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Denim Blunders, Reflections and General Nonsense.


cmboland

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^totally right mate about the thrill of hunting down a pair. Same goes for me, got a few pairs sitting around ds or worn a week or two and am constantly wearing the same 3 pairs.

I feel it's that way with most hobbies, be it vinyl collecting/music, cooking, coffee, leather-stuff or sports. It comes in waves and parts of it stick around in the daily routine. For denim it's usually the "daily beaters"/favorite pairs, for coffee it's the daily cup and so on. 
But sometimes one is overcome by the great desire to get all the music from this one artist, or to try as many fancy coffee-places as possible or go bouldering 3 times a week :D

Edited by Thanks_M8
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A lot of my consumption (most of which stashed away and barely worn) coincided with the need to consume information and especially detail.. fucking rediculous details.. it's not just denim but it has been for the last 20yrs so ive purposely stopped reading the denim threads.. i'm not saying i know it all.. far from it (i'm trying to forget) but i know more than i really want to know about a subject which has never really benefited me in any way, ive enjoyed tracking down the details but  it's only served as a garnish to my forum life, nobody else gives a shit.
The need to consume details, especially code numbers and dates feels like a mild form of hyperfocus... anyway since i stopped reading the denim threads ive started researching 90's era mountain bike components, which was once a passing interest but now i'm comparing minute differences and dates of manufacture between XTR front derailleurs, M950 compared to M952, top pull compared to bottom pull, top swing compared to down swing... ahh! what the fuck is wrong with me :) why do i obsess? ive just replaced one need to consume very specific denim related details with the need to consume very specific bike related details.. why doesn't my brain work in the same way when i want to learn a language or something beneficial..
 
To paraphrase Girls Aloud.. "I can't speak French.. but i could tell you every product code of every single pair of Sugarcane jeans made between 1991 and 1998, Oh oh oh"
Edited by Double 0 Soul
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I guess I'm not in it as deep as some of y'all but I maybe have a (slightly) different take on it. Being that arts is my profession I really enjoy the creativity that goes into something so limited by nature as the blue jean. I guess it's like seeing innovations in fonts or something - the letters are fixed so what you do with how they look is what makes it interesting. So when I'm fighting buying a new pair it's usually because there's a little twist to it that makes me enjoy it as a bit of craft. I don't know much about Levi's history nor do I care to because what they make now is mostly pretty crappy compared to what they used to make, and many other places do that particular thing better - at least to my mind. But that translates to, instead of me trying to hunt down a great replica or some deadstock piece, I'm quite interested seeing what @rodeo bill or some other small scale designer is upto - from an artistic perspective but also because the small scale designers make more interesting stuff that I like to mess with. The pandemic definitely steered me into more of a rabbit hole as like many my world shrank, but I'd still hike and walk for miles (needing comfortable shoes has largely spared me from the artisan boot world as even a broken in pair doesn't compare to some cheap adidas or vans) and since I've been more or less lone wolf in my work for years the ritual of putting on jeans in the morning goes way back (you really don't want to get in the habit of spending a day in soft pants that is one slippery slope). 

Then again, my collecting problem is dedicated exclusively to photography books - given how often I've moved putting any other collection on top of that just wouldn't be possible - books are pain enough. But to that end a pretty effective limitation for me has been never to "collect" i.e. nothing in the closet that I don't plan on wearing immediately and theoretically if I don't touch it for 6 months it's gone (not great at abiding by this). Still, it's a push and pull with consumption because I genuinely like spending my hard earned money on the work of another artist and artisans but I don't need what I don't need and wearing out some of this stuff takes a awhile! I've been not terrible this year (two pairs) but the end of the year is putting some pressure on as I see a hole in the wardrobe (as usual). Maybe I wouldn't see that hole if I didn't see the fits that I liked but didn't have, haha. 

Cherish what you have is good advice though. No one in my life cares about it, at all. 

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When I was a kid, I lived in a country where you couldn't buy real jeans. I, of course, wanted to own one (didn't even start dreaming about owning a two or more), because my musical idols, all of them walked around in jeans! And so some sailor I knew brought me real jeans from far away, it was Lee Riders, gorgeous, I remember until this day the great feel of the fabric and the smell, amazing smell! The size was obviously bigger than necessary, and my grandmother, who had a sewing machine, tried to make the jeans smaller, even using the original thread neatly taken out for the purpose. My grandmother also hemmed the pant legs to my height. It turned out terrible, but at least I could wear my precious jeans, better with a long jacket or coat. All was over after the first hot wash. No one around me knew the real jeans would shrink, and that's exactly what happened. 

