This is just ugly and unfashionable. I don’t quite get the point, unless it’s to mock women’s fashion shows, which just makes it petty and condescending.
Why do people do this?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Some people just want to look different.
I’m guessing alcohol and betting were involved somewhere in the process.
Does this tie into Goop somehow?
One part avant-garde art in the form of clothes, pushing at the boundaries of what clothing can be/do. The other part being that maybe just a few of the ideas represented in the weird stuff will filter down in some way into a more normal garment for everyday wear.
In my opinion, this outfit https://eatliver.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/male-fashion10.jpg actually looks cute. I definitely wouldn’t want to wear anything like this myself, but I do perceive it as cute when worn by another person.
I have no clue what was going on in the heads of the designers who made these outfits, but I can explain what I am thinking while looking at these images.
I am thinking about double standards. When female models have to wear pretty much identical outfits, then that’s socially perceived as normal. When the same kind of clothes are put on a male model, then you (and also many other people) scream about how that’s an abomination.
I am also thinking about people’s freedom to wear whatever clothes they like. If some guy actually liked such fashion, it would be his right to wear such clothes, and the society shouldn’t condemn it.
Again, I have no idea what were the designers thinking, but in general one of the best ways how to expose sexism and double standards is to create art in which men are portrayed in the same sexist ways how women are portrayed regularly.
https://www.sadanduseless.com/men-ups/ Here is one example.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/artist-gives-vintage-ads-a-feminist-makeover-by-swapping-gender-roles_n_5a60f7c9e4b01767e3d1a484 Here is another example.
Any way you look at it there’s a whole lot of just plain stupid in the world of fashion.
Remember this fashion statement?
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/21/17489632/melania-trump-jacket-zara-i-really-dont-care-do-u
We’re all living in an I Love Lucy episode.
Yeah, I have to say I’m with Andreas Avester @#5 here; I’m not super plugged into the whole fashion show world but the idea that women’s fashion shows aren’t full of what might be termed abominable fashion is… inaccurate. Tons of what designers put on the runway is ugly and unfashionable as hell, and that’s sometimes maybe the point, or beyond the point.
Consider the fashion show as art rather than a utilitarian decoration of (primarily female) bodies in the service of a normative aesthetic and you might get closer to the mindset here. Does it have a responsibility to be beautiful, or does art have more scope than that?
Because they watch way too many Rammstein videos.
#3 Marcus
I just assumed it did.
Ugh, that is a hard thing to look at. Need to poke out my minds’ eye right now.
Fashion shows objectify women and they set impossibly high standards. The fashions put out on haute couture runways are often just plain ridiculous. So mocking those types of fashion shows does not seem wrong to me.
@9 You’ve never seen a Rammstein video, have you? ;)
You’re right, it’s not. I’m fairly plugged in to the menswear world, and that bears absolutely no resemblance to anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s certainly nothing like anything at any of the major shows this season. It’s obviously assembled from a number of different shoots, most of which don’t seem to have an audience, and there’s no sign of any attribution. I guess somebody’s just put together some clickbait from a bunch of weird-looking images (probably ripped off) that might have meant something in their original context.
Yeah, Dunc just beat me to it. Where are these images from? Is there anything to indicate they’re from the same event? It appears to be an unsourced compilation of the weirdest-looking outfits from an unknown number of shows. What do you imagine such a compilation using female models would look like?
At least the guy in the inline picture is ready for his dental exam.
Even I know that’s a fashion don’t.
Wow.
Also, it looks super uncomfortable.
On the one hand, I hate standard men’s “fashion” with the fire of a thousand suns. It’s ugly, it’s drab, and it’s dull. Suits should be burned, not worn.
On the other hand, this is not an improvement, and it looks painful. That thing in his mouth would start hurting after a few minutes, and the dry mouth would be a killer. Those straps on his legs would pinch with every step and, being clear, the blood blisters they’d eventually spawn would be clearly visible and none too pretty. Also, pockets? Pockets are the one really good thing about men’s clothing, so where are they?
(I also vote that any women’s fashion that doesn’t include pockets is a failure.)
The shiny codpiece is fine, as is the crown of lace flowers. Not what I’d wear, but there’s nothing wrong with them that I can see. The fluffy tank top isn’t terrible, but the model doesn’t really have the physique to pull it off. That’s a shirt that would only really work on a bodybuilder.
I know, right? Everyone knows you don’t combine transparent plastic leggings with a yeti-fur vest and bejewelled dental retainer. They’re strictly to be paired with a gilded chainmail waistcoat and a porcelain buddha mask.
