Transcript of Sunday Special: The Fashion Episode

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Welcome to the Daily Sunday Special. I'm Gilbert Cruz, the Editor of the New York Times Book Review, and every week, I'm here with my colleagues. We're talking about music and movies and books and TV, just all sorts of fun stuff. Today, we're talking about fashion. This month kicked off the Big Four Fashion Weeks, New York, London, Milan, and Paris. If you've ever seen even a single photo from one of these runways, I think you know that those clothes bear little resemblance to what we wear on a daily basis. But those clothes and those events are still important and influential in many ways. I want to know how, and today we're going to talk about that. We're also going to answer some of your questions about personal style. With me today are two of my colleagues who cover Fashion for the Times, Stella Bugby, the editor of our Style's Desk. Hello, Stella.

Hello, Gilbert.

Also here is Jacob Gallagher, who is one of our Fashion Reporters who goes to a lot of Fashion Week events. Hello, Jacob. Hi, Gilbert. Hi. Okay, so I feel like I have to fess up straight away. Maybe you already know this based on what I wear around the office. But I don't feel like a particularly fashionable person. I don't follow the world of fashion. I don't think about it a ton. Not because I don't think it's important, but because it seems impenetrable to me. It's a little like sports sometimes. There's so many names to remember, so many designers. I'm hoping that we can have a conversation that unlocks that. But I want to go way back first. I want to ask each of you, when you think you first understood that fashion was not only important, but it's actually something that you wanted to spend your time thinking about? We're all pointing at each other. This is a Spider-Man meme here.

I think what makes fashion interesting to me is that it's about how we like to be perceived out in the world and the messages that we like to send. It's one way that we can decode the world around us neatly and easily, or at least that's the hope. You pick the clothes you pick to communicate how you think you stand in the world, if you can. I think I was very aware of that growing up in Washington, DC, where where what you wear is very coded to where you fit into the world. As a very little child, I just remember thinking like, Oh, it's very easy to tell which group everybody is a part of. There were the suits, the punks, the soccer moms, just these tribes of style choices that people would make. It had nothing to do with high fashion. As a young child, I wasn't aware of trends or anything like that, but I was very aware of the way people use fashion to display their values in the world.

Gilbert, I'll maybe ask you to not use fashion as much as clothes. I'm sure a lot of listeners make that same distinction, but to me, what we do is cover clothes. I think fashion is a part of that. High fashion, as you're perceiving it on the runway, is certainly part of that. But what we talk about is just the broad universe landscape of clothes. I also grew up, I grew up right outside DC, and I grew up in the skateboarding, hardcore punk world. That is a very esthetically driven space. It's very tribal. How you dress dictates what you're into or who you're into. I think that was where the awareness came in for me. I have a cousin who is from the Bay Area, which was its own punk scene. I will always remember, in the way you always look up to your older cousins, he had a hoodie that he never washed, and it was disgusting. But I thought it was the coolest thing on Earth because it was from this band that he loved and he was really into that I didn't know of because they were from the Bay Area. I just remember the fact that it felt like that sweatshirt had something that made it greater.

The fact that a piece of clothing and cotton stitched together could take on something like that, that registered with me pretty early. I would say to maybe try to answer your question in the high fashion world, the first piece of high fashion I bought were a pair of Genya Watanabe jeans that I bought when I was, I want to say 20. I had just moved to New... I transferred colleges. I was in New York. I was working retail and I saved up for these jeans. They looked like what you'd put on a scarecrow, like out on your farm. Ready to stuff up straw. They were really patched. It was like they should have come with a packet of straw. But to me, they felt, and I hate saying this word now because it's so cringe, but they felt very punk. They felt like the high fashion version of what I grew up looking at and believing in and wanting to emulate. I still have them. I refuse to get rid of them. They are not way, way too small, but they're so prized to me still.

I think what you're getting at is one of my favorite terms, which is the narcissism of small differences. It's like this This idea that you're going to notice that somehow my shirt is different than somebody else's shirt because you're going to be clued in to the secret messages that a junior Watanabe jeans might send out to the people who know what those things are. That's what makes fashion fun.

Absolutely.

What happened to your cousin's sweatshirt?

Oh, man, I'd have to ask him. Did he ever wash it? He definitely did wash it at some point, or it's just disintegrated. It's now in a landfill out near a Benicia California.

He never washed it. He never washed it.

Also, there was a time where, this is a total tangent, but in clothing, the whole thing was to never wash your jeans, and they could eventually walk out the door on their own. I tried to never do that, but I wonder if he was just ahead of the curve, maybe on the raw denim movement a little bit.

I feel like we all had that cousin. Totally.

You looked up to him. It's always a cousin, it's never a sibling.

As we speak, New York Fashion Week has ended. Stella, you are shortly going to head over to Paris Fashion Week. Is that correct?

I am, yes.

