Beginner's Resources - Topic of the day 7/22/24
At this point #fashion-guides is wildly outdated. What are some good, current guides for people just who are just starting their fashion journeys?
224 Replies
Not really an answer, but it would be awesome to crowdsource a "getting started" guide.
Is Parker York smith a good resource? He’s one that keeps popping up in my YouTube algorithm
I'm also in favor of updating (and renaming) the basic bastard guide, but with a disclaimer: There is no "correct" way to dress, but if you like the look of the outfits you see on MFAD, here are some suggestions about things to consider buying.
That’s what I’m hoping this turns into
I'll give my 2 cents on getting into fashion. If you just wanna dress better I don't know how much this will help but I think the best thing you can do as a beginner is find some inspo of how you want to dress. Figure out what you like and dislike. Then you can start to focus on copying them, and can ask for advice here.
Some previous discussions I liked for this are the springboard wardrobe talked about in this thread: https://discord.com/channels/1116793467654381685/1260264203332092018
I don’t think there is ever a guide that won’t go out of date in 2 years.
and GSH's post about his personal journey here: https://malefashionadvice.substack.com/p/on-the-development-of-personal-style
On the development of personal style
—finding the self through embracing self-expression and cultivating personal style—
It’s not like keyboards or pens where there’s been the same wants for 20 years
To reiterate my personal views of this. I think a very very limited wardrobe in the beginning + inspo will be the best way to start. You'll find yourself wanting clothes to make the outfits you want a lot if you have a limited wardrobe, and that will essentially be a personalized buying guide in and of itself
I think fashion is a hard hobby to get into because guides are not very useful. Theres no guide to self-expression.
I can start a Google doc if people want to pitch in and start writing/editing
I think we should endeavor to have guides on framing and tools of discovery rather than specific garments or styles
"where to start" is so hard with fashion. Partly because of, as you said, guides being of limited use, and partly because it requires developing an eye for something that many people haven't really thought much about before
Was gonna say the same thing, open mindedness and pushing people towards self expression dont go out of style
I also find figuring out brands difficult, there are so many and I still have trouble judging them
The answer to “how do I get started learning to dress better?” Shouldn’t be “buy these things,” but “here’s how to find what you want to buy and here’s how to put those things into outfits you like”
How do you evaluate
How do you train your eye
How do you find more things like x or y
I actually think we should have a guide to "how to dress like MFAD", but with a prominent disclaimer that this isn't "correct". Thinking about my own experience, I could sort of tell that MFAD was the right vicinity of how I wanted to dress, and I appreciated some particular suggestions. It took awhile to be able to understand the more general questions.
I think any guide should also emphasize patience. It's not a race, and it's pretty likely that the first things you buy, you'll realize you don't like once you've gotten more knowledge/a better eye
I don’t think anything should be labeled as the explicit default style of the server
Give them the design education basics and a place to get inspo (like waywt)
@bishopcorrigan
I would be fine having several style based inspo albums and related brands for those styles linked in guides
Isn’t that the same with all other art forms like painting and photography? For example beginner tips for a photographer aren’t to buy the best gear possible as much as they want an easy way out. Same here there aren’t specific items that’ll make someone’s eye better
That’s the aim of the recurring style inspo collections
Yeah, I like this. I remember coming across this on reddit and really learned a lot from it.
i could use this
Yes, but you need to teach people to frame fashion in the same way as those things
Like photography too, a better camera wont make you a better photographer
Inspo albums of all the powerusers and when you join you choose your path
People don’t always think of this as something they are learning as a skill, many assume it’s just a list of information they need to absorb like history without analysis
But the static information in fashion is the same as anything else, only valuable when a lens is applied
Part of the problem is many dudes are simply seeking to min max getting dressed and buy the pair of pants that will solve everything
So how do you help them get started
Or we sort them like harry potter
Heavily emphasize, both with words and by not offering oversimplified solutions, that fashion is not a solved equation and never will be
yeah, i think a lot of guys like to have very rigid rules that they can stick to, like there's a "correct" way to dress
Then point them to the style albums and guide from there
I think fashion/clothing recommendations can be like fitness recommendations in it can be easy to let your own biases, experiences or desires influence the advice without taking into account the advice seekers goals. That’s how broad advice can get distilled down to read the basic bastard or do Starting Strength/ the program du jour. Which can wildly mis assume a person’s goals.
So maybe a guide in figuring out who you are dressing for and how to find an aesthetic you like. So much of fashion learning can be figuring out the language of different aesthetics and how to put into words and items what you want.
