"You can’t tell how cool anyone is or how rich anyone is or what anyone reads."
70 Replies
thats one hell of a title
Summary of this article: skill issue
Complaining menswear isn't interesting enough in 2024 is a skill issue
Id also argue 90% of the authors points are false anyway but why bother it will just make me mad
read it tomorrow bruv
i expected the cold takes from that author but +1 to ayo edibiri style
half the skill issue seems to be that the author doesn't know where to find fashion online
genuinely shocked someone would write and publish this
in summary
This is a silly article but I think it hits on something that I do feel is kind of true in regards to how many people engage with aesthetics in the current state of the internet
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/magazine/aesthetics-tiktok-teens.html
Men’s fashion, rather than opening new doors for identities to try on, has instead become the defining identity, as Benny demonstrated. Wearing an expensive jacket has never been interesting in itself.
By Mireille Silcoff
The New York Times
Teen Subcultures Are Fading. Pity the Poor Kids.
Gorgeous, abundant visuals are just pale imitations of what young people used to have: an actual scene.
Styling expensive clothes poorly isn't new, I've been doing it my whole life
Read the article, thought it was basically nonsense
While theres something to this, 'the kids' (tm) absolutely do engage in subcultures beyond just ethics. Theres a few goths and hardcore/straight edge kids in my local fgc who are always going gigs, making bands and all the rest
Yeah i should mention that i don’t really blame the kids here
Social Media and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
kinda surprised that the reaction to this has been so negative, i agree with a lot of the big points
although i do think benny safdie was obviously dressed as his character from the curse, it's literally the same outfit
it's kind of written in an annoying way but i'm similarly exhausted with the same stuff just circulating around and around
Fine lemme go through this to shit on it fuck it i don't wanna work
the organiclab.zip of it all
and i like that account, i'm part of the problem!
someone more thoughtful and incisive should write the same article though cuz i do feel like it's trying to be more provocative than it needs to
After more than a decade of being an exciting space for creativity, self-discovery, self-expression and broadcasting personal aesthetics in order to attract like-minded people whose sensibilities matched your own, menswear is in a sinkhole.This is just Nostalgia. 10 years ago had all the same issues lmao. In fact I argue it was more prescriptive and limiting than today. If you can't do this today thats a you problem.
These days, everyone’s personal style can be reduced to a Starter Pack. If you care about fashion, you’re instantly a gorp nerd or a suit guy or a dropcrotched Rick goth or most questionably, someone who pays a monthly fee for access to a menswear Substack that strives for post-irony but instead reads like it’s stippled with blaccent.BBSP sucking aside, I feel like this is him telling on himself. You could go to the 2010s or 2000s and try to put people into subcultures in the same way. He might have a point that social media encourages boxing in your style to get clicks, but I think this is more a labeling issue than anything profound about what people are wearing. Think people will blur the lines still plenty.
You can’t tell how cool anyone is or how rich anyone is or what anyone reads.Skill issue. I don't need to expand on this to refute it.
Men’s fashion, rather than opening new doors for identities to try on, has instead become the defining identity, as Benny demonstrated.At what point in fashion were there not celebrities bricking fits trying to flex. Like I feel like thats a constant since the camera was invented. Hell even before that, some of those old portraits have some bricks in em too.
It’s telling that the people who wear menswear the best right now are, like, Ayo Edibiri and Chinatown grandpas.Ayo cool af but this is an issue with finding people, not with a lack of people. I don't think she is dressing particularly uniquely, she just has swag. Running out of characters so continueing in another message.
smiles you are spitting here
i don't really have nostalgia for 10 years ago because i think that environment produced the largest concentration of bricked fits ever seen, but whenever someone posts an old top of waywt from like 2014 it's actually way more varied than you'd think given how dominant the mfa uniform - j. crew type stuff was
i think cuz despite how prescriptive things were everyone was still trying to figure out how to dress
like i said the fits are uniformly terrible and the environment was way less varied than today in terms of advice
but there was weirdly more experimentation than people remember because everyone was kinda making it up as they went along
Garments of historic import have been largely demystified; it’s hard to obscure your references when we’re all bookmarking the same Oakley Chop Saws spotted on Constant Practice and Organiclab.zip. Compounding matters is that the moodboards have become sentient, to varying degrees of creative success.Sorry fashion isn't as gatekept anymore. Thats a plus in my book.
The worst offender of this generation is, by far, the New York City brand Aimé Leon Dore, which is basically fast fashion with Supreme prices. The fact that ALD—a brand whose whole cinematic universe can be distilled down to “What if we dressed like 9/11 never happened?”—is at the forefront of menswear says a lot about how dire things have gotten and how bereft we are of actual creativity.I'm perhaps too biased to respond to this point lmao. I'll give it a shot still though. I feel like this is just missing the point. Its also like, the wrong read of ALD. I think ALD is far more of a progression of the NYC loheads of the 90s brought into the modern age than anything else. Its the 90s New York style reinvented in the modern world. Also ALD isn't super high quality but its weird to call it fast fashion when I generally find their clothes to have tons of minor details that I have been unable to replicate elsewhere. Again, biased.
