By: XEONIQ [ Instagram | Tumblr ] and Joseph Gleasure [ Instagram | Tumblr ]
Introduction
Over the years, I’ve enjoyed many conversations about clothing and fashion with various people online. Podcasts and radio talk shows have been popular for decades and have a more free-flowing, if less efficient, dynamic than the written interview. I thought it would be interesting to see if those techniques could be combined by having a short topic-driven conversation with a designer friend and then publishing the chat log with minimal editing for the audience to read as an alternative to my admittedly much “dryer” articles.
Something I’ve come to find and I think a lot of people who have been into ‘”techwear” for a while come to experience is that what a person needs for their day to day lifestyle in an urban or suburban environment is often far more comfort-based than it is performance-based. Fetishizing performance metrics in daily urban outfits could lead to a wardrobe of clothes that actually provide less utility than casual high-street or designer fashion. For this first log, we started the chat topic on typical daily techwear performance, but predictably, we diverged on a number of points.
The Chatlog
As someone who normally approaches techwear as gear for warm weather, tropical use, I find the overlap between comfort and performance significant in the clothes I wear regularly. But I was wondering about your perspective since you live in a much colder, Northern climate. What kind of performance functionality do you tend to value in your day to day clothes?
XEONIQ – 12:47
5 days of the week
Jo – 12:50
I wear a French Terry fleece
Jo – 12:51
Like a long-sleeve t-shirt or something thicker like a pull over?
XEONIQ – 12:51
My daily top is usually a thin cotton sleeveless tee. Very breathable and doesn’t stink after an hour like polyester does. Polyester performance tops from brands like Lululemon or Nike have always been too insulating and smell horrible by the end of the day in my experience.
XEONIQ – 12:52
Pull over hoodie plus a nylon pair of Uniqlo pants, very mid 20s urbanite fit
Jo – 13:05
But working In a creative field it’s fine and expected
Jo – 13:05
And warm if I go outside
Jo – 13:05
So you prefer nylon pants over denim because?
XEONIQ – 13:05
I have a plethora of down jackets or wool
Jo – 13:05
10oz or so, so thick
Jo – 13:06
Nylon blocks wind a lot better than jeans at least.
XEONIQ – 13:06
And breathable-ish
XEONIQ – 13:06
And stronger.
XEONIQ – 13:06
They cut wind sure
Jo – 13:06
But more than jeans
Jo – 13:06
They’re comfortable
Jo – 13:06
Yea Nylon next to cotton is my favourite material because of how comfortable and strong it is. Only draw back is the noise.
XEONIQ – 13:07
There’s not a real expectation to dress well
Jo – 13:07
So you want to look ‘normal’
Jo – 13:07
Not trying too hard, but comfortable
Jo – 13:07
At work, I wear a collared shirt, a pullover jumper and a pair of wool slacks
Jo – 13:07
Very much the Raf simons uniform of the late 2000s
Jo – 13:08
Which endears me to creative personalities lol
Jo – 13:08
Yea social norms of dress are something a lot people don’t seem to consider in techwear. Well in the streetwear side of it at least. There’s always been brands like Outlier making polo shirts and chinos.
XEONIQ – 13:08
Techwear for better or worse
Jo – 13:09
Seems to exist outside of fashion to me
Jo – 13:09
In Queensland, Australia sportswear is very popular for most people so it hasn’t been hard blending technical performance considerations into sportswear since the sportswear industry has gravitated towards that for its general release items anyway. My techwear looks don’t stand out that much when everyone is running around in black Nike or UA gear
XEONIQ – 13:09
It’s a weird place
Jo – 13:09
Outlier and lulu make ‘technical officewear’
Jo – 13:10
Which is great imo
Jo – 13:10
But its a minority of the market, massively
Jo – 13:10
Most people are wearing cotton poplin or the like
Jo – 13:10
Depends on the definition of techwear at the end of the day. The hypebeast stuff and drop crotch pants with pink sneakers look always sticks out no matter what, and has no performance benefits over even basic outdoors or sportswear market garments. But if techwear is a strategic application of functional features on garments in daily outfits then I think you’ll find a lot of that has bled into both high fashion and general consumer clothes.
XEONIQ – 13:11
Teatora is one that does technical officewear well imo. Less boring at least than Outlier.
XEONIQ – 13:11
As brands like Uniqlo and Muji have developed more towards integrating performance and functionality into their daily clothes, at very affordable price points, I really struggle to wonder the value proposition of brands like Outlier. Uniqlo U and Muji Labo do interesting things too from time to time while keeping things pretty “wearable”
XEONIQ – 13:12
Lululemon does performance casual or officewear as well, but I tend to not enjoy how most of their clothing is all polyester. I like nylon, but poly is not one of my favourites.
XEONIQ – 13:13
Yeah it’s very fun, and the whole compact office concept
Jo – 13:22
Packable, modular comfort etc
Jo – 13:22
It looks good
Jo – 13:23
Reminds me a lot of the porter use case
Jo – 13:23
I feel disappointed brands like TEATORA aren’t more represented online in the “community” and instead hypebeast stuff is everywhere, but then again the hypebeast stuff is more visually dramatic and lends itself to being photographed in selfies better than a pair of loose nylon pants or packable black coat like what TEATORA puts out. When the community is represented by social media selfies it’s going to always go towards the dramatic for attention I guess. Veilance suffered the same fate
XEONIQ – 13:23
Where it’s good for the contemporary salaryman
Jo – 13:23
Which is like, very different from what a salaryman means to you or me
Jo – 13:23
Wherein the 80s salaryman was essentially a slave and loyal to a company
Jo – 13:24
The current