A Fistful of Style

Bloggers are doing it for themselves (well… some of them)

So apparently today there was some to-do about whether people are dressing too much for the intertubes or for their bros or how they aren’t dressing for the ladies anymore. I thought it was a worthy topic of conversation and something I’ve been tossing around in the ol’ brain pan for a while now.

First off, congrats to all the bloggers out there. You’re dressing better! Hurrah! It’s a worthy goal to dress better because how you dress determines how you are initally perceived. That’s just a fact. You can be a super genius, Rhodes scholar, Nobel prize winner who solves the Jr. Jumble every single day, but if you dress in pajama pants and ratty t-shirts, nobody will take you seriously (at first blush at least).

Second, I think the interwebs does care too much about reblogs (the amount of anons accusing me of slinging mud for reblogs in my recent debacle showed me that).

Some (well… many if not most) people posting on the internet are trying to “show off” to the internet. [ed. note: myself included]. You’re posting pictures to the internet, are you really going to argue ” I’m just doing it for me man!”? Because that’s kind of stupid. OF COURSE you’re doing for others, at least to some degree.

But the most important thing, and one point I think gets lost in the reblogging of beautiful double monks and arguments about whether cargo pants are “essential” is personality.

What was once whitewashed by the “casual” trend is being duplicated in the menswear sphere. People are encouraged to be “dressed by the internet” rather than by their cubicled co-workers.

To be sure, it’s better now. Where once we saw baggy pleated chinos and square toed loafers, we now see people searching for dub monks and unstructured blazers.

Again, this is good! People care! They want to wear nice things that make them look good. But now we’re arguing over whether our girlfriend or our blog friend has more influence, but not about how we feel about what we’re wearing.

I for one respect Ashley’s (the ol’ ball & chain) opinion more than the intertubes. She knows me better, she knows who I am more than the internet. And her opinion is untainted by 1000+ pics of Neapolitan shoulders or English v. Italian shoe lasts. She only conceptualizes of what I could look like based on me and who she sees every day. So when she says “I think those bucks look funny, try some brogues.” I know she’s not just enamored of the shoe of the moment.

But in the end it’s my choice, because I am the only one who wears my clothes. And you know what, I’ve made my name on being against the grain (oh, and one stupid rant against Gay Talese). I’d be lying if I said that I don’t care what the blogosphere says, because to some degree I do. I want you guys to “like” my posts because it says to me “we get some idea of who you are, and we think it’s worth liking.”

But if I stopped blogging tomorrow, I’d still have Ashley.

And if (god forbid) I lost Ashley, I’d only have myself.

And that’s the only opinion that really matters.