As a complete antithesis to this point of view, I like the silhouette that work/service pants give me. When paired with a good polo shirt, it gives off the confident vibe that I know perfectly well where I'm going and what I'm doing and that there's no need to interrupt me for whatever reasons, because I'm probably doing something important. I've never had so few religious people/coupon hawkers annoy me on the street and so many people decide to ask me for directions over everyone else in crowded streets before I started dressing like this.
Obviously the broad-shouldered build, full beard, glasses and balding head help sell the appearance.
Fashion is only for people who need other people to tell them what to wear.
I do not think you would find a single person who would call it fashionable. I don't dress based on aesthetics, I dress based on practicality and comfort. How it happens to look is a consequence, not a goal.
Form follows function. I don't wear boots because I think they look good, I wear them because they're comfortable to walk around in for a whole day and last much longer than regular shoes.
I don't wear polo shirts because they look good, I wear them because they're comfortable and because the collar is practical to avoid sunburn on my neck. They also tend to last longer than t-shirts.
I don't wear work pants because they look good, I wear them because they're comfortable, last longer than regular pants and because they have a bunch of practical pockets.
The end result may be that I do fit a certain type of look, but that is incidental and was never the goal in itself.
Fashion trends are pointless and destructive. They herd us into cheaply made fast fashion and is a great factor in our willfull destruction of the environment.
Fashion and fast fashion are different things. I dress fairly practically as well. Even in work wear, there is fashion involved — although some of the changes in fashion may be driven by practical or safety considerations much more than appearance, appearance still makes a difference.
For each of the things that you’ve mentioned (boots are comfortable and last longer, etc) that you attribute as “form following function”, each of the functions may be fit by alternative forms.
You say you wear boots: what type? Even within steel-toed work boots there’s several different styles and fashions, and colour makes a difference. I did a quick search and on “Boot Barn”, there are 611 styles of steel-toed work shoes. For “style”, you have: 202 pull-on style, 172 lace-up (137 6" and 80 8"); 66 cowboy; 30 high/low top; 28 logger; 20 hiking; 19 roper; 19 wedge; 16 slip-on; 16 work sneaker; 10 driving shoe; 9 authentic; 7 Chukka; 7 Oxfords… You have work shoes that are heavily rubberized for electrical hazards; you have anti-slip.
You picked a style of boots that you _liked_. You may have had functional reasons for picking boots in the first place, but whether you want to admit it or not, you picked a particular _fashion_.
When you buy polo shirts (which I don’t wear because they look _awful_ on me, and they’re not at all comfortable), do you have colours and/or brands that you buy regularly? You might buy Lacoste brand entirely because you’ve found their quality good, or maybe you buy Hilfigger (or do you buy an entirely different brand because both Lacoste and Hilfigger are too “fashion”, so you’ve chosen the “anti-fashion” fashion brand?). Do you always buy the same two or three colours of polo shirts? You’re following a fashion.
Fashion is what people _do_. It’s not this amorphous thing. What is fashionable this year is not fashionable next year. Sometimes this is driven by fashion designers, but more often than not, a “fashion trend” takes two to ten years to catch on and become popular enough to become a “trend”. (Was punk a fashion trend? No, but it spawned at least three or four fashion trends out of it as people started to follow the scene and then age out of it.)
So dude, what you wear _is_ your fashion. You may not think that it’s fashionable, but you’re choosing your look based on an aesthetic that you believe you inhabit _whether you think so or not_. Otherwise, you’d have chosen an entirely _different_ look based on the same functional requirements you stated.
Of course there are multiple possible forms to the same function, and even the workers segment is subject to silly whims of fashion. However, a set of basic practical and durable work pants generally looks the same now as they did 20 years ago, and will probably look about the same 20 years from now.
If you buy from the fashion-adjacent brands, some of which have also introduced streetwear collections, of course they will reflect some trends. If you buy from brands that purely make work clothes, practicality still comes first, because if they don't last, they just lost a repeat customer. The main drivers in that segment are durability and comfort, not looks.
Generally I just try to avoid clothes with obviously tacked-on flair and garish design elements. That means I mostly buy straight forward work pants and shirts, polos/t-shirts with no logos (or minimal logos for polos, they're hard to find without the traditional little logo on them), and boots/shoes in subdued or clean classic designs. I like the Norwegian M77 military boots because they're affordable, comfortable and super durable, and because they don't scream "look at me I'm so tacticool!", unlike a lot of newer designs. They've been made unchanged since 1977, and they obviously got it right.
Is it fashion or anti-fashion? I don't know, I just don't want to be a walking billboard for silly trends.
I've had this discussion a number of times, and I guess it really bugs people that not everyone cares obsessively about fashion and outward appearance as they do.
Just stop buying trends. Buy sustainable and long-lasting. Repair when things break. Keep the same things for as long as possible instead of buying something new all the time. Frequent thrift shops.
> I've had this discussion a number of times, and I guess it really bugs people that not everyone cares obsessively about fashion and outward appearance as they do.
If that’s what you got from what I said, then either I’ve failed to make what I’m saying clear or you’ve misinterpreted what I’ve said. I don’t actually care how you dress. As a lot of people are fond of saying—words have meanings. And what _you_ define as “fashion” is a small (but vocal and visible) subset of what the word “fashion” means. Sadly, even if one is trying to buck trends…you’re participating in a trend of bucking trends.
You are describing a fashion—a trend even—that resonates with a certain number of people.
I am also amused that you recommend visiting thrift shops. Fashion “leaders” tend to make their own clothing, visit thrift shops (because often they are poor artists trying to make their own way and can’t afford or don’t like the current fast fashion trends), and combine clothing in ways that (sometimes) eventually becomes a fashionable trend.
(Consider the pre-ripped jeans trend. This wasn’t caused by some “Fashion Overlord” deciding that this would be some year’s fashion. People who became fashionable wore their jeans into the ground and looked good in them. Other people couldn't/didn’t want to rip their jeans or wear them into the ground like that, but felt that having ripped jeans gave them some sort of fashion credibility…so it became something that mattered in fast fashion. But it started from someone who didn’t decide to make a fashion statement as such anyway.)
It feels like you're very bent on casting everything in a vain and appearance-focused light.
I'm not sure how much more clear I can make it: none of my clothing choices are based on fashion nor on appearance, other than the basic requirement of actually being dressed and not wearing ragged scraps.
My choices are based on practicality. If someone wants to turn that into fashion, they can go right ahead, it won't change my choices.
Obviously the broad-shouldered build, full beard, glasses and balding head help sell the appearance.
Fashion is only for people who need other people to tell them what to wear.