• Hi, I am the owner and main administrator of Styleforum. If you find the forum useful and fun, please help support it by buying through the posted links on the forum. Our main, very popular sales thread, where the latest and best sales are listed, are posted HERE

    Purchases made through some of our links earns a commission for the forum and allows us to do the work of maintaining and improving it. Finally, thanks for being a part of this community. We realize that there are many choices today on the internet, and we have all of you to thank for making Styleforum the foremost destination for discussions of menswear.
  • This site contains affiliate links for which Styleforum may be compensated.
  • We would like to welcome House of Huntington as an official Affiliate Vendor. Shop past season Drake's, Nigel Cabourn, Private White V.C. and other menswear luxury brands at exceptional prices below retail. Please visit the Houise of Huntington thread and welcome them to the forum.

  • STYLE. COMMUNITY. GREAT CLOTHING.

    Bored of counting likes on social networks? At Styleforum, you’ll find rousing discussions that go beyond strings of emojis.

    Click Here to join Styleforum's thousands of style enthusiasts today!

    Styleforum is supported in part by commission earning affiliate links sitewide. Please support us by using them. You may learn more here.

The Official Dieworkwear Appreciation Thread

SpooPoker

Internet Bigtimer and Most Popular Man on Campus
Affiliate Vendor
Dubiously Honored
Joined
Oct 11, 2009
Messages
43,889
Reaction score
73,311
If I can interject -

I find menswear to be my hobby. I detest sports, cant stand politics, and dont garden. But I love clothes. I havent worn a tie in months but I get ties in that Im like OOOHFUCK thats a good one and want to buy immediately. Because I love them. Am I alone in having a hobbyist POV on menswear (which trickles down to consumerism) (and in my case a sustainability aspect because all my purchases are pre owned)? I mean, I appreciate - and therefore purchase - things from Kapital and RRL to Formosa and Anderson & Sheppard. Even if I never wear them, I appreciate them like a car collector who has a garage of 25 automobiles that he's never driven.

StyleForum is not the root cause of overspending, or epitome of consumer culture as you say, but basically the #menswear communities biggest AA meeting and gathering of junkies under the bridge at a single convergence point.
 

SpooPoker

Internet Bigtimer and Most Popular Man on Campus
Affiliate Vendor
Dubiously Honored
Joined
Oct 11, 2009
Messages
43,889
Reaction score
73,311
Ooooh how I hear you there :'(

Lets have a Zoom party from Adams apples to bellybuttons! We can pour Negronis and toast ancient madders!
 

am55

Distinguished Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2014
Messages
4,949
Reaction score
4,658
My techie in-group's signalling requires me to avoid Zoom due to the constant security vulnerabilities :-D

(was actually thrilled when my VC call yesterday was on Google Meet... the one in 100 actually paying attention...)
 

heldentenor

Distinguished Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2013
Messages
2,962
Reaction score
6,614
Anyone else listen to this? It's spot-on (at times painfully) about the relationship between tailored "menswear" (traditional men's aesthetic, no matter the gender of the wearer), detail, and signification.

Also, @dieworkwear makes an audio appearance.

 

vida

Senior Member
Joined
May 6, 2010
Messages
771
Reaction score
353
Anyone else listen to this? It's spot-on (at times painfully) about the relationship between tailored "menswear" (traditional men's aesthetic, no matter the gender of the wearer), detail, and signification.

Also, @dieworkwear makes an audio appearance.

I listened. You’re right about the painful part. Very accurate and somewhat embarrassing.
 

dieworkwear

Mahatma Jawndi
Dubiously Honored
Joined
Apr 10, 2011
Messages
27,320
Reaction score
69,979
I listened. You’re right about the painful part. Very accurate and somewhat embarrassing.

Anyone else listen to this? It's spot-on (at times painfully) about the relationship between tailored "menswear" (traditional men's aesthetic, no matter the gender of the wearer), detail, and signification.

Also, @dieworkwear makes an audio appearance.


