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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Do you assume that someone is less intelligent if they dress up all "cool looking?"

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Tryphena Absent

20:02 / 28.09.03

intellectuals frown on people who look counterculture, and this partially has to do with the majority of stylish people being utter morons

What do you think is stylish? Is counter culture alone stylish or is your definition wider than that?

00:13 / 29.09.03

I do think that intellectuals frown on people who look counterculture, and this partially has to do with the majority of stylish people being utter morons.

I'm not sure very many people are actually morons, and it takes a certain intelligence to dress stylishly. Perhaps the people you have been finding interesting are so because they are neither reactionary nor counterculture, the latter being, let's face it, inevitably commodified and available to anyone with the dollars. I think your friends could be described as counter-counterculture and maybe they think wearing your brain on your sleeve is gauche. I'd nip in there and start dressing blandly before that too is commodified ... oh wait a minute, he says, casting his eye over a pile of nondescript laundry, I already have.

06:14 / 29.09.03

Rage, I'd like to thank you for starting this thread, it reminded me that I left my clothes in the washing machine.

Back to the topic. I tend to trust someone who dresses obsessive compulsively, but am neutral towards those who dress according to current fashion. If a person has their own sense of style, and is determined to hold on to it, I believe that they'll be more likely to be the sort of person who adheres to their goals and values just as firmly.

Tryphena Absent

10:04 / 29.09.03

Can I once again ask for a definition of what stylish means? People who dress in a 'subversive' way and try to mark out their difference by doing so, people who wear Diesel and some of the more radical designer wear that's currently available? And what's bland here? Can we please try and get some description of the clothes that 'intelligent people should be wearing'?

I haven't met an intellectual who frowned on people who dressed in a counterculture way but than it generally means piercings, tattoos, hair dye and braids/dreads and university students tend to dress like that all the time. Thus all those intellectuals and academics working in those environments, or simply exposed to them, are probably quite bored by countercultural dress, I mean, it's hardly subversive is it?

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:45 / 30.09.03

the majority of stylish people being utter morons

This hasn't been my experience AT ALL. On the contrary, many of the people who I think dress with the most style are fiendishly intelligent. Quite a few of them post on this board, I'd name names but it would probably be a little embarrassing.

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:27 / 30.09.03

There's the germ of something interesting here, but, it's being obscured by inaccurate terms...

Key terms like stylish, intelligent, intellectual, counterculture are being used differently by pretty much every poster so we're floundering around in the gaps between each persons' viewpoint.

Is stylish about putting a well-composed/strong visual statement together? or about buying expensive, well-cut clothes? Or buying a currently considered stylish look wholesale and wearing it?

What's intelligence? blahblahblah...

And who on earth are 'intellectuals'? academics? self-conscious 'thinkers'/people who sit in bars fingering their copies of TAZ? cultural commentators/critics? Intellectually-gifted people?

Counterculture,as Anna's pointed out, is being used here in what has become a cliche/uniform/reaction all its own: dreads, piercings, hair dye....

One which is AFAIK regarded very differently depending on the context in which its performed. eg, in small town uk, it still denotes 'weirdo'/invites approbation, even occasionally violence....it can stil be a statement of intent...

In metropolitan locations it's unlikely to provoke these reactions. In universities it's (or certainly was when i was at college) pretty much the norm. it would have excited far more comment at my college bar to have wandered around it a suit.

23:09 / 04.10.03

Sorry it's taking me so long to respond to this: I haven't had the most internet time in the world.

Let's just say this thread has got me thinking.

Intelligent response is coming soon. I might even do an essay on this topic specifically.

00:23 / 30.11.03

Since when did expressing yourself physically become a reason for people to raise their noses at your unenlightenment?

Since forever. If you wore a sign around you're neck saying ‘kick the shit out of me’ or ‘dismiss me’, would you complain if people did beat you up or dismiss you?

The way you dress or look will send out these kinds of signals. Now you can bitch about it and demand that the world changes to suit you, or you can change how you look/act to get the reaction that you want.

