Where do you go to learn about fashion? Reimagining fashion third spaces.
Fashion is a communal art. You won’t learn about style by keeping to yourself.
Welcome from inside the Lekondo fitting room. A weekly dispatch from between the mirror and the door:
Each issue explores a theme, highlights some standouts, and introduces what’s new — in the app, on the streets, or inside your wardrobe’s collective unconscious.This issue comes from @Jakob Pablo. Jakob is a Queens based visual artist primarily interested in painting and fashion design. He also claims to know the best sandwich in New York. You can find him on instagram or on X.
It was really funny to see Derek Guy aka @Dieworkwear start blowing up on Twitter sometime two years ago, as someone that used to read his blog back when I was in high school. DieWorkWear is a menswear writer who credits a chunk of his interest in fashion/ knowledge to his time spent within menswear forums. Forums that I myself have a huge nostalgia for, because they really brought me up on my own fashion journey. It’s always a great feeling seeing someone who puts as much thought into their words as Derek breakthrough the mainstream. Commentators under Derek’s posts seemed to all share a recurring trend, they would speak about stylish individuals with a sort of mysticism. As if you had to have a sort of supernatural wit about you in order to have great style. Of course I’d argue your boyfriend isn’t genetically pre-dispositioned to wear that tacky sports hoodie, he just doesn’t know how to dress himself. Though it made me question where this sentiment was coming from, since the reality is there shouldn’t be any mysticism when it comes to talking about people with great style! Fashion after all is a skill that is as learnable as cooking,drawing, etc. To me outsiders only consider the subject’s current style, not considering the years of learning and experimenting it took to build that up.
This experience made me realize there really aren’t any good spaces to learn how to get a good sense of style. Google searches might point you in the direction of a youtube video or two, but there’s so much nuance that’s lost / can’t be conveyed in a 10 minute video. I couldn’t even tell you where I’d begin to point when someone asks the question “where can I learn about fashion?” When I was in high school circa around 2018 it seemed like there was an abundance of great resources available from the aforementioned online fashion forums, places such as Styleforum, r/Malefashionadvice, Kaynetothe, etc. I couldn’t have imagined those places were on their last legs but nonetheless they existed. None of these spaces operate anywhere near as popular these days, and there hasn’t really been a new space to fill that void. Niche hobby enthusiasts who’d find themselves in such public arenas have retreated into discords, and conversations for less entrenched beginners have been primarily relegated to social media. Frankly I would go as far as to stake there isn’t a single good forum/arena to discuss ideas. Journalism doesn’t even report on the artistry or the process of clothing anymore as much as it does work to create digestible fashion content.
What I’m lamenting the loss of here is the loss of real third spaces to talk about fashion and fashion adjacent subjects. The loss of third spaces is an American wide epidemic, but also one that intimately affects people interested in fashion. “From 2003 to 2022, American men reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent. Boys and girls ages 15 to 19 reduced their weekly social hangouts by more than three hours a week. In short, there is no statistical record of any other period in U.S. history when people have spent more time on their own.” (1) Both online and in person spaces lack the infrastructure to build real communities, which also greatly hurts broader dialogue about topics in niche communities. It’s really difficult to ask people for recommendations on raw denim when they’re all hiding in their private raw denimheads discord. I believe however the formation of community driven fashion third spaces is a solution to the current state of dialogue in regards to style.
Discussion about the current state of fashion media.
Fashion as a subject exists in a rather peculiar place. There has never been such a widespread interest in the subject without any real substantive spaces to discuss it. When I began to learn about fashion and style it felt like there was an abundance of resources available to me. The aforementioned style forums were a great environment to talk to other niche hobby enthusiasts who accumulated a wealth of style knowledge that were also willing to share their personal experience. There wasn’t any profit motivation for users to share their thoughts, homies were just doing it for the love of the game. Genuinely these different forums functioned as a great entry point into learning about fashion from people with a variety of different backgrounds. Environments like this were unique to that late 2000’s to mid 2010’s internet, but it genuinely promoted interaction between experienced and intermediate levels of fashion experience. Compare that to today where there isn’t really any sort of space where an intermingling of experience levels occurs. Rather today as I alluded to earlier if you were looking for advice on how to dress you would most likely seek out some sort of content creator. The dynamic is completely different from a mentor//mentee approach, as invariably content creators are trying to sell you on something (whether it be a product, idea, or themselves). Really this is part of a larger shift in discussion overall, as fashion spaces do not curate for discussion anymore, they instead serve to create content.
Much of this shift from discussion to content based conversations is a result of the isolation of American Communities. Really who can blame them? As it stands it feels like there isn’t any infrastructure for spaces that cater toward in-person communities or discussion. Instead online & social spaces are competing with an endless stream of content for who can maintain the public’s attention. As a consequence conversations about fashion have become much more commercially driven. Should I purchase this? What should I purchase instead? This brand is making this move, etc. To me this is the antithesis of learning about fashion. What we are left with are a generation of fashion consumers wrapped up in aesthetics, but without styles that have personalities. As art critic Ben Davis observes in Art in the After-Culture “The details of an artwork’s literal presence- actually going to see art at a museum or gallery, the subject of traditional critical writing- are reduced to a kind of local news status, compared to its significance as part of the more general circulation of images” (2) Carry this example forward to fashion. The average person interested in fashion isn’t concerned with the artistry of a piece of clothing anymore. Rather it is reduced to a mere status symbol. Clothing is part of such a longer conversation that entangles history and builds upon designers of the past, but current spaces don’t have the infrastructure to have that discussion. Conversations about Rick Owens aren’t about the pieces themselves, instead concerning themselves with the act of owning Rick Owens.
