00:03:17.200about how the global garment industry works,
00:03:19.120about how fast fashion works in the US and in Western Europe, and about the quality of clothing
00:03:24.920that's available to consumers in those countries. And that is like the fulcrum on which much of this
00:03:32.620conversation hinges. It helps explain why the quality of clothing overall has gone down, why
00:03:39.000the workmanship that goes into a lot of them is just not as good as it used to be. And why the
00:03:44.420materials that they're made out of have changed so drastically in about 20 years yeah it's one
00:03:49.560of those things that I think people like notice and until someone articulates it plainly in a
00:03:55.720tweet or in an article like yours they don't have that everything is illuminated moment until they
00:04:01.180actually read that right so like I was reading your article and I was like oh my gosh my sweater
00:04:06.480is filled with like weird stretchy material that is like similar to stretchy jeans like
00:04:13.100i didn't even think deeply about it i'm looking actually at my closet right now and right next to
00:04:19.100one another there are two mint green j crew sweaters one of which was purchased for me as
00:04:25.940like my big christmas present from my granddad in 2000 still going strong and then the other one
00:04:34.680is a sweater from j crew purchased two years ago that like i kind of like because it's very
00:04:40.760resilient and it's not really pilling too much but it is it feels like it's from a different
00:04:46.820company altogether different price points but I think they probably in adjusted dollars are
00:04:53.120probably kind of similar but like you can see that contrast even across the the trajectory of
00:04:58.980one company right like if you look at clothing made in the early 2000s or before versus clothing
00:05:07.800made now, you genuinely get a lot of differences, even from like sort of a surface level appraisal
00:05:13.520of that clothing. When I go home to visit my family, my mom still lives in the house that
00:05:19.560like I grew up in. So there's still, you know, artifacts of my high school wardrobe and my
00:05:24.900college wardrobe in there. And, you know, you go through that stuff, you look at it, you try to
00:05:30.200figure out like, is there anything that I would like to keep from this? Like, is there anything
00:05:33.220I should bring back to New York with me. And I always look at fiber tags, because this is just
00:05:38.240something I'm interested in. And it's amazing to me how often I will look at a tag of a sweater
00:05:44.260from Old Navy or from the Gap or something like that from that era. And it is like 100% wool,
00:05:49.680or it's wool and cotton, or something like that. And it's all natural fiber. And you go to those
00:05:55.680same retailers today. And it's just very, very difficult to find something that's not at least
00:05:59.660part nylon, part acrylic, part polyester, part viscose, something like that. And 20 years ago,
00:06:06.560when I was in high school, it was just so so much easier to find those garments at like a really
00:06:12.380reasonable price tag. J.Crew is a great example of that. And I think that J.Crew is among the
00:06:17.180retailers that is trying to get back to like a more natural fiber based inventory, as we currently
00:06:23.400speak. And they've made some progress on that in the last like year or two, I think. But once so
00:06:29.000much of the garment trade moved to manufacturing overseas in poor countries, a couple of things
00:06:34.800happened. The first thing is that you're hiring from a workforce that you don't want to pay very
00:06:40.420much and that you don't want to train very much. You just want to pump as much product out of these
00:06:45.920people's time as they can possibly make. So you get workmanship that's not as good. You get corners
00:06:52.340that are cut. You get people who just do not have like the long-term skill acquisition that a more
00:06:57.980highly trained, long tenured garment worker would have. And then you also end up manufacturing in
00:07:04.340countries that just do not hold you to the same environmental standards as richer countries tend
00:07:09.860to hold manufacturing to. So you get countries where you can manufacture and use a lot of
00:07:15.140synthetic materials, you can you can make viscose or rayon, which I think my understanding is that
00:07:21.000it's basically impossible to manufacture that in the US because of environmental regulation here.
00:07:26.400But you can manufacture it, you know, by the ton in countries where their government is willing to let garment manufacturers sort of write the regulations themselves.