00:49 / 30.11.03

That sounds a lot more aggressive than I meant it to be. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can't control how people react to your appearance, you can only change your appearance to get a different reaction. Or alternatively, fuck what other people think of you

22:05 / 11.02.04

p has his head screwed on

people are always going to judge you on what you wear but if theyre going to turn their noses up at you then maybe theyre not worth the effort :>

i dress like my grandad and people dont like it thats their problem, just wear what you want

i try not to write someone off based on what they wear, although im sure im guilty of that more times than id like. Some of the smartest people ive known look absolutlely normal, i guess appearance isnt everything eh

my latest aquisition cost a quid from a charity shop down the road, woohoo

20:35 / 12.02.04

A guy started at my job who wears nothing but fubu, ecko etc. at one stage he said "i'm thinking of getting a baby blue ecko sweatsuit". Now, I'm a hiphopper, and as all Real HipHoppers know: it's not about the clothes, man! So needless to say i HATED this dude! what a wigger! what a try hard! jesus, he talked about 2pac and biggie! 2PAC AND BIGGIE!!! Anyway, long story short (and i'd be very surprised if you didn't see this coming) he's an extremely cool guy, one of the most head-screwed-on-est people i know, just wears the clothes that he likes to wear. and boy do i feel stupid.

No star here laces

02:09 / 13.02.04

Haha. You should write that up as a comic-poster and paste it on the door of Mr Bongo.

No star here laces

02:10 / 13.02.04

In fact, that's straight out of barbershop!

13:54 / 27.09.04

It's not just those who dress in a subversive way who are misjudged in terms of intelligence. The way I dress varies from day to day - it can be punky, gothy, sexy, 50s, Victoriana, suits, whatever. I find that the more I dress in a sexy or feminine way, the thicker people assume me to be.

A few weeks ago, while wearing some jeans and a tight top, I was introduced to a friend's boyfriend who works in a similar industry and I who have quite a lot in common with. Having got past the pleasantries, he hardly said anything to me and I got the distinct impression that he'd dismissed me as not particularly bright. Once I'd loudly discussed electroacoustic composition and Music Concrete he changed his tune...

And this attitude isn't the preserve of men. In my experience, unless I'm wearing something overtly 'look at my tits'y, men don't tend to notice what I'm wearing. With women, I know I'm looking good if I get filthy looks – and they tend to assume that I’m a bit of a cow who is out to steal their boyfriend. I can't remember which designer it was, but he called one of his dresses 'The Bitch'. When asked why he explained that it made the wearer look so fantastic that the reaction it would incite from other women would be "bitch..." muttered under their breath.

11:13 / 04.10.04

I usually do the opposite- I assume if someone has the requisite amount of piercings and spikes and rubber bits and whatnot, there might be some activity upstairs. I've yet to have a convo with a suit at my register that didn't get past "You work at a register, ergo you are scum.", to which my muttered reply is usually "Everybody looks the same when you shove 'em under a bus, cockbag."
Really, you buy into a certain look, you're advertising that you've bought into that mindset. I deal with this on a practical level every day, working in the service industry. People honestly don't stray far from what they broadcast. Suits are arrogant shits, Hippies whine about plastic bags, Homies make team co-ordinated attempts to steal chewing gum, Goths and punks... well, they have to contend with me drooling all over them. Ahhhh, spikes. EEEEHEEHEEEHEEEHEEE!
I don't put people in boxes, they're more than happy to cliché themselves, thanks.

Tryphena Absent

14:37 / 12.10.04

You know, I hate to say this but I do assume that someone sporting a Tommy Hilfiger jacket is less intelligent than me. Particularly less aesthetically intelligent.

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:06 / 13.10.04

How does "aesthetically intelligent" work as a concept? I can imagine it would appear to make sense when talking about extremes, but I suspect in other fora one might be heavily criticised for using it instead of "aesthetically differant (from me)"...

11:25 / 13.10.04

When I read that, I interpreted it to mean that someone who was aesthetically intelligent would consider the aesthetic effects of their wearing a particular item of clothing. Not sure that that entirely avoids the problem of meaning 'wearing things which I like', because it's hard to know how much thought has gone into someone's outfit, but it does separate the two.

00:29 / 04.11.04

Montaigne addresses the question, in another way -- asking whether a rich man should be respected because of his fine clothes, and concluding that he should not, since the clothing itself imparts only warmth to the wearer, and not intelligence, etc.

Pascal refutes Montaigne, saying that the fine clothing represents wealth and power, and that he had better treat it with respect, because money and power are backed by force.

Each of them has a point. Pants so baggy they're worn well under the bottoms of underpants and expose the backs of the thighs do not drain intelligence from the wearer, but they do signal that the wearer views exposed underpants as desirable. Perhaps it is because the wearer considers exposed underpants to be 'rebellious' or 'sexy' or 'the height of fashion' or 'indicative of great physical strength' or 'a sign of a deep thinker' -- without getting to know the person wearing this look, I cannot really say. In fact I cannot even be sure that person doesn't consider the look be undesirable, was perhaps forced into it by peer pressure, and would much rather be wearing a pinstriped suit, or a loincloth, or kevlar body armor.

