I think that caring about fashion and clothes sometimes seems frivolous to people, far more so than other art/luxury purchases, and I think that two contributing factors are societal sexism (not that old art/craft split, exactly, but more that fashion is identified with women) and self-styled artistic types' disdain for capitalism and the profit motive.

And I think that talking about fashion can bring out defensiveness in people, more than talking about expensive cars or fancy watches or whatever, because everyone has to wear clothes, and everyone sees other people's clothes, and everyone therefore has some dealings with it. It's very out front and public.

You might think my record collection is frivolous and excessive, but, unless I invite you over, you'll probably never see it. The same could not be said about my eco-friendly European comfort footwear.

I agree with everything above.

So I think that if you know how to dress yourself, and generally like how you look, then you dislike Put This On and other "how to dress" new dandyism sites.

it's not true for me. I get tired of fashion sites, journalism, talk, etc, very quickly, but not because I dress well. I don't dress well; it's a real effort for me. I have enjoyed some blogs/writing about how to get your wardrobe to be as simple and functional as possible while still looking polished, and I like dressing up and nifty clothes a little bit, but not enough to really concentrate on it for a long time.

I also agree with box that since maybe the 1940s, there's a large strain of thinking that says it's somewhat un-masculine to be interested in clothing. It's fairly ridiculous, and definitely a historical anomaly - during most of history, men were pretty seriously into their clothing when they could afford to be.

One thing I appreciate about the men in the Texas half of my family is that they've never been this way. Something in the culture there meant: you dress sharp. Your jeans are hemmed right and have creases. You wear a suit when it's time to wear a suit. Your shirt can be flashy and your boots are awesome.

talking about fashion can bring out defensiveness in people...because everyone has to wear clothes, and everyone sees other people's clothes, and everyone therefore has some dealings with it. It's very out front and public

And in addition, people judge one another's clothes. It's something the culture actually encourages us to do, with the "do's and don'ts" sort of journalism, shows like "What Not to Wear," etc. From childhood on, we've probably all experienced being openly condemned for some fashion faux pas, and it stings. Clothes have always been markers of status and personal with-it-ness, but contemporary Western culture can be especially vicious about people's individual choices. That part of the world of clothing has always been exceedingly alienating for me.

The museum where I work currently has an exhibit on fashion and personal style up, and these topics have come up a lot: clothes as prisons, clothes as anxieties, clothes as aspirations, clothes as frustrations.

So while I think it's true that at least some people don't need the information in clothing blogs, some people just don't want it. Just as with cooking, not everyone's into it at a hobby or even a utilitarian level, and some people have a real antipathy for the whole fashion enterprise, which has come a really long way (at least in the case of women's fashion) from dressing regular people to look well.

I agree with everything above.

Miko hits pretty much everything I was thinking about.


In terms of alienation, it can be especially vicious when it comes to sizes. I'm a big woman. I've always been big, ever since I was a baby. It sucks to not be able to go into a store and be guaranteed to find something in my size.

Most of the time, if I do manage to find something in my size, it's usually more expensive than an equivalent smaller size thing, or it's in some horrific weird fabric, or it's in ugly colors, or it may even just fit strangely like have giant gaping arm holes.

I'm sure things are different for men's and women's fashions. I remember buying men's slacks for my referee pants because trying to find women's pants that actually fit worth a damn and that didn't require hemming was fucking impossible. (Of course, then I got called out on an evaluation for wearing men's slacks, because they had white pockets, not navy like the rest of the pants.)

I suppose that I'm a wee bit oversensitive about this sort of thing (because I am so fucking tired of listening to my mother bitch about my clothing choices and how I look like a slob and how I should dress more feminine and lose weight so I can wear cuter clothes and GRAR GRAR GRAR.)

There's some things that people just value more. Some people value weird foods that I just can't wrap my head around. Some people are all about the latest gadgetry. Theater, movies, TV shows--it doesn't really matter. If someone values their shiny clothes and $500 shoes--that's their business. I don't really give a fuck.

But if someone tries to get in my business and bitch about the fact that the comfiest pair of shoes that I own (blue Lacoste flats I swiped from Nordstrom Rack 2 years ago for $80, marked down from $200+) are scuffed because I've worn them to work every day for the past 2 years--they can fuck all the way off. I value comfy shoes over shoes that look like they've just come from the cobbler. (Especially at work since I'm on my feet a lot and driving a forklift. No, internets, I am not going to wear a skirt+stockings+heels when I'm on a forklift 40+ feet in the air in a 50F warehouse. Nice try.)

Some people nowadays grew up in an atmosphere of unisex it-doesn't-matter-what-you-wear.

For men there's also that women can wear most things they wear but not the reverse. At some point some guys want to explore what exclusively male clothes (3 piece suits, cufflinks, ties) look like. And then these dandyism weblogs fill the gap of explaining that a jacket is all about the cut, that it's better to err on the understated side, what good shoes look like etc.
The kind of things you used to learn partially from your father and grandfather.
I explored these things in my early twenties. And it was great to leave the unisex world of t-shirts and jeans aside for a while.

