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Fashion?


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When I was born people looked like this:

4716modified.jpg

When I was in high school people looked like this:

thCA9S155R.jpg

When I was in college people looked like this:

thCAH7U1PP.jpg

All of this change in about twenty years.

I can watch movies and television shows from the sixties and seventies and pretty accurately guess what year they were made (give or take a year or two) by the style of clothes and haircuts that people were wearing.

When I look at photos, videos and movies from the last twenty years or so it's much harder to guess what year they were made because the clothing and hair styles don't seem to have changed that much.

Have we reached a point where fashion styles are no longer evolving? Will fashion cease to exist?

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Have we reached a point where fashion styles are no longer evolving?
I suppose we may have reached a "postmodern" stage where there's not really anything new left to be said in the fashion world, so people just draw on the existing motifs to build whatever look works for them, instead of seeking out the latest trend (e.g. pants down around the knees). The lower (in real terms) cost of clothes and huge expansion of shopping options might contribute to this idea, since you're not stuck with whatever the local department store tells you is "in style".

Will fashion cease to exist?
No. Google "Justin Bieber AMAs".
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Quote Originally Posted by rangefinder View Post
I suppose we may have reached a "postmodern" stage where there's not really anything new left to be said in the fashion world, so people just draw on the existing motifs to build whatever look works for them, instead of seeking out the latest trend (e.g. pants down around the knees).
How long has the pants around the knees been in style?
Hasn't it been like ten or fifteen years now?
I'm not sure if bell bottoms even lasted that long.confused.gif
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Quote Originally Posted by Folder View Post
How long has the pants around the knees been in style?
Hasn't it been like ten or fifteen years now?
Well, it STARTED probably close to twenty years ago. Ten years or so ago, it was de rigueur for teen males. Now it's still around, but only in certain subcultures.

Anyhow, if I go to my local department store today, I can find twenty major variations in styles of jeans/casual pants. There's no longer a single dominant style, and as long as SOMEBODY keeps buying saggy pants, stores will keep selling them.
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There is at least one new look in the last 20 years:
blackmansaggingpantsghettofab-300x225.jp

But I generally agree that most "new" fashion seems like a remake or remix of an earlier look and fads aren't as universal as they once seemed to be. It seems to me that people of all ages now have a wide variety of looks that they can choose from, and they don't need to throw away their five year old clothes because they are out of style. I remember all the commotion about changes in skirt lengths in the 60s and 70s. Now you see a wide range of lengths on women of all ages.

I think this is a good change, it means people aren't feeling forced to buy new clothes based on the latest fads. Maybe they're spending all their money on the latest smart phone instead.

On the other hand, I hear that some kids have camped out for two weeks in front of stores to buy a newly released sneaker......

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I've got a number of supermodel friends (Hey, remember I used to play music for fashion shows for several years!). They feel it was Punk in the late-70's/early 80's that may have destroyed "high" fashion as we know it. VOGUE magazine, since its inception in the 1892, had long chronicled the hijinks of the super-rich, a-la:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]350275[/ATTACH]

Even girls from America's Levittowns could afford to approximate this look in their local proms and cotillions.

If VOGUE dipped into the avant-garde, it still concerned itself with the experiments of "proper" artists (read: white males) like Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. Jackson Pollock was quite a walk-on-the-wild-side.

The counter-cultural thrift-shop thing of the 1960's (however antisocial in intent at grassroots level) could still be parlayed into something classy, "global/ethnic" and expensive-looking, if need be:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]350276[/ATTACH]

But with the Punk explosion of 1977-78, things were different. Magazines like VOGUE, to stay afloat, were becoming more supermarket fare, no longer the preserve of America's and Europe's aristo classes. It was increasingly difficult to souffle' up the CBGB/STIFF look into something that the ultra-rich might dally in:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]350277[/ATTACH]

In fact, the Punk movement was specifically about shooting the finger at elitist fashion. 1970's Feminism also questioned whether young women were still to be the painted, waiflike playthings of men...whose lives began at marriage.




As hip-hop arose post-1982, along with the PC need to start including more non-white models, you had attitudes bubbling up from among society's most disenfranchised, climaxing in heroin-chic of the 1990's:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]350278[/ATTACH]

In short, Western high fashion has been dumbed-down, "democratized" to reflect very downmarket sensibilities. Eclecticism has been its only choice since VOGUE's readership has become more supermarket checkout fare... scarcely more chic than the "urban working girl" scrape-by feel of COSMOPOLITAN. A Manhattan yuppie female might want to ape the look, weekend warrior-style, of the charred-spoon set, but she sure didn't want to actually BE one of them.
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Very interesting topic, particularly because I've always considered the music industry a fashion industry, and I think there are some parallels.

There's no longer a shared, common cultural touchstone as happened with Benny Goodman, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles. Too many "tribes" have their own fashion...the same people who dance to Tiesto aren't into Justin Bieber or Carrie Underwood. Of course there were plenty of people who didn't like the Beatles, but they were at least aware of the Beatles; I doubt that many Justin Bieber fans even know who Tiesto or Armin Van Buuren is.

