So the world of men's fashion is a wacky, wild and turbulent place especially
thanks to the Internet where 10 years ago if you discovered a men's fashion forum looking for advice,
they'd say, "Yeah, just wear jeans and a shirt that fits properly,"
and you'd be leagues ahead of your average dad just by doing that.
Nowadays while they're existed to some degree, those fashions and forums have diverged
and then grown into huge subcultures. They include things like your mainstream business attire,
high-fashion, casual wear, street wear, and all sorts of subgroups under that, including things like your sneakerheads, tech wear, skate wear
pale wave, avant-garde and then everything Kanye has been in the same room as
On the surface they all seem like completely different and confusing genres
but it's kind of like how there are a million types of movies
But they're all built on the same principles
So if you break it down into what the actual purpose or inspiration of the different trends are it starts to make some actual sense
So to start with the obvious you take business and formal attire and it literally has barely changed for a hundred and twenty-five years
besides the Fat Conductor hats
A basic suit looks fantastic all the time
And the only way it doesn't is if it doesn't fit or you're wearing it at the wrong place, and that's the whole point
It's a super simple yet refined outfit
That says I'm a respectable put together person representing a respectable put together company so sign this contract and let's monopolize American steel
So is that devolves a little bit you have something like business casual,
which is of course much more prevalent nowadays as business has become a lot less
face-to-face and a lot more online
Some people wear business casual or chic casual outfits all the time
but it works better if you're a bit older because if you're a high school student or university freshman you can come off as a
bit incongruent because there's really no reason you'd ever need to wear a buttoned shirt other than when your date
drove you to prom or that one job interview you've had
So I might be good to wait until you've at least paid taxes before you look like you filed someone else's
So in my opinion
this is the point where things get interesting because you get to your casual everyday
clothes where you can really express your personality by copying what popular rappers are wearing
So by far the most rapidly evolving area of men's fashion
I think the most noticeable shift
recently has been the huge prevalence of street wear and designer brands gaining popularity with teenagers and young guys
I mean not that long ago
The only people who'd spend money on Gucci were rich middle-aged guys buying their wife something for an anniversary
But nowadays the barrier for entry is getting like three a's that semester
The part that I found the most interesting about some of the street-wear culture is that
a lot of unfashionable items are worn ironically
where you're sort of saying
"I know so much about fashion that I'm wearing something I know is unfashionable because in order to identify
something so unfashionable you would have to know a lot about fashion"
Like a while ago it would be as simple as
wearing a pink shirt and putting your hair in a bun because it was the opposite of traditional men's
fashion at the time. Then later
It was overalls in a bucket hat because you live in a city and haven't ever caught a fish
And then eventually jean joggers and a NASA fanny pack because you're emulating that one weird kid in middle school
I'm still sour about this because I was literally that kid in middle school and people did not think I was fashionable
I did however have a pouch for my laser pointer.
Now this sort of ironic incorporation of uncool items
certainly doesn't end there because some brands seem to have been built almost
entirely on this sense of consumer irony, and I think the most brilliant example of that is Supreme
And they were originally a much smaller kind of skate shop clothing brand, but effectively they said
"Alright, we're a pretty niche shop with a pretty dedicated clientele.
Do you think people would buy just a regular white shirt with a box logo on it for $30?"
And it turns out they would. And as they got bigger, they said
Alright, what about something like a Zippo lighter?
And that sold out instantly. But as they kept getting more traction they just said
"Fuck it."
Nun chucks? Sold out instantly.
Tennis balls? Sold out instantly.
Fire-extinguisher? Sold out instantly.
And at one point they must have had a conversation that went
"All right, what is literally the least useful
stand alone item we could possibly sell?
And someone said
"How about a brick?"
Yeah, brick and look Supreme was pretty big at the time and everything was selling out
But would people actually pay $30 for a brick?
and of course the answer was no, they didn't.
Almost no one would pay $30 for a brick.
They'd pay $1,000 for a brick because it sold out instantly.
*disappointment in humanity sinks in*
So anyway, hit me up for that collab
Like, like actually though.
So once you go deeper into different contemporary fashions
You'll find some very interesting sub categorizations
And they explore the extremes of other genres and some of them are pretty weird
So, the most well-known is probably high fashion
which does get a lot of flack for being weird
But it's really more of an advertising campaign for showing off a designer's
inspiration for upcoming commercial lines than it is for actual practical wear
So in a way, it's almost weird by design
which is neither here nor there for me
But if we start looking at the niche clothing that people do wear on a day-to-day basis
it brings us to some super interesting trends.
So of course a massive group that's permeated all casual wear are your sneaker heads,
and these are the people you might have heard of who would camp overnight to cop a fresh pair of Jordans
But they only really wear them once for Instagram
And then they resell them the next day at five times the price to rich Asian exchange students
Something like normcore is wearing literally your entire outfit ironically, effectively dressing as blandly as possible on purpose.
Pale wave is a sort of minimalism that centers around a lack of detail and subtle pastel color palettes
I quite enjoy this look because if people come over to my apartment, I blend in nicely with my IKEA furniture
Then there's all black everything which is also a pretty solid choice (if you don't like sorting laundry)
I mean, I think it's cool because it makes your washer spin cycle look like a portal to the fourth dimension
That's pretty neat
And then something like avant-garde which is sometimes called goth-ninja
is way more complicated
but is fundamentally about being able to sneak up on people
perfectly camouflaged in the urban environment,
and then being able to tap them on the shoulder and they'll drop dead instantly
Lastly we have tech wear
which is the most technically advanced clothing possible.
Your jacket weighs about 14 micrograms and is resistant to all four seasons simultaneously
Your carbon fiber gore-tex underwear is completely waterproof from both directions
and has a concealed pocket for up to two Magnum condoms
Honestly, the only downside I can find to a tech wear outfit
Is that it costs $4,000, and you only use it to walk to work?
Now at this point we've barely scratched the surface of all the fashion ideas that are out there
But moving forward all these areas of fashion will continue to evolve in some very interesting in unpredictable ways
Personally I've been trying to Pioneer comf-core
which focuses on being as comfortable as possible at all times
The only downside that I've realized is that it's the literal opposite of fashion and usually devolves into you not leaving the house and binging
YouTube's top 10 lists so you have no Instagram traction on that one yet, but I'll keep you guys updated