Speaking for myself, I have little idea what goes on at these events. I see videos, I see photos, I imagine various celebrities sitting in various places and watching models walk down the runway. But I actually don't know what any of that means. I don't understand what's happening in the room. I would love for you to decode it for me a little bit, if you can, as someone who's been to maybe more than a few of these.

Yes. I don't think that I understood before I started going to fashion shows exactly what the purpose of fashion shows were. They are both to display new ideas for that season or for the coming opposite season. If it's fall, we're looking at spring of the following year. If it's spring, you're looking at fall. The show is supposed to preview for editors and members of the press, as well as buyers for major department stores and smaller stores, what's going to be available. The buyers will go to the show, and then they will do an appointment after the show and pick which things that they're going to bring into their stores. The editors will go to the show, and they will ostensibly decide which looks they're going to photograph in the pages of their magazines. That was how it used to work. That's pretty much still the format that we all follow. Am I missing anything, Jacob?

Well, I would say I think it's important to parse out that the buyer Their interaction has in many cases, that's withered, I would say, because a lot of, as you alluded to actually, Gilbert, for some brands, what they show is purely conceptual. It will never be shown to buyers, it will never be purchased. It will never land in stores. I think people focus maybe a little too much on that aspect, but there is no denying that the purpose of it, I think, is now more as marketing exercise than as a way to to drum up interest for the commercial side of your business or to try to offer catnip to those buyers. I think now it's like the event itself is the marketing end. You see that in reports about how much marketing dollars these shows equate to and what have you, and that's why they invite celebrity and all that. But I think it still functions the same as a member of the press in a way. You're still looking at it, trying to dissect what this might mean for the broader market.

Yeah, what are the trends going to be? I think that's the big question coming out of each season. That, at least traditionally, has been. Traditionally. I wouldn't say that it's so predictive.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think the glamor that you're seeing, if I can try to bring you in the room. Please do. The glamor that you're seeing is really not what we're experiencing. It's like if you've ever waited for the bus or if you've ever been at a concert and you've been like, Why will this just not go on already? That's what being at a fashion show feels like a lot of the time. You get there and you sit there and you're like, Okay, I understand. It's this performative ritual of if the show's at one, it will actually begin at 1: 45 or when the last celebrity that they have been waiting on finally arrives. That can be- It will last 10 minutes.

If that. Then you will be herded back out the door. Yes.

What are you doing in those 45 minutes? Are you looking around?

I play Spelling Bee by the New York Times. No, like any good reporter, I'm getting up and I'm going to talk to whatever celebrity is there. Sometimes they're interesting, and a lot of times they are the same celebrity that you've already seen 3-5-7 times that week because the season that Chapel Roon got popular, it was like she arrived in Paris and her people were like, We'll have her go to every show possible. She was at all these shows back to back to back. Part of that is image building for them. Part of that, I don't know what brand deals Chapel Roon has or what she's fostering, but part of that is that eventually that relationship with the brand might result in an endorsement deal that could be very lucrative for them. So especially on the men's side, the NBA's offseason, you'll see a lot of basketball players just suddenly show up at these shows and they're going to like, Zanja, then Then they'll be at the Canalee presentation. Then they might show up at Prada and you're like, How did you end up just making your schedule?

But in a way, that becomes its own trend. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's almost more interesting to see who's at the show on the celebrity side, on the VIP side, because it's a way to see culturally who's mattering to these big brands.

What are you seeing in the room, Stella?

What are you looking for? What I'm looking for in a show is something surprising, something directional, something that changes my mind about the brand, even. I often go into a show with an expectation from a certain brand, and when they surprise me, I'm always delighted. It's like, Oh, I've never seen Tori Birch do something so interesting.

Can you tell me something that falls into this category from this season or the past one?

You don't have those moments very often. When they happen, it's like, Oh, all this waiting, all this stress was worth it because that was magic. That felt really exciting. I can imagine that changing the way that women are going to wear their coats or something. We have those moments, few and far between. But I remember, for example, there'll be a designer like Eddie Slomane, who is a very controversial type of guy. Polarizing? Polarizing, perfect word.

Like personally polarizing or professionally polarizing?

Yeah. He's been at the helm of several brands. But sometimes you'll be sitting there and you'll have It was an experience like I did in, I don't know, this was more than 10 years ago when he took over Saint Laurent. Everybody in the audience hated it so much. I remember sitting there thinking, I don't know, this is fun. It's good. Maybe it's a little provocative. Rather than, for example, being swept up in the energy of disliking it, I was sitting there allowing myself to think whether I was about to have an independent reaction to this thing and going back to my hotel room afterward and writing that I liked it and then feeling like, Oh, I'm going to be at odds with the prevailing attitude about this particular show. That thing is very fun.

What did he show? What was the look?

That runway was just a bunch of leather mini-dresses, which everybody was like, Oh, those could be from Hot Topic. I had a different feeling about it and just that willingness to challenge my own expectations and then also perhaps be at odds with with my peers, and it's fun to have those moments. I often get them at Prada. You'll sit there and she'll send something out that's so wild and different and crazy, something like you've never seen, and you have to decide, is the reaction I'm having negative? Is it positive? Is it positive that it's negative? It sounds silly, but that's what makes it fun. That's what makes it glamorous. That's what makes the sport of it engaging year after year after year.

