Dressing as Craft

Ok, so dressing isn’t exactly a craft.  But you can certainly approach it like one.  Richard Sennett, in his required-reading The Craftsman talks about things like parenting and being a physician as crafts, so here goes my stab at dressing as craft.

Talking about fashion as art, both for the designer and the consumer, is something pretty commonplace these days.  Sennett says in no uncertain terms, “there is no art without craft; the idea for a painting is not a painting.”  It doesn’t matter how many blogs you read (including this one), how many jpeg lookbooks you have sitting on your hard drive, or how much you pay for your overseas subscription to Men’s Ex if it never goes any further.  Knowing how to dress well and actually dressing well are different things entirely.

To take from Sennett again, craftsmanship “tends to focus on relationships…deploys relational thinking about objects…[and] emphasizes the lessons of experience through a dialogue between tacit knowledge and explicit critique.”  There are two parts to this: relationships and knowledge.

In a perfect experience, the clothes you put on each day are the products of relationships.  You might know the gentleman who made your coat.  Maybe you’ve visited the factory your shoes come from.  Or maybe you just had a great day when you purchased the tie you’re throwing around your neck.  Relationships and objects become indistinguishable.  This is where dressing becomes something of substance.

Then there is the knowledge end.  As Sennett suggests, the best dressers strike a balance between thinking they know what they’re doing and being critical of themselves.  The “dressed by the internet” phenomenon is the opposite of this.  Do you know why you strap on double monks, or is it just accepted wisdom?  What actually suits you?  It’s through self-critique that you refine your taste and shrink the gap between what you know and what you’re yet to discover.

And, just as the violin maker becomes accustomed to his tools, so should the craftsman-dresser prefer the tried-and-true to the new and ephemeral.  Buying high-quality, long-lasting clothing that wears in over years is the path. Craft is also something done for it’s own sake, not for external payoff; dressing should be a pleasure itself or you’re wasting your time.

The best labors are those of love.

 

I highly recommend you check out The Craftsman if you haven’t already.