eating meat, and having kids are so so so much more destructive that buying a few new shirts and pants every year becomes a rounding error.
> Fast fashion and the fashion industry as a whole seems incredibly wasteful to me. Buying new clothing because of yearly trends is way to damaging to the enviroment for what it's worth.
I don't disagree per se, but I think you could say this about just about any hobby/habit/interest. Is it really necessary? Probably not, but it makes some people happy for whatever reason.
How do you draw the line?
Some people complain that travel is too hard on the environment..but I love travel and will continue to do so (post-covid)
From the practicality standpoint it seems that we should all be wearing togas (or robes, at most). They're basically unisex (with opportunities for expression for those who value it), flexible on size (or at least very forgiving if your exact size is unavailable), and can be made pretty cheap (assuming mass production).
Except they are basically a primitive dress. And I don't find such things comfortable at all. Please just give me basic pants and find a way to adjust the size slightly so they fit well.
Pants are warmer and I don't have to worry about how I sit (am female, and do not enjoy this bit about dresses). Biking is not an issue, nor is extra fabric going to get stuck in a conveyor belt.
I'm also pretty sure the togas would require a decent learning curve if you are wanting sleeves. I certainly want sleeves and a shirt that isn't in the way: Things like ponchos aren't good to cook in - they get in the food.
Togas would be outright dangerous when swimming and I can't imagine them being great for working on a car. They might be slightly cooler in the summer if you aren't using too much fabric.
And I'd argue that no matter what, you still have fashion. You'll see it in the way folks drape the toga fabric and their use of belts and things to hold it together. You'll see fashion in the color and/or print of fabric and whether or not you can keep a white one clean. Like with uniforms, you'll find more emphasis on body shape, hair, and other such things.
But I suppose we could all just let our hair grow out: women and men both should just stop shaving as well. It is, after all, fashion. And not do phsyical fitness more than what is required to be healthy and do your job - excess muscles are fashion, after all.
That's very dismissive of the art and self-expression that goes into this. It's a strange, but pervasive human behavior, to make things not only practical, but beautiful. To put in different ideas into easthetics of things, to express yourself through them.
Of course, may be most shoppers simply go after current trends, but that's just true for any art form, from music to movies to books; almost all of these things are just as impractical. Investing your resources into something just because it looks nice is a very human thing to do.
I'm saddened by the job losses, but the fashion industry (esp. the high end) seems nothing but a toxic drain on society and the environment. New "trends" dictated by celebrities and designers every year do nothing but sow personal insecurities and environmental destruction. Good riddance.
Your comment applies equally to all luxury consumer goods. It also ignores the fact that many people derive pleasure from 'dressing up', or 'looking their best'.
High-end fashion is not fast fashion. I wear high-end shoes daily, some that have been resoled twice, having a 10-year lifespan each. I feel I stand out from the crowd when I appear in my don't remember-when-I-bought Hackett blazer and Liberty shirts.
If you are a man, whatever looked good on Steve McQueen in the 70s would still give you the look today.
>I feel I stand out from the crowd when I appear in my don't remember-when-I-bought Hackett blazer and Liberty shirts.
Is that not an effect of marketing though? The only time i've ever felt like i've 'stood out in a crowd' is when I'm walking around in something utterly ridiculous, or filthy work clothes or something.
To be honest, all the high end designer brands blend in to me and I can't be bothered to tell them apart from the lower end brands. When I do recognize one though, my thoughts tend to be something huh, look, someone spent $500 on a shirt/purse/other small singular item of clothing.
Then i'll look at the person next to them wearing less than that over their entire outfit in budget clothes and i'll think, hmm that person doesn't like to waste their money. They have some sense.
Some of the richest, most successful people i've ever met dressed in the same things other regular people do.
I'd rather stand out for my accomplishments and things I do, than some crap made in china I buy at the store at overinflated prices. Because in the end, those designer clothes are pumped out in the same factories alongside Walmart crap.
I'll agree with you about shoes though, a high quality pair of shoes is worth investing in. As long as their actually high quality and not just 'paying for the name' high quality.
Above a given level, for sure. But you can tell the difference of a $20 shirt and a $100 from a distance. I am not sure about the $100+ range. If you check the brands I mentioned, they are not overly expensive (in London, UK you can find them at 50% now, at outlets even less), yet they are considered hard-to-beat.
> Because in the end, those designer clothes are pumped out in the same factories alongside Walmart crap.
The fabric, maybe, but the amount of time some workpiece requires can be vastly different and might require more experienced hands. This can be especially true for tricky materials, such as leather and wool.
> Some of the richest, most successful people i've ever met dressed in the same things other regular people do.
Yeah, if you are the emperor, you can be naked too. :)
> I'd rather stand out for my accomplishments and things I do
Me too. But not every decision is made on rational grounds and there is no 2nd try for first impression either. :)
Tailoring is probably most obvious, especially if you're not really a standard size. And that's expensive even if it's only semi-custom.
I'm sure there are reasons but I'm actually a bit surprised that more customization isn't a more normal thing on the internet for a modest premium. I assume some combination of the economics and the way customization has to happen don't work in some way.