As I see it there are three major spaces for fashion conversation as it stands: Media (podcasts, substacks, as well as larger publications like Vogue), Discords (replacing forums), and finally social media. All three of these spaces predominantly serve that content form of discussion. I wont press too much on social media because that is self evident. In the case of journalism articles have to be made to be accessible and comprehensible to the largest common denominator, as “clicks” are now a metric of success; otherwise they face the inevitability of being buried by the algorithm. Inevitably these conversations get bogged down in constant conversations about new fashion seasons, and who’s wearing what designer. There has to always be something new going on. Discord discussions function in a similar manner. Because there is a lack of threads/posts there is a constant information stream with no organization in sight. It becomes less of a discussion and more of an overglorified group chat (an overglorified group chat which I enjoy tbf, but i digress!). These spaces are not conducive to conversations about learning, and honestly they’re not built for that function. These spaces are built to serve as content.
It’s hard to have actual discussions about fashion when any sort of discussion is filtered through the need for it to become content. A comment section is not a substantial replacement for a back and forth between peers, too much gets lost.The remedy to the question of “how can we fix discussions about fashion” is the formation of spaces that are conducive to that end whether it be online or irl. In fact there are already spaces where that shift in discussion is occurring.
The creation of spaces to learn about fashion
I was rather bitter about discussing clothing in general for a very long time, and personally thought it best to opt out of such conversations entirely. I didn’t really enjoy this new wave of content based discussion and found it rather alienating. But an overwhelmingly positive experience at Komune changed my mind. Komune is a New York based experimental fashion retailer which highlights emerging brands & designers. For their one year anniversary they invited designers they worked with throughout the year for a showcase, asking the designers to reimagine their first piece through their current skillset. Martin, one of the store’s co-founders offered a walkthrough in the store’s space at the end of each day where he broke down the designer’s vision for the piece they submitted, the design process, & what it meant to the designer. It was an experience which left a lasting impression on me because it really made me imagine what fashion centric third spaces could be. Discussion about fashion can & frankly shouldn’t end at aesthetics when there is broader discourse about intent, growth, etc to be had. Creating a space for your audience to engage with you & the designers you work with on a deeper level is an awesome idea. In my opinion a large part of Komune’s success is in part because it focuses so much on teaching. They give the people who walk through their doors the tools to understand the clothes they sell, which in turn creates a genuine feeling of community.
It’s important to acknowledge that there are spaces that are experimenting with alternatives to the current form of discussion about fashion, it’s just about discovering those spaces. Crying about the way things were or lamenting that they might never get better is an easy way to fall into a cycle of cynicism. It’s even more ridiculous to fall into such cynicism when there are real efforts to make a real material change, and build communities.
One more space I want to highlight is studio Wenjue Lu, a multidisciplinary art studio in Brooklyn. The main tenet behind Wenjue Lu’s work is restoring a feeling of “slowness” in an ever accelerating world (which is also kind of what this article is about in a roundabout way). Something that WJL has done lately is host several workshops for fashion sketching and the dyeing process for clothing within their studio walls. These workshops are exactly what I would want a “third space” to be. Not only are you creating a space for people to exist in, you’re also helping educate others. I can’t gush enough about how thoughtful I think the duo behind this studio are. My takeaway from this studios and Komune’s work is that fixing the way that we speak about fashion would come in the formation of a space that focuses on two aspects:
1) Works to educate their community in regards to fashion, consumption, and style
2) Is driven by a community focus.
There has to be more in person spaces like these. It would be great if we could make this kind of education accessible to people from as diverse a background as possible. I hope more spaces like these begin to emerge, as the demand for third spaces increasingly emerges. It is my belief that through supporting spaces that foster thoughtful discussion, we can shift the dialogue from a consumption oriented mindset to one that is focused on the artistry of fashion.
I want to also briefly touch on the topic of third spaces online. While outlining two examples I’ve personally experienced in the real world, the virtual world is a whole different space. Not everyone wants to live in New York City with all the subway rats, but still really want to talk fashion with other people. So what would those kinds of online spaces even look like? The answer as it stands is I’m not sure? Maybe it can’t! Of course a return to the old internet forum style discussion would be ideal, but the infrastructure for such a change isn’t there just yet. The way the new internet has settled forums doesn’t retain user attention the way social media does, leaving it to be unprofitable. Leaving a rift between what is best for the consumer vs the market, as inherently the algorithms of websites like Twitter or Instagram aren’t serviceable for the kinds of discussion that places like Wenjue Lu or Komune are having. In truth I believe it would require the emergence of a new online space that is focused on a diverse set of discussions, divorced from the demands of the algorithm.
So if you wanted to learn about fashion, where would you go? At the end of the day there’s no better place than out in the streets. Stroll down a crowded street, see what other people are wearing, have conversations about pieces you thought were interesting. Fashion is a communal art and you won’t learn about style by keeping to yourself. It’s because fashion is such a communal art that I think it’s important for the formation of third spaces that support that end.
References:
1) Thompson, Derek. “Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out.” The Atlantic, 14 Feb. 2024, www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/america-decline-hanging-out/677451/.
2) Davis, Ben. Art in the After-Culture. Haymarket Books, 15 Mar. 2022.