
Sweatpants Forever: How the Fashion Industry Collapsed - samsolomon
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/06/magazine/fashion-sweatpants.html
======
kazen44
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.

~~~
taurath
(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.

~~~
coldtea
> _Women have an expectation to express themselves and their personality._

Personality is expressed through choice of cut, material, and color of cloth?

~~~
magic_beans
Don't be dense. Whether you admit it or not, most people judge others based on
appearance.

~~~
coldtea
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.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
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.

------
coldtea
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...

~~~
tomkaos
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."

------
the8472
> 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.

~~~
chrisseaton
Do you believe that Taiwan somehow knew ahead of time that there was going to
be a pandemic this year? How do you believe they knew that?

~~~
the8472
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.

~~~
chrisseaton
> 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.

~~~
user_501238901
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.

~~~
wcoenen
> _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.

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-
industry-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-
passenger-traffic-globally/)

~~~
tomglynch
You are arguing a very minor point.

~~~
wcoenen
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.

------
pwinnski
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.

~~~
Shivetya
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.

------
MattGaiser
Good riddance. The majority of my clothing spending was for rarely worn social
compliance items like a suit, ties, and nice shoes.

~~~
ghaff
My spend is probably:

#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.

------
joosters
“ _Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every
six months._ ”

With the fashion industry ' _pushing the unseen and unsold 2020 collections
into 2021_ ', Oscar Wilde's quote may no longer be true!

------
apozem
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.

[https://stratechery.com/2020/brandless-closes-the-dtc-
facebo...](https://stratechery.com/2020/brandless-closes-the-dtc-facebook-
challenge-dtc-versus-softbank/)

~~~
cagenut
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.

------
dredmorbius
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans-
culottes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans-culottes)

~~~
ImaCake
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.

~~~
dredmorbius
What do you see following, or are you heralding the Coming Age of Formal
Sweatpants?

~~~
ImaCake
I hope for the latter! But I suspect the usual cyclical nature of human
fashion and culture.

------
badrabbit
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.

~~~
01100011
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.

------
waihtis
I think there's a lost opportunity here to bring monk-type robes back into
fashion.

------
exabrial
[http://archive.is/vDYqU](http://archive.is/vDYqU)

------
mthoms
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.

~~~
pembrook
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.

~~~
mthoms
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.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum)

~~~
nemothekid
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).

~~~
mthoms
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).

------
dgut
font-size: 30px; max-width: 600px;

Is it just me who has difficulties reading this article on desktop?

~~~
giancarlostoro
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.

~~~
jahewson
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.

~~~
giancarlostoro
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.

[0]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Learn/CSS/Building_...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Learn/CSS/Building_blocks/Values_and_units)

------
Razengan
This problem seems to be US specific.

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.

~~~
swarnie_
Maybe some enterprising young chap could bring mainstream fashion to the Xl -
6XL size ranges? That way the US could get involved.

~~~
mensetmanusman
People don’t realize that culturally that is the ‘fashion’ of the U.S.

Read Anathem by Neal Stephenson, it has a funny take on this :)

------
diebeforei485
Fast fashion is terrible for the environment[1]. It's good that things are
moving towards comfort and longevity.

[https://youtu.be/xGF3ObOBbac](https://youtu.be/xGF3ObOBbac)

------
torgian
Most of my money net goes towards cycling gear. I buy new clothes maybe once a
year or once every two years.

I have a custom made suit that I bought from a bespoke tailor in Chengdu for
about 1200 usd including custom shoes.

I still want to find a nice trench coat for winter, and I saw one at Dior that
I really liked. Didn’t want to pay the 5000 usd price tag though.

~~~
eb0la
I remember asian tailors advertised in the Financial Times.

They just rented a room near the City to make measuremens an bought an ad in
FT to book appointments.

That way you could get a nice bespoke suit for less than it was sold in
London.

I wonder if that market still exists.

~~~
torgian
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.

------
DonHopkins
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):

[https://web.archive.org/web/20060127002252/http://www.suck.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060127002252/http://www.suck.com/daily/1995/12/22/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com)

Ten years later, the story of Suck.com (2005):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10143395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10143395)

[http://www.keepgoing.org/issue20_giant/the_big_fish.html](http://www.keepgoing.org/issue20_giant/the_big_fish.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10143805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10143805)

> nailer: Inventor of snake text, which is now so ubiquitous it doesn't have a
> name.

> derefr: So ubiquitous that Google can't define it for me, either, it seems.
> What is it?

> Cederfjard: I'd never heard of it either. This is one of the results my
> search yielded:
> [https://web.archive.org/web/20130420012902/https://longform....](https://web.archive.org/web/20130420012902/https://longform.org/stories/web-
> dreams-the-story-of-suck)

>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.

------
dstick
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
;)

~~~
site-packages1
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).

------
hmmazoids
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

~~~
loughnane
Remind me of this[0] Calvin and Hobbes strip

[0] [https://thecomicninja.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/calvin-
and...](https://thecomicninja.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/calvin-and-hobbes-
individuality.gif?w=640)

------
neonate
[https://archive.is/vDYqU](https://archive.is/vDYqU)

------
wonderwonder
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.

------
jshaqaw
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!

~~~
joncrane
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.

------
spaetzleesser
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?

~~~
Nursie
>I am getting pretty tired of sweatpants but regular pants feel uncomfortable
while working from home.

No pants? You're working from home after all...

Only half kidding, my morning work uniform now is my cotton dressing gown
('bath robe' in US English?)

I tend to get dressed around lunchtime.

Vive la difference :)

~~~
Tade0
_No pants? You 're working from home after all..._

I used to work for a guy who applied such a dress code in the office.

On any sign of customers approaching he would bolt to his office and put some
pants on.

------
Cthulhu_
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.

------
spodek
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](https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost).

The industry pollutes and oppresses beyond what you think.

------
motohagiography
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.

------
WalterBright
I admit it, I miss the style of the 80's - Miami Vice, Duran Duran, etc.

~~~
wsc981
Shoulder pads in woman's cloth were a horrible invention imho.

~~~
WalterBright
I like the neon colors, big hair, and just the flamboyancy of the style.
Shoulder pads I could do without :-)

------
Jemm
Good. The fashion industry is toxic and wasteful. I hope it does not survive,
but of course I am sorry for the people who's livelihood is impacted.

------
chiefalchemist
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.

~~~
rainonmoon
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?

~~~
on_and_off
thanks for this comment.

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.

------
kwhitefoot
For an article on an international industry this was quite astonishingly
parochial. What is happening outside the US?

------
torgian
I’m gonna start wearing my cycling jerseys and bibs everywhere I go in tennis
shoes now.

------
sukilot
Has the Submarine resurfaced after 15 years?

[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

------
tibbydudeza
Lounge pants for the win.

------
vaibhawc
He studied economics.

------
Melting_Harps
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.

------
znpy
tl;dr: the fashion bubble popped.

------
bwasti
perhaps title "Sweatpants Forever: How the Fashion Industry Collapsed" for
context?

~~~
dang
Changed now. Thanks!

------
Camillo
This is basically a twelve-thousand-word advertorial for this Sternberg guy's
brand, AFAICT.

------
INTPenis
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.

~~~
ehnto
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.

~~~
INTPenis
Well this story is talking about fashion. Not local trends. Fashion today will
not be negatively affected by some cities going into lockdown.

So this is a non-story, typical for bored journalists to make up. Because they
have to. They have no other choice.

