Gen Z "Zoomers" and Classic Menswear

[breakaway01]

Unfortunately I almost find posting pictures of people who look *bad* to be more useful than people who look good. Especially people who are close but no cigar. I don't need more pics like @Spinster Jones posted, which I understand why they're terrible. I need pictures of people like me, who are closer to a good look, but just not quite there. @dieworkwear has provided me incredibly useful comments on my own fits in the Style Advice forum, but it's still been hard to know where I'm going wrong.

I don’t think the fits I’ve seen have been ‘terrible’. All of us have better and worse fits, and nobody’s perfect. I think we (I?) should start a fit critique thread. Agree with DWW that we have to post our own outfits. Need to figure out some ground rules. Like no mention allowed of brand names/makers. What else?

 

[comrade]

I just want to show what "fits" brands are putting out here in Norway. So you guys understand what others think are a good fit (and why they get angry when I try to tell them that the industry is quite rigid in its uselessness). This is from every larger mens retailer, except from Cavour.

This is off the rack. I don't think alterations would save any one of them.

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This is the"tiny suit" plague I referred to.

 

[dieworkwear]

What is the gangster movie where the old-school wiseguy laments of the new generation of up-and-coming thugs, something along the lines of "they buy thousand-dollar suits but have no idea how to wear them"?

I think hearing that, a long time ago, was the first time I started to become aware of the fallacy that you are talking about here of "If that guy looks good in the jacket, all I need to do is buy that jacket."

Unfortunately not familiar with the film.

 

[stuffedsuperdud]

@JFWR @mozi
Please don't put words in my mouth. It sounds like you guys have some sort of personal thing with DWW (a stranger from the internet who posts all his stuff under a pen name). I am not interested in inflicting some sort of feeling in DWW such that he thinks "Oh oops I am wrong and should feel bad and they are right and should feel good." Rather I'm just a guy who spent years being frustrated by academic smoke and mirrors and have no patience for that style of communication reserved for when one is too lazy to actually strengthen his argument.

Is it surprising that dressing well is not just about buying internet approved items and throwing them on yourself?

Of course not; don't strawman me. Style is more than your clothes; it is the entire summation of how you make others think and feel when you communicate with them. But that's well outside the scope of this forum. Thus, within this subset of parameters, we can only talk about picking out garments we like, arranging them in a way that harmonizes with each other and with our individual builds, and...that's about it. However that's never good enough, according to your definition of "beautifully dressed" so we might just have an absurd situation where the constraints of we can discuss here make it impossible to satisfy your criteria for "beautifully dressed."

^ This is the fallacy that the fashion industry runs on. If that guy looks good in the jacket, all I need to do is buy that jacket. But in the end, the clothes might not fit well, the silhouette doesn't suit your body type, you may be wearing it in a way that doesn't look very good, and the style might not suit you.

The fashion industry does this but does anyone actually think along this line? Maybe some celebrity's stylist will copy something trendy and then her client will show up at an event looking ridiculous, but I don't think many people copy things outright. Someone who wears a suit because he has to will just wear whatever a salesman tells him to wear. Someone who looks into it deeper, like we do, probably put at least some thought into "Well...would this work for me?" But all these criteria that you list are very subjective and it's the easiest thing in the world to point and go "har har you're not beautifully dressed."

Many of the discussions that used to happen on this board were really good at helping people train their eye for when something doesn't fit well, such as flared vents on overcoats or wrinkling at the back of the sleeves. I think those discussions helped a lot of people judge whether something fits well off the rack, which is especially useful nowadays since skilled sales associates are very hard to find.

Once someone gets a sense of when something fits well, then there's the silhouette. In that case, I think it helps to look at a ton of photos online. I started noticing that soft, natural shoulders don't look good on me because I have narrow shoulders. Some men with narrow shoulders still look good in natural shoulder tailoring, but I did not like the silhouette on me. And then I noticed what I liked about the suits on other guys, such as Iammatt and maomao. They all had a v-shaped figure that I think looked good, so I started looking for a slightly extended shoulder.

Then I think there's the challenge of learning how to put things together in a way that's coherent. Including the silhouette of your jacket, trousers, and shoes. And then the stylistic combinations that speak to something and have a sense of style.

