Menswear Bloggers: Tell Me What Informs Your Style Of Blogging

[mossrockss]

I have an on and off blog in Portuguese. It began as a mean to find others in Brazil who share some of my fashion related interests, which at the time were raw denim and boots. No one talks about it here, so I was able to achieve my initial goal through SEO.

Little by little I began writing about "advanced things" as I discovered them myself. Sharing engineer boots and repro brands with the local custom motorcycle crowd, to whom Von Dutch and John Varvatos are the ultimate brands. Again, it worked, and the blog became a point of reference as products like Red Wing Moc Toe Boots became popular in certain niches.

As questions came in, I began another shift. Posts began involving a bit of history and culture around certain goods and styles, with inspirational pictures and where to buy. Almost all of the recommended shops were from abroad because Brazil is a desert when it comes to good brands.

After reading some Brazilian blogs it became apparent that consumers needed help. Brands with money could fabricate any story they'd like. We don't have means of comparison and the market has no knowledge. I decided to review popular brands and write more about how things are made and how to evaluate price. It helped that I worked for 4 years in the shoe industry, so I knew the workings of the manufacturing industry in Brazil and had some technical background. I'm by no means a specialist, but it got very positive feedback.

The way I see things going is that at some point, I'll have to make my own product or open up my own shop. Ebooks and personal style guides are not my thing, and paid content from Brazilian brands would not be up to the standards of credibility I've set up. It's a natural progression to help the market get what it wants and make our menswear scene a little bit better.

As the next step of the blog I've been searching for good brands with reasonable price points that the Brazilian public can buy and have found a lot of great brands in Indonesia, Singapure and even China. People here love shops like Self Edge, but simply don't have the money. It's the last step: to introduce a type of product that our market can buy without watering down the quality.

All good content must help alleviate a persona's pain. Help someone solve a problem. Improve their lives. What that means to each target audience, will vary. If you're doing well on SEO or social, it's probably because you do that. If you're not, and if your goal is to get good reach, you might need to improve how you deliver your message, or re evaluate if what you're saying actually matters (and to who).

Most blogs from the Tumblr/Blogspot period were nice hobbies, but very poorly set up in terms of SEO or any other web optimisation. They probably died because they don't put food on the plate and as more and more content started being published by people who had a better idea of what they were doing, the little reach they had, got taken.

I still see written content, on a blog/medium as a good backbone. It's a great foundation for people to find you while searching for something on the world's biggest search engine. You can use what you have there to feed all your other channels, tailoring the message to every different behaviour (you won't post a long text or link on Instagram).

Instagram is a nice complement. Mine is personal (@lucasbazevedo). Mostly pictures of places I've been to or stores visited. I like to travel and to take pictures but not a photographer, so Instagram is the best place to share it.

I don't think faking life style photos is good, but people are drawn to something they aspire to, or cannot have. The most popular profiles have lavish lives, and even tech guys and entrepreneur's sell lifestyle. At some point I would like to make a switch to focused content. Anyone who want's to have a following or make money should. I feel like working niches is the way to go if you want to be found on social media.

This was an excellent reminder for me to focus on a persona and alleviate their pain as I’m setting up my new blog and focusing on more content. Thank you.

 

[Claghorn]

Are we about to become stuffy and uncool guys who wear ties, again?

We never stopped being those guys.

 

[Caustic Man]

I was waiting for that.

 

[Andy57]

@Andy57 fair points. I think in my mind, I was referring more to long-form menswear blogging and not the industry in general. In my mind, the blogging era was already in decline by, say, 2013-14. I think the array of products available to consumers has only gotten better, though - we just discover and discuss brands in a different way.

I understand your point now.

So, then, are we saying that there really is no future for "long form" menswear blogs, save for a few (Crompton's, Derek's, one or two others)?

 

[am55]

I understand your point now.

So, then, are we saying that there really is no future for "long form" menswear blogs, save for a few (Crompton's, Derek's, one or two others)?

Is that not true of all literature? How many authors do we remember from the 1930s, the 1850s, or contemporary works to War of the Gauls?

 

[Andy57]

Is that not true of all literature? How many authors do we remember from the 1930s, the 1850s, or contemporary works to War of the Gauls?