>The fabric, maybe, but the amount of time some workpiece requires can be vastly different and might require more experienced hands. This can be especially true for tricky materials, such as leather and wool.
The thing is, for things like high quality clothes from leather and wool, I'm going to hit up a leatherworker's shop or something like the sheep wool clothes store they have in town here. Those things cost a bunch, are unknown designers or whatever but they're made locally out of high quality materials and are the kind of thing that should last a decade or more.
I'm not adverse to spending money on good expensive clothes, I'm adverse to spending money on expensive clothes where you're paying for the name of a designer.
If I'm going to drop that much money on a shirt or something, it's going to be from a local tailor or seamster. It's going to be fitted to me and it's going to be made of high quality long lasting materials. It's the kind of shirt that gets passed onto the grandkids or something.
>Yeah, if you are the emperor, you can be naked too. :)
What i've noticed is, except under very certain circumstances, most people are too worried about what they're wearing and look like, again unless you're overly ridiculous looking or something, to really notice your clothes. The exception being unless it's something they want themselves, or they're trying to find something flattering to say to a date or potential date.
>Me too. But not every decision is made on rational grounds and there is no 2nd try for first impression either. :)
First impressions are overrated. As long as you can make it to the second impression. The second impression is the one that counts. It's the one that's judged more thoughtfully and rationally, the one where your guard's down and such. This is why we have probationary periods in jobs, even for candidates with excellent first impressions and why once the honey moon faze of relationships end, problems tend to start.
The one and only thing I own that sometimes gets remarked upon (other than various T-shirts) is a pair of custom-made hiking boots I own that are fairly distinctive and not at all common. (Also very comfortable and they've been repaired and resoled.)
When you say this, do you mean Loakes, or Trickers/Church’s, or Edward Green/John Lobb? Just curious what you mean by high-end, US would be something like Allen Edmonds, Alden, (?? Not sure for top-tier US makers)
I have Cheaney, Barker (I know it is not high-end by pricing, but I'm very satisfied with their quality over the years) Paul Smith, Attila Shoes, Vass Shoes and some workhorses that are worn enough not to care to walk 10-20km a day or if I am on holiday.
I'm always surprised when people say these are not comfortable as much as a trainer. I have to disagree.
I don't think it applies equally to all consumer luxury goods.
Fashion is designed to be "consumable" in the sense that it has a totally made-up expiration date. An expiration date largely dictated by the very industry that created the product.
>It also ignores the fact that many people derive pleasure from 'dressing up', or 'looking their best'.
No it doesn't. That feeling can still exist in a world where clothing lasts two, three or four times as long. The entire premise of the (luxury) fashion industry is built on making a person feel bad if they aren't "in style". Where "in style" is a completely arbitrary standard made up by a select few extraordinarily rich people.
Besides, I'd argue that people use cooler/sexier/more fashion-forward clothing as a crutch for what might be a more serious issue with their self esteem. But I digress.
High end fashion is woefully overpriced items that predominantly largely priced on their brand rather their functionality and material. While yes, you could make the same argument with technology, I can at least get a lot of value out of premium I've paid for Apple products like my seven year old MacBook Pro or five year old iPhone.
And after working briefly in the fashion industry as a developer, I found a lot more people involved in the field to be incredibly snobby and superficial, as in literally judging people by their looks which shouldn't be surprising given that is what the industry is about.
To be fair, and you even bringing it up, apple products is to some degree the fashion equivalent in tech. I recently had to buy a MacOs compatible hardware for the first time in years, and I had really no idea how large the difference has become. Apple products truly are "way of life", more than anything tangible. And when choosing to upgrade components, I really couldn't believe it. It was more than twice the comparable value. In some cases 8 times. In what other industry are people willing to pay at least more than twice, for the same hardware?
> In what other industry are people willing to pay at least more than twice, for the same hardware?
The whole premise is incorrect, so the conclusions are incorrect. The hardware is not the same, and even if it was, clearly the software makes a difference to the user.
The whole Apple fashion status trope is tired and has never been true. The amortized cost of an Apple device in my 15 year + experience with them has always been less than the competitors. Especially if you add my troubleshooting time.
Not to mention they’ve been selling iPad Minis for $400 for 7 or 8 years, and they now have an iPhone at $400. Their stuff works, they offer physical stores you can get technical support at, and they seem to be the best offering for privacy conscious users.
>The whole Apple fashion status trope is tired and has never been true.
I love (and almost exclusively use) Apple products for many of the reasons you listed. But I think it's disingenuous to deny that there is an element of Apple's branding and design that is based on fashion.
Exhibit A: Laptops and phones getting thinner and thinner at the expense of battery life and other features (headphone jack).
Exhibit B: “A computer absolutely can be sexy… yeah, it can” – The glorious ways Jony Ive has described Apple products
You're preaching to the converted. I only disagreed with the notion that there is absolutely no "fashion" component of Apple's products or branding at all. Of course there is.
> The whole premise is incorrect, so the conclusions are incorrect. The hardware is not the same, and even if it was, clearly the software makes a difference to the user.
