Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Fashion trends that you HATE

Page: 1 2(3)

22:10 / 07.04.08

im sorry. what is the problem with quiffs?

All Acting Regiment

22:36 / 07.04.08

Nothing at all is wrong with quiffs in themselves - as a style they're rather wonderful.

The problem is the reasons some people have - or seem to have, and I'm aware that I'm no mind-reader, and that in fact this whole premise is dodgy - for wearing a certain style or look, which is to say, a kind of ironic re-appropriation (taking something square and making it a symbol of being a hepcat) coupled with an utter self-confidence about the fact that one rules the world and is very important. It's a kind of knowing-but-ignorant mockery, an unpleasant cynicism, which one could only have if one was a spoilt rich white person but hadn't started reading books yet. Perhaps. And then, as the style gets more popular, it becomes accepted as a trend, a group identity, it ceases to be an individual thing, and then it's even worse.

On the other hand, the utter reverence for things exhibited by some people is piss-poor as well but I feel bad taking the piss out of them because they don't seem to know what they're doing (fat people very earnestly dressed up as elves, that sort of thing).

I may be talking utter rubbish, but this is the closest I can get to explaining my reaction.

Zibarro In the Real

16:52 / 17.04.08

Pussy farts?

Notes from Boris-town
(prev. Now: Nolte with added Flyboy!)

17:17 / 17.04.08

Oh, do shut up.

Zibarro In the Real

22:32 / 17.04.08

Breefield wrote:

"I can't stand these kinds of polo shirts. They're usually worn with a wife beater underneath. To me at least, they scream social degenerate.

I really don't see them that much, but on occasion...it makes me gag. I'd also like to stereotype the wearer as someone who went to a motocross event the night before and probably owns four wheelers and jet skis. They probably also chew wads of gum so large they look like they're chewing tobacco. I assume you understand what I'm getting at."

I live in the American South, and these things drive me nuts because the are very Walmart-ian (which reveals my weird prejudice). And to a certain extent he is right: they are for social degenerates (but not the people with the four wheelers and so forth, they are very social and generally have a better social dynamic structured around the common interest). The reason you seem them so much is that they are cheap, and with people who shop at walmart there isn't that much variety.

The other people who seem to love it, are the real social degerates: nerds. Not "good" nerds like you and me (hehe). But they are kind of people at the stage where they haven't yet realized the existence of irony. They are the kind of people who seem into Dragon Ball Z, Transformers, etc. and who participate in lots of video game playing and ROTC in full earnestness. To me it connotes social degenerate in the sense of someone who is not engaging (or exploiting) the social systems in the fullest or in a joyful way. Think the Gareth or Dwight in the Office.

I don't hate these people or fell revulsion toward them, but I know I have to engage them in a certain way as to not put them into crazy mode. It is an automatic call for caution.

05:01 / 18.04.08

The problem is the reasons some people have - or seem to have, and I'm aware that I'm no mind-reader, and that in fact this whole premise is dodgy - for wearing a certain style or look, which is to say, a kind of ironic re-appropriation (taking something square and making it a symbol of being a hepcat) coupled with an utter self-confidence about the fact that one rules the world and is very important.

I think you might have tied yourself into a knot too far with this, AAR; isn't fashion/style for most, really, just a question of getting from home to bar to club and back again, with someone gentle in tow?

Hasn't the sense of entitlement you mention got more to do with having enough cash left to order a cab when the club spits out onto the grey dawn of Picadilly (when one or other of your lot is going to have to sell their arse) than it has to with class prviledges? At sunrise in Manchester, that's when everyone's fucked. Ahead of them is the severed horse's cock and balls that carves the Sunday roast in semen-flecked gravy - that's where you came from, but don't think about it. Chill out, watch Eastenders. Watch Eastenders. Hide.

Clothes are like so many f***ing rags, man, when compared to that level of lived, f***ing experience!

Yeah?

Twice Five Toes

08:27 / 18.04.08

At the risk of being a bit curmudgeonly, my problem with the quiffs was (and AAR probably had a great deal of it right AFAIAC) the fact that one chap, slightly older, was clearly rather ahead of the game. He looked great, particularly with the full sleave tatoo accessorised. He was getting lots of attention, and not only from those (hem) old enough to be his mother. It was clear that he liked the look, and it suited him. I liked that he'd chosen a style with a little individuality, and being inspired by past fashion is no bad thing, per se.

What irritated me just a little was watching others round him adding the numbers together and, seeing the effect, aping it. They had these rather pathetic pre-natal quiffettes. I'm reminded a little of a story of Paul Weller as an early Jam teenager playing in a pub with a placard round his neck saying "How can I be a Fucking Revivalist when I'm Only 18", meaning, I think, that he felt he was doing what he was doing because he liked it, and not because he was trying to be anything in particular. Sure enough, though, he became a Mod icon. Earlier Jam album covers seem to me much more inspired by New Wave, but only later, and possibly helped by commercial pressure, inspired by Mod-ism.

All Acting Regiment

12:53 / 18.04.08

Clothes are like so many f***ing rags, man, when compared to that level of lived, f***ing experience!

You'll never guess which Manchester-based* writer and singer in Manchester-based** electro band Are We Endorsement? has just got himself one of these quiffs. I shit you not. And like someone fondling his first pair of healthy middle class breasts in a park in Fallowfield, thinking about life, man, and cathedrals, and Gary Snyder, I imagine it's hard, hard like a hard cock which is the only way to really live life - man.

*Born elsewhere.
**Went to Uni there.

Page: 1 2(3)