Texture
We are having a texture moment in fashion right now, more so than ever before. The comeback of high-pile fleece in the loudest patterns and the quiet resurgence of corduroy in muted hues are indicative of fashion’s turn to the most visceral kind of statements. When you see a garment, you can imagine what it would feel like without ever having to touch it, but it is still an incomplete sense. Your eyes tell you what it must feel like to wear it, to touch it, but it leaves you lacking. The sensation of touch is one of our most innate, and most complex. We can differentiate texture differences that our eyes cannot spot, and this is one of the most interesting and important aspects of texture, and why texture is the perfect antidote to people who cop off their timeline.
To dress with texture is to distinguish yourself from the majority for whom the idea of even being concerned with texture does not exist. When you see a picture of somebody wearing a jacket, you do not have the full understanding of the jacket. You miss the way it looks as it moves, how it catches the light, and of course, the nuances and subtleties of texture. Texture is only truly knowable in-person, from touch. This is what drives me and Jack, another excellent contributor, to Need Supply nearly every time we meet up. We go through the store, touching just about every article of clothing we can find. The way an expensive garment feels is very different from the way something made in a cheap sweatshop does, and this difference is immediate in ways that you cannot really tell just from looking at pictures.
This difference is what allows nuance in outfits that mallcore or fast fashion wouldn’t allow, and it is something that has renewed my love of clothing and fashion and deepened it. When you wear an outfit rich with texture, you are adding another layer of sensory experience to it, one that is immediate and one that is impossible to ignore. Texture plays off color, enriching and deepening hues or adding subtle single-color patterns. The kinesthetic bliss that a gauzy knit can bring in the way it feels on your arms is not where texture ends. Texture also allows for a complimentary soft silhouette in that same garment. And texture, like pattern or color, can be contrasted or complimented. The rigidity and flatness of Dickies has helped me to appreciate synthetic fabrics. Contrasting them with a mohair knit or with a patterned corduroy allows that louder texture to shine even brighter against a clean and artificial backdrop.