Speaking as someone who has spent a fair share of money on Apple products, It really doesn't. Apple is in the business of selling Veblen goods, and unless you are in a niche domain that requires niche software, Apple does not offer anything that makes a significant difference when compared with what ships with other platforms.
This is specially true nowadays as the bulk of the work done by anyone is performed through a browser. I mean, Finder works but no one spends $2k on a laptop just because you can open files like a champ.
In order to understand the appeal of Apple's product line, all you need to check is the rationale of companies who try to entice potential hires by advertising how they make available flashy Apple hardware to their employees.
The entirety of my grandparents generation being able to Facetime their grandkids all over the world since 2010 isn’t a Veblen good.
My non English fluent and tech illiterate family members can browse the internet and click on all the malware links without worrying about losing personal data or ruining their device. That’s not a Veblen good either.
My time doing tech support going down to zero because the solution is either power cycle the device or take it to an Apple store is not a Veblen good either.
> The entirety of my grandparents generation being able to Facetime their grandkids all over the world since 2010 isn’t a Veblen good.
You are being disingenuous if you believe that Apple Facetime is the only or even dominant voice and/or video call system. WhatsApp alone has between 4 and 5 times the market share of Apple's FaceTime.
You need to come up with another explanation.
> My non English fluent and tech illiterate family members can browse the internet and click on all the malware links without worrying about losing personal data or ruining their device. That’s not a Veblen good either.
Quite frankly, that's complete bullshit. The majority of web users, whether they are computer illiterate or not, don't worry about "malware links" at all, and that concern simply doesn not register in the mind of the Facebook+Instagram+WhatsApp+Twitter crowd.
You’re missing the point. Apple democratized technology and made it extremely consumer friendly, so that grandparents or a 2 year old know how to use an iPad. Credit where credit’s due.
In 2012 or so, FaceTime was the only easy to use, reliable video call option. I know because I tried Skype and hangouts and tango and whatever other crap was out there. They all failed where FaceTime succeeded with all the elders. Also, iPads are the only decent tablet available which are nice for older people due to the larger screen. Reality is my explanation.
And I guess I must be imagining the hours I spent removing malware from windows computers before iOS came along. The stage was set a decade ago when the best option was iOS. My grandparents aren’t going to learn a different system nowadays.
I recently got a macbook after having never owned an apple computer (besides a 2nd hand iphone 5). The improvements compared to windows and linux are really impressive. This device does exactly what I want it for; unix native shell support and performance without linux problems. Windows still has it's place, but Macbooks still provide real value.
There's clearly an appeal of the Apple brand to people. But I think that the appeal comes much more as a form of "general belonging" rather than as a "fad".
Usually "fashionable" items (be it clothing or others) are quite noticeably different from year to year. To the untrained eye, my 7 year old mbp doesn't look all that different from a brand new 2020 one. If I open it up in public, I'll look like "a guy who uses apple". People won't know that I'm out of style because I rock an "ancient" laptop.
This seems true for iphones, too. The models before the X look somewhat different because of the button, but aside from the cameras being changed, I can't easily tell apart the newer models without a home button.
" I can at least get a lot of value out of premium I've paid for Apple products like my seven year old MacBook Pro or five year old iPhone."
I think you might have missed the fact that what you value is not what other people value.
At the 'high end' of fashion, there's an incredible degree of artisanal effort, and FYI most of those items are well made and will last a lifetime.
Using 'Apple' - which takes its design and pricing cues literally from the world of fashion and design, is actually an argument in favour of the industry, not against it.
> I can at least get a lot of value out of premium I've paid for Apple products like my seven year old MacBook Pro or five year old iPhone.
Yep, their Total Cost of Ownership can make them very appealing. I’ve made significant contributions towards my MacBook Air upgrades by selling the old one part-for-part.
Which parts of a Mac laptop to people buy by the part? I congratulate you for your thriftiness and ecological contribution, but surely this is an extremely niche practice.
Any piece that you can dissemble, from the top case and keyboard, to the logic board, to the display and bezel. And on older ones, they even had those amazing removable drives and RAM... and remember, since the drives at least were using a slightly proprietary form factor, you either have to buy a used OEM drive or a more expensive 3rd party replacement like the ones from OWC.
But even an old broken MacBook Air can get $100+ depending on the specific model, not parted out at all.
Yes, human “culture” and it’s “trends” are such a waste. Why can’t everybody just spend their entire lives staring at screens while dressed in tshirts, like us software engineers do?
Those thousands of years of human history spent on emotionally-driven aesthetic pursuits like art, fashion, music, culinary tradition and architecture...what a waste of time and resources. If only we could be more robot-like and efficiency optimizing! Good riddance indeed.
Authentic culture isn't created by a microscopically small group of rich people. If you think that criticising an exploitative industry is the the same as turning people into cultureless robots, then you're missing the entire point.
What exactly makes a culture "authenic"? The funny thing is historically I can think of plenty of counter examples. Chokers caught on because of a high status woman wanting to cover up a neck scar. For better or worse that fundamentally is part of culture. Criticizing cultural practices is as well of course.