Menswear, in its current iteration, is so painfully, tragically, white boy coded.Absolutely mind boggling ngl. I feel like a ton of Asian designers are having big moments. Nevermind streetwear continuing to be decidedly non-white in its inspiration. I do think its easy for someone to end up in "white boy fashion" though because of social media. Theres def a bit of a uniform for the worst person you know that is very white coded. I think this is still a skill issue, but I see his point. One last message for the last bit of the article incoming.
Nothing to rebel against. It’s so safe, so algorithmically formulated. The counterculturists like Supreme have gone mass (see also: Babenzian —> J. Crew) and the OG avant gardists—Rei, Yohji, Jun, Rick, Thom Browne even—have all been pushing the envelope for decades now. I came across an interview recently where Rei, in designing her collections, was like, “Punk is against flattery, and that’s what I like about it.” She’s right of course—the best clothes should offend other people’s sensibilities—but it’s hard to continually introduce fresh ideas when you’re the same age as Joe Biden.I think they are pushing the enevelope fine. Also ignores Denma (probably because Denma is a direct counter example to his point). Think this is just these designers are more accessible than ever, which makes them feel less shocking. Don't agree that theres no new ideas in fashion. Denma has continually courted controversy for doing exactly what he claims to want anyway.
Gen Z, at least, seems to finally be moving beyond easy Y2K nostalgia and developing a style rooted in archival that takes creativity and energy to put together. Recently, I worked on a project that required talking to a bunch of actually cool Gen Z teens to find out how they spend their time, and this finding really surprised me, in a good way…"I got out of my insufferable internet bubble and found out that its wrong. Will I reconsider my beliefs in light of this info? No" Really wanna see how this guy dresses ngl
I feel like the y2k thing definitely came after the 'archival' stuff
Call him a builders yard cos he's full of bricks
i know this guy, if you really wanna know then
yes i saw it was a pseudonym lol
you wanna talk this much shit you better be able to back it up
...on April 1st tho
ik it could be a joke
but it doesn't feel like one
as far as i can tell this substack is just a story a day of people whining?
I mean this feels like a put on
If its a bit, its a weird one
that being said a few valid points were made (not just the one dunking on TF) but my takeaway is, as it was before, the only thing worse than current menswear is current menswear writing
I thought that was supposed to be BBSP not throwing fits
But they’re both annoying
What menswear writing? Its almost all advertorials
Yeah it definitely seemed like BBSP
i said *current menswear writing
Im not sure which was the TF dunk then
i mean i don't agree with everything in it but i do think we're kind of at the end of the moodboard era and that's kinda what they're identifying
and i support any dunks on ALD
I think there is perhaps a kernel of truth about how social media has some bad effects on fashion
but this article reads as nostalgia bait
i don't even know if i'd go that far because i like looking at stuff on instagram
and just whining about current fashion
i do too but I think theres some points to be made about putting people into boxes and creating echo chambers
i think i just dislike the stuff that's designed for people to put in their story or whatever
like literally yesterday there was that photoshoot of swagged out bill nye for time out mag
that definitely feels like the dying gasps of like "jerry seinfeld for kith 🤪 " type stuff
this is kinda what i mean about seeing the same stuff over and over
or the same kind of stuff
It seems to me the author has problems with his bubble and is extrapolating that to menswear as a whole
which is just...skill issue
idk if i actually think that filters down to how people dress as much as he thinks
like sure people are sharing stuff like that pic of princess diana in a sony snapback ad nauseum but are they actually wearing that irl too
or are they just sharing pics that look cool
i actually think the benny safdie in the boro trucker thing could be a good point he's just misidentifying it, i think the show was trying to parody the kind of guy he's mad at with that
rather than benny safdie being that guy irl per se
just like how nathan fielder's character is wearing CDG play
I just feel like celebs bricking it in whatever brand is hot is a constant
i don't think theres anything to read into
plenty of celebs bricking Supreme in 2015, or YSL in 2012
is that any different?
