"The irony is that the more you chase this quality, the more affected you can look. And certainly, not everyone who 'doesn't care' looks great (Fetterman comes to mind). This is why style writers are so obsessed with this quality. To me, if you constantly chase the idea of middle class respectability, you can end up looking a bit stiff an uninspired. But if you open your mind to wider expressions of style, you'll not only enjoy what you see around you, but you'll be more stylish as a result."
Writes Derek Guy, at X, after writing this Politico article —
"Congress Is Falling Apart /But These 5 Guys Look Good Doing It" — which caused Meghan McCain's husband (Ben Domenech) to say that he once saw Bernie Sanders and mistook him for a homeless man.
For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: "Tell me about the idea, expressed by fashion writers, that looking like you don't care how you look is actually a great look to pursue."
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45 comments:
One thing that that grizzled, old prick Sanders isn’t is “homeless”. That commie has three houses. Just sayin’…
...a bit premature for that Congress falling apart stuff. Maybe your side of aisle, you know, the part that has already fallen apart is falling further apart, but let's not call it for the whole thing...
Boris Johnson gives off that same vibe with his wild hair. I recall being surprised it’s not naturally like that. He makes a mess of his hair on purpose, iirc.
Fetterman's style has grown on me.
I was thinking the other day about what I would do different if I had my life to do over. So many things, but one was to dress more stylish and have a personal style. I really have no style. I buy clothes based on cost, comfort, and ability to hide dirt. I choose what to wear daily based on minimizing laundry. I guess I could start having a style now, but it would seem contrived at this point, but that's a strange criticism of having style Of course it's contrived. That's the whole point. Style = contrived dress. I guess that's why I don't have any. I don't want people to think I care, because sometimes I'd drop the ball. So far I avoided this one failure.
Derek Guy does the same shtick as Robin Givhan, where they insist that they're just writing about fashion, but somehow it always happens that people in one party look great and people in the other party don't.
I recently came across some old photos of me when I was homeless (early 20's). I dress exactly the same today, In fact, I looked more "stylish" then. Money can't fix everything.
Ben Domenech was probably referring to this image. It resonates until you find out his glasses are Oliver People's, the coat is Canada Goose, and the mittens are Saint Laurent knits. When it comes to fashion, the proles are just gonna have to bite their tongues.
Now lets talk about how great Steve Bannon looks! Are the leftwing fashion critics going to go there?
BTW, I think Boris Johnson had the right idea, do everything right clothes/grooming wise EXCEPT one thing. That can be your trademark. I'm reading a Churchill bio and Winnie often wanted to wear the wrong thing and his valet stopped him. Alanbrooke mentions Churchill wanting to wear a big floopy hat and shorts in North Africa, and the valet refusing to let him, saying Churchill looked like a little lad at the beach - all that was missing was the sand pail and shovel.
I don't care, I don't care
If people frown on me
Perhaps, it's the lone way, but I go my own way
That's my philosophy
I don't care, I don't care
If he's a clerk or just a millionaire
There's no doubt about it, I'll sing and I'll shout it
'Cause I don't care
Oh, I don't care, I don't care
When it comes to happiness, I want my share
Don't try to rearrange me
There's nothing can change me
'Cause I don't care
It's just the Left doing what they do - deconstructing. Here, it's style and fashion.
They have a compulsion to do it to everything.
Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class bigotry).
Bernie used to spew hatred at millionaires, until he became one in Congress, so now he spews his hatred at those dastardly billionaires who actually produce things. They can have him.
Just because Bernie often doesn't know where to lay his head doesn't mean he's homeless: it means he can't decide which of his houses to lay it in.
My aunt, a wandering schizophrenic, always looked stylish. She had her social security check and she'd use it to buy one nice pair of slacks or a blouse. (She lived on peanut butter.) You'd never guess she was homeless. Lean, tanned, and clean.