00:07:39.240And is viscous and rayon, like, are they like basically plastics?
00:07:45.120Those are, viscous and rayon are interesting materials.
00:07:48.140my co-worker sarah zhang wrote a really interesting article about what you know all these sort of
00:07:54.080bamboo based fabrics are and that's how they're marketed especially in baby clothing oh right
00:07:58.500right they're basically cellulose that gets extracted from often bamboo but other types of
00:08:04.700plants sometimes as well and then highly highly chemically treated in order to make it soft and
00:08:09.780pliable and um and make it into thread that can be used in clothing and the the chemicals that
00:08:16.220are required to make bamboo into something soft and something that you want against your body are
00:08:21.180like really incredibly caustic and poisonous and that creates a lot of you know groundwater
00:08:26.660pollution it's bad for the for the textile workers it's bad for the garment workers but
00:08:31.080it's very very inexpensive to manufacture and you and because bamboo is very easy to cultivate you
00:08:36.980can make it in really large large quantities so it sort of might as well be plastic on in that way
00:08:42.140The other thing that I really noted from your article was the point that like, even places that are selling like the Instagram high end sweater, you know, like the $300 Cezanne sweater. I was like, certainly those will be fully natural fibers. And I went to the website and looked at the like the most beautiful sweaters. It's like, nope, not at all.
00:09:03.760Nope. Anybody who's manufacturing at a really, really high scale, no matter how expensive their products are, you're going to find these corners cut in their manufacturing.
00:09:13.060I used as an example in the story, this Gucci sweater that I found on their website that is $3,200, I believe.
00:09:23.880and like there there are good there are a few good arguments from like sort of a textile
00:09:30.940technology standpoint in putting like a little bit of polyester in a knit blend like if it's
00:09:37.360done well it can make a product a little bit stronger in certain ways it can it can change
00:09:42.160sort of some of the physical properties of the yarn in ways that like in certain situations you
00:09:46.340might want but if you're looking at that large of a volume of polyester it's not doing anything that
00:09:53.600you want it to do. It is just cutting the materials cost of that sweater. And there's
00:09:58.000no like financial reason that Gucci has to cut the materials costs of a sweater that costs $3,200.
00:10:03.200You could make that sweater out of the finest materials on earth. You know, you could pay
00:10:07.340those garment workers really, really well, you can treat the animals that create the wool really,
00:10:11.860really well, and still make a profit on that sweater. But consumers are have been trained
00:10:16.480not to look at these things like our knowledge about the, the way that garments are made and
00:10:23.220what goes into them has been purposefully sort of curtailed by the clothing industry, by the fashion
00:10:27.820industry. And this started like at the very beginning of industrialized fashion. Garment
00:10:33.400factories are not glamorous places. They weren't when most of them were in the US, and they
00:10:37.780certainly aren't now. Most of them are in poorer countries with workforces that can be subject to
00:10:44.160worse conditions. And an important part of the fantasy of selling clothing is sort of severing
00:10:50.980the consumer's knowledge of what it takes to create clothing so it is we have been trained
00:10:57.280by a global industry basically not to understand what it is we're buying because it's not in their
00:11:02.940best interest that we understand right and even using a clever subterfuges i guess i would call
00:11:09.980them like calling the fabric for baby clothes bamboo fabric right like oh bamboo it's like
00:11:15.880pandas soft like there's all these different advertising connotations and i'm sure that
00:11:20.360there is incredible amounts of market testing into the different names that they come up with
00:11:25.300for these various synthetic fabrics in order to make them sound like just another thing that you
00:11:30.320should pay more money to put on your body. Right. There absolutely is. And there's been
00:11:34.600also a move to shift fabric composition from the tags that are in like the back collar of your
00:11:41.520shirt to the tags that are like down closer to the hem. Yes, that you cut off anyway because
00:11:47.660they bug you. Yes, because there's there's 400 pages of information down there. And it's in a
00:11:52.980bunch of different languages. And because the same shirt that you're that you're buying is sold,
00:11:58.000like all around the world, it is not a specialized product. It is not a product that
