Menswear on Women

jrd617 said:

Also personal pet peeve is when women cut their hair short. Unsexiest thing ever to me

shivers

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Sexiest thing ever imo.

I mean it's also kind of unfair if you take one specific and extreme short hair cut to represent all of them. I can just as easily post lots of "ugly" women in long hair, and attractive ones in short hair.

jrd617 said:

This was my intiial reaction to the thread: (now spoilered at claghorns request


Then I thought about why I dislike most of these images. The women are "peacocking" too much with loud colors, loud patterns, and exagerrated non anatomically correct sihlouettes. Tacky. Looks like the a costume. If the J. Crew #menswear **** looks ridiculous on a man, then shouldn't it also look tacky on a woman? (See the images of Diane Keaton and everthing shawnBC posted)

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I personally think this is much of it. There isn't a single OTR suit for women that has SF approved styling, or that isn't really tacky or poorly made. Most of the other suits besides these are from fashion/celebrity icons. I have, in fact, seen women wear CM or CM related clothing and they look good in it walking around London/Cambridge, you just won't see many pictures of it on the internet.

Granted it's usually not suit, just chinos or flannels and a sportscoat, but I mean generally fits and combinations that you'd see on the WAYWN threads, and they seem perfectly fine when it's on a woman instead of a man (obviously assuming that outfit/fit/styling should be adapted for the specific body/skintone/etc).

jrd, your idea of what is attractive in a woman is completely besides the point. Women do not exist to be attractive to you, and the reasons why women wear menswear also have nothing to do with this. There's a whole section of this forum called Dumb Threads reserved for threads were people can make stupid comments, so why not keep your sexist remarks there?



jrd617 said:

Then I thought about why I dislike most of these images. The women are "peacocking" too much with loud colors, loud patterns, and exagerrated non anatomically correct sihlouettes. Tacky. Looks like the a costume. If the J. Crew #menswear **** looks ridiculous on a man, then shouldn't it also look tacky on a woman? (See the images of Diane Keaton and everthing shawnBC posted)

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I understand your point but those are all features of women's clothing, not just for men's clothing adopted by women.

Women do typically wear clothes that are more brightly coloured, that have loud and large patterns, and that have exaggerated silhouettes.

If women wear such clothes as part of everyday womenswear, then it makes sense that those things would carry over when women decide to adapt certain menswear styles.

For what it's worth, I thought that the pictures of the ladies wearing menswear-style clothing further up the thread were great.

As much as I abhor sexist attitudes, and raise my eyebrow at jrd's taste (at what his idea of a "check mate" picture posting is) I don't think he's said anything really out of line since his now edited out reaction picture. That said maybe I've just conditioned myself to expect even worse.

Quote:
I think this is a point lots of men miss, so it bears mentioning. That said I do think it's valid that women for reasons that imo aren't really their fault, as I have mentioned before, have difficulty looking classy and traditionally respectable in menswear even when that is their intent, and often do end up looking tacky, I don't think that's unfair to say. Obviously Kylerton's site is meant to fix that, which I think is quite cool. I think it'd be nice to have a thread discussing exactly what problems women face in achieving the look they want or why/when it doesn't work as well, especially how to compensate for different body shapes.

Okay so I mentioned peak lapels and double breasted suits to build shoulders out, what about roped shoulders? I think it'd be good except there's the nasty call back to those huge roped shoulders, you know what I'm talking about.

I think single button, whilst casual and trendy for men, is quite feminine on a woman, and might not be the best especially when one wants to look conservative. Of course this is in context of queer women/lesbian, I hadn't really thought about CM for women that embraces feminine aspects.

But on more masculine clothes for women, I far prefer ties over bowties as well, I know lots of lesbians/queer women prefer it, but I think the tie really helps set the outfit apart as menswear and a straight line is good for shorter people too. One problem is probably that for shorter women ties are often too long. My partner has to stick the narrow blade into the shirt to hide it (so I guess all my sam hober ties are now going to be dipped in their scent. Not sure how I feel about this.)

I actually had a discussion with a friend how stripes would work for women, with suits anyway, but in shirting at least I think it helps make women look taller and they're also a lot more aggressive/masculine, so that might be good. It actually makes me wonder why andro/queer women has such a preference for bowties and checks when they are more casual and less masculine even for men. I know it's partially an identity thing, but beyond that?



jrd617 said:

My OP says that I think that most women fail at the "menswear" look because of the peacocking approach they take

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However, as I said in my response to you a couple of posts back, most womenswear involves "peacocking".

Women often wear a lot of black, but it's often broken up with either bright colours (bright blouse, scarf, necklace, shoes etc, quite often colour co-ordinated) or large-scale patterns for variety. Therefore, it's entirely to be expected that when women decide to adopt some stylistic cues from menswear, that whilst they might adopt the *style* of the garments, they would nonetheless continue to use the colours/patterns common in womenswear.

Well said.

Isolation said:

I think this is a point lots of men miss, so it bears mentioning. That said I do think it's valid that women for reasons that imo aren't really their fault, as I have mentioned before, have difficulty looking classy and traditionally respectable in menswear even when that is their intent, and often do end up looking tacky, I don't think that's unfair to say.

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Obviously Kylerton's site is meant to fix that, which I think is quite cool. I think it'd be nice to have a thread discussing exactly what problems women face in achieving the look they want or why/when it doesn't work as well, especially how to compensate for different body shapes.

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I looked at that Kylerton site when it was posted a spam thread (since deleted by the mods) and found a lot of the stuff to come from the peacocking/haberdashery school. Not my cup of tea on women. (Sorry is that sexist, flying monkey?)

More from that Closed Circuit movie

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I don't understand, you are saying women don't look good in a suit right? That picture is making a strong case for the reverse to me.

Either you are all reading this thread on your phones or you all have poor reading comprehension, or both

Words being put into my mouth:

-That women categorically look bad in suits (I posted the Rebecca Hall example as an example of a suit looking good on a woman...)
-That I'm "sexist"

Would never have expect this kind of bizarre, illogical pushback on styfo, seriously



Isolation said:

I don't understand, you are saying women don't look good in a suit right? That picture is making a strong case for the reverse to me.

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At the risk of putting words into jrd's mouth, I think that he's saying that women can look good in menswear style suits, but only if they're in very conservative colours and patterns.

If women wear men's style suits but in female-approved colours and patterns (large scale plaids, bright colours etc) then it's not approved by jrd.

I don't think that's too unresonable a position since it's basically saying that "nobody looks good in xyz style/pattern". It would be his opinion, but I would have thought one pretty natural, considering the nature of styleforum mentality.

That's essentially the gist of what I've been arguing. I would add that color or patterns in themselves aren't bad ("per se"); it's too much loud color and too much loud patterns that is bad.

I don't think it's fair though the way you're framing my argument. You're talking in terms of "approved by jrd" and "not approved" when I'm merely voicing my opinion. I'm not the end all authority. I just know what I personally prefer.

Journeyman said:

At the risk of putting words into jrd's mouth, I think that he's saying that women can look good in menswear style suits, but only if they're in very conservative colours and patterns.

If women wear men's style suits but in female-approved colours and patterns (large scale plaids, bright colours etc) then it's not approved by jrd.

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A thread like this would be best served on a forum section with more female members.

There is only so much we gents can constructively discuss regarding this topic, without the intended target's input...