As for that leaf diadem, well, those are soooo last decade darling. Fashion-forward gentlemen are all about the cerise periwig and aviator glasses nowadays.
Lack of attribution means that this is likely just making fun of things. There are Avant garde fashion shows that are more performance art than any actual fashion that will be sold. It’s no worse as art than the banana duct taped to the wall. Many of those art shows including things like that picture you posted have women wearing things that are just as outrageous.
Not only are those photos not from the same collection, but they’re also not even from the same year. They’re images that get used frequently as click-bait. It’s interesting that there are several outfits that would be considered just fine if women wore them. The more far-out ones are just showmanship. Some designers have fairly low-key, serious runway shows, but others want to be more entertaining, like when Jean Paul Gaultier had flower girls come out from under a bride’s gown.
Art is meant to provoke an emotional response.
Oh hey, look at that: it worked.
#12 If you combine the gag Till Hindemann wears at the end of the official video to “Mein Teil” with the hoops that Melanie wears in “Mein Hertz Brent”,along with some of the feather collars the band wears live I do find some of the outfits reminiscent. Also the nod to corsetry and bdsm. And yes I have seen every single video Rammstein has ever made, And the Making of those videos. Same with Lindemann.
Bless your Heart
The dental retractor isn’t part of the fashion, it’s part of the styling, along with the makeup, the shoes, the music, and everything else that isn’t a specific piece of clothing that a customer might theoretically be able to buy. It’s all meant to convey a particular mood that the designer feels suits the zeitgeist and the clothes. Nobody watching an outfit come down a runway expects to see anyone wearing everything that the model is wearing: they’re all mentally editing, perhaps thinking that a particular coat might pair well with a pair of trousers from earlier in the collection, or from someone else’s collection, or from their own closet.
Yes, a lot of the pieces are obviously women’s clothing, or designed like women’s clothing. Whoever compiled that montage deliberately chose the most ridiculous and extreme pieces from collections that might otherwise have been fairly restrained: designers often throw a few offbeat or extreme looks into a show for fun. (Look at Alexander McQueen’s iconic It’s Only A Game show, which was about fifty percent gorgeous, wearable clothes and fifty per cent funhouse clothing, like an amazing molded-plastic dress with enormous panniers and a human hair fringe.)
I have no way of knowing what any of the designers were thinking or intending: perhaps they were making fun of women’s fashion, or trying to expand the boundaries of men’s fashion, or just having a bit of fun. Whether anyone thinks it’s hideous and shameful is entirely beside the point: it’s art, and art is supposed to experiment, remix, and stir up emotions. Think of a fashion show as a sort of laboratory where new ideas are generated and tested: some of them will survive and get absorbed into popular culture, always in an altered form (as in Miranda Priestly’s monologue from The Devil Wears Prada), and many of them will die in situ.
And some of the coats in that montage are really gorgeous and would look fantastic on their own, without all the colour-matched accessories and bizarre makeup. There are other pieces that with some editing or rethinking could be stylish and fascinating: the shawl made of stuffed gloves doesn’t work, but a scarf with four or six flat gloves on the end instead of a fringe or tassels could be really fun, both to make and to wear. And that’s what I mean about remixing: all of popular culture, all of art, including fashion, is remixing ideas that have come before, and that ridiculous shawl could be transformed into something wonderful.
To say that all of it is ugly and unfashionable is to misunderstand what fashion is supposed to be, and can be.
@22 It’s still kind of a stretch, I’m afraid. To get into the “too many videos…” territory, it would have to be covered in blood and/or on fire. Ich habe auch ihre Videos gesehen.
Ah, fashion. ‘Tis for other people.
Anyway, re the featured post, been done before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatterer
Reminds me of John Torrington, a casualty of the ill-fated 1845 Franklin Expedition. Warning: graphic.
I can tell exactly what the designer was thinking: ‘This will get attention!’
It’s a standard move in haute fashion nowadays, and has been ever since the 70s. There’s no implication that anyone would wear this in real life. It’s installation art put on models to walk around for one show, then never seen again. And it’s even more common in women’s fashion.
It’s not every day you get to see a recyclable cod piece.
The dental retractor/mouth thingie is pretty standard in Japanese bondage porn videos. Also ropes, lots and lots of ropes.
@25 It’s the gatekeeper from Return of the King
This kind of runway fashion is abstract art. If you’re thinking of it as anything meant to be worn, you missed the point by a mile.
GAS:
Um, apparently not just was it meant to be worn, it is photographically depicted as being worn.
