February 7, 2008

"The man of the moment is an urchin, a wraith or an underfed runt."

Fashion designers design for the ultra-skinny man. Fascinating pictures at the link of very thin male models.
[E]ven those inured to the new look were flabbergasted at the sheer quantity of guys who looked chicken-chested, hollow-cheeked and undernourished....

[M]odels like Stas Svetlichnyy of Russia typified the new norm. Mr. Svetlichnyy’s top weight, he said last week, is about 145 pounds. He is 6 feet tall with a 28-inch waist.

“Designers like the skinny guy,” [model agency director Dave Fothergill said.] “It looks good in the clothes and that’s the main thing. That’s just the way it is now.”
It wasn't that long ago that male models were expected to be well-muscled. But somehow, as one designer put it: "The eye has changed." A well-built man can't fit into the clothes the designers want to make. He only fits in clothes that look "boxy," and boxy looks so wrong right now. So, the designers must design not only the clothes that look right, they must design the person inside the clothes.

Pity the poor fashion designer! It is not his business to make ordinary people — have you seen these horrible ordinary people? — happy and comfortable and reasonably good-looking in their clothes. He must realize a vision. Yet he is continually hitting up against the limits of human anatomy. He must put a human being inside his beautiful work, and these human beings are so hard to reshape into what looks new. It's not as if you can rip them apart at the seams and resew. So maddeningly frustrating.

66 comments:

Peter Hoh said...

Can't wait to see what Camille has to say about this trend.

Irene Done said...

It's creepy because, as the article mentions, it's the body type of an adolescent. With their skinny guys and women in baby doll dresses, the fashion world is making a fetish of adults who look like children. Which is sorta like sexualizing children I think.

Peter V. Bella said...

"Wasn’t it just a short time ago that the industry was up in arms about skinny models? Little over a year ago, in Spain, designers were commanded to choose models based on a healthy body mass index; physicians were installed at Italian casting calls; Diane von Furstenberg, the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, called a conference to ventilate the issue of unhealthy body imagery and eating disorders among models.

The models in question were women, and it’s safe to say that they remain as waiflike as ever. But something occurred while no one was looking. Somebody shrunk the men."


Will there be a hue and cry over rail thin men? Will there be a conference? Will there be doctors on hand to measure body mass? Will people question whether the men suffer from eating disorders?

Or is it only female models so called concerned people care about?

ricpic said...

They won't get away with it. Women will literally endure pain to accommodate fashion dictats -- not men.

tituslamb said...

After reading the article in the times today I had a feeling you would post about this.

Very sad. I blame Heidi and Prada who both have designed for the very thin man and now the rest of the mans fashion world has followed.

The male models are basically just stick figures today.

Give me the musclebound type any day.

This is not an attractive look.

Roost on the Moon said...

Quoted in the article:

“I personally think that it’s the consumer that’s doing this, and fashion is just responding,”

Of course! They're just responding to the consumer. My brother and I have had our eye on this for a long time, but they are always sold out of the 28 inch waist(s).

Bob said...

Maybe designers should be required to make clothing for all three of the basic body somatotypes: ectomorphs, mesomorphs and endomorphs. Perhaps if hosting cities set out guidelines requiring designers to send models of all body types to the runway maybe the abuses would cease. The world isn't composed solely of ectomorphs (skinnies).

Unknown said...

Ann said:
Pity the poor fashion designer! It is not his business to make ordinary people — have you seen these horrible ordinary people? — happy and comfortable and reasonably good-looking in their clothes. He must realize a vision. Yet he is continually hitting up against the limits of human anatomy. He must put a human being inside his beautiful work, and these human beings are so hard to reshape into what looks new. It's not as if you can rip them apart at the seams and resew. So maddeningly frustrating.

I think we can all agree that prose of that quality really needs wider exposure. Please, take some time from your busy schedule to copy it into an e-mail and send it to the folks at
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/.

Thanks in advance for supporting our efforts to bring Ann to the wider audience she so richly deserves.

Hoosier Daddy said...

[M]odels like Stas Svetlichnyy of Russia typified the new norm. Mr. Svetlichnyy’s top weight, he said last week, is about 145 pounds. He is 6 feet tall with a 28-inch waist.