00:12:01.740its makers want to have any discernible history or any discernible context, except for the
00:12:06.740marketing context. All right. So one of the questions we got is from Megan. And she says
00:12:11.660that she recently went to Zara because she needed something last minute. And like we've been talking
00:12:15.880about she was shocked at how much the quality had declined since she last shopped there and she wants
00:12:20.700to know is there anything consumers can do to actually drive change in this area that's a tough
00:12:26.760question because the thing that's going to fix the fashion industry is um regulation it's not
00:12:32.160consumer behavior but i think that like consumer behavior is also the thing that sort of makes
00:12:39.300people realize that regulation is possible and that there's a interest in the electorate for
00:12:44.400this type of regulation so i think that like consumer behavior is not something that like
00:12:49.460directly affects change but i think that it has to change if we want a better world um if we want
00:12:56.320things that serve our needs better and i think that like that is possible so what i would say
00:13:01.240is that like the best thing you can do and the simplest thing you can do is stop buying that
00:13:07.040stuff if you can avoid it or just like try to reframe your approach to clothing um away from
00:13:15.320the one that you've been sort of socialized into by these brands because like everything about the
00:13:20.500fashion industry is sort of made up and like I love clothing I love dressing up I love the
00:13:27.120aesthetic possibilities of it all but it's important to draw a distinction between that
00:13:32.460and the constant treadmill of consumption that clothing companies have convinced us we need to
00:13:39.460be on in order to achieve the sort of like personal expression and enjoyment of our day-to-day
00:13:45.740wardrobes and of getting dressed and of being out in the world and presenting ourselves to
00:13:49.940other humans. I think that those things often get conflated, but they're not the same.
00:13:55.340One of the best things that you can do for yourself is to develop taste.
00:13:58.460Yep. And to believe in your personal taste, to understand what it is that you feel good in and what you like wearing and understand that, especially as you get into your 30s and 40s and beyond, the need to adhere to trends, to adhere to changes in expectation is just something that you can opt out of in large part.
00:14:22.060There is a certain amount of it that you can't opt out of because clothing is a social language and it's how we communicate that we understand, you know, the expectations of us in the workplace, in social situations, in romantic situations.
00:14:34.880But I think that there's a way that you can sort of roll with that and still keep your personal taste and your personal point of view intact.
00:14:43.060And the goal of trend marketing is to draw you further and further away from your personal
00:14:49.220understanding of how it is that you like to look and how it is that you feel comfortable looking
00:14:53.200in public. And the more that you can do to get back to that, to sort of understand how
00:15:00.660your own personal relationship with clothing is something that you can do to resist this sort of
00:15:06.840constant bid for your attention from these companies and for your dollars too. Beyond that,
00:15:12.040I think that when you do need or want something new, changing your consumption patterns is possible for a lot of people.
00:15:18.980One of the things when I was writing my story about sweaters that basically everyone told me that I interviewed for that story is that when they want a new sweater, when there's like a gap that they would like to fill in their wardrobe, they shop secondhand.
00:15:32.000They look on eBay, they look on Poshmark, they look in local thrift stores, because you're going to find older brands that are better made that are made out of nicer materials that are more likely to be 100% natural fiber. And like sweater styles don't change that much over the years. Like, if you find a little bit of a poofy shoulder, and then the poofy shoulder goes away, right? Like the extent, right? And like, and there can be also, I think some aesthetic pleasure in being a little bit out of fashion in that way.
00:16:01.540Like, people respect that, I think, more than we'd expect them to.
00:16:06.920I also think the other thing that people can do is participate in resale a little bit more.
00:16:12.360And whether that's on a site like Poshmark or Consignment, which for a lot of people is frustrating and certainly frustrating for me.
00:16:19.740Like, every time I've ever gone to a, what's the name of the store that's, like, for cool kids that, like, you bring your clothes and they don't take anything.
