Sweatpants Forever: How the Fashion Industry Collapsed
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
People still need clothing obviously (cheap and of good quality preferably).
Also, what do we consider the fashion industry exactly? Most long term clothing trends seem to be dictated by a couple of factors. Consisting of:
- practicality. Jeans are good example of this. It's cheap and practical clothing that lasts a long time.
- cultural "requirement": clothing that is required to fit into social circles. The shirt would be a good example of this, aswell as the tie.
- Enviromental requirements: This one should be obvious ofcourse, No one wears a wool jacket in abu dabi.
Fast fashion and the fashion industry as a whole seems incredibly wasteful to me. Buying new clothing because of yearly trends is way to damaging to the enviroment for what it's worth.
So... fashion?
Contrast this with the women’s section. Women have an expectation to express themselves and their personality. There are all sorts of “impractical” cuts, flairs, colors, layers to choose from. There’s a shoe for every occasion. You can get dramatically different fabrics, feels, and touches. Not even going into accessories.
There is certainly a sea change happening in fashion retail, but it’s more that like everything else it’s accelerating things that are already going on. People were trending less formal almost everywhere in the workplace, except NYC, SF and LA (or in high touch industries like real estate or law). Your H&Ms are best positioned to survive, where everyone already knows that Macy’s is on its last legs.
There’s quite a bit of variation within those. Where I live, “casual” these days is usually something like Columbia PFG - the epitome of “dad clothes”, as my wife tells me. I tend to wear that pretty much exclusively. I substitute jeans for the shorts in winter and buy a new leather jacket about every 3-5 years. I pass my old one on to someone else.
Your point stands, though. As a man, my clothes are 100% based on practicality, and I often only discard them when they’re too worn to be presentable.
https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1AawYy29TBuNjy0Fcq6zeiFXaW/Off...
https://patternshub.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Tube-top-...
http://images.asos-media.com/products/asos-cut-out-sleeve-on...
https://cdn.tobi.com/product_images/lg/1/teal-kayla-ombre-ma...
(That last one is a bit of a cheat because manufacturers are starting to produce rompers for men).
https://a.suitsupplycdn.com/image/upload/b_rgb:efefef,bo_100...
[0] https://www.rickowens.eu/ as an example
[1] https://theshopyohjiyamamoto.com/shop/r/r10/?h1_text_prm=Yoh...
But here are some things I think are equivalentish..
https://www.asos.com/au/asos-design/asos-design-regular-fit-...
https://www.asos.com/au/one-above-another/one-above-another-...
https://www.asos.com/au/asos-design/asos-design-t-shirt-in-b...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Official_Preppy_Handbook
I think Japanese fashion is less about the clothes themselves than the acceptance to let people wear what they want and and not judging. I think it’s more acceptable to match different colors and styles.
One strap shoulder Man-bags are all the rage. They are pretty practical, especially when you can’t fit your checkbook-sized wallet in tiny pockets. But in the US it looks like you’re wearing a fanny pack.
If you saw someone wearing an all yellow track suit it would look OK, partly because someone wearing an all green version is 20 feet away.
Or business slacks tapered and cropped above the ankle — in the US they’d ask, “is there a flood?”
While the clothes themselves don’t seem much different, I prefer slimmer cuts. The US is too baggy and loose.
>I think Japanese fashion is less about the clothes themselves than the acceptance to let people wear what they want and and not judging.
In my experience this mostly applies if you are young. At a certain age you are more or less expected to start fitting in the mold.
Usually I go through Harajuku (excluding Takeshita-dori), Shibuya, Omotesando, and Shinjuku and go through the various stores. Especially in Harajuku stores tend to close constantly and are replaced, but theres always something good to find.
Especially true in SE Asia. I resisted the trend because it looks effeminate, like you're wearing a purse. Asian guys love them because they're super practical if you ride a motorbike or scooter tandem style. I think it works better for more masculine types to go for a bigger bag. I have a black Crumpler bicycle messenger bag (not super big, just a normal-sized bike messenger bag) and it works great for me down here.
This is probably also because so many clothes are made here, its demystified.
To be honest, it seems that in the most of US, merely being stylish is perceived as "effeminate" (for a man).
As a straight man who is into fashion for quite a few years now and who moved out of Brazil to Sweden: that culture is pretty stupid, I feel so much better and more myself when I'm able to express my personality with my clothes without the fear of being judged by someone's else prejudice... Even better that it's a common thing in Western Europe for people to be more fashionable.
I've bought some pieces that are pretty bold, I love some avant-garde male fashion pieces and being able to wear that without people batting an eye (and even getting random compliments) makes me feel pretty good, hope the Americas can get to this point because it's a very toxic masculinity trait for a whole continent to have and perpetuate.
I'm a Norwegian guy, and I love how tolerant we turned weirdly quickly. Even the anti-abortion Christian™ Party walks in the Pride parade now.
Frankly I think most people here would still think of the random guy in a dress as non-straight, but since "nobody" cares about that here anymore, nobody cares about clothing in a negative way either.
Tote-bags also work, I've started using one for the last two summers.
In Romania we used to call them "sacoșă" back in communist times, and almost everyone used to have one in hand while going around town, you never knew what store could you stumble upon which might have brought in fresh supplies, in which case of course that you needed a "sacoșă" to carry back home the stuff that you purchased from there. I think that was a common sight in other communist countries too, that's why the Tiananmen guy actually had not one but two "sacoșe" in his hands while confronting those tanks (I'm curious what the term for "sacoșă" is in Chinese).
Unfortunately the late 1990s-early-2000s saw that phenomenon disappear, as the new middle classes used their newly purchased cars to bring stuff home from the super-market while "sacoșe" were "relegated" to old pensioners, but fortunately they made a comeback re-baptised as hipsterish and trendy tote-bags.
Jesus... I never thought I'd ever read that Finns could be someone's idols when it comes to elegance. But if you fancy wearing sports overwear [0] fitted in your rubber boots, after all...
----
[0] don't forget to buy the exact same model for your partner, and wear it at the same time, if you want to pass as a true Finnish couple.
If you keep up with current events you might have noticed that Finland has become a prominent country in the worldside design and fashion world.
I for example have never heard of this kind of joke being said or written anywhere.
For example the Aalto University in Finland is currently one of the best ranked universities for art, design and fashion. None of the other nordic countries are even in the top ten. Sweden is not even in the top 25.
That is a pretty different picture than the academics side of fashion...
Like I said, there is a lot of objective evidence to point to the contrary of what you are purporting. But hey, up to you if you want to beleive it or not.
I think you would do well to seperate the clothing/availability of the capital Helsinki, vs. rest of Finland.
Yes, outside of Helsinki and with the older population clothing is very utilitarian and wind-resistant sportsy clothing worn all round the year is common. The biggest seller of clothing items in Finland nationally is a supermarket chain.
Male fashion is on something like a 10 years cycle and you can find tons of brands focusing on quality or durability.
Female fashion seems to obsess about the latest trend and change dramatically every 3-months to a year.
Probably lots of cultural bias there, not sure how much this applies in all countries.
I kinda hope that fast fashion is not what's going to survive, between ecology and employment practices, they are not really my favorite.
So I used to have 8 pairs of pants, 2 colours total. Black and beige. Then, once a year, I'd go buy 2 more pairs of each colour. On a 'bad' year, I'd buy 4 pairs. EG, I'd rotate the worn out, always only having 8 pairs.