It's been decades since then, and I'm buying real jeans again, now Japanese jeans. In an endless search for the perfect pair. Maybe in an unstoppable attempt to go back and replay my first experience again, but now without mistakes?

Edited by Talan
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a psychoanalytic account, not of jeans but of the enjoyment linked to missing one's goal...

in Lacanian psychoanalysis desire is founded on the subject's relation to a fantasmatic object-cause which doesn't exist, but certainly stimulates activity [that never to be found perfect '47 501, for example]

... equally there is a notion of drive [for Freud, trieb, in French pulsion] linked to developmental stages oral, anal, etc. - and these are firstly bodily but also entangled into symbolic processes or replaced by things/activities like smoking or hoarding, or become characteristics ... see here for characteristics of the 'anal triad': orderliness, parsimony, obstinacy ... [I say this with my own treasure-hoards of unused objects and information... ]

Jodi Dean, following Lacan, makes the following point that may share light?

"The circular movement of the drive is enjoyable; enjoyment, in other words, is the pleasure provided by the painful experience of repeatedly missing one's goal [my emphasis]. With respect to drive, then, the nuggets of enjoyment is not what one is trying to reach but cannot: rather, it is that little extra that adheres to the process of trying... Enjoyment results when focus shifts from the end to the means, when processes and procedures themselves provide libidinal satisfaction" [it should be noted that the word 'enjoyment' here is from Lacan's use of the French term jouissance which has a stronger cruder sexual connotation as well as an interrelation of pleasure to pain... Nestor A. Braunstein links jouissance to expenditure above positive accumulation, if linked to goods or property, jouissance should be linked to their destruction: “Jouissance appears in guilt, in remorse, in confession, in contrition, more in paying than being paid, in destroying more than conserving.”]

I babble this all without judgement as I enjoy[suffer] my symptoms; searching endlessly through the affective network [Dean argues the internet itself functions via the endless circulation of drive] to find/not-quite-find images of '60s Oakbrook d-pocket double rider jackets for that [impossible] perfect one... 

Edited by bartlebyyphonics
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1 hour ago, bartlebyyphonics said:

a psychoanalytic account, not of jeans but of the enjoyment linked to missing one's goal...

in Lacanian psychoanalysis desire is founded on the subject's relation to a fantasmatic object-cause which doesn't exist, but certainly stimulates activity [that never to be found perfect '47 501, for example]

... equally there is a notion of drive [for Freud, trieb, in French pulsion] linked to developmental stages oral, anal, etc. - and these are firstly bodily but also entangled into symbolic processes or replaced by things/activities like smoking or hoarding, or become characteristics ... see here for characteristics of the 'anal triad': orderliness, parsimony, obstinacy ... [I say this with my own treasure-hoards of unused objects and information... ]

Jodi Dean, following Lacan, makes the following point that may share light?

"The circular movement of the drive is enjoyable; enjoyment, in other words, is the pleasure provided by the painful experience of repeatedly missing one's goal [my emphasis]. With respect to drive, then, the nuggets of enjoyment is not what one is trying to reach but cannot: rather, it is that little extra that adheres to the process of trying... Enjoyment results when focus shifts from the end to the means, when processes and procedures themselves provide libidinal satisfaction" [it should be noted that the word 'enjoyment' here is from Lacan's use of the French term jouissance which has a stronger cruder sexual connotation as well as an interrelation of pleasure to pain... Nestor A. Braunstein links jouissance to expenditure above positive accumulation, if linked to goods or property, jouissance should be linked to their destruction: “Jouissance appears in guilt, in remorse, in confession, in contrition, more in paying than being paid, in destroying more than conserving.”]

I babble this all without judgement as I enjoy[suffer] my symptoms; searching endlessly through the affective network [Dean argues the internet itself functions via the endless circulation of drive] to find/not-quite-find images of '60s Oakbrook d-pocket double rider jackets for that [impossible] perfect one... 

I just really want to know what you do in your life outside of the whole fashion interest. 

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@bartlebyyphonics maybe not to most but given that I'm the sort of person that (sometimes) enjoys white papers on that sort of stuff (esp photography, as it is my primary discipline). I also lecture from time to time (though not doing it these days) so ... if you're up for I'd be curious to see your work. DM me if so. I've also been on the hunt for the best cogent challenge to Althusser's work - just putting that out there in case you have an opinion on that. Not that I ever came to this forum expecting such information! 

Okay now back to pants... 

