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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

That's the party line, but it's just some sub-cultures, teens and troubled personalities that "express themselves" through fashion (the most shallow thing you can do, a juvenile thing in any case), the "early adopters", and then a huge industry copying them at various levels and with various delays. On top of that, there are also top-level mandates "this year let's push yellow strayjackets" or whatever.

This results in a huge industry, selling junk people don't need, which are enviromentally harmful, with the ludicrous insistence that the clothes you bought last season are not good anymore because "fashion".

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Fashion is basically part of a real world interface for the social groups you interact with, a way to tweak the first impression. It's only junk for you as an outsider not understanding the social groups of insiders dressing a certain way.

It's valuable and sells because social ladders are everywhere, we're all apes to a degree. It's not a suprise that the epic centers are urban melting pots with a higher population density and more "troubled people".

>Fashion is basically part of a real world interface for the social groups you interact with, a way to tweak the first impression.

Yes. But it's a shallow real world interface, for shallow groups and facile identities, mostly used to associate with teenagers and juvenile group forming.

I dont say it's not a thing, or don't have a use. I say the use is bad.

This is rediculous. Just a few years ago there was an article about silicon valley casual fashion being challenging for minorities who grew up outside the bubble and were taught to dress their best in a work suit or similar. The LGBT is huge on visual signals of allegiance. Popular brands are built 80% on what their brand signals and not on their build quality. There are countless examples of clothing being used to signal elements of personal identity but for some reason you seem to consider this 'fascile' because our wardrobes aren't full-on biographies of personality.

You’re expressing your opinion as if it’s a cold hard truth.

Which part? That fashion/clothing industry is not the leading cause of pollution in the world (aka. bad ecologically)?

>> Fashion is basically part of a real world interface for the social groups you interact with, a way to tweak the first impression. It's only junk for you as an outsider not understanding the social groups of insiders dressing a certain way.

I've seen former peers and fellow students borrow and become indebted to become part of the group this way. Great if the subject can afford it, not so much if the subject is now enslaved to debt or is misallocating funds. Then, perhaps find more welcoming social groups?

Any culture group that expresses itself through expensive clothes will find another expensive way to show group membership if clothes aren't an option. Other subcultures (think grunge, or tech people) either use cheap mismatched charity-shop styles or use other signals (e.g. running Linux at home).

This is so true! If the definition of fashion is extended to also include the latest smartphones, laptops, or service memberships. I never thought of it this way, but makes a lot of sense.

Maybe both?

There are social ladders, and there are people using social ladders to sell clothes they started working on last year?

> it's just some sub-cultures, teens and troubled personalities that "express themselves" through fashion (the most shallow thing you can do, a juvenile thing in any case)

Are you claiming that dressing to express yourself is shallow and juvenile?

Do you just...buy the first thing you see at Goodwill that fits you? I'm not sure how one could avoid dressing to express oneself, to at least some degree, unless you exclusively wear work uniforms or hand-me-downs.

> I'm not sure how one could avoid dressing to express oneself, to at least some degree, unless you exclusively wear work uniforms or hand-me-downs.

Exclusively wearing work uniforms (outside of work) or hand-me-downs is still, in its own way, expressing oneself. One way or another you make a personal decision on how to dress and whether to follow a particular style, trend, price point, etc. and that reflects something about you.

> but it's just some sub-cultures, teens and troubled personalities that "express themselves" through fashion

Like, really?

My dad mostly wears tough leather boots, flannel shirts and aged jeans. It's all old, proven, and tough. He's a heavy outdoors enthusiast, into kayaking motorbiking and camping, and his clothing style fits this perfectly.

My brother is a big rugby player. He prefers a much more casual look, with rugby shirts, trainers, shorts if the weather allows, and a baseball cap (not often seen in rural England!).

We all express ourselves through clothing, whether you do so consciously or not. Even picking clothes that say "I don't care about fashion" is expressing yourself. We're social creates, and there's no getting away from that.

This is such a weird cynical take on fashion I don't even know where to begin...

It says a lot about parent posters close mindedness and lack of imagination, as well as their shallowness for judging people based on their fashion choices

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