Timegrab fashion concept

[rinue]

I've been feeling very bored with contemporary fashion (where "fashion" could mean what I wear; what I see on the street; or what's on runways: I am bored with all of them) but have also disliked all obvious alternatives, because in the current political moment, which is expressly reactionary (make America Great Again) anything past-glorifying suggests agreement to move backward on human rights, and anything futuristic is either retro-futurist (same problem) or suggests a dire future to which I am not resigned. (Yes, there is theoretical fashion like solarpunk, but the technology is not there. As for cutting-edge 3D-printed stuff, it is not suited to actual wearing by a human executing day-to-day tasks and is better classed as wearable sculpture.)

But of course "invent an entirely new fashion aesthetic" is heavy lifting. It's the dream of hundreds of people educated in fashion design. Who do not accomplish it. "Invent an entirely new fashion aesthetic that is affordable and doesn't take too much work" is unsurprisingly not simpler.

I'm playing around with the idea that you could square the circle with a style I'll call "timegrab" (because timepunk sounds great but the -punk suffix is way overused) which deliberately collages elements from wildly different timeperiods, but not in a way that suggests "I went to a vintage store and grabbed random things" so much as "I am not merely a time traveler but a time colonizer." Essentially a bohemian aesthetic for someone moving through time instead of geography, with an aggressive mien. A credo might be "you want to go back to the past? Fine. I'll get there first and fuck it up until it looks like what I like and you hate."

It seems like a promising high-concept, but I can't post pictures of this idea to see if it works because it'll take me a few months to find/make them, and I'm busy with other projects.

Probably deliberate/emphasized holes (where tears are reinforced rather than repaired) are key.

Comments

[sabotabby]

Ooh, I really like this idea.

I hate how informal and ironically ugly everything has become. Like, who thought sweatpants out of the house were such a good idea that it's impossible to find pants that are not for old ladies, or are jeans or sweatpants? And all of the layers of transparent things. And that shade of pink.

Raiding the past and future seems like a good alternative. If fashion cycles are going to be sped up to a dizzying speed, why not just compress them all together?

[rinue]

Examining this question of how to do counter-reactionary fashion has made me more sympathetic to the ugly stuff (like the famed high-waist cropped mom jeans with clear plastic knees), because if you take everything that has ever been popular off the table, all you're left with is bad ideas, and an aggressively bad idea is a way to signal "I'm not into the stuff you jerks are into."

I think the sweat/stretch/athleisure stuff is purely cheaper to make in bulk, since you don't have to worry about construction. It just stretches! A large segment of the retail fashion industry would like to cut three holes in a sheet of lycra and call it a day, but they have to add a couple of embellishments (like an ornamental drawstring) so everyone doesn't say "hey, I could make this myself." In contrast, a non-stretch woman's trouser is difficult to make for the mass market, because there's so much variation in waist-to-hip ratio. It's only worth putting out all the fit variations if you're sure you can move enough units at a high enough price point - which means jeans.

(At least in the U.S., women are willing to pay more for jeans than trousers made from other material, and I haven't seen an explanation for why, since they're informal. I think it might be the literal weight of the fabric: this seems heavy, so I'm not paying much money for how much I'm getting.)

I am so mad about all the sheer stuff. I don't want to have to layer three or four shirts to achieve "eyes up here" opacity. The only time I wear three or four shirts, it's for warmth, and those shirts are not there to protect my body heat (or, perversely, to keep me cool on a hot day).