This persisted until, 20 years later, the company that sold them went bankrupt. As my gut and ass had literally grown to into the form / shape of these pants, drooping and expanding to perfectly fill these specific pants, no other pants I tried seemed even remotely comfortable. Or to even fit well!
So I tried to find the company that made them... note, this was very early internet, and I had to go old-school. Finally called the trustees handling the bankruptcy, eventually found out where the pants were made, called them, and?
It was in Mexico, and they made custom for a variety of retailers. And none were left, no matter how I begged.
Two things:
1) Don't wear the same pants for 20-30 years, while you gain your middle-age gut and ass. Just don't.
2) Always have a pants fallback plan.
> As my gut and ass had literally grown to into the form / shape of these pants
It sounds a lot like you are wearing clothes that are too small for you :)
Regardless, I would be very surprised if there were no equivalent. There are even many brands dedicated to reproduce old garments (off the top of my head, TCB denim does that for jeans)
I'm 60 and absolutely fine with the same sizes and basically the same cuts that I've worn for more than 40 years. If something starts squeezing, it's a timely reminder that I need to adjust some behaviour, not a signal to give in and upscale my wardrobe.
The problem isn't the pants, its your lack of fitness. You act like becoming overweight in middle-age is an acceptable thing.
This is not where I expected to see the "personality" euphemism today.
However, the two are connected; how one's personality is perceived is dependent on one's looks. If you want people to value your personality, best to exercise regularly, dress well, and keep up with proper grooming.
Personality is expressed through choice of cut, material, and color of cloth?
A simple example of this might be a haircut. Whether accurate or not, a mohawk often signals something to other people (and sometimes signals something the person that wears it, like "I may be ties down with more responsibilities, but I won't let that define me").
I like to think most my clothing choices are made because of practical matters such as comfort and fit, but even within my normal range of jeans to shorts and t-shirts to polo shirts (and maybe the less formal button-up shirt), there's definitely things that fit that criteria that don't feel like they fit how I think of myself. And that's as a man, where I think expectations to do with style and clothing are much simpler.
It's just a cheap way to signal something that you might or might not be, and only superficially at that.
But be realistic. Someone that wears all black has made a choice just like the person that is always fashionable with lots of clothing. Some beard and hairstyles take more work than others. These are lifestyle choices people make. Someone knowing how to do 20 hairstyles to get their hair off of their neck decided to learn that instead of something else. A man with a complicated beard style probably spends some time daily on it to keep it up. A person with nails half the length of the fingers they are attached to probably eshews some practical things simply because the nails are in the way. A person that wears traditional clothing due to religion probably isn't a good candidate to date me.
I understand that being poor might make it so you don't have a lot of choices in these things. I've been there: My look was basically whatever I was forced to wear to work and whatever I could find at thrift stores. At the end of the day, though, I still had choice -and to discount what these choices tell others about you is, in itself, dense - as is discounting that humanity often makes snap judgements based entirely on how things look.
For what it's worth, they develop a loyal following.
The same with clothes: the choice of textures say something about you, the choice of cuts say something, the choice of colour the same. The thing is: the clothes you wear need to resonate with you to become part of your expression.
It's not that your clothes = your personality, but the choices you've done consciously will tell someone else about you, the same as looking around your book shelves at home. The thing is: you need to care about you are wearing for it to become something expressive.
With my clothes I can signal a lot of stuff to others that are into the same things I am, I can signal hobbies, I can signal that I care about a particular type of material or cut, and so on.
If not then you are just being practical and wearing what is expected from you, nothing wrong with that but don't judge and put others down because they take this more into consideration than you do.
This is so true, and it annoys me for reasons I'll mention later.
> Contrast this with the women’s section. Women have an expectation to express themselves and their personality.
I'm a young man, but I also like to express myself by dressing a certain way, which is why I'm especially disappointed when literally three whole floors of a relatively mid-high-end department store are dedicated to women's fashion, while half a floor is dedicated to men's.
I enjoy shopping for clothes in person - this way I can feel the clothing I'm actually going to put on, I can try different sizes on, see how it looks with my jacket, etc. So it also annoys me when a greater variety of men's fashion is found online, where I can't observe the physical quality of the clothes I'm about to buy, making it a hit-or-miss in most cases.
Women’s fashions are much shorter cycle, so they are often made with terrible quality fabrics that are quite uncomfortable. Worse, custom clothing is very expensive and by time it arrives, the season is changing.
If you get it made in India or Asia this is the norm.
Long sleeved shirts from a good tailor in Saigon or Bangkok are 15-25 EUR p.P. for the tailoring. Then add 3-20 EUR for fabric – depending on what material you choose.
Once the tailor has your measurements on file you can either send your fabric of choice there and have the shirts be in your mail three weeks later or they send you pictures of fabrics they stock and you choose.
20% of my shirts are off-the-shelf (but all of them have been adjusted to fit me bette). The rest are tailor made.
100% of my trousers are tailor made. I never understood why any sane man would pay for pants that are pants (pun intended). Too tight, too low waist and too short at the ankles. It makes you look like you are the younger sibling from a poor family who inherited the clothes from the elder, taller brother. And you even paid for that eye-cancer-inducing disaster. ;)
I have a tailor in Berlin who charges 70 EUR for tailoring a pair of trousers. With fabric that means I pay less than 100 EUR usually. Which is totally competitive with off the shelf pricing. He charges 40 EUR for a new cut. Aka: if I show him a picture of a cut or photo he will make it for my measurements. This is a one-time cost though.
As an added plus I have extra pockets for change/coins and invisible pockets under the belt line which are great to stash anything pointy that will distort the shape of your leg if put into the normal pants (I e.g. put my keychain there when I go dancing tango).
And the craftsmanship (seam look/quality/longevity) is superior to anything I can buy off the shelf. Even expensive brands are commonly produced with lower quality nowadays. You pay for the better material and the brand but the seams and button stitching are still sub par.
The owner is a bit all over the place but the work he does is outstanding. Also for ladies. If you need a tailored evening dress or costume: this is the guy.
Make sure he writes down any instructions and after agreeing for some pieces, you confirm them again yourself with him, written, by WhatsApp.
My Bangkok tailor is Dino Suits[2].
Dino is one of the few real tailors in Bangkok. Most 'tailors' there are just fronts for tourists that sell fabric with a suit pattern that gets adjusted to your body. That's a pattern of /their/ choice "made to measure" which is not the same as a pattern of /your/ choice "tailored".
Usually it's a sweatshop in the countryside doing the labor. In that place you have a 1-2 dozen half-trained people doing the grunt work and 1-2 real tailors checking on them/doing the occasional difficult section. That's why they can only do the one pattern.
Dino is known in Bangkok because if one of these other 'tailors' fucks up the last resort to fixing/saving a piece is often Dino. ;)
This is always a good litmus test for a new 'tailor'. Ask if you can bring your own fabric and ask if you can bring your own pattern. If either is a no look for another, real tailor.
In Asia/India in general: if you want a jacket w/o padding in the shoulders (Napoletanean style/pagoda shoulders) be sure to bring a well fitting (better: fitted/tailored) sample jacket from home for them to copy from.