Jacob, do you remember a moment at a show where you said to yourself, I'm seeing something that feels unique, different. I'm having a genuine esthetic or emotional reaction to it.

When the whole experience is calibrated just right, it's still, to me, I feel corny saying this, it's still the greatest thing to get to witness, I think. There's a couple of Prada shows from back when... I remember there was one season where the space was like a ship and we were sat sunken looking up at the runway. The collection was this nautical shipwrecky feeling to it. I remember sitting there and I was like, This is so incredible. I just want this P-coat. I remember thinking, I still try to find this peacot from this collection. It had a denim strip on the sleeve, but it was incredibly It felt like being in theater, you were in an immersive theater experience that you could then shop from, which is so cool as a way to break down what a show is.

Yeah. I think I'm not shopping so much as wanting to have my perspective changed around my own desires and my own idea of the way that someone can look. For example, Balenciaga. I have never bought an item from Demna, who designed Balenciaga for all these years. But I remember sitting in his shows, like his early shows in Paris, and thinking, this is a totally different way of presenting a body of interpreting modernity. Those kinds of thoughts, like whether or not I was actually going to buy them was less important to me. It was more that I had never seen anything this before, and that's thrilling in and of itself.

Yeah, I should say, as a critic, the times where I'm sat there being like, Oh, I want to buy something, very, very few and far between.

But that peat coat.

But that peat coat still does rattle in my brain. But I think there have been a number of shows. He's now at Dior, but Jonathan Anderson, on the men's side in particular, to me, has been very, very good at that. He was at Loeve for a number of years. But he would do these shows, and you would see the way he was thinking about the male body proportionally in particular. I really remember this one show where he showed these pants that were sat at the rib cage and they were sparkly, but they were shown with otherwise conservative items, dark Blazers and buttoned-up shirts. I just sat there smiling and was like, This is actually new. This has no applicability to how anyone will or probably should dress. But what a cool way to rethink where a pant should sit. Maybe that will have impact to make people think differently about how their pants sit, not to that dramatic scale, but certainly, you could see him saying, Okay, I'm going to plant the flag here. Now it's up to you guys to see how far you want to go to catch up to me.

That's a great transition because I feel like what you are both talking about is an esthetic experience in some way that you're having there. You're thinking about fabrics, you're thinking about looks, you're thinking about moments of extremity, maybe. But how is that influencing the way I wear my jacket on the street? How are the high pants influencing? Maybe not these pants, which are the most boring J-Cru pants you could possibly find, but I love the way they feel on me. How are those affecting the way people wear pants?

Well, we brought up... Stella brought up Eddie Slimane earlier, and that's probably the last real... I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but to me, that's what he did at Saint Laurent was the last time that the runway had a movement-wide impact on how people dressed in the mainstream. You had Eddie Slamaine and then Tom Brown, both pushing very shrunken suiting. But then that really did... That's the reason why J crew ended up doing their slimmer suit. That did have a direct trickle-down effect. Today, listen, it's harder to see for sure. I think you have to really be looking at the corners and squinting to see the impact at times, but it's there.

I think- Well, I would say something slightly more controversial, which is that it's always trickled up more than we give it credit for. Yeah, that's absolutely true. Yes, designers, they're synthesizing the moment. They're looking around the world, they're putting it through their filter, and they're interpreting through it high fashion lens. But these trends probably bubble up as much from Jacob's cousin's dirty sweatshirt as they do from music, communities, or subcultures of all kinds. I don't think that, historically, we've given that enough credit for the way that people yourself dress or people just regular people dress. What's fun about looking at fashion historically is that you can identify time periods very succinctly, based on what people were wearing. I don't know that that's so easy to do now. We live in a post-consensus, post-trend world. You're wearing something that you could have been wearing five years ago. You're wearing something probably that you'll be wearing in five years from now. Absolutely. People always ask both of us, what are the trends for the season? What's in? What are the trends? It's really hard to answer that now because I don't think that you could reasonably say there is one or there are even five.

Yes, there may be a lot of lace on the runway or something like that, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be a lace trend. It doesn't work that way anymore.

But I also think that the way that high fashion works, the way that luxury fashion works now, it has to be broadly palatable. And what I mean by that is these corporations that own these smaller fashion labels, your Louis Vuittons, your Dior, your Saint Laurent's, your Balenciaga's, they have to be globally successful. And when you are operating at that big of a scale and you have to continue to generate revenue at an incredible clip, you don't offer as revolutionary of ideas within the store. And that's true both for, I think, the huge companies as well as your big mainstream fashion labels, your Levi's, your Gaps, your Uniqloos to an extent. And so you have to keep giving the consumer what they're buying into already. And so it does become harder and harder to, I think, revolutionize that consumer and create excitement and have people really believe they need to get behind that.