00:16:31.540And but where I found success, and I think that people would find success, even if they don't have a larger Instagram following is just by putting stuff online and also only like putting it in an Instagram story and being like, and pricing it pretty low, and only selling stuff that like, I would be proud to give to a friend.
00:16:51.980and that allows me to be like this isn't going to the garbage it's not going to goodwill where
00:16:57.400it might also go into the garbage there's going to be a new home for it and like i didn't necessarily
00:17:03.320quote unquote recoup my investment but it has a home like it's getting a second life it's getting
00:17:09.960a longer life and also having that in mind too when i buy stuff like is this something that i
00:17:15.980would feel comfortable selling to a friend or selling to someone who follows me on social media
00:17:20.820then okay that's okay also like facebook buy nothing groups can be great yes there's a real
00:17:26.580opportunity to you know take some pictures list some stuff in there and like people don't necessarily
00:17:30.520they don't pay you for it but it goes to somebody who like looked at it and decided they actually
00:17:34.540wanted it instead of um into a landfill or something like that and the friend i have who
00:17:40.320i consider like the best dressed is someone who as long as i have known her she has bought and
00:17:45.360sold all of her clothes on ebay like i don't know if i've ever known her to have something0.99
00:17:50.360brand new even she is someone who just has like incredible personal taste like has decided long
00:17:57.100ago what it was she likes and like does not really um waver when it comes to trends or or um what
00:18:05.000she's supposed to be doing and like she's a woman in her 30s who lives in brooklyn just like i am
00:18:09.760she lives in sort of like the trend capital of the world but she saves a lot of money and she0.67
00:18:14.600always looks incredible and she always looks like herself and she was doing the resale thing before0.99
00:18:20.320the zoomers thought it was cool. When she gets sick of something or decides that she doesn't0.90
00:18:24.800have any use for it anymore, she ebays it. A lot of being like sort of well dressed and being
00:18:29.140perceived as well dressed is just having the courage of your convictions when it comes to
00:18:32.560getting dressed. And like, that's, that's hard. Like people, people feel all kinds of different
00:18:37.900ways about their bodies. They feel all kinds of different ways about like the, the cost of getting
00:18:42.400dressed and how to use their money and like how they'll be perceived at work. But the people who
00:18:47.220ultimately are thought of by everyone as being sort of like incredibly stylish are the people
00:18:52.960who are not as concerned with trends. And I am here to tell you today that you do not have to
00:18:56.860really care about trends. That is a young woman's game, first of all. None of us are in high school
00:19:03.820anymore and trying to sort of, and like when you're young, you're sort of figuring out what
00:19:07.480it is that you feel good in. That's like one reason that it makes a lot of sense to sort of
00:19:11.840jump around to trends because you're trying to figure out who you are. But at this point in life,
00:19:16.360I feel like try to be comfortable in who you've learned yourself to be so far and try to dress
00:19:21.760that person and not the person that Zara wants her to be. Okay, our next question is from Chris,
00:19:27.980who did not know that you were going to be the guest on this episode, but he linked to your
00:19:31.880sweater piece and he asked this. So now that we know sweaters are mostly garbage, how do we go0.64
00:19:38.080about buying okay sweaters? I wear men's tall sizes, which makes finding sweaters even harder.0.58
00:20:06.780what you probably want to do is find like smaller labels smaller stores and sort of rely on them
00:20:16.400yeah the United States is still full of sort of like interesting knowledgeable small retailers
00:20:24.240they're harder to find than they used to be in my sweater story I mentioned O'Connell's in Buffalo
00:20:29.820which is a you know a long-standing long-time menswear store um in in buffalo that has a sort
00:20:37.200of um rickety web presence in a charming way um and people that like run and work at stores like
00:20:44.740that are excited to help out people who have questions and who need guidance um i have no
00:20:50.580problem believing that you could call o'connell's and be like i need a i'm a men's tall what do you
00:20:55.760carry in a men's tall and if you don't carry it where do you think i could find it and i have no