I'm female, and want to wear simple clothing. Black pants, black shirt. Short sleeve in summer, long sleeve in winter plus or minus a basic sweater or two. Sometimes, these aren't available or aren't available in black, so I often wind up wearing simply jeans and a t-shirt.
I'd rather not have frills, though I can occasionally tolerate zippers.
I'd really like pockets that have space for things: I used to wear men's pants when I was younger and I gotta say, I've considered switching back. I wish they fit better because the pockets are glorious. (Men's shirts don't fit well at all since they aren't made for breasts).
I can usually find non-athletic shoes in black, but it gets much more difficult to find black or mostly black athletic-style shoes.
Nobody wants to look bad, but there are different degrees of effort people put into it.
That aside, I think retail will still suffer greatly compared to online sales since most have a service to send back clothing for free.
Sorry if this comes across as nitpicking but I'm curious what makes you think SF remains formal outside of high touch industries? AFAIK tech is the biggest industry in SF and formal clothes are far from expected there, you would not look out of place in a hoodie and shorts in an SF tech office (or even in some reasonably nice restaurants). In most tech offices you'd look like a bit of a weirdo dressed any more formal than business casual.
> There are 5 genres of men’s clothes - business (pressed shirts, suits), casual, workout, skater, and comfort (hoodie).
Only 5 of them and one of them includes "skater"? I mention confidence because you name them off with some authority when it looks like it should be "There are 5 categories of men's clothing for me".
You leave off streetwear [1] which is a gigantic category in men's clothing and reinforces the personal / arbitrary nature of the list.
Also, while they used the term "skater" (which I also find oddly specific) I think "streetwear" would be a better label. This would cover more specific styles like "skater" as well as other types of streetwear.
As a disclaimer, I know next to nothing about fashion and am just going on my own limited perception of broad categories.
About half of my daily wardrobe is stuff that's advertised as "tactical", but the reason why I actually wear it is because it's comfortable (relaxed fit, stretchy fabric where needed etc), and because it has plenty of large pockets to carry all the gadgets and random items.
I still hold that men's clothing is more like the menu at taco bell, whereas womens clothing covers both much more nuance and opportunity for expressiveness. Mens styles are broadly muted in contrast. More than happy to argue that point!
I think that men have the same expectation. What's different is: Men are working with a relatively stable means of expression. They're working with clothes that are naturally more multi-season (both in terms of utility and in terms of aesthetic norms.) And it's more socially acceptable - even required in some contexts - for them to wear basically the same thing every day.
Whereas women are expected to take part in a sartorial red queen's race where everything is changing so rapidly that the statement you make by wearing a particular piece of clothing in summer 2018 might be markedly different from the statement you make by wearing it in winter 2019 or summer 2020, so it only serves to express your personality in the way you intend for a desperately short span of time. Worse, even within summer 2018 it might make one statement on June 18, and a completely different statement if you dare to wear it on June 25, because, even if nobody at your office actually will notice and judge you for wearing the same outfit on two consecutive Mondays, you've likely been conditioned to expect it to happen.
The amount of online discussions I have seen for a single item in male fashion makes me think nothing is ever simple.
Yeah but that skinny/tight jeans trend really did made some jeans less practical.
Mainstream jeans brands seem astronomically expensive to me.
Figure that there is a 100-1000% markup for a garment at retail. The jeans that cost $3 to make versus the ones that cost $13 will sometimes be durable, but you are basically buying the quality of the seamstress beyond materials at the higher price point.
My quads aren't even that big and yet I seem to have this problem. It only started after lifting for a few years and it drives me crazy. I seem to go through jeans every 3 years whereas before it felt like they would last a life time.
Google around for Adam Minters book secondhand on how the rag industry is one of the largest.
Aside from that more stringent local environmental regulations are the only advantage I can see mattering.
On the other hand, local food has other important advantages: resiliency (perhaps less important for clothing), and supporting the local economy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/28/jeans-sal...
I suspect that it's a long term trend to reduce cost and quality/durability to maintain sales volumes. Fast fashion was a part of this, but now that people aren't going out to be seen, it doesn't matter what you're wearing (if it looks good on zoom). I suspect this will trend back once we're going out more, but with LA/NY/SF/MIA mostly shut down it won't be this year. What is happening for the Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, but home video?
Maybe leisure suits will come back?
Then they started going all anti-gun / SJW / spending money to reduce gun rights.
I have not bought a pair in a long time, won't buy any of that brand for anyone else, and anytime someone I know is shopping for or discussing jeans I mention my distaste for the brand and those who would support them.
Seeing them go down sparks joy. I'd rather wear a leisure suit made by snuggies than hand them cash. Seems I'm not the only one.
*edit to manual correct seems to seams
The last pair I bought fell apart in 3 months, the ball of my foot eating through the interior material in that short span. I kept wondering "what changed" and then I looked at the label in the tongue. Different country of manufacture than the last 2 pairs I bought (I'd usually keep my old pair as a backup since they typically still had some life left in them, despite the sole wearing down)
As much as I liked the styles, I started to try other brands... then went back when some skechers were on sale and bought the 'wide' versions to see if there was a difference. I have really been enjoying the new balance I've been wearing more than any the past couple years.
I guess fox news is winning that battle.
Citation needed. I don't know how more unambiguous the framers could get than "shall not be infringed".
Setting aside my personal feelings on the matter, this just seems to be a bad argument which is not in evidence. I've read the Constitution thoroughly on more than one occasion, I don't see anything within that makes it seems as if the framers thought ignoring what was written in plain English and skirting its intent was a-okay.
Picking up a gun you’ve found from the larger cultural war and shooting random commenters with it is fun, but quite inappropriate for HN from what I’ve seen of it.
Yes they are, the comment above me has this:
> I don't know how more unambiguous the framers could get than "shall not be infringed".
That's the second amendment, is it not?
On top of that, the 2nd amendment itself is about defending against the government. It says that armed citizens are necessary to be able to form a well-regulated militia. The founding fathers had just broken free of an oppressive government, so they wanted to be sure it was possible for states to break free again if necessary.
I will happily re-read this doc any day.
Funny you mention fox news winning the battle, I read an article in the last few hours that says they are. They are crushing every other news group - all of the primetime news - even though they are cable only in most markets and the others have further ota reach.
However I don't celebrate that. They are not my primary news source. I put them about 9th or 10th in my reads.
Nobody cares about your precious guns. We care about mentally ill getting assault rifles. It’s really not that hard to understand.
Whatever happened to practical, well-wearing clothes for gold miners?
They went the same way as the gold miners.
I read this as I rock along on my Thinkpad x200 and read it on a forum where people regularly defend the use of electron apps and gush over the latest sumptuous macbooks with gobs of memory.
"But, but, I need those for my work"
And so might these people who buy clothes because of yearly trends.
"But that's different!"
No, it's not.
It's not up to me to say anyone shouldn't enjoy your latest laptop, but I think it's good to realise that the large majority of people who work in software are in a precarious position to be handing out edicts about what should and shouldn't be considered "incredibly wasteful" and what is "damaging the environment".
You can say this about virtually any hobby/interest that you don’t personally find enjoyable.
Buying any new stuff yearly isn’t great for the environment — with exceedingly rare exceptions. But in the grand scheme of things: owning/driving a car, living in too big a home, eating meat, and having kids are so so so much more destructive that buying a few new shirts and pants every year becomes a rounding error.