It may be offensive but is it "classist"? If we had second- and third-generation homeless people, I guess it would be, but otherwise, are the homeless really a "class"? I'm not going to say that homelessness is a choice, but it is an affliction, and not a matter of social status or position. If your dharma isn't being a servant or toiling as a day laborer but getting high and trying to get high again and again, maybe your condition doesn't define a class.
What does it mean to say that "he looks homeless" is "loaded with classism"? Mr. Guy seems to be saying that the belief that economic status can often be accurately inferred from appearance is "classist". But in fact, it is Mr. Guy who is interpreting "he looks homeless" to mean "he is poorly groomed". Which means that he is, by his own standard, classist.
I would suggest that there is nothing wrong with that. Stereotypes exist because they are useful, and that is why they are used. But the verb "loaded" implies that for some reason, Mr. Guy does not approve of classism. Except, perhaps, his own.
Style writers; a more worthless pursuit I can not imagine.
What, pray tell, do they think they have to offer to those of us who "don't care"?
My clothes are clean. That is sufficient.
As Dolly Parton said “It takes a lot of time and money to look this cheap, honey,”
Bernie Sanders is a lazy and mediocre human being who sold out to the democrat party. He obviously got a whole bunch of money from Hillary Clinton in 2016 and sold his soul to the Democrat Party.
Bernie Sanders is a lying, amoral fraud. The definition of a demagogue. He is just saying words people want to hear in order to gain power and wealth.
Bernie Sanders does not believe a single word he says.
Sprezzatura. The style of looking a bit messy. Also the name of a former commenter here. Or the former name of a commenter here?
JSM
I'll be "lookist" and say that Rosa Delauro looks like a bag lady--who happened to pour a bottle of cheap fluorescent hair dye over her head--or is that a wig? Whatever, no amount of expensive stylish clothing is going to fix that.
@Skeptical Voter, that would be aposematic coloration - Delauro's irrepressible evolutionary signal to people everywhere that she's poisonous. To the unaware - especially children - it comes off as clownish or innocent. However, it is but a Myrmarachne-style ruse to gain enough trust to preach the benefits of sexual reassignment surgery amid our hominid young.
Sprezzatura. The style of looking a bit messy. Also the name of a former commenter here. Or the former name of a commenter here?
I had two previous monikers here, which I don't care to disclose. I've been around since 2005 or so, off and on. But I am not Sprezzatura.
Sanders is a liberal grifter, a lowly drifter, a kleptocrat with a fascist orientation.
We often look pretty homeless, living at Trump International in LV. ESP in the colder months. Typically we will both be wearing XL jacket shirts (she’s actually an M, and sometimes even S) that we bought at Costco for $20. Until you look at her left wrist and hand, and notice a diamond studded gold Rolex and understated 5 ct diamond ring. When I am trying to find her, I sometimes as security for the crazy homeless looking woman I am sometimes with. And with new security officers, I suggest that they check her for a room key, because she looks homeless - that I know she won’t have, because I have to get her one or two new ones every day. Then when they get a more experienced officer, they tell the newby that I was pimping them, and that we are residents there.
The first thing that the more experienced security agents look at are shoes. Our show, while not pristine are too clean to actually be homeless.
A low level wannabe commissar,
For a lot of homeless, it most definitely is a choice. It's the choice of your friends and family to no longer put up with your shit.
his ridiculous diatribe to the Pod Saves America, saying these 'are the most dangerous times' are a historic at best,
Bernie is pretty tall, maybe 6'2" I am guessing from standing next to him, well walking past him, a couple of times. He gets out and about in Vermont on the street, or in the farmer's markets where he gets mobbed, or wherever, and since he is tall and thin, a lot of clothes are designed for his body type, so it's a lot easier for him to look good in them.