What did you find painful or embarrassing about it?
 

scurvyfreedman

Distinguished Member
Joined
May 5, 2010
Messages
2,820
Reaction score
4,420
I like to learn about quality in consumer goods even if I'll never buy it. I've been reading about horsehide leather jackets for 2-3 years, but I'm never going to buy one for multiple reasons. I just find it interesting to know about different leather dying processes, the positives and negatives of skiving, a one piece back, etc.

I'm also never going to buy a bespoke suit, but I like to read about their details.

I've spent two-three weeks researching mattresses so I could make a recommendation to my wife who wants a particular feeling. I know there is no objective best, but I think I found the subjective best for what she's looking for in terms of support, cushion, cooling.

I can spend weeks researching tires when mine need replacement. Not because I have a performance car that I'm taking to the track and need a couple extra seconds. I have a Chevy Volt. No, I just want a little better wet traction without giving up "gas" mileage or dry traction.

My next purchase is a hand knitted sweater. It's a traditional craft, which makes it interesting to me. I like handmade goods when I can afford them, even if machine made are equal quality and less expensive. Although for this the price seems somewhat similar.

I'm not sure if this is consumerism or materialism or perfectionism.

I don't do this with less expensive goods or disposable goods like batteries. I'm not looking to squeeze the extra two days out of duracell versus energizer versus generic.

I read articles about the quality of things that I will never need, want, or buy, just because I'm interested in the hallmarks of quality, traditional practices, and I like to read when someone writes about their own passion.

The primary things I've learned on ASW, Permanent Style, and Die Workwear! over the past 15 years are to buy clothes that fit, buy what you piques your personal interest (not what's hot), and that there appears to be some linkage between price and quality, but it's not linear or rational.
 

UrbanComposition

Distinguished Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2010
Messages
6,583
Reaction score
19,823
If you haven’t yet read Derek’s post on Dylan & Son, it’s definitely worth a look — the videos are from the point of view of someone who deals with the variety of our various shapes and how tailoring adjusts to target an ideal. Dylan’s perspectives are a fascinating mixture of science and art, and perhaps more importantly, he explains them in a way that’s easy to digest.
 

somatoform

Distinguished Member
Joined
May 7, 2007
Messages
2,315
Reaction score
169
What did you find painful or embarrassing about it?

I can't speak for the others, but for me the, not 'painful', but point of tension occurs in juxtaposing where Boyer admits at the beginning that from a distance the details don't matter with the end where he admonishes the "blatant.....knock me out" elements of dress while idealizing "training the eye" to see subtlety.

That "you don't have to knock me out" is his intersubjective scenario, and it is intersubjective. The tension is that Boyer's idealization requires closing the distance in the first scenario to become so intimate in the 2nd scenario that you have the trained eye to notice some serious subtleties. But he gives no indication of what the scene is of this intersubjective idealization of "we need to get really close to each other to notice." For what, by whom, where is this closing the distance to intimacy being performed? Even the well-trained eyes of regular Pitti-goers wouldn't be able to close the gap between not knowing to knowing.

Frankly, I am more intrigued by your little comments on some conditioning emerging out of the Oscar Wilde case where men who still desire to care about fashion need to learn to fear too much flamboyance and look rather for some flamboyance sublimated into a maximum amount of flamsubtlety (my neoligism).
 

dieworkwear

Mahatma Jawndi
Dubiously Honored
Joined
Apr 10, 2011
Messages
27,320
Reaction score
69,979
Frankly, I am more intrigued by your little comments on some conditioning emerging out of the Oscar Wilde case where men who still desire to care about fashion need to learn to fear too much flamboyance and look rather for some flamboyance sublimated into a maximum amount of flamsubtlety (my neoligism).

At least in Western societies, I think it's always been considered odd for men to have an interest in clothing. Men are supposed to dedicate their lives to higher pursuits, such as a life of the mind. Women were allowed to have fashion, but they were traditionally considered less than men. Vanity, pride, and the body are considered shameful.

But I think our stereotype of the modern gay man comes from the trial of Oscar Wilde. Wilde was a performer who loved the arts and especially the theatre. He was witty and had a languorous, above-the-fray attitude. And he was a flamboyant clotheshorse.

