Am I unreasonable to enjoy being challenged by my clothes?

[TroubledBloodyMary]

Prompted by this:

Lyst article

and by reactions on a current H&M thread, I’m wondering if I’m the weird one, rather than everyone else on the Style & Beauty board.

To be fair, I grew up reading Vogue, so am perhaps more accustomed to wildly stylised fashion images and exaggerated clothes than someone younger whose yardstick might be an insta influencer pouting in the mirror whilst showing off her beige leggings. But I’m honestly astonished at the number of perfectly unexceptional things - colourful dresses or furry shoes for example - that people react to with horror here. I do sometimes wonder what S&B is for …

I’m group 2, and I’ve started and been on several threads on S&B that have been deleted due to the vitriol they attracted. Threads about perfectly nice, pretty clothes that are perhaps out of the ordinary but certainly expensive.

I don’t necessarily own or wear any of these brands but I’d love to get down and discuss Alexandr Manamis, Rundholz, Cabbages & Roses, Kindred of Ireland, Simone Rocha, An Acre of Land, or vintage Laura Ashley and Droopy and Brown with fellow enthusiasts but this isn’t the place. S&B isn’t about avant garde fashion.

That’s fine, I just wish I’d known that before I tried it!

Now I just join in the Toast threads here as I do quite like Toast for every day and they usually manage to get to forty pages without Grayson Perry being invoked to put someone in their place.

All that to say, I think I know where you’re coming from @TroubledBloodyMary

I’ve reminisced lovingly and at length on Droopy and Brown across many threads over the past 15 or so years, @BankfieldForever - and in fact nearly invoked them again when a poster asked Castle if she lived somewhere urban. I spent many happy years trailing around the countryside in huge tattersall blouses and ground sweeping grey flannel skirts thanks to them. Laura Ashley takes me back to Cambridge in the 80s - and just how epically pretty the richer or more profligate undergrads looked in their pie crust collars and checked skirts. (And also to happy days spent fabric shopping with my mother.) I love Simone Rocha, though not as much as Cecilie Bahnsen, and am cautiously interested in Kindred. I hadn’t come across Manamis - on a first glimpse it has a slightly Paul Harnden look, but a different vibe? The other two you mention aren’t really me - but I know other people get a lot of joy from them.

If you really want to invite pitchforks on S&B drop a link to Apres Paris into your post …

I hadn’t come across Manamis - on a first glimpse it has a slightly Paul Harnden look,

Me neither, but definitely Paul Harnden look.

An Acre of Land is new to me as well.

I do like "The Little Jacket".
An Acre of Land

@IHaveAlwaysLivedintheCastle I just got this from Manamis, via Corniche in Edinburgh.

A little Paul Harnden, definitely!

Love that.

Google lens has sent me down a rabbit hole.

So if you're wearing one, do you go and get changed every time you have to do the washing up?

Not trying to be snidey, just genuinely curious about this way of living that is so different to mine (as someone who washes up twice a day, with office work in between)

I'm in my 40s and have always liked simple shapes and clean lines.

I'm going out for dinner tomorrow in a fitted black roll neck sweater, black tights, brown calf length boots and a plum-coloured A line cord mini skirt.

I'm happy for anyone who enjoys the more outlandish fashion options, but I don't like them and often think they make the wearer look like they're in the circus.

The only thing that makes me genuinely angry though, is when a model on a website is pulling such a stupid pose, you can't get any sense of what the item of clothing actually looks like!

But I'm in group 3 - I love clothes as art, like group 2, and also love them to flatter me like Group 1, by which i mean make me look thin, as I am a child of 90s culture and cannot erase the toxic idea that being thin is the only job I have to do.

However my menopausal body is so overweight, lumpy, oversensitive in a sensory way and lacking confidence - that I can only bear comfortable things that allow me to move freely, and involve very little grooming, jewellery etc.

So I dont look put together at all and end up completely in Toast and Cos.

I’m interested in fashion as a concept, although I find most fashion quite ugly (I know that’s kind of the point of it), but I wear what suits my body and my budget, and is practical for my lifestyle.

I do avoid beige because I’m Caucasian and don’t want to look like I’ve forgotten to put my trousers on.