Hayden, ref rich people looking like homeless:
I live in the neighborhood around an expensive private "safety" college. One of the "Street Challenges" I do with my friends as we pass people is "Homeless and Mad - or College Kid's Dad?" A lot of the college kids are products of second and third marriages, so their fathers are old and rich. Which means they never throw anything away, especially their off-duty clothes. So they may have the same Lacoste shirt from 1977, hanging off them in rags. And they have a vacant stare, because they just do what the most recent trophy wife tells them, at least for off-duty things like taking the kid to college. When the trophy wife takes the kid to Urban Outfitters for last minute dorm room stuff, the dad is left ambling aimlessly in the neighborhood. It is very difficult to tell them apart from the homeless. I will have to remember the shoe trick.
JSM
Bernie: "These are the most dangerous times."
Bernie in a Dangerous Time (apologies to Bruce Cockburn)
Don't the hours grow shorter as the days go by?
You never get to stop and open your eyes
One day you're waiting for Hillary to fall
The next you're dazzled by the DOGE of it all
When you're Bernie in a dangerous time
Bernie in a dangerous time
This fragile party of fraud and waste
This vibrant grift, this US AID
Your vote's open for a little taste
Never a buck you can't afford to chase
When you're Bernie in a dangerous time
Bernie in a dangerous time
When you're Bernie in a dangerous time
Sometimes you're made to feel as if Socialism's a crime
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
Got to grift at the darkness till it bleeds daylight
When you're Bernie in a dangerous time....
JSM
The more Derek Guy focuses on politics, the less I enjoy his writing. He can be quite interesting.
It wasn't that Sanders was dressed slovenly, it was that the trench coat was stained. I have Walmart clothes, but they're clean!
Fetterman is 6’8. Bernie is 5’10. If Bernie were 6’8 his rumpled couture wouldn’t look any better than Fetterman’s pick-up game chic
Part of Sprezzatura is to have a bit of effortless grace to the appearance. Bernie just looks like the dumpy grandpa who's only wearing nice things because the kids took away his ratty mittens and faded coat held shut with those big safety pins.
If he wore a suit and tie none of his socialist diatribes would hold water.
"Tell me about the idea, expressed by fashion writers, that looking like you don't care how you look is actually a great look to pursue."
Looking like you don't care how you look raises the question, "What else don't you care about?"
Because it's a fraud by people who take taxpayer salaries.
If my dad showed up in rags at IBM he would be fired. It is a grotesque insult to taxpayers who have to dress decently to keep jobs for him to play funny uncle. In fact, it's the most elitist thing that that taxpayer fraud and his even more Marie Cunty Antoinette wife can do.
As a person who knows there are photos of me in bright yellow tennis shorts from my college days, I am not one to opine on the fashion choices of others. But I will go so far as to say that looking great is partly a matter of behavior, as well as outerwear. Trump raising a defiant fist and yelling "Fight!" with a bloody face, for example, made whatever suit he was wearing unimportant at that moment. Bernie spouting his socialist nonsense also makes his clothing unimportant, as socialist nonsense remains nonsense no matter the style in which it is presented.
I heard somewhere that, "style is being yourself, on purpose." For people with the means to choose, their clothing choices send a message. It's fair enough to interpret that message.
@RideSpaceMountain makes a good point about Rosa Deluaro's fluorescent hair signalling that she is poisonous.
@Jaq said that Bernie dresses for his body type. An old, skinny guy wearing a suit that is too big, looks frail or ill. Bernie chose to wear those ugly mittens. He could visit the Lost-and-Found at any ski resort in Vermont, and find a nice pair of Burton or Outdoor Research mittens.
Fetterman has grown on me, but his style is a mess. He is a big guy who wears over-sized hoodies with shorts. His chicken legs aren't doing him any favors.
Dressing with style can be refreshing, but the clothing has to be clean and fit properly.
@RCOCEAN II makes a good point about doing everything right, except one thing.
Wouldja rather have a peg than a chicken leg?
To me only women wear "outfits." Men just wear clothes.
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