Total Gear Crisis.
OK, I’m going to start having to watch my word count. I was writing an diatribe about how fashion has created some kind of social schizophrenia these days and it got out of control. But I was addressing the fact how when I was back in college, I could look at a girl and tell the following:
1. Whether or not she was a reader.
2. What kind of bands she listened to.
3. If she was into art.
4. If she considered herself a social outcast
5. If she was a sports fan.
6. If she drinks
7. If she smokes
8. If she pokes
9. You get the idea.
Not so, these days.
You might find a girl running a crooked, asymmetrical bleached/dyed razor cut who’d rather be at the local sports arena watching a football game rather than at a coffee shop…a girl whose idea of high literature is Cosmo Magazine. You’ll see a gaggle of girls who look like Ramones or Iggy Pop groupies who listen to John Mayer or Nickelback. Girls with paint splattered all over her jeans who’ve never been to a gallery or museum. Girls trying to look like heroin junkies who don’t even eat meat and only eat organic vegetables. Ladies with full sleeve tattoos who are die-hard republicans.
Wow.
You get the idea.
No longer can you judge a book by it’s cover, so to speak.
Everybody likes everything these days. Nobody specializes anymore. It’s almost as if these people are an amalgamation of every single influence ever blasted through the television…and in the worst way.
And no longer can you walk into a bar in the midwest and tell if that girl that looks like an artist is a actually an accountant who drives a Range Rover, roots for the Cincinnati Bengals and would rather be tailgating than walking into a gallery to check out a new exhibit.
And no doubt, the same can be said for guys, too. I’ve met dudes wearing Black Flag shirts who gather at sports bars, full grown men wearing skateboard branded shoes and t-shirts who’ve never stepped on a board in their lives.
It’s all kind of confusing, socially.
Which, kind of brings me to what I wanted to originally say: Fashion (if that’s the word you choose to use) used to simply be an outer extension of your inner personality. And that’s what made it rad. You really could tell a lot about people just by looking at what they were wearing. Socially, it helped people of like minds find each other, it gave them some common ground to launch a discussion, it brought people together. It easily and quickly identified allies vs. enemies.
And it seems those days are gone, unfortunately. Schizophrenia is the only word that comes to mind when I think of social situations and how personal style has clashed and intersected on the worst levels.
I graduated with a minor in sociology. So to me, all of this is like a crazy experiment gone awry. And of course, I generalize because, well, generally you can in regards to things such as this.
Still, I lament the days when you really could tell what someone was into without having to log on and check out their myspace profile.
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4. June 2008 - 09:50 Uhr
Love your post, always very thought provoking - Keep it up.
I “grew up” in the late 80s and early 90s and I can always remember going through school being taught that “you can’t judge a book by its cover” - message being that people were more than just what they appeared to be. At that time society was definitely judging people on appearances and it was seen as a bad thing.
With that said, I understand the point you’re trying to make - that people have stopped wearing things that represent themselves - they just buy in to a certain look/culture.
But maybe it’s not such a bad thing that everyone looks “schizophrenic”. What’s wrong with liking different things and dressing accordingly? I think that’s one of the greatest parts of our culture lately - the fact that a banker who’s never done graffiti and still respect it as a form of art or a guy that’s never skated buying a pair of kicks because, he likes the design.
I definitely agree that there is a lot of this “buying into” a certain culture/style. But, maybe I just have bit more faith in people and believe they look “schizophrenic” because, they actually like more things. Maybe I’m too optimistic - I can’t tell you the number of paris hilton look a likes I see on a daily bases.
4. June 2008 - 14:36 Uhr
nice post. its something i have been thinking about too recently.
as a kid growing up in London in the late seventies and being a teen through the eighties people were very simply identifyable by a tribal silohette, skins, punks, goths, mods, new romantics, casuals whatever. Anyway as a young metalhead travelling to different parts of London to record shops one would have to keep half an eye open for a group of skins, who enjoyed nothing more that giving you the chase down and maybe lobbing some random objects at you while trying to get you cornered. Although when the ska thing broke and punk and reggae began to fuse, these lines began to blur for sure and a more generalised look emerged, and many styles began to get mixed up making people harder to place.
So, like i said recently it has been concerning me, as someone who conrtibutes design into streetwear, how quickly and obviously once hipster/ underground / skate etc looks are interpreted into the high street (thanks uniqlo!!! high fives all round - awesome) and they are adopted by people who just buy what they see and like.