I feel like there are so many analogs here between clothing and other sorts of culture, other kinds of pop culture, which is the corporations, companies say, We know there's a mass audience out there for these of movies or these type of TV shows. Therefore, that is the thing we need to cater to. We need to make the most palatable form of it because we are here to make money and high forms of art or experimentation, maybe, is not the thing that we are going to invest in.

Well, I would also say for me, when I was growing up, the way I dress was a reflection of the subculture that I was into. I think now the way kids dress in a lot of ways is a reflection of the clothes they're into, if that makes any sense. That the clothes themselves are what people are interested in and what they're pulling from, and they're very removed from their original subcultural context. So that ends up resulting in you're seeing this weird feedback loop right now where kids on the street, kids, we're using kids very loosely, let's say 20 something people on the street, teenagers, are dressing very like '90s, the baggy pant crop top thing. Then that, I think, is then feeding back into fashion. You're seeing designers then try to give that directly to that audience. They're trying basically to make money by pulling from how these kids are dressing.

I think I like to call my kids who are Gen Z, Gen Z Chaos fashion.

It's just so... It has- Have you officially branded this?

With them, yes. I love how chaotic they are. They're truly chaotic. I look at the choices they make, and I'm like, I don't understand what's informing this. I I don't think they do. I think that that's what I mean when I say post-consensus. But I keep thinking about Normcore, which was a little over 10 years ago, a pretty big movement that was, I think, a rejection of individuality. That didn't come from fashion, but it was expressed often through fashion, which is just this everything is generic and you're one of seven billion. That It has been hard to shake. Although when I talk about Gen Z Chaos style, I think that that is the first time we're seeing a rejection of Normcore, which I think has been Normcore being the most prevailing esthetic that we've seen in the last 10 years, and whether that's in minimalist clothing or minimalist interiors or millennial pink or any of these big, pervading esthetics that have really changed interior design or have changed car design or shoe design. All of those things were related to that. Now, I think we're seeing a more eclectic rejection of that desire to be anonymous.

People are, I think, finding their individuality again a little bit.

Okay, Okay. On that point, let's take a break. When we come back, you all are going to answer some listener questions.

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A few weeks ago, we did a call out, and we asked listeners to send us their personal style questions, and we got so many responses. Thank you to everyone who submitted a question. Obviously, we can't ask or answer them all, so I'm just going to put a few to Stella and Jacob and see what we get. Are you guys ready?

Sure.

Yep.

So many questions, as I said. As I read through many Any of the questions, I saw that something that a lot of people had on their minds is how to dress for their age. People in their 60s, 70s, people in their 80s, but also listeners that were much younger than that. This first one is from Paul. He lives in Rostock, Germany. Paul asks, I've been trying to find a more modern adult style for a while now since I'm still wearing a similar style to the one I've been wearing since high school. I believe Paul in his late 20s. Why is that and how can I change that?

I can answer the why easier than the how, I think. The why is that is because basically there's very little societal pressure today to dress in an adult manner, depending on your career. But I think there is not the same pipeline of you graduate school, you get a mature wardrobe as you move into the workforce. You don't need that anymore. Based on, I would say, the withering of dress codes in the corporate world. It's very hard as a result. I feel for Paul, I do understand that. It's hard to try to then dress in a way that feels better without feeling risky. I get that tension.

I feel like we need to go back to the fundamental question. You said we got tons of questions about how to dress your age. Pulling back on that, it's so hard to age, period. We have a ton of things to navigate psychologically around those questions. It's not just clothing. It's your body changes. It's your feeling about others change. It's your feeling about your authority in the world changes. How do you reflect that with your clothing? That gets the very most difficult question about fashion, period. It's It's not surprising to me that so many readers would ask, How do I dress my age? Because how do I talk my age? How do I feel my age? I might feel a lot younger than I seem or that I look. I would say It's probably okay for him to dress like he did when he was 20, as long as it's okay for him socially. But if it doesn't line up with how he feels as a person, he's going to have to actually spend some time thinking about how he feels as a person, and then he'll figure out how to dress. I think we think that clothes will answer those questions for us, but in fact, we have to answer those questions and then go out and find the clothes that match our feelings about ourselves.

That actually evolves fairly frequently as we age. That's why you're getting questions from people in their 80s, 70s, 60s, and lower, is that we're always trying to navigate this problem.

I think a lot of people don't want to, again, dress like they're trying to be 25 when they're in their 40s, or they don't want to try too hard to look cool, even though they want to feel good in their clothing.

One thing that I keep saying and thinking is that it is almost impossible to escape the moment in which you were forged. You cannot quite shake that, whether you're a boomer, whether you're a Gen X, whether you're a Gen Z. It just will be there, and there's something in there that you can't quite fight, and that's okay.

Stella, I went to a Catholic All Boys high school, and I still dress that way. I think I locked it in when I was 16 years old.

