It's probably just a front for some sweat shop.
Or is it obnoxious of them, given that they are both extremely slender and exclusive, high end clothes tend to be limited to very slender people?
The thing is, even most high-end clothing tends to come in sizes up to 10 or 12, with scaled proportions to match. Even within those confines, something that looks floaty and breezy on a size 2 is going to look wrong on an 8, and vice versa. While the clothes look cute enough in the pictures, something tells me that unless people share their exact measurements, they're not going to look good out in the real world. It just strikes me as ..... well .... stupid.
I hope you don't mind if they see this in their referrer logs and come here.
5 was my first thought. I remember "They've never even seen a violin" lady.
It occurred to me. 1) I doubt they're checking the website anymore, and 2) I doubt they remember me? But maybe I'll google-proof.
Yeah, I thought about that before I posted my negative comment - but went with it anyway. sorrynotsorry.
Since then, they built a website for the store, but then let the website die. (I think the bricks and mortar store is still open.)
This seems exactly backwards. I'm not sure why you would think they have let the website die, since we are all clicking on it. (And it has a current 2015 date at the bottom.)
Also, the website says: "After a decade-long romance with our retail shop on the LES of NYC, we are changing gears to catch up with the times. We get it now, you want to shop from anywhere." Which sounds to me like the bricks and mortar store may be closed.
It just strikes me as a bad business model, because going to all of the trouble to tailor clothes to an individual who isn't actually the one buying it seems like a mistake.
Oh, I guess you're thinking the website is dead because everything is sold out. Maybe. Or they could just be low on inventory. It's hand-sewn, you know.
Ok, I undid the link, so there should only be a few click-throughs. The rest of you can easily google the quoted text and pull it up that way.
The deal is that they're doing alterations to vintage things they bought elsewhere, right? So each piece is one of a kind rather than available in a range of different sizes. I guess they only start with things that will fit them, because... blah. Anyway, yes, the tiny size range is absurdly silly/obnoxious. I think the part about what size they personally are is to help the viewer judge the actual size of the garments from how they fit in the photos.
When they do the blocking, it's hand stretched.
They have a shop in LA. I've seen their clothes before, they're pretty cute. Re. obnoxiousness, eh, I don't know. As you point out, most high-end shops limit their clothing sizes -- it's a problem across the board, so I wouldn't single out this small boutique on that ground. Also, IIRC they do custom alterations, so that if something doesn't quite right they can modify it slightly.
They have a shop in LA. I've seen their clothes before, they're pretty cute. Re. obnoxiousness, eh, I don't know. As you point out, most high-end shops limit their clothing sizes -- it's a problem across the board, so I wouldn't single out this small boutique on that ground. Also, IIRC they do custom alterations, so that if something doesn't quite right they can modify it slightly.
They have a shop in LA. I've seen their clothes before, they're pretty cute. Re. obnoxiousness, eh, I don't know. As you point out, most high-end shops limit their clothing sizes -- it's a problem across the board, so I wouldn't single out this small boutique on that ground. Also, IIRC they do custom alterations, so that if something doesn't quite right they can modify it slightly.
I'm willing to admit to jealousy! Not exactly of the tiny waists so much as that they must be living rather glamorous lives. I couldn't quite hang back when I knew them - I was always a beat too slow and uncool - and so this sort of cements that to Vestigial Young Heebie.
They haven't updated tumblr in a year or instragram in almost 2. Who knows if current 2015 means anything.
It doesn't seem like the craziest thing to me. The people who they turn out to match bodies with are going to love it. If there are enough of those people out there to support the business then it makes sense.
And not that I exactly want their life, but just that I'd be excluded if I did want it.
All of a sudden I feel like I'm on the therapist's couch.
Height 5'8" weight one humblebraggety two on an especially humble day, uh-huh.
I think that's the only truly obnoxious thing, though. Is it for the benefit of clients who can be bothered to weigh themselves but not take measurements, and so might be able to guess that the clothes would fit them?