The old MFA had a rigidly specific fit guide that became dated. So instead maybe a silhouette guide that explores different silhouettes and how to achieve them
I think budget is also something beginners can really get stuck on (at least speaking from personal experience). Learning what the clothes I actually want cost was a bit of a shock to me
Yes that’s what I was trying to say. People want to know the best items but that’s like telling someone that you should always shoot on f1.8 or that you need a zoom lens or that you have to follow rule of thirds in every composition. Instead, we should focus on why something looks good
Then they can tell us the correct way they want to dress and we dress them the correct way I guess
Just need to know their definition of correct
I'd love an updated version of some of these (obviously a lot of work though!) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mhOIpjUUibBf3QueJs8iRJy5gBKCILq82ekJkiC5uqQ/edit?gid=0#gid=0
Google Docs
MFA Best of Picks
Sheet1
Article of Clothing,$,$$,$$$,$$$$
Welcome to the MFA Best of Picks. Created by the /r/malefashionadvice community, compiled by /u/ThisBelongsInMFA
Formalwear
Blazers / Sportscoats...
But isn’t that also something endemic to those giving advice? We tend to give what we believe to be the “correct” advice when it isn’t what the user wants. Like if someone is choosing between AF1 colorways and someone recommends loafers, it might be correct for one party but not the other.
I started https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OgQYB3LVIhxHvpn0lfuF2JAzggVmNi-2bLUAJo9S5XU/edit?usp=sharing to start to collect these. DM if you want edit permission.
Google Docs
How to dress better
Beginner's guide to dressing better (Unorganized, crowdsourced) What does it mean to dress better? There is no one correct way to dress, and you should be skeptical of advice from anyone who claims otherwise. Every man DOES NOT need a blue blazer, or any other particular article of clothing. Th...
What type of guide someone is receptive to and needs will depend heavily on their goals.
If someone is just looking for what pants to buy to wear to the office/bar/wedding/etc. that's totally different than someone on a self-improvement journey which is different from someone who just thinks clothes are cool and wants to explore them in more depth.
You can't point the guy who needs pants for a wedding in 2 weeks to a guide on how to think about silhouette and colors
Also this is a personal thing but I do dislike terms like "better", especially for guides. It implies far too much while saying so little
I think better is only useful when there is already a very narrow frame of reference
Y'all seem very hesitant to be even slightly prescriptive. (I mean that as an observation, not a criticism)
There are plenty of prescriptivist fashion blogs, youtube channels, tiktoks, etc. If someone wants a "you should own these clothing items" there are probably millions of places to look and get all sorts of answers
So do you think we should be aiming for something very different, rather than a "MFAD house style" prescription? That seems to be the consensus here.
As others have pointed out above, any prescriptive guide is going to have tons of inherent bias and is going to be quickly out of date AND it's not really the goal of the server.
Yes. If someone wants to follow the house style it's as easy as applying the more general principles of collecting inspo and paying more attention to outfits to #waywt and #inspiration
Personally, I learn by starting with specifics and generalizing/extrapolating. So I actually appreciate (good) prescriptive guides, although I also think I appreciate how problematic bad ones can be.
but maybe that should be a separate thing. For example, I agree that updating the "recommended brands" would be very helpful.
I still think the more general approach can work for that mindset. Collect the outfits you look good, and try to find common themes, boom there's a buying guide more personalized than anything else on the internet
I think collecting and organizing outfits from WAYWT into themed inspo albums would be very helpful to beginners.
good for who? I like linking this post as an example but as smiles and char brought up in a different totd it's super :derek: coded with a focus on tailoring. If someone is interested in a different style this is a terrible guide. If someone is in HS this is a terrible guide.
Whether a guide is good or bad depends on whether it matches up with the goals of the reader. I personally don't find much use is writing more of these guides when so many already exist and plenty of people are already writing them daily.
Put This On
The Springboard Wardrobe
When I started getting into fountain pens about eight years ago, I was overwhelmed by the number of options. The...
I think a good format would be inspo albums, but I think they should include some commentary for the reader to make them aware of certain details they might otherwise miss
I think ppl need to learn to see to develop a taste in fashion
funnily enough I think this post has a lot of relevant info to this topic:
A springboard wardrobe isn’t meant to be a forever wardrobe. It’s not about “Buying It For Life” or “Things Every Man Must Own.” It’s intended to give you a baseline that allows you to explore different aesthetics — a jumping-off point — so you can develop a personal sense of style. It’s possible to dress well by only ever wearing “springboard” items. At the same time, you can also use these items to explore different looks
Focus on Outfits; Don’t Fetishize Objects It’s easy to forget this simple lesson, especially if you’re learning about clothes online. As you learn about different technical details — storm welting, canvassing, hand stitching, etc. — you’ll become curious about how these details look and feel in real life. This tension is then only resolved through experience (or shopping). There’s nothing wrong with buying new things to see how you like them, but it’s important to focus on creating stylish outfits. Be aware of how easily you can start to fetishize objects, disconnected from the rest of your wardrobe, as you learn about certain details and see them presented through carefully cropped, beautifully photographed images. When shopping and exploring, use image-heavy sites such as Instagram to see how people wear those items in stylish outfits.
it also helps to not be so analytical and sterile about how you view style. Clothing is deeply tied to culture and identity. As you learn about clothes, read about historical fashion movements — the Mods of the 1960s, prep revival of the ‘80s, Armani’s tailoring, punk movements, Japanese avant-garde designers, etc. It also helps to learn about various social movements and artistic scenes, so you can see how people have expressed themselves through clothes.
it might help to have a language guide or dictionary as well - both to ensure we're on the same path of understanding and to potentially mitigate reductive or misguided thinking
I also don't mind some of the basic structure like trying to find 3 pairs of shoes and 3 main pieces of outerwear/jackets.
