Happy New Year, friends. This is another part in my Worth and Quality series, where I want to talk about what the ideas of “worth” and “quality” mean when it comes to fashion. I didn’t plan well and posted Part 1, Made in X prematurely. I am not in the fashion industry or even in a fashion adjacent industry, this is just something I'm interested in.
This post is going to focus on some more personal stuff, which neatly tied into an end of year fashion reflection for myself. I hope that others can find analogs from my experiences and thoughts in their own lives.
TL;DR Whether a garment is “worth it” is highly subjective and based on a number of things, including your personal style goals and motivations, your financial situation, and more broadly, where you are in your life.
Setting the Stage
Before we can talk about what the idea of “worth” can mean, I think it’s important to establish one thing: everyone has a different motivation for why they’re on MFA and that’s a great thing. This can range from things like making yourself more attractive for dating, having to embrace a new uniform for school and work, wanting to develop an image others respect, boosting your self confidence, and a million others. Whatever your personal reasons were, are, and will be, fashion is something that we all have to partake in because of social necessity.
However, if our motivations our different then of course, our goals will also be different. I want to use this heuristic of motivations and goals to talk about the idea of “worth”. Because this is an abstract topic, I’ll use my own fashion journey thus far as the example because I think what I’ve gone through is pretty representative of many people’s experiences.
Fitting In With The Cool Kids
The first time I really noticed “fashion” was in high school. Homogeneity was king and being on the East Coast, the cool kids wore A&F, Aeropostale, and Hollister. Thinking now, this was really before pre-hype Supreme days. Or maybe my high school was just lame. In any case, high school was the first time I spent my own money on clothes with the goal being to fit in. It didn’t matter to me what the clothing was, a navy blue long sleeve tee, a green striped hoodie, a brown henley, those characteristics were second to my main motivation. I just needed it to have the right logo and not be too out-there. A $50 A&F hoodie was so worth it.
My Cult Says I’m Handsome
Once I went off to college, my goal changed. I was more concerned about appearing more mature to stand out from my classmates for both respect and attractiveness. Most of my classmates were upper-middle class and above, dominantly white or asian, and preppy meant fashionable. As fate would have it, I discovered MFA and GYW and The cult of the basic bastard consumed me. I knew I needed my light blue Uniqlo OCBD, dark blue Levi’s 511s, and CDBs in Beeswax. This is now the somewhat-ironic-but-not-really meme uniform of MFA. Though we have somewhat progressed to s c a n d i m i n i m a l i s t, the basic bastard is the beloved heart and soul of our ever growing community.
During these four years, I gave up my hoodies and sneakers, embracing shawl collar cardigans, wool knit ties, and boots instead. Again, I didn’t really understand fashion, I just knew that if I followed a certain formula I would reach my fashion goals. I actually distinctly remember arguing with a sneakerhead friend that shoes were the least important part of an outfit because they were visually the smallest. He still laughs at me for that.
The clothes I amassed in high school were no longer worth it to me even if they were in the same price bracket as Uniqlo and Levi’s. The CDBs were my single most expensive fashion purchase at that point in my life and they were worth it.
Gotta Flex
So I graduated. Armed with my basic bastard armor and an unstructured ASOS blazer (gotta keep it bizcas), I went into my first interview for a tech startup in NYC. Got the job, great. It took me about a month to really realize that I was the only person in the office who wore a blazer to work daily. Even the C-suite just wore blue check gingham shirts (a J.Crew staple) and dark slim jeans. Maybe they read MFA too.
With my newfound salary, urban environment, uniform-less office, and FIT girlfriend, I realized that there were many styles out there that I now had the freedom to explore. I had a short streetwear, hype-y phase where I spent more than was fiscally responsible on Vetements, BAPE, and Yeezy. This was largely fueled by Instagram and seeing Asians dress this way. I thought they looked cool and wanted to emulate them. It was all about casually displaying wealth and I needed to flex, which made the $1000+ Vetements hoodie worth it.
Deeper Into Fashion Hell (Click on this title, its hilarious SFW)
When I realized that I really didn’t want to live that hype life (and frankly it was irresponsible and unsustainable for me), my motivations changed again. This time I wanted to express myself, which spiraled me into learning about design, silhouette, drape, and all the wonderful words we throw around on MFA to describe why we like or don’t like a garment or outfit. Capital-F Fashion became a serious interest and hobby of mine.
Avant-garde designers like Rick Owens, Rei Kawakubo, and Yohji Yamamoto were introduced to me through MF/MFA and it instantly clicked for me. I liked those odd shapes, the draping details, the play on proportions. Most of all, I like black. The first time I handled and tried on a pair of Yohji balloon pants was quite memorable. They were comical and foreign, especially because I was wearing a CDG Play tee and Onitsuka Tigers at the time, but they were so fascinatingly complex. The way the fabric was stitched together to create the balloon shape, the small hooks and button details. I couldn’t imagine what the fabric must have been cut like in order to create such a thing. From then on, I haven’t looked back.
My income has since gone substantially up, I’ve learned to be more responsible with money, which is great because I’ve really found a style that I identify with and appreciate at all levels but its definitely not cheap. Fabric and construction and no longer just buzzwords for me. I haven’t posted an outfit here in several years but I feel like this is the moment for a more current pic. For ID purposes, the sweater is Isabel Marant, the tee, shorts, and sock boots are Rick Owens, the leggings are Uniqlo, the rings are Ann Demeulemeester and Vivienne Westwood. I’m not going to go into the cost of any of these pieces, but every single one is 100% worth it to me.
Final Thoughts
In writing this, I quite liked putting my reflections into words but it also felt very masturbatory. I hope nobody else takes it that way but instead sees the theme of how the idea of “worth” has changed for me at various stages of my life. I also hope it’s clear that “worth” is not simply tied to a dollar value. During each step in my fashion progress, what was worth it to me depended on how well it aligned with my lifestyle and fashion motivations. Additionally, and I may be in the minority here, except for my GYW phase I never thought about how many years I would wear something. I expect my garments to stay in good condition, of course, so I treat the majority of my wardrobe very carefully, but my choices are not rooted in durability or longevity but rather how well a piece fits into my life now.
How do you define worth? What are your fashion goals and how have they changed? Are there things in your wardrobe that you have absolute confidence in their worth to you?
There is a lot of overlap with this topic and one I plan to cover later about “Fashion and Context” so please look forward to it. If you have any ideas or topics that you think may be interesting in this overall discussion, just post it or PM me. I also welcome any critique and other feedback for writing style, tone, content, etc. as it’s been several years since I’ve written anything outside of emails and business reports.