How did you get into fashion/clothing? - Topic of the day 9/30/23
Well, how did you?
40 Replies
in high school started wanting to dress a bit better than hand me down jeans. Progression was mall brands -> /fa/ sticky -> r/streetwear -> rick owens discord -> exited rick and started dressing
Popped into MFA around 22 y/o to find a jacket that I saw in an episode of The Flash. Stuck around to try to dress a little better and I'm still on loop 8 years later.
I grew up in a small town, but my parents would subscribe to the Sunday NYT, and the style section became a means of escape for me. In high school I would go to the local thrift stores and try to crudely recreate the looks I saw in the paper.
My friends in early college and late high school were into fashion and we would drive to LA to go to the Rick Owens, acne and opening ceremony store all the time so I had to pretend to know what they were talking about so I bought size 26 apc petit standards, an alpha industries jacket, and common projects knockoffs
Fashion was so much easier back then lol there was a solved format
r/streetwear > streetwear x MFA mod fit battle > MFA > mfad
/r/MFA and /r/streetwear towards the end of high school beginning of college (attempt to get girls lmao). I dressed marginally better for a bit but didn't actively follow fashion.
Didn't really move forward as I wasn't following fashion (or doing anything to improve my fashion). Thought my shitty fits were good lol. Pandemic came around, towards the end started to get interested in fashion again and went back to where it all began, /r/MFA. This time I actually started to put effort into improving and interacting with the community, which led me to my current state. Now its actively an interest of mine more than a passing fancy, which has actually caused me to improve. Plus I'm a lot more open minded and other things that make fashion a much more enjoyable space to be in.
Idk if this is anything but I feel like I didn't have an option growing up as a girl - or maybe just my social circles and family put a lot of pressure on me to care about clothes and style? I started to feel more inspired about it when I went to art school in the USA tho. So many people wearing such a variety of clothes - from crust punk type fits to avant garde runway stuff. I think some of the 2010s valentino shows, Schiaparelli, vintage and historical dress were my absolute faves to look at but not sth I wore, for obv reasons. It wasn't until I started experimenting with masculinity that I really got into caring about the clothing I put on myself. I finally gave myself permission to start actively pursuing becoming a cringe little menswear hobbit/ wind and the willows creature/ 'suit guy' just before the pandemic.
I was into fashion way before I was good at it just because I wanted to look different from people
I would wear my jeans inside out in middle school (I stand by it) and had too many terrible hats and ties(I do not stand by it). At some point I found the mfa Reddit and started spending all my disposable income on clothes, got into EHF by defending Rick owens in the waywt threads and then stopped experimenting for about 6 years, I just wore apcs grey tee and Stan smiths non stop, until they all were on the verge of disintegration, which was cool anyway, then I rejoined Ehf in the pandemic and started getting influenced by charlie, now I’m getting influenced by mfa and charlie
my gateway was APC, too. snagged new cures in 2009, got a lookbook from them with the jeans. since then it clicked that fashion can be a beautiful artform like any other and now i spend too much money on pants
I started discovering fashion on tumblr during early highschool and then started going on Reddit for Streetwear supreme and mfa towards the end of highschool. Then in college I lurked on /fa/, hung out with people that wore crazy ass fits, and fashion discord servers. At this point I my life I just use discord fashion servers to learn about things now.
COVID. Felt like I needed to find a new pursuit of interest since I'm a big extroverted guy who was gonna be inside all the time. Wanted to approach it in a media studies way where I'd just watch runway shows and analyze them "because there's no way I could fit into nice clothes". Joined the Discord started by the Fashion Roadman/The Fashion Archive YouTube channel where I started seeing a lotta people dressing in fun and idiosyncratic ways and I was like "oh wait you can be the art piece here, not just whatever the designer puts out". So I dropped a bunch of weight to fit into the clothes I want and now I'm here posting.
do you mean for yourself or like, in general? I wonder abt this sometimes
For men all you had to do was wear a minimalist shirt, skinny black jeans, white slim sneakers and maybe a black jacket and that’s it
no drape to worry about either since it was all skin tight
I came into fashion initially trying to figure out how to pass as a "good" woman while still feeling comfortable (which was always going to be a losing battle). I wasted a lot of time thinking about how to put together flattering fits that didn't set off my dysphoria.
Obviously that didn't work very well, and I've since come to way better terms with myself, but I think at the core of my fashion journey it's always been about trying to find ways to show who I am inside externally. People's assumptions about me based purely on my physical appearance have never aligned well with my sense of self, and fashion has helped me gain a lot more control over how I embody myself in a visual sense.
Pretty much the same backstory!
Originally got into "fashion" as a means to impress people/change my image in high school without actually caring about the actual fashion aspect behind it. Unfortunately relying on HS trends and pop culture (read: K-Dramas and anime 
gave a less than stellar impression of what was considered fashionable. Still have a few remnants of that stuff in the back of my closet somewhere, but most of it's been phased out since it's pretty much completely antithetical to where my style is now. Can't really see myself going back to slim-fit menswear or BB anytime soon.
Then the pandemic happened in my senior year and I actually had an opportunity to reevaluate what I liked about clothes, since I didn't have people to show off to anymore. Browsing r/MFA and actually reading Discussion and Article posts instead of just searching for guides for the "best ___ for $" helped me realize fashion as an actual hobby so that was cool. Didn't like the part where I burned a ton of money on shit I don't use though
gave a less than stellar impression of what was considered fashionable. Still have a few remnants of that stuff in the back of my closet somewhere, but most of it's been phased out since it's pretty much completely antithetical to where my style is now. Can't really see myself going back to slim-fit menswear or BB anytime soon.