This is all part of the societal fracturing which poses a political danger as well as a cultural vacuum. I see more people being concerned with themselves, and not the bigger picture of society. People conversing on cell phones in a theater epitomizes this: they don't care that they're disturbing other people, because other people don't exist. Only the person talking exists in their reality.

Solipsism is the order of the day, and ultimately, while I think individuality is extremely important, failure to recognize oneself simultanenously as being part of a society will ultimately destroy that society. Fashion may seem like a somewhat trivial subject; on the surface, it is. But the following of fashion speaks to a different, and I feel important, impulse.

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Quote Originally Posted by Anderton View Post
Very interesting topic, particularly because I've always considered the music industry a fashion industry, and I think there are some parallels.

There's no longer a shared, common cultural touchstone as happened with Benny Goodman, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles. Too many "tribes" have their own fashion...the same people who dance to Tiesto aren't into Justin Bieber or Carrie Underwood. Of course there were plenty of people who didn't like the Beatles, but they were at least aware of the Beatles; I doubt that many Justin Bieber fans even know who Tiesto or Armin Van Buuren is.

This is all part of the societal fracturing which poses a political danger as well as a cultural vacuum. I see more people being concerned with themselves, and not the bigger picture of society. People conversing on cell phones in a theater epitomizes this: they don't care that they're disturbing other people, because other people don't exist. Only the person talking exists in their reality.

Solipsism is the order of the day, and ultimately, while I think individuality is extremely important, failure to recognize oneself simultanenously as being part of a society will ultimately destroy that society. Fashion may seem like a somewhat trivial subject; on the surface, it is. But the following of fashion speaks to a different, and I feel important, impulse.
And there you go. You said it.

I recently re-watched 1971's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, a shocking portrait of societal breakdown in some imagined future. I was surprised to find myself no longer shocked at all by this film, scarcely interested in it, in fact; real-world things that have happened in the interim have far outstripped anything it warned against.
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Quote Originally Posted by Anderton

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...while I think individuality is extremely important, failure to recognize oneself simultanenously as being part of a society will ultimately destroy that society.

 

I've felt for a while that Western countries tend to emphasize individualism to the detriment of society, while Eastern countries tend to emphasize collectivism to the detriment of the individual.
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Quote Originally Posted by Anderton View Post
Very interesting topic, particularly because I've always considered the music industry a fashion industry, and I think there are some parallels.
The "Punk or Metal" thread is in some ways about parallel music "fashion trends".

I posted over there about how when Elvis Costello first came out most people I knew didn't know what to make of him. At that time in suburban America most guys had long hair and wore bell bottoms and had aviator type glasses. Then along comes this goofy looking guy with short greasy hair, straight leg pants and fifties style horn rimmed glasses. He was wearing the wrong uniform and represented everything that we were supposedly against fashionwise. Didn't he get the memo? How could he not realise that he looked like a nerd? Nerds weren't cool in 1977.

When I was in the second grade there was an older kid who came to school wearing something called a nehru jacket. He had already begun to grow his hair out when one day he came to school wearing it. He also had on striped flair pants and a wide white belt. He was wearing Beatle boots with the little zippers on the side and had several strings of love beads around his neck too.

A couple of hours into the school day an announcement came over the intercom asking him to come to the principals office. It turns out that the principal had called his mother and told her to bring him a different set of clothes because they claimed that he was disrupting class by wearing hippie clothes.

From what I remember I think he looked something like this:

090904_fg21.jpg


About ten years later my mother bought my brother and I something called leisure suits to wear to our cousins wedding. The salesman claimed that they were all the rage and that they were semi-casual clothes designed for life in the seventies. Both my brother and I hated them and we refused to wear them again, so my mother ended up returning them to the store.

I remember they looked just like this:

Leisuresuit1.jpg


Now I don't think that nehru jackets or leisure suits lasted more than a few years before they became considered uncool for most people. I think the rate of change was still excelerating at that point.

I see kids today dressing as if they were a hippie from the sixties or maybe a punk rocker from the eighties and while I admire their audacity sometimes I feel like saying to them "Hey don't you know that's already been done before"?icon_lol.gif
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Quote Originally Posted by Tomm Williams View Post
Damn public schools!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I meant SIX years icon_lol.gificon_lol.giffacepalm.gif
I read something a while back about things that young people don't know and that was one of the things they didn't get. I guess they look at those pictures and think the Beatles were popular and making records for twenty years or something. Maybe they can't fathom that the world could change so fast.

From this 1964:

z11389735QThe-Beatles--1964--John-Lennon


To this 1970:

beatles_probably_1970_630_pxlwmodified.j
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I wouldn`t say there`s no fashion... the goatee was a recent look for men which turned into a beard for many... I see that a lot more now than ever before.
Also, men are just going more with the facial hair than ever before as well... just another observation. Men are going more with darker jeans these days too. I`m a jeans and button down type guy personally but as I write this I`m in my underwear... so much for fashion. love.gif

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Quote Originally Posted by Hard Truth View Post
There is at least one new look in the last 20 years:
blackmansaggingpantsghettofab-300x225.jp

But I generally agree that most "new" fashion seems like a remake or remix of an earlier look and fads aren't as universal as they once seemed to be. It seems to me that people of all ages now have a wide variety of looks that they can choose from, and they don't need to throw away their five year old clothes because they are out of style. I remember all the commotion about changes in skirt lengths in the 60s and 70s. Now you see a wide range of lengths on women of all ages.