Then after that, there's how that style may or may not connect with you. I again think that takes some trial and error. You might wear Ivy style for a bit and then realize that the style doesn't really resonate with your personality and lifestyle. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out whether something is your "vibe." And sometimes it's also ok to wear stuff that's not connected to your lifestyle and personality, and you're just dressing up. But I think connecting all these things together is what helps make a good outfit -- fit, silhouette, coherence of the individual pieces coming together in an outfit, and then how that outfit intersects with the wearer's actual self.

See, this is a helpful and informative description of this vague thing you're chasing after and is certainly more constructive than snippy "That's not CM" drive-bys. However, I think you're on a doomed fools errand. Assuming that there is some sort of "eye" for this thing the way one criticizes any other unquantifiable art form like paintings or music or interior design, all of the guys in the old timey pictures you post dressed in "true CM" were dressed by professionals such as the CU's you constantly mention. That skill set, if if it ever existed, certainly does not exist now, as there are basically no more full-time career sales associates working at one-stop haberdasheries that men shop at for a lifetime.

All of the guys in your more recent pictures who dressed themselves all either work in the rags trade or completely obsess about this stuff in a way that the rest of us can't or don't want to. Instead we are left to fend for ourselves by casually perusing pictures and this site, and I guess in your eyes most men in this supermajority category either 1. don't try, or even know that there is such a thing as trying, and thus look terrible, or 2. do try but are SF-educated amateurs and thus also look terrible. That's a very harsh criteria that no one in 2022 outside the clothing/fashion industry, someone who marinades in this for a living, will be able to achieve.

I guess your frustration boils down to us guys in category 2 asking what you think are the wrong questions, that is, trying to optimize individual parameters like shoe style or pants rise, or perhaps trying to find a good deal on a pricy individual item, instead of seeing the summation of all the parts, but that's just now an individual effort is going to go. I don't have a personal stylist to act as a project manager for the project that is how I look as a whole so I am left figuring out the individual trees in the forest. I'm sorry if SF had more of the "right" discussions 10 years ago but you should know as well as anyone that academic discussions tend to boil down to bitter disputes over small differences and everyone eventually forgets what they were talking about originally. #academia #bullshit

Forgive me for oversimplifying, but in a way, this just seems like a colossal mismanagement of expectations. How is this different from criticizing anyone any time they do not display professional level skills at anything? I doubt too many of us are committed to the massively diminishing marginal returns on going from "well-dressed" to "beautifully-dressed" and I imagine that this has been the case since the first time a man was suddenly embarrassed by other people seeing *********.

 

[dieworkwear]

Of course not; don't strawman me. Style is more than your clothes; it is the entire summation of how you make others think and feel when you communicate with them. But that's well outside the scope of this forum. Thus, within this subset of parameters, we can only talk about picking out garments we like, arranging them in a way that harmonizes with each other and with our individual builds, and...that's about it. However that's never good enough, according to your definition of "beautifully dressed" so we might just have an absurd situation where the constraints of we can discuss here make it impossible to satisfy your criteria for "beautifully dressed."

I'm only talking about clothes, not mannerisms or what someone has to say.

The fashion industry does this but does anyone actually think along this line? Maybe some celebrity's stylist will copy something trendy and then her client will show up at an event looking ridiculous, but I don't think many people copy things outright. Someone who wears a suit because he has to will just wear whatever a salesman tells him to wear. Someone who looks into it deeper, like we do, probably put at least some thought into "Well...would this work for me?" But all these criteria that you list are very subjective and it's the easiest thing in the world to point and go "har har you're not beautifully dressed."

I would say not only is this a common line of thought (sometimes reasonable as that's how we experiment with new styles), but I pointed it out because you seemingly found it a ridiculous line of critique. Just because someone is wearing the same jacket as someone else, it doesn't mean that they look good in the jacket.

And yes, being well-dressed is subjective. That is what makes this field enjoyable. Most of the interesting things in this world are somewhat ambiguous and not yet sorted out.

See, this is a helpful and informative description of this vague thing you're chasing after and is certainly more constructive than snippy "That's not CM" drive-bys. However, I think you're on a doomed fools errand. Assuming that there is some sort of "eye" for this thing the way one criticizes any other unquantifiable art form like paintings or music or interior design, all of the guys in the old timey pictures you post dressed in "true CM" were dressed by professionals such as the CU's you constantly mention. That skill set, if if it ever existed, certainly does not exist now, as there are basically no more full-time career sales associates working at one-stop haberdasheries that men shop at for a lifetime.