Besides being a reductio ad absurdum[0] argument that ads nothing to the discussion, I'll address your comment.
Music, Art, Food, Literature and Architecture generally don't go out of style every 6 months (although companies are trying harder and harder to make it so).
Nor do they have the same toxic effect on the environment (possible exception: food?) and personal self esteem as high fashion.
You are conflating high fashion and fast fashion. High fashion doesn't go out of style every 6 months. Louis Vuitton still sells the same Monogram purse that they did 10 years ago, likewise my aunt has several $1000+ handbags she has owned for 20+ years. Your comment about high fashion going out of style every 6 months is just untrue, and to the other posters point just highlights the myopic lens in which software engineers view fashion.
Also, the NY article is not about fast fashion (Zara, H&M), it's about high fashion (Marc Jacobs, Balenciaga, Alexander Wang).
High fashion sets the trends (and the 6 month cycle) that the fast fashion outlets follow. When talking about negative influence on society and the environment they're pretty inseparable.
I agree I could have made the distinction between high and fast fashion clearer in my comment though.
For the record, the handbag example is an extreme outlier and not at all illustrative of the how the industry actually functions (makes money).
men fashion does not go out of style in 6 months (in 10 years, though, some trends do change).
Also, Architecture, music and movies also have trends.
Not a lot Brutalism projects are started today and westerns have been replaced by superhero movies. It does not make any of these projects pointless either.
There are trends in every creative field imaginable, that wasn't the point. The trends in fashion move the quickest and are completely, absolutely arbitrary. Fashion also dictates that still-functional products get discarded on a whim, unlike say, architecture.
Pointing out an extreme outlying example does nothing to contradict my assertion. A single example does nothing to negate what is obviously an overall trend.
First, gp comment just give a basic example (chinos or tshirts, or lots of other clothes would have been admissible too) showing that your assertion is pretty weak.
But let's not focus on that one.
Let's see what the thesis is :
- there are new trends (dictated by celebrities and designers)
- these trends only sow insecurities and environmental destruction.
Let's disregard the first one, even though as shown above it could be debated.
but focus on the second part. You assert that fashion work only sow insecurities and environmental destruction but provide nothing to prove that point. You can repeat as many as you want that an art form brings nothing, you will be no closer to have an actual argument.
I am really not a fan of fast fashion and its environmental practices but if anything it is more of a parasitism of the work of fashion designers. By a large margin, the bulk of what fast fashion companies produces does not come from well known designers and for good reason : there is a lot of work on materials, techniques and fitting that get into such pieces. This is just not doable at any scale.
If anything, a better argument would be that late stage capitalism or lack environmental taxation allow companies to produce lots of goods without any regard for the environment.
"these trends only sow insecurities" is a very sad statement. Clothing choices is way of self expression for many people. The world would not be a better place if we all worn black pants and grey tshirts, only a less interesting one.
Basics such as chinos and t-shirts do not show that "my assertion is pretty weak" at all, because they aren't "fast fashion". They are staples that remain in style for a long, long time. I'd argue that they serve to support my argument rather than contradict it. I didn't say all clothing is "fast fashion".
As for the second part. My quote was actually 'New "trends" dictated by celebrities and designers every year do nothing but sow personal insecurities and environmental destruction.'
Obviously the phrase "do nothing but" is an absolutism that I should not have used, since it makes it easy for someone to provide a single counter-example to disprove it. I don't deny that self-expression and "art" are positive things. The question is whether those positive effects are worthwhile considering the negative ones. My opinion is that it's not even close. Not by a long shot.
>late stage capitalism or lack environmental taxation allow companies to produce lots of goods without any regard for the environment.
Agreed. But, I think the fashion industry itself is largely morally bankrupt. It preys on peoples insecurities, and environmental externalities more so than (almost) any other.
> My opinion is that it's not even close. Not by a long shot.
at last we agree. That's your opinion and nothing else. you also seem to confuse/conflate fashion with fast fashion. It seems just as fair and interestined as conflating movie making with the worst money grabbing by the numbers movie ever made.
well if you remove the "do nothing but", the argument does only get weaker since it becomes "for some people fashion fuels insecurities, so it should be destroyed".
Marvel movies always have that one shot of the protagonist impossible pecs and abs. It fuels insecurities for sure for some men. It is not a reason to stop making movies.
This simply is not true. You may not know enough about food culture or architecture to see it, but those trends move just as quickly as the rest of human culture.
Still-functional products being discarded on a whim is basically the history of architecture.
The fact is, all of human culture is “arbitrary” and bad for the environment. Food, architecture, fashion, and civilization itself. Just because you don’t care about clothing specifically, doesn’t make it somehow worse than everything else we do.
The only thing that is good for the environment is becoming a nomadic hunter-gatherer and living off the land.
You're asserting that architecture changes faster than fashion? I'm not even sure how to rebuff that since it's so patently ridiculous on its face.
As for food trends, they are indeed changing faster than ever but they're more on a 3-5 year cycle at most. Certainly not 6 months.
Let's examine the word arbitrary. The "in" colors, styles and cuts (the entire make-up of clothing) are undeniably arbitrary and change every 6 months. There's nothing remotely comparable in food or architecture.