With an understanding that men have always been mocked if they showed too strong of an interest in clothes (the lyric "put a feather in your cap and called it macaroni" refers to flamboyant dressers known as macaroni, at least one of which was sentenced to death for sodomy), I think the strongest connection between queerness and an interest in clothes comes out of the Oscar Wilde trial.

Prior to Wilde's trial, there were still some men who dressed with Wilde's flamboyance, but without their gender or sexuality coming into question (e.g., d’Orsay, Balzac, Disraeli, etc). After Wilde, I think men who dressed a certain way came under greater suspicion.

I don't think men need to learn to fear this, I just think they have learned to fear this. I think many men are worried that an overt interested in clothes, or dressing in non-traditional ways, calls into question their gender and sexuality. I think the bounds around what you can wear as a man are also tighter than they are for women.

I don't think men today dress with "flamsubtlety." I think most just don't have any interest in clothing at all. Or if they do, they want to dress in ways that look appropriate.
 

WayneLyndon

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 9, 2018
Messages
83
Reaction score
46
If I can interject -

StyleForum is not the root cause of overspending, or epitome of consumer culture as you say, but basically the #menswear communities biggest AA meeting and gathering of junkies under the bridge at a single convergence point.


Haha, isn’t that exactly what I was saying? People go to AA only when they feel and realize they already got a problem.

I too hate politics. It’s rubbish and weak as a science, and arguing and fighting at best. I don’t follow daily news, American daily politics or even politics of my own country.

The subject of ecology is been tossed around a lot. It seems to be, as it is something of a ideological catch-phrase instead of something people would really think about and follow to the end, that it is just the next step selling anything, nothing more. Something of a good will, something to feel good about, but nothing of actual merit or value in its own term.

I just like to see, how far someone who likes to write down his thinking, is willing to go. Is he willing to settle in lukewarm and cut his thought process in the middle of it like ”yeah, this is good enough, this is where I stop”. @dieworkwear obviously understands political thinking.

Like in the context of what @dieworkwear wrote: is the word ecology just the next **** people use as the excuse to continue buying clothes they don’t need? Yes. Do they feel better when they throw it out because it’s made recycled waste? Absolutely. Can everything continue as it were? hoo-ray, yes! Doesn’t that ruin his article, the essense of it? Yes it does. Overconsumption of clothes won’t change by individually thinking about the feeling for the object. Or have even marginal effect on anything.

I do have old **** from my grandparents. I get the simple point: instead of buying new crap, buy some old crap and have a sentimental feeling about it. Perhaps something with the word ’artisanal’ on it. I would like to see deeper analyze about what drives people to buy and thought perhaps @dieworkwear could offer some. The term ’human nature’ won’t fly, as human nature is impossible to pin down.

I also get the article wasn’t about ecology as such, but about what’s next in consumer culture. But the calling-out for better consumer behaviour was brought out, as were the problems with the ecology.

I refuse to recycle all my banana peels and light-bulbs and whatnot since I don’t need the happy-go-lucky good feeling about being a good person. I feel the problems are yet to be formulated and the problems of ecology don’t solve by recycling bananapeels.

I am being provocative here.
 

am55

Distinguished Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2014
Messages
4,949
Reaction score
4,658
At least in Western societies, I think it's always been considered odd for men to have an interest in clothing. Men are supposed to dedicate their lives to higher pursuits, such as a life of the mind.
I don't think that's quite right and the CM community exemplifies it.

Look at Herbert's Dune - that Paul wears his desert suit correctly "out of instinct" in the first book is the turning point after which the Fremen begin to believe. Or this now famous article. Or the former combat divers that formed Cousteau's first team and their obsession with dive watches. Or lawyers. There is and has always been plenty of this stuff in aggressive, "manly" fields.
 

Featured Sponsor

How important is full vs half canvas to you for heavier sport jackets?

  • Definitely full canvas only

    Votes: 55 36.2%
  • Half canvas is fine

    Votes: 59 38.8%
  • Really don't care

    Votes: 17 11.2%
  • Depends on fabric

    Votes: 26 17.1%
  • Depends on price

    Votes: 26 17.1%

Staff online

Forum statistics

Threads
505,156
Messages
10,578,851
Members
223,880
Latest member
nor77man
Top