That was a really beautiful answer. I thought that was really eloquent.

You're going to tell me I'm wrong.

No, I think that you are absolutely right, but I'm trying to think of how materially to help here. What I would say is already asking the question clearly indicates that there's something that when Paul and people like Paul look in the mirror, they think, I'm dissatisfied with this. This seems off of who I am or who I'm trying to be. What I would say is, try to then stand there and figure out maybe what part of what you're wearing makes you feel that the most and begin there. If it is that you're still wearing the same exact chinos you wore in high school or the same exact Catholic school button up, if you will, and that that is pulling you too far backwards or too far to that time that you want to pull out of, then begin there and start slowly and try to figure out how you might update or even just modify that a little bit within your box. Don't go out and buy seven gajillion patterned shirts because you've worn solid shirts your whole life. That's just a waste of money, and you will not actually end up wearing those. I'd say zero in on that thing and then build outward from there, and don't get daunted by that process.

That would be my guidance.

That is very actionable advice. That's good. Thank you.

Start with the shoes, for example, or start with something that you- shoes are so hard. Yeah, but you can... Most people, let's say, your weight changes as you age or you go through surgeries or you have all kinds of physical changes. But shoes can be one way that a person can update They look quickly, that they come in a different range of prices. You're probably not going to outgrow them. If you wanted to make a big investment, you could justify that because you'll wear them all the time and you'll get them repared. That's a good place to start.

I feel like this is related to our next question, which is from Laura in Menlo Park, California. Laura writes that after giving birth to her son, none of her clothes felt appropriate to wear anymore. Again, touching on this theme we've been talking about, the clothes that she accumulated in her 20s She's no longer matched her sense of self. She's a different person now inherently as a new parent. She asks, How do you suggest navigating this early motherhood era with regard to personal style? And, How do you do so without going broke?

I would say the transition to new motherhood is one of the most profound shifts a woman is going to experience in her life, in her body. It in relation to others, in relation to the child she now has to take care of. You're also navigating a realignment to who you feel you are in the world. That's maybe the most difficult of all that I've experienced and that I've witnessed other people experience. Similar to our other answer, I think it's got to happen gradually if you can't afford to just throw it all out and start over, which is this fantasy. I don't think anybody can really, unless you're a very rich chances are you're going to have a lot of the same old stuff you always had, and you have to figure out how to make it work. I guess, not to be corny, but to be a slightly gentle with yourself as you go through that, maybe pick up one or two things that you feel really good in. It's the opposite of what Jacob is saying is identify the thing that makes you feel the worst. But this would be like, go out and treat yourself to at least one thing that you do really feel good in that does express that about you.

Start with that and then wear it to death. Just wear it all the time.

That's what I would say. Yeah. I mean, obviously, I'm a man, so my answer will be very gendered in this way, but I'm a new father. My son is less than five months old as we speak, and I truly just got off leave a week ago. I went through that entire period of leave dressing in almost the exact same thing every single day. I wore shorts and a old shirt, like an old tee every day. I did that for months. Obviously, you're so sleep-deprived and you're so whatever. You're not seeing people. You're like, Who cares? Just get me dressed so I can feed him. I think it took until two weeks before I came back to work, I went and I did buy something, and I bought something that was very personal to me. It was very of my style, it It was a sweater. It had- It's not this? No, it's not this sweater. It had a funky pattern to it. It felt like I was like, Oh, this is a reminder of what I like and who I am. Because it is really difficult. I think I look at a lot of stuff in my drawer right now and it feels very juvenile, which makes no sense because I wore that a year ago.

But then there's other things where I'm like, Does this make me look too much like a dad? What is that? And then what does that mean? You're just tortured by it a little bit, but I think that's a great piece of advice, Stella.

All right, this one, I'm interested in this one as a dude who sees dudes dressing terribly. Okay, so this is from Kael in New Haven, Connecticut. Don't know where he went to college. He is a law student who describes himself as, never particularly concerned about fashion or style, but he gets anxious about making sure his outfit fits the particular setting he's in. So he asks, What are good rules of thumb I or should be following to make sure I'm not finding myself chronically overdressed or underdressed. This touches on a theme that a lot of, I think, men asked about, which is how do they dress better than they do now without looking overly formal?

I would say that what I've observed is that many men, their primary goal, I'm going to be grossly generalist, is not to stand out too much. There are all kinds of social reasons for that that are above my pay grade, but are quite deep and psychological. I don't know. You know about Red Sock Theory? Do you know about that?

Do you want to get that? God, please tell me about this.

No, go ahead.

No, you go ahead. No, you go ahead. Well, I might mangle it. But what I understand it to be is that you can pick one item to have a little bit of flair and that people will respond well to that tiny bit of flair. But if you, let's say, put a red blazer on, they might not respond as well. You're standing out too much, so you want to stand out just a little, but not too much. That's what red sock theory comes from. But I do feel like maybe this person asking this question once a a little bit of flair, but not too much. They want to walk a line, but not. Why are you giving me that?