00:20:59.580doubt believing that they'd be excited to help you out or tell you where they think that you can get
00:21:04.140more options. And wool sweaters don't have to be like fantastically expensive. A lot of the ones
00:21:11.140that O'Connell's carries cost less than $200. And like $200 is a lot of money. But a lot of
00:21:16.960retailers, J.Crew, Gap, etc, that are sort of like mid priced mall retailers are going to get you up
00:21:22.880around $100 for a sweater anyway. And a lot of times it's going to have plastic in it. So if you
00:21:28.860can sort of and this is the point at which becoming a little bit more discerning in like how often
00:21:34.040you're shopping and and what it is you're buying can be useful because buying like one really
00:21:38.980gorgeous merino wool sweater instead of like three or four like random things from j crew or
00:21:44.980from whatever wherever it is that you might um be inclined to shop is going to be like in your
00:21:50.060long-term best interest my partner charlie who's also your co-worker yes his solution has been to
00:21:55.720find a maker of like Irish sweaters you know like the Irish fisherman sweaters they look like that
00:22:03.440like that Billy Crystal sweater and they're bulky like they're not um svelte that is not the word
00:22:09.740but they are amazing sweaters and so like every two years he gets one and they're they're what
00:22:16.220makes him feel like him in the winter so it's like the perfect solution when you're looking at any
00:22:21.300any kind of garment i think a good rule of thumb is to look for garments made in places that people
00:22:26.800need those types of garments scotland and ireland and new zealand produce a lot of incredible wool
00:22:32.520they have a lot of sheep and they have the climates where people need garments like the ones
00:22:37.960they're creating so there are still like you know sort of like old style heritage makers in those
00:22:44.440countries that are making sort of like the the old style garments that you're not going to find in
00:22:50.880your average online retailer. But they're out there and they're available. And this is, again,
00:22:57.160one of those situations where like these sort of like small companies that care about the product
00:23:02.860and care about ensuring that the product can continue to be made for a long time and that
00:23:07.520people understand why it's different are oftentimes quite willing to help you out if you need
00:23:14.140something, if you need advice, if you're looking for something in particular. So our next question,
00:23:18.760gosh, I just love we have so many dude questions about fashion. This is from someone just thinking
00:23:24.480about care of clothing. And his name is Ted. So let's go for it. Why do so few of us seem to iron
00:23:31.840our clothes or have them professionally cleaned or laundered? Is it a time issue,
00:23:38.840a money issue, or some sort of deliberate statement?
00:23:42.680oh gosh I was ironing on a Ghostbusters logo onto my Ghostbusters costume earlier this like last
00:23:52.060month and I realized that that was the first time that I had used the iron in like nine months
00:23:56.940and I think about this all the time right like I love my clothes when they're ironed I hate ironing
00:24:03.880the apparati for ironing are so cumbersome but also I live on an island there's no such thing
00:24:11.620is dry cleaning. And even when I lived in New York, and dry cleaning was all over the place,
00:24:15.320like I would pay to have my clothes laundered, but I wouldn't pay for them to get dry cleaned.
00:24:19.360What are your thoughts on why? Is it just like the spread of stuff that's more ready to wear
00:24:23.840that doesn't need it, but all that linen shit needs it? I don't know. Yeah. Where do we go here?0.96
00:24:28.900I think that part of it, like this is a question that spans like several generations of history,
00:24:34.360I think because I think a lot of it goes back to women getting jobs um this like the sort of like0.75
00:24:42.160laundering and ironing and mending and tailoring like these like little care tasks domestic care0.95
00:24:47.440tasks that go along with um maintaining your clothing are things that women did for a really0.85
00:24:53.240long time um and if you go back further like making clothing spinning yarn um making textiles1.00
00:24:59.060And then making clothing out of them was all like, that was women's work long before industrialization. And it is, it is like real work. It is, it takes elbow grease, you're standing up, you're doing physically skilled labor. Ironing things is not easy. You have to, it takes skill, it takes experience. And it takes the tools and space necessary to do it.