All of the guys in your more recent pictures who dressed themselves all either work in the rags trade or completely obsess about this stuff in a way that the rest of us can't or don't want to. Instead we are left to fend for ourselves by casually perusing pictures and this site, and I guess in your eyes most men in this supermajority category either 1. don't try, or even know that there is such a thing as trying, and thus look terrible, or 2. do try but are SF-educated amateurs and thus also look terrible. That's a very harsh criteria that no one in 2022 outside the clothing/fashion industry, someone who marinades in this for a living, will be able to achieve.

I guess your frustration boils down to us guys in category 2 asking what you think are the wrong questions, that is, trying to optimize individual parameters like shoe style or pants rise, or perhaps trying to find a good deal on a pricy individual item, instead of seeing the summation of all the parts, but that's just now an individual effort is going to go. I don't have a personal stylist to act as a project manager for the project that is how I look as a whole so I am left figuring out the individual trees in the forest. I'm sorry if SF had more of the "right" discussions 10 years ago but you should know as well as anyone that academic discussions tend to boil down to bitter disputes over small differences and everyone eventually forgets what they were talking about originally. #academia #bullshit

Forgive me for oversimplifying, but in a way, this just seems like a colossal mismanagement of expectations. How is this different from criticizing anyone any time they do not display professional level skills at anything? I doubt too many of us are committed to the massively diminishing marginal returns on going from "well-dressed" to "beautifully-dressed" and I imagine that this has been the case since the first time a man was suddenly embarrassed by other people seeing *********.

I don't understand what you're critiquing. I have long said that I think this forum has moved toward shopping and shoes. That has earned me enough haters who start new accounts here and follow me around for years across different threads, posting only when I post.

Sure, the people who are well-dressed are often those who spend a lot of time on this subject. But that's like any skill. I've never said that the people who are poorly dressed are bad people. In fact, I've often fought back against this notion on this forum, as people who are super into CM often imbue this style with certain respectability and morality that I find to be distasteful. I hate the idea that people who aren't into CM or those who are not well dressed are somehow sloppy, lazy, or undeserving of respect. Or that they lack merit, skill, and virtue. This sort of thing gets thrown around this board all the time, and I often speak out against it.

I've only said that this forum has shifted further and further away from discussions about dress, something that just 30 minutes ago earned me someone's ire. You, yourself, accused me of sophistry.

This latest brouhaha started when JFWR said that you can go get a suit off the rack and get it altered, and achieve a "tailored look." I don't think it's that easy. This forum will spend years dissecting the benefits of leather stiffeners and SPI on the uppers, but much less time discussing how to dress well. I don't think altering a "high end" RTW suit is enough to get you to be beautifully dressed. The disconnect between the time spent on dissecting dress shoe construction and how to put together a beautiful outfit seems bad to me.

This is my last post in this thread. I don't want this to turn into another year-long oxford with suits war.

 

[schraiber]

It's hard to post those photos because you're basically attacking someone (or, at least, criticizing them). Since clothes are very personal, I'm reluctant to throw up photos of outfits that I don't think are good because you're basically saying someone is ugly (even if we're talking about clothes and not something actual body or face). it's just too sensitive of an issue.

The nice thing about previous threads such as Whnay's Good Taste and the "Foofed" thread is that people volunteered their own images, and then other members critiqued them. I think this is fairer since that person volunteered for feedback. But otherwise, just putting up random people's images for critique seems like bad taste to me.

I think those old threads are good for review, however. As breakaway noted, many of the photos are gone, but I assume some are still upo.

Oh yeah I 100% agree with your philosophy here. That's why I said unfortunately

 

[stuffedsuperdud]

I don't understand what you're critiquing. I have long said that I think this forum has moved toward shopping and shoes. That has earned me enough haters who start new accounts here and follow me around for years across different threads, posting only when I post.

Sure, the people who are well-dressed are often those who spend a lot of time on this subject. But that's like any skill.

I'm saying that very few people can be "beautifully dressed" by your definition, and that being "beautifully dressed" is not a worthwhile endeavor in this day and age when most of us have to go at it alone in pursuit of this goal. So there's no point in lamenting when someone tells a beginner that they can get a good part of the way there just by taking an RTW jacket to a tailor. This is not an all or nothing scenario.

People who are into shopping are still in pursuit of this goal, but might have gone off on an unproductive tangent and have lost the forest in the trees. I don't think that's worth complaining about; at least they're trying, even if the discussions turn really granular and unproductive towards developing style.

I've never said that the people who are poorly dressed are bad people. In fact, I've often fought back against this notion on this forum, as people who are super into CM often imbue this style with certain respectability and morality that I find to be distasteful.