Because I have several pairs of red socks. That's why.

Well, you're special.

Oh, God.

I'm going to say the first thing The unfortunately about the red sock theory is that a lot of people know it, so a lot of people do the same trick, so it doesn't become as memorable. I actually think I'm wondering, as I sit here, I think this guy should go the other way. I mean, I feel this is like...

You mean he should go full formal?

I think he should just wear a suit all the time.

Well, that's a good option. It's better to be overdressed.

I think it's like if I'm this guy and I'm thinking I'm concerned about being overdressed, people will very, unless you're wearing a tuxedo, they will I very rarely judge you for being overdressed. I think you might feel a bit abnormal in that immediate moment, but you're not going to be judged. To the Red Sock theory, you will probably be remembered, especially in this universe where I think people, men in particular, sit in this weird wishy-washy zone of business casual, sometimes too business, sometimes too casual, whatever. I think you could lean in, wear the suit, wear a tie even. I'd say not vary it up that much. If you're going to do that, I'd say keep it pretty standard suit, maybe solid-colored knit tie, solid colored shirt, but get a good template going, and maybe that's just what you wear all the time, and you can lean into that if you're comfortable with it. I'd say otherwise, it's tough because I think, I think too many men are in that muddy middle right now where it's like, Oh, here's my button up shirt with my Vinax sweater over or my performance polo. Then you just look pedestrian.

Yeah, a lot of half-sips.

Yeah, I think the half measure The half measure is where you're in trouble, I think.

I like what you're saying, which is basically be bold. Go for it.

Go for it. Why not?

Can we touch on the obvious, which is did the pandemic break the way some people think about clothing?

Oh, a thousand %. Yeah. I'm wondering if she's going to disagree, but I think- It didn't change me in any way.

Well, I think, okay, we got it, Stella.

I think it irreperably changed what the market for clothes is. I think we were maybe heading in a different direction before the pandemic. This is such a very specific high fashion example, but I remember being at a Louis Vuitton show just before the pandemic happened, and there were a lot of suits, and I thought, Okay, this is something that people are going to try to message around. This is what the brand is going to try to package. This is what magazines might try to make editorials out of. This is going to be a talking point. And then boom, the pandemic happened. Those clothes hit the stores, but they did in a very muted way because of when they landed, people were at home in sweat pants. I think that the casualization of everything It's like you can't put that back in the box. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. I think people still do in a lot of ways, shop with how can I feel comfortable as the number one criteria, and often, I think the only criteria.

I think pulling back a little bit is what it did to our whole society, where we became disaggregated and a little siloed. That will have a profound effect on the ability for trends to take hold because you can live in your little echo chamber where, boat shoes are cool and never have to confront a group of people that think they're not cool. To the extent that the pandemic just further atomized us, yes, I think it has been profound.

This is good because Maggie from Summit, New Jersey, she has a question that relates to what you're talking about here, I think. She says she's really concerned with coming off as, a trend hopper. She says that she finds that whenever she goes back to something in her closet, it inevitably feels like she's drafting off what other people are wearing, even though it's just her wardrobe. She writes, I feel like it's harder than ever to curate a unique personal style without parts or the whole becoming social media's latest microtrend. I guess she's worried about appearing trendy to the world, if I'm understanding this correctly. What would either of you say to Maggie?

Yeah, I think Maggie just needs to be okay with her wearing the thing. Don't worry about how people are going to perceive you in it. I think also, as we've discussed, everything feels like a trend all the time. Shirts are long, shirts are short, pants are wide, pants are narrow. Everything is possible. Within that, it's like, tune out that noise. If there's something in your closet you want to wear, just wear it. If you want to buy the thing, you're never going to be able to identify how you were incepted to buy the thing. You're in a store, you see something that's yellow, you might like it without realizing that butter yellow was the trend of last year, what have you. If you are personally compelled towards something, don't waste your time psychoanalyzing why you're compelled toward it. If you like it, it makes you happy, you think you'll look good in it, just wear it.

Yeah, you just pulled a Miranda Priestly right there. You're like, That butter yellow that you're wearing.

You may not know how it got into the store.

I think color is still where the trickle down is still probably the most potent. But yeah.

I have a question that is going to draft off a little bit of what you're talking about here. This is Dana Tempe, Arizona. Dana asks, How can you keep up with trends while trying to limit overconsumption and make environmentally conscious style choices?

You cannot. You actually cannot.

There's no ethical consumption under capitalism?

No. Well, you can buy vintage clothing. That is a choice that you can make. My personal mission would be to tell people to stop following trends in that way and to think more about what they like and to wear what they like. But I'm anti-trend.

Why are you posing it to me like I'm pro-trend?

I feel like you're about to argue with me.

Before you respond, what is anti-trend? What does that mean for the styles that- I don't think that people should change how they look and dress and act every six months.