Then the pandemic happened in my senior year and I actually had an opportunity to reevaluate what I liked about clothes, since I didn't have people to show off to anymore. Browsing r/MFA and actually reading Discussion and Article posts instead of just searching for guides for the "best ___ for $" helped me realize fashion as an actual hobby so that was cool. Didn't like the part where I burned a ton of money on shit I don't use thoughfor my last year of highschool, I went to a school that required uniforms but we were allowed to wear whatever shoes we wanted. that got me into sneakers, and then after I graduated, I had no clothes that fit me because I relied on uniforms for a year, so I went extra hard on finding cool clothes that went well with my sneakers. eventually stopped caring about sneakers as much and started caring more about clothes. I made a few friends who were into clothes as well and I started my own clothing brand because I was also interested in design. this helped me learn more about fabrics. then I discovered the throwing fits discord and entered a rabbit hole of fashion adjacent discord servers and now I'm here as well
I lost 50 lbs and gained some pride in my body and appearance. I needed new clothes, and decided to take an interest in clothing and how I could express myself through what I was wearing. Started reading MFA on Reddit, and followed the Exodus to Discord.
I think I've been conditioned to believe that clothing is superficial. I think the folks on here who aren't cis men have demolished that misconception, mainly by existing, but also by dressing well. Definitely unexpected, and very appreciated.
I credit a majority of it to a specific celebrity but last time his name was mentioned the chat went into slow mode..
don't get me in trouble again 😭
SuFu>kanyetothe>rstreetwear>archive discords
Tumblr first but I didn’t have a job yet.
Tumblr 
I think theres a lot to be said for his historical influence without getting into his more recent takes
My biggest influence is still from pics I saw on tumblr first
Shakespeare in the flesh
He’s a god.
Pretty sure this pic predates MFA and it lived rent free in my head for a long time
Despite my hatred of him now (and me being to blame for slow mode) it's undeniable he's one of the most influential people in fashion (and music) of the last 20 years
I have a hard time judging him for his recent actions simply because he is not mentally well. But that’s also getting off topic so it’s all I’ll say about it
I moved from a suburban city in Mexico, where changes in fashion move at a glacial pace, to a trendier city in Canada and got sucked right into those 2010s workwear and then minimalist (no so) timeless vibes.
I let my hair grow out during the COVID lockdowns and found out that it’s curly. I didn’t know how to care for it, which led me to r/curlyhair. Someone there pointed me to r/mfa, and then I followed the migration to mfad.
Yeah, I poked around in r/rawdenim and r/goodyearwelt before MFA because "quality".
me smiles
🫱🏽🫲🏻
causing MFA slow mode
I always loved looking at the fashion pages in the newspaper as a kid, no idea why. I guess it was an escape from the homogeneous, middle class preppy world I grew up in
I got into fashion via music. There were a lot of blogs about indie music in the 00s and I played in bands and got exposed to a lot of looks that were different from whatever kids were wearing at my school through photos from bands and visiting shows. Going from music blogs to fashion blogs and forums like superfuture went pretty naturally and I've been following things more or less since then moving to different places as the old ones closed down.
My partner at the time in 2014 said I should "dress better" because I wore meme tees and cargo shorts only, and they would gift me a few things from Zumiez to nudge me lmao. I was already on reddit quite a bit back then, so started following /r/MFA and compiling inspo from the waywt posts, started making bigger purchases/hauls in 2015 to redo my wardrobe and started with J Crew/BR/Gap/Uniqlo and getting basic bastard stuff, started like streetwear cuz of some cool fits on /r/streetwear, and then i basically got addicted to clothes.
I would say I'm still getting into fashion, but what I want from it is to feel more myself. I've hidden for a lot of my life for a variety of reasons -- social anxiety, dysphoria, etc -- and I've just begun to undergo the process of making my body, my wardrobe, my presentation actually mine. One thing I'm hoping to get out of this is to be a bit less "basic bastard" and a bit more out there with my fashion, even if that means bringing women's or otherwise feminine pieces back into my wardrobe. I've been falling into the "must be masc at all times" thing because i feel like it will make people take me more seriously as a trans person. But I think I'm ready to branch out from making my fashion about other people's perceptions of me. I'm genderqueer and tbh I'm kind of weird, it's time to stop trying to fit into boxes that others have made for me
The catalyst for me was moving to LA. Never thought about clothing or appearance at all through college in Rhode Island, but after I got to LA I started to notice a lot more people dressing with intention in the spaces I was frequenting. I started feeling a bit self conscious about my wardrobe and decided to improve it a bit. The massive secondhand market in LA really helped me explore different styles for a while. I'd consider myself a pro thrifter/second hand buyer at this point. Its only this year that I've felt like I'm actually settling into a distinct style.
I had basically just been introduced to MFA on Reddit and then this came out and I went deep on searching and lurking SuFu, SF, and MF. I took a lot of the Techwear Guide (I dunno if the site I'm thinking of is archived anywhere easy to find but I'm pretty sure it's gone) to heart too.
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I feel like I’ve always been into fashion, although whether or not I dressed well is highly contestable. Some of my earliest memories were watching videos of Prince and Selena Quintanilla and thinking “I want to dress cool.” Growing up, I was a skate kid from elementary through middle school and that definitely influenced me because I basically just wanted to live in Dickies, a graphic tee and some skate shoes. At the same time, my family rode horses so I wore a lot of western wear too (still do want to be a cowboy). In middle school, I got into pop-punk and started wearing girls skinny jeans with studded belts. By the end of high high school, I’d shifted to raw denim after finding some Evisu and Edwin’s in TJ Maxx. Made my way to superfuture and lurked there for a few years, while also being influenced a lot by tumblr accounts such as How To Talk To Girls At Parties. Since then, it’s basically been a combination of following various fashion forums, talking to other fashion nerds, and looking at IG for inspiration.