Unironically would recommend some of Frugal Aesthetic's more general advice videos
his style of narration makes the concepts a lot more approachable and his videos do a lot of comparisons on himself to demonstrate how different pieces fit on him vs the nebulous "find something that fits you" advice
:huhh1:
I think if we do garment specific guides these should be primarily about giving people the vocabulary to look up similar items online. Basically a "these are all jeans of different cuts, this is how these cuts look on the body, these terms are used for these types of cuts"
There's a caveat to that solution in different brands having very different interpretations of the same cuts
But like, it's not even useful cause it's written within the bias of the times and plenty of cuts might change in the future.
I think having a more pared down guide of just diagrams/terms might be better
Lord knows how many people jump into wanting a specific look without even knowing what a rise/inseam is
Maybe we should identify some thing we know are going to change over time, but want to keep reasonably up to date. Such as the recommended brands guide.
Fundamentally fashion is all vibes
i think there are sole universal terms - rise, inseam, drape, wash, etc
Like a straight cut 10 years ago and a straight cut now are totally different lol
For example
Even 5 years ago
Cut names are marketing terms
That change in context with the current style
but they told me it was timeless 🤬
people do dissertations on Levi's 501s lmao we're fkt
i do also think there's an opportunity to modernize things in the context of a post pandemic world
Genuinely we shouldn’t expect things to be evergreen but the more things we have based on just documenting the styles we are finding interesting now the more those things will return to be useful in the future, think about how many fashion images from 10,20,30,40 + years ago we look at here
Also the guides get discussed to update every few months and there are guides that are nigh on a decade old at this point. I feel like focusing on vibes and general tools is useful
MFA archive revival for a themed waywt :xd:
I also don’t think it’s a bad thing to update something every couple years
Collecting and sorting inspiration is actually the most valuable way we could spend our time if we want to contribute to fashion culture now and in the future
Even if they just become time capsules
The lessons we may take from those images will change over the years but they will still tell us something
people would have to be able to recognize or translate the inspiration...that in itself might be worth writing a guide on
one page in size 48 font "USE GOOGLE LENS/POST IN Q&A"
or at least to destigmatize being inspired about clothes
Is GSH's BB that out of date?
I think it's still valuable, but I think I am in the minority.
Yeah obviously this is the problem but needing to update something every few probably isn’t an argument against updating it
It could be helpful to prioritize exactly what guides we want to update or create, and which are the highest impact.
no it's an argument against creating new stuff that will need to be updated
also how much traffic does the substack even get?
the radical take is that it's time to take :BB7: out back
I'd argue the growth of dedicated, diversified style communities for everything w/ the help of TikTok kinda eliminated the usefulness of a catch-all starter set
we've already had a lot of discussion ab growing the server out to accommodate more styles so imo it'd be more meaningful for more experienced people for each style to kinda develop their own bb standard and just relegate the current BB to "BB: House" or something
It’s an argument against mandating someone make a guide but not against someone making it if they want to. Which I recognize is probably a theoretical argument since few people want to. So I’ll stop arguing.
