PATREON PREVIEW - Die, Workwear! Wardrobe Series: The Big One

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0:36Thanks so much.

0:41Hey, Derek. Hey, Peter. How you doing? Doing pretty well. Yeah? I recently read this article by Emily... I don't know if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, but Emily Siegel? Siegel? Okay. She wrote this article recently on, well, she recently, she wrote it on Twitter as an article. Twitter has this thing where you can like write articles. Really? And then she transported it to, I think it's a substat called Nemesis. Okay. And she's, have you heard of Emily Siegel? Not at all. Siegel. I don't, apologies to Emily if you're listening to this for mispronouncing your name. I apologize. She was a founding member of, have you heard of this collective called K-Hole?

1:22No. So K-Hole is this, my understanding is like an art collective slash trend forecasting group or something. Okay. Have you ever heard of the term Normcore? I have, yeah. Yes. They popularized that. Okay. So Normcore came out, I don't know if they coined it, but in the way that the word traveled through culture, It was picked up in a K-Hole document of which Emily was part of, or she was part of K-Hole. And then, so the document was talking about this idea of normcore, which was in the K-Hole document, the idea that you should blend in and be a part of certain, of the social groups that you're part of to basically have a connection with people.

2:10So if you're among punks, you should dress like a punk. If you're among jocks, you should dress like a jock. That's not what that term came to mean. Yes, exactly. So then once it was picked up from the K-Hole consulting report, ran through social media and blogs and all of that, it essentially did not really mean that. It basically meant dressing in a very specific way, which we can describe as like Seinfeld, right? Yeah. It's like wash jeans that are not super slim or super baggy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. White's New Balance sneakers. Yeah. You know, just like a simple sweater. It was like dressing super normal in the Seinfeld sense.

2:56Right. Anyway, if you heard the term normcore, Emily had something to do with that. Okay. And now she's coined this new term called taste slop. All right. And she wrote an article on X slash Twitter, then transported to this substat called Nemesis Global. I read it. One, I was surprised to see that was mentioned in it. And slightly struggling with the concept. I think I understand some of the contours of what taste slop means. Yeah. According to her. I like how she summarizes it at the end because a lot of it is deep dives into concepts that I know little of. and a lot of it is based on art and culture.

3:40And I don't pretend to be incredibly studious about historical status symbols, which is what signifies taste. But I kind of know a little bit about it. But at the very end, she basically summarizes it. And I will summarize that even further because it does take her a few sentences to summarize it. But essentially, she's saying you cannot have taste in a vacuum. It has to be connected to culture, whether it's your culture. It's usually better if it's a personal part of culture. So, you like it because it signifies something that you have experience in, regardless of whether other people consider that to be tasteful.

4:19Yeah, let me give my version of what I think she's referring to as taste slot. Okay. So in the most extreme version of it, and I don't think she means it in this narrow way, but to give an extreme version of it, taste slop, I think, for her, would be like an AI-generated mood board. If you go to AI and you said, generate me a mood board of tasteful things, it would create a mood board of Ramoa luggage, Dieter Rams, you know, design book. Pour over coffee. Pour over coffee, the rose clothing, you know, like it would mash all this up. Kedja in the rye book in your back pocket. Yeah, it would put all this up.

5:04It's in the mood board. Yeah. And this is what it means to be tasteful. And I think what she's saying is that when you strip these things out of their social context and they are then only used as a signifier of taste. Yeah, that's what I got. Then you're actually not only exhibiting no real taste, but taste slop. It's like a mood board of a Miles Davis album cover. You don't know anything about Miles Davis. Right. You never listen to the album, but you're putting up this sign. A poster in your bedroom. Or on the mood board or a poster in your bedroom or anything, wearing the t-shirt to say, I have cultural capital.

5:46I have good taste. And now the thing has been stripped of its cultural context, and it only exists as a symbol of good taste. And therefore, actually, you're exhibiting bad taste because it's copy and paste. Oh, I know a very good recent example of that, the Palantir chore coat. Yeah. That's a great example of a chore coat, which has incredible meaning socially and historically. but now a tech company is trying to say oh we also do a chore coat but it has nothing to do with and the chore coat then is a symbol of good taste yes look what we do we make something of good we make something of good taste but it's so far stripped from its original right the thing i struggle with emily's there are a few things i struggle with this concept one to bring the issue of the chore codes um palantir is in my opinion not you know someone someone called me they were doing an article on it and they called me to get some quotes.

6:40And I said, the chore coat has essentially become the default outerwear of a certain kind of knowledge worker, often in cities. White collar, knowledge worker, right? Like actual manual laborers have not worn this coat for - Maybe creatives. Yeah. And I mean, it's a knowledge worker, creative director, email job haver, you know, kind of thing. And so Palantir is really just like moving it just one step away from that. But like this thing has been removed from its context for a very long time. So one is that when she talks about this idea of context, I think, well, things often evolve over time and take on different meanings.

7:23And it's all culture. the other thing is that I struggled with is that I mean you know like if we're to be against taste slop what we end up what we end up with is just kind of cultural gatekeeping right like you're not allowed to wear this I mean it's the same thing in the 90s whether one thinks this is good or bad but you know it's kind of like the thing in the 90s like oh you wear that band t-shirt name your favorite 10 songs sing that song right now from beginning to end right like you wear a skate shirt and you don't even have a skateboard you said poser like one it feels like we're getting back to that maybe that's a good thing maybe that's a bad thing but i just think when i read i was like are we now for cultural gatekeeping and the other thing is that when she talks about how things then just become a symbol of good taste rather than a thing connected to culture and it's then presented all over the place as this is good taste this or i have good taste or this shop has good taste i start Because she brings up this idea of, she has a few rules of what does good taste mean?