Based on your other comment, you seem to take great offence at fashion being disparaged here. It's okay to like fashion. It's the industry that's being attacked, not you personally. And yes, other industries are bad, some even more so. But that's irrelevant.
Yes, culture and trends are a waste, when they are primarily a marketing tool to make people consume your product.
Look at history and you find plenty of examples how cultures and trends emerged and spread within parts of societies, then got dragged into the spotlight by people wanting to maximize profit of off it, selling soulless disposable shells of the originals.
It's the same thing. People aren't spending $150 on designer jeans but now spending $100 on designer sweatpants. Hollywood celebs have been replaced by instagram influencers.
Every pound of vehicle mass that you've purchased beyond what was absolutely necessary to 'get from A to B' and every unnecessary bit of travel or vacation has produced considerably more 'waste' than anything a the 'high end' of fashion.
Seriously - this moral concern coming from the 'land of a billion not-necessarily-even-useful plastic gadgets'?
The 'high end' of fashion is mostly art and artisanal, paid for by the rich. Not essential, but not a big deal.
Furthermore, the article is not about even 'high end fashion' - it's about basic attire. If people want to walk around in branded underwear then fine, but this is literally 'Idiocracy, 2008' coming to life.
If there is possibly an issue with 'waste' it's definitely not towards the 'upper 1/2' of the industry wherein such pieces could be worn for a lifetime, rather, it's 'fast fashion' i.e. H&M and Zara. This is arguably wasteful.
>Since when is 'fast fashion' 'high fashion'? 'Fast Fashion' is not even 'fashion' - it's literally just 'clothing'.
I'm not clear why you would call fast fashion, "not even fashion". That sounds embarrassingly elitist.
To be honest I'm not sure what point you're making that relies on their being a clear distinction between the two? I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that you're trying to say high fashion is not as culpable or "bad" as fast fashion is?
Sure, not directly. The lower volume and having more money for better sourcing probably makes it slightly more sustainable.
But, high fashion sets the dangerous expectation that you have to update your wardrobe regularly in order to fit in. That's the crux of the problem. They also directly profit off of fast fashion churn [0].
I could have been clearer in specifically condemning "fast fashion" rather than the high end (though I think the condemnation of that segment was also implied).
The reason I called out high-fashion is that it sets the trends and expectations for the rest of the industry. H&M and the like model their lines based on what the high end fashion industry says is in-vogue. They change this every season for no good reason other than to drive (false) demand at the mid and high end.
Other than that, nothing you wrote contradicts anything I wrote. Automobiles, travel and single use plastics are also valid issues but that's not the focus of this thread.
Its just a manifestation of human need to be in a hierachy. Makes no sense to me to attack a particular symptom.
I can think of a lots examples more destructive than fashion
expensive cars
single family homes with 5 bedrooms and 4 toilets
yatches
driving/flying vacations
suburbs/ need for "space"
overeating meat
I think its a common kneejerk reaction against fashion in nerd circles because we never found it useful and something that played to our negatives. A complait that has very little to do with the environment, really.
There is nothing kneejerking about being against 'fast fashion'.
The fashion industry is the second-largest consumer of the world's water supply. [0]
The fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity’s carbon emissions. [0]
For comparison it produces more carbon than international flights and maritime shipping combined. [0]
The wastefulness of it all is even more dismaying. 85% of the world's textile production ends in a landfill every year.[0]
I agree that all the things in your list are as non-essential as the fashion industry but none of them (except maybe for the meat industry) have the business volume and carbon impact of the fashion industry as it currently operates. None of this is sustainable.
#1: Specialty clothing for outdoor activities, etc.
#2: Stuff for day-to-day travel and (when I used to regularly go into an office--which hasn't been for years) day-to-day office. This clothing isn't particularly expensive but gets stained/worn over time.
I have dress clothing but I wear it so seldom that I'm pretty sure I'll never buy another tie or likely another suit.
My thought was more of the dramatic shifts in fashion which can follow a sudden political and economic shock, as with the French Revolution.
Fashion evolves toward ever greater complexity as a Veblen status-signalling good, then recapitulates. Often it is lower-class wear which emerges as the new standard, then progresses through the cycle again, often being elevated to the status of elite wear: dinner jackets, morning coats, longe suit, three-piece suit, dungarees, designer jeans, button-downs and khakis, etc.
Several of those transitions followed major shocks: WWI, Great Depression, WWII, the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam movements especially. The 2001, 2007, and 2020 economic panics similarly, though the last most notably IMO.
(Arguably Fast Fashion was a business response to the 2007-9 crisis.)
The fast-fashion trend seemed heading for a fall. Covid-19 delivered the kick.
See Homage to Catalonia for fashion change to lower-class wear and back, changing with the fortunes of the republic.
Rule of thumb: the waitstaff in restaurants wear what the patrons had been dining in, before the last fashion shift. In the Coming Age of Formal Sweatpants, I'm guessing the front of the house will adopt button-downs and khakis.