Well thats not really the new norm for Russia. Back in the good old days that size was quite common after a few months in the gulag.

I think I weighed 145lbs in the
7th grade.

Palladian said...

"Give me the musclebound type any day.

This is not an attractive look"

I'm with you, titus. Since the "Fashion" world is controlled, for the most part, by extremely unstable, emotionally damaged, sexually confused queens, it makes sense that the project of fashion in the last couple of decades has been to "unsex" women and now men, to mold the world into pre-sexual-differentiation children, to remove the threat of genitalia, breasts, muscles, hair. The psycho(patho)logy of it is so embarrassingly obvious.

"A weakling weighing ninety-eight pounds
Will get sand in his face
When kicked to the ground
And soon in the gym
With a determined chin
The sweat from his pores
As he works for his cause
Will make him glisten
And gleam, and with massage
And just a little bit of steam
He'll be pink and quite clean
He'll be a strong man
Oh, honey!"

Oh, honey, indeed.

rhhardin said...

I recommend Cabela's Trail Shorts for all occasions.

They last many times as long in the seat, where bike riders lose otherwise fine clothing to premature disintegration.

JohnAnnArbor said...

Pity the poor fashion designer!...So maddeningly frustrating.

THAT is an inspired piece of snark!

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Now that designers have driven the sale of women's fashions into the tank, they are setting sights on men's fashions. With any luck no one will buy clothes this season.

Roger J. said...

In all matters of fashion, I value Titus' observations above all others.

michael farris said...

The sure sign of the second rate designer is having to adapt the humans to the clothes and not vice versa.

If you can't make clothes that make reasonably normal people look good then I'm not interested in anything else you can do. Period.

michael farris said...

The sure sign of the second rate designer is having to adapt the humans to the clothes and not vice versa.

If you can't make clothes that make reasonably normal people look good then I'm not interested in anything else you can do. Period.

Inspektor Friedrich said...

Really, don't you people out there at the UCLA Troll Center know who to send to threads like this?

I mean, this is pure Maxine territory.

fstop's job should be to pursue Middle Class Guy, just as Lucky did Fen. You're wasting him on Althouse.

Troll Central's motto: Driving Wingnuts Away, One at a Time

I will be accused of lying, but I can say almost without question that Maxine and fstop share an IP address. He blew it the other night and had them both on the same thread, apparantly with no IP proxy or masking, so it was very easy to trace.

Unfortunately, it was late, and I didn't have the presence of mind to take a screen shot. So, you'll have to believe me, or not. I don't care. You can judge for yourselves who might have the most credibility.

In any event, I'm putting this up as a public service for those who might be inclined to respond to Maxine, fstop, et al. You will be talking to a chimera. But people do that all the time on computers, so I suppose I shouldn't get too bothered.
Carry on.

Unknown said...

Inspektor F:

I'll let you in on a little secret. I have no fricking idea who Maxine is, but speaking as a troll who admittedly only comes here to make fun of some people I think deserve being tweaked, I find her/him every bit as annoying as you do.

As for the IP address being the same, I strongly doubt it. I piggyback, illegally I guess, on what ever wi-fi hotspot is available in my neighborhood at any given moment, which changes all the time. I know nothing about computers, but it seems unlikely that Maxine would have the same addresses, unless he/she lives within blocks of me.

Sorry if that blows a hole in your preconceptions, but it's the truth.

Ann Althouse said...

fstop, I think you are a troll. Make an effort to show that you care about participating with us in a constructive way or I will ask you to leave.

Ann Althouse said...

And making an effort means responding to the topic discussed. Don't make it about you. And that includes arguing with me about this. Email me if you want to discuss my view that you are a troll. It will not be a topic here.

Maxine Weiss said...

A 'Dirty Dean's' T-Shirt. Muddy sneakers.

It's what all those clean-cut, fresh-scrubbed, all-American boys wear on their flop days.

Of course, the really immaculate, fastidious fellas, take white paint and try to cover all the dirt stains in the sneakers.

Is that taking things too far?

Trooper York said...

Now for something completely different.

