As with most things, whenever I get a bit of the writer’s block, I turn to the New York Times for “inspiration” I find that the sycophantic, almost teenboppper-ish way it approaches the “problems” of upper middle class white society and culture to be invigorating.

And so, clicking on the “MOST POPULAR” listings, I found this article, which opens as a critique on our consumer culture and outlines a burgeoning anti-consumer — or at least “thoughtful consumer” — culture, a movement no doubt galvanized by the recent economic troubles and the ever-present need for Americans to out-smug one another.

One couple began giving away and paring down their possessions and now “live in Portland, Ore., in a spare, 400-square-foot studio with a nice-sized kitchen.”

The article veers about, after this Zen-like anecdote, before, in classic New York Times fashion, it start quoting various Ivy League researchers who have done just this sort of thing and that, in fact, you need not worry about having to spend less to be happy. I’ll leave it to you to do most of the heavy reading (four pages! Jesus Christ I’m not a scholar!) but suffice it to say the article recommends that you take that trip to Tibet rather than buy that discount Sherpa you saw on eBay.

But one point in the article struck me, not only because I’m a style “blogger” who has a “blog” in which “opinions” are “printed”, but also because the point was a direct exemption of the article’s thesis.

I like that for two reasons. First, I agree. There are many who are fashion lemmings, they follow whatever is out there and will blindly, fiercely go wherever the crowd and Vogue takes them. Then there are the fashion artists, those who would suffer for their chosen craft and self-proclaimed religion, and see getting dressed every morning as nothing short of holy ritual. I like to consider myself in the latter group, even unto when I pull on my Spiderman jammies.*

The second reason I like is because I disagree. I disagree because to say that fashion somehow has some kind of special ‘pass’ on materialism is laughable. Fashion IS materialism. To say that fashion people are exempt from the materialism because the derive special pleasure from their purchases is like preaching to an alcoholic about his drinking problem before going home and sating your porno addiction with a 10-hour wack-a-thon.

But I don’t think the two ideas are incompatible. There is a move towards simplicity, even in the fashion world. The 100 Thing Challenge might cause some fashionistas to shut their laptops, grab a rifle, and dig in in front of their closets (“You can take my Gucci when you pry it from my cold dead hands”), but I think it could be an interesting challenge. And it WOULD be a challenge, considering I probably have 80 pairs of shoes alone.

So, if you had to, what items would you want to keep or toss in our clothing arsenal? What guidlelines would you use? You’d have to have a lot of basics and neutrals for maximum flexibility, and ideally high quality pieces that can take a beating. This challenge would be easier for men, who generally can look stylish with a pair of dressy shoes, some decent slacks, and a button up shirt. But the question remains: can it be done?

Man I straight janked that NYT article.

*Spiderman is, on the Grand Cycle of Heroes, just “out” enough to be cool, but not quite in enough to be mainstream. Ironman and Batman are the in heroes right now. The Hulk is out (damn you Ang Lee). Thor is a bit too radical. Also, Spiderman is emo as a motherfuck.

Just found this ridiculously awesome picture on reddit under the title “The night my Grandma and Grandpa met…looks like a postcard”.

There is style in this picture, and not just because all fashion nowadays pretty much draws from this time period (or otherwise derives from this time period.) But it has a great deal more style because of its LACK of style. These are just some young people enjoying themselves and there is a real story, a connection, captured here. Is this shot possibly during a break in the war? If so, the immediacy of life is even more important? Who are these men? Who will fall in love tonight? If it was during a war, who will live and who will die?

The men are clearly in uniform, and they’ve done their hair, so they’re obviously trying, they’re just not trying in the way that people try now. There’s a certain amount of unclutteredness (made up word). In short the picture is so earnest it puts all modern PR/marketing/photoshoots to shame. 

Bitches.

Men are on a constant search for The Jean. Ever since rickety old miners demanded they have a new type of trouser to wear while furiously panning for gold, men everywhere have been on the lookout for that One Pair of jeans that will make their lives complete and give their otherwise meaningless existence purpose.

Jeans can’t just be pants, you see. They must tell some kind of story. They have to tell your life experience within a few seconds. Denim is uniquely suited to do this because they wear in. Carry a lot of change and your wallet in your right back pocket? Jeans will be able to convey this useful fact to anyone fortunate enough to be leering at your ass. Indeed, jeans are great at letting people know what you typically carry in which pocket, be it change, a comb, a switchblade, or even a small mammal.

Jeans also have the power to give you a tremendous amount of “cred”. Everyone knows that selvege denim is the best denim, since Japanese people wear selvedge and Japanese people wear only the best garments. Samurai were known to win battles purely on how much street cred their armor had:

Samurai1: Yamamoto-san, gaze upon Tachiguchi’s armor! It is woven of only the finest silk found in the Harajuku district!