I don't disagree per se, but I think you could say this about just about any hobby/habit/interest. Is it really necessary? Probably not, but it makes some people happy for whatever reason.
How do you draw the line?
Some people complain that travel is too hard on the environment..but I love travel and will continue to do so (post-covid)
By representing the environmental externalities of fashion, travel, etc through CO2 taxation.
Everything more complicated than that is fashion.
gymnos = naked
Pants are warmer and I don't have to worry about how I sit (am female, and do not enjoy this bit about dresses). Biking is not an issue, nor is extra fabric going to get stuck in a conveyor belt.
I'm also pretty sure the togas would require a decent learning curve if you are wanting sleeves. I certainly want sleeves and a shirt that isn't in the way: Things like ponchos aren't good to cook in - they get in the food.
Togas would be outright dangerous when swimming and I can't imagine them being great for working on a car. They might be slightly cooler in the summer if you aren't using too much fabric.
And I'd argue that no matter what, you still have fashion. You'll see it in the way folks drape the toga fabric and their use of belts and things to hold it together. You'll see fashion in the color and/or print of fabric and whether or not you can keep a white one clean. Like with uniforms, you'll find more emphasis on body shape, hair, and other such things.
But I suppose we could all just let our hair grow out: women and men both should just stop shaving as well. It is, after all, fashion. And not do phsyical fitness more than what is required to be healthy and do your job - excess muscles are fashion, after all.
(Since that's a name I hadn't heard in a while, I had to check to see that they still existed)
Of course, may be most shoppers simply go after current trends, but that's just true for any art form, from music to movies to books; almost all of these things are just as impractical. Investing your resources into something just because it looks nice is a very human thing to do.
And Jello Biafra (iirc), said: "Record copying is killing the music industry - and it's about time!".
I'd say the same for the fashion industry - selling crap, made in sweatshops, marked up 10x to 100x, for mindless, environmentally unfriendly consumption based on BS advice of complicit websites, tv shows, magazines, etc., on what people should wear next...
I've almost completely pivoted to wearing classic polo shirts (so much better than t-shirts) and workwear(-derived) pants and shorts. Work pants run the gamut from heavy-duty carpenter/bricklayer-type designs to clean straight-forward chinos and classic men's pants for service staff, waiters and the like. Designs that are clean and decidedly non-flashy, and last for a long time. I also prefer work shirts to dress shirts, I like the thicker softer fabrics, and just like how the collar on a polo shirt is genius in the sun, rolling up the sleeves on a shirt makes it more versatile.
If a specific brand's clothing isn't both comfortable and durable, they simply do not last long in the workwear segment, because word of mouth spreads like wildfire among colleagues.
As a bonus, most workwear is made to be washed at 60 or even 70 degrees C, which means I'll probably never wash it to pieces at 40 degress, unlike some of the more fashionable clothes I used to own.
Some people did. Taiwan prepared after SARS. Of course nobody forsaw all possible consequences but it would be better to say that not everyone has the capacity to account for all possible tail risks.
-Stephen Schwartz, on Twitter, May 2018
People knew. Also, Americans don't really have the habit of factoring in major events outside of their control into their long term strategy. It will be ok. The danger is "over there". The oceans will protect us.
Why is Bandar bin Sultan still free?
Why was information suppressed by congress concerning Bandar sending $130,000 to the two 9/11 hijackers? Why has the Bush family never been questioned about their close friendship with Bandar?
But I think so did every country.
Wasn't global pandemic at the top of almost every country's national security risk register? They knew it was likely, and they knew it was high-risk. I know for a fact it was at the top of the UK's public national security risk register.
You're perpetuating a silly myth that major western countries didn't know this was coming and didn't know it was a big risk.
Air travel increase is a big factor why it got so bad so quickly, even in the past two decades basically everything has changed. We have hundreds millions of people basically teleporting between continents every day.
That's hyperbole. In 2019 there were 4.5 billion passengers boarding a flight[1]. Divide by 365 days and you get on the order of 10 million per day, most of which will not be intercontinental.
I don't disagree about the amount of air travel nowadays facilitating pandemics, just wanted to get the numbers straight.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-...
You’re implying as if wars happen because people are all angry and if they just happened to be kinder then all of that would be resolved immediately.
It’s discounting a bunch of pragmatic reasons a lot of which have nothing to do with philosophy or human condition.
>> and prepared for one happening eventually
Which is what you're doing - because the context of the thread is more specifically that anyone foresaw it - 'He couldn’t foresee that. No one did.' and the person I'm replied to that saying that they thought just some like Taiwan foresaw it.
Both are demonstrably false claims - you can look at public national security risk registers to confirm to yourself that many other countries foresaw it.
What else did they prepare for. Is this public knowledge?
Few like to prepare for something that might happen, but nobody can tell you when. But as a private citizen or small to medium business, what you can do to prepare for an event of this scale and duration is also fairly limited. It has to happen at broader societal level.
to the dead comment, i agree! except i don't really see bernie being an ultra-borderline commie. but i guess that's how you would view someone when the entire "right" calls joe biden a socialist. man if only those labels were actually true of those people.
the entire us system is broken because there are basically only two parties, and the democrats have decided to keep pushing further right because they assume actual leftists will have to vote for them. so i don't really give a shit that you bag on them. they suck.
trump probably would have had the election in the bag if he didn't muck up the pandemic so badly. and that's not my opinion. the polls show it happening. now will trump get a big enough bounce coming back the other way come november? i don't see it, and neither does trump and the gop considering the ways they're trying to basically suppress the general vote. the democrats suck, but the gop are straight up using fascist tactics. he already tried to "suspend" the election so can't wait to see what happens when he loses and he decides that, no, he actually didn't lose. (again assuming polling is right, i guess we'll find out in 2.5 months)
We are lucky that we don’t have a U-shaped fatality curve like the spanish flu.
Also, states need testing regimes and plans in place to handle millions of tests per day.
tl;dr: We are learning a lot! Lack of preparedness is not a <5 year story.
You mean W-shaped. Regular flu is U-shapped. Covid is more of a ᜴
People have also been warning about the next market crash for many years. Finally, one happened because of pandemic, and it's over in a blink of an eye.
I'm still expecting an even bigger crash, but I've learned my lesson against timing the future.
"We don't know when the next pandemic will come, but it will come, and we should be prepared for it" is a perfectly reasonable statement. Any pandemic is likely going to require PPE, PCR testing reagents, BSL labs, etc.
Same thing for recessions; predicting the specific timing of one is difficult. Advocating preparations for one - economic, fiscal, social policies etc. to mitigate, for example - is not a bad idea even if we don't know the timing.
Isn't California due for the big one. Should we be spending now to get everyone out before it hits.
Prepare? Absolutely. I can't speak to the state of California's earthquake preparedness, but there should absolutely be supplies and equipment stationed throughout the state in preparation for it. It is my understanding that San Francisco, for example, has water cisterns throughout the city for fighting fires in such a scenario.
It is dumb not to prepare for disasters we know will happen.
Why is disaster preparedness at all controversial?
Don't try to time the market. Do try to prepare for a crisis.
In all fairness, the US did actually think to create a preparedness strategy, it was just ignored when the time came.
In your market comparison, it would be like having a safety net of cash stashed in case of a market crash, and when the market crashes you spend it all immediately on a new car.