I now have some experience in the fashion industry from the grunt level, having a store where we actually have to sell to the consumer. We have been dealing with designers and have found that almost without exception, they are insane. They are interested in their own ideas of style where function and practicality are of no consequence. A concrete example is one of our high end designers. Last season they had a dress that sold pheonmally well, we moved quite a few units. So much so that our little store comprised about 30% of their sales in the United States. Cool right. But now we get their spring lines and they don’t include that dress that everyone loves and which we can still sell a ton of in spring colors and fabrics. So I have to call them up and fight with them to give me something that will make money for both of us. They finally agreed to make 3 size runs of these dresses. But they freaked out that we didn’t order any of the new stuff. I explained nicely, no hard feelings but that me wife told me that this stuff sucks. I had to explain that I am not emotionally involved in the fashion sense. I am motivated solely by filthy lucre. My wife tells me what is good and on the money and I have to beat their ass to make it so we can both profit. The designers are motivated by their own psychotic impulses to create new and avant garde crapola that will impress their friends. As a storeowner I am motivated to get clothes at a reasonable price in attractive and viable fabrics and styles that will look good on a real woman’s body. It’s like that dude who had to keep rolling that big rock up the hill. I head to Vegas next week to duke it out with some of these creative shit heads. Wish me luck.

Now back to tit jokes and stories about the sex habits of Supreme Court Justices.

MadisonMan said...

I head to Vegas next week to duke it out with some of these creative shit heads. Wish me luck.

Blog all about it!

I used to have the body these people are looking for -- 6' 3", 160 pounds. Then I got out of high school. I suppose if you want to make things that look nice on high schoolers, who can't/won't buy them, that's your prerogative. Don't come weeping to me, though, when people of age (who have actual money to spend) look at something and say No Way.

But if someone is trying to stay High School-y, well these clothes are for them. Ah, eternal youth.

stealth pundit said...

Almost any man would look good in a nice pair of pleated wool trousers, polo shirt and a decent sweater. Throw in a pair of well maintained shoes and a decent watch and "the well dressed man" is ready for almost anything these days. Adapt for bankers, lawyers and whoever else (or special occasions) has to wear suits and ties these days.

That's it - works for business and nice casual events. As men we are accessories to the ladies - need to look good but don't distract from the main attraction.

To think of "men's fashion" as anything other than a niche market is a fool's errand. To design for men with a 28 inch waist is inviting ridicule.

Trooper York said...

Well Madisonman, I don't know if anyboby will be interested. I will be searching out sizes 10-28 in womans fashion so it will be an uphill battle. And I am trying to find petite sizing, which is the proverbial needle in the haystack.
Unlike most people, I don't think anyone is interested in my problems.

Irene Done said...

Trooper York -- you'd be surprised. Let's hear all about Vegas.

JohnAnnArbor said...

Trooper York, it sounds like the fashion world needs a Frank Lloyd Wright-type person, one that cares about form, but makes sure that the result is practical and functional to real people.

Trooper York said...

Well Johnannarbor, you have no idea. These guys lack the one thing that to me is the secret of life. Self-awareness. Businesses are more alike then they are different. Buy low, sell at what the market can take, but still make a profit. We just had a conversation with a designer who was somewhat reasonable. My wife thought that the dress shape and body were superb. But the wholesale price was way out of wack because it was silk. I said make it in a decent fabric at half the cost and I can sell the crap out of it. But it didn't fit her vision. Hey good luck with that. Have a vision of people coming in and buying your stuff and me writing you lots of checks. Now that's a freaking vision.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

"As a storeowner I am motivated to get clothes at a reasonable price in attractive and viable fabrics and styles that will look good on a real woman’s body. It’s like that dude who had to keep rolling that big rock up the hill. I head to Vegas next week to duke it out with some of these creative shit heads. Wish me luck."

LUCK!! fight the good fight and get us working women some decent clothes that fit.

Synova said...

They'll care about the health of young men after a couple of them die.

Just like the girls.

And yeah... this is how boys are shaped right after they get their height and before they have to shave.

Trooper York said...

Dust Bunny Queen, check out What Not to Wear this friday (at 9pm eastern) and let me know what you think.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
paul a'barge said...

Those two guys in the R. Lauren are thin?

No they're not.

KCFleming said...

The most ineffective and sometimes the most dangerous people in the world are those who refuse to work with people as they actually are, as they actually live and behave, but instead have an ideal of the world as they think it should be.