For women the standard seems to be to look young. For guys it seems important to seem mature. A slightly different dynamic. Traditional male clothes like suits and dress shoes fulfill a role in this transition from childish boy to mature man.

A third way of looking at it may be rather European: knowing your way around these things is also a status indicator. So if you don't want to come across as a rube, if you move in circles where that is important, you want to know about these things.

Anyhow I'm drukn.

I dunno: I enjoy reading the occasional style blog (fashion blog, no so much, and I do think there's a difference), and I enjoyed that one, too... a little. I'm obviously not its target market, though I love the News Radio cane clip that's up there now. We quote that surprisingly often around my house, because I may be requiring a cane for daily use pretty soon. (I also often quote Turk from Scrubs: "I know you hate my cool walking stick, baby, but I got to be my own man! [pause] See? It's catching on!")

I don't need instruction on how to dress. I used to be very stylish; I worked in a posh boutique; I was surrounded by lush, lovely clothing every day and buying my own clothing there. Wearing fine apparel and lavish accessories became an everyday thing for me. Every day, all day, people inside and outside of the shop would tell me how smashing I looked.

(And even when I was posh, I always wore comfortable shoes. I'm with sperose on that. And comfortable shoes can look great. That's always been my first rule for clothing: it has to be comfortable, or I am not buying it. Even for my wedding, that was my first criterion: it must be comfortable. I thought, "Geez, I'm going to be exhausted and excited and busy and on display all damn day. Whatever I wear should feel great.")

Now I'm a student, and my style is much more utilitarian. I know how to doll up; I just don't do it very often. I still enjoy reading style blogs, and I can even take an episode of "What Not To Wear" occasionally (though I tune out during the make-up segment), because it's fun to see how other people put things together.

jouke, you made me think of something I was noticing yesterday as my mind was wandering in a meeting with my boss. I was finding myself feeling envious that menswear offers such a simple formula. A very small, finite set of basic pieces is infinitely variable in terms of fabric, color, cut, and combination. But the basic ensemble: shirt, tie, pants, jacket - not only remains unchanged, but is completely go-anywhere and always appropriate, as long as they're not bizarre or shabby. You can sit on a plane in them, go to a business meeting, eat at a barbecue, give a presentation, go to a wedding, officiate a wedding, negotiate a deal, have a business lunch, walk outdoors in winter, walk outdoors in summer -- all without changing the basic formula, and while always knowing you'll be fairly comfortable. You can easily walk in this outfit, and run if you have to. Jacket on = more formal, jacket off =less formal. Tie off = a lot less formal. Sleeves rolled up = working hard.

For women, I get frustrated some times with the range of clothing I have, and seem to need, because there's no one basic formula. I can wear a sweater, blouse, jacket, or dress. I can wear pants or a skirt. If I wear a skirt, I need tights or knee socks. I need a lot of different kinds of shoes, to "go with" these other outfits, and not all of them are appropriate to all weathers. I need some stuff that looks more formal, like business suits and nicer pants and blouses, and less formal, like sweaters and corduroys and jeanlike pants.

I feel like every day, I have to get up and do a complicated calculation about what to wear, taking into account: the weather; what's on my meeting schedule that day; whether I'm gonna see my boss or just the other working stiffs; whether I'll have a long walk or short walk from the car; and how hot or cold the office has been lately. In some ways, even though it seems nice that women can wear a lot of different things, too many choices are a problem, too. If you make a choice that's wrong, you can be sure someone, somewhere will be saying about you "don't you think she dresses a little...[schlubby/sexy/young/old/frumpy/wild/casual/stiff]"? It's like everything you wear is fraught with weight. Sometimes I think I'd like having fun just mixing and matching ties and shirt colors, and throwing a few basic suits over that and knowing that no matter what I have on the plate that day, it'll be appropriate.

Exactly. Men have a fairly neutral set of standard options, and they can also choose to step outside those options.

Women in developed Western nations do not have an equivalent neutral wardrobe option. Every decision is loaded with cultural and sociological baggage, even in standard office attire: do you wear a suit? A dress? Trousers? Skirt? Heels? Flats? Pantyhose, opaque tights? Do you wear make-up? To wear make-up is to make one statement, to eschew make-up is another. There is no non-statement.

There is no non-statement

Well put.

That said, there's a price for men, too: when they do choose to step slightly outside their narrower range of safe wardrobe choices, they may pay a stiffer social penalty than women do for small deviances from the style norm.

And that is why sexism is bad for everyone. The end.

I don't want to start a fight, but I think you may have some misconceptions about how loaded with meaning men's clothing is too.

Yeah, I don't think we need to have a fight about it, either; we have different experiences and live under different social expectations, and we pay different costs for flouting them. I recognize that men have social costs, too, and that I don't know all of them.

But, hell, I don't even know all the social rules and social costs for myself, as a recent wedding shower showed me. I showed up looking pretty nice, I thought, but to that side of the family, wearing trousers to a shower was a political statement. I am now the designated feminist, which is okay by me but totally unintentional.

