Random fashion thoughts - Part II (A New Hope)

[Superb0bo]



as an adult, do I have to wear a watch?? or are they just for people into that kind of thing?

I own say five (two would be enough) different Timex watches and wear one every day . Really the cheapsest thing around, but to me they still look good and have been going for years. I somethimes think about getting a, for me, expensive watch, say 1000 $ but I really dont think I would appriciate it that much. Given that you dont "interact" with watches as much as clothes, in the sense of combining with different items, or even just in a sensory manner (as a watch is just always there) the subjective value (for me) of having a good/expensive one is lower than with clothes. And a cheap one obviously avoids any concerns of ruining it with wear..

Its quite practical with watches though, I like not having to fiddle around with a phone for seeing what time it is. So, if you find a cheap one that looks nice, try it.

 

[Superb0bo]

ive really started regretting/getting annoyed with owning (alot) of "imperfect" items. For instance, why o why did I buy made in china Dr Martens? They look ok but feel crappy (synthetic lookingc, non-breating "leather"), when I could have gotten some made in germany trad shoes for not much more? Should i just throw them away, or wear them given that I´ve actually already spent money and the earths resources on them? Just seeing them in my apartment makes me slightly annoyed.

A general point: is striving for some stripped down perfection reasonable, or is accepting the intrinsic flaws of the world /being a consumer the only way about it?

 

[Grintricha]



But forums are weird, I wonder if they'll still be around and up and running in 10, 20 years and then you'd have entire generational shifts documented in minute details/interactions and maybe posters who would be active members for most of their life and then later new members would dig up contributions and heated discussions between ppl who've since passed on. I was watching Twin Peaks last year and had a look at old usenet discussions from 1990 and it's weeeird reading that stuff 25 years later, just people talking about the last episode of a tv show, ******* around

I'm guessing in most cases communities die down or the membership turnover is too high to allow and kind of extended continuity or maybe the posting format will be radically different by then...but still... I wonder what's the longest a posting member on a messageboard has been active.


thoughts

Technology will develop and at some point this forum will migrate to a new one, and it just won't be worth migrating the old content so it'll get deleted I'm afraid

 

[iamacyborg]



Those are pretty much the ONLY store newsletters, apart from those with an enticement of a exclusive coupon code, that I open.  There is otherwise no reward for me.  I don't really care about the editorials from stores, and wonder at the ROI on those.  Maybe they are good branding opportunities?  In any case, I have, for example, not opened a single "editorial" piece from Mr Porter, but I open their Tuesday and Friday "new product" sends, every time, and if there are less than say, 150 new products, I am automatically disappointed, because it means that the chances of my finding something in the intersecction of I like/I can afford/its a category in which I'm currentely interested drops to nearly zero.  

If I want to look at interesting content, I open emails from Quora, my daily WWD pdf version, or from other torums that I have memberships to but don't participate in much, just she see what's up, etc.  A store though?  I want to see what they ave in stock;.  There is no story that they can tell me that a cursory glance through their brand list and new items does not already.

Which is where things like personalisation shine, letting subscribers directly choose what emails they receive is great. Some people love heavily product focused emails, others prefer editorial, the challenge then becomes combining the two in a coherent manner. Email's so cheap to send that ROI is pretty much always positive.

Quora and Medium send great emails, and Quartz' daily newsletter is the first thing I check when I'm in the office.

Maybe it's because I only care about a few brands, but a number doesn't do anything to excite me.
That's just it, they aren't personalized. It's just a number, and I know some shops count all of the sizes as individual items.

That's kinda ******, and they're leaving money on the table.

 

[Bam!ChairDance]



That's what mildly fascinating to me, the conditions are all there for long lasting communities to develop but is it just a structure where successive waves of new users incrementally but completely replace the old member base or can it retain enough long timers to achieve some sense of continuity (ppl posting for decades) ? Feels like everything points to the former and I can't really see myself posting here in 10 years but who knows...

But yeah maybe this kind of stuff is becoming irrelevant in today's more dynamic environment and increased fragmentation, idk.

I need to sleep

There are lots of IRL parallels to this-- I'm thinking of things like fraternities and student organizations that have lasted a century or longer. Meeting spaces would move from one building to another, founding members would ascend to the Big Forum in the Sky, and new members would join without having met any of the founders face to face.

But in these organizations the n00bs still think of themselves as part of a community, thanks to all the rituals the community uses to pass along institutional memory from one generation to the next. Meanwhile current members extend their tendrils to alumni and other former members to keep them coming back for reunion events, making sure the community always keeps some connection to the past.

Or, if StyFo lasts long enough, it could even become a sort of Online Style Nation. We send digital textbooks to new members so they can learn about Fok the Belted or Moo the Instigator. Admins levy taxes and collect census data from all the commoners so they have no choice but to imagine themselves as part of the state. We create flags, mantras, pledges of allegiance that we recite on the regular.

Etc

 

[Bam!ChairDance]

What I'm saying is, soon it'll be really important for future stylefarmers to ask each other.... "what wash are those?"

 

[nahneun]

rft off topic: i hate the direction devoa is going

 

[Parker]

So I really don't give a flying **** about watches (fashion) but apparently I have way too much time on my hands because a couple months (years) ago I found myself reading up on movements (Japanese streetwear) and complications (chainstitching, riri zips, goodyear welting, bespoke tailoring, left warp denim) and Geneva seals (German army trainers) and before you know it I was on Chrono24, (Styleforum) trancelike, bookmarking like a fool and planning 'reasonable' purchases I have no business making. The internet is a funny thing.