Height 5'8" weight one humblebraggety two on an especially humble day, uh-huh.
humblebraggety s/b skeletal
I mean, I'm very pro-clavicle, but I really want to give her a sandwich, especially on page 2.
27: Nah, remember how variable frame-size is. At 5'7.5", I was skinny, but still looked like a big healthy broadshouldered person at 125-135 in college (I can't remember what the weight limits were for rowing lightweight -- I think they moved 5lbs from spring to fall, but they were in that range and I never had to think about making weight). I was nowhere near skeletal.
28: Oh, I didn't realize there were pictures.
Mass-produced clothes don't actually fit most people either, they're just designed so it doesn't matter. (Ruching around the torso; uneven hems; waistbands below the curve of the hips.) The vast number of cuts of jeans show how hard it is to actually fit everyone.
There are tiny companies that specialize in patterns for unfashionable shapes, tested on the designer.
Looking at pictures: She looks fine to me. I think you're reacting to a picture where she's doing a shoulder-hunchy thing that makes her clavicles stand out.
29: Oh how I resented weight classes. It should be height classes.
Mass-produced clothes don't actually fit most people either, they're just designed so it doesn't matter....The vast number of cuts of jeans show how hard it is to actually fit everyone.
Well yes. No one item fits many people, but it's obnoxious that the high end fashion industry limits itself to tiny sizing.
32: Maybe, though the one that shows her back looks painfully thin to me, even accounting for flexing her shoulder blades. But people can look different IRL, obvs.
So they buy secondhand clothes, maybe add darts, take photos of themselves (Knecht, you may enjoy browsing, some of the clothing is sheer), and resell at a higher price?
Maybe if they do really well they'll get to be friends with Katy Perry, they deserve the fate that they are building for themselves.
In high school I had a friend who had a dart added to her jeans at a party. She was very angry, I think because the dart was added to her thigh at the same time.
Here as with knitting patterns, I'm basically suspicious of anyone who uses photos of people in completely unnatural postures to try to sell me clothes that will hang well in ordinary use.
I suppose the upside of the business model is that if the pieces don't sell, they get "free" clothes for themselves.
I guess it's mildly more obnoxious than usual, but I find fashion retail in general extremely obnoxious, so this doesn't really register as particularly bad. It's just their boutique niche - very low overheads relative to other store concepts, dedicated clientele. In a large enough city, it makes a certain amount of sense. No reason it could be replicated in other sizes by other people.
I am always fascinated by the financial arrangements for these high end small boutiques. My belief is that most of them (maybe not this one) operate at a loss and are largely designed to be a lifestyle vehicle for the owners, generally subsidized by some other funding source (in NY, of course, the classic example is a banker husband/boyfriend). We have a friend who has a company selling ultra high end shoes to such places and his financial arrangements are comical, he has done pretty well relatively but nets out something like a grad student stipend.
27: yeah, I initially read that "on a good day" as meaning "on a day when I got some food to eat," then realized she was implying the opposite.
largely designed to be a lifestyle vehicle for the owners, generally subsidized by some other funding source
Any number of used bookstores are like this as well. People in the trade therefore distinguish between a 'true bookman' and, uh, not a true bookman.
Men have it so much better than women. For prices only about a third higher than sourcing a full outfit from this company, you can just get yourself a made-to-measure suit from an EU company (ie, paying full labour costs, unlike the ones you can get made in SE Asia - which I hear are also great!). Made just for you, out of much better fabric, no matter what size you are.
Kraab sure is judging that woman's body.
Men have it so much better than women.
???? Strongly disagree. I am obliged to dress myself every day knowing full well that I don't know what I'm doing, it's like having to converse in a foreign language.
44: Well, yes, to some extent. In my defense, my reaction was largely driven by her "on a good day" tag. (See also lurid, 41.) Besides the obvious skinnier-is-better implication, it reinforces the very destructive notion that weight monitoring and loss should be near constant.
as with knitting patterns, I'm basically suspicious of anyone who uses photos of people in completely unnatural postures to try to sell me clothes that will hang well in ordinary use
This!