Make-up is a whole other thing. A man who wears make-up is making a statement; a man who wears no makeup is not. A woman makes a statement by wearing makeup, or by choosing not to. Either way, I'm perceived to be saying something, even if what I'm actually saying is "I overslept" or "I couldn't find my compact."

Heh, our piece of grass is pretty luscious, isn't it?

I remember being quite annoyed when there was a fashion in NL for women to wear coats inspired by 19th century uniform coats with galon. And similarly women in NL often wearing boots up to the knee in winter.
Both things have been historically worn only by men. But we can't wear them anymore and women can. So unfair.

So I guess the boon of a limited mandatory standard for clothes is that it's convenient when you're in a rush to go to work and don't want to spend the time and energy to make a detailed choice.
On the other hand at some times; dates and festivities, you may want to splash out. Be special. Make an impression.
That's not so easy to do as a guy I find.

So for work it's quite easy. Especially since most guys don't know about cut and good shoes. So any charcoal suit will do.
But I'm still not quite sure how to dress to make a female date think; ooh, a man.
What's the male equivalent of wearing a form-fitting cocktail dress or summer dress and showing some cleavage?

Codpiece.

Hey, that's such a good idea.
I'll wear that on my upcoming 2nd date next sunday.
Hey, if it worked for Cameo and Henry VIII, why not for me?

You could even go all out and pull off A Clockwork Orange look. )Though then, the woman in question might think "Ooooh, a droog" rather than "Oooooh, a man."

we can't wear them anymore and women can

Well, I think it depends on how fashionable you are. We had an event here not long ago at which a guy came wearing a 19th-century-type jacket, ruffly shirt, tight breeches and tall boots, and looked incredibly hip. BUt he was a young, fashiony-clubby type of guy, and it worked for him. Even though I'm a woman,if you put that on me, it would not be a success.

What's the male equivalent of wearing a form-fitting cocktail dress or summer dress and showing some cleavage?

I think it's a really good quality pair of stone-colored, simple and soft-looking khaki-type trousers, or maybe a great fitting pair of jeans (depending on formality level of the date, of course), with a really nice leather belt and a crisp, well-tailored but relaxed-looking button-down shirt in white or, more awesomely, a pastel or unusual print. Top few buttons open. That's the classic look, I think, which would be equivalent to the linen-summer-sheath kind of thing for females.

I personally like men who dress with kind of a rustic, woolly character, and I love vintage, but that's me. I recently had a little fashion consultation (again, part of an event for work) and they said my look was "new preppy/Americana," which surprised me, but then made sense. I really like no-nonsense classics that look crisp, especially if they're reinvented with some sort of cool little twist. I like vintage, too, and Western.

* note that even that look for men is still: pants and a shirt.

Um... what's a button-down shirt? Is it a shirt that (counter-intutitvely) buttons up? Or the kind that has a button-down collar?

Heh, my stereotype hunky male image is of a guy with a few days stubble and a mixed grey-white sweather with a collar. And a golden retriever dog. And rowing.

I'm afraid you lose me with descriptions like "Western" or "vintage" or "no-nonsense classics".

But I'm happy to say that it's easy to find tight-fit shirts nowadays. I guess that to a date it's key to show of your body; slender waist and broad shoulders. (I'm just extrapolating from my view of the female role in a date)
So maybe I'll wear my black polka dot tight fitting shirt.
Hm, but the matching velvet black jacket would be over the top.
Grumble, grumble.


(in NL a button-down shirt is a bit of a faux-pas btw)

my stereotype hunky male image is of a guy with a few days stubble and a mixed grey-white sweather with a collar. And a golden retriever dog


So, the L.L. Bean catalog, in a nutshell. Or maybe Irish Spring ads, circa 1979.

The
I'm just extrapolating from my view of the female role in a date)

eh, it depends upon the person, ultimately.

(in NL a button-down shirt is a bit of a faux-pas btw)

You amaze me. Shirts w/o buttons are a bit of a faux pas here, at least in more formal/dressy places.

My dad has a story about a suit my grandmother made for him in the mid-60s (my grandmother was a great seamstress). It was purple velvet, with a tuxedo stripe in the pants, also purple. He wore it with a yellow Indian-style tunic shirt. So awesome. He had some other pretty splendid outfits as well. So, color and dashingness do occasionally break out from time to time.

We're all probably best off wearing what we feel comfortable in. If you really love flashy clothes, you can probably pull them off.

"Button-down" shirt means it buttons to close all the way down the front. Some people might start butting at the bottom and call it "buttoning up," though. Funny.

As a result of this thread I made some decisions about workwear last night. Totally headed for the land of simplification, and I think I'm going to go for a look that is at once both more neutral and more formal - really good coordinated suits,some w/pants, some w/skirts - which I can add fun accessories to, and of course change the shirt style and color. It'll be cheaper in the long run, and I'll be able to have more of what I envy in menswear. So what if I look like the office Ellen DeGeneres.