The social life of #menswear
If you are posting pictures of yourself on the internet, can you please refrain from telling people to just dress for themselves?
This is not to say that we shouldn’t dress for ourselves. Rather, it’s to point out that we never just dress for ourselves. There is a massive tradition behind #menswear. Traditions are not the creation of individuals. They are social constructions. It is through our interactions with others that a tradition is created. If aristocrats in Edwardian England had scorned the first men to wear tuxedos, deriding it as a crass compromise, unsuited to their station, it is doubtful others would have taken up the outfit, giving us today’s most common formalwear.
One of the rules[1] of #menswear is that you dress appropriately for the setting. Again, an important part of what is appropriate or inappropriate is social. It is about what friends, families, neighbours and colleagues think of the outfit. You don’t wear shorts to a funeral. You don’t wear balmorals to the beach. You wear formalwear when the invitation says to.
Further, anyone who’s posting pics of themselves online comes across as a little disingenuous when they claim to be only dressing for themselves. I won’t pretend that I’m not pleased when one of my pics gets a ‘like’ from Acute Obtuse, or a reblog from This Fits. Part of my community is this online #menswear community and I refused to be ashamed of that. I dress for me, but I also dress for you.
All style is social and that’s how it should be. Of course, there is a great deal of leeway to be yourself. But even who you are is social, just as the social is you.
[1] Let’s also stop saying, “There are no rules.” There aren’t formal rules, as for say baseball or accounting, but there are certainly rules.