Anyway the point is, the more aesthetic coherent people become, then actually the easier it is to avoid. Style is timeless and personality always SHINE !!
4. June 2008 - 15:14 Uhr
Right on.
Modern culture is so saturated and so obsessed with the next big thing, before any genuinely nurtured, home-grown style is given a chance, the high street, MTV and the cool hunters (sub-vultures) kidnap it and flood the world with two-bit interpretations. I might be coming off as bitter…. I don’t mean to.
When I was a youth, when I started skateboarding in ‘93/’94, I checked every kid like me, from the shoes up, a weird habit I have never grown out of. But in those days seeing someone on the street in a pair of skate shoes (that had actually been skated) was enough incentive to go up and start talking to each other. Back then, skateboarders were a rare breed anywhere outside London in the U.K. so we stuck together.
Nowadays, everyone has owned a pair of skate shoes, but only a small percentage bought them because they were going to use them for skateboarding.
The flip-side is that skateboarding is in the best place it has ever been. There are some hooky companies and people out there, in it for a quick buck, but the majority of the real companies and riders are still around, and finally getting what they deserve, for what they do. Not to mention the new generation of kids, upping the anti and pushing real skateboarding.
4. June 2008 - 17:00 Uhr
O.Two - I think you hit it right on the head. It’s a catch 22 really. Popularity is usually a sign that people are doing something right and is a step to progression isn’t it? I mean, ya there are exception but with out popularity people that influence the seen, now and in the future, may have never had a chance to fall in love with it.
I think the problem is, that we have swung too far to one side - we as a society consume without thinking. To thinking about it, most people do everything without much thought - don’t want to seem like I got a hate on but, unfortunately everything now seems to be more about $$$ and getting the limited editions rather than the ideas behind the products.
4. June 2008 - 18:46 Uhr
I would never completely judge someone based on what they’re wearing.
OK. You got me.
I would. But it’s the result of growing up as an artist and skateboarder in the poorest state in the country, which was full of farmers, sports fans and cow tippers.
You have to keep in mind that this was pre-internet when there wasn’t international fashion on demand. The famers looked like famers; the jocks looked like jocks; the preps popped collars, etc.
These are cliques. So while you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, I think it’s truer still that birds of a feather flock together, as they say.
Truth be told, the biggest issue I have with the whole thing is like I stated: fashion was more of an extension of the personality and sent a message (albeit a small message) about what kind of interests the person had.
Have you ever been on a website where a person is supposed to fill out what their musical interests are?
“I LIKE EVERYTHING BUT COUNTRY.”
Yeah? Go fuck yourself.
To me, it just says, “I never took the time to figure out what I really like so I like whatever is popular because that’s what I’m supposed to like.”
I just see the same thing happening in personal style.
People have the right to like everything, be everything, aspire to everything; but I see those people as generic to a degree, I have to admit. Oscar Wilde once said, ‘Only the shallow know themselves.” But I still believe that people who try to be everything to everyone end up just scratching the surface of themselves.
And that’s kind of unfortunate in a way. That’s just the way I see it and no doubt it’s the result of living in the midwest in a city where a lot of people seemingly don’t know who they are, what they like. That makes it tough to relate to someone on at least one level.
4. June 2008 - 18:55 Uhr
I totally agree with you about people really not scratching the surface and just liking things because that’s what they’re suppose to do. Big problem but, what’s the solution? How do we change it, can we change it, should it be changed?
Love how your post get people thinking…keep it up.
4. June 2008 - 19:18 Uhr
Personally, I just think people are a product of their environment and their generation to a degree. I’m bad when it comes to generalizing. There are without doubt countless individuals all over the place who don’t fit the description of what I laid out here.
It could be a situation where this stuff happens in the formative years and parents probably play a part to a degree. I think if you’re a naturally curious person, you can happily dabble in a bit of everything but are really drawn to the things you find yourself passionate about.
And as a generational thing, I’m sure there are plenty of people who would say that I’m too into the things I’m into and probably short sighted for not being a jack of all trades or a lover of all things.
I think things are basically the same as they’ve always been…visually, it just looks a lot more confusing than ever before. The DIY aspect has definitely been taken away somewhat because of commercialism but I suppose if we look beyond the surface of it all, people are, always have been and always will be people. Not wrong, not worse, just people.
I’m just kind of stoked that I’m actually old enough to already look back and think, ‘Wow. Those days were awesome.” I’ve been waiting my entire life to be a bitter, old dude! I’ve been practicing for years!
4. June 2008 - 21:37 Uhr
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