🏃♂️
fair enough
I have not read any of the discussion here, but something I find super useful is critical analysis.... someone take a few examples of good and bad outfits and describing what they see in them. As a "beginner" I feel like most of my issue relates to my eye, imagination, vision, etc. Having someone with a more refined eye describe what elements stick out to them helps me bridge the gap between myself and them, without necessarily trying to be them, if that makes any sense at all
I think that’s something that new generations always learn and teach, and often are better at than we ever will be
more simply put (maybe), im interested when people describe the process by which they reach a conclusion more than the conclusion itself (conclusion being the end result outfit I guess)
I feel like that could risk losing people in the process
like this scene where emile doesn't really understand the interpretation and just kinda feels alienated for feeling like he should be seeing something
that example goes hard
these are some examples of content I find very effective
https://malefashionadvice.substack.com/p/on-the-development-of-personal-style
https://malefashionadvice.substack.com/p/building-outfits-that-work
https://malefashionadvice.substack.com/p/making-it-work
https://discord.com/channels/1116793467654381685/1223394786141278258
might be more meaningful go have this under a broader umbrella of starter packs
Desperately do not want to reinvent r/starterpacks guides
IMO nay's list and some of the shopping stuff is p much as much fundamentals as most people would need
It may seem like a marginal difference to present inspo and separately brands that align but I think it’s meaningful
Bishopcorrigan starter pack big hat camera sabahs paint stains partner that mogs
yeah I'd be fine w/ that
my argument is that bb already feels very "starter-packy" in itself
like it's probably a relic that we can let go of by this point
i think the only real benefit to starter packs is having an initial "win" for someone starting from -1 vs starting from 0
while i do agree that the best beginner guide is to get someone used to defining and finding their inspiration then buying clothes i think the intended audience also may not be someone willing to wait for their best style
I think prior to finding individual items through BB or whatever you need to find a vision, which is what a lot of beginners lack, but it does require patience. People always show up here saying “I want to dress better” and someone says “what do you like” and they post the google image results for “fashionable man.” They’re trying to buy shit before ever putting thought into how they want to dress – as others said, just trying to “solve” fashion. Maybe they would still land on skinny jeans and v necks even after exploring, but imo a lot of people just don’t understand what the possibilities even are which is where providing inspo is so valuable
also not sure if this is a dumb point but I'd really like to see front and center the idea that fashion is an inherently expensive hobby
even w/ thrifting and secondhand I think it's important to get rid of the notion that things "should" be costing fast fashion prices at retail
i think we've got to establish "expensive" as a relative term though
in the sense that a $400 suit is perceived differently from a $400 t shirt for example
i unironically think repacking some of the recent totds as guides would help
I'm more speaking to how stuff like Shein have grossly warped people's notions of what's considered a fair price independent of actual income
like you'll have wealthy people spending hundreds on a "haul" yet refusing to buy fewer, more thoughtful items for the same price bc they've ingrained the idea that clothes don't have value
kinda goes back to the point I always harp on about for people weirdly justifying thousands for tech but not clothes bc fabric is seen as being inherently cheap to produce
Too true but I haven’t worn my sabahs in a bit
I think there’s a big difference between SHEIN/boohoo fast fashion and mall brand fast fashion (j crew/abercrombie/cos/theory)
I feel like the problem is still prevalent with mall stuff tbh
like there's a completely different grading to the average consumer where ultra fast fashion is considered low end, malls are mid tier, and everything above that just gets nebulously branded as unreasonably expensive and high end
to the point where they get filtered out of consideration entirely when picking pieces as a beginner
they should be filtered out of consideration for a beginner
tbh
hot take
if you don't know what you want buying a $300+ shirt is a waste of money
mall stuff or thrifting/ebay is the ideal starting point
You can learn whats currently popular but you cant learn good taste :sheesh:
Is there a guide for how to dress if you can't learn/have good taste? :okee:
Literally every person can develop their own taste and style. It's the exact reason why no matter what you put on, you'll always look terrible in someone's eyes. That's my entire hangup with "dressing better" - there is no universal.
It just takes time and effort, like anything else. IMO and to echo others, the best things we can do as a community are well-documented and organized inspo albums, and resources like GSH's last post on developing personal style.
That article never made much sense to me. It seems like he already had a personal style, and then got negative feedback, learned his style was out of date and changed it to be more like everyone else
I'm sure that's not what he was actually thinking at the time, but the article has a weird implication that the earlier outfits were "wrong" and there's a direction that your style is "supposed" to develop in
That seems like a very reductive and wrongly assumed take honestly, but I don't think this Topic of the Day thread is the right place to critique the writing of specific articles. Instead I'd encourage you to have a read of the thread where GSH first shared this, there's a lot of great discussion of it here https://discord.com/channels/1116793467654381685/1235984218715066488/1235984218715066488
Fair enough. To actually apply it to the topic, I'm unsure about the idea of showing this kind of advice to a beginner. If they read this article and their first thought is "wow, those first few outfits are sick, I want to dress like that!" and then it goes on to explain how those outfits are bad and he needed to evolve away from them, it could be quite offputting
I'll definitely give that thread a look, though
It was less "these outfits are bad", more: "these prescriptive ways of dressing that I learnt previously do not actually reflect my personality or how I want to look", I believe
But the article literally says "These are also not good outfits"
If he said the second thing it would be fine
i feel like that particular quote is taken out of context- he in fact says he thought those were good outfits but that others' feedback was what led him to question it further
Also, the entire article is written from his POV and is essentially journaling his discovery of personal style. In that sense, those fits are bad. Because they aren't Ben. They're dressed by the internet.
additionally it's not that he needed to evolve away from them, it's that he wanted to
i think if you're clicking an article about developing personal style there's an implication that you may not have developed it on your own but want to, and in the pursuit of getting advice in this way i think you sometimes have to accept that it's not always going to be confirmation bias
Does that kind of nuance land with a beginner though? If someone is really excited to get involved with "x", and you send them an article about "how I learned that I hated x and needed to switch to y", I can't see that being very encouraging
Even if the person who wrote the article is being completely genuine and it's a good article, it might not be good advice, per se
to you, what would be good advice?