There's one LYS (local yarn store, for the uninitiated) -- I can't remember which one -- that always shows their patterns on Ravelry with pictures of 3 or 4 women of different body types wearing the clothes. I heart them.
45: Um, well, I'm speaking generically rather than individually, of course. But I suppose what I meant is: it's much easier to buy quality* men's clothing that will last multiple years/seasons, made in good conditions, and have it fit well. Granted, I probably feel this way because my husband/in-laws run a men's clothing shop, but really! Their stuff is so much higher quality than similarly-priced women's clothing.
HOWEVER, I think we can all agree that in global terms, nothing on that website comes close to the horror of the long sweatshirt I saw on a young woman in my Silicon Valley work-town yesterday, which said, near the lower hem in the back, "Nice SaaS". (To which I think the only viable response is "I am being sexually haraaSed.")
My belief is that most of them (maybe not this one) operate at a loss and are largely designed to be a lifestyle vehicle for the owners, generally subsidized by some other funding source (in NY, of course, the classic example is a banker husband/boyfriend).
Obviously I have no idea, but Summer is River and Joaquin Phoenix's sister. Money is available to subsidize, if need be.
It's a little more mean girls in here than I'd expect. By their measurements, neither is skeletal; by their posted weights, they're solidly in the normal range of BMI.
Did you know that family from your days in the Angry Cuban state?
Also she's married to Ben Affleck's brother.
52: yeah, they're from my hometown.
I feel like I'm missing something important about 49.
Agreed with 51. Re. 46, her "good day" comment may be annoying, but surely criticizing and insulting her body is not the right response.
Cala, I was mostly kidding around, though I chose a poor target for humor, but 41 was literally true rather than rhetorically -- I did a double-take. She totally doesn't look skeletal or unhealthy to me, though. Sorry if I implied that. That "yeah" was pretty content-free in my head, just a conversation marker.
I know basically nothing about BMI. Should I learn more?
51/57: That's hardly been the tone of the thread. SK made a comment and then retreated from it.
I didn't realize there was such variation in weight. I'm 5'8 and when I was 145 pounds (years ago) I was pretty skeletal.
58: BMI is not the most useful measuring tool on an individual level, but it's useful as a gut check. Bodies vary so much it doesn't tell you much about a person's shape, but someone with a BMI of 22 is very unlikely to be skeletally thin absent photography angles.
???? Strongly disagree. I am obliged to dress myself every day knowing full well that I don't know what I'm doing, it's like having to converse in a foreign language.
Anyone who does know what they're doing got there by learning it, and men have a much less complicated set of stuff to learn to reach the level of basic competence. If you're going to disagree that men have it better, clothing-wise, do it on the basis of having fewer fun options, not the basis of "I haven't been socially obligated to learn how to do this."
62 is my experience. But maybe I'm just really lazy. Anyway, I've worn essentially the same clothing since 1995 or so.
I've bought maybe two suits this century. They never go out of style or nobody can make me care if they do.
Also, I don't have many occasions to wear a suit.
"I haven't been socially obligated to learn how to do this."
This is something I appreciate about England. It's not exactly the most fashion-forward place, but I feel like men and women's fashion efforts are much closer to equal than in the US.
BMI is not the most useful measuring tool on an individual level, but it's useful as a gut check.
I see what you did there.
I bought a suit once, but it went out of style.
Anyway, I've worn essentially the same clothing since 1995 or so.
Good thing fashion hasn't changed since then.
66: I've been watching Inspector Morse lately and I noticed something similar. However, that may not be very good evidence since it looks about thirty years old and may not be a documentary. At least I'm pretty sure that if that many people connected with Oxford died during the 80s, I would have read something about it.
70: Well, I've noticed that shirts now only have room for me, a lapdog, and a sandwich instead of me and a small pony.
You can get shirts in different sizes, you know.
Shirts are mostly sized at the neck. If you go someplace fancy, you can get shirts for people with slightly nonstandard arm lengths. But I mean that the generic shirt now has less fabric.
the generic shirt now has less fabric
Typical corporate cost-cutting.
