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Clothes: Comfort or Fashion?

Comfort or Fashion

  • Comfort

    Votes: 18 78.3%
  • Fashion

    Votes: 5 21.7%

  • Total voters
    23

SaiyanHajime

CF Legend
Both.

Looking awful cannot be sacrificed for comfort, nor can comfort be sacrificed for looking good.

There's a middle ground. It's called "normal". :p

Also, "fashion" is subjective and relative to individuals.
 

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Don't mix up style and fashion Joey :)

Fashion is really just wearing whatever is commonly worn and sold to the masses as, well, the latest fashions. It's all about the number of people wearing the items (or being told that they should were them in the case of new fashions).

Fashion will often sacrifice comfort (and even looking good) simply for the sake of being popular.

Style however should always be used to make you look good (subjective and relative to individuals ;) ). You can be both stylish and fashionable and stylish and unfashionable.
 

nadroJ

CF Legend
Fashion I guess but I wouldn't wear anything I wasn't comfortable in? Like I don't wear heels that often because I can't walk in them, despite them looking amazing.
 

SaiyanHajime

CF Legend
furie said:
Don't mix up style and fashion Joey :)

Fashion is really just wearing whatever is commonly worn and sold to the masses as, well, the latest fashions. It's all about the number of people wearing the items (or being told that they should were them in the case of new fashions).

Fashion will often sacrifice comfort (and even looking good) simply for the sake of being popular.

Style however should always be used to make you look good (subjective and relative to individuals ;) ). You can be both stylish and fashionable and stylish and unfashionable.
There are multiple fashions at any one time, though. Stop arguing semantics.
 

Ben

CF Legend
A bit of both.

I won't wear something that's uncomfortable, but, I'd rather wear something of a nice brand and feel than something from Primark.
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
Cheap, comfortable and ok looking is my clothing style. Be it jeans from Asda, work shirts from Primark or latex catsuits, if it fits that criteria, I'll wear it.
 

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Please tell me more about these organic apparel and blank t-shirts. A link to a website sellnig them would be fantastic.

Also, can you please detail the Nissan coaster and Family Park? We've had so many people on here recently who have them as favourites, but they're never around long enough for people to actually find out more (that blasted Furie just keeps ban hammering them for some reason, I think he may be an anti-spammer fascist, but don't tell him I said so).

Anyway, thanks for joining and please spread to us the joy of your knowledge of organic apparel, Nissan Coaster and Family Park...
 

Mark

Strata Poster
Why do people always assume that fashionable means it MUST include designer labels and therefore it must be expensive? You don't not have to spend tonnes of cash on clothing for it to be on trend. After all, ALL those clothes that you get in the cheaper high street clothing stores are inspired by the designer labels anyways. Fashion is also not just walking into a shop and buying what everyone else is wearing. You need to have the ability to change it up, accessorise or adjust depending on what you feel good wearing and what suits your body. If you feel good and confident in what you are wearing and it actually suits you, it comes across in your personality. Fashion is totally subjective!

For me, I seldom ever buy something purely because it is comfortable, especially if it looks like a sack of **** when I put it on. Things like onesies for instance, for me, are purely for lounging around at home in the evening as pyjamas. I find basic sweatpants really comfortable but I don't like wearing them in public and the only time I do is when it is practical to do so... the gym. For the most part I am buying clothes that I will been seen wearing in public and so I make sure that I do not feel like a complete prat/total mess wearing them. However, I know a few lads that actually totally rock the sweatpants and tshirt look.

I think what Alex means when he says that it is fashionable he means, on that particular person. I don't think I have ever seen Alex looking anything short of fabulous in whatever he wears. Why? Because he ensures that everything he buys suits him, not just in a physical size and shape way, but also in a mental, matching of his personality way. That, in my eyes, makes him incredibly fashionable. Whether everyone else is wearing similar outfits is totally beyond the point and so is where he got them from. I doubt very much that he can always afford designer labels (as much as he may want to :p) but the clothes might as well be because the little bitch always looks good! (Sorry, I had to get one snipe in, I realised I was being far too complimentary!).

Another example, this time the ladies... Wearing leggings is very 'fashionable' right now. Does that mean every woman in the UK should go and buy them? Does it heck! I don't care how fashionable you might think you are, certain size people should not wear leggings like they are trousers. It does nothing for you besides show off everything that you actually complain about having (such as cellulite). You may feel confident but you look a mess. The same goes for designer labels. Just because it has the name it does not mean it will instantly suit you!

I love certain designers simply because they make incredibly good quality garments in the style I like that make me feel good when I am wearing them and they actually compliment my bodyframe. Hugo Boss being one of them. NOT because they are the most 'fashionable' at any given time or because they are expensive, but because the way in which they design and manufacture their clothes seems to work for me.

