A Different Point of View

[robxznyc]

Hello,

I was very glad to have found styleforum last year to explore my interest in menswear and to feel connected to a community. So I just wanted to start a thread that offers a place to anyone who has a difference voice related to menswear and wants to share.

To kick off, I find how the site's organizing posts under classic menswear and streetwear overlapping, outdated and inconvenient.

What makes classic is the enduring quality of the style. An A-1 flight jacket, Levi's 501, a reinvented Aspesi blazer made of a high-tech material are both classic and street style. As streetwear elements have become more mainstream and integrated into more traditionally considered classic brands, the current categorization is easy to cause confusion as items and collections may be considered classic by some but streetwear by others. Using just finished FW16 show as an example, I consider Lemaire, Marni, Wooyoungmi, Lucio Vanotti, and Bottega, just to name a few, all classic collections with a heavy streetwear influence.

By browsing the threads I also noticed the current categorization is polarizing members into views of traditional vs. unconventional, old-fashioned vs. creative, resulting in each group developing a vision that's homogenous and static, rather than diverse and dynamically evolving.

Categorization is necessary for ease of use and creating a sense of style identity, so I wonder if I can get any consent from other members to suggest using category names like traditional style and contemporary style, or suit and tie, smart casual, and casual, etc.

Rob

 

[Claghorn]

"Classic Menswear" is just a name. Not all classic menswear falls under it. I supposed "Tailored Menswear" would be more accurate. And then you have the odd beast which is the Classic Menswear Casual thread, which isn't really "Classic Menswear" (the arbitrary category that seems to be defined by neckties, dress shirts, and lapelled jackets) but is stuck over here because many who wear "Classic Menswear" also enjoy that type of thing.

With NMWA, the line between what would fall under "Classic Menswear" and what would fall under "Streetwear and Denim" is increasinly blurred.

 

[Testudo_Aubreii]



Hello,

Changed to what? I don't understand your rationale for this change to an alternative you don't clearly describe. Do you mean that your style falls somewhere between the norm for CM and the norm for SW&D? Then why not help reinvigorate Reevolving's Sharp Casual thread? Do you mean that CM and SWD are categories that inherently overlap, and shouldn't? But there will always be overlaps between any categories of clothes we might choose to work with: social concepts always have fuzzy boundaries. Do you mean that the current division leads CMers to be homogeneously old-fashioned, and SWDers to be homogeneously unconventional? It's true that like-minded people encourage each other to be more committed to their shared beliefs and practices; but so much so that they're problematically homogeneous? By what standard? It sounds like yours is somewhere between CM and SWD. Again, Reev's thread is trying to find such a middle ground, as is the CM Casual thread, as Claghorn notes. Do you mean you wish we used concepts like suit and tie or smart casual? We already do in discussion and thread. So do you want to have three basic categories for SF: suit-tie, smart casual, casual? It sounds like it: but if we did that, and divided SF into three basic tribes instead of two, the same phenomena you complain about with the binary division would happen again, wouldn't they? You'd get hidebound smart casualers, even more nutty suit-and-tie guys, and ever weirder casual streetwear types.