I get it, I get it. I phrased it badly, which I regret. I really wasn't meaning to criticize her body; rather what I unfairly inferred to be her belief that skinnier is better full stop. Obviously, I have no idea what she thinks or what complicated feelings she has about her own body.
I do, though, find the having a "good day" sentiment far worse than annoying, whomever it comes from.
I should perhaps return to my self-imposed commenting ban. (Because of work, not because you all aren't still my favorite people on the interwebs.)
60: Variation is huge. My mother's 5'9" and lightly built -- I don't know what she weighs now (lots, but I couldn't guess within thirty pounds), but as a young woman she was a healthy, athletic 110. I'm 5'7.5", and haven't ever seen 110 at this height. And I'm in the 160s now, and no one who wasn't a nutcase would look at me and call me obviously overweight. My husband's 6'2". somewhere in the 150s, and doesn't look like he's dying. You can't tell what a healthy weight is for anyone within forty pounds or so without knowing what they look and feel like at various weights..
I do actually have the interior monologue of good days and bad days, mostly probably due to variations in bloating and how that makes my pants fit.
That's fair -- I read "on a good day" as meaning more like "probably weighs 5lbs more most of the time, but counts 13x as her ideal weight" So more self-deprecating than fussing over the scale.
I have days when I have to let my belt out a notch until my bowels get a move on.
60: Yeah, my bones are like toothpicks, so my height/weight ratio skews pretty low given how I'm pretty sure I look to most people (unremarkable, not skeletal). I do remember that I was still in the "normal" BMI range (23!) the day before I gave birth, so that one data point made the whole thing seem pretty lolworthy. But I bet it has its uses.
SaaS = Software as a Service
my bones are like toothpicks,
Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure mine could be confused with a Neanderthal's. (Which I am mostly grateful for - I get to be stronger than many women without working at it because of them, but it does screw with your conception of weight.)
Sorry, weight/height ratio. Why am I commenting so much? I guess it's better than following that Chapel Hill murder story, which for some reason wiggled past the usual psychic filters. 79 is kind of mindboggling.
Also
[I am now anonymous]
I quit my antidepressants cold two weeks or so ago. Maybe three weeks? I am worried that I won't notice that things suck again until they're unbearable. Should I keep a mood journal? Or do aggressive cheerifying? Join bouldering gym? Eliminate sugar & wheat? Build artificial boulders out of unhealthy snacks and climb them?
[I am now nonymous]
Can you remember, back before you started the antidepressants, what you were feeling/acting like in any concrete, specific to you kind of way? Make a list of "Yes, that's me when I'm depressed" and watch for items on it? (I have no idea if this is a good idea, but it seems as if it might be. Come to think, maybe that is a mood journal.)
I must have dense bones. BMI on the middle-high end of normal, and very lean. If I were 110 pounds like LB's mom I'd probably be on my deathbed.
I think mood journals are a good idea. Data! Even if it's just a running text message to yourself with a number on a scale of 1 to 10, or something. You can still tabulate it for trends.
I think it's largely proportions -- leg versus torso and so on, and width/depth of bone structure. Buck is so light for his height because he's a gibbon, all arm and leg, and while he's broad-shouldered he has no depth front to back. My mother's like that too; maybe a little less so, but all skinny leg. If you're structured with more torso, a deeper chest, and so on, you're going to weigh a very different amount at the same height and leanness. Numbers really don't translate from person to person, unless you're very similar types.
The skinniest I ever was, as a young thing, was 120 at 5'4", which was wearing size 2s and 4s. LB's mom does sound surreal.
"I haven't been socially obligated to learn how to do this."
I don't really disagree with your point - and I certainly wouldn't argue that USian men have a harder time vis a vis fashion than women - but I do want to note a wrinkle, which is that there's a certain set of requirements that you're supposed to master (e.g., knot a tie, match belt & shoes, when to tuck) which enable you to function as a grownup. That's a really low bar, but what nobody really tells you is that lots of guys know lots more rules/guidelines, but it's all kind of vague.