I don't think so
the author either needs to find other places to look at fashion online or log off tbqh.
complaining that subcultures don't exist when you're only looking at specific content farms or hollywood is just... dumb lmfao
Off the top of my head I can think of a number of subcultures that still have a unique style of dress but most of them do not have the cultural capital with coastal elites to be considered cool right now. But given time maybe they will. Others are fundamentally uncool and may never be cool unless it’s redone in decades in a subversive way (like prep)
damn. i like how the people in here get really deep into this stuff. really gives the fashion layman (basically me) a lot to think about and learn
the author complains about algorithms flattening taste but this reads as ragebait to be peddled around as “content” because of how substanceless/glib it is, if the author truly hated current menswear they would be more concise but instead flounders — he mostly talks about algorithms but seldom communities/forums, which could be another thing if it was about digital mediated existence/profilicity’s role in short identity formation, yet its even more baffling that the glimmer of hope is people using another algorithm: the author’s stuck in the same algorithm and it’s all they see
I am aware when the “algorithm” is pushing me a lot of a certain thing and I consciously work to change the algorithm all the time. But that requires finding inspiration outside of social media and then searching for it on a platform
Also if the “algorithm” is pushing a lot of bad content then you are probably interacting with a lot of bad content. At least I find that true on Instagram. I’m not sure about TikTok
Late to the party but
I think this article betrays how hopelessly addicted to the internet the author is and it seems like their algorithm is cooking their brain with content they hate
Also they were absolutely seething when writing the first two paragraphs lol
I guess theres some confusion as to who the author is but its more than likely a vanity fair writer which makes it weird that they were like
The only men who dress well work at conde nast
Also I absolutely love when “punk” as a descriptive gets thrown out
Punk is so vague and amorphous it can be used to define anything
And i cant think of anything more pathetic than pining over something that in your mind “used to be punk but isnt anymore”
The last refuge of the truly out of touch
Who could they possibly be referring to with that
I guess like sam hine and noah johnson
When I think conde nast style all I can think of is like Adam rapoport from old bon appetit
learning some of the context around this article is so weird and unsurprising.
TL;DR: author is a soon-to-be-laid-off writer at a major mag. heard that they've been telling everyone and their brother 'haha i wrote that'. ends up looking like sour grapes for not beating TF / BBSP to the paid newsletter/patreon punch
i think everyone's just taking it way too seriously, like it's clearly written to be an over the top rant
which is why it ends up sounding dumb at points
it's part of a collection of different writers writing over the top rants about stuff that annoys them
optimistic take - there's value in dissecting the ideas expressed via satire, as above
pessimistic take - maybe the satire isn't as effective because of the writing style
Idk if it’s satire per se like I think they actually do think menswear now sucks but they’re writing it as angrily as possible
I guess I just like reading a furious takedown even if I don’t agree with all of it
i feel like it would've been more effective six months ago
stuff like the algorithm or how flattened menswear has gotten has become more apparent (i suppose to those paying attention) since last summer; people are now shifting towards what to do in response, be it finding joy in whatever their desires take them sartorically, accepting whatever current aesthetic they're in, or just accepting the easiest capsule someone shoves them
Mm yeah that’s kinda true, I think that’s what I meant by us being at the end of the moodboard era
Like the thing that they’re mad about is kind of reaching its conclusion
I see what you mean but this is why you gotta keep the petty stuff that annoys you to yourself or in person convos with friends
I think the biggest complaint they have that annoys me is since everything is now accessible
Theyre mad that people they dont like dress like them
The article they linked is pretty funny to read https://web.archive.org/web/20120527171047/http://thehairpin.com/2010/10/all-dudes-learned-how-to-dress-and-it-sucks/
The Hairpin
All Dudes Learned How to Dress and It Sucks
Uuuuuuuuum, OK. Am I bugging or did a whole lotta dudes in New York suddenly learn how to dress? Sure, there are still square-toed Skechers and Targus laptop ca
I just honestly don't find hating like this interesting. But if you are gonna hate like this its extra cringe to hide who you are and how you dress, and to just like, generally whine about a major subset of cherry-picked examples.
That is mostly telling on yourself
Like yes im sure they wrote it for shock value blah blah blah, but maybe they just shouldn't have written it at all
And as people in the comments pointed out- its lame to take shots at people but not be brave enough to name them
Reading this I'm wondering if they were trying to do this, but instead of coming accross as tongue in cheek, the OP feels actually upset
yeah the hairpin piece feels like a fun commentary on mens fashion whereas OP feels kind of bitter
Also one of the comments pointed out how in his paragraph shitting on ALD/white boy coded menswear, he praises 18 East lmaooooooooooooo
18 East rooted in personal geography: a white guy in NYC/Vermont lifting asian inspired designs
are they getting fired because their writing is bad
Nah from what I've heard it's anti union shit
18 east praise is the worst part of the entire piece
this one is better but has aged pretty poorly i feel like
I mean its 14 years old and still pretty funny
I kinda hate how saying something negative is so often missunderstood for saying something profund. It is always easier to say one hates something than to say one likes something. Liking something can open one up to ridicule
What if we dressed like 9/11 never happened?
Like wtf does that mean
ALD is like a Ghostbusters reboot dressed up in DEI language.
Yeah I really did not understand that line about dressing like 911 didn't happen, what is it supposed to even mean?
I think what he is trying to say is that it is overly optimisitic?
i think they just mean the premise of the brand is what if it was still the 90s
and yeah what if we were still in the "end of history" optimism era