The border between fashion and style?

[katon]

Originally Posted by AskAndyAboutClothes

TravelLight:

"Fashion passes, style remains."

-- Coco Chanel (1883-1971), founder of Chanel

How does one know where to draw the line? How does one know when one has crossed the border of "classic style" into the neighboring countries of "fads" "fops" and "historical re-enactment"?

 

[Dragon]

Chanel`s quote does not say classic style...it just says style.

Just because you wear conservative, so called classic items it does not mean you have style, and wearing modern items does not mean you are fashionable either.

Taking Chanel as an example, her style broke many classic rules such as wearing black, using more relaxed materials such as tweeds and jersey, etc. Back in her time, many on this forum would have considered her to be way beyond fashion forward.

 

[neyus]

Classic Style will always remain in 'style' or look appropriate. However there are time when a classical item of clothing or look will become 'trendy' or fashionable.

 

[gorgekko]

Classic style...style...fashion...these words mean nothing. Classic in relation to what? Stylish by what definition? Fashionable until it becomes classic?

A little over a century ago it was scandalous to have cuffs on your pants. Seventy years ago you would have been a buffoon to wear suede shoes in the city. Until forty years ago wearing colourful socks with staid suits was normal. Twenty years ago you broke major rules not wearing a tie with your suit. Until a decade ago it was still technically against the rules to wear a brown suit outside of the country.

Classic style is a little like the rules of war: we all know what they are but we all pick and choose which we honour in the breech, and they are always changing regardless of what text argues.

Classic Style will always remain in 'style' or look appropriate.

Really?

I could probably sit here and name several changes in "classic style" that your grandfather would have known that you do the exact opposite of and call classic.