Do you think that's a valid comparison?

 

[am55]

Do you think that's a valid comparison?

Yes, I absolutely do. If your argument against it, as I interpret your comment, is that form matters to the quality of art, I disagree.

Great art touches upon more than its literal content or form. War and Peace is not about the Napoleonic Wars from the Russian point of view; Pierre is a vehicle for Tolstoy's unlayering of human nature which is still relevant today. Cao Xueqin can be read as the anti-period drama (his own words in the early chapters of Hong Lou Meng) or as a critic of the Qing dynasty (which seems to have read it as such, to the extent the contemporary elite refused to even admit to knowledge of the work), but it is really a masterpiece of realism. The Little Prince is the most translated work after the Bible despite being almost an afterthought sketched on a restaurant napkin; I watched the recent animated adaptation and it completely misses the point by turning it into some kind of 1960s counterculture unidimensional message (plus the translation is bad, it is not "what makes her your rose is the time you have spent" but, literally "the time you have wasted with her"). By the same author, Mermoz is on the surface a biography, but really a bittersweet note on the lack of place for heroes in the modernist world. This is not to speak of the high number of great works published as columns in weekly or monthly papers (such as a great chunk of the comic book masterpieces). And many of Asimov's or Heinlein's short stories are fantastic - Space Cadet, written in 1948, inspired Star Trek which changed not just science fiction but TV itself. Or to veer outside literature, Henri Duparc's songs put him on par with at least Schubert, even if his death and self-destruction of output have limited his wider recognition; certainly these songs are more artistically worthy and more likely to survive than a number of symphonies by lesser peers.

Here is a more recent CM example, not really about buttonholes but about gentle vanity and the endearing humanity of even the highest placed. Survived half a century and counting.

Where would you publish today if you were not well connected? Blogs. The internet is the great leveller; your thoughts can be published in infinitely shareable format. Eventually someone who appreciates greatness will take a taste, and forward the work within the gatekeepers and tastemakers who will be able to crown it for posterity.

Zhu Xiao Mei was cleaning houses in L.A. to make ends meet, ignored by the American musical community; once she moved to Paris, practicing in her friend's apartment (who, if I recall well, "disliked the piano" - but stunned, asked her to continue), she was rapidly discovered. I suspect her Bach and Schumann recordings will last as perhaps Maria Yudina's have (and as Yudina, despite her distaste for "leaving a mark in the world"), especially since YouTube and other media have allowed, once again, an easily shared format. You may counter that not many bloggers are worthy, well, that is my point, only a few survive. We will be doomed only when discoverability disappears, and whether that is even possible is a very interesting area of discussion. And the Joshua Bell playing in the metro experiment is one of many more visible examples for the need for tastemakers and a gatekeeping context of sorts (in other words as you can imagine I am quite against the whole "playing opera in car parks" idea).

 

[am55]

Another example I just thought of is Jiro Dreams of Sushi which has a cult following amongst a large number of artisans and artists across every discipline. The man literally just cuts fish and puts it on rice, and the movie literally just films him doing that (and buying the fish), but that is not the point. Jiro is the modern Fountainhead (which I am very careful to mention in these politically charged times) as a defense of artistic integrity. The shokunin is quite similar to Roarke in spirit. Who'd have thought fast food could be this inspiring.

 

[brillopad]

I don't know if I would classify most menswear blogs as "great art" but I see your point!

On a similar note, in my opinion I find that the best blogs are those that have a fairly narrow scope - blogs that try to cover too much or attract too broad of an audience seem to slowly devolve into "lifestyle blogs" and so forth. From my perspective, the best blogs are those that have a specific range that they cover and do so in depth. I think this can be seen in popular niche blogs like Die Workwear but also in others like Made By Hand or V Cleat (just some quick examples), both of which have a very narrow focus that they are highly knowledgable in.

 

[am55]

I don't know if I would classify most menswear blogs as "great art" but I see your point!

On a similar note, in my opinion I find that the best blogs are those that have a fairly narrow scope - blogs that try to cover too much or attract too broad of an audience seem to slowly devolve into "lifestyle blogs" and so forth. From my perspective, the best blogs are those that have a specific range that they cover and do so in depth. I think this can be seen in popular niche blogs like Die Workwear but also in others like Made By Hand or V Cleat (just some quick examples), both of which have a very narrow focus that they are highly knowledgable in.