(Browsing old pictures makes it clear the Iron Curtain was pervious to even minor changes in fashion. There may have been ideological opposition among the elites on both sides, but not only did We look, from the oh-so-distant viewpoint of the twenty-first century, silly in our wide lapels or legwarmers, They did too.)
Maybe the pandemic and associated social revolutions are the endpoint of an evolution towards public acceptance of comfort clothes that begun with angry, poorly dressed, peseants in 1790's france.
Honestly I like some aspects of the fashion industry -- shoes, hats, even shirts or collar shirts all have some personality you can showcase who you are and give yourself an identity (I think that's what makes fashion kinda interesting).
However, pants? It's not really that different. I could care less lol
I am getting pretty tired of sweatpants but regular pants feel uncomfortable while working from home. Does anybody know some pants that are reasonably comfortable but still a little stylish?
how are normal pants uncomfortable when working from home exactly? How is your home enviroment different from work that makes this clothing uncomfortable?
Normal pants aren't necessarily uncomfortable. But, when the weather is cooler (I haven't had on a pair of long pants except for doing some yard work that required it for at least a couple months), I tend to wear tights or sweats around the house which are more comfortable.
After all, I used to wear a suit in the office. If it was well-fitted it's not that uncomfortable but doesn't mean I'm going to wear it at home.
Honestly? Levi's makes cheap jeans under the "Denizen" brand for Target (and maybe others too, I haven't looked). They're made of a stretchier fabric than real denim, cost less, feel more comfortable, and I've yet to blow out the inseam in a piar :)
From other thread: As a former fashion writer, the "fashion industry," reduces to a spectacle for selling perfume and cosmetics. Fashion itself is an expression of beliefs, power, and alignment that people buy clothes to participate in.
In this sense, fashion is to clothing what live music is to alcohol, or what journalism is to advertising. There is an underlying high-margin business that you use a spectacle to attract people into to sell them stuff. The talent for the spectacle exists in a local equilibrium that is largely oblivious to the economics that make it viable. Journalists are a great example of people who thought they were the money maker and remain in denial about the economics of their role of bringing readers to advertisers.
Fashion designers (like Jacobs in the article) appear to have the same conceit, where their role as the spectacle that draws in punters who buy super high margin smelly water, face paint, and snake oil lotions has been displaced. Covid has just been the coup de gras, where the fashion business has been steadily being polarized and dis-intermediated for at least a decade. A business that promised and re-sold proximity to fame was really taken out much earlier by Instagram and its influencer economy, where now everyone is famous for Warhol's 15 minutes, and the returns on investment in fame schemes are now much more diffuse.
The dynamic described in the article about luxury clothing in the end resembles the book and publishing business, where you are in effect consigning product to retailers, who make massive orders for their big box shops, then destroy you with returns. It's like how movies spent almost 100 years in in the popcorn and concessions business, and they've found totally new economics in the streaming game. Fixing fashion is the same class of problem as fixing journalism, publishing, music, movies, and arts in general, where the economics of getting people together to sell them complimentary high margin goods in the moment and place was decimated by social media, and now finished off by covid. These markets aren't dead, but they are now polarized, where the super high end is fine, and the absolute bottom will persist, but the lucrative middle is hollowed out. These fashion design brands made most of their money on middle market goods backed by over leveraged private equity investments and sunk costs in conglomerates, and that's why they're getting killed by this.
Fashion is the business of symbols and signifiers and there is infinite human demand for these (just as there is for stories, conflict/news, spectacle, etc), so future businesses using totally different modalities will pick up the slack to meet it, but reading fashion talent hand wringing about their market is like listening to journalists talk about the economics of publishing, hockey players discussing team ownership, or perhaps even us hackers talking about venture capital. What we think is meaningful and decisive, it's not meaningful and decisive.
Fashion is simply marketing gone wild. It's preying on the idea that the best way to be a better you is to wear ____. That you can cure your inferiority complex by consuming X, Y or Z. Which in turn belittles those around you, and so on.
TL;TD - An expensive ____ (e.g., watch) doesn't make you a better person. And you know this. So you get a nice car. Doesn't help. So you get new shoes. And so on.
Fashion is a cure for people who lack confidence and style. But that cure is more like an addiction.
It's a little strange to me how often the ills of consumerism are conflated with fashion alone. This comment (although not only this comment) drastically undersells that fashion is an art form as much as painting, writing or cinema: a means of personal expression and cultural communication which exists in conversation with its own history and traditions. Beyond that, the staving off of existential dread you mention is just as present in the amount of networking gear I've been obsessively adding to my homelab during iso -- where is the contempt for that?
this comment section is hard to read. For lots of topics, HN comment section is interesting to follow to see experts in the fields giving insightful info. This is not one of these.
Totally agree on fashion as an art form. The pursuit of beauty also applies to what you wear.
I read the article, then was surprised to see that the comments here are focused to much on the clothing part of the story, rather than the investment and financing parts of the story.
They way VC is described in the story seems familiar to me from time spent working for Bay-area startups, and I think the critiques in the story apply in tech as well.
Well DTC is moving through a lot of non perishable industries as many do understand how much power retailers have over the manufacturer of products they sell. Just as the article mention RTVs and discounting forced upon the manufacturer grocery has been doing this for ages, even down to the point of forcing sales on a schedule, charging for end cap space or specific aisles.