I wish I had a better memory of the process I went through when I joined MFA.
specifically for developing ones personal style; i wouldn't necessarily share that to someone looking for how to wear a suit
As advice to a beginner, probably something with a similar structure but changed to be less of a personal story and more of a general template for exploring fashion, if that makes sense
and how would one explore fashion
I don't think I know enough to give a great answer to that
Or alternately, maybe if there was an article that explored multiple stories, which were all different
Maybe you have 3-4 people, who all evolved but in different directions
i think that article speaks to a near universal way of developing one's personal style, unless you're fortunate to have been born into your chosen aesthetic
moreover at the beginning of the essay he writes "With all that off my chest, let’s get to the point. The purpose of this essay is to 1) describe the journey that it took to get me to my sense of personal style, and 2) share with you how to define and dress in a way that you find cool, self-expressive, and stylish"
i think that speaks to the reader ultimately making a choice on what they deem cool, self-expressive or stylish, similar to many of the suggestions upthread which called for more resources for people to see what exactly is out there and what they like of it
I think that if piejamas read the article and got something different from it than intended by the author, that’s not necessarily the fault of the reader
In design all feedback is valuable because whether they know the correct way to fix the problem or not, their interpretation of whatever you present to them must be taken into account
You can always refine and develop to improve your presentation of information
Now obviously Ben isn’t on here anymore and doesn’t need constructive feedback on his essay
But I do think it’s worth considering how we write future things on the topic
Simultaneously his essay is deeply personal and excellent for some and not as valuable for others and that’s fine
I agree, it's a good article, I liked his story and it's something people can learn a lot from. I just think it can definitely give the wrong impression to some beginners
i think that's the crux of any sort of beginner resource, where is the on ramp for a reader to absorb what's being presented
not just in a "this is how to write" sense but a way that acknowledges that this is a less objective process than much of the internet has expressed
I would like to write something introductory for people but I generally hate the way fashion writing sounds and I have very little time so we shall see
I would definitely give it a go if I knew more about fashion, maybe one day
I think the gist of it would be this: If you want to get better at fashion, the number one thing you must do is invest yourself in it. Not monetarily but with time, energy, and thought. Absorb more, focus more, talk about more, and principally, dress more.
I think an important message to a beginner is that there is no wrong direction to evolve in
They say every painter has 1000 bad paintings they have to get out of the way before they can paint something beautiful, so in that same way, the sooner you get all the scribbles and disasters and spaghetti at the wall ideas out, the sooner you can make something that feels truly like the best you translated for the world to see.
Like I think it would be cool to see opposing stories. If you took the perspective of one person who started out dressing one way and ended up dressing another way, and then another story from someone who made a similar journey but in reverse, it would be a great lesson for a beginner
I don't know if two people like that exist
is this a matter of aesthetic or of something else? like person 1 who dressed in style A then style B and person 2 who dressed in style B then style A?
Yeah, exactly
Like both of those people evolved and grew, but it was to being more themselves, rather than to a prescriptive end goal
And neither of the starting points were bad, just bad for them
One of the few things from r/mfa I enjoyed was the user interviews with specific power users where they spoke to their inspirations and how they applied those to their own personal style, which sometimes included "brands/designers to consider" sections for total beginners. Was a good way to sorta show people how to get into a different mindset.
i wrote on this earlier, but as a beginner what I appreciate most is discussion beyond "this is good, this is bad", but why they think so. I feel that this could be broken down to something beginner friendly if a writer was inclined. The focus not being on the actual final outfit as much as what goes into it. As a beginner, I find myself questioning my tastes based on the feedback of others. Some part of this is healthy, some might not be. I want to know, for example, if you think a slim fit is bad because this particular fit looks bad, or you just feel its dated (valid), etc. Otherwise it can be a bit confusing to piece together an idea of good/bad fits based on outside comments
i enjoyed the 'flip a brick' theme waywt as it allowed for people to explain why their fit was bad, it could be silhouette or items chosen or intent or just it not feeling like "them"
basically what scott said, shifting from a prescriptive "this is good, this is bad" to "why [x] or why not [y]"
Idk sometimes vibes are just off and you can’t explain it
this still frustrates me as a relative beginner.
