television. And of course that would
mean not buying the Beano every
week or watching Jackass
exclusively, not to mention the
horror of being seen to care about
such un-boy-ish things as how one
looked and dressed.
No, when I was young it was
fundamentally impractical to look
good. There was simply no way
covertly to discover the ins and outs
of current trends and to deploy
them nonchalantly, as though the
idea of wide lapels and deck shoes
came to you in some casual vision
between meals.
But now everyone has their own
private little pocket-screen, their
own secret connection with the
outside world, and if you want to
know something... well... no one
needs to know that you know it.
The beauty of Twitter, Instagram,
Facebook, and particularly
Pinterest, is that you can build up
distinctly personal collections of
desirable imagery and opinion,
without having to let anyone in on
your particular secret. You need
never tell anyone whether short
shorts in Spring were your idea or
Prada's. Following someone like
Fabio Attanasio, Eskricke, or even
Bruno Mars on Instagram can set
you up with all the fashion tips a
modern man needs. You can read
the views and ideas of trend-setters
from Ryan Gosling to Ricky Gervais
on Twitter and then pass them off
as your own. You can, in short,
become the best kind of fashionconscious man – the kind that
appears not to be fashionconscious at all – with very little
effort indeed.
But does this furtive mechanism
ultimately harm our ability to grow
and flourish as aesthetic beings?
Might we in fact be walking into a
strange semi-fashionable stasis by
our fascination with app-based
trend-gathering? The way social
networks offer you things you'll
enjoy (and thereby, of course,
things you're most likely to buy and
share) is by mathematically
working out what you've enjoyed
most in the past and referencing it
Sleeves Magazine