It got boring eventually and, all in all, I still don't know **** about watches (Goodyear welting) but I guess I can see part of the appeal now, kind of. And yes, okay, watch (fashion) people are not automatically douchebags, sorry all, many are just nerds. Still can't wrap my head around the financial aspect of the collector (baller sneaker thread) thing and the ugliness of some designs and Rolexes (Augusta boots and CCP scarstitch jackets) (sorry cyc sorry guys in the artisan leather thread) but hey, tastes... Who knows, maybe one day I'll get something low profile like an old VC ultra fine (Margiela replica blouson) or a Patrimony (Burberry shearling) if I'm crazy.

Parker
Member since 2005

 

[Fuuma]



^heh the undercover one is almost certainly a nicer garment, as an idea i think the vetements thing is more fun. would rather wear the vetements, though maybe that's because it strikes me as more masculine.

re pangolin, sure that's totally true and bless is amazing, but despite those sort of conceptual or formal things they have in common, it's a very different feeling and aesthetic. I don't think they end up really achieving the same things either actually. bless seems more to me about these weird art objects that tell stories and convey surprise and wonder. vetements is more interested in notions of street fashion and i think, by proxy, ends up speaking to (and perhaps in a weird way in dialogue with) blog/internet fashion culture. that's a direction that i'm not aware of bless looking toward.

another dichotomy that relates to this conversation: finding information about bless requires quite a bit of digging and it's hard to turn up much, it's kind of almost a secretive thing; vetements takes the opposite approach and is enmeshed in a firestorm of publicity and social media despite an initial veil of mystery.

Finding information about Bless requires you to be like humans before everything was on the internutz and just buy their archive books, I have plenty of info about Bless (granted one of my friends worked for them and had to handle archives). Does Vêtements even have a website?

 

[Fuuma]



Eh, I wouldn't say there's any obligation to. Maybe if you're in an industry where there's some kind of creepy prestige requirement and you're lacking in social and cultural capital if you don't wear a baller timepiece. I'm just kind of addicted to being able to tell time just by glancing at my wrist. I wear a super-cheap Seiko, FWIW.

edit: what snowman said

There is no industry exactly like this though, for every trader with an expensive watch you have a dude wearing a Casio.

So no, you don't need to care about watches, in fact most watches are so ugly that you're better off with no watch. I only like simple designs and smaller watches and, let's be honest, watch fans have a very high dumb douchebag contingent, just like wine fans connoisseurs or whatever (for the record I like a good wine with my meals and own some mechanical/Swiss watches, I might be a dbag). Nature of the (status) game. Doesn't mean there aren't some charming nerds in both hobbies but I mean. And no it isn't true that every hobby has the same amount of morons, c'mon.

 

[LA Guy]

There is no industry exactly like this though, for every trader with an expensive watch you have a dude wearing a Casio.

So no, you don't need to care about watches, in fact most watches are so ugly that you're better off with no watch. I only like simple designs and smaller watches and, let's be honest, watch fans have a very high dumb douchebag contingent, just like wine fans connoisseurs or whatever (for the record I like a good wine with my meals and own some mechanical/Swiss watches, I might be a dbag). Nature of the (status) game. Doesn't mean there aren't some charming nerds in both hobbies but I mean. And no it isn't true that every hobby has the same amount of morons, c'mon.

See: model train builder/conductors and comic collectors. You know, know, know, that they really like the stuff and are nerds. They may actually be building negative social capital from their hobbies.

 

[ManofKent]



...

I'm guessing in most cases communities die down or the membership turnover is too high to allow and kind of extended continuity or maybe the posting format will be radically different by then...but still... I wonder what's the longest a posting member on a messageboard has been active.


thoughts

Oddly this has probably been my longest stay on any community- 2008 I think (albeit starting out on MC before coming across to the dark side ). I've joined various photography boards over the years and dropped them when life's been busy/they've turned into 'my kit is better than yours' groups or in one case when the site owner decided he'd use the site to drop in racist jokes and promote Hungarian far-right extremism... I used usenet back in the late 80's but then didn't have internet access for a few years. I might have hung around other communities for longer if I had more online time, but I can't keep even vaguely abreast of what's going on if I follow more than two or three.

 

[gdl203]



let's be honest, watch fans have a very high dumb douchebag contingent

I'm really curious as to how you came to this conclusion. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time in watch forums, meetups, etc... and never got that feeling at all.

The dbags I've encountered around watches are typically people who know zero about them and only seem to care about the status of acquiring a particular watch - like that guy who fantasizes about a steel Daytona or a Royal Oak for years without knowing why, other than some influential friend convinced him it's the watch to own.

The guys who actually collect, read, post about watches don't come across as dumb dbags at all - although there is a good quotient of fanboys who take their loyalty to a particular brand too seriously sometimes.

 

[ManofKent]



...

The guys who actually collect, read, post about watches don't come across as dumb dbags at all - although there is a good quotient of fanboys who take their loyalty to a particular brand too seriously sometimes.

Fan boys seem to be an issue on any hobby forum - camera forums can be excruciating.

I can see the appeal of watches, and could have become an addict. I can really appreciate the skill that goes into producing fine watches, but quickly realised that I was happy with a couple of cheap Seiko automatics and a slightly dressier Tissot were good enough for me with other interests to swallow up funds.

 

[ManofKent]



Obneauf's is sticky, IME. Even in light layers. Seems like if you put that stuff on a bag, it's just going to get all over your clothes and/ or contents.

Yes obernaufs stays sticky forever. Maybe a neutral shoewax?