it's part of developing the eye and your own intuition imo
"I didn't have swag in this photo"
Interesting exercise would be to deswag an outfir
Take an outfit that works and then style it so it looks bad
Would be a good visual aid to explain swag
That sounds fun
I'll confess, as much as I agree with the famous "swag" sticker... I really don't like how its just thrown out like ":skillissue: ". Like everything that makes a good outfit can be broken down to some degree, even if there is still that secret combo bonus. It's true, but kind of unhelpful
i guess this means I dont have swag
Until you read it and have a minor existential crisis over preferring the swagless versions more often than not
insert parable about the students that were tasked with making 3 perfect pots and the students that were tasked with making 1000 pots
idk I really feel like the best advice in many cases is "just try again"
Personal example I always think of is how all of these pieces are good but the outfit imo looks off
And all it needs is for me to flip the waistband of the sweater
There's so much that can be off unrelated to the clothes just being on your body. Maybe it's new for you so you're not really feeling it even if the fit is good. Maybe the photography doesn't quite capture it.
flatlay bait
Good morning from Australia! As a beginner (and school teacher) explaining what works and doesn’t work about fits is imo essential to learning. I could also use help with vocab around fitting, less so about actual features of a garment, which is more searchable. For example, brainsnap said one of my fits last week was “well constructed,” which makes me feel great, but I don’t actually know what he’s talking about or what bears keeping in mind from that fit moving forward. So, exemplar analysis and vocabulary would be huge for me. If not from this community, then at least direction on where to find it. (Also where to find inspo related to certain styles is huge too.)
generally I agree, I do some other creative activities where this is just so essential... however just a bit of guidance the right direction when you try again is what separates a great teacher and positive experience from just feeling like you are lost and hitting your head against a wall.
i think any time you have one of these thoughts you have to ask yourself why
People said this above, but I’m just reiterating. If you could all do this work for me that would be great lol
I think something I struggle with personally is I know when I dont like something on myself. But I struggle with how to articulate it
no
I mean this seriously
other people can't do the work for you
being able to question things, even if you find you go back to what you know, shows you're learning about clothes relative to yourself
I have many thoughts on this, but it might be a bit off-topic
At least examples analyzing stuff? That’s the biggest thing. I agree the digging has to be on your own, that’s when you find out lots of stuff you don’t like too
if it's in another #topic-of-the-day necro bump it or else just post it in #fashion
but the overarching thing is that you're thinking about it
whether it's what you specifically like or dislike or whether something works or doesn't work
maybe I'm the fud here but I'm just not that interested in really trying to analyze fits that much and I don't see how it's helpful to someone new to fashion and creating outfits.
Exemplar analysis of PSI in a couple of fits doesn't do nearly as much as spending equal time thinking about why you like or dislike an outfit and what elements of it you vibe with or latch on to
it's one of the limitations of BB, where if you have the sense that, say you wearing an ocbd and jeans isn't working for you there's less of an incentive to question why since it's meant to be a quick start for the masses, if you will
i can see the benefit in terms of someone diagrammaing their own thinking, with the lesson being how to see an outfit more than what specifically about a single fit
I have a half-finished article about that kind of topic that I'm procrastinating on, I'll try to post it when it's done
Okay I see that. It feels a bit like being in an art museum and having no idea what I’m looking at sometimes. Like, I know some art appreciation lessons are helpful sometimes even if it doesn’t make you LIKE a piece more you can see what’s going on it. Doesn’t even have to be good or bad, but like, “here is what this line does here. Notice this here, that choice led to this effect,” sort of thing
I guess I’m figuring that out through watching videos and trying stuff out, but I always think examples of how to think about this are important, especially if framed as just examples.
I see. I don't find that analysis to be particularly helpful unless you're trying to 1:1 a fit. In which case I think putting it on and seeing for yourself nets you tons more insight and lessons.
I'm probably jaded about this bc I feel like I spent so much time trying to learn how to dress in a way that I liked that I almost forgot to actually do it. No amount of reading will get you more experience than just putting that shit on and deciding for yourself and getting feedback on your thoughts.
From the side of advice-giving a picture of a single outfit provides orders of magnitude more context and information than any text.
A qna thread with an inspo pick and a fit pic that says "What am I missing, help?" Is going to be so much more productive than hours of reading
IMO If we didnt stem from an advice giving community we would be more focused on just being a community of people that are enthusiatic about clothes
but helping folks as best as we can is in our blood
For my personal fits, totally. What I had in mind, that someone suggested earlier as basically annotated inspo or fit pics, explaining what is going on in the fit. I’m grateful for reading other people’s qna so anything else you guys do is bonus
To bring it back on topic a bit. I think any general direction for guides can be helpful: "How to think about color/silhouette/fit/etc." "A Primer on Fabrics and Drape" "Intro to and brief history of Ivy" etc are all informative resources but I think front and center to beginner resources should be
1) Be more mindful about the clothes and outfits around you
2) Collect things that inspire you and that you like
3) Put that shit on
All of the other skills and things we're talking about can be found in that process or along side it from other places. And an important aspect of fashion I think is participation, what good is all of the knowledge you're acquiring if you're not putting a fit on?