I wonder though if the events in the second half of march could be considered a black swan. Starting from mid-march, we saw first Europe, then a significant part of the world shut down most travel, large parts of its economy and almost all of its public life.
I remember the shift in the overton window to be particularly salient (from my pov in Germany):
Before March 15, the pandemic was one news story among many, even if a particularly worrying one. There were spirited public debates about whether travelers should go through temperature checks at airports and whether or not a city should take the unprecedenced step to chancel one particular trade fair. Some experts were proposing to close schools for a week or two and to conduct soccer games without audience - but those ideas seemed mostly academic and without any hope of becoming real policy.
Fast forward one week later and all trade fairs are canceled, as are any other kind of mass event; schools are closed indefinitely, borders are closed, global air travel comes to a full stop and the discussion of the day is whether or not to expect a nationwide, permanent curfew in the coming days.
The measures were clearly justified, but I have my doubts if anyone could have expected that countries actually pull through with this extreme kind of reaction.
They way VC is described in the story seems familiar to me from time spent working for Bay-area startups, and I think the critiques in the story apply in tech as well.
One issue the fashion industry also faced is that for the last few years it really felt as if America was pulling back from celebrity worship. That is good thing and part of that means not having to keep up with the Kardashians, whether their TV show or the brands they sport. With so many in the music industry called out in #METOO; excepting one glaring genre; there was pull back there as well.
DTC has made it sort of in perishables through Instacart and such push many manufacturers DTC through proxies like Amazon and more.
As for sweats, as an ex who used to model when young always told me, sweats don't judge.
#1: Specialty clothing for outdoor activities, etc.
#2: Stuff for day-to-day travel and (when I used to regularly go into an office--which hasn't been for years) day-to-day office. This clothing isn't particularly expensive but gets stained/worn over time.
I have dress clothing but I wear it so seldom that I'm pretty sure I'll never buy another tie or likely another suit.
With the fashion industry 'pushing the unseen and unsold 2020 collections into 2021', Oscar Wilde's quote may no longer be true!
> Here is the problem for DTC companies: Facebook really is better at finding them customers than anyone else. That means that the best return-on-investment for acquiring customers is on Facebook, where DTC companies are competing against all of the other DTC companies and mobile game developers and incumbent CPG companies and everyone else for user attention. That means the real winner is Facebook, while DTC companies are slowly choked by ever-increasing customer acquisition costs. Facebook is the company that makes the space work, and so it is only natural that Facebook is harvesting most of the profitability from the DTC value chain.
https://stratechery.com/2020/brandless-closes-the-dtc-facebo...
(How about 3/4 pants among the patagucci crowd?)
Fashion evolves toward ever greater complexity as a Veblen status-signalling good, then recapitulates. Often it is lower-class wear which emerges as the new standard, then progresses through the cycle again, often being elevated to the status of elite wear: dinner jackets, morning coats, longe suit, three-piece suit, dungarees, designer jeans, button-downs and khakis, etc.
Several of those transitions followed major shocks: WWI, Great Depression, WWII, the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam movements especially. The 2001, 2007, and 2020 economic panics similarly, though the last most notably IMO.
(Arguably Fast Fashion was a business response to the 2007-9 crisis.)
The fast-fashion trend seemed heading for a fall. Covid-19 delivered the kick.
Rule of thumb: the waitstaff in restaurants wear what the patrons had been dining in, before the last fashion shift. In the Coming Age of Formal Sweatpants, I'm guessing the front of the house will adopt button-downs and khakis.
(Browsing old pictures makes it clear the Iron Curtain was pervious to even minor changes in fashion. There may have been ideological opposition among the elites on both sides, but not only did We look, from the oh-so-distant viewpoint of the twenty-first century, silly in our wide lapels or legwarmers, They did too.)
If you are a man, whatever looked good on Steve McQueen in the 70s would still give you the look today.
Is that not an effect of marketing though? The only time i've ever felt like i've 'stood out in a crowd' is when I'm walking around in something utterly ridiculous, or filthy work clothes or something.
To be honest, all the high end designer brands blend in to me and I can't be bothered to tell them apart from the lower end brands. When I do recognize one though, my thoughts tend to be something huh, look, someone spent $500 on a shirt/purse/other small singular item of clothing.
Then i'll look at the person next to them wearing less than that over their entire outfit in budget clothes and i'll think, hmm that person doesn't like to waste their money. They have some sense.
Some of the richest, most successful people i've ever met dressed in the same things other regular people do.
I'd rather stand out for my accomplishments and things I do, than some crap made in china I buy at the store at overinflated prices. Because in the end, those designer clothes are pumped out in the same factories alongside Walmart crap.
I'll agree with you about shoes though, a high quality pair of shoes is worth investing in. As long as their actually high quality and not just 'paying for the name' high quality.
Above a given level, for sure. But you can tell the difference of a $20 shirt and a $100 from a distance. I am not sure about the $100+ range. If you check the brands I mentioned, they are not overly expensive (in London, UK you can find them at 50% now, at outlets even less), yet they are considered hard-to-beat.
> Because in the end, those designer clothes are pumped out in the same factories alongside Walmart crap.
The fabric, maybe, but the amount of time some workpiece requires can be vastly different and might require more experienced hands. This can be especially true for tricky materials, such as leather and wool.
> Some of the richest, most successful people i've ever met dressed in the same things other regular people do.
Yeah, if you are the emperor, you can be naked too. :)
> I'd rather stand out for my accomplishments and things I do
Me too. But not every decision is made on rational grounds and there is no 2nd try for first impression either. :)
I'm sure there are reasons but I'm actually a bit surprised that more customization isn't a more normal thing on the internet for a modest premium. I assume some combination of the economics and the way customization has to happen don't work in some way.
The thing is, for things like high quality clothes from leather and wool, I'm going to hit up a leatherworker's shop or something like the sheep wool clothes store they have in town here. Those things cost a bunch, are unknown designers or whatever but they're made locally out of high quality materials and are the kind of thing that should last a decade or more.
I'm not adverse to spending money on good expensive clothes, I'm adverse to spending money on expensive clothes where you're paying for the name of a designer.
If I'm going to drop that much money on a shirt or something, it's going to be from a local tailor or seamster. It's going to be fitted to me and it's going to be made of high quality long lasting materials. It's the kind of shirt that gets passed onto the grandkids or something.
>Yeah, if you are the emperor, you can be naked too. :)
What i've noticed is, except under very certain circumstances, most people are too worried about what they're wearing and look like, again unless you're overly ridiculous looking or something, to really notice your clothes. The exception being unless it's something they want themselves, or they're trying to find something flattering to say to a date or potential date.
>Me too. But not every decision is made on rational grounds and there is no 2nd try for first impression either. :)
First impressions are overrated. As long as you can make it to the second impression. The second impression is the one that counts. It's the one that's judged more thoughtfully and rationally, the one where your guard's down and such. This is why we have probationary periods in jobs, even for candidates with excellent first impressions and why once the honey moon faze of relationships end, problems tend to start.
Not faze...phase
I have no idea what i was thinking there.
When you say this, do you mean Loakes, or Trickers/Church’s, or Edward Green/John Lobb? Just curious what you mean by high-end, US would be something like Allen Edmonds, Alden, (?? Not sure for top-tier US makers)
I have Cheaney, Barker (I know it is not high-end by pricing, but I'm very satisfied with their quality over the years) Paul Smith, Attila Shoes, Vass Shoes and some workhorses that are worn enough not to care to walk 10-20km a day or if I am on holiday.