I’ve tried. I love Ancient Earth/Stone Circle clothes and festival type garb. I just can’t make it work with my lifestyle. Trailing sleeves won’t stay rolled up, and they trail across the cooker or dangle in the toaster (potentially!). At work they catch papers on desks and get in the way of anything I do with my hands. The more extreme sleeves like on that H&M dress could 100% trail into the toilet bowl as you wipe, @IHaveAlwaysLivedintheCastle as a terrible mishap but just as possible as dropping your phone in if you carry it in an inadequate trouser pocket! I don’t have days when I don’t cook or wash up, unless I’m at a wedding or something, so if it’s a dress or a top I would have to strip off to do my jobs.
Ditto trailing skirts, in which I catch my toes or which I tread on while climbing stairs, or which tangle in the wheels of my office chair. Again, it’s a look I love but I can’t make it work for me.

i am probably a Group 2 at heart, but Group 1 in reality because I get frustrated if my clothes impede me (or get me laughed at. I grew up with relatives who would be merciless in their mocking of anything outlandish, and it’s quite hard to carry on if everyone in your house says you look ridiculous 😒)
Also group 3 resonates here @CancelTheTableAlan !!

So if you're wearing one, do you go and get changed every time you have to do the washing up?

I literally don't do any washing up. It all goes in the dishwasher and I was banned years ago from stacking the dishwasher due my inadequate stacking efforts.

I love beautiful clothes and am frequently overdressed for day to day occasions. However I do draw the line at looking plain ridiculous.

A good friend of mine spends her days in giant Sugary pink Cecilie Bahnsen baby doll dresses even while dog walking. She’s in her 60s and of course she can wear whatever she likes but in my mind she looks nuts.

I think there’s also a big divide on here between 1) posters who enjoy thinking and talking about clothes, regardless of whether an outfit in question suits their budget or lifestyle, and 2) those who do not.

In my first group there could be posters with varying styles and taste: fashion as art people, classic dressers, lovers of beige and capsule wardrobes and Helena Bonham Carter admirers. The common ground is that they like talking about it.

In my second group I’d include posters who disapprove of the whole business and who associate any interest in fashion with the shallow and stupid - the drop in scolders come to mind. But I think it also includes posters who used to enjoy it but who’ve found that bearing and raising children, menopause, poor health etc have taken a bodily toll. They may well feel let down and resentful of fashion and I sympathise. They may sometimes use the board for advice. They may have avoided thinking about it for years until an event or new job etc, demands action and they may therefore land here in a bit of a panic.

Not everyone wants to be a style icon. Most people want to be comfortable in good quality clothes, but that is harder and harder to come by.

I also can't shake my growing disapproval and concern about fast fashion. Every season when new trends emerge and shops release the new styles I just think what a fucking waste. Who would be wearing those fucking hairy h&m shoes, they might be worn once or twice then in to the fucking bin they go because the novelty has worn off. Not to mention h&m are one of the worst fast fashion polluters.

Lucky you!

I guess it all comes down to priorities. Looks are perhaps only the third or fourth most important factor in what I choose to wear. Thinking about it, it would shake out something like this....

Priority #1: practicality. Can I cycle to work in this? Will I be warm/cool enough?

#2: cost (at the buying stage). Can I afford it, and is my money going to an individual woman decluttering on Vinted, or a charity? Or the fat cats at the head of Inditex (owners of Zara, Pull & Bear, Oysho, Massimo Dutti and many more)

#3: mood and comfort - am I feeling this outfit today? Is the texture what I want against my skin?

#4: does it look reasonably ok? My office is very "anything goes" - I've seen colleagues in everything from bias cut silk dresses to wife-beaters - so wardrobe etiquette is not really a problem.

Because style and fashion aren’t the same thing?

I occasionally wash up. And carry out every other household task. But I was brought up to change out of my good clothes as soon as I get home - we all wore old clothes at home (not specially bought loungewear) so that’s been my habit all my life.

Yet another poster has yoked exciting clothes with throw away fashion. Why (the hell)? I spend money (or time and effort stalking pre-owned) on clothes I hope to wear for years and years, until they fall apart. I’m not the one ordering hauls from Amazon or Next. I’ve bought one cheap thing this year (such useless fabric it can’t even be used for shoe polishing cloths now it’s unwearable); everything else will see me into my 70s and beyond.

@zaxxon what are “wifebeaters”?? 😳

White vests worn by men as tops

You sound pompous and unrelatable

I'm getting an AbFab vibe

I'm seeing it like this... being interested in fashion is a hobby, like gardening is a hobby. It's ok to like or not like gardening. No judgement. No one is better for liking or not liking gardening. It's just a preference.

Yes.
Although maybe one difference is that it would never occur to me to go and scold posters on a gardening thread. I don’t even know if there is a board specially for gardening because I’m not drawn to those kinds of thread titles. Likewise pets.