Popularity Breeds Contempt

[Teacher]

Brooks has always had seersucker, in fact they claim to have introduced it to the US. Mine's a Haspel, the old Southern maker of seersucker. It seems odd to me to champion classic style, but if classic style is popular then not to want any part of it.

This reminds me of Metallica. (I'm not just a clothing guy...I'm also a metalhead.) When Metallica was a popular cult band, its fans were few but rabidly involved. When Metallica started becoming popular (Master of Puppets, 1986), these original core fans began resenting the "pretender" fans. When Metallica became huge (...And Justice for All, 1988), especially with the enormously successful video for their hit song "One," these same fans turned on the band itself for "selling out." What it boiled down to is that they were at one point happy to be the members of a small, selective clique of social outsiders, and once that clique was infiltrated by the masses, they weren't special any more.

 

[jgilbert]

I have been for over 30 years your basic Brooks Brothers type of guy. So every nowand then I find my sense of style is the newest fashion trend. It goes awaty and in about 10 to 15 years or so it comes around again.

 

[griffer]

Fine, I'm getting some polyester plaid bell-bottoms.

 

[Edward]

Interesting thread. I remember when I first became really clothes-conscious, at about 14/15. I was definatly anti-fashion from that age - if it was in fashion, I hated it. I've not worn them for some time (must get me some new ones), but I used to love combat trousers, as we called them - I believe they're more universally known as "cargo pants" nowadays. Seven years after I started wearing them, they became a hot fashion item over here.... I was gutted. Up til then, you'd only ever have seen them available in an army surplus store - suddenly the regular shops were flooded with non-military alternatives of all sorts. We kept wearing them in the end (after considering dropping them!), though we made our own distinction by wearing only military-spec ones (there's a delicious irony in all my adoration of military clothing, what with me being a pacifist and all!). I soon came round to the idea of a much wider range of fabrics and colours, though - especially when they slipped out of fashion again (though still around as "basics" now) and I was able to be able to find great pairs at knockdown prices! I can remember too being delighted when they said that jeans were gonig out of fashion, though that supposed trend died on its arse....

I agree absolutely that it's lunatic, but to this day I hate the idea of "my" clothes being fashionable and belonging to the mainstream, and yet I'll bitch too that the mainstream has no style (on the rare occasion i pay it any mind now, at least). I like to think I've grown up to the point that I can be myself and not care when it's in fashion ("screw you, darling - I was wearing this when you were in shellsuits!"), but it does still rankle a bit sometimes. I do like when there are things I want to wear that beocme "classic basics" though - the sort of thing that doesn't go in or out of fashion, and is always available. I might vary a little, add new things to my look from year to year, but for the most part I've had very fixed ideas about what I do and don't like clothes-wise for over a decade now, and there's nothing more frustrating as someone who knows my own style and doesn't care to wear what base fashion dictates is in to find that I can't find the clothes I want to wear because they're not "in."