So, stuff in fashion shows isn’t actually meant to be worn by real people in real life, but rather is abstract art? Weird, but plausible.
#3 Susan:
Well that’s the thing about art, isn’t it? Especially when comparing two such very different thing as haute couture and music videos. One’s ideas may be so very different from another’s based one so many different factors that they may strike another as so very wrong, unbelievably wrong, that the other must not even be familiar with the material under discussion.
This discussion tires me. Art will always be subjective.
@33 As you like :)
High fashion = self-important rich people trying to make a splash.
vucodlak, @ #17:
While a lot of it is dull and drab (especially in America, apparently) it doesn’t have to be that way, and of course 90% of everything is shit. Oh, and if you try burning my green 3-piece with the velvet collar and the shot-silk lining, I will cut you.
John Morales, @ #32:
Yes, it’s 3 dimensional modern art intended for display on the human body.
If you want to see clothes intended for actual wear, then there are shows for that too – the vast majority actually, but that stuff doesn’t get picked up by click-bait sites because it’s not click-baity enough.
One thing that fashion undoubtedly is, is immensely environmentally destructive – the pressure to be fashionable results in millions of tons of perfectly good clothes being sent to landfill, and over a billion tons of carbon dioxide being emitted, per year. But hey, if it’s “art”, who cares? And if the point of art is to generate an emotional response (#21, #23), and that justifies it, skinning live kittens would presumably be just fine so long as it’s called “art”.
His mum must be so proud .
Oh fuck off KG, no one said anything about justifying the fashion industry. That’s a leap you made all on your own.
And “art” is anything that the perceiver deems to be such. The execution of which could be benign or fucking evil, to be commended or condemned as needs be.
Oh fuck off, Fossil Fishy. Nobody explicitly said “the fashion industry is justified”, but there was plenty of defence of the absurd nonsense paraded on the catwalk – for example, in the quote within my #37 (which I should have attributed to pyramus@23). As for your view of what art is, it would have been considered ridiculous any time before the 20th century, so don’t put it forward as though it’s an unarguable truth.
First you imagine that I’m justifying the fashion industry and now you’re imagining that I think my definition of art is unarguable. Your psychic abilities are crap.
And the argument from antiquity is just as stupid in your usage as when theists use it.
Done with you now.
KG: I think it’s a mistake to conflate the fashion industry with the “arty” end of fashion shows. That’s a bit like condemning the people who grow novelty giant vegetables for village fetes for the sins of the global agribusiness conglomerates.
Google image search easily finds endless reposts. Found a 2013 Reddit post where people already complained about endless reposts, and you find pretty much all the same arguments as here. There’s nothing new under the sun.
Funny aside: why does Google think that Reddit thread is from 2008? Because the sidebar shows that the forum itself was founded in 2008. Be careful about inferred data like this (also if it comes from humans, of course).
Clearly you’ve mixed up successive posts, this is the new outfit that North Carolina should weld to the “Silent Sam” Confederate memorial before handing it over to the Sons of the KKK.
@KG: Fountain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)) was created in 1917 so technically the 20th century but clearly at the beginning of it and its widely considered one of the most important avant-garde art pieces of the 20th century. It is often considered an important turning point in the art world and led to 20th century very different than the centuries before it. I would certainly hope that modern ideas of what constitutes art would be different from historical ideas of what constitutes art. IMHO it would be a more boring world if ideas about art had stagnated in the 20th century. And while your reference to skinning kittens as art is a clear hyperbole intended to get a rise out of people artist Damien Hirst has created a piece titled One Thousand Years (http://www.damienhirst.com/a-thousand-years) which involves a rotting cows head with maggots on it that grow into flies and then are killed by a bug zapper hung over the head. Finally the concept of “art” is a solely human invention with zero importance outside of human interaction so the question of what is and isn’t “real art” is entirely subjective and not really answerable. You can look at what the majority of people with expertise in art think it is, but even then the only time that really matters is in the sale of art or tickets to shows to see the art (i.e. if lots of people think its art then the piece or tickets to see it will likely cost more). I have 0 doubt that the designer who created the piece in the picture did so knowing that many people would consider it stupid and not art, that may have even been part of the point in creating it in the 1st place.
Whats wrong with it?
I’m getting more than a little bit of a horseshoe vibe. Posts making fun of modern art/fashion and other things that are “bad because me don’t understand :(” is not really enlightened or “freethought”. There was in fact a youtube video that sounded remarkably similar to some of the comments here by paul joseph watson.