00:25:23.200And I think that as women went into the workplace, a lot of those skills were not passed down to daughters. I think for reasons that are both like sort of practical and that are emotional, because like, a lot of our mothers did not want us saddled with that work. My mom didn't teach me how to cook because she hated cooking. And she didn't want me stuck in a situation where I had to cook for everybody just because I had been taught.
00:25:46.660That's so interesting because, you know, when I think about it, I learned to iron. I think I was mostly bored. And my mom had been like sending out my dad's shirts to get pressed. And she said, I'll pay you a quarter for each if you press each of these shirts. So little money. But you know, when you're a kid, you're like, yeah, I'm super bored anyway. And I'll learn how to do this thing.
00:26:12.200and but I think that that speaks to one she never did it herself or like refused to do it herself
00:26:17.460and two that there's like I think a lot of families have to do this sort of analysis of like well
00:26:23.640if the shirt has to be pressed like if men are going to be wearing these shirts that need to
00:26:28.340be pressed who is going to do it are we going to send it out is someone in the family going to
00:26:32.100make time in their lives to make it happen and I also think there's this shift in menswear that
00:26:37.900like there are fewer things that need to be pressed just generally that that also opens up
00:26:43.560all this space so if you don't have a whole bunch of things to take to get pressed to get dry cleaned
00:26:47.860then it disincentivizes taking that one thing right the history of clothing in modern times
00:26:53.540is a history of casualization where we are less and less put together quote-unquote in ways that
00:27:01.980require the sort of precision that ironing and dry cleaning give us. And then also with that,
00:27:08.400and with the sort of shift in women's labor from unpaid to paid, you get materials technology that0.97
00:27:15.000sort of fills in those gaps. And you can see this happening in other areas of domestic work as well
00:27:20.360with like dishwashers and washing machines themselves and things like that, where the sort0.81
00:27:26.040of changing lives of women are sort of met by technology. There's also this like, the materials
00:27:33.560technology has changed. Brands are always looking for an opening to market a new product and to
00:27:38.500develop something that might like be marketable to a particular need that they've sensed. So
00:27:44.000materials technology has advanced in a way that like wrinkle free stuff is more common.
00:27:49.280A lot of this is because plastic is added to clothing in some way. So a lot of things that
00:27:54.400would have been not washable at home in the past or that would have needed hand washing can now be
00:27:59.320thrown in the washing machine a lot of things that would have required ironing before now as
00:28:05.200long as you dry them with heat they are much less wrinkled so you get just like a lot less need to
00:28:11.520do these like particular skills that you like might not have been developing anyway i have this
00:28:17.680this romper that absolutely needs to be like deeply steamed and pressed it has sat at the
00:28:24.120bottom of my hamper just like you know I dump it out and then I put it back into the bottom and
00:28:30.040then I do my laundry and I put the laundry like it just I'm not kidding you 18 months
00:28:34.280and that per romper it's very cute you know I have stuff like that too and I live down the street
00:28:40.300from a um from a dry cleaner I live in Brooklyn like there's places to get your dry cleaning done
00:28:44.460all over the place but it's just not like a part of my routine um and it feels like a special task
00:28:50.700and like i have lots of other tasks i need to do so it's one of those things where it's like it's
00:28:55.620far enough outside the realm of normalcy because the composition of people's wardrobes have changed
00:29:00.640the value of any particular piece of clothing has gone down so much so there's yeah there's not as
00:29:06.320much people own more pieces of clothing than they ever have before what is the real motivator in
00:29:12.880taking this thing to get dry cleaned and paying $10 for it to be dry cleaned, if it only costs
00:29:16.380$30 to begin with. And like, you've got all this other stuff in your closet. The last thing I'll
00:29:20.880say is that I live in a house that was built in 1904. And it has tiny closets. And like a lot of
00:29:25.360people who live in older houses, I bitch about the closets constantly. When really what it is,
00:29:29.900is a reflection of the fact that like, that closet was a big closet when the people lived
00:29:34.320here before, right? Like, they were like, this is ample space for two people's clothing.
