u/Absurdity-Peddler

I imagine this post might elicit some hate, but I wanted to see if there were kindred spirits among the TF crowd… There’s a certain approach to dressing today—I’ll call it “ivy maximalism”—which involves an excess of layers, an excess of colors (often several bold or pastel colors in the same fit), an excess of patterns, and, seemingly inevitably, a baseball cap. I’ve seen fits posted that involve an OCBD + tie + vest + knit + jacket + overcoat + scarf, to say nothing of belt, pants, socks, or shoes. Are people taking lookbooks too literally? Is it an attempt to broadcast the sheer volume of garments one owns? “What’s wrong with a little fun, you fuckin’ curmudgeon?!” you may (justifiably) ask, but a sufficiently strenuous signaling of zaniness (think quirky socks as an obvious example) immediately raises my cynic hackles—I can’t help it. What bothers me most about this style paradigm, however, is its the lack of discipline and restraint it telegraphs. Have you ever been to a “nice” restaurant where the food feels like the product of a recent culinary school graduate eager to showcase as many lessons as he can with each dish? This is the sartorial equivalent. There are people who dress well in this style, to be sure, but so often it comes off as overdone, reeking of effort, and studiedly stiff—ironically, in sharp contrast to ivy’s initial spirit of being dressed down, comfortable, and lived-in. An outfit that does fewer things but does them all extremely well or interestingly will always look better.

I’m piggybacking on my own thread from yesterday about authenticity as a bedrock of good style… Like a lot of you guys, I get annoyed at the constant barrage of “that looks like a costume” and all its variations—it’s a pretty lazy way to pass judgment without digging any deeper. But some comments in that thread made me realize: there seems to be a large number of people who see authenticity, identity, personality, etc., as mere choices, selections from a buffet of options. Can it really be that shallow? Has late-stage capitalism really squeezed us so much that we treat this palette of lifestyle options as “freedom” despite the intensely rigid structures in which such options are generated and promoted? Perhaps people levy the criticism of something looking like a costume because, in effect, it *is* a costume. After all, is there any palpable difference between going to Spirit of Halloween and picking a monster to dress as on October 31st and scrolling social media to pick whether one is a preppy or a workwear bro or a Scandi minimalist or a timeless heritage dude or a tailoring gent or whatever the heck? Who is the deeper “you” that is getting dressed when you put that shit on? People want to see and know *that* guy.

The recent handful of personal journey fit pic compilations got my old Gen X ass thinking about this… I cannot imagine being significantly younger (I’m 45) and trying to hone my personal style today. It feels like there are an ever-ballooning number of options—eras to evoke, personalities to embody, trends to play with, etc.—with no real grounding in anything other than existing as options. (If that sounds circular, I mean it that way.) I’m far from the first to point this out or anything, but “back in my day” one’s manner of dress felt explicitly linked to one’s identity, whether that was to a certain subculture (the most obvious influence), community, or whatever. Pardon the oversimplification, but dressing in a certain manner felt true to oneself because it aligned with one’s larger set of interests or allegiances. Today, the question of “how do I dress myself” feels isolated from those external grounders of selfhood and instead feels almost forced upon young people whose primary means of engaging with the world is through being a consumer. Sure, “fashion is all surface” and all that (yawn), but we all know deep down that certain things feel more “right” on us than others, for whatever reason. I will always believe that the absolute best dressers are those that look at home in their clothing, which is usually a consequence of *feeling* at home in their clothing. Maybe this is nothing new, and the means and intensity with which options are presented today simply highlights it differently, but there is something inherently unsettling to me in the endlessness of options seeming to exist as nothing but signifiers of their own aesthetics. “Authenticity” is a loaded word, but I think it’s worth upholding as an ultimate guidepost in one’s style journey. I would even argue that, if it feels difficult to sense whether something feels true to oneself, it’s probably worth spending more time doing other things than looking at and thinking about fits.