One issue the fashion industry also faced is that for the last few years it really felt as if America was pulling back from celebrity worship. That is good thing and part of that means not having to keep up with the Kardashians, whether their TV show or the brands they sport. With so many in the music industry called out in #METOO; excepting one glaring genre; there was pull back there as well.
DTC has made it sort of in perishables through Instacart and such push many manufacturers DTC through proxies like Amazon and more.
As for sweats, as an ex who used to model when young always told me, sweats don't judge.
My preference is to buy full black jeans and shirts, 10 at a time. They look good and don’t go out of style. No insecurity when going outdoors and tons of cognitive load freed up for other stuff every morning. Instead of having to choose an outfit every morning... It’s too exhausting to keep up with trends ;)
This has the unfortunate side effect of everyone thinking there’s something “off” about you. This can have detrimental effects on your career, even if you’re a billionaire iconoclast, but a regular person probably will face greater detriment.
Notably, the cognitive difference picking between having all the same clothes and having a variety of clothes that go together in any combination (various jeans, colors of tee shirts, etc) is nil, and has the added benefit that people won’t think you’re write because you’re always wearing all black (though I can’t promise they won’t think you’re weird for other reasons).
I’m on the pretty low to nonexistent level of fashion consciousness but fast forward 8 months to a world where maybe there is a vaccine. I can see a rebound cultural shift to going out/dressing up bringing back fashionable clothing for work and play stronger than pre-pandemic. There can easily be a cultural shift away from everyone sitting in their basement playing Animal Crossing in dirty sweatpants on Saturday night. I’m a homebody introvert but when the vaccine hits man I’m hitting the town hard!
And at that time, being fashionable will have additional cachet because by then many of the fast fashion retailers will be bankrupt or running reduced selection and inventory.
For anyone who cares about sustainability and how textiles and fashion relate, the documentary The True Cost will change everything for you. It's available free online: https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost.
The industry pollutes and oppresses beyond what you think.
Isn't this ultimately a good thing? I recall someone here made a post about how much Green House Emissions are created as a result of the Fashion Industry.
Personally I haven't worn sweatpants since I was in mandated gym class in HS and it was too cold outside for those overpriced cheaply made shorts and have instead opted for gym clothes (as it was closed) which are nylon/synthetic wicking and breathable during the winter months and then cargo shorts collection I've had and added to since I was in University in the summer.
Honestly, while I think Women's fashion is mainly a thing they do for themselves, as most guys care more about what is underneath the clothes, its something that should be disrupted if its true it accounts for so much environmental costs. And perhaps we could accelerate the tech needed to '3d print' clothes/outfits, or at least something like a community based automated textile model where you bring a 'print/template' of the outfit adjusted for your measurements, pay a sum to the operators and come back a few days later with the clothes you want and cutting out the middle men.
This could spur on a ton of creative sub-cultures like they have in France, Italy, Japan or England that so many have talked about about in this thread, as they still have a significant demand for tailors to meet the Global demand.
I tip really well when I take my clothes to the local dry cleaner own and operated by a Family of Koreans because not only do they have a dry-cleaning business, they're situated inside the family owned landromat with about 40 machines, but also have a garment altering business, a shoe repair business inside them and are perhaps trail-blazing how clothing could be done in the Future with a modern automated textile model as an adjunct now that retail real estate is undergoing an Apocalypse situation and can be had for cheap.
I wear timeless fashion things for formal wear and its usually made in Italy or S. Korea these days, I wish I could put a few local seamstresses/tailors/shoe artisans back to work and stop relying on needless shipping costs and the harm that goes with it for my clothing. Even if it costs more I'd prefer to stop relying on this model for the few $1000s I spend on clothes a year.
> Yes, but Jeans are part of the collapse now and considered formal for creatives with Levi's down 62% and doing layoffs. I thought "formality" was bizarre as well, but apparently their target demo don't consider the older skinny-jeans, and the new high-waisted mom-jeans to be as comfortable as Lulus... who'd have thunk it?
It's CEO did, I saw his interview in a podcast about how he saw the trend happening from Yogis and Health Centric movements in the early days and how he swept in after the 2008 financial crises when many of the former Bar Hopper scenesters switched to the Gym for their socilizing place of choice due to less expendable income.
He still thinks the one piece lycra smart-clothes movement that measures all kinds of vitals and provides a ton of real-time health information is in the works for the next transition, but that Lulu is the first phase to get to that. If I recall correctly, he came from the outdoor/skate-snowboard Industries and caught that wave before starting Lulu and had a lot of success there. Overall it was interesting and insightful on something I give almost no real focus toward, clothing trends are something I stopped caring about in HS and I've seen so many things 'come back in style' that I see how unoriginal 'fashion' really is.
So, in the 80s, there was this anti-cassete copying campaign, and they were stickers etc, "Record copying is killing the music industry".
And Jello Biafra (iirc), said: "Record copying is killing the music industry - and it's about time!".