I fundamentally think that that has been a problem with the fashion industry. I think you should not even encourage people to do that. If there's something grossly consumerist and unsustainable about that behavior. One thing that we haven't touched on here is the way in which trends often have to do with silhouette and proportionality of clothing. The ways that something might look five years ago or 10 years ago have to do with how high your hem line is, how short your shirt is. Jacob has a piece coming out this week about men's shirts getting shorter and shorter and shorter, not crop tops, but just regular button-up shirts, and how they now have a flat front. Then I have Gen Z children who shop in thrift stores, and they sew their clothes to look like that because they can't afford brand new clothes, and it's more sustainable, and they're into that. Paying attention to the ways that designers are suggesting that you wear your clothes enables you to keep up with the trends in a variety of ways. You could buy an old shirt and chop up and make it look like the silhouette of the quote, unquote, moment.

That's a sustainable way to, quote, unquote, keep up with trends. It's also just a fun, in the sporting mode of what are people wearing, it's just one way that you can start to think about clothes. I think the idea of silhouette, that's actually a big part of what we're talking about when we talk about trends.

Yeah, I do agree with Stella. I think people want to say vintage is sustainable. I don't really buy that 100% because I I think the way vintage is treated now, it's still treated as a very consumption-based habit.

It's still more sustainable.

It's certainly still more sustainable. I don't want to cut into that, but our habit remains consumption-based. We still want to buy the hot new thing and feel like we're taking part within fashion. To be truly sustainable within that is very, very, very difficult. I also think it's worth noting that vintage clothes are not always better made, especially now as we get closer and closer to things from the 2000s being considered vintage. They're probably just as fast fashion disposable as a lot of stuff that's in stores. We're heading toward a weird time in the vintage market for that reason. But yeah, sure.

It goes back to what I'm saying. It's just like, and also what you're saying, buy one thing. Buy one thing.

That's what I was going to come back to.

Buy one thing. That's the way that you can be more and wear that thing all the time. Wear it a lot. Wear it until you're sick of it and you can buy your next one thing. A lot of us grew up with this idea that it's back to school, so you're going to get a new bunch of clothes and you're going to change who you are every year. I don't know if that's the Sears catalog of my childhood Pavlovian experience that is September, so I feel like I have to reinvent myself.

Just went through this new pair of sneakers, new pair of- But actually, breaking free from idea.

I do think that the pandemic, the one way in which it really did actually change the way I dress is that I was wearing the same thing over and over and over again, and it felt great. When I'd go out, I'd wear the same coat to every event, and that was fine. I didn't need a new dress. I didn't need to habituate myself to novelty. And that is actually at the answer of almost every one of these questions. It's like, if you feel like you're not yourself, pick one way in which you want to alter it. If you want to be sustainable, buy less, pick one thing and wear it all the time. If you want to be fashionable like everybody else, pick the one thing that you think is holding you back and alter that. This is a really good advice.

Our final reader question is specifically for Jacob. It is a reader named Schmilbert Schmoos from New Jersey. He wants to know, Jacob, should he be wearing double-pleated trousers? All he has are flat front pants.

Okay. I do think you should try double-pleated trousers.

Yeah, why?

I only buy pants that have two pleats, pretty much. I think maybe these are... No, these are one pleat today, but these are also very, very wide through the leg that I'm wearing. I think they are more comfortable. I will advocate for that. I think they are more comfortable, and I think that it is a very... The comfort aside, I think it's a very good way to add intrigue because it modifies one part of outfit, and everything else can remain balanced up top. Everything can remain the same. I think it makes you think a little deeper about what shoes you wear because I do have pants that seem to swallow a lower-profile shoe. But I like the cleanliness of a broader pant and how straight that line feels along the side. I think that that looks nice. I just think it looks very sharp, and you look, particularly for the workday, it's in this moment where suits have long-faded and ties are really endangered. I think it's a way to look clean and crisp and a little traditional without having to really modify your entire outfit.

I do know that the minute you switch, fashion will change because that's what happens. This is a pendulum. It is cyclical.

What if I leave this booth right now and go buy a pair of double-pleated trousers?

That means in three months from now, flat trousers will be back.

Okay. That's how it works. Is that the laws of the universe here?

The laws of the fashion universe.

We'll be right back. When we return, we are going to end our episode as we do every week with a little game. Okay. Every week we play a game, and the time to play that game is now. I promise the two of you, it's not going to be silly. Maybe it'll be a little silly, but that's fine. Let's roll with it. We've talked about all kinds of fashion today, but this quiz is about a piece of clothing that I think pretty much everyone has worn at some point in their lives. This quiz is about jeans. Skinny jeans, baggy jeans. You love them, you hate them. We've talked about them. They've been part of the American wardrobe for a very long time. How the game is going to work is we have three rounds here, and they're all focused on jeans in some way. It's a little bit of genealogy. You ready? Yeah. Oh, boy. These two cool fashion writers right here. All right, we have three rounds. Just are you ready? Tell me you're ready. All right. Hands on buzzers or on laptop space bars. First round is called Behind the Jeans. I'm going to ask you a question about a notable denim moment in pop culture from the past 40 or 50 years.