The damage comes when the real world does not conform to the ideal, and they try to make it fir anyway.

In fashion, it means unsold clothing and unhappy customers. In grade schools it means kids cannot read or multiply. In architeccture it means leaky roofs and cold rooms. On campuses it means speech codes and kangaroo courts. In politics it means disaster.

ricpic said...

DBQ & Trooper,

Are either of you aware of an outfit called The Territory Ahead (territoryahead.com)? I've been buying their stuff for years. Sane casual clothing but with a little sumpin' sumpin' thrown in. A very large selection of women's as well as men's clothing. You might find something there that appeals, DBQ. And if parts of their women's line fits what you're looking for you might be able to hook up with one of their sane suppliers, Troop. Just a thought.

Trooper York said...

Thanks, ricpic that's a great thought. In fact we did glom onto one of their vendors for this really cool product which was made from bamboo no less. I convinced them to make stuff in the larger sizes to specs we gave them and they sold like hot cakes. And it was all natural so the communists from Park Slope loved it. Go green to get green if you know what I mean baby.

Smilin' Jack said...

Fashion designers design for the ultra-skinny man.

Fortunately, this is irrelevant to me. Real men don't have fashion. Real men have style.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Thanks Ricpic.... I buy most of my clothing through catalogues any more and Territory Ahead IS one of my favorites for myself AND my husband (for his dress up clothes). I also use Coldwater Creek, Lands End for casual clothing, sometimes Spiegel and Zappos.com for shoes.

These places have real clothing for normal sized people and petites. Not everything needs to be dry cleaned.

The fashion designers are so wrapped up with their own ego that they forget that real people are required to purchase their items to be successful. If they want to do performance art, paint your self white and call yourself a mime. Or actually, mime calling yourself a mime.

KCFleming said...

Cary Grant needs to return:

"All at once there was the detached, distracted wit; the knowing charm; the arch self-mockery; the bemused awareness of his audience, with whom he was sharing a joke (a quality that made him simultaneously cool and warm); the perfectly timed stylized comedic movements—the cocked head, the double takes. And, not least, the good-natured ease combined with a genius for pitiless teasing...

Moreover, he suddenly created a new hybrid, combining qualities that hadn’t before mixed in the movies. ...both American and quintessentially English; at once subtle and rollicking, he seemed to James to anticipate nothing less than “a new social type.” Moreover, Grant had lost his jejune, matinee-idol look; he now married an extraordinary, intelligent handsomeness with an attractiveness beyond the sexual—one equally appealing to men and women—that’s best defined by Pauline Kael’s memorable description of its effect: “We smile when we see him, we laugh before he does anything; it makes us happy just to look at him."

Trooper York said...

Catalogs and online shopping are a great resource (especially since we went on line last week, hee hee) but there is no substitute for a brick and mortar store where you can try stuff on. We specialize in fashion forward stylish clothing in the sizes 10-28
and have been doing pretty good. You want to try the clothes on because everyone's fit is different. The vendors love to screw you around. They will swear that they use the proper fit models and specs, but you know what, they lie.

Anonymous said...

A lot of this movement towards slimmer and slimmer lines in fashion is a result of the growing Asian economies. Japan is a fashion consumption powerhouse, with China and India waiting in line. The U.S. is actually diminishing in its share of how much luxury fashion it purchases on a year to year basis. I think we're now the third largest purchasers of luxury fashion, with both Japan and Europe way out ahead of us.

It's not pleasant to admit it, but It's just become good business sense for a global designer to bypass larger American body types for an audience that spends more for his/her product on a regular basis.

But don't worry -- there will be smart young designers who will recognize a niche when they see one and they'll design solely for the American market while making a tidy profit doing so. But these other designers, the ones employed by huge fashion corporations like LVMH and PPR, they have their marching orders and it's Asia all the way to the bank.

MadisonMan said...

ricpic, I also add my thanks for the link to territoryahead. They do have nice looking clothes.

Synova said...

So why not Asian models?

Synova said...

One of the co-bloggers at my new blog linked to a story that is a bit related about a company that plans to market jeans made to fit Latinas.

http://asecondhandconjecture.com/?p=2367

Trooper York said...

