On plaids, fashion, and style

Yesterday I got my new grey Glen plaid suit delivered and I must say that I really love it. I recently had a discussion with some people about plaids and the view they held was that plaids were horrid and should never be worn. I found this view especially strange, considering that plaids are very traditional and will stand the test of time very well. My friends held the opposing view. After some bickering, it actually turned out that with plaids, they were referring to those horrid overshoots from a couple of decades back. This allowed us to find some common ground as I will admit that those sorts of extravagant plaids might be something that you would want to steer clear of. But as for more traditional plaids and checks, like the Glen plaid and the Prince of Wales check, are very traditional and stylish. And as such, there is nothing wrong with either, in my opinion. Quite the opposite, I think that a subtle dark grey Glen plaid suit with a nice tie and maybe a vest or a knit can in fact look very sharp.

This leads me to another discussion that I had yesterday regarding fashion versus style. The worst mistake you can do, from my point of view, is to treat the two words as synonyms. I dislike fashion and the fashion world. I think they just artificially and commercially create fashion fads that run a multibillion dollar industry that forces (or allows?) fashion aficionados to scrap their wardrobe every six months and buy everything again. Additionally I often get this feeling that fashion is exactly form over function. Take, for instance, very tight and slim jeans. What is the point of them, exactly? I would imagine that moving around in them is very tedious and restricted. Additionally it represents one end of the scale, and extremes are rarely good things.

Enter style. I would define style as your personal taste that you develop and which evolves through time. But unlike fashion with its sharp corners, I would say that styles, at least for me, evolve more slowly, gradually and with softer edges. One might say that every time your style changes slightly, that you might have started to follow a new fashion. And I guess that's a fair thing to say. But still I would hold the view that style is stronger than fashion and for me, my personal style dominates fashion in the sense that if fashion brings about something that I in fact do like, I will adopt it into my style. This, of course, would also include some background work on the thing being adopted. In this regard I guess I am very conservative when it comes to clothing. I would've also said pragmatic, but that would've just been provocative and nobody would've believed me.

I would like to have you believe that fashion and style are very far away from each other and you should never ever use them interchangeably. But that's quite a harsh view and isn't very true. I think a better interpretation is to see the dynamics between the two. Fashion tends to be very blunt and aggressive; it makes sharp turns, tight corners, reverses itself every six months, and so on. Style, in turn, is slower, more refined, more subtle and when style starts turning somewhere, it turns very much slower and different fashions are just slightly steering it. As an analogy, think of fashion as a speedboat and style as a large cruise ship (I don't know how well that analogy works in practice, but it captures some broad points). I think another distinction might be that style is very personal whereas fashion might be less so. I'm not, of course, saying that I outright despise fashion. Instead, I just find it slightly silly and prefer a more traditional approach. But this topic is of especial interest to me, so if you do want to share views or just spend an afternoon argueing about this in good faith, just drop me a line.