(Not to say it's useless, just a different goal than this server/community I think)
trying things out of your comfort zone also helps you develop better taste and feelings on things imo.
Because you either know what makes you feel cool and good or what didnt work because you have already tried it before
Maybe we need to have different guides for different needs. Some people (like me) show up and want to learn how to dress better as a long-term project. But we also have a lot of Q&A threads that are "Eek! I'm going to a wedding next week. What do I wear?"
becoming an op-ed writer for the washington post
:cryingderek:
i do think some of the old guides will have value if recontextualized in this way - the tailoring ones come to mind immediately
it'd be impossible to adequately encompass a lot of those small questions bc of how context dependent they are though
imo those are fine for q&a
making a guide iceberg would be a funny but decent suggestion though
:boi:
We should develop a mathematical model to predict optimal pants size for a given future date, and then use an LLM to update the guides automatically.
also necroing this point a bit
i think i want to clarify that i don't mean people should necessarily be looking to own more expensive pieces as a starting point, but that this stratification of price stops a lot of newcomers from wanting to glean inspo from more expensive brands that usually have a more focused design philosophy
AI has spoken
When asked how pants will fit in 2034
wow crazy
things could be simple
OR
things could have details
thank god we have AI
now this is how you verify ChatGPT has only been trained on data before 2021
:xdcrying:
weed eater
"How to breathe" parts 1 & 2 remain what I would consider some of the best informative pieces from r/mfa because they present a specific set of visual cues with suggestions for buying and styling your clothes.
Again echoing what was prev said, any prescriptive guide is going to be outdated <2yrs after its published (regardless of the community it came from), and from some perspectives might already be outdated by the time it's actually written. IMO a guide is more useful when it helps open minds up to new avenues of learning and the basic bastard and its ilk do not do that. They are guides meant for people who really aren't interested in putting that shit on. Which ig is fine but again ultimately the question is, is that what we want to offer as a community? Because we can't shit on Wired's Every Man Must Purchase These Items lists if we are.
Yeah I agree.
It sounds like there's support for organizing some good fits from WAYWT into theme albums.
And maybe something like a short guide that almost doubles as a statement of values. Something like:
1. There's no "right" way to dress or things that "every man needs"
2. You have to decide for yourself how you want to dress, and what it means to you to "dress well"
3. You have to invest time and effort.
4. Collect inspo and pay attention to how people around you are dressing
5. Put that shit on.
How to breathe was cool! I’d never seen those posts before
I'm finding that I learn best by actually buying clothes and trying to style them. I guess this makes sense, since you get better at anything by trying it. The issues when it comes to fashion are:
1. There are so many options for clothing (and slight variations for each option) that it leads to analysis paralysis.
2. It's hard to put down serious money on something that I can't be 100% sure I'm actually going to end up using.
For both of these problems, I'm finding that thrift stores have helped the most. They have limited enough options that I can try things I wouldn't otherwise without feeling overwhelmed, and without breaking the bank. I also feel better about buying clothes second-hand because I'm not creating waste by buying something I don't end up using.
Second that. Also looking at tags and digging through different clothes is really helping me get a feel for fabrics
IMO fashion guides like the basic bastard are good because they provide a very distilled 'meta rn' look. A lot of people want fashion advice because they want to be fashionable, not be into fashion as a hobby. That guide is meant for people who are here to ask "what can fashion do for me" as opposed to what can I do for fashion. They want to be in phase with the internet-meta because it displays the sort of social competency that is good for tinder.
My proposal for meta distillation: addidas sambas+wide jeans+white tshirt
the problem is guides like the basic bastard have a shelf life; if the things become 'anti meta' then the person wearing just that stuff without an idea of how to branch out or change or else the confidence to accept wearing their off-trend stuff without judgment
see also: the number of questions fielded about slim fit
Isn't a simple answer to that just to date stamp the guide and say it was relevant as of date?
there are hundreds of fashion content creators that do "meta" looks far better than the BB ever has. Do we even have people who want to create more BB guides? They feel like such an r/mfa relic and the use case is so niche (inoffensive mind numbingly dressed by the internet bizcaz) that I genuinely don't see a point.
that relies upon the reader knowing the necessary substitutions or else to be okay with being less trendy
one thing i thought about is if it's worth having content less about 'how to dress' and more 'how to think about clothes'
fleshing out things like 'it's okay to try new things' or 'it's okay to spend a little more money on something that won't fall apart after 5 minutes' or 'it's okay to buy secondhand clothes'
Hmmm. Imo it's like... The goal isn't even to get this person to the epitome of trendy. It's to get them to within striking distance of it.
The whole "develop taste, follow inspo, look at others, thinking about clothes" that's all slow steady refinement stuff.
The basic bastard is intended to get someone who has no idea how to dress an outfit which is reasonably cohesive and put together. Once someone has something to refine and flesh out, then the whole "fashion journey how to" starts to become a lot more relevant.
