Ditch the Fashion Guide
Charlie Caulfield
Backseat Driver
Ditch the Fashion Guide
In the late-stage information age, there’s an over-reliance on data to show us what works and what doesn’t. There’s little room for experimentation. Deviating from statistically proven success is a…
14 Replies
Charlie always a banger author
I WAS GONNA MAKE THIS A TOTD YOU FUCK
But yeah great article
this channel deserves a bit of love and i think making it a TOTD is a bit on the nose
No yeah I think it’s great here as well
broadly i think they hit the nail on the head
i don't know that you need to be original (theres a little NYC bias here as well) but they are right like, guides aren't gonna get you where you are trying to go
smiles trying to avoiding complaining about nyc be like
lmao i love ny and you know it
but like fashion in nyc is moving so much faster and at a higher level than like 95% of the world
like dog being fashionable makes you unique in most cities
He does not try to avoid it
He lets it flow
That’s why he’s the goat
i have never tried to not be a hater true
I really appreciated this section.
We’re surrounded by constant visual stimuli, and yet we all go back to the same 50 photos on our moodboards. Next time you want to experiment with something new (butter yellow, anyone?), eschew the internet. How is butter yellow used in food packaging at the grocery store? Or book covers at McNally Jackson?I think that part of the exciting thing about fashion is that you're able to carry yourself in the outfits you wear. This includes the things that you appreciate beyond referencing them on a graphic tee. My outfits are pointedly kinda outside the traditional colour palettes of the city that I live in, and I think it's beautiful that I can play with that experience. It's not a choice that was laid out for me in a guide, it's getting to use the context, something I see in everyday life, in order to inform how I present myself. It's your reinterpretation of your everyday, and one that's informed by paying attention to the world around you outside the feed. I think "be yourself" is better advice than a guide on the whole, but it requires that the person hearing it knows how to think about being themselves at all What they like, what they don't, where they grew up, what they see and experience, and then starting to find the rules in-between that allow them to reach the vision they want
Sometimes we need this kind of useless crutch to get over a mental hurdle preventing us from moving forward. Having a set color palette to choose from narrows down the impossibly wide world of fashion into a smaller spectrum that’s more manageable. But it shouldn’t be treated as dogma, and it shouldn’t be restrictive.I liked that the article acknowledges why these guides are useful for certain people. Also liked what it said about not trying to reverse engineer your thought process sometimes I do appreciate guides/rules that attempt to help understand how to tweak/change an outfit even if they are limiting in some way i remember listening to rick rubin talk about creativity some time ago and not being impressed. but also hes clearly very creative, so that was the start of me trying to understand creativity and how hard it is to express how to do, let alone put it into practice
Rick Rubin is an idiot
an amazing pedigree from an outsiders perspective but i agree that when he talks or writes it just feels like bullshit
I like fashion guides, and the basic bastard will always have a special place in my heart. But I have also come to realize that, in the end, the ultimate fashion guide is "put it on and look in the mirror"