Like, there are plenty of things I chose not to learn/care about (music on any level higher/deeper than "I like that song"; college sports; video games beyond the Atari 2600), but they were readily accessible to me if I'd wanted to put in the effort. By contrast, I was never aware that being fashion aware on a practical level* was available.
It's possible that the grunge era didn't help in this regard. My older sister's male friends tended towards preppiness, which, say what you will, at least it's an ethos.
*anytime I was exposed to male fashion in the GQ/Times Fashion section sense, it looked[looks] utterly unrelated to any conceivable part of my life - here's a $1000 jacket for wearing to the yacht club
120: I've seen home movies of her at that weight -- she looked like a gazelle, but not unhealthy, and I'd swear from every family story I heard she wasn't doing anything other than eating like a horse. When I was a teenager, she was in the 140s, and was always kind of unhappy about her weight, and while obviously she shouldn't have been beating herself up over it, it's not important, she did have a noticeable potbelly at that weight, such that I'd totally believe that as a healthy young athlete she would have been much lighter.
(And the only point about talking about my mother with numbers is that people are wildly variable. I don't have an offhand person who's much heavier than I am at my height who's obviously lean, but I bet they're out there.)
I always remember showing up at Jr. High on the first day of 8th grade, and all the girls were dressed in denim with rhinestone medals and who the hell knows what else. Nobody had been wearing that at the end of 7th grade, and all I could think was, "How did they know? It was just a complete mystery to me.
This is pretty informative on the "big-boned" thing. Get out those tape measures!
If I may be allowed one body-gripe: I know, know, know that my body does not change one bit before the baby is 3 months old. That it is futile to worry about it or fret. Rascal is very close to being 3 months old, and I have the worst senioritis about this particular body-shape. Like, complete non-acceptance and zero motivation to work towards acceptance because maybe maybe soon I'll start changing, finally, for the last time.
91: I have thick, short legs, and long arms, which I never realized looked funny until my kid was born with basically my proportions, and man, he has the shortest little legs (nummy, of course, like all babies, but he looks like he should be an inch taller than he is, and when he gets taller, his torso grows and then his legs catch up.)
I completely remember the phenomenon in 97. For me, most vividly it was with a brand called Trocadero, and I've idly looked up that brand as an adult and can find absolutely no proof that it ever existed in the form I remember. False memories and all, but this is a very oddly specific one.
"Most people's weight is carried in their soft tissue -- muscle, fatty tissue, their organs," says Lajam, "so blaming extra weight on your bones is not accurate."
This, from the link, is moronic. Talking about variability in healthy weight as being due to skeletal structure doesn't mean that one person's skeleton is itself much heavier than the next, but that the shape and proportions of it provides room for more or less soft tissue. Michael Phelps, with a hugely long torso and little flipper legs, is going to weigh a lot more than some hurdler the same height.
97: 5'5 and 6.5". Take that, bitches.
(Or more politely, I'm actually aware of my bone size. Mostly because bracelets, etc., so rarely fit.)
And to support LB's claims, I'm all torso. (And a significant amount of fat! I'm definitely not blaming my overweightness on my frame, I know what that's from.)
87 - Withdrawal can be rough, which makes it hard to tell if quitting them was a good idea or not for a while (cold turkey is not always such a good idea unless you're on a fairly low dose or have a strong reason to quit right now). A journal isn't a bad idea at all, especially when it comes to keeping track of things like sleep which are easier to assess and importantly revealing. It'll probably take a few months before you can be sure whether or not stopping them was a good idea, though.
I'm 6' and my wrists are 6.5". Don't break me over your knee, Parenthetical.
This, from the link, is moronic
I think it's just presuming a distinction between big-boned and big-framed.
I'm proctoring an exam and can't figure out how to measure my wrists.
But I can exactly reach one hand around the other wrist, with no slack, which I thought was a good measure of being super average.
110: I can't make any promises.
112: if you have a dollar bill on you, that's six inches long. You should be able to use that to approximate pretty well.