I'm always surprised when people say these are not comfortable as much as a trainer. I have to disagree.
Fashion is designed to be "consumable" in the sense that it has a totally made-up expiration date. An expiration date largely dictated by the very industry that created the product.
>It also ignores the fact that many people derive pleasure from 'dressing up', or 'looking their best'.
No it doesn't. That feeling can still exist in a world where clothing lasts two, three or four times as long. The entire premise of the (luxury) fashion industry is built on making a person feel bad if they aren't "in style". Where "in style" is a completely arbitrary standard made up by a select few extraordinarily rich people.
Besides, I'd argue that people use cooler/sexier/more fashion-forward clothing as a crutch for what might be a more serious issue with their self esteem. But I digress.
https://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-wi...
(...off to scroll YouTube's infinite list of tech reviews..)
High end fashion is woefully overpriced items that predominantly largely priced on their brand rather their functionality and material. While yes, you could make the same argument with technology, I can at least get a lot of value out of premium I've paid for Apple products like my seven year old MacBook Pro or five year old iPhone.
And after working briefly in the fashion industry as a developer, I found a lot more people involved in the field to be incredibly snobby and superficial, as in literally judging people by their looks which shouldn't be surprising given that is what the industry is about.
The whole premise is incorrect, so the conclusions are incorrect. The hardware is not the same, and even if it was, clearly the software makes a difference to the user.
The whole Apple fashion status trope is tired and has never been true. The amortized cost of an Apple device in my 15 year + experience with them has always been less than the competitors. Especially if you add my troubleshooting time.
Not to mention they’ve been selling iPad Minis for $400 for 7 or 8 years, and they now have an iPhone at $400. Their stuff works, they offer physical stores you can get technical support at, and they seem to be the best offering for privacy conscious users.
I love (and almost exclusively use) Apple products for many of the reasons you listed. But I think it's disingenuous to deny that there is an element of Apple's branding and design that is based on fashion.
Exhibit A: Laptops and phones getting thinner and thinner at the expense of battery life and other features (headphone jack).
Exhibit B: “A computer absolutely can be sexy… yeah, it can” – The glorious ways Jony Ive has described Apple products
https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/sophisticated-intuitive-...
Spending extra on design isn't the eco disaster that spending on throwaway fashion is.
Speaking as someone who has spent a fair share of money on Apple products, It really doesn't. Apple is in the business of selling Veblen goods, and unless you are in a niche domain that requires niche software, Apple does not offer anything that makes a significant difference when compared with what ships with other platforms.
This is specially true nowadays as the bulk of the work done by anyone is performed through a browser. I mean, Finder works but no one spends $2k on a laptop just because you can open files like a champ.
In order to understand the appeal of Apple's product line, all you need to check is the rationale of companies who try to entice potential hires by advertising how they make available flashy Apple hardware to their employees.
My non English fluent and tech illiterate family members can browse the internet and click on all the malware links without worrying about losing personal data or ruining their device. That’s not a Veblen good either.
My time doing tech support going down to zero because the solution is either power cycle the device or take it to an Apple store is not a Veblen good either.
You are being disingenuous if you believe that Apple Facetime is the only or even dominant voice and/or video call system. WhatsApp alone has between 4 and 5 times the market share of Apple's FaceTime.
You need to come up with another explanation.
> My non English fluent and tech illiterate family members can browse the internet and click on all the malware links without worrying about losing personal data or ruining their device. That’s not a Veblen good either.
Quite frankly, that's complete bullshit. The majority of web users, whether they are computer illiterate or not, don't worry about "malware links" at all, and that concern simply doesn not register in the mind of the Facebook+Instagram+WhatsApp+Twitter crowd.
And I guess I must be imagining the hours I spent removing malware from windows computers before iOS came along. The stage was set a decade ago when the best option was iOS. My grandparents aren’t going to learn a different system nowadays.
Just about all of them, from cars to ski equipment.
But that's not what's happening here.
Usually "fashionable" items (be it clothing or others) are quite noticeably different from year to year. To the untrained eye, my 7 year old mbp doesn't look all that different from a brand new 2020 one. If I open it up in public, I'll look like "a guy who uses apple". People won't know that I'm out of style because I rock an "ancient" laptop.
This seems true for iphones, too. The models before the X look somewhat different because of the button, but aside from the cameras being changed, I can't easily tell apart the newer models without a home button.
I think you might have missed the fact that what you value is not what other people value.
At the 'high end' of fashion, there's an incredible degree of artisanal effort, and FYI most of those items are well made and will last a lifetime.
Using 'Apple' - which takes its design and pricing cues literally from the world of fashion and design, is actually an argument in favour of the industry, not against it.
Yep, their Total Cost of Ownership can make them very appealing. I’ve made significant contributions towards my MacBook Air upgrades by selling the old one part-for-part.
But even an old broken MacBook Air can get $100+ depending on the specific model, not parted out at all.
Yep, all the proprietary parts work out well as long as you don't end up needing them yourself.
Those thousands of years of human history spent on emotionally-driven aesthetic pursuits like art, fashion, music, culinary tradition and architecture...what a waste of time and resources. If only we could be more robot-like and efficiency optimizing! Good riddance indeed.
Music, Art, Food, Literature and Architecture generally don't go out of style every 6 months (although companies are trying harder and harder to make it so).
Nor do they have the same toxic effect on the environment (possible exception: food?) and personal self esteem as high fashion.
Also, the NY article is not about fast fashion (Zara, H&M), it's about high fashion (Marc Jacobs, Balenciaga, Alexander Wang).
I agree I could have made the distinction between high and fast fashion clearer in my comment though.
For the record, the handbag example is an extreme outlier and not at all illustrative of the how the industry actually functions (makes money).
Also, Architecture, music and movies also have trends.
Not a lot Brutalism projects are started today and westerns have been replaced by superhero movies. It does not make any of these projects pointless either.
miner garments invented 150 years ago are a staple of nowadays fashion.
First, gp comment just give a basic example (chinos or tshirts, or lots of other clothes would have been admissible too) showing that your assertion is pretty weak.
But let's not focus on that one.
Let's see what the thesis is :
- there are new trends (dictated by celebrities and designers)
- these trends only sow insecurities and environmental destruction.
Let's disregard the first one, even though as shown above it could be debated.
but focus on the second part. You assert that fashion work only sow insecurities and environmental destruction but provide nothing to prove that point. You can repeat as many as you want that an art form brings nothing, you will be no closer to have an actual argument.
I am really not a fan of fast fashion and its environmental practices but if anything it is more of a parasitism of the work of fashion designers. By a large margin, the bulk of what fast fashion companies produces does not come from well known designers and for good reason : there is a lot of work on materials, techniques and fitting that get into such pieces. This is just not doable at any scale.
If anything, a better argument would be that late stage capitalism or lack environmental taxation allow companies to produce lots of goods without any regard for the environment.
"these trends only sow insecurities" is a very sad statement. Clothing choices is way of self expression for many people. The world would not be a better place if we all worn black pants and grey tshirts, only a less interesting one.