The only thing of which I can be certain is that it's a fucking retarded look, and life is too short to look inside every pair of dropped trousers in search of brilliance.

00:33 / 04.11.04

Also there is the question of context. A girl wearing ugg boots and a pleated microminiskirt to school is one thing. A girl wearing that look to a job interview at an office conveys that she has not been able to draw the conclusion that her garb is not appropriate business attire by looking around her at what everyone else is wearing.

00:35 / 04.11.04

"I can't remember which designer it was, but he called one of his dresses 'The Bitch'. When asked why he explained that it made the wearer look so fantastic that the reaction it would incite from other women would be "bitch..." muttered under their breath. "

Please tell me where I can buy this dress. I need it.

Unconditional Love

23:38 / 05.11.04

belonging belonging and belonging. needing to feel a part of something larger than you. tribal identity.

needing to feel individual and seperate by modelling yourself on current individual fashions.

who you trying to please? yourself?

costume,aint clothing its costume, which part you playing?
and why?

Harrison Ford, in a battle suit, wheels for feet, knives and guns

14:59 / 18.11.04

These blokes look pretty cool & they're fucking thick. The one on the left can't even feed himself & as for the one on the right he's a bit brighter but he's just a bloody thug.

Tryphena Absent

14:30 / 19.11.04

wolfangel can you please be more specific than that. If you have something to say than actually say it rather than uttering generalisations, if you have a question to ask than ask someone. Most importantly please read the thread and if you must post than interact with the other people. This is a bulletin board not your weblog.

wembley can change in 28 days

15:12 / 29.11.04

I'm interested in the question as it relates to context and money - specifically, the workplace.

For instance, I dress very casually. I prefer to be creative as hell but am not driven as others to make a lot of my own stuff (mostly prints anyway). Now, I work at an creative online media house in Helsinki, which means many people in my office are making a pretty penny and, this being Helsinki, have little to do with the cash outside of fashion and restaurants. If I wear something a little too obviously thrift-shop to work and then see the nth pair of beautifully-cut shirts and diesel jeans go by, I actually feel a need to go and spend more money on my wardrobe. Not so that I look exactly like them, but so that I'm on the same economic level. When I get something designer, I wear it to work and am elevated by folks asking where I got it.

I've confessed this to people who feel no such pressure at all. However, many of these people spend €200 on a pair of jeans, so I don't necessarily think they're 100% free of it either.

Another of my best friends is a consumption trend analyst, meaning that his fashion sense is up to the last 30 seconds (albeit in a noncreative, very consumer kind of way), and I sometimes have changed clothes when I know we'll be hanging out.

It's not as though this is like a paralysing neurosis for me, but I recognize the anxiety and resulting behaviour.

a) in the workplace, is it acceptable to modify your clothing (or buy above your "usual" budget limit) in order to gain credibility/promotions?
b) how is this different from fitting in with a peer group?
c) one designer has an impressive array of tattoos and when he dresses in a suit for client meetings, the overall effect is devastatingly credible. Is this just the way it is and are the rest of you "let's dress the same" peasants just missing the boat?

14:13 / 02.12.04

I'd like to thank Harrison for the funniest post I've seen all day.

22:20 / 01.01.05

Description of my looks is in this thread right here. To summarize: old punk, dark clothes, shaved head, and a few well-placed scars to remind me of various stupid things I did.

I feel fine looking like that. But many people think I'm some kind of nazi bonehead at first glance. And in the end, I'm fine with that too, because not only has it been educational to myself in learning to deal with other people's reactions and my own expectations of them, it also tends to reveal much of the state of mind of the people I talk to very early on in a conversation, which is always interesting.

(I do have one "sharp" suit, also dark. But that one apparently makes me look like some kind of would-be underworld figure, which scares even more people away... so I only wear it when I really can't get away with anything less decent.)

All Acting Regiment

16:33 / 11.06.05

About intellectuals looking down on the dress code of the counterculture.

Perhaps we need to look at the timescale with relation to this question. It's a huge generalisation, but, a lot of the "academics and intellectuals" around today probably grew up in the 50s or 60s. You'd probably have to be that age to have worked your way into the position of university tutor, for example.