I'd say the same for the fashion industry - selling crap, made in sweatshops, marked up 10x to 100x, for mindless, environmentally unfriendly consumption based on BS advice of complicit websites, tv shows, magazines, etc., on what people should wear next...
Exactly, the fashion industry needs a hard stop and to be replaced with a environmentally responsible and ethical approach.
I've almost completely pivoted to wearing classic polo shirts (so much better than t-shirts) and workwear(-derived) pants and shorts. Work pants run the gamut from heavy-duty carpenter/bricklayer-type designs to clean straight-forward chinos and classic men's pants for service staff, waiters and the like. Designs that are clean and decidedly non-flashy, and last for a long time. I also prefer work shirts to dress shirts, I like the thicker softer fabrics, and just like how the collar on a polo shirt is genius in the sun, rolling up the sleeves on a shirt makes it more versatile.
If a specific brand's clothing isn't both comfortable and durable, they simply do not last long in the workwear segment, because word of mouth spreads like wildfire among colleagues.
As a bonus, most workwear is made to be washed at 60 or even 70 degrees C, which means I'll probably never wash it to pieces at 40 degress, unlike some of the more fashionable clothes I used to own.
One cassette version of the Dead Kennedys e.p. In God We Trust Inc. had a blank side, printed with the message "Home taping is killing record industry profits! We left this side blank so you can help."
Even sweatpants grow old. Feels weird but sometimes I need to put on work clothes even if no one will see me in that outfit. It helps a little to set boundaries.
Yeah I stopped wearing my sweat shorts and went back to chinos because it makes me feel more alert and focused. I've never been one to pay much attention to my appearance, but in quarantine I need all the help I can get to stay on task. I'm even thinking of getting some indoor, lace-up shoes and wearing them during the week.
The way this article frames it, all these fashion companies are going direct-to-consumer (DTC) as their business model salvation, but that is only good for Facebook.
> Here is the problem for DTC companies: Facebook really is better at finding them customers than anyone else. That means that the best return-on-investment for acquiring customers is on Facebook, where DTC companies are competing against all of the other DTC companies and mobile game developers and incumbent CPG companies and everyone else for user attention. That means the real winner is Facebook, while DTC companies are slowly choked by ever-increasing customer acquisition costs. Facebook is the company that makes the space work, and so it is only natural that Facebook is harvesting most of the profitability from the DTC value chain.
fwiw this is basically what happened to "media" or "the news". facebook middle manned the distribution chain and then peeled off most of the value/ad-revenue. moving on to consumer-goods/e-commerce is just "whats next" after news.
I think it depends on who you approach. The place I went to in Chengdu was actually owned by a foreigner. You would get measured. Then he sourced fabric from Hong Kong, had the pieces made there, then made second and third fittings in person. Shoes were made locally, with leather sourced from Hong Kong as well.
I'm not sure if it would be possible to order a completely bespoke tailored suit online. If you gave them your measurements, you probably could get a suit, that was semi-tailored (similar to off-the-shelf suits). You'd still need to get final adjustments made. But it still wouldn't be completely fitted 100% to you and your body.
If you look up YouTube street tours of some European countries or Japan or even Russia, you'll notice that the average person is still generally fashionable, certainly more so than in the US.
Speaking of fashion design, the snake-text formatting and layout and industrial snarkiness of this NYT article is totally reminiscent of suck.com (i.e. 22 December 1995):
>HotWired's Flux, a weekly gossip column from the pseudonymous Ned Brainard, was close. The column was the first example of what the Web magazine Salon (www.salon1999.com) dismissed as "snake text," meaning the story ran in one long, narrow column.
I see fashion every single day, people aren't under lock and key like what happened in China where they welded apartment doors shut from the outside, on at least one occasion.
Such a non-article that really shows how the media inflamed the whole influenza story.
It's their job to write. Writing stuff literally puts food on their table. Even when it's something as stupid as fashion industry collapsing.
An influenza season with a higher death rate than usual is a gold mine to them. A literal golden age of media.
So because your particular experience is different, everyone else's is invalid? Hundreds if not thousands of cities went into complete lockdown, and some remain in it.
My city is vibrant and busy, but a nearby state is locked down, with curfews and all stores shut except pharmacies and supermarkets. That's the reality of it, this article is exploring the effects of that.
It's not influenza, you think you're being clever, but you're just displaying your willful ignorance. A proud idiot is still an idiot.
The "fast" fashion industry maybe, which has been an over-inflated, Brave New World-like market for decades. When it comes down to it, people don't need more than a few items of clothes. And right now we're in a situation where it comes down to it. Comfort and practicality are important now, not whether your outfit is fresh or fashionable.
Looking at the brand in question in the article, their sweatsuits look very similar to any $20 sweatsuit but cost $88 for the top and $88 for the bottom.
I would argue that the reason high end fashion is dying is because no one can afford it and more importantly I think people realize there is no need. Amazon provides exposure to a wide range of acceptable clothing for pennies on the dollar compared to high end brands. If the quality is not great and it does not last as long, I'll just buy another. If i have to buy 5 of them, I am still probably better off and that really does not happen, the quality is generally fine.
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