Old timers - tell me about fashun before the internet - Page 3

What's your problem?

Sorry, I'm just trying a little humor and evidently it's not translating. No problem.

In 1988 I was working in a record store (Sound Spectrum, Laguna Beach!) and a guy came in to drop off a package for the owner of the store. I was wearing a Stussy shirt and he said "nice shirt" with a wink. I noticed he was wearing the exact same shirt - a black and grey striped Stussy T. I pointed at his shirt and was like "Cool." Five minutes later the owner of the store came in and I gave him the package and told him "some dude dropped this off for you." He was like, "Stussy came in? Sorry I missed him." I was like, "What? That was Shawn Stussy?" It was him, dropping of a batch of new shirt designs. That store was one of the first places that carried his stuff and he still dropped in to give the owner new stuff as a show of appreciation.

^ Neat story

I was a hip hop kid and Polo was king in the 90's. Tommy came on the scene and then all the "Urban" brands came on the scene. With high end designers pulling from the street and vice versa.

In the early to mid nineties I was pimpin hilfiger, polo and nautica from macys. My footwear of choice was some timberland mid top mocs what can I say I was styling. Of course nothing fit right. I did have some girbaud white denim x pocket shorts too def next level. I'd always pop into south coast to see the latest gearz.

my aunt was a buyer at barney's and worked for charles jourdan and armani. i was always steezing on y'all.

So, I was just digging through old, archived clothes from 1998-2002 or so, and there was a lot of Costume National, Prada, Helmut Lang, Jil Sander (Menichetti years) and Martin Margiela, especially shirts and outerwear. There were also lots of jeans from A.P.C. and Paper Denim&Cloth. Other brands represented included very early Hlam, when it was considered a conceptual "project" rather than a luxury brand, some wilder Dirk Schonberger pieces (I had a Schonberger obsession for about 2 years), some very, very, early Steven Alan (gingham windbreaker), Gucci by Tom Ford, a pre-Christopher Bailey, Roberto Menichetti Burberry Prorsum cotton peacoat, CP Company outerwear, Sandy Dalal sweats, and some P.S. Paul Smith shirts. There is also a Cloak shirt from the first season, and some early CCP (which looks nothing like CCP today - it started off sort of "conceptual dandy" - colors were pretty neutral too). There were also some very early pieces from James Perse, His stuff used to fit slim. That is hard to even imagine now. I have/had a few suits from Emporio Armani, as well as an (Sartorio) Attolini and a Helmut Lang number. There were also some pieces from failed diffusion lines - Daryl K, for example. And wow, lots of sneakers in all shapes and sizes - Puma was a big deal for a while, and I have early Adidas classics and lots of Nike Cortez's, as well as tons of busted Chucks - usually black, some natural. I think that I've gone through more than a few dozen pairs of each. Remember that even the oldest brands often talked about here today didn't exist in 1998, A.P.C. excepted. Engineered Garments started in 1999, but was not introduced to the American market until FW 2003, which meant that Robin and Timpoblete were naked for 5 more years. Also, South Willard was about 6 years off, which meant that jet would've been naked too (bad visuals, must gouge out own eyes now.) Branquinho started her men's line in... FW2002? and Burberry (in 1998) was still a brand for Japanese tourists to be bought at the duty free. Neil Barrett was earning his stripes at Prada and then at Samsonite Black Label (which sold poorly in LA).

It seemed like every mall in the 90's had a store which sold this kind of "Italian" stuff - garish silk shirts, Cosby sweaters and uber-pleated shiny trousers. They were always empty, too, yet they managed to stay open for a decade or so before being replaced by Auntie Anne's pretzels

You know, back in the 80's we had things called magazines... GQ and Esquire were the most popular but some of us went out and found British magazines like The Face and Arena.

MTV was also pretty influential in spreading style and various looks.

There's always those old fashionplates that Men's Clothing stalwart Sator posts, which are from the late 19th century. As well, the infamous Apparel Arts plates were also fashion periodicals now taken as gospel. Men's magazines from the '60s and '70s such as OUI had fashion spreads, and certainly GQ and Esquire existed back then. Brioni was showing crazy stuff on the runway for men starting in the '50s. In fact, they were one of the first to introduce runway style for men. Think velvet Nehru suits. There were also in-the-know tailors and designers like Savile Row's Tommy Nutter, the Rodeo tailor Nudie, London's Mr.Fish, et al. who could do outrageous stuff for a price, of course. I suppose someone like Adam Ant or Michael Jackson were quite influential on youth style.

You'll notice this post is not indented. Oooooo, he's using margins and I'm soooo annoyed. Fuck off. Care as much how you look in print as you do in clothes.

I was queuing to get Post Overalls x Bathing Ape stripe jacket (this was 13years ago 1998 and I was young).
I waited about 3hours to get a raffle ticket with some beggars.
As soon as the shop assistant started giving the tickets, around 10guys turned up, giving 1000yen ($10ish) to those beggars.
I saw the real world then...


Anyway, I could buy the jacket and was quite happy, but something in me really changed that day