8:26One is discernment, discerning between different things. Right. And the other thing is personal connection, which is where she brought me in because I said I like Ralph Lauren because I used to go to clubs. And the coolest guys wear Ralph Lauren head to toe. And that's why I like Ralph Lauren because I remember a very special time in my youth where I went to clubs and I saw these people. or like I like chambray shirts because it reminds me of the Roscoe Holcomb cover. And there was a moment in my life where a lot of that old Appalachian and just general American folk music played a very strong role in how I thought about culture and politics and society and everything.

9:02This was with a group of friends. So chambray shirts remind me of that. There are all these reasons why I like certain things. I like split toe shoes because I think of Bruce Boyer, whose work really has influenced me a lot. And that's why I like these certain things. So she says there's the personal connection, there's discernment, and then she uses the term esoteric, and then there's the isms and this. She used a lot of words that I could not find in the dictionary. She's much better educated than I am. I struggled through this article, and she's definitely much better educated. Quite verbose.

9:32So this idea of esotericness, that something to display good taste is to have a level of esotericness, but also says that good taste has to be socially recognized. that good taste cannot exist in a forest. Right, I get that to a certain extent, yeah. But then how can esotericness and the social recognition of good taste exist alongside each other? If we all recognize something as good taste, and then someone uses that as a sign of good taste, all of a sudden it's no longer received as good taste. Something is only good taste if it's esoteric, in which case nothing bears the symbol of good taste.

10:09Yeah, I think she's talking about the fact that something is in good taste if there is that struggle. So take, for example, a leather jacket, specifically double riders. So there was a time when, for decades prior to the 2000s, that they were a symbol of someone who was a rebel, someone who actually rode a motorcycle. Yeah. And then when Ye started to wear them, then they became popular amongst other people who really like Ye. And that, of course, spread because he had immense cultural capital, all the way down to the point where even girls in the marina were walking around with them in leggings.

10:50Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, they strayed so far. No one's going to go up to them and be like, hey, what do you ride? No one's going to go up to a marina girl with a leather jacket asking that because it's so far removed from that. It was like the ultimate bourgeois outerwear. It was, yeah, for a long time. Yeah. And still is to a certain extent, especially with tan chelseys. Yeah. So I get the fact that there is that struggle because there is someone, many people, in fact, that still view the motorcycle jacket in that way. And then they turn their head and they see other people wearing it not in that way at all.

11:24There is that struggle. I get what she's saying, esoteric or idiosyncratic in the sense that people will probably view something as or in good taste for completely different reasons. Some people will say it's in good taste because it's in style, and that's where it begins and ends. Whereas other people will say, well, I like it because Marlon Brando wore it in the day, and then my grandfather wore it because he used to ride a Harley, and he used to tinker around and monkey wrench on the engines and all that. For very different reasons. So I kind of get what she's saying. I mean, isn't the biker...

12:00I understand, to some level, I think that uniform... I have no opinion about how women dress at all, whatsoever. But for the guys that did that, it was like biker jacket over long tee, skinny jeans, tan Chelsea boots. And to some degree, that was derided by snobs because it was super popular. And snobs love to hate stuff that is super popular. Of course. And two, it was connected to a certain kind of social character that, in my opinion, had questionable cultural capital. Ye has a ton of cultural capital. Yeah. But the people that slavishly follow him were described as hype beasts and mindless kind of like parrots, right?

12:41Like, oh, that person's doing this. I'm going to do that. It's just like mindless zombie parrots. So to some degree, we're judging this because the actual person has low cultural capital. But the other thing is, it feels like there are people who will look up to the hypebeast and think they're the coolest guy. I mean, that's what they did in the 50s. Thousands of teenagers saw Marlon Brando in James Dean and other jackets. I want to be like him. I mean, they didn't go into, well, what is the historical significance of shot jackets? And what kind of leather are they using? Is it vegetable tan or chrome tan?

13:19Does that not actually make you less cool? Right. The guy that's just copying his favorite musician, that's like a, to me, I've always thought that is the most relatable fashion moment. Like you buy an album, you look at the cover, you like the music, and you're like, I want to dress like these people. Yeah, totally. Um, it's just, you know, I think there was like a lot of sneering at like the hype beast. Yay fan, blah, blah, blah. I just, I found the article interesting. We'll have a link to the article in the show notes. There is some tension for me in that, like one, I will admit the article is often over my head.

13:52It's like, yeah, there's a lot of thing that I just don't have the education for, but there's that. But there's also this thing, this tension as I'm reading it, thinking this is the person who helped popularize the idea of Normcore, which is about picking up certain cultural signals to fit in with a group and form human connections. And then this idea of taste slop, which is kind of cultural gatekeeping and saying that you are not allowed to wear these certain things unless you qualify in these different ways. Yeah. Which seem like two contradictory views. I mean, you know, maybe these are just terms, taste slop and Normcore are just ways to describe social happenings.

14:30I think what she's specifically talking about I could be misreading the article I'm with you, a lot of it was over my head but I think what she's referring to are AI generated cues, what is in good taste she mentions Evan Kanori which I think is great I know, there's a recent sneering of Evan Kanori because the prices and the designs, some people don't feel justified, I don't understand any of that sometimes certain things feel to me like cycles of really hit people deciding too many people like this now so now I have to pretend to hate it and I'm just like, just last year you said it was great there's that cycle where often it feels like people are constantly posturing for cool points knee jerk reaction to popular acceptance of theretofore unknown only to a select few it's like, I listened to Radiohead when they opened up for Oasis.

15:30I really dislike that dynamic. It's just not my thing. But I do understand the opening of the article is really about...

15:59See you there.