Talking the Talk – Some Thoughts
Our clothing speaks volumes. Most people would agree with this statement. But Jesse Thorn recently wrote a great piece for Put This On called “Learn to Speak the Language: Why the ‘Lo Heads are Masters of Sartorial Discourse” that complicates this commonplace idea about dressing. Read his original post if you haven’t already, and then click through for my thoughts.
Jesse tells us that “dressing is a fundamentally discursive act. The most sophisticated dressers are engaged in a three-way conversation – between the creator of their clothing, themselves, and the people they interact with while dressed. This happens in the context of a broad set of only semi-shared cultural values,” and he emphasizes that “the designer intends one meaning, the wearer recombines it, recontextualizes it, and gives it new meaning, and then that meaning is interpreted by the people the wearer interacts with in ways that the wearer could never have conceived.”
From there he goes off about the ‘Lo Heads, which I really can’t speak to. But from this basic formulation we can tease out a number of complexities in the semiotics of dressing.
For example, what is this dynamic like for custom clothes? Whether bespoke, made-to-measure, or any other permutation of form, there is no “designer” per se. Instead there is this dialogue between craftspeople and customer, and out of this dialogue comes the final product. This product, as Jesse so aptly points out, is itself a way of speaking. So conversation produces the tools for more conversation. Here, the triangle seems to approach collapsing on the creator-wearer side, though not entirely.
Also, speaking with only like-minded individuals is a great way to end up cloistered, ignorant, and narrow-minded something the online menswear community seems to forget on a regular basis. Often it’s the conversations with those who disagree with us, sometimes passionately, that yield the most fruitful outcomes.
There is also the evolution of one’s style over time. The three points on the triangle are not static after all. Just as when you take a class in school, you come out of the class speaking differently about the subject matter than when you entered, so to does one’s sartorial vocabulary, dialect, and tone change over time. And, like with any other subject, the more tools you have at your disposal the better you are able to articulate what exactly you mean.
Hopefully Simply Refined, alongside thoughtful sites like Put This On, is helping build your tool kit. I know it’s helping me build mine.
Still from Put This On Season 2: Episode 1