As for the second part. My quote was actually 'New "trends" dictated by celebrities and designers every year do nothing but sow personal insecurities and environmental destruction.'
Obviously the phrase "do nothing but" is an absolutism that I should not have used, since it makes it easy for someone to provide a single counter-example to disprove it. I don't deny that self-expression and "art" are positive things. The question is whether those positive effects are worthwhile considering the negative ones. My opinion is that it's not even close. Not by a long shot.
>late stage capitalism or lack environmental taxation allow companies to produce lots of goods without any regard for the environment.
Agreed. But, I think the fashion industry itself is largely morally bankrupt. It preys on peoples insecurities, and environmental externalities more so than (almost) any other.
at last we agree. That's your opinion and nothing else. you also seem to confuse/conflate fashion with fast fashion. It seems just as fair and interestined as conflating movie making with the worst money grabbing by the numbers movie ever made.
Marvel movies always have that one shot of the protagonist impossible pecs and abs. It fuels insecurities for sure for some men. It is not a reason to stop making movies.
Hell Levis from 30 years ago and todays Levis jeans are recognizably different.
Still-functional products being discarded on a whim is basically the history of architecture.
The fact is, all of human culture is “arbitrary” and bad for the environment. Food, architecture, fashion, and civilization itself. Just because you don’t care about clothing specifically, doesn’t make it somehow worse than everything else we do.
The only thing that is good for the environment is becoming a nomadic hunter-gatherer and living off the land.
As for food trends, they are indeed changing faster than ever but they're more on a 3-5 year cycle at most. Certainly not 6 months.
Let's examine the word arbitrary. The "in" colors, styles and cuts (the entire make-up of clothing) are undeniably arbitrary and change every 6 months. There's nothing remotely comparable in food or architecture.
Based on your other comment, you seem to take great offence at fashion being disparaged here. It's okay to like fashion. It's the industry that's being attacked, not you personally. And yes, other industries are bad, some even more so. But that's irrelevant.
>Besides being a reductio ad absurdum[0] argument
I'm not sure how your failed attempt at pedantry adds anything useful to the discussion.
Look at history and you find plenty of examples how cultures and trends emerged and spread within parts of societies, then got dragged into the spotlight by people wanting to maximize profit of off it, selling soulless disposable shells of the originals.
Every pound of vehicle mass that you've purchased beyond what was absolutely necessary to 'get from A to B' and every unnecessary bit of travel or vacation has produced considerably more 'waste' than anything a the 'high end' of fashion.
Seriously - this moral concern coming from the 'land of a billion not-necessarily-even-useful plastic gadgets'?
The 'high end' of fashion is mostly art and artisanal, paid for by the rich. Not essential, but not a big deal.
Furthermore, the article is not about even 'high end fashion' - it's about basic attire. If people want to walk around in branded underwear then fine, but this is literally 'Idiocracy, 2008' coming to life.
If there is possibly an issue with 'waste' it's definitely not towards the 'upper 1/2' of the industry wherein such pieces could be worn for a lifetime, rather, it's 'fast fashion' i.e. H&M and Zara. This is arguably wasteful.
www.businessinsider.com/fast-fashion-environmental-impact-pollution-emissions-waste-water-2019-10
'Fast Fashion' is not even 'fashion' - it's literally just 'clothing'.
So yes we wear 'cheap clothing' and it has pollution effects, which are greater than 'aircraft' but not nearly as big as other industries.
And as to the premise of the article, making 'stretchy pants' is in no way more environmentally friendly than making 'more formal attire'.
I'm not clear why you would call fast fashion, "not even fashion". That sounds embarrassingly elitist.
To be honest I'm not sure what point you're making that relies on their being a clear distinction between the two? I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that you're trying to say high fashion is not as culpable or "bad" as fast fashion is?
Sure, not directly. The lower volume and having more money for better sourcing probably makes it slightly more sustainable.
But, high fashion sets the dangerous expectation that you have to update your wardrobe regularly in order to fit in. That's the crux of the problem. They also directly profit off of fast fashion churn [0].
[0] https://www.thefashionlaw.com/just-how-successful-is-your-fa...
The reason I called out high-fashion is that it sets the trends and expectations for the rest of the industry. H&M and the like model their lines based on what the high end fashion industry says is in-vogue. They change this every season for no good reason other than to drive (false) demand at the mid and high end.
Other than that, nothing you wrote contradicts anything I wrote. Automobiles, travel and single use plastics are also valid issues but that's not the focus of this thread.
When people can freely go out and socialize again sales of fashion items will roar back.
Its just a manifestation of human need to be in a hierachy. Makes no sense to me to attack a particular symptom.
I can think of a lots examples more destructive than fashion
expensive cars
single family homes with 5 bedrooms and 4 toilets
yatches
driving/flying vacations
suburbs/ need for "space"
overeating meat
I think its a common kneejerk reaction against fashion in nerd circles because we never found it useful and something that played to our negatives. A complait that has very little to do with the environment, really.
There is nothing kneejerking about being against 'fast fashion'.
The fashion industry is the second-largest consumer of the world's water supply. [0]
The fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity’s carbon emissions. [0]
For comparison it produces more carbon than international flights and maritime shipping combined. [0]
The wastefulness of it all is even more dismaying. 85% of the world's textile production ends in a landfill every year.[0]
I agree that all the things in your list are as non-essential as the fashion industry but none of them (except maybe for the meat industry) have the business volume and carbon impact of the fashion industry as it currently operates. None of this is sustainable.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.nl/fast-fashion-environmental-im...
Is it just me who has difficulties reading this article on desktop?
OTOH reader mode on firefox fixes any of that nonsense.
Namely according to the MDN docs I read:
> To recap, the em unit means "my parent element's font-size" in the case of typography. The <li> elements inside the <ul> with a class of ems take their sizing from their parent. So each successive level of nesting gets progressively larger, as each has its font size set to 1.3em — 1.3 times its parent's font size.
So REM is what you probably want if you intend to do some nesting and use the parents root font-size, set it once, apply it everywhere. TIL what em really does, versus what rem does.
[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS/Building_...
If you look up YouTube street tours of some European countries or Japan or even Russia, you'll notice that the average person is still generally fashionable, certainly more so than in the US.
Read Anathem by Neal Stephenson, it has a funny take on this :)
I have a custom made suit that I bought from a bespoke tailor in Chengdu for about 1200 usd including custom shoes.
I still want to find a nice trench coat for winter, and I saw one at Dior that I really liked. Didn’t want to pay the 5000 usd price tag though.
They just rented a room near the City to make measuremens an bought an ad in FT to book appointments.
That way you could get a nice bespoke suit for less than it was sold in London.
I wonder if that market still exists.
I'm not sure if it would be possible to order a completely bespoke tailored suit online. If you gave them your measurements, you probably could get a suit, that was semi-tailored (similar to off-the-shelf suits). You'd still need to get final adjustments made. But it still wouldn't be completely fitted 100% to you and your body.
Notably, the cognitive difference picking between having all the same clothes and having a variety of clothes that go together in any combination (various jeans, colors of tee shirts, etc) is nil, and has the added benefit that people won’t think you’re write because you’re always wearing all black (though I can’t promise they won’t think you’re weird for other reasons).
https://web.archive.org/web/20060127002252/http://www.suck.c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com
Ten years later, the story of Suck.com (2005):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10143395
http://www.keepgoing.org/issue20_giant/the_big_fish.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10143805
> nailer: Inventor of snake text, which is now so ubiquitous it doesn't have a name.