Since starting xfit, though, my shoulders can't fit into anything sized medium anymore. The rest of me has fluctuated for lots of reasons before, but that's the first time my shoulders have started to determine things. So I believe I have a large frame.
115: I didn't bring my purse, actually.
111: No, it really isn't.
112: I wrapped the short side of a sheet of paper around my wrist, and eyeballed the overlap. 6", which makes me a delicate little thing. I do have tiny wrists, compared to everything else. Ankles like a Clydesdale, though.
Surely there's a student in the class who has a dollar bill?
(I have to admit, guiltily, that I rounded up. My wrists are more like 6.4".)
Probably, but they're taking a test.
So guiltily that I accidentally erased my name!
What tools are currently at your disposal?
121: Announce that you'll add an extra 5 points to the test score of the first student to bring you a dollar! This is a science emergency!
You're all in luck! The test is over and the verdict is: my wrist is bigger than a dollar!
By enough, I think, to declare myself Large Boned. But it's borderline.
Expanding on 118's flat contradiction of 111: The link doesn't say anything at all about body proportions, it only talks about literal bone size. Take Michael Phelps again: you could build Phelps' torso-to-leg ratio out of large or small bones. While the bigger-boned Phelps would probably be heavier than the smaller-boned one, they'd still both outweigh the leggy hurdler.
And the specific claim in the link that frame-size doesn't explain a thirty-pound difference? There aren't many people where I know what they weigh, but I can think of a couple of examples with differences in healthy weight that big (Mom and anyone else her height; my father and Buck, who are the same height: Buck's been 130-165 at that height, and Dad's skinny as anything in the 180s.)
I'm about 5'3 (for years I thought I was 5.4 then some gym person measured me at 5'2) and my wrists are seven inches around. I actually have a short torso though I think, or at least am shortwaisted.
I'm officially big boned according the Huffington Post-cited criteria as determined as good as I could using twine and a ruler.
Sorry. My wrists are too thick for me to type properly.
For me, most vividly it was with a brand called Trocadero
Like, this was one of the brands with the medals?
I'd note that I was living in Miami at this time; this would have been the summer of '85. Do any non-Floridians recall this trend?
I moved to north Jersey a year later, and it sure was different wrt fashion. Not completely of course, but enough for a doofus like me to notice.
Speaking of Inspector Morse, Sargent Lewis seems to get hit on the head a great deal.
Probably more like '89 or 90. But north Florida could easily lag behind south Florida by a couple years.
Looks like I officially have little girly wrists.
I'm with LB on the weight thing and how wide the range can be. At 17 I weighed about 120lbs (at about 5ft 8) and at 21 I weighed about 175 (at 5ft 10). I'd bet that to most people I didn't look that different. Filled out a bit in the chest/shoulders, but I didn't look scary skinny before or fat after (my waisy went up by 2 inches).
I'm with LB on the weight thing and how wide the range can be. At 17 I weighed about 120lbs (at about 5ft 8) and at 21 I weighed about 175 (at 5ft 10). I'd bet that to most people I didn't look that different. Filled out a bit in the chest/shoulders, but I didn't look scary skinny before or fat after (my waisy went up by 2 inches).
Returning late:
Misses my point. Even clothes mass manufactured in a broad range of sizes are made in a narrow range of shapes, basically tubular. There are small companies aiming at other fits, but they go under a lot (the ones that fit me, certainly). They cost a lot more than their competitors because (a) they're small and (b) they have to forgo cost-cutting 'styles'.
Also, there seems to be demand failure. There are good seamstresses all over who feel lucky to work at minimum wage, but hardly any customers who want to pay the price. The fashion industry is toxic in worse ways than sizism.
For decades techies have been working on item-by-item customization and discovering that all that unskilled labor is way too skilled to emulate. eShakti is trying to get out on the high road - they depend on more skilled seamstresses, afaict.
Gah, dropped the quote:
No one item fits many people, but it's obnoxious that the high end fashion industry limits itself to tiny sizing
parsimon, is the `true bookman' the one who can turn a profit or the one above pelf?