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17 hours ago, bartlebyyphonics said:

a psychoanalytic account, not of jeans but of the enjoyment linked to missing one's goal...

in Lacanian psychoanalysis desire is founded on the subject's relation to a fantasmatic object-cause which doesn't exist, but certainly stimulates activity [that never to be found perfect '47 501, for example]

... equally there is a notion of drive [for Freud, trieb, in French pulsion] linked to developmental stages oral, anal, etc. - and these are firstly bodily but also entangled into symbolic processes or replaced by things/activities like smoking or hoarding, or become characteristics ... see here for characteristics of the 'anal triad': orderliness, parsimony, obstinacy ... [I say this with my own treasure-hoards of unused objects and information... ]

Jodi Dean, following Lacan, makes the following point that may share light?

"The circular movement of the drive is enjoyable; enjoyment, in other words, is the pleasure provided by the painful experience of repeatedly missing one's goal [my emphasis]. With respect to drive, then, the nuggets of enjoyment is not what one is trying to reach but cannot: rather, it is that little extra that adheres to the process of trying... Enjoyment results when focus shifts from the end to the means, when processes and procedures themselves provide libidinal satisfaction" [it should be noted that the word 'enjoyment' here is from Lacan's use of the French term jouissance which has a stronger cruder sexual connotation as well as an interrelation of pleasure to pain... Nestor A. Braunstein links jouissance to expenditure above positive accumulation, if linked to goods or property, jouissance should be linked to their destruction: “Jouissance appears in guilt, in remorse, in confession, in contrition, more in paying than being paid, in destroying more than conserving.”]

I babble this all without judgement as I enjoy[suffer] my symptoms; searching endlessly through the affective network [Dean argues the internet itself functions via the endless circulation of drive] to find/not-quite-find images of '60s Oakbrook d-pocket double rider jackets for that [impossible] perfect one... 

The mind would be capable of constructing a complex misinterpretation of an event or process quite often. The neat structure and inner logic which such frolics would possess may require some effort on the part of the cognizing mind which entails a transgression of the limits of pleasure... B)

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13 hours ago, MJF9 said:

We're not a fashion forum though are we??  I think of fashion as the popular, latest styles.  I never considered my wears, at least, as either.

The term fashion is always up for dispute; here is the abstract to a recent academic article from M. Angela Jansen on decolonising strategies in fashion (to dispute that fashion is always the new, that the developed world is the only site for fashion/-ing, to think of the myriad practices of fashioning the body...) - abstract below and article attached...

"Although eurocentrism in fashion studies has been contested for nearly four decades, the topic is as timely and urgent as ever. While critiques focus on symptoms such as discrimination, inequality and exploitation, the actual decease, the modernity/coloniality structure, persists. The way fashion, as a noun, is being defined according to a temporality (contemporaneity), a system (of power) and an industry (of capitalism) particular to modernity, coloniality is inherent to its definition. Whereas fashion as a verb, the act of fashioning the body, is of all temporalities and geographies and operates beyond the colonial difference. Decolonial fashion discourse constitutes a framework that enables to redefine fashion as a multitude of possibilities rather than a normative framework falsely claiming universality, to humble modernity’s narrative by recognizing its own epitomical limits, to listen to and acknowledge an episteme plurality outside of modernity and to decenter the production of knowledge in regard to fashion. It aims to critique the denial and erasure of a diversity of ways to fashioning the body due to unequal global power relations based on modern-colonial order, the Euro- American canon of normativity and the exploitation and abuse of cul- tural heritages, human beings and natural resources."

see the section on critiquing fashion as the 'new' ... an extract:

"Contemporary fashion as a materialization of modernity/colo- niality, imposes a time that dismisses the past and turns the future into a utopic promise of endless progress while other fashions are being discarded due to their relationality with the past, with memory. Memory, however, should not be considered as a conservative move; the possibility to experience the past is not essentialist, but rather rebellious (Vazquez 2009). Imperative is that memory is not idealized or disguising, not turned into a utopia, but rather memory as the past as a site of experience, a rebellion against the future oriented reason of modernity, against the reason that idealizes and disguises (Vazquez 2009)."

 

... She also edited this book which had this section; the chapter on Bhutan brought up the example of a Facebook page on Bhutan Street Fashion that brings up some of those contradictions of old vs/and/with new as practiced outside the 'centres of fashion'...