Synova, there are already well established jean companies that service this market. Svoboda Jeans really fit the girl with a little extra curves and C.enn.V, a great little California company has a great fit for the Latina community. They have two basic shapes, the apple or the pear, and look great. You know it's a pretty cool gig when I sub for the wife at the store and spend all day checking out babes and telling how they look "Hey you're ass looks great in that baby" or "No, your breasts look great in that bra."

Sometimes, life can be good.

blake said...

Troop,

Got a website?

And as far as designers screwing with things, you could mint your own money by creating a reality check that compared the designer's numbers with actual measurements.

Just a thought.

Trooper York said...

Yes we have a website, but I don't want to make it too easy. We are pretty well known now in the community. If everybody knows what I know, why would they need me. They should come to the store to get the fit they want. You have to strike a balance between helping people and giving your proprietary information away for free. In other words, I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you. Just come in and buy our stuff ladies. You won't regret it.

Anonymous said...

While I agree that a six-footer who weights 145 lbs and has a 28 inch waist is a disturbing image for an adult male, I think it bears remarking that the trend towards a leaner line in men’s fashion may have at least something to do with the increasingly enormous (pun only slightly intended) difference between what Europeans and Americans consider to be a normal body in their everyday observation. The boys pictured here may be an extreme, to be sure, but I’m not sure they’re necessarily completely freakish, at least relatively.

I spent two months in Paris recently on assignment and I swear I am not exaggerating in saying that in all that time I saw exactly one person that could be called obese and very few that would even qualify as overweight (I found the same to be true during extended stays in Greece, Spain and Latin America) with the norm being what we Americans would consider thin or even skinny. The reality of the supersizing of America by contrast could not have been more obvious as is that ‘ordinary’ Americans are actually quite big by much of the rest of the worlds’, or even our own previous generations’ standards. It is I think an equally disturbing image that has implications far beyond This Year’s Models, so to speak.

But the point of discussion is mens’ clothes so, to take a slight contra stance: I am a 44 year old man who through a combination of genetics and regimen has never weighed more than 150 lbs or had greater than a 30 waist and generally hover around 145/29 – admittedly on the low end of normal, but still within the range of normal nonetheless: just small framed and athletic. I had to resign myself years ago to being unable to find mass market clothes that were small enough and while it was never my intention my wardrobe became largely a hip-ish mix of vintage and boutique European for no other reason than it’s what fits. Believe me, I would rather be able to just go to the Gap because this has cost me a fortune, but like many other retailers they relabled their M an S a long time ago and I couldn’t find so much as a white T-shirt. So, I eventually gave up and swallowed the expense and some good-natured teasing for being a “plate” rather than go shopping in the boys’ department and looking like it.

Lately though, and due obviously to the filter-down effect of Slimane and others’ collections, I’m able to walk into at least a higher-end department store and have a reasonable expectation of finding, say, more than one jacket in a size 38 that doesn’t carry a $1500 label. Not a bad thing at all from my perspective, though as I said I freely admit to being a minority.

Which is ultimately my point: I promise you there’s still only a few of these items while there are racks and racks of 42-52s and while I grant everything Ann and others are saying here, I wonder if it’s something worth bothering with unless you really want to wear the kind of stuff pictured here, which I rather doubt.

More interesting to me is whether it isn’t just the designers who are ‘hitting up against the limits of human anatomy’.

Thanks.

KCFleming said...

The Europeans (and other nations) are skinny because their food is so expensive, not because they are better walkers/more moral/fashionable/etc.

"International statistics provided by ERS only account for the percentage of disposable income spent on food at home. Still, the numbers show huge disparities between the U.S. and other countries.

The U.S. percentage is 6.1 percent. The next lowest figure comes from consumers in the United Kingdom at 8.3 percent. (Note: No statistics are available in the report for Canada, which would be considered a lower percentage country.)

German consumers spend 10.9 percent of their disposable income on food at home, followed by Japan (13.4 percent), South Korea (13.4 percent), and France (13.6 percent) among high income countries.

Middle income countries include South Africa (17.5 percent) and Mexico (21.7 percent). China (28.3 percent) and Russia (36.7 percent) are seeing rapid decreases in food expenditure percentages but are still relatively high. India (39.4 percent) and Indonesia (49.9 percent) are among the highest when it comes to the amount of disposable income spent on food."


