playing it safe

On the heels of my previous post and having read editor's post here on the same article, here's an old article I read waaaaaaay back in NYT at the beginning of the year about men's style. The gist of it was about how male fashion professionals dressed, but some of what the interviewees said could have come straight from my heart:

'“I am very low-key. I dress very conservatively...almost to the point of being boring.”

“I don’t want new. I just want to feel like I look nice.”'

I'm not into fashion risks (I think I'm quite risk-averse, though my financial adviser says otherwise), and though boredom occasionally seeps into my fashion frame of mind, I relish old favourites, and take pride in consistency. And I have an intense fear of looking like a fashion victim.

Somehow, I think fashion for men cater to this attitude better than fashion for women. I like the way 'fast-fashion' isn't pushed to men the way they're pushed out to women - I always feel like there's an emphasis on quality for menswear that's less so in womenswear. It's as if because the formula for menswear is so finely evolved that there's nothing new to prove except to make them really really well.

When it comes to clothes, I want that too - simple things done really really well.

(The picture above illustrates my desire for a really nicely-cut pair of loose black trousers. They're from Alexander Wang.)

Image from lagarconne.com