
The Essay to Read If You Even Think About Wearing Clothes - tintinnabula
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-essay-to-read-if-you-even-think-about-wearing-clothes
======
Spearchucker
Fashion has fascinated me for 35 years. All that time has resulted in two
observations -

The first is that nobody knows fashion like the Italians do, so get your
advice there.

The second is a result of the first - some basic rules will get you an ageless
but very fashionable look for very little money. And so positions you well for
a future focused on wealth rather than status.

This applies everywhere. Buying a car? Look to the best car manufacturer.
Don't buy new, never lease, always go for reliability.

~~~
detritus
I don't disagree with your view on Italians and fashion however I do often
find myself amused by the compliant uniformity of fashion in Italy. I vist two
or three times a year and as someone old enough to not obsess so much about my
own fashion anymore, but not so old as to have given up entirely, I'm
invariably impressed by dapper old men holding on to youthful exhibition.

However, the flipside is that 'whatever mode is in fashion that season' is
draped off everyone - be it the particular type of puff jacket, or particular
brand of trainer or hoodie or size and volume of scarf, there it is in
consistent multiplicate, over everyone.

It becomes less, to my eye, individual expression than blinkered social
compliance.

Not that I'm not entirely without some envy, especially where my father in law
is concerned, he being very much more fash than I!

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I am Italian (living in San Francisco though), and I pretty much agree with
your observations - in general, and also specifically about Italy.

On a side note, I find the brand "Uniqlo", which sounds very much like the
word "unique", to be the ultimate oxymoron.

You can see people wearing "unique" dresses dozens of times a day, everywhere
in the US.

~~~
detritus
Amusingly, for me, my partner buys each of her folks a puffer jacket every few
years from Uniqlo - apparently they're just about different enough to stand
out from the crowd they work so hard to confine themselves to! :)

Personally, I see Uniqlo as offering fine base-elements for clothing. I long
ago settled into having my own uniform - just so that I don't have to think
about my daily clothing too much - so own a dozen or so exact-same long-
sleeved navy blue t-shirt-things from them. No logo, no branding, no overt
design - just simple, methodical soft cotton clothes that pair nicely with
whatever else is in my wardrobe.

.

I never thought I'd write about my crap fashion on HN...

------
ggm
I recommend _it 's a small, medium and outsize world_, by John Taylor which is
probably out of print, but is a fantastic history of fashion written in 1966.
Its wry, satirical but informing. Eric Newby also wrote about his family
fashion business pre and post war in _something wholesale_

------
mises
I'm not sure I understood this article at all. Part of it may be because I
don't understand fashion, but it was written in an overly-grandiose prose
which is a bit misplaced in an article such as this. I don't want to have to
give an artcile the same kind of thought I give Dickens.

With that said, can any one fkll me in on exactly what this is supposed to
mean?

------
Freestyler_3
And after that you can watch The True Cost.

~~~
spodek
Available free online: [http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-
cost](http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost)

Highly recommended if you even think about wearing clothes.

------
cafard
There is an essay of Ortega y Gasset's from the 1920s or 1930s, in which he
wrote that British men were the worst dressed in Europe, because they had real
things to think about. I was pretty slovenly when I read this, and took some
comfort in the notion. (I have long since married a woman whose eye for
clothing is as sharp as mine is dim, and am usually presentably dressed.)

------
zaroth
Chiuri (Dior) sure knows how to make a peplos look amazing. The best fabric,
lighting, makeup, and photography in the world probably don't hurt. It could
do without the typography though.

This book review of Bernard Rudofsky’s “Are Clothes Modern?” is about as close
as something could get me to being interested to read a treatise on fashion.

------
dec0dedab0de
After a certain level of cleanliness, the more effort someone puts into their
appearance, the less respect I have for them. I have tried to look past this
in some situations, but I cant help but think they're lying to me in some way.