No one has accused you of this, or at least, I haven't. I'm saying that there's no point in lamenting the high number of poorly dressed people in the first place, or in lumping the guy who takes an okay-fitting jacket to a tailor to make it better with the guy who didn't try at all, just because neither of them looks like the guys in your pictures.

 

[breakaway01]

My take on this is that there is definitely value in learning how to recognize a good fit. You will end up looking decent at least, if you can also follow a few basic guidelines in terms of color combinations. I think DWW’s point is that many people (not calling you out) would make better use of their time by thinking about how to make their whole outfit work better than by thinking about how their shoes are constructed.

I don’t think there’s an easy or objective answer to how to put a great outfit together. I don’t think I have it down yet much of the time, but I am starting to recognize what makes some of my outfits better than others, at least to me. For me this is a very personal thing, a small pleasure that I indulge myself in.

 

[DougDevious]

And don't give up on secondhand shopping. Even if you're just a 36R, there's enough good stuff out there for you to make it well worth your patience.

I'm 32S.
Not.
Even.
Kidding.

Oh by the way, seeing as this thread has everyone's attention, can any of you guys spare a moment to check out my thread I did on AliExpress Menswear? I updated it ages ago and I still haven't gotten any traction on it.
It's got a lot more content than it looks like it does, it's just all spoilered for the sake of being compact.

 

[DougDevious]

Also, mother of god, did this thread get derailed HARD.

DWW, you seem like a mature guy, but damn do you have a knack for starting multi-page spanning arguments. They seem to follow in your wake. I'm sure you have valid points to make, but please try to stay on topic.

I have only really been sort of skimming this thread, and I really don't have context for what a lot of you
Honestly, I am of course not so concerned with chasing perfection with style. I feel like it's a matter of perspective a lot of the time.
I feel like, when you're in this sort of insular, incestuous hobby subculture, it's all too easy for people to get way too inside their own heads, and fret over small details way too much, details that only they have learned to notice. In my opinion, no matter how the details come out, no matter how well or badly something is tailored, at the end of the day it's a matter of personality, and communicating that personality.
You can always refine your visual vocabulary, but more important than the flow of your prose or how concise you can possibly be, is just what you're trying to say to begin with, and how well you can get it across.
This is why, in my post on the WAYWRN thread, I stressed trying to have a sense of movement and personality with how you pose for a picture.
If you can't make an outfit picture look cool through the context of the person wearing it alone, you can at least imply some of that context.
However you end up dressing, that's exactly how someone like you would dress when and where you are, and you can only be who you are, and that person rarely has to be a guy with a super-duper savant-like eye for detail. I think a little imperfection, nay, perhaps even some small mistakes here and there, are what make an outfit all the more human.
This is also why I'm trying to push for taking inspiration from unconventional sources, and why I think more 'punk rock' sources of style inspiration belong in the discussion of menswear, as if we go entirely without that punk spirit of naturalism, nihilism, and 'letting it be', the style discussion can become an entirely-too-fussy circlejerk.
And to railroad this back into the discussion I was originally trying to cultivate, I don't think there is a single zoomer in the world that can look at a circlejerk like that and somehow want to even be at arm's length to it.

 

[JohnMRobie]

Also, mother of god, did this thread get derailed HARD.

DWW, you seem like a mature guy, but damn do you have a knack for starting multi-page spanning arguments. They seem to follow in your wake. I'm sure you have valid points to make, but please try to stay on topic.

I have only really been sort of skimming this thread, and I really don't have context for what a lot of you
Honestly, I am of course not so concerned with chasing perfection with style. I feel like it's a matter of perspective a lot of the time.
I feel like, when you're in this sort of insular, incestuous hobby subculture, it's all too easy for people to get way too inside their own heads, and fret over small details way too much, details that only they have learned to notice. In my opinion, no matter how the details come out, no matter how well or badly something is tailored, at the end of the day it's a matter of personality, and communicating that personality.
You can always refine your visual vocabulary, but more important than the flow of your prose or how concise you can possibly be, is just what you're trying to say to begin with, and how well you can get it across.
This is why, in my post on the WAYWRN thread, I stressed trying to have a sense of movement and personality with how you pose for a picture.
If you can't make an outfit picture look cool through the context of the person wearing it alone, you can at least imply some of that context.
However you end up dressing, that's exactly how someone like you would dress when and where you are, and you can only be who you are, and that person rarely has to be a guy with a super-duper savant-like eye for detail. I think a little imperfection, nay, perhaps even some small mistakes here and there, are what make an outfit all the more human.
This is also why I'm trying to push for taking inspiration from unconventional sources, and why I think more 'punk rock' sources of style inspiration belong in the discussion of menswear, as if we go entirely without that punk spirit of naturalism, nihilism, and 'letting it be', the style discussion can become an entirely-too-fussy circlejerk.
And to railroad this back into the discussion I was originally trying to cultivate, I don't think there is a single zoomer in the world that can look at a circlejerk like that and somehow want to even be at arm's length to it.

