You're gazing into the wrong side of the two-way mirror if you think #menswear is about clothes. No, people wore clothes long before the Internet. #Menswear is about community. We're out here breaking digital bread with strange men who've also been bit by the style bug. And why shouldn't we? Those of us who don't live in Manhattan and can't bouquet toss a cronut without hitting a hypebeast need to get our style jollies off somewhere.
#Menswear culture took off the same way you braid a good tribe. Young'ns slinked up to the herd, knowing only that they wanted to dress better and not much else, and gleaned advice from seasoned elders. Because that's how you make progress: Teach the newcomers how to behave, so this thing you built doesn't go out the door when you do. But this tendency to dole out advice is based on the presupposition that the student will never surpass the teacher. Imagine how much less forthcoming we'd be about style advice if it resulted in us being the second best dressed man in the room?
When you consider that point, a new, truer picture emerges: one where we care about #menswear as a whole, but furtively want to stick it to everyone else flexing under its auspices. Those magnanimous elders, then, are exposed for what they are: a deceptively welcoming bunch, rocking the perma-smile of a man who wears white loafers and a squirting carnation. So, to answer the very question posed in the headline, surprisingly, yes, we do want other people to dress better. (Kind of.)
When you're invested in a group the way people are with #menswear—or any of its other countless aliases—you don't want just any stumblebum in Foamposites claiming your colors. When the group looks bad, you look bad by association. So, in that regard, yes, everyone needs to dress better. But the addendum to that edict, which is maybe more important, is that you just can't dress better than me. Because the only thing worse than second place is losing first in a come from behind victory.
What does all this mean for the health of #menswear? Well, not a whole lot. So long as tastemakers continue to do them and push us forward without giving a fuck about what other people are wearing, #menswear will be just fine. That maelstrom of people dipping in and out, wooing photogs, all the while trying to maintain kayfabe, is what happens when you get caught up comparing yourself to the guy next to you. So, the next time he barrels into the room, swing around that two-way mirror, watch him catch his reflection long enough to even up his RiRi side zips and take solace in the fact that he's just as insecure as you are.
Rick Morrison is a writer living in North Carolina. Follow him on Twitter here.