 

1362704X.2020.1802098.pdf

 

Edited by bartlebyyphonics
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Freud contrasted the pleasure principle with the counterpart concept of the reality principle, which describes the capacity to defer gratification of a desire when circumstantial reality disallows its immediate gratification. In infancy and early childhood, the id rules behaviour by obeying only the pleasure principle. People at that age only seek immediate gratification, aiming to satisfy denim cravings such as volume of pairs, 'sufu-approved' cuts and niche brands (all within the 'otaku' denimsphere), which contribute to a collector/hoarder mentality, and at later ages the id seeks out 'sick fadez'.

Maturity is learning to endure the pain of deferred gratification. Freud argued that “an ego thus educated has become ‘reasonable’; it no longer lets itself be governed by the pleasure principle, but obeys the reality principle, which also, at bottom, seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished, primarily through a smaller collection of well curated, flattering pairs of jeans that display vintage fading characteristics”.

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5 minutes ago, Maynard Friedman said:

Freud contrasted the pleasure principle with the counterpart concept of the reality principle, which describes the capacity to defer gratification of a desire when circumstantial reality disallows its immediate gratification. In infancy and early childhood, the id rules behaviour by obeying only the pleasure principle. People at that age only seek immediate gratification, aiming to satisfy denim cravings such as volume of pairs, 'sufu-approved' cuts and niche brands (all within the 'otaku' denimsphere), which contribute to a collector/hoarder mentality, and at later ages the id seeks out 'sick fadez'.

Maturity is learning to endure the pain of deferred gratification. Freud argued that “an ego thus educated has become ‘reasonable’; it no longer lets itself be governed by the pleasure principle, but obeys the reality principle, which also, at bottom, seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished, primarily through a smaller collection of well curated, flattering pairs of jeans that display vintage fading characteristics”.

Maturity is not about learning to endure the pain of deferred gratification. It is about getting rid of the pain by learning to distinguish the necessary from the desirable, limiting oneself to the former and treating the latter only as a game. One way or another, we are entitled to desire whatever we want and have no control over the outcome. 

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9 minutes ago, Maynard Friedman said:

Freud contrasted the pleasure principle with the counterpart concept of the reality principle, which describes the capacity to defer gratification of a desire when circumstantial reality disallows its immediate gratification. In infancy and early childhood, the id rules behaviour by obeying only the pleasure principle. People at that age only seek immediate gratification, aiming to satisfy denim cravings such as volume of pairs, 'sufu-approved' cuts and niche brands (all within the 'otaku' denimsphere), which contribute to a collector/hoarder mentality, and at later ages the id seeks out 'sick fadez'.

Maturity is learning to endure the pain of deferred gratification. Freud argued that “an ego thus educated has become ‘reasonable’; it no longer lets itself be governed by the pleasure principle, but obeys the reality principle, which also, at bottom, seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished, primarily through a smaller collection of well curated, flattering pairs of jeans that display vintage fading characteristics”.

amen to that!

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14 hours ago, Duke Mantee said:

And still you’re going out of the house wearing that Schmatte? Oy vey!

there is a certain pleasure in terrorising people with essentially the same outfit on repeat for years now [with minute variations...] - although the young-uns seem most taken with the m65 military liner [I think given the flood of the quilting design on the highstreet at present]

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26 minutes ago, bartlebyyphonics said:

The term fashion is always up for dispute; here is the abstract to a recent academic article from M. Angela Jansen on decolonising strategies in fashion (to dispute that fashion is always the new, that the developed world is the only site for fashion/-ing, to think of the myriad practices of fashioning the body...) - abstract below and article attached...

"Although eurocentrism in fashion studies has been contested for nearly four decades, the topic is as timely and urgent as ever. While critiques focus on symptoms such as discrimination, inequality and exploitation, the actual decease, the modernity/coloniality structure, persists. The way fashion, as a noun, is being defined according to a temporality (contemporaneity), a system (of power) and an industry (of capitalism) particular to modernity, coloniality is inherent to its definition. Whereas fashion as a verb, the act of fashioning the body, is of all temporalities and geographies and operates beyond the colonial difference. Decolonial fashion discourse constitutes a framework that enables to redefine fashion as a multitude of possibilities rather than a normative framework falsely claiming universality, to humble modernity’s narrative by recognizing its own epitomical limits, to listen to and acknowledge an episteme plurality outside of modernity and to decenter the production of knowledge in regard to fashion. It aims to critique the denial and erasure of a diversity of ways to fashioning the body due to unequal global power relations based on modern-colonial order, the Euro- American canon of normativity and the exploitation and abuse of cul- tural heritages, human beings and natural resources."

see the section on critiquing fashion as the 'new' ... an extract:

"Contemporary fashion as a materialization of modernity/colo- niality, imposes a time that dismisses the past and turns the future into a utopic promise of endless progress while other fashions are being discarded due to their relationality with the past, with memory. Memory, however, should not be considered as a conservative move; the possibility to experience the past is not essentialist, but rather rebellious (Vazquez 2009). Imperative is that memory is not idealized or disguising, not turned into a utopia, but rather memory as the past as a site of experience, a rebellion against the future oriented reason of modernity, against the reason that idealizes and disguises (Vazquez 2009)."

