A Crisis/A Life
“I write this sitting in the park. I'm wearing a thrifted shirt from a running shop I've never been to, my favorite high-waisted black jeans, and black loafers with Russian Kopeks tucked into the penny straps. My favorite denim jacket lies thrown over the arm of my chair, and I'm drinking coffee. Two days ago I wore a Margiela track jacket and zip-up cowboy boots. A few days before that I wore those same boots with a trucker jacket and RRL button-down. Preppy, chic, Americana, punk. I'm proud of this variety but something about it eats at me— at the end of the day, this seemingly consistent inconsistency in my personal style forces some self-reflection on the questions of who I really am and who I really want to be.
And the answer is that I don't know.
For nearly five years now, when people have inquired as to my interests, "fashion" has always been my first and foremost response. I recognize that whether it's healthy or not, predicating my image to such a high degree on so simple a thing as fashion has certain occupational hazards. When I become confused about my own stylistic image, my own sense of self becomes muddy.”
I wrote that six months ago.
I’ve stopped caring since then. That’s not necessarily true. I still spend the majority of my day looking at clothes on Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Grailed, Yahoo! Japan, you name it. Hell, I spend the first couple hours of my day, five days a week, editing articles for a largely fashion-centric blog. But fuck if I know what fashion is. So many online fashion communities have rules— you have to wear certain items with other items, particular color combinations based on the season— everything is broken into carefully labelled styles: Americana, Japanese Americana, normcore, gorpcore, sleazecore, avant-garde, etc. I run into this shit anytime I engage in my regular hobby of compiling yet another inspiration album on some subreddit or another and get plenty of comments to the tune of “this has no rhyme or reason, there is no coherent style here.” And as much as I hate to admit it, they were right. Look at the JTTB Moodboard, besides a vaguely beige color-scheme and a certain penchant for Sofia Coppola, Chloë Sevigny, and a Sporty & Rich French Riviera pretension, there is no real coherence.
What I’ve increasingly come to grips with is the fact that coherence doesn’t matter. I have to remind myself that I really am into this shit to invest in what I’m attracted to. Take the hardcore scene: you go to a show to see a bunch of meatheads drone about political resistance and straight edge over some beatdowns, but you’ll see people in Morrissey shirts and the venue blares Carti over the PA between sets. Seemingly opposing genres and cultures shouldn’t go together, but they do. Why should fashion have to be any different? The same people in the (male dominated) Reddit space that take issue with “coherence” are the ones who reach a certain point in their style and feel the need to start peacocking. They find their specific, categorizable style and invest in gaudy pieces that make them stand out to get the attention of passersby and signal that they know what they’re doing and are really about it. Like pinning your Masters to your lapel. That sucks.
I turn from this exceedingly online and garment-focused culture of fashion and look to what really influences me: people like Lizzy Hadfield, Lulu Graham, Emily Oberg— all people revered by their fans as well dressed, but with signature styles often focusing on little more than well fitting pants and some nice shoes. There is no exceedingly flowy Haider Ackermann or draped layering of Rick Owens. Perhaps what these women have figured out, which the guys serving unsolicited critical analysis of moodboards and fitpics online haven’t, is that the lifestyle your clothing enables you lead is far more important than the items of clothing themselves. This is why Dakota Johnson grocery shopping in Gucci loafers or Sofia Coppola, who has a Louis Vuitton collaboration, on a motorboat off the coast of Belize is so much more interesting than one of those YouTube pinheads telling me how slim trousers can get me babes or even John Mayer Visvim gardening robe that’s never even gotten close to soil. In the words of one Former Child Prodigy, maybe just stop buying shit, try to live a little.
