Comment by fvrghl

3 months ago

Are you familiar with Miyake's work? He did a lot of innovative design with synthetics, including the entire Pleats Please line.

16 comments

fvrghl

Reply
bborud  3 months ago

To some degree, but junk is junk even if it says Issey Miyake on it. But at the price they are asking I'd insist on higher quality materials. Not this junk.

It is like those horrible Louis Vuitton plastic bags. Yes they are expensive and probably better made than most plastic bags, but they are mass produced plastic bags. You can get nice, custom, handmade bags for a fraction of what this pointless junk goes for.

(The only reason I know about Issey Miyake is because years ago I happened to buy a couple of handmade linen suits while visiting Japan. And only later discovered that these suits were "a big deal" when some fashion people I shared an office with saw me wear them as "casual office clothes". To me they were comfortable linen suits that were obviously hand dyed. And they weren't even that expensive)

  • futuraperdita  3 months ago

    > You can get nice, custom, handmade bags for a fraction of what this pointless junk goes for.

    You're making the subjective value judgement that a synthetic material is "junk", without qualifying it as such. A textile that is less expensive to manufacture, or is synthetic, does not automatically qualify as "junk". Look at technical fabrics such as GoreTex as a highly functional example, or any avant-garde techwear from brands like ACRONYM which usually last quite a long time and have some artistic merit within the fashion world.

    It's OK to not like synthetic materials. It's also OK to not care about fashion-as-art, but fashion is oft ephemeral by nature and design.

    • bborud  3 months ago

      Gore Tex is a good example of a material that, on its own, doesn't actually work as well as the marketing would have you believe. For instance it stops breathing when it gets wet. And then the whole rationale is gone. It means your perspiration condenses on the inside and then you become wet and cold. Most gore-tex jackets will not even work for my bicycle commute since it rains all the time here. Much less riding my bike in the forests or mountains.

      Technical garments are not just down to what materials are used, but how the garment is designed to manage moisture and heat, and how you combine it with other garments and reconfigure it as needed.

      I spend a lot of time outside in anything from heavy rain to -25C cold. Often in stormy conditions. I often engage in prolonged physical activity, which means I perspirate a lot. Often followed by rests. If you do not dress properly, so you can manage moisture and heat, best case is that your jacket will start to smell like a homeless dog. Worst case, you freeze to death (yes, that happens when tourists don't know how clothes work).

      If there is any miracle material it is wool. No synthetic material even comes close. But then again, that's not an outer layer. It's what you wear for the inner and middle layers. And it does that job unreasonably well.

      8 replies →

    • lucideer  3 months ago

      GoreTex is highly functional but it doesn't last long & it isn't repairable. These are trade-offs that may be worthwhile for certain innovative, highly-functional use-cases (like water proofing) but are very rarely worthwhile for average use-cases.

      With very few exceptions, the majority of synthetic materials commonly used in clothing come with these trade-offs. "Junk" being a slang term for things that get thrown away seems appropriate in this case (short-lived, non-repairable material).

      > have some artistic merit within the fashion world

      > It's also OK to not care about fashion-as-art, but fashion is oft ephemeral by nature and design

      While I do feel strongly that art for its own sake is oft undervalued & has enormous merit, this is ultimately off-topic in a thread that kicked off on the topic of quality, function & the (undeniable) fact that we produce too many things. These are separate qualifiers to "artistic merit".

      Fashion being ephemeral is in fact the point here (it should be less ephemeral, independent of what your views on art are).

    • jowday  3 months ago

      GoreTex is a bad example - it's gonna delaminate after a year or so of heavy use and is pretty much impossible to repair after that. Which also undercuts ACRONYM's messaging about their GoreTex products being some kind of like, buy-it-for-life rainjacket.