Adrafinil is similar to modafinil, only it’s much cheaper because its patent has expired.
HumanFlesh
Karma: 111
They’re not ethnic slurs.
They both live in cities.
People can become so used to certain styles and colors that they don’t even classify certain sartorial habits as fashion. They don’t notice the cultural currents that surround them anymore than a fish notices that it’s wet. To them, the word fashion is associated with only the most loud and heavily marketed forms of fashion.
It’s similar to how people associate the word diet with slimming diets. In truth, as long as we are eating, we have a diet. And as long as we dress ourselves, we are making fashion decisions.
Conservative garb is not necessarily timeless. Some subcultural or countercultural fashions manage to loosen their connection to the year in which they were born. If you showed me a picture of a man in a suit taken in 1978, I could probably guess that it was from the late seventies by using the color palette and fit as clues. I would have a harder time identifying the year in which a photo of a skinhead was taken.
3-piece suits from 1917 were not made in the same styles as the ones that you can find in the store today, but Converse All-Stars, though designed in 1917, are still widely available. I can also go to a shoe store and buy a new pair of Adidas Superstars that were designed in 1969 or Adidas Sambas designed in 1950.
Which conjunction do you find odd? Is it the “and” between lapel and tie?
In London, there is a reasonable overlap between set businessmen and set lager louts.
The books that I mentioned discuss many kinds of signaling, not just sexual semiotics. Sometimes people wear uncomfortable shoes not to look hot, but merely to avoid looking like a proletariat.
Read Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class and Zahavi’s Handicap Principle if you’d like to know the answer.
But by 2015, that stigma will be gone and purple has a chance to come “back in style”.
Six years seems too soon for a style to come back into fashion. People sometimes keep a garment in rotation for six years, so it would be hard to distinguish the people who intentionally adopt an old style from those who never bothered to update their wardrobe. It can also take six or more years for a style that’s first accepted in Manhattan to spread to Topeka.
Fashions tend to run in 15 to 30 year cycles. In this way, a style can seem new to teenagers and nostalgically appealing to the 18-30 demographic. Anachronistic styles that are considered gauche rather than charming can be worn ironically to mock the previous generation or to distinguish oneself from an older cohort who wouldn’t dare to repeat a fashion faux pas.
Cf. Laver’s Law
Stereotypically feminine colors (e.g. pink and purple) for shirts and ties were popular among London’s businessmen in 2002. Not long after that, lager louts and Essex wide boys took a shine to pink polo shirts—typically worn with the collar popped. Eventually chavs, spides, neds, and scally lads began to collect pink shirts sold in market stalls.
Young men in New Jersey and other guido (AKA gino) habitats were seen wearing pink polo shirts in 2004. The fashion eventually trickled down to garden-variety North American dudebros.
Conservatism filters clothing from status signals, making other signals relatively stronger.
Designer suits, Savile Row suits, and bespoke brogues are among the most expensive garments men can buy. Surely there is status signalling involved in conservative fashions. Granted, the logos are typically less conspicuous in formal, semi-formal, and business attire, but doesn’t that just signal refinement?
Designer jeans and expensive basketball shoes were largely unheard of until the late 1970s. The peacock signaling that you associate with clubwear may just be an artifact of the fact that human leks now take place in nightclubs more often than in Débutante balls.
There is also the trend wherein yesteryear’s formalwear becomes the clothing of today’s servants (think tailcoats and livery) while yesteryear’s sporting garments appreciate in status. For example, the sportcoat was originally a hunting jacket. The blazer, too, was associated with sport. Brogues (AKA wingtips) were once outdoor shoes.
One doesn’t necessarily “sidestep fashion” by dressing conservatively. Desired lapel and tie widths change over the years. Do you care if your clothes have stains or holes? That signals something about your fashion sense.
Figuring out which clothes appeal to the shifting tastes of various audiences in various social settings is not easy for someone who suffers from schizophrenia, autism, trisomy 21, severe depression, or other affliction that impairs one’s will or ability to conform to mercurial social trends.
Even someone who buys desirable brands can be inept at coordinating garments and selecting an appropriate cut. Like many other social behaviors, the clothes we wear send messages about our social roles, aspirations, and neurological health.
What does SASS stand for?