Have you thought about checking out the SWD side of the forum? You might find more things to your liking and additional inspiration if classic menswear isn’t your thing. There’s a SWD tailoring thread you could start with.

 

[DougDevious]

Have you thought about checking out the SWD side of the forum? You might find more things to your liking and additional inspiration if classic menswear isn’t your thing. There’s a SWD tailoring thread you could start with.

If I wasn't interested in a slightly more tailored look, I wouldn't be here. As oddball and, well, "low-budget" as my style is, It's still firmly rooted in tailoring. I rarely wear a button-up shirt without a tie, and I don't think I'll ever buy a jacket that doesn't have lapels. I don't believe there's quite as much of a divide between "classic menswear" and everything else. If we think of men's style only in binary terms of "classic" menswear, which has the connotation of being the old-fashioned thing, and SWD is everything besides that, then that will only contribute to the slow death of this style. As I said, I'm here to try and evolve things, at least in some small way.
Besides, the "SWD Tailoring" thread seems to be mainly centered around avant-garde, experimental takes on the tailored silhouette and fabrics, and that really isn't my cup of tea.

 

[Spinster Jones]

That skill set, if if it ever existed, certainly does not exist now, as there are basically no more full-time career sales associates working at one-stop haberdasheries that men shop at for a lifetime.

Instead we are left to fend for ourselves by casually perusing pictures and this site, and I guess in your eyes most men in this supermajority category either 1.

I guess your frustration boils down to us guys in category 2 asking what you think are the wrong questions, that is, trying to optimize individual parameters like shoe style or pants rise, or perhaps trying to find a good deal on a pricy individual item, instead of seeing the summation of all the parts, but that's just now an individual effort is going to go.

Good comment

Can't bother with finding the arts and architecture comment. But it's a real valid one. How much "aesthetics" have one actually consumed? I have friends that dress okay, but then their homes look like a bad IKEA showroom. It's all about training ones eye for proportions, colours etc. And one can't do that solely by watching clothes and fits from people online. Some of whom have never understood the larger picture.

Which is why the The way They Wore-thread is so valuable, since DWW tries to emphasize the setting and larger understanding of aesthetics that these men often were able to convey with clothes alone.

Alas, I think, as have been pointed out by now, it's hard to even train your eye in this day and age, since CM are so watered down and misaligned with it's origins.

 

[TomTom]

Would love a suit-brand that just did the same style year in and year out. Something one could return to 10 years later and know what to expect.

Bespoke makers are like this, and to an certain extent they were. Me and my friends could buy and discuss the same suit; same fit, same cloth, same everything. But that's also costly, and nothing a normal person would care to do. Therefore if we were to compare, it would have to be something like odd jackets, but it would have to be this seasons, which again is in the narrow lapel-style that's present right now, which might change with the next season.

My point being that it's easier to see a guy wearing Paraboot Michaels and then going to the store and getting the same pair, even if it's three years later.

I reckon this is why people appreciated staples like Brooks Brothers in its hay day?

For me that is Ede and Ravenscroft here in the UK..Have 10 year old jackets from them. Suits have been the same fit and model since I started wearing them in mid 00's. My favorite RTW brand.

 

[TomTom]

I think this takes a lot of trial and error and thoughtful discussion. It took me a while to move away from Neapolitan tailoring and accept that a soft, natural shoulder doesn't look good on me, which is why I started writing about extended shoulders

I am the opposite. The Neapolitan soft natural looks good on me.
My problem w/ much Italian RTW is the close-fitting short jacket
that goes with the shoulder. I have several Neapolitan examples
that are over 10 years old and pre-date this "tiny suit" style.
More recent acquisitions were much harder to find.

I feel you..I'm a 6foot 3 former rugby player and most Italian tailoring looks absolutely ridiculous on me. Plus most Italian brands do not have L sizes. SO I have moved over to English brands and have never looked back.