00:29:38.860and now I have to like lug the the fall clothes up from downstairs and that to me is just a
00:29:45.460testament more than any other of how like as you said like the the real wage comparison with how
00:29:51.160much clothes cost like how that's changed how our understanding of like how many types of clothing
00:29:55.640that we need has changed all that sort of thing okay so here is a great segue to our next question
00:30:02.380which I don't necessarily agree with but it's going to be a good like way for us to have a
00:30:07.860conversation. So one of the prompts that I gave to readers when we were coming up with questions
00:30:12.560was just this very open-ended, why are clothes the way that they are? And we've gotten into the
00:30:20.820substance and the fabrication of clothes, so I think we should talk a little bit about style.
00:30:25.600And this question is from Sarah. I love the recent push to make more clothes comfortable
00:30:30.060and younger generations embrace slash insistence on it. But why have we gone so far from clothing
00:30:35.900that's flattering? Why wear leggings that show every roll and cellulite dimple? Why wear colors
00:30:41.660that make your skin look bad? Why are glasses so big? So I think this concept of flattering
00:30:49.240is something that people have begun the work of unpacking, but it's almost like diet culture
00:30:56.940in that it takes a long time to move away from even that idea of like, flattering is a static
00:31:04.740thing right like that there is such thing as like this is a flattering silhouette and this isn't
00:31:09.980like when I talked to Heather Radke a couple weeks ago about her book about butts like she did this0.97
00:31:14.580whole section about bustles and how you just like put like a huge second butt on your butt and that0.91
00:31:20.720was considered incredibly flattering so how do you think about this question and just the general0.88
00:31:26.600idea about flattering and also I think there's a lot of millennial stuff going on in this question
00:31:31.400too. Yeah, I think there is. The first thing I would say is that when it comes to looking at
00:31:38.320other people and deciding if what they're wearing is flattering or appropriate or whatever, you've0.99
00:31:43.760got to kill the cop in your head. Stop it. Just stop it. Knock it off. It's like the grandma in1.00
00:31:50.220your head too, right? Like for a lot of people. Yeah, you've got to kill that voice in your head
00:31:54.680that goes, it is inappropriate if I am presented with information about somebody's body that I0.94
00:32:00.540don't necessarily find enjoyable because like when you're when you're looking at someone who's like
00:32:05.600you know wearing a tank top wearing a short skirt something like that and you can see the bones in
00:32:10.480their shoulders or their collarbones sticking out or something like that that is just as much like
00:32:14.220visceral information about their bodies as being able to see someone's cellulite or being able to
00:32:19.560see like a fat roll or whatever but like one of those is good and nice and like the other one is
00:32:25.940somehow inappropriate like those are just two bodies those are just bodies with different shapes
00:32:30.120and different parts and different compositions. And one of them is not inherently superior or
00:32:35.820more valuable to view than the other one. And I think flattering is like a fake concept insofar
00:32:42.140as it, it is like a negotiated collective understanding of like what we expect out of
00:32:48.300people's bodies. So in order for something to be flattering, you have to know what standard
00:32:53.100you're holding it against. And the standard often is that, you know, someone should have a small
00:32:58.700waist and medium sized hips and a medium sized bust and be tall and not be too muscular, but
00:33:04.460also not be too fat. And that flattering things are things that mold your body or negate your body
00:33:10.980in some way towards this shared ideal. And I think that when you look at something and go,
00:33:18.780that's flattering, that's unflattering, why is this person, you know, not more ashamed of their
00:33:23.620cellulite? Why aren't they covering it up? I think that you are assuming that everybody has
00:33:29.820the same understanding of what they should be trying to accomplish with their clothes
00:33:33.120that you do. And I think that that's not true. And I think the faster we understand that that's
00:33:37.980not true, the better. Because like, I think it's just really, really limiting. I feel for people
