MC General Chat - Page 70

Well I'm glad I riled you guys up a bit at least! Some great posts here. I'm headed out for the night, but will come back later to check in and respond.

Can you get more Stealth Wealth than blending in perfectly with your car(s)?

Good Lord... sounds pretty on the mark. Well... it would probably be as hard for me to be as cognizant of all that "baggage" and disassociate from this mode, as it would be for Hermes Man to decide to spend his hard earned Malaysian dollars on a simple automatic watch. As long as we're both pleased....

double post? actually i tried to "edit" but accidentally "quoted..."

lol, well, I'm not trying to single anyone out or suggest anyone changes. I'm just posting what I see, which may or may not be correct. I don't insist upon it.

 

Even I'm spot-on with that construct, the consolation is that as cultures are constantly in flux, the associations of clothes can loosen and reshape themselves over time (this is, of course, another word for "fashion"). Thus, the historical cultural condensates associated with certain looks/details/attitudes aren't permanent but constantly reinvented. What today might simply be a modern interpretation of an old elite's dress might tomorrow become a fresh new construct (#menswear, anyone?). Our cultures are all going through an interesting period of change at the moment, driven easy, daily, mass international communication on a grand scale. It's almost entropic; like a combination of dissolution and homogenisation at the same time, as if they're all turning to blancmange. It'll be interesting to see what new concepts arrive to create new forms. I think that's the case for clothes and other cultural trends too.

Primary colors get a nay from me too. (Except on dark-skinned/tanned men in certain very specific contexts.)

I wouldn't object to a definition of good taste as something like, "displaying wealth without looking like you are trying too hard to display it". Exactly how hard you should be trying varies across time and across cultures. A close variant is "displaying that you don't care about money without trying too hard to look like you don't are about money". In any case, over time, the things that are most expensive and difficult to produce or replicate will be the things that are most coveted. Effecting a look of monied indifference will always be a winner.

It can be hard to admit that when you feel like you're just cultivating an aesthetic appreciation of beautiful things. And surely this is part of it too. But what we find beautiful is heavily influenced by what it costs to produce. Take something like pick-stitching. When it could only be done by hand, it was cool. Then machine-made knock-offs came along. To be sure, they didn't do it as well, but still, it looked kinda similar. Then the hand-made pick-stitching has to be more subtle and more irregular to differentiate it further from the cheap machine-made stuff. Now pick-stitching seems to be dying out as an element of a tasteful suit.

This is true with colors too. The color purple became the color of royalty because it was produced through a long and expensive process that involved extracting small glands out of snails. I would guess that today, producing primary colors is fairly cheap and easy. The more complicated a color you intend to create, the more you need someone who knows what they're doing to design it and make sure it can be reproduced faithfully in whatever you intend to sell with it.

My philosophy is just to accept that style and class connotations are irrevocably linked. There's no point in trying to talk your way out of it. It doesn't really diminish my own enjoyment of clothes, but my classism sensitivies may be anachronistically low.

On the pics:

I don't think Nick Foulkes looks terrible in his brown and yellow, but...well actually I guess I do. Brown and pink and yellow is a no. Maybe without the pink it would be ok. The second pic of the navy suit and blue blue tie is pretty good. I can't argue with that as being in good taste.

This is interesting discussion. I wonder if this unb's observation applies to men of color. Most of dw's example outside of vox are pretty dark skinned individuals

Ivar mentioned this - actually when I was writing this I almost mentioned that Tirailleur seems almost unique in his ability to look inventive and fresh in primary colors. I don't know if it's your skin tone or just overall high level of stylishness.

One day I was in a store called Uni Qlo. A friend was trying on some things and this black man came up to me to ask my opinion on what shirt would look best with his gray suit he was wearing. He had on a lavender shirt with it. I told him that I would personally like it best with a white, or light blue shirt and I showed him some at the store. He looked at them and held them up to him face and said, yeah, but, uh, I'm black. I was partially stunned because I never ever thought of matching anything to my olive skin and also I don't notice things like skin color on other people

This is a really interesting conversation, guys. Wish I had more to contribute to it other than that I agree that "taste" has an irrevocable link to class--specifically "old money" class.

Interesting point about matching with skin tone since I typically avoid red (not just because I do not have a stable full of Ferraris) because it does not compliment my skin tone. Light pink and burgundy are fine but in between is a no-no.

I'm not clear on how lavender matched any better.