> derefr: So ubiquitous that Google can't define it for me, either, it seems. What is it?
> Cederfjard: I'd never heard of it either. This is one of the results my search yielded: https://web.archive.org/web/20130420012902/https://longform....
>HotWired's Flux, a weekly gossip column from the pseudonymous Ned Brainard, was close. The column was the first example of what the Web magazine Salon (www.salon1999.com) dismissed as "snake text," meaning the story ran in one long, narrow column.
However, pants? It's not really that different. I could care less lol
[0] https://thecomicninja.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/calvin-and...
I would argue that the reason high end fashion is dying is because no one can afford it and more importantly I think people realize there is no need. Amazon provides exposure to a wide range of acceptable clothing for pennies on the dollar compared to high end brands. If the quality is not great and it does not last as long, I'll just buy another. If i have to buy 5 of them, I am still probably better off and that really does not happen, the quality is generally fine.
They aren’t cheap, but I find them worth the price and live in them.
After all, I used to wear a suit in the office. If it was well-fitted it's not that uncomfortable but doesn't mean I'm going to wear it at home.
No pants? You're working from home after all...
Only half kidding, my morning work uniform now is my cotton dressing gown ('bath robe' in US English?)
I tend to get dressed around lunchtime.
Vive la difference :)
I used to work for a guy who applied such a dress code in the office.
On any sign of customers approaching he would bolt to his office and put some pants on.
The industry pollutes and oppresses beyond what you think.
In this sense, fashion is to clothing what live music is to alcohol, or what journalism is to advertising. There is an underlying high-margin business that you use a spectacle to attract people into to sell them stuff. The talent for the spectacle exists in a local equilibrium that is largely oblivious to the economics that make it viable. Journalists are a great example of people who thought they were the money maker and remain in denial about the economics of their role of bringing readers to advertisers.
Fashion designers (like Jacobs in the article) appear to have the same conceit, where their role as the spectacle that draws in punters who buy super high margin smelly water, face paint, and snake oil lotions has been displaced. Covid has just been the coup de gras, where the fashion business has been steadily being polarized and dis-intermediated for at least a decade. A business that promised and re-sold proximity to fame was really taken out much earlier by Instagram and its influencer economy, where now everyone is famous for Warhol's 15 minutes, and the returns on investment in fame schemes are now much more diffuse.
The dynamic described in the article about luxury clothing in the end resembles the book and publishing business, where you are in effect consigning product to retailers, who make massive orders for their big box shops, then destroy you with returns. It's like how movies spent almost 100 years in in the popcorn and concessions business, and they've found totally new economics in the streaming game. Fixing fashion is the same class of problem as fixing journalism, publishing, music, movies, and arts in general, where the economics of getting people together to sell them complimentary high margin goods in the moment and place was decimated by social media, and now finished off by covid. These markets aren't dead, but they are now polarized, where the super high end is fine, and the absolute bottom will persist, but the lucrative middle is hollowed out. These fashion design brands made most of their money on middle market goods backed by over leveraged private equity investments and sunk costs in conglomerates, and that's why they're getting killed by this.
Fashion is the business of symbols and signifiers and there is infinite human demand for these (just as there is for stories, conflict/news, spectacle, etc), so future businesses using totally different modalities will pick up the slack to meet it, but reading fashion talent hand wringing about their market is like listening to journalists talk about the economics of publishing, hockey players discussing team ownership, or perhaps even us hackers talking about venture capital. What we think is meaningful and decisive, it's not meaningful and decisive.
TL;TD - An expensive ____ (e.g., watch) doesn't make you a better person. And you know this. So you get a nice car. Doesn't help. So you get new shoes. And so on.
Fashion is a cure for people who lack confidence and style. But that cure is more like an addiction.
this comment section is hard to read. For lots of topics, HN comment section is interesting to follow to see experts in the fields giving insightful info. This is not one of these.
Totally agree on fashion as an art form. The pursuit of beauty also applies to what you wear.
Personally I haven't worn sweatpants since I was in mandated gym class in HS and it was too cold outside for those overpriced cheaply made shorts and have instead opted for gym clothes (as it was closed) which are nylon/synthetic wicking and breathable during the winter months and then cargo shorts collection I've had and added to since I was in University in the summer.
Honestly, while I think Women's fashion is mainly a thing they do for themselves, as most guys care more about what is underneath the clothes, its something that should be disrupted if its true it accounts for so much environmental costs. And perhaps we could accelerate the tech needed to '3d print' clothes/outfits, or at least something like a community based automated textile model where you bring a 'print/template' of the outfit adjusted for your measurements, pay a sum to the operators and come back a few days later with the clothes you want and cutting out the middle men.
This could spur on a ton of creative sub-cultures like they have in France, Italy, Japan or England that so many have talked about about in this thread, as they still have a significant demand for tailors to meet the Global demand.
I tip really well when I take my clothes to the local dry cleaner own and operated by a Family of Koreans because not only do they have a dry-cleaning business, they're situated inside the family owned landromat with about 40 machines, but also have a garment altering business, a shoe repair business inside them and are perhaps trail-blazing how clothing could be done in the Future with a modern automated textile model as an adjunct now that retail real estate is undergoing an Apocalypse situation and can be had for cheap.
I wear timeless fashion things for formal wear and its usually made in Italy or S. Korea these days, I wish I could put a few local seamstresses/tailors/shoe artisans back to work and stop relying on needless shipping costs and the harm that goes with it for my clothing. Even if it costs more I'd prefer to stop relying on this model for the few $1000s I spend on clothes a year.
> Yes, but Jeans are part of the collapse now and considered formal for creatives with Levi's down 62% and doing layoffs. I thought "formality" was bizarre as well, but apparently their target demo don't consider the older skinny-jeans, and the new high-waisted mom-jeans to be as comfortable as Lulus... who'd have thunk it?
It's CEO did, I saw his interview in a podcast about how he saw the trend happening from Yogis and Health Centric movements in the early days and how he swept in after the 2008 financial crises when many of the former Bar Hopper scenesters switched to the Gym for their socilizing place of choice due to less expendable income.
He still thinks the one piece lycra smart-clothes movement that measures all kinds of vitals and provides a ton of real-time health information is in the works for the next transition, but that Lulu is the first phase to get to that. If I recall correctly, he came from the outdoor/skate-snowboard Industries and caught that wave before starting Lulu and had a lot of success there. Overall it was interesting and insightful on something I give almost no real focus toward, clothing trends are something I stopped caring about in HS and I've seen so many things 'come back in style' that I see how unoriginal 'fashion' really is.
Such a non-article that really shows how the media inflamed the whole influenza story.
It's their job to write. Writing stuff literally puts food on their table. Even when it's something as stupid as fashion industry collapsing.
An influenza season with a higher death rate than usual is a gold mine to them. A literal golden age of media.
My city is vibrant and busy, but a nearby state is locked down, with curfews and all stores shut except pharmacies and supermarkets. That's the reality of it, this article is exploring the effects of that.
It's not influenza, you think you're being clever, but you're just displaying your willful ignorance. A proud idiot is still an idiot.
So this is a non-story, typical for bored journalists to make up. Because they have to. They have no other choice.