I weigh myself everyday first thing in the morning. not super-healthy, I think. though it does prevent me from accidentally gaining 10 lbs; they are hard to lose. it has conclusively demonstrated that my feelings about whether I look fat are not strongly correlated with my actual weight. for some reason that hasn't had the impact logic would seem to have mandated.
oh man, the narnian university hospital objine office is a little bitch: you scan your ID card and get your weight and height measured automatically, it goes on your chart every visit. so far so good BUT the scale told me that if at 5'6" (converted) I were to weigh more than 143 fucking pounds I would be overweight. WHAT THE FUCK? thanks, mom.
133: Have you seen the new episodes without Morse (because dead) but with a young intellectual sidekick.?
I have not. There's a new Morse because the actor died or a new character?
It's called Lewis, and yes, because the actor died, the spin-off series has his old sidekick as the nominal lead, and a younger sidekick [played by the son of actor James Fox, of 'Performance' fame, among other things].
Sounds a bit like a rip off of Dalziel and Pascoe. Does Mick Jagger get a cameo?
Does Lewis still get sent out to get hit on the head? So far, his getting hit on the head doesn't really serve to advance the plot much. I think the writer just like watching him get hit on the head.
62 is pretty interesting.
I disagree with the implied claim that men's indifference to clothes is an expression of sexist privilege.
I say this because a) counterexamples exist: there are subcultures of men who participate eagerly-- my freshman college roomate was a guido, would ask "dude, does this go?" about a shiny sportscoat/polo shirt combo. and b) (more controversially) the rapid changes in the meaning of a particular fashion are created I think by women for women, though this may have been less true say before WWI.
Personally, I have the practical problem that I do stuff at times that are hard to predict-- schlep, bicycle, fix stuff. I'm not interested in changing or having my clothes constrain what I can do. So jeans and casual shirts rather than fitted stuff or nice fabrics.
Absent that constraint, and left to choose for myself, I would alternate between dressing like Jim Rockford and the dude on this page but I understand that both choices would be basically antisocial. It is an effort to pay attnention to which clothes and which sunglasses say "hello, competent but not overbearing" every year that I don't particularly enjoy.
more like the rockford flies, am I right?
Those linked clothes are awesome, lw! I wish I could feel comfortable wearing things like that, but I worry I'd be appropriating too much. I do wear waistbeads, which is probably appropriating but at least in a place where regular people don't see, and the dress with the beads or fabric cords along the thigh reminds me of that and is really appealing.
I'd feel like I was appropriating if I dressed like Jim Rockford. But I still want to.
The culture of the ancient Californians is not my own.
I don't think the people of Southern California in the 1970s would mind at all.
They aren't around for us to ask anymore.
Drat you Moby. Fine, everytime you put on a houndstooth garment you're oppressing surfers.
You can't step into the same Californian twice.
appropriating Yeah, see, I just can't manage to think that way-- I understand that imagining how other people will respond to clothes is part of choosing them competently.
It is exactly that part of choosing clothes that I can't deal with. AT some level I do understand pieces of the conventions-- eg I don't like most clothing that has words in any form as part of the design. But basically it seems like insecurity-making guesswork to spend too much time paying attention.
I don't know your life, lw, but I would have worn something like that before the rest of my family was black, but now that that's the case it feels like I'd be trying to claim an identity that's not mine when really I'd just be trying to wear awesome fashion. So I'm not saying others need to feel the same.
Blume almost never wears a Tweety Bird costume to work for what I assume are similar reasons.
Which, honestly, that's not even where my handle came from so she should go for it.
160. Got it, the reactions of specific people you know are different, I agree with that.
more like the rockford flies, am I right?
Are the rockford flies zipper, buttons or poppers?
Somehow, I doubt that that's the sole, or even most important reason she's not wearing a tweety bird costume to work.
more like the rockford flies, am I right?
Are the rockford flies zipper, buttons or poppers?
Sorry, some kind of connectivity weirdness, with inscrutable MT message.
Wow, maybe I am big-framed. I used some adhesive tape and a ruler, and my wrist seems to be over 8", with a height of 5'11".