On Style: Filler

[mishalak]

Well the style section of Denver's Sunday paper was bereft of articles proclaiming fashion trends. There was hardly any free advertising for fellow corporations announcements of new places to shop aside from one for a website run by The Gap's corporate parent. A piece on politeness on Light Rail (and the lack thereof) and a profile on Colorado's next First Lady. Nothing about clothes. So I'll have to make up something about fashion on my own instead.

Fashion has a negative connotation among geeks when it isn't openly derided by the bookish intellectuals and engineers alike. And it really shouldn't be so scorned, particularly if the person happens to be a science fiction or fantasy fan. Fashion is all about visual cues to what kind of person the wearer wants to be perceived as. This does not have to be just be about keeping up with some trust fund baby social set where having the right label on ones clothing means being part of the group or not, it can also be about saying, "Hey I'm an intellectual, an engineer, a reader, or otherwise a really smart person." Faded black tee shirts with scruffy ill fitting blue jeans does not do this.

The so casual that it goes beyond sleeping through dressing to a "I was comatose when these clothes appeared upon my body" look doesn't proclaim the wearer's intellectual prowess because it is also favored by drug addicts, high school drop outs, and the gormless. Because these other people dress in the extremely casual way they do everyone who doesn't want to be associated with them must choose a look and expend a minimal amount of effort on maintaining it. It can still be tee-shirts and blue jeans, they just have to be unfaded tee shirts and clean blue jeans paired up with a neatly trimmed head of hair and/or beard. Then the wearer doesn't just look like any old computer programmer, he looks like a computer programmer with his shit together.

The whole point of this is that filth and shabby clothes don't proclaim a person's liberation from lesser concerns, they're too common. So get ready to pick a look with Mishalak. Why? Because I suspect until New Years I'll need to fill my journal with stuff on this until I have something new to critique from fashion sites sometime after the Yule.

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

As a typical geek, my only interest in clothes is pragmatic, are they clean and do they fit with the weather. I don't want to make a statement with them, as I don't want to put on an act. Judge me by my words and deeds, not looks.

I'm wary of fashionable people because they attempt to change their persona with their plumage. The only fun of fancy dress parties is going as a bad pun.

Fashion says "look at me", and what introvert wants that?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

The thing is that pragmatic clothing is also a fashion statement. It is just a different fashion statement from fitted jeans and artfully splattered tees.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Like deconstructionism, be wary of reading in something the author didn't intend

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

That's all well and good to say, but people do read things into both books and clothing choices that the author did not intend. If a person is dressed up like a Hell's Angel then people are going to by and large react to him as they would to an actual biker gang member without waiting to get to know the person. People make more subtle assumptions about a person wearing practical everyday clothing, but they still make them.

Not to mention that not planning/thinking about the message that something will send isn't the same thing as not wanting to send a message. I've noticed that people often pick practical clothing as a way of setting themselves apart from people they see as frivolous or less intelligent. I used to do that when I was a stuck up brat of a geek without actually thinking about what I was doing until it struck me later.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I'm purple today. I was purple with tie-dye the last two days. People looking at me are going to assume I like bright colors.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

What people who prefer to defalt to the 'null' message in clothing style seem not to understand is that most people they may associate with are likely to be so well-socialised that judgements are made at a subconscious level. So if you are interested in the opinion of relatively well socialised people, you need to make a minimal effort when choosing attire.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Exactly what I am trying to get at here. I do add that I suspect everyone makes assumptions based on other people clothing choices, but most of these assumptions are not made at a level where they're thought about very much. I'm sure that people who prefer to default to the 'null' message assume things about people dressed up in suits or in artfully torn jeans with designer tee shirts. Probably something along the lines of, "He's a boring business person and that's a shallow hipster," only with less words and more just emotional reaction.