Ah, but thanks to Sturgeon's Law most menswear blogs won't be great

The lifestyle blog is the original "blog". Look at "Take Ivy" or the "Made in USA" "mook" described in Ametora as massive successes in Japan. I've definitely seen the former on a few American friends' libraries, even though it bears no relevance to their modern life, which hints at some degree of artistic importance. Both of these books are basically lifestyle blog posts in long form, both launched enormously successful, multi-billion yen trends.

I wonder if bloggers have had the same impact. I suspect Manton's famous wedding essay has unwittingly turned every groom outfit into a succession of navy suits with silver plaid ties, for example. It was written well enough that it was shared to me by people not interested in menswear, well before I was reading anything about menswear. It's harder to source today as it seems most websites have taken it offline and Google is losing its war against SEO spammers, but the influence is undeniable here and elsewhere.

 

[Caustic Man]

Thanks for linking The Secret Vice, btw. That was a great piece from Tom Wolfe.

 

[am55]

@Claghorn this piece by Charles Darwin's son touches on the subject you mentioned previously: http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=1&itemID=A570&viewtype=text (Development in dress, George H. Darwin).

For example:

A new invention bears a kind of analogy to a new variation in animals; there are many such inventions, and many such variations; those that are not really beneficial die away, and those that are really good become incorporated by "natural selection,"as a new item in our system.

[...] besides the general adaptation of dress above referred to, there is another influence which has perhaps a still more important bearing on the development of dress, and that is fashion. The love of novelty, and the extraordinary tendency which men have to exaggerate any peculiarity, for the time being considered a mark of good station in life, or handsome in itself, give rise I suppose to fashion. This influence bears no distant analogy to the "sexual selection,"on which so much stress has recently been laid in the "Descent of Man."Both in animals and dress, remnants of former stages of development survive to a later age, and thus preserve a tattered record of the history of their evolution.

These remnants may be observed in two different stages or forms. 1st. Some parts of the dress have been fostered and exaggerated by the selection of fashion, and are then retained and crystallized, as it were, as part of our dress, notwithstanding that their use is entirely gone (e.g. the embroidered pocket-flaps in a court uniform, now sewn fast to the coat). 2ndly. Parts originally useful have ceased to be of any service, and have been handed down in an atrophied condition.

The first class of cases have their analogue in the peacock's tail, as explained by sexual selection; and the second in the wing of the apteryx, as explained by the effects of disuse.

 

[am55]

I'm bumping the thread to recommend to (mostly) French readers the Chouan des Villes blog, now defunct. It is a different style from Scavini or PG. More intellectual. There is a refinement of thought in some of the more verbose posts, and in what is left unsaid, that is quite pleasing. His selection of @RoSaCe 's croquis is particularly illustrative of this.

The blog was shuttered through both frustration with the "upgrade" of its platform, and a feeling of dullness and repetition overcoming its author. A shame as I think thinking always evolves through one's life and so the same subject can be broached later anew. Chouan, if you read this, come back!

 

[am55]

Bumping the thread again, going somewhat off subject, because as I get through the Chouan archives I find many interesting ideas. Here's one (which was new to me): that elegance necessarily requires physical imperfection (I have no idea if Google Translate will capture the meaning properly). He closes with "to the elegant man, clothing serves to hide misery. To the contemporary man, it serves to show off the body".

This is a surprisingly good intuition explaining the trends towards lycra fits and ultra thin fabrics in ever increasingly eye popping colours popular today (and the following draping of oneself in black or invisible jeans as age and a life well lived take their toll).

He takes examples including Cary Grant, Fred Astaire and Philippe Noiret - examples used a thousand times by a thousand writers - and somehow derives an original insight. This is what writing is about. Is the thought right or not? Who knows, but it added some depth to my thinking, making it worthwhile. Writers, why do you, or do you not, go down this path? We could also discuss the veracity of the claim.

 

[Caustic Man]

I'm not sure what "path" you mean. Are you asking if writers agree with the quote you posted, or that they choose to write in that style, or what?