Fashion for Geeks: Why bother? | Hacker News Reader

Fashion for Geeks: Why bother?

urbanmonarch.com

27 pointsdag26 comments

It's true! When I'm with the ladies I can go on for hours about a random content generator I'm working on for fun, I can forward tons of /. links with explanations about what makes them interesting, I can call with a frequency and average message length just past the line of "creepy," I can be visibly nervous and embarrassingly insecure, and I can show up for teh love having skipped a shower and on 3 hours of sleep. But as long as I throw on a $75 hoodie, some prefaded jeans, and a pair of Pumas, my shit is tight!

You must hang out with the wrong girls...my girlfriend would get unconditionally aroused solely due to the moment I said half a sentence about random content generators.

Well with proper fashion, the enemy's gate is always down.

I just pay $12/year and subscribe to "Nylon for guys" magazine (http://guys.nylonmag.com/) - it really does do all the work involved with "staying current" so you don't have to look like this guy: http://yogan.meinungsverstaerker.de/fun/80s1337ness.jpg

Also, I wouldn't consider the last photo of you to be "haute couture": you're just copying Steve Jobs with a little bit of hair gel.

"I just pay $12/year and subscribe to "Nylon for guys" magazine"

You may be a hipster. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hipster

"Listens to bands that you have never heard of. Has hairstyle that can only be described as "complicated." (Most likely achieved by a minimum of one week not washing it.) Probably tattooed. Maybe gay. Definitely cooler than you. Reads Black Book, Nylon, and the Styles section of the New York Times. Drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon. Often. Complains. Always denies being a hipster..."

I'd love to stay fashionably dressed. As it is though, I just can't afford it. Or, I'd rather spend my money on something else. How much do you spend to buy the current season's clothing? And what's the best way to get it? I'd love to have a website where I input my basic style preferences or rate different fashions of the current season and get output of links to buy in style clothes/outfits I would like in my price range.

Most basics stay in fashion for about a decade.

This is true, it is quite expensive to stay in touch with fashion. However, it's not so hard to find things that look good on the cheap. I typically try and bargain hunt at stores such as H&M, tjmax, and the sale section of large department stores. If something is a season or two old - it's good enough to wear around without anybody chastising you for it. It's really not WHAT you wear, but HOW you wear it.

Had the jeans. Had the kicks. Had the day-glo. No mullet. Was that the problem?

I have a simple solution: get a girlfriend. I now wear nice shirts that apparently compliment my skin tone (who knew?), I wear layers (apparently very sexy) and I now have $300 shoes. I've never owned $300 shoes in my life.

Once you have a girlfriend, dressing fashionably is rather easy and mainly because I'm no longer allowed to choose except between Brown Shirt #1 and #2.

Your simple solution has a chicken and egg problem. Or at least according to the article linked to. The whole point of dressing fashionably is to get a girlfriend.

It's sort of a bootstrapping process. You build yourself the most basic girlfriend possible, and use her to compile one that's more complete.

Potentially the worst article I've seen on HN. It spends several paragraphs stereotyping women, damning them for caring about looks, and then promoting the author's superiority for basically being smarter than them. (He understands the social hierarchy thing, they don't.) Then, without irony, he appeals to Natalie Portman, who is someone that is - wait for it - attractive.

Girls like guys who look nice for the same reason guys like girls who look nice: it's more attractive.

It doesn't matter if it's stereotypical, only if it's accurate. I would like to hear an argument against the accuracy, and would love if citations were included.

It's another set of rules to play with, another system to hack. Learn the game and have some fun, that's what I did.

When I say something is stereotypical, I imply its inaccurate by being too general. Some women will do this, some won't. More importantly, some people will do this, and some won't. All people are involved in social hierarchies, and make judgments based on them. You're participating in one right now.

Hmm, I don't like the stereotype. Most of my friends that are programmers are fairly fashion forward.

I live in Vancouver, so maybe that is different from the valley.

Some of my friends are the Yaletown game developer nerds. This probably describes me. I like my Pumas and Lacoste shoes. When Douglas Coupland described the "Nikumas" in his book jPod, I almost fell over from laughing because he described the situation perfectly. The rest of the attire fits the shoes. Think Kanye West's outfit.

I know the Gastown web developer nerds too. They wear their Skechers and other hipster-nerd shoes. The rest of the attire matches.

Fashion != being well dressed. You can buy the most fashionable pant and still looks like a clown because it is too large or too short. But you can dress well without any clue in fashion. Just be careful about the size (that's the point when buying new clothes) and colors. Most people would go from a bad look to a decent one just by resizing their clothes to suit them correctly. And never forget : the white shirt is the best ally of men since forever.

The article would be more convincing if the "well dressed" examples were well dressed. Well, and also if it was well written. There has been no era in which a cheap white blazer over an olive drab t-shirt looked good.

Unfortunately, reading fashion magazines doesn't really improve a person's style unless you already look like a fashion model. San Francisco is filled with programmers who wear expensive, trendy gear and they don't look much better than the hacker slobs because it doesn't really suit their body shape or personality. In fact, they look like posers who spent $50 on a too-small t-shirt and $200 on sneakers that look like aerobic trainers from a B-movie about the future.

Simple, clean clothes that suit your body shape are a better bet. Most guys would be doing themselves a favor by donating their wardrobe to goodwill and spending a few hundred dollars buying some fresh basics.

Never before on hacker news have more words been said about less.

Launch and get funded. Then no one will care what you're wearing.

> no one will care what you're wearing.

This is never true. The impact of dress on perception is well studied and it is large. If you're not dressing well, you are foolishly giving up an easy edge.

A somewhat overlooked subject is coworker dress as a workplace quality issue. A lot of geeks don't notice dress, but most other people are sensitive to the aesthetic presentation of the people they have to spend many hours a day with. Going to work with very well presented people is a job perk, and having to interact with slobs is undesirable. Realize that even if you don't care about dress, other very competent people you may work with will care. Tacky clothing and pasty physiques can be like second hand smoke.

>Tacky clothing and pasty physiques can be like second hand smoke.

But without the cancer risk.

If you have a pasty physique it means you're not taking enough sun and probably not exercising, and I'd adventure a guess that that makes you a good candidate for cancer.

> Launch and get funded. Then no one will care what you're wearing.

Robert Winston has a piece in his book "Human Instinct" where he was looking at the effect of "funding" on his attractiveness to women. Day 1, he turns up in old clothes, in a clapped-out motor car and generally unkempt appearance. Scores about 4-5. Next day, he's back in a flash car, expertly groomed right down to the manicure, and he gets average 9 out of 10. The most telling part was one of the female test subjects saying "Well, I really liked you better yesterday, but I gave you a higher score today."

So, yes, money is not important and it's all-important. Dressing well shows you have it, but so do other things. It's up to you to decide if you care. Personally, I don't.

You and the article are talking about different things. Looking nice doesn't matter much for getting funded. But it does if you want a balanced life outside of your startup.

What are you going to do when your startup is successful and you're rolling in money? If you want to be out in the world, pursuing varied interests (or women), looking nice helps.

Appearance is continuous with reality. Imbalance in your intellectual life, for better or worse, tends to reflect in the way you appear. Looking nice is an indicator that you value social connection with others.

Who says the geeks on HN need fashion help, anyway?

I needed fashion help:

http://ourdoings.com/2008-02-12

I have that t-shirt...

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