I hope you feel the danger! If you have any respect for your closet, I hope you take my words in this post seriously, because things are rough out there- let me tell you, the teenagers are coming.
The fright of the teenagers is pretty serious, and all of us who aim to live a creative life, in our art and our personal presentation need to be aware of the distinction that these biting-ass youg’ns helped me to realize: fashion and style are two separate things. And though fashion is used more in our day-to-day lingo, I’d rather have style.
Fashion in this: understanding what’s vogue, what’s in, what’s current and what’s poppin in the streets, depending on what streets you bop down. It’s generally knowing what society thinks is cool, classy, sexy, upscale, etc. The truth is that it has a lot to do with playing follow the leader- Calvin, Vogue, MTV, Hearst, Bravo ( yeah man, Bravo’s got power these days!) As the dominant word, fashion is touted as the desirable thing to be, and who wouldn’t want to be well-dressed and well known for it. But fashion is like an ipod, cool, but so easily accessible, anyone can have it.
Fashion takes little skill, and even less of someone’s actual self. I could teleport to Prague right now and become fashionable in just a few weeks. But what I couldn’t be is stylish. Style is a personal reflection; a personal rendering of fashion that pretty much transcends the “what not to wears” of the time. I don’t know about you, but that sounds tasty.
Now here’s the thing, imagine you’re a stylish person who manages to get a little bit of limelight for the whatever-chic you invent…the teens will be there. They’ll be there to copy you, take it to school and spread it around, like the cold…and mono! And you know what happens to your style when more and more people do it, it becomes fashion and when you’re style becomes fashion, whether you like it or not, you become that much less unique (from an outside perspective). Perfect example- leather boat shoes. Some soul out there decided that they felt dope in a pair of boat shoes- unfortunately the teenagers stole the blue print and now the number 2 train is littered with enough boat shoe wearing teens to confuse this place for Maine, or worse, Vermont!
Even Complex, the used-to-be-bible (until the teenagers got a whiff) has got the hood rocking shoes, apparently they read my post about them...ha! Check the Cool Kids, styled as such (we still dig you though dogs):
The fright of the teenagers is pretty serious, and all of us who aim to live a creative life, in our art and our personal presentation need to be aware of the distinction that these biting-ass youg’ns helped me to realize: fashion and style are two separate things. And though fashion is used more in our day-to-day lingo, I’d rather have style.
Fashion in this: understanding what’s vogue, what’s in, what’s current and what’s poppin in the streets, depending on what streets you bop down. It’s generally knowing what society thinks is cool, classy, sexy, upscale, etc. The truth is that it has a lot to do with playing follow the leader- Calvin, Vogue, MTV, Hearst, Bravo ( yeah man, Bravo’s got power these days!) As the dominant word, fashion is touted as the desirable thing to be, and who wouldn’t want to be well-dressed and well known for it. But fashion is like an ipod, cool, but so easily accessible, anyone can have it.
Fashion takes little skill, and even less of someone’s actual self. I could teleport to Prague right now and become fashionable in just a few weeks. But what I couldn’t be is stylish. Style is a personal reflection; a personal rendering of fashion that pretty much transcends the “what not to wears” of the time. I don’t know about you, but that sounds tasty.
Now here’s the thing, imagine you’re a stylish person who manages to get a little bit of limelight for the whatever-chic you invent…the teens will be there. They’ll be there to copy you, take it to school and spread it around, like the cold…and mono! And you know what happens to your style when more and more people do it, it becomes fashion and when you’re style becomes fashion, whether you like it or not, you become that much less unique (from an outside perspective). Perfect example- leather boat shoes. Some soul out there decided that they felt dope in a pair of boat shoes- unfortunately the teenagers stole the blue print and now the number 2 train is littered with enough boat shoe wearing teens to confuse this place for Maine, or worse, Vermont!
Even Complex, the used-to-be-bible (until the teenagers got a whiff) has got the hood rocking shoes, apparently they read my post about them...ha! Check the Cool Kids, styled as such (we still dig you though dogs):
(admittedly, Rocks and Inglish are a bad example cuz they look pretty fly most time)So are the stylish doomed. Will the words become one in the global dictionary or will there still be a light for style to profile in. It’ll be a hard fight as long as there are teenagers. But the hope remains- because style is an internal, constant, creative deal, it’ll always be there. As long as you’re stylish, you’ll always be coming up with new, not-popular ways to rock your gear, many of which might be a hit, more of which will not. And that’s what we have left.
Damn teenagers.
‘prece
Damn teenagers.
‘prece
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