I think this is a good change, it means people aren't feeling forced to buy new clothes based on the latest fads. Maybe they're spending all their money on the latest smart phone instead.

On the other hand, I hear that some kids have camped out for two weeks in front of stores to buy a newly released sneaker......
Wearing your jeans absurdly low was very much in fashion in So Cal in the late 50s. One of my gay friends (a senior citizen) claims it derives from jail culture, a signal of sexual passivity/receptivity. But I've never run into a G who buys that, of course. wink.gif


FWIW, I think the pop culture machine just ran out of new ideas -- the fad mavens have simply run dry.

Also, I think, in the 80s, music style recycling came full circle. There've been a few stylistic tic changes -- but since the birth of rave culture in the late 80s, I can't think of much new that's happened. Oh yeah, hard-tuned vocals. Twenty years of culture hash -- and all we have to show for it is T-Pain.


Instead, we have sort of style tribes who seem to define themselves by landmark stylistic events and particularly the phony representations of past youth cultures in pop culture movies.

Not at all unlike The Warriors, the late 70s movie that, along with the competing -- and strikingly similar -- youth-in-revolt flick, The Wanderers, were youth exploitation movies that went to the well of post-modern mashup of youth-in-revolt stylistic memes -- while bringing no new ideas.

We live in a commercial culture that -- cut off from real creativity and driven primarily by dreams of financial profit -- can only recycle hackneyed copies of past ideas and styles.
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Quote Originally Posted by Folder View Post
I read something a while back about things that young people don't know and that was one of the things they didn't get. I guess they look at those pictures and think the Beatles were popular and making records for twenty years or something. Maybe they can't fathom that the world could change so fast.

From this 1964:

z11389735QThe-Beatles--1964--John-Lennon


To this 1970:

beatles_probably_1970_630_pxlwmodified.j
Before: Brian Epstein. After: no Brian Epstein.
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Quote Originally Posted by Folder View Post
How long has the pants around the knees been in style?
Hasn't it been like ten or fifteen years now?
I'm not sure if bell bottoms even lasted that long.confused.gif
I think fashion is still changing just as much, but as we age it just starts to look more "all the same" to us.

Baggy pants have been out of style for at least a few years now. Skinny jeans are all the rage and you couldn't even hardly find a pair a few years ago. I watched a movie last night from 1998 and it was notable how dated the movie looked based on the clothes and hair styles. We just aren't quite far enough away from more-recent fashions for them to look quite as 'dated' yet. And we're not young enough to care. But the changes are there.

Look at these two pics. To old guys, they look kinda the same probably. But no way those guys in the first pic would have been caught dead in the jeans and hair-in-the-air fashion of the bottom pic.

BOY BAND 1996:

379394_1_f.jpg?d=20120905034221

BOY BAND 2012:

t1110onedirection-interview_feat2_1.jpg
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I've felt for a while that Western countries tend to emphasize individualism to the detriment of society, while Eastern countries tend to emphasize collectivism to the detriment of the individual.

 

 

Ken, you always have a way of being able to distill complex subjects down to essentials.

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I think fashion is still changing just as much, but as we age it just starts to look more "all the same" to us.


Baggy pants have been out of style for at least a few years now. Skinny jeans are all the rage and you couldn't even hardly find a pair a few years ago. I watched a movie last night from 1998 and it was notable how dated the movie looked based on the clothes and hair styles. We just aren't quite far enough away from more-recent fashions for them to look quite as 'dated' yet. And we're not young enough to care. But the changes are there.


Look at these two pics. To old guys, they look kinda the same probably. But no way those guys in the first pic would have been caught dead in the jeans and hair-in-the-air fashion of the bottom pic.


BOY BAND 1996:


379394_1_f.jpg?d=20120905034221

BOY BAND 2012:


t1110onedirection-interview_feat2_1.jpg

The outfits and haircuts look different -- but if you know your fashion, you can see it's the same culture segment: shop boys.

 

 

I watch a lot of movies from across the decades. (I particularly like the early 30s/pre-Hayes Code jazz era films but I'm a big fan of the 40s/swing movies, too.) Of course, coming of age in the 60s, I watched all the 60s and many of the 70s films. As many great films as there were in the 60s, it seemed like there were just as many total stinkers in the 70s. I think the movie making establishment just couldn't get their bearings and kept throwing money around frantically -- like a degenerate gambler looking for the big score that will help him pay his hotel bill and get out of town on both legs.

 

Interestingly, though, as bad as things got in the 70s, in terms of both style and artistic content, the mainstream movies and TV of the 80s were almost uniformly gawdawful in terms of not just content but the utterly hideous clothes and hair fashions and the insipid music that was often glued onto the soundtracks.

 

Without question in my mind, the 1980s mainstream culture had, hands down, the ugliest, most grotesque visual style of any decade in my awareness since the bizarre excesses of the 1890s.

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