 

... She also edited this book which had this section; the chapter on Bhutan brought up the example of a Facebook page on Bhutan Street Fashion that brings up some of those contradictions of old vs/and/with new as practiced outside the 'centres of fashion'...

 

1362704X.2020.1802098.pdf

 

I like this premise Bartles and hope I'm not totally missing the point. My limited understanding (and without properly reading the link!) of this as a wider discussion would suggest that living in a progressive, multi-cultural society (within a more global world), it should be perfectly reasonably to acknowledge, accept and adopt a more varied and diverse understanding of what constitutes 'fashion'. In global melting pots, this could manifest itself in a complete hybridization of styles. To some extent this reminds me of some of the photo shoots you'd see in magazines such as The Face and ID during the 1980s, with Buffalo as a specific example. If you look back at that now, it certainly displays various examples of what under a modern lens is now regarded as cultural appropriation. e.g. a model in a native American headdress. If fashion is truly to embrace a more global audience (via heterogeneity rather than clothing everyone in Gap), then it seems that some of the thinking around cultural appropriation and post-colonialism may need to evolve further otherwise we risk treading a minefield of a catwalk.

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19 minutes ago, Maynard Friedman said:

... it should be perfectly reasonably to acknowledge, accept and adopt a more varied and diverse understanding of what constitutes 'fashion'. 

 

... If you look back at [Buffalo etc.] now, it certainly displays various examples of what under a modern lens is now regarded as cultural appropriation. e.g. a model in a native American headdress. If fashion is truly to embrace a more global audience (via heterogeneity rather than clothing everyone in Gap), then it seems that some of the thinking around cultural appropriation and post-colonialism may need to evolve further otherwise we risk treading a minefield of a catwalk.

The tight walk / minefield to think around is the tension by which the 'moderns' defined themselves as breaking with tradition, and yet did so often through the pilfering / reworking / cultural appropriation of so-called 'traditional' cultures. Thus the West comes to be seen as the site for fashion-as-modernity, and yet it does so through accessing other cultures who are then locked into positions of being bound to 'heritage'. Thinking otherwise around new/old, modern/traditional also requires a reckoning with historical imbalances...

Jamie Morgan, the photographer responsible for catching some of those key Buffalo images [styled by Ray Petri] worked fairly recently [see here and here] with Graces Wales Bonner [a designer credited with bringing diasporic narratives to the catwalk] -  so I don't think that conversation is closed... 

I personally think the Japanese relation to American style is a very interesting aspect of this narrative; in terms of being faithful copies, a repetition of the same rather than the infinite spawning of micro-variations of difference [if you remember what was at stake in the K-Hole 'Youthmode' / normcore text I shared a while back...], but also a degree of Eastern romanticism/exoticism of the West rather than the other way round... as well as this issue of memory I cited from Jansen; memory as a rebellion against the steam-roller of the new [as long as this memory doesn't sink into swamps of nostalgia or inert narratives of lost edens] ...

There is also a sense that it is an interesting uniform [exact reproductions of obscure moments in the history of the 5 pocket jean] to wear in a period where there is only the perpetual-present, where the past has become a randomised-personalised google search and we live in what Mark Fisher calls the ‘slow cancellation of the future’… 

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Just speaking for myself, I loathe the modern world and basically everything about it, including but not limited to our (really, my) slavish addiction to technology and its associated emotion-manipulation, so I guess something I like about the denim hobby is that it encourages me to slow down, use well the clothing I already have, repair stuff when it breaks, and buy things carefully and deliberately. The style itself mostly hearkens from a bygone era slightly less bad than the one I live in, one a bit more humble and down to earth, and the production is all very low-tech and human-centric by modern standards. It's a nice alternative to the breakneck pace of fashion, mindless consumerism, and constant, uncritical pursuit of newness for the sake of newness, and slathering over everything in mass mental topography with a bland iPod aesthetic. Some guys are attracted to heritage clothing for the perceived macho factor in pursuit of some Old Hollywood masculine ideal, but I don't really care about this in comparison to the aforementioned points. I feel like there's something surprisingly humbling about it, actually, but that's just my experience.

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