~~~
bane
I have a hard time getting out of my head that those people could be putting
more time into furthering their expertise rather than participating in a
fashion show. I've had similar experiences with people who pursue very intense
fitness activities. You _can 't_ train for a marathon while also putting in
the long hours to be at the peak of your technical field for example.
Sometimes, on a day off, I see people out in the road training for intense
cycling or running activities and I can't help but think to myself "those
people must be impossible to work with...why aren't they at work now?"

Then I also temper myself to realize that work isn't all of a person's life,
and I also spend a great deal of time in non-productive pursuits that aren't
help to me at work.

Working all the time at all costs isn't healthy. It reminds me to go out and
take a walk, or a sculpture class or something.

~~~
losteric
> You can't train for a marathon while also putting in the long hours to be at
> the peak of your technical field for example.

Why not?

I always try to tackle big challenges at work, switching teams / companies
when finding challenges becomes the challenge. Hands-on learning 9-5 is enough
to maintain my personal maximum sustainable career growth - any more would
lead to burn out.

Commute jogging (10mi/day) and weights at the gym takes 2h/day.

That leaves another 6 hours/day for happy hour, cooking, movies, guitar...
_excluding_ all the free time of weekends.

What are you doing with all that time?

~~~
bane
Not taking the time to read all of the original comment provides a nice
compact example of the point. Perhaps you were too busy lifting? (I'm being
sarcastic, please don't take offence!)

> What are you doing with all that time?

Working! Why are you spending all that time screwing around? You've just told
me you have another 10 hours a week you can be working that you use
exercising. And another 30 hours a week you spend watching movies and playing
guitar! That's like a whole other full-time job you could be putting into
work! (for the record I'm being very sarcastic)

In responding to dec0dedab0de's original comment, I agreed that I share his
superficial feelings -- but I don't think those feeling are right. My point is
that while for some people like myself, grinding as hard as possible as long
as possible, is both natural _and_ not healthy. For some people, work is not
naturally the thing they spend all their time on, and they gravitate to other
things as soon as the clock hits 8 hours for the day.

For people such as myself, my natural tendencies to overwork can, at times,
unfairly extend to other people and I often have to resist the temptation to
think that they should be doing the same as me -- and if they aren't that they
aren't putting in 100%.

These are _very_ unhealthy thought processes and one that I personally have to
spend time, effort and discipline to temper. The problem is, for me, work is
_fun_.

On the flip-side I've also really worked with people who become incredibly
unreliable at work (during normal work hours) while they train for <sporting
event> and it's absolutely intolerable. I also say this as somebody who
intensely pursued a sporting activity very heavily in my younger years at
about 20-25 hours a week. People really minimize the amount of time they spend
doing these things.

And to dec0dedab0de's original point, I've also worked with people of
impossibly limited technical capability who fly up the corporate ladder, often
to disaster, because they have good looks and dress well.

------
hi5eyes
[https://loosethreads.com/podcast/2016/09/27/loose-threads-
po...](https://loosethreads.com/podcast/2016/09/27/loose-threads-podcast-
building-the-future-of-clothing-and-unlocking-social-mobility-with-abe-
burmeister-of-outlier/)

podcast with the creator of outlier.nyc one of the more interesting
workwear/techwear brands

'Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear' is also good read

------
nickhalfasleep
The book in question from MOMA:
[https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_3159_300063439...](https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_3159_300063439.pdf)

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AgentME
I'm going to be that guy and complain about the webpage's formatting.

When I opened the page, a modal dialog was covering everything asking me to
sign up for some newsletter. I closed it to get to the article, and I ended up
with this: [https://i.imgur.com/sV9hfOA.png](https://i.imgur.com/sV9hfOA.png).
The actual article makes up less than 4% of my screen. I've never seen a page
this bad before. There's two different types of pop-ins from different
directions I have to close before the article becomes readable. It's like
playing whack-a-mole. Is anyone working on the site proud of that? Who looked
at the site when it had just one of those pop-ins (and a modal) and made the
decision that it needed another one? I don't want to be too ranty, I'm
actually baffled.