Now, if we look at the definition of counter-culture clothing from the 60s- again, another generalisation- there is a definite sense of some kind of vaguely defined purpose implied by the clothing, as there was in the nusic etc: protest, rights, free love- clothes attempted to link themselves to the idea of intellectual freedoms.

Whereas today, that purpose and message has largely given way to the simple negativity and nihilism you see in e.g. Slipknot, whose fans make up a wide percentage of the dreadlocks/peircings demographic, and who also tend towards conservatism.

So essentially, the intellectual is aware of the "selling out" that has happened and so looks down on modern youth culture/counterculture. This could be true of the older intellectual, but also the younger, if they have knowledge of the history of the radical.

Another thing to remember is that kids have always had their own culture and fashions; the intelectual will be aware of this, and so realises that the idea of there being something inherently "special" or "unique" about glue in the hair or dreadlocks is perhaps a fallacy.

Does race matter in all of this? I think it does. A white, left leaning intelectual might have more sympathy with the countercultural garb espoused by e.g. Flavor Fla V than he does with that worn by Marilyn Manson because he is aware of of a history of segregation which is the cause of Flav's disatisfaction. What do you think?

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:22 / 14.06.05

A) I don't think "intellectuals" in this thread was ever intended just to mean "university tutors and other academics".

B) I know for a fact that there are plenty of university tutors and other academics younger than 45.

C) The idea that a greater propotion of people wore clothes for political rather than aesthetic reasons in the 1960s than do today will not be taken seriously unless some evidence is provided.

All Acting Regiment

19:29 / 14.06.05

Good points. I was only using "university proffesors" etc as an example, should have included that to a generalised "intellectuals", but then that would have been too vague. Is it at least clear what I was getting at?

Tryphena Absent

23:03 / 14.06.05

I think it's clear but I'm not sure I agree with you. You've explained why you think that intellectuals might dislike an apathetic generation but where's the evidence that they actually do? Or even that the generation is apathetic in clothing themselves? I think that most people who adopt a distinct dresscode might be attempting some kind of apathy but actually spend a lot of time looking at themselves and making sure that the constituent parts fit together into an image. That's not nihilistic and it certainly fits my definition of caring.

I, personally, don't think that there are distinct countercultures at the moment- certainly not in London. I haven't seen anyone wearing a Slipknot hoodie in about two years and with the disintegration of the club scene there seem to be less and less people who are definable by a specific countercultural scene. Perhaps that's something to consider in this thread? It might also be what you're trying to get at on some level??

08:51 / 15.06.05

I, personally, don't think that there are distinct countercultures at the moment- certainly not in London. I haven't seen anyone wearing a Slipknot hoodie in about two years and with the disintegration of the club scene there seem to be less and less people who are definable by a specific countercultural scene. Perhaps that's something to consider in this thread?

i think that we're moving into the age of cultural fragmentation, niche marketing and narrowcasting to the point where none of the niches are robust enough to have a full-on easily identifiable dress code, because they're both too small and too widely scattered geographically to be noticeable. the internet certainly has a role in that - people who know other people who are into third wave popadeliglitchica or whatever probably know them primarily online, or at least more often know them online than they would have even five or ten years ago.

i think we're also at a point where everything tends to be about cross-fertilization and hybridization, and so what you see on the street tends to be, say, an element of punk with a bit of old-school raver with a hip-hop flare, or something like that, which tends to lead to very specific and personal looks on the individual level, but when you're looking at larger groups it tends to flatten into a sort of homogeneity, because everyone's working with the same elements, just in different combinations.

i think we'll be due for a new "uniform" soon, though. we're right at the point where something bold and new will have maximum visual impact, and that seems to be when new stuff pops up.

08:55 / 15.06.05

I've confessed this to people who feel no such pressure at all. However, many of these people spend €200 on a pair of jeans, so I don't necessarily think they're 100% free of it either.

well, you only feel pressure if there's resistance. you aren't normally inclined to go and spend €200 on a pair of jeans, so you feel it as pressure because you don't want to do it. some people really genuinely like buying expensive clothes, and so they don't feel pressured at all and don't feel like it's necessarily a competitive status thing in the same way you do.

Tryphena Absent

18:10 / 15.06.05

i think we'll be due for a new "uniform" soon, though. we're right at the point where something bold and new will have maximum visual impact

I think that will be interesting because for quite a while the old sub/counter cultures have been recycled and it's been a good ten years since the last emerged.

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