Random fashion thoughts - Part II (A New Hope)

[Find Finn]

Buys two pairs of sneakers from SNS, three weeks later ONE pair arrives.

 

[ClambakeSkate]

Vetements is trash, who cares? That's kinda the whole point/joke, right?

But the thing that really pisses me off is the amount of assholes I saw wearing thrasher shirts with some tech runners and stupid raincoat this season in Paris. It's definitely up from last season.

And last season everyone had the white with black logo version. This season everyone had the black with flame logo version. It's almost as if they think thrasher has seasonal deliveries.

FUCKTARDS STAY AWAY FROM SKATEBOARDING PLEASE.

 

[ghdvfddzgzdzg]



FUCKTARDS STAY AWAY FROM SKATEBOARDING PLEASE.

as a fucktard near a skateboard i take offense

 

[Fuuma]



Vetements is trash, who cares? That's kinda the whole point/joke, right?

But the thing that really pisses me off is the amount of assholes I saw wearing thrasher shirts with some tech runners and stupid raincoat this season in Paris. It's definitely up from last season.

And last season everyone had the white with black logo version. This season everyone had the black with flame logo version. It's almost as if they think thrasher has seasonal deliveries.

FUCKTARDS STAY AWAY FROM SKATEBOARDING PLEASE.

The Thrasher thing is already old, I wa surprised that so many people supposedly "in the know" kept at it. With that said skateboarding and fashion is an on/off thing that has been going on for a long time. I don't feel a special kind of affinity for suburban american teenagers and I don't want to **** the Russian version like Gosha so, yawn.


http://www.vogue.com/tag/misc/skateboarding/

 

[ClambakeSkate]



http://www.vogue.com/tag/misc/skateboarding/

http://quartersnacks.com/2016/07/the-stuff-we-learned-from-vogues-skate-week/

 

[shoreman1782]

Anti-Hero--Fucktards (1997)


Re: authenticity, I think that's a broader trend in culture generally—art pretty clearly, pop music, etc. Authenticity is an antiquated hangup, and I'm only being partially sarcastic here. The 1990s hand wringing about selling out and being true to yourself, the 2000s obsession with old timiness and heritage, most of that is passe if not ridiculous seeming. Part of the way to differentiate yourself is to just be "over" what the previous generation thought made them cool.

I'd be interested to hear @Fuuma 's thoughts on this as he seems to be a guy who looks at bourgie tastes with a gimlet eye.

 

[LA Guy]

"System requirements: Sound Card."


I get the argument that Margiela seemed nerdily into vintage finds and Vetements seems to just trawl the shallows of recent clothing culture but to an extent that's just vintage snobbery/valuing an authenticity I don't think vetements or its fans give a **** about. Vetements is post authenticity.

Isn't "post authenticity" just a longer way of saying "irony". And this new incarnation seems to be particularly cynical. If I found the earnest "authenticity " of the noughties to be annoying, I find the "post autenticity" of brands like Vetements to be much more so.

I understand that it's a joke, but it's a humorless and joyless joke.

 

[shoreman1782]

Hm maybe slightly different, imo? Irony to me still implies you need to know about the thing you're choosing to use in an unexpected way/unfamilair context, and to an extent I think vetements deal is "we don't even care if you get it." It's cool because it's cool, not because of what it's saying or what it's making fun of.

Authentic wearing of a Megadeth shirt would be a guy who likes megadeth wearing a megadeth shirt.

Ironic wearing of a Megadeth shirt would be a guy who conspicuously dislikes Megadeth wearing a megadeth shirt.

The current vogue for wearing a Megadeth (style) shirt doesn't presume or care whether you have any awareness of Megadeth at all.

 

[LA Guy]

Hm maybe slightly different, imo? Irony to me still implies you need to know about the thing you're choosing to use in an unexpected way/unfamilair context, and to an extent I think vetements deal is "we don't even care if you get it." It's cool because it's cool, not because of what it's saying or what it's making fun of.

Authentic wearing of a Megadeth shirt would be a guy who likes megadeth wearing a megadeth shirt.

Ironic wearing of a Megadeth shirt would be a guy who conspicuously dislikes Megadeth wearing a megadeth shirt.

The current vogue for wearing a Megadeth (style) shirt doesn't presume or care whether you have any awareness of Megadeth at all.

I find it difficult to believe that the designers have no awareness of the pop culture references, especially since "cool culture" is a global culture right now.

I suppose that @conceptual 4est might argue that some Japanese designers are the way you describe it, but I find it really difficult to believe of North American and European designers, who all move in pretty much the same cultural circles with the same cultural touchpoints - the skateboarder thing being a prime example.

Also, I find what you say to be difficult to reconcile with the collaboration with brands like Juicy Couture. I suppose that maybe it's like "This is so uncool that my wearing it is cool", but that seems like irony to me.

 

[Fuuma]



I find it difficult to believe that the designers have no awareness of the pop culture references, especially since "cool culture" is a global culture right now.

I suppose that @conceptual 4est
 might argue that some Japanese designers are the way you describe it, but I find it really difficult to believe of North American and European designers, who all move in pretty much the same cultural circles with the same cultural touchpoints - the skateboarder thing being a prime example.