00:33:43.460who look at clothing and look at other people and think this way, because I think it suggests a lot
00:33:47.680of sort of internalized shame about like what they're allowed to wear and what they are comfortable
00:33:52.720showing to other people and what they are comfortable doing with their clothing but like
00:33:56.580clothing is is an imaginative thing clothing is something that gives you a lot of power to
00:34:04.180tell the world about yourself or not tell the world about yourself in like whatever ways you
00:34:09.100choose and it's it's a way to demonstrate your feelings about or understanding of a particular
00:34:14.660situation you're in which like you know comes up a lot when you're getting dressed for a wedding or
00:34:19.620as a guest or as a ride or whatever like this is this is a really powerful language that we have
00:34:24.840and i feel for people who feel like they are not allowed to like speak fully with it or through it
00:34:32.940yeah um because that's a really limiting thing and that's a really hard way to look at your own body
00:34:37.600and it's a hard way to look at other people's bodies and look at look at other people's self
00:34:41.440expression also what people are reacting to in this is that like looking at something that is
00:34:48.480different than what you're used to seeing is challenging. And when I see garments that are
00:34:54.220not on a body that are just like laid flat in like a stock photo or whatever, when it's something
00:35:00.340that I am not expecting to see and something that I have not seen in a while or like a new idea,
00:35:04.980like I find myself going, I don't know about that. That's a little bit much. That's,
00:35:09.440I don't know if that would look good. I don't know like who that looks good on.
00:35:13.600I think that that is a really natural process for people when confronted with new aesthetic ideas.
00:35:20.580And but it's also like a real opportunity.
00:35:22.540Like whenever I find myself reacting to something that way, I'm always like, OK, like what what is bothering me about this?
00:35:27.540What is totally what is totally what is different about this?
00:35:30.440What is rubbing me deep in that reaction?
00:35:32.180It's kind of like I used to tell my students when I was teaching film history, like when you're watching something that's avant garde,
00:35:39.040you can't think about watching it the same way that you would watch a blockbuster like the most
00:35:44.120interesting part of watching this film is watching your own reaction to it right it's a real
00:35:49.800opportunity for introspection and for me that's been part of like killing the cop in my head has
00:35:56.300been doing that like you said and then also i've just followed a lot of people on instagram who
00:36:00.840are doing interesting things with fashion as almost like a a normalization process right
00:36:05.960And seeing all sorts of people who feel really at home in their bodies and in the fashion that they're choosing is like a different way of understanding even what that word flattering could be.
00:36:21.300Like what if flattering was wearing clothes that make you feel like you?
00:36:24.160Something that has always struck me as interesting and that I don't think that people totally
00:36:28.260understand, but that I learned while working in fashion is that people who work in fashion
00:36:35.120and who care deeply about clothing and who are really interested in trying new things
00:36:38.920and who are really stylish and who are like the person in the room where you go like,
00:36:50.100Well, and there's pleasure and dissonance too.
00:36:52.220You know, part of this question is like, why would you wear colors that, quote, don't look good on you or glasses that are so big?
00:36:58.860If you think of fashion as more of an experimentation and and less of how do I look like other people, then it becomes clear like, oh, there's something really fun about doing something that doesn't work.
00:37:11.680Right. And I think that something that Gen Z has sort of seemed to embrace that older people, people of other generations could stand to take an interest in is the sort of embrace of these like sort of disparate slew of like aesthetics of like cottagecore or dark academia or like whatever, like all these entire different ways of like allowing yourself to be a little bit costumey and be a little bit campy and be a little bit silly with clothing.
00:37:41.680I think is really good and healthy and fun.
00:37:45.320I wear glasses and my favorite glasses for a long time have been like