Samurai2: Indeed, Kensei-san. We must quickly drop our weapons, for his fine armor proves that he is the dope shit.

Samurai1: Word.

And so it goes.

The funny thing about denim is that just as amazing, handmade selvedge denim is coveted, so is the cheap ass crap you can sometimes find at giant megastores that also sell shotguns and microwaves and microwave-shotguns. Again, it really comes down to the amount of cred you can get. You can rock the $350 Jean Store jeans, but you run the danger of being called a metrosexual, which ironically challenges your sexuality even as you claim to be over such labeling. So then you can rock Wrangler jeans, because jeans are supposed to be for salt-of-the-earth type people, and nothing has more salt than the people of Walmart. This is a very strange characteristic of denim, much more so than whiskering.

I just bought some Pointer Brand jeans because it fell into that second camp of jeans: cheap but rich in storied history. They’re a Tennessee-based clothing company that doesn’t so much make clothes as it does armor for blue collar workers. I wanted to show my solidarity with my fellow hunters and carpenters by the only means I knew how: buying Pointer Jeans from a fancy boutique in Soho.

You have to give it to Pointer. They have so much street cred a Google Image search reveals almost no useful pics. This is the only image I could find of the jeans I bought:

Tiny is the new huge. “No Results in Google” is the new “underground”.

For what it’s worth, the jeans are pretty friggin sweet. Now I finally have a place to put my hammer and straightedge. Being a Brooklyn Hipster, carpentry is one of the many side projects I have, along with my Swedish Rap album and my performance art project with the radio station.

The jeans are absolutely enormous, which I like, since many jean brands seem to be going way overboard on the tight, tight, tight jean cut. The rise is super high, so maybe I can take them fly fishing with me sometime (my fourth side project). All kidding aside, the color is actually very nice, and wearing them with some suspenders makes me feel all warm and American.

I wonder wear this denim roller coaster will take us next. Perhaps the Sensible Jean will take prominence in the metrosexual’s denim universe. Or maybe those jeans that have cuffs at the bottom that you can by at Costco.

Ah, if only those gnarled 49ers could see us now.

It seems customary now amongst the various men’s style blogs to talk about LA’s newest money vacuum, Baxter Finley. Baxter Finley is a high-end barber shop with low-end appeal. Focusing only on “basic cuts” and shaves, Baxter Finley hopes to capitalize on the recent, as designer J.P. Mastey put it,  “trending to tradition.”

If you ask me, “trending to tradition” sounds like a bit of an oxymoron. It’s like saying “fucking to virginity”, or “bombing to peace” or “watching Star Trek to cool”. The two ideas really are the antithesis to each other, no?

Then again, the last time I had a high quality shave was in 8th grade after borrowing my dad’s Sensor Excel. I imagine with the recent “trend to tradition” and the fact that straight razor shaves complete with those bushy-brush thingies are becoming fashionable, men might “rediscover” other shaving utensils. Imagine, the Schick Mach 1 and those disposable Bic razors becoming the new “old school tradition.”

Douche1: Ah, I just had a refreshing $65 trim at Baxter Finley. Off to the links. You coming, Evan?

Douche2 (Evan): Not quite ready,Rupert.  First, I must shave. I’ve just acquired a bevy of Bic razors at the local auctioning house! Now I can shave like that did back in ‘99.

Douche1: swoons

Eventually we’ll all be shaving with Buck Knives and brushing our teeth with chalk like the Forefathers did.

I was walking around the other day when I saw a big delivery truck decked out with “Land’s End Canvas” branding. There was a picture of a couple wearing gingham, and the side of the track was one huge close-up picture of a canvas bag or tarp, and on it was printed “Land’s End Canvas 1963″. It made quite the statement.

I bring this up for a few reasons.  First, because I didn’t even know Land’s End was launching a “Canvas” line. In fact, I had actually confused it with the recently launched Eddie Bauer Signature line. Which further got me thinking: what’s up with all of these “throwback” lines, each one a seemingly exact copy of the last?

It’s no news that workwear is in. Walk down Broadway in Soho or Bedford in Brooklyn and you’d think there was some kind of convention of lumberjacks and fisherman from 1964 in town.. The whole scene now reminds me of that “Derelicte” joke from Zoolander. We laughed back then because it was ludicrous to think that anyone would ever purposefully dress like a poor degenerate. Silly Us. (As an aside, remember that Zoolander’s father was a coal miner ["I've got the Black Lung, pop"], and it’s funny to think that coal miners might be having a large effect on this current work wear trend.)

But I don’t want to know what is in, or even so much why it’s in. Rather, I want to know how.