Also, I find what you say to be difficult to reconcile with the collaboration with brands like Juicy Couture.  I suppose that maybe it's like "This is so uncool that my wearing it is cool", but that seems like irony to me.

You're thinking like an old person here (depth of knowledge, primacy of the lived-experience, familiarity through reading and more conceptually rich mediums). In a web-centric visual culture you can consume images very quickly and harness them in any way you want to, not caring all that much about their insertion in a wider context. You're consuming very vaguely defined signs and playing with them, something that we sometimes "accuse" the Japanese of doing due to a lack of cultural familiarity.

Derrida's différance through fashion sweats

 

[LA Guy]

You're thinking like an old person here (depth of knowledge, primacy of the lived-experience, familiarity through reading and more conceptually rich mediums). In a web-centric visual culture you can consume images very quickly and harness them in any way you want to, not caring all that much about their insertion in a wider context. You're consuming very vaguely defined signs and playing with them, something that we sometimes "accuse" the Japanese of doing due to a lack of cultural familiarity.

Derrida's différance through fashion sweats:

I think that you are arguing that we live in a present culture that is dominated by a stream of decontextualized, barely associated, visual images, and that both the designers and their customers reference cultural images without any context. I think that this may be arguably true for the consumers (recent events have convinced me that it's possible for people to go through life without any mental exertion whatsoever), it's difficult to believe that this is true of the designers.

Western culture has a rich history of analysis and putting things into cultural context and even if the designers are merely tapping into a digital stream of "Apache Indians... urban decay... zombies.... DHL... netflix and chill... sneaker boots... Britney Spears... Catdaddy...mountains... Kokanee beer.... Nike SB..." they have to, physically, spend a minimum amount of time on each design, certainly more than enough to understand the cultural significance of the images they are using.

The only way that I could see @shoreman1782 's "post authenticity" happening is if the design is fully automated.

I can see this being more true of, say, guys like Girl Talk's music (to date myself even more) but even then, it's hard to imagine that the creator is wholly unaware of what he or she is referencing.

 

[jet]

Just looked at images of this Vetements (sorry I been under a rock) and this **** is comical.

 

[dieworkwear]

I think Pete is right with the Megadeath example. None of these are being worn for ironic purposes; it's just because X item has been deemed cool.

The Juicy Couture thing is a little confusing, but I don't think it's presented as irony. I think it's just part and parcel of a general trend to milk as much as possible from "low brow" culture (as loaded as that term may be, but you get my point). So grunge (SLP), skateboarding (Vetements), trashy parts of Russian youth culture (Gosha), and now this weird pimp stuff at Brioni. Happens in pop culture too with how you see Kanye, Kylie Jenner, ASAP Rocky, etc dressing (some news stories a while back about how supposedly Kylie Jenner tried to bring back VonDutch hats).

I don't think any of that is being worn with irony. I think it's being worn because it's considered cool, much in the same way those pieces were originally worn because they were considered cool, but just without any of the cultural requirements (which gets back to this post-authenticity issue). I think people are just tired of the things before this: authenticity, provenance, factory tours, think pieces on Raf Simons and Margiela, etc.

On some level, fashion has always been about just wearing whatever thing is deemed cool at the moment. This time, it just seems stripped of any pretense.

The pretense made things fun though, IMO.

 

[dieworkwear]



You're thinking like an old person here (depth of knowledge, primacy of the lived-experience, familiarity through reading and more conceptually rich mediums). In a web-centric visual culture you can consume images very quickly and harness them in any way you want to, not caring all that much about their insertion in a wider context. You're consuming very vaguely defined signs and playing with them, something that we sometimes "accuse" the Japanese of doing due to a lack of cultural familiarity.

That's an interesting point. but the disassociation between clothes and social rules/ culture predates the internet. Even predates Japanese menswear culture, where things were presented in a kind of sterile, "adopt what you'd like" catalog form. All of 20th century clothing history is a slow march to "liberalizing" clothes -- kind of in-step with general liberal movements (in the European sense of the word). Basically allow people to do whatever they'd like, including dressing however they want.

And to some degree, the original meaning of so many clothes are so far back in cultural memory that they're basically pointless. The reference point for a double-rider jacket is no longer Marlon Brando and The Wild Ones; it's Kanye West. So it's more "cool musician" than "biker." Newer generations imbue clothes with their own meanings, which take them further and further away from their original, cultural contexts.

The internet may have sped all this up. I don't think any of this "wear a Megadeath tee just because you think it's cool, but don't listen to the band" would have been possible when I was in high school during the '90s, but I assume we would eventually gotten to this point with or without the internet. A 19 year old today associates wearing metal tees with Kanye West, who at this point is basically as much as fashion icon as he is a musician, not some grungy metal head with long hair. Again, it's that "clothes take new meaning over time" point.

Put it this way: you can wear a Megadeath tee right now without irony because Kanye said it's cool. You can't wear a Garth Brooks tee without irony (or without being a fan) because it still has cultural meaning. Neither can you wear a dress, cowboy hat, or any other socially loaded piece of clothing. A lot of this is a combination of liberalizing clothes (to some degree) and basically pop-culture driven trends (which are very specific in scope).

 

[accordion]

Can someone explain what the oversized sleeves thing is about, reference to Margiela? And are the other recent collections by different designers that feature oversized sleeves doing the same thing?