coldforge
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I think there's a disconnect that gives a lot of people trouble when this sort of topic comes up. Basically I think there's two layers of young, internet bound men who want to dress well:
2. There's most of the people here, who don't mind spending a shitload of money on clothes, who know about labels and what things like F/W11 and DBSS mean, and basically see dressing well as an art form—whether that means dressing extravagantly, edgily or elegantly, dressing classically or idiosyncratically—they see it as an expression of personal taste, aesthetic, and skill;
1. There's people whose main concern is essentially emerging from a state of not knowing how to dress _at all_. Maybe they are college students who have become self-conscious about only owning graphic tees and Armani Exchange, or maybe they're programmers who are trying to grow oup of wearing too-short Dockers every day on account of just never having given a **** about clothes up until now.
Both groups might find themselves on SF even though their values clash in many areas. A blog like Put This On or Nerd Boyfriend is essentially geared towards the latter; it's not a matter of disdaining goth ninja, or claiming APCs and Clarks as a personal style, because the latter group is trying to dress 'like a grown-up'. They're looking to learn and practice the rules of dressing appropriately and competently, and have the (not-unfounded) feeling that wearing head-to-toe J Crew makes them a lot more stylish than wearing a Threadless tee and Old Navy denim. The notion that there's no creativity doesn't really enter into it.
Nevertheless, a thread like WAYWT understandably will frustrate those in the first camp. If I'm jet or kunk, or a similarly high-level player, it's hard not to bring the sensibility of display and artistry to a series of 'dressed by the internet' pictures. Hell, I'm never gonna own a stitch of Rick Owens myself, and I still get pretty ******* bored by plaid and raw denim.
But the trick here is that people in the second group don't see themselves as simply moving along a spectrum, with ownership in the first group at the end. The vast majority of people who have become interested in menswear over the last couple years, and turned to the internet, have not done so because they'd eventually like to attain massive swagger status. It doesn't make much sense to treat them like novices in the whole fashion game. And I have friends who, for years, have been very happy cobbling together a modest, conservative wardrobe, going on Gilt nearly every day, never spending more than $100 on a pair of shoes, never buying anything flashier than maybe a tweed sportcoat, and still deriving a good deal of pleasure from their clothes and their ability to dress well.
2. There's most of the people here, who don't mind spending a shitload of money on clothes, who know about labels and what things like F/W11 and DBSS mean, and basically see dressing well as an art form—whether that means dressing extravagantly, edgily or elegantly, dressing classically or idiosyncratically—they see it as an expression of personal taste, aesthetic, and skill;
1. There's people whose main concern is essentially emerging from a state of not knowing how to dress _at all_. Maybe they are college students who have become self-conscious about only owning graphic tees and Armani Exchange, or maybe they're programmers who are trying to grow oup of wearing too-short Dockers every day on account of just never having given a **** about clothes up until now.
Both groups might find themselves on SF even though their values clash in many areas. A blog like Put This On or Nerd Boyfriend is essentially geared towards the latter; it's not a matter of disdaining goth ninja, or claiming APCs and Clarks as a personal style, because the latter group is trying to dress 'like a grown-up'. They're looking to learn and practice the rules of dressing appropriately and competently, and have the (not-unfounded) feeling that wearing head-to-toe J Crew makes them a lot more stylish than wearing a Threadless tee and Old Navy denim. The notion that there's no creativity doesn't really enter into it.
Nevertheless, a thread like WAYWT understandably will frustrate those in the first camp. If I'm jet or kunk, or a similarly high-level player, it's hard not to bring the sensibility of display and artistry to a series of 'dressed by the internet' pictures. Hell, I'm never gonna own a stitch of Rick Owens myself, and I still get pretty ******* bored by plaid and raw denim.
But the trick here is that people in the second group don't see themselves as simply moving along a spectrum, with ownership in the first group at the end. The vast majority of people who have become interested in menswear over the last couple years, and turned to the internet, have not done so because they'd eventually like to attain massive swagger status. It doesn't make much sense to treat them like novices in the whole fashion game. And I have friends who, for years, have been very happy cobbling together a modest, conservative wardrobe, going on Gilt nearly every day, never spending more than $100 on a pair of shoes, never buying anything flashier than maybe a tweed sportcoat, and still deriving a good deal of pleasure from their clothes and their ability to dress well.