If they actually had money, they'd be fatter, too.

Joe said...

I found the same to be true during extended stays in Greece, Spain and Latin America

You must not have been to the same Europe and Latin America I've been to. (Especially since those damn statistics don't support your observation.)

Anonymous said...

synova said...
"So why not Asian models?"

Because the image the companies are selling (and Asian consumers are buying) is one of Western European luxury, so Western models are used in order to properly sell the image -- you know, "Made In Italy"

Anonymous said...

Pogo: Was that addressed to me? I never said why I thought the Europeans seemed to be so much thinner, just that they did.

Ditto Joe: Anecdotal experience, offered as nothing more, but fairly extensive and real nonetheless. Maybe you were visited different places and saw different things, who knows?

As to the statistics, well, not sure what to make of that. If those are what you're refering to Joe, they actually support my observations don't they, at least according to Pogo, though since they refer to 'disposable' income spent, I'm not sure they make the point he thinks they do either...

Whatever, though, what's with the sarcasm and innuedo anyway? I'm talking about having trouble finding clothes that fit sometimes, good grief.

Sir Archy said...

To Professor Althouse.

Madam,

As a Ghost, dead these 250 years and more, you may imagine the many Changes of Taste & Fashion that Fate has favour'd me to observe.  I fear I could write at length on the the present State of Cloathing & Fashion, making not a few uncomplimentary Comparisons of the wretch'd Garb of the Modern World with the comfortable, flattering, serviceable & rational Apparel of my own Day.

'Tis a Commonplace that every Age regards the Cloaths of another with Contempt, finding in them Everything risible and absurd.  Despite the Vagaries of Centuries, that the Existence of Arbiters of Fashion, together with their Minions, should continue unabated or even enlarg'd, is wonderful to behold, especially for One who has seen so much of the World turn'd upside down, or perhaps inside out, in other Matters.

As I was meditating upon all this, Madam, I noticed the ninth Remark on this Topick, made by way of Criticism of your Writing, which struck me as both extremely wrong and most insulting.  I thus left off my own paltry Efforts, and began to wonder at the Cost of continuously exposing Yourself to such Calumnies.

'Tis already well-known that most of your Criticks are Madmen, or perhaps Mock-Madmen.  I would flatter Myself that my Labour, as a Critick of Lunaticks here at your Theatre of Topicks (as I call it), has not been in vain, and has helped, in some small Way, to improve the Manners of your Audience.  For all that, there still remains no small Measure of Fortitude necessary to daily face the Onslaught of Invective & Abuse that attends upon your Position as impressaria.

I would quote Newton, the famous late Professor of Mathematicks, who wrote, "I should reproach Myself for my Imprudence, I were to lose a Thing so real as my Ease to run after a Shadow."  Thus he nearly withdrew his Treatise on Opticks when faced with several premature Objections; and the World nearly lost a noble Contribution to Natural Philosophy and Mathematicks, because of Human Screech-Owls who would frighten an Author.

If it not try the Patience of your Audience, to the Example of Newton, we may add the Fate of the Abbé Cassagne, a Man of Learning, and not destitute of Talents. He was intended for one of the Preachers at the Court of the French King, Lewis the XIVth; but He had hardly made Himself known in the Pulpit, when He was struck by the Lightning of Boileau’s Muse. He felt so acutely the caustic Verses, that They rendered Him almost incapable of literary Labour; in the Prime of Life, He became Melancholy, and shortly afterwards died insane.

That the familiar Lunaticks and Madmen to this Audience have not the Talents of M. Boileau, need hardly be said; so We may take some small Measure of Comfort knowing that Professor Althouse or any of her Audience are unlikely to share the Fate of the good Abbé.

Criticism still stings whatever the Source.  It is a hard Discipline to persevere despite every Knowledge that your Detractor may be Lunatick.  Thus I pray it not seem a Piece of base Flattery when I say that Professor Althouse's Fortitude & Tenaciousness are Examples for any among Us who would write for the Publick.

I should also say that my Ghostly State ought to render me beyond Praise or Blame; but I cannot but admit that the Desire for Applause reaches beyond the Grave, and that a disembody'd Spirit may still strive to please.