Once I finish reading, you can buzz in. Please do not buzz in until I finish reading. Daisy Duke's The Incredibly Short Denim Shorts draw their name from Katherine Bach's character on what 1970s television series? Bugby. Which is the name I see in front of me.

Stella. Was that the Dukes of Hazzard?

The Dukes of Hazard? The Dukes of Hazard, correct. Okay, next question. What former pop star couple showed up to the red carpet of the 2001 AMA's in matching Canadian tuxedos? Jacob.

Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears.

That is correct. Next question. Just earlier this month, which actress showed up to the Emmies red carpet wearing a pair of Levi's? Jacob.

Oh, from Hacks.

Yeah.

Megan. Megan? I don't know her last name.

Okay.

Meg Stalter. Stalter. There we go.

Meg Stalter. Megan Stalter. Okay, next question. Lena, Tibby, Bridget, and Carmen are four different-size friends who nonetheless share the same magical pair of jeans in what 2001 novel adapted to the screen in 2005?

Jacob. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pads.

That is correct. That is correct, sir. Thank Next question. What seminal 1957 novel about nomadic hipsters did William Burrows once say, quote, Sold a trillion Levi's?

Stella. Is that On the Road?

On the Road. Very good. You guys are both doing great. Last question in this round. Last month, Gap released an ad that has been viewed more than 30 million times. It stars what girl group dancing in Gap Denim?

Jacob. Cat's Eye.

Cat's Eye. Excellent. Good job. The next round is a musical round. This is a round we were calling Name the Jardist and the Jong. It turns out that people do not just love wearing jeans. They love singing about them. I'm going to play you a clip of a song that mentions jeans. You get one point if you can name the artist. You get another point if you can name the song title. These clips are quick. Be ready to buzz in. First one.

Jacob.

It's Beyoncé, and the song is, Isn't it Levi's Jeans?

Levi's Jeans, you're right. You got both points. All right, next. Stella. It is the Yardbird's House of the Rising Sun. It is the House of the Rising Sun. I believe this is the animals.

The animals. I always get those two ideas. Yes.

I was going to say something. You got it. Next clip.

I get you home racing Jacob. It's Katie Perry in the song His Teenage Dream.

Gee, you guys are... We should make this harder. All right, final clip.

Jacob hit it so fast.

Jacob.

It's Nelly, and the song is Apple Bottom Jeans.

Both of those are wrong.

No, it is wrong.

The song is Low by Flo Rida.

Oh, no.

I totally knew that. No.

I heard. Yeah, okay. There we go.

All right, final round. This is rapid fire. This is a round we are calling Artistic Genies. I will tell you what they did. You tell me who they are. First, he started in singing in the Rain. Jacob. It's Jean-based.

Yeah. Jean Kelly?

Jean Kelly. Yes, great job. Okay.

You just hit buzz. You didn't even know.

How do you know his strategy? He's the Jeopardy guy. He's the Jeopardy guy.

You buzz first.

I don't know. All right. She just won another Emmy for her role in Hacks. Jacob.

He's Jean smart?

Jean smart. Next. He played the title character in Willy Wanka in the Chocolate Factory. Stella.

Oh, no. Are you kidding me?

I got you buzz on that one. You really don't know?

You do know it.

You know this.

It's Jean Wilder. It is Jean Wilder. I don't know how we're going to score that. I don't know how we're going to score that one.

Jacob is going to get that one.

All right, this is the final question in the round in the game at large. He won an Oscar for his role in the French Connection, and he also passed away this year. Jacob.

Who's Jean Hackman?

Jean Hackman. Stella, did you just give up over there? Just staring at me.

I just keep thinking about Jean Simmons. Why he didn't pick him?

Okay, the winner of this week's quiz is Jacob. Jacob, I think we all knew Jacob had this, right as soon as he said Nelly, apple bottom juice.

For some reason, that was when I hurried in my ears. I was like, Oh, it's got to be Apple Bottom Jeans. That's coming.

Jacob, I have a prize here for you. This is the fifth one of these that we are awarding. This is what we call a Gilby. It is a small golden trophy with my face on it. I'm so sorry, but congratulations. No, thank you very much.

I'll cherish this forever.

I'm so sad not to have won a Gilby.

I think I only half believe you, but I think you just have to come back on, and maybe we can get you one. Thank you, Jacob. Thank you, Stella, for being on this week's episode of the Daily Sunday Special.

Thank you, Gilbert. Thanks for having us.

This episode was produced by Kate Lepreste, with help from Luke Vandenploeg, Alex Baron, and Tina Antalini. It was edited by Wendy Dore. We had production assistance from Dahlia Haddad. The Sunday special is engineered by Sophia Landman. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, and Diane Wong. Special thanks to Paula Schumann. We'll be back next week. Thanks for listening.