What I mean is, where did this retro/vintage/work wear/outdoorsy idea come from? Take a look at some of the branding, wording, and styling of these websites. This is Land’s End Canvas:

Then there’s LL Bean Signature

Tradition. Classic. Authentic. These are serious words with lots of appeal, and rightly so. With the democratization of fashion thanks to the likes of H&M, and the subsequent demolition of any male standard of clothing, I think a lot of men (and women) want to be able to latch onto something that is “classic” and “timeless.” People don’t want to just wear something because something is “in”, they want to wear it because it’s functional, it has meaning, and it references a storied history.

But that’s the problem: it’s a story. Who’s tradition? What classic? Authentic in what way? These clothes try to invoke a past, which I would argue is at least partly imagined, and certainly very skewed. How many people in America were really out there trouncing around in the woods, hunting deers and chopping down wood? Certainly these people couldn’t have thought that their clothes were anything more than tools to get a job done. And even if there were Americans running around with flannel and all that, why is that subset singled out for being “classic”? I’m pretty sure most Americans didn’t descend from New England back country lobster fishermen (lobstermen?).

Gingham. So much gingham. (via J.crew)

So then if most of us didn’t descend from Maine royalty, where does that leave us? Not to fear, for these are “classics”! Don’t worry that wearing avintage army jacket, faded jeans, and hunting boots 10 years ago would have easily demarcated you to the level of “street wino”, because that same army jacket and hunting boots can now be yours for only a couple hundo.

I’m definitely not saying that certain tracks of America didn’t rock that all-American look. A Continuous Lean showcased some great pictures, some from Life Magazine, showing clothing styles that would be comfortable on the runway or Broadway today. So the point isn’t that that gingham-and-washed-canvas look doesn’t actually come from somewhere. I guess I’m ultimately arguing that invoking ideas about “classics” and “history” are more powerful than the clothes themselves. Nostalgia (or imagined nostalgia) is the best marketing tool ever devised.

Annie Leonard was on The Colbert Report the other day, espousing her monumental The Story of Stuff Project. Being that I’m always either working, consuming things, or doing other decadent things like lying in a tub of extra virgin olive oil, I simply don’t have 20 minutes to watch a full video lecture on exactly why my lifestyle was destroying the planet (olive oil baths take hours to draw, so I’m not going to waste that experience ever).

That said, I did catch snippets of her message here and there during the interview, and being that I received my questionable education from a very liberal school of liberal arts, I am not unaware of the issues she raises. I for one, like most people from the San Francisco Bay Area, like to think of himself as a member of the elite non-overconsuming class. We like to think that we’re reusing and recycling, and generally fighting the Man by our lifestyle choices — choices like buying Priuses, wearing only eco-friendly shoes and clothes bought during North Face sample sales, and eating things that we have grown, or were grown within 50 miles of our eco-friendly custom house designed by some Swedish dude.

Being a Postmodern Gentleman, I am also all about re-appropriating clothes from vintage and consignment stores, so i guess you can add “re-appropriate” to the list of “re’s” (recycle, reuse, reduce, reminisce…about-what-life-was-life-before-we-became-neurotic).

That said, I can’t help but think that as a “fashion” “blogger” I am contributing first-hand to the destruction of our ecosystem and general culture of glut that has made our nation so great. While I refashion old clothes all the time, I certainly buy NEW clothes all the time too, and I am definitely plugged into the mentality that “buying stuff makes you happy.” The very existence of this blog is because buying stuff makes me happy, and then bragging about that stuff makes me even happier.

I like to think that I am a little bit of a Connoisseur of Consumption, at least, because I am not just about buying things willy-nilly**, but rather I like to cultivate and consider my purchases widely, making an acquisition only after careful thought and all to further my notion of style and sustainability. In this way, I’m unlike the common farm pig, who will eat slop without prejudice, and more like the highly trained pig, who will use his incredible sense of smell to root out the finest truffles, and THEN be awarded with slop.

It is tough to reconcile these competing priorities. On the one hand I simply MUST have the latest Jean Paul Gaultier X addidas X OshKosh B’Gosh project, but on the other I do tend to feel guilty that it was probably made out of polar bear cub skin and unicorn ears in a horrible warehouse somewhere. What to do?

**F you guys I’m bringing back this term.

Hello all (or at least me, since I might be the last person to be actually reading this).

PMG has been trying to find its roots for the last few months. And by “roots” I really mean root directories and other such computer mumbo jumbo. See, I had a good friend set up this whole blog thing for me, and since moving to NYC I’ve had to learn what the heck all this stuff was, including all the FTP stuff, database stuff, Google analytics, and even upgrading WordPress to the latest edition. I even had to learn how to use this computer more effectively (it’s not just a typewriter that also shows porn!)

Anyways, thanks for bearing with me, and I promise actual, God-honest content will soon be here.