To quote the wonderful Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada...
"'This... stuff'? Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select... I don't know... that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent... wasn't it who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff."

Just some food for thought to those that mock and scoff at the notion that they are influenced by 'fashion'... I know a huge number of people on here who buy theme park hoodies. Hoodies with theme park logos on them only became popular when hoodies became popular in the mainstream. When I was a kid I only really remember seeing a tshirt or shirt available. In essence, hoodies were a massively 'fashionable' item at one point (not quite as much now) and yet, here we are, with countless comments from people, saying they don't do fashion, yet have a hoodie in their closet and I can guarantee that some of you look awesome in a hoodie and others, do not!
 

Intricks

Strata Poster
Considerind the fact that almost every enthusiast alive has or has had a coaster hoodie, that would deem them popular.

Fashion is mainly what is deemed popular and trendy in clothing, which means Coaster hoodies are/were a trend in fashion (in a very loose sense).

By claiming you buy for comfort and ignore fashion trends, but still own any coaster related article of clothing, you have still bought into a trend/fashion.

Fashion is nothing more than an image that caters to ones own personallity and body, as Mark said.

I dress mainly for comfort as Im fat and nobody needs to be thinking that theres a bakery infront of them :3. I could be all trendy and fashiony based off of what the media feels is 'in', but that **** looks gnarly on me, so I just rock some plaid/checkered shorts and random graphic t-shirts of varying shades of darker colors.
 

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
By definition, fashion is what is popular.

If you're a goth, then wearing black lacy goth stuff in a crowd of goths is being fashionable. However, in a football stadium surrounded by people wearing football tops, it's not.

Likewise, wearing a theme park hoodie at a theme park with enthusiasts could be classed as a fashion (though I would say that in reality it's a comfort thing that just suits taste).

When in day to day situations (walking down the high street, in the pub, etc), what may be your "fashion" in certain situations just becomes a style. That's because general fashion is what you can buy from either a designer outlet, or what other shops sell ripped off from designers (which is what Mark's quote relates to).

AJ (as an example, not necessarily) may not buy branded items all the time, but the clothes he wears are available from places which sell current fashions (in the purest sense of what is readily available and popular to the majority of people).

Leggings are fashionable at the moment, they are still fashionable even if you go to a swimming pool where swimsuits are worn by everyone. Though a two piece or backless or Speedos or whatever may currently be the swimwear fashion, generally, by observing people in swimwear at a swimming pool, you can't then say that swimwear is fashionable. If that makes sense in the theme park hoodie, goth, rocker, chav, football fan, etc sense?

At least that's what I understand AJ to mean, in the OED sense:
The Oxford English Dictionary said:
Popular or the latest style of clothing, hair, decoration, or behaviour:
 

Mark

Strata Poster
Smithy, what I'm saying is that theme park hoodies are the offspring of a particular fashion trend that was very popular and so have their place in the world of fashion.

Kim, essentially what that quote is pointing out is that all clothing styles come as a watered down version of something on a catwalk beforehand. Ya know how each year designers have the really outlandish unusual outfits as a fashion show. Outfits that most of us wouldn't be seen dead in on the high street. They are the very designs, ideas and colours that go on to influence the clothing on sale at a place like Primark.

Primark is actually a brilliant example of a company that takes fashion concepts and makes them affordable to the masses. What lets them down is the general quality and finish of the garment. It often looks 'cheap' but nevertheless, it is still on trend.

For instance, lately Chinos were on trend. They were available everywhere in a whole variety of colours. I have to be really careful with chinos. Some colours I can pull off, a pale blue perhaps but a bright orange would look ridonkulous on me. As much as I have a loud personality orange would be overpowering. It looks great on some people. I have to be careful of the fit too. I don't have much of an arse so I have to get something a bit more tailored. The mass manufactured stuff has a tendency to be made for a more general bum size which on me just looks saggy and crap and I hate that on me. In order to get a more tailored finish I have to look at the more expensive places etc.

Personally I thought I would look stupid in slim fit jeans until a friend convinced me to at least try a pair and I actually found they do suit me and compliment my slim build without making me look like a stick insect.

Fashion is not simply what everyone else is wearing. (Technically all clothing is fashion, just not necessarily fashionable). Fashion is a combination of finding the right clothing that suits you, that you feel great wearing, that others think suits you, that actually fits your body type and that compliments your personality (rather than overpowering it). It is a very complex thing to understand and get right to be honest and certainly not as simple as some people here seem to think when they scoff at it!

EDIT: In fact Furies comment about Goths is a very good one. Karen is a great example of someone who can totally rock the Goth look in any given situation. I've seen her wear the most gorgeous outfits at theme parks and at a particular wedding (conventionally not places you would wear those sorts of outfits). Yet someone else could wear exactly the same outfit and look like a total prat! Why? Because the fashion and style totally suits everything about Karen.
 
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