Praying You will not take amiss my Meandering from the Topick, and fill'd with Admiration for your Ability to read hard Things about Yourself and yet persist,

I remain, Madam,

Your most humble & obt. Servant,

Sir Archy

Ann Althouse said...

Thanks, Archy. I thought I'd deleted that post, but perhaps he reposted. He's a troll with nothing original to contribute and no basis for his superior attitude.

Trooper York said...

When we went to the Magic show last August, we went in the wrong door and ended up in the men's section. What a mess. I can see where the problem lies. There were about nine zillion set ups for urban wear and such but precious little that would actually fit a regular guy. Did you ever see Easy Money with Rodney where he invented the "Regular guy" look which was bascily bowling shirts. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Hmmmmmmm.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Regular guy look? Well, it probably depends on the area.

In my rural area... regular guys wear 501 jeans, Carhart shirts topped with twill or denim shirts. Warm woolly socks and walking shoes, construction boots or cowboy boots depending on the job description. Jacket emblazoned with John Deer or Snap on Tools for work. Ball cap or Cowboy type hat. Although recently the knit stocking cap seems to be pretty regular.

Dress: any of the outfits from the Territory ahead. Dockers or other twill/rayon blend type slacks. Cleanest pair of sneakers or boots or red wings. Sweater vests are still "regular" usage. Leather jacket.

/shrug. This regular outfit would be soooo out of place in Orlando, Philadelphia or Charleston... to each his own.

Trooper York said...

Of course it depends on the area. Tight jordache jeans, silk shirt, gold chain with a horn on it, black italian loafers, members only jacket, that's a regular guy in Carroll Gardens. You know, like my cousin Vinny.

But I think we can come up with something that everyone will like and not be out of place. Just not for the fashionista's who seem to be obessed with cammo and prison garb in the summer lines. scary.

Trooper York said...

Of course the woman's clothes we have are all over the lot. High end cocktail dresses, sporty fun dresses, business suits, cool tops and fitted pants, cool jeans and really, I said really, hot, hot, hot lingerie.

No guido wear, I swear. I don’t want to give you the wrong idea.

I have a gold swing coat with a leopard lining that has Dust Bunny Queen’s name all over it. Just sayn’

TMink said...

This is not about fashion, it is about sex. The designer is into twinks.

Trey

From Inwood said...

One can never be too rich or too thin (attributed to Wallis, Duchess of Windsor), I guess.

So we learn that "In terms of image, the current preference is for beauty that is not fully evolved. 'People are afraid to look over 21 or make any statement of what it means to be adult,' "

I don't want to trivialize The Holocaust or Famines, but these models look like victims of these disasters with makeup.

H Palmer said...

This image fits a very small percentage of men in the United States I feel. It is different for the woman model who is super skinny because many women will starve themselves. However, I do not think this skeletal look for guys will last because they are known to eat and be muscular- have a dominant role. Their original role was to protect. Women, however, have conventionally been known as subservient and so the muscular look has never been a popular one (toned, maybe, but certainly not muscular). The skeletal look comes across as a someone who is not able to defend him/herself. Consequently, this super skinny look will not work for the male populace (other than for ugly models)

Fen said...

However, I do not think this skeletal look for guys will last because they are known to eat and be muscular- have a dominant role

Not the new metrosexuals.

joated said...

Looking at the two guys in the photo, my immediate reaction was that we are back to the Heroine chic styles.

The last time I saw photos of guys this thin was when I was studying the Holocaust.

Synova said...

H Palmer, the reason muscular isn't a popular look for women is that it is really *really* hard to put on muscles when you're female (no matter if you're quite strong and lift weights) and when you do have muscles you've got more fat in your skin normally so they don't show. There's reasons for that, such as keeping your reproductive cycles going.

Not bulking up has zip-nada to do with *wanting* to appear subservient. Egad.

What you said about guys is probably true. What you said about women is just silly.

TMink said...

I think you guys are missing it.

Barely adult males this skinny serve older gay men's sexual fantasies for real boys.

Twinks. Plain and simple.

And disgusting.

Trey

Trooper York said...

Hey Dust Bunny Queen, did you see the gold coat with the leopard lining? I have your size. Just sayn'