...tbh I haven't really figured out what a "cohesive outfit" is that's a bit of a wip for me.
i cannot speak to the overall "goal" of mfad because i'm one person but i think the overall idea is to get someone comfortable with clothes - picking clothes, buying clothes, wearing and determining if those clothes are good for that particular person' wants/needs (rather than their physical appearance, for example)
BB-type guides are a good resource for the moment where you're like "I just got an office job but I only own one interview outfit, everything else is graphic tees" (it was me)
Yes, and this is a genuine need, I think
yeah, i think so too. I think the way the original BB was framed, though, it sort of makes it seem like "fashion is for guys who live in cities and work white-collar office jobs"
That seems accurate. TBF tho we get a lot of "oh shit I got a job" questions along with "oh shit I got a wedding invitation"
when is that a question suited for a guide and when is that suited for a question thread though?
perennial question
It doesn't seem crazy to have a guide to chinos and button up shirts for "your first real job"
I think that organizing waywt fits into themed albums is the best suggestion to emerge from this thread, though, and probably the most helpful
i think one combine some of the other ideas together i.e. "what mfad wears to work"
yeah i like that idea
if so inclined people can write a little about what they do and why they chose what to wear - it's grounded in reality but is more inclusive of different environments
i imagine it could scale to stuff like "mfad at weddings, mfad in a carry-on bag", etc etc
I like this a lot
I like that!
yeah, i always wish I had something to contribute because I appreciate people who write up guides, but I don't know enough
talking about my own fits might be possible though
do lurkers on the server even read guides or long-form pieces? "how to breathe" was fun to write (i kind of cringe at some of it but too far gone to edit it now lol) and i really love writing, but those pieces feel like they were of an era in the community where long-form posts were consumed more
this isn't to say any of the new things written during the mfad era are not important or well made — i just don't think anyone but the 100 or so regulars are reading any of it or going to the substack
the target of those posts were beginners but it seems like their needs are better served through chatting and asking in q&a, so then what's the point or incentive to write all of that if only a handful of people read it anyway
plus i can't really think of a great way to host long-form pieces on discord. the substack was the best alternative and i have a feeling it's not a popular way for lurkers and beginners to consume information here (but i'd love to see a survey to see if that's true or not, and to get a sense of how resources are being used)
totally agree with you, and I'm generally opposed to guides as a concept, my push was more "if yall are writing guides I'd encourage it to look more like how to breathe than basic bastard"
If there's any usage data on the substack I imagine that'd be a good data supported indication of whether or not guides are even worthwhile anymore (imo they aren't but 🤷🏼♀️)
Anecdotally, as a beginner and lurker I like reading the long-form content / guides that people here write and find them valuable food for thought. But admittedly I suspect my style would probably develop more quickly if I just posted fit and got feedback
The difficult truth of it all certainly
Is that most of the work is on the other end
And not doable by writing better and better guides
True. If you asked me three years ago "what clothes/style do you like" i could not have given you an answer bc i was barely able to think about that stuff
Can you think of anything that was or would have been helpful to guide your thinking as you experimented, or it was all Q&A and self reflection?
I’ll say I also struggle with finding brands. Most of the brands that people talk about on here don’t come up in search results. That could be qna recommendations, but the old recommended brand list I thought was helpful.
And btw this server rules. I don’t expect anyone to do all this extra work organizing brands and pictures and doing writeups, but if the question is “what do beginners want?” I’ll just shamelessly pour out stuff I wish I had easier.
The last 4 or 5 months of being on here have already gotten me thinking differently about clothes and fit and fabric and context and comfort and expression, and now just waking down the street and noticing people feels different. I have a lot more fun trying stuff on too. Everything that’s already here and on the Substack and other recommended reads is awesome. I appreciate it and anything else you guys do is extra.
I think maybe people adding more links to brands they mention and using full names instead of abbreviations could be helpful. Not sure exactly how often it's a problem here, but could help the search result issue?
Oh sorry I meant like if I search for a garment, I get pages of mall brand results and none of the more interesting or quality brands that people talk about here.
ahh yeah
gotcha
the inspo albums seem like they would be fun to put together too
thank you
I think at that point I was not even able to articulate a question tbh. It was just trying things on and getting over some hangups (like im too uncool to wear "cool" clothes) on my own/with close friends.
Guides on more specific styles are super useful, to me at least, but probably not in the beginner category. That one Derek article on western wear was absolutely pivotal for me personally
Yeah, I think genre-specific guides like the :derek: one are quite useful to explore an aesthetic. But I think we don't neccessarily need to write our own guides. I think the derek guide for example has held up okay (with the exception of his recommendation of ropers, but thats just a very personal dislike)
At the same time, it is a very classic menswear approach to westernwear and someone else might have written a completely different guide