My very fashion-focused friend (a trend analyst at a big name high street fashion label) says that the coda of style/ heritage-oriented clothes enthusiasts - that "style is timeless" is a load of rubbish, and that, in today's world, the classic menswear lover is really just a subculture with its own dress code - like mod, or punk, or whatever. That in reality he is just as driven by the tides of trend and fads as, for example, streetwear, or haute-couture fans. As examples she pointed to the fact that various items of clothing such as tweed suits, work wear boots, flannel shirts, blazers etc, ebb and wane in popularity , as well as different cuts, fits and materials becoming regarded as "always stylish" over time.
She also pointed out that most "style icons" who are held up by the classic menswear crowd as paragons of permanent style - Sinatra, McQueen, Kennedy, Connery - were in fact highly fashion-conscious and in step with their times, and that anyone who went around dressing exactly as they did, today, would look incongruous and probably ridiculous.
Classic menswear enthusiasts are fetishists to an even greater degree than other fashion subcultures, she opined. Driven by a sensual reaction to cloths, folds and stitching that, rather than being an innate harmony with some ethereal principle of fundamental taste and style, is in fact entirely subjective and moulded by the senser's tastes, preferences, cultural background etc.
Ok she didn't actually say it in those words. Those are just kind of my interpretation after thinking for a while about a few throwaway comments she made, when I said something like "style never goes out of fashion" in a vaguely ironic context.
But I wondered if she had said that , whether anyone here would have put up a defence, for the "classic menswear enthusiasts" (aka SF regular) being in any way above, or more than, the rest of the fashion world.
She also pointed out that most "style icons" who are held up by the classic menswear crowd as paragons of permanent style - Sinatra, McQueen, Kennedy, Connery - were in fact highly fashion-conscious and in step with their times, and that anyone who went around dressing exactly as they did, today, would look incongruous and probably ridiculous.
Classic menswear enthusiasts are fetishists to an even greater degree than other fashion subcultures, she opined. Driven by a sensual reaction to cloths, folds and stitching that, rather than being an innate harmony with some ethereal principle of fundamental taste and style, is in fact entirely subjective and moulded by the senser's tastes, preferences, cultural background etc.
Ok she didn't actually say it in those words. Those are just kind of my interpretation after thinking for a while about a few throwaway comments she made, when I said something like "style never goes out of fashion" in a vaguely ironic context.
But I wondered if she had said that , whether anyone here would have put up a defence, for the "classic menswear enthusiasts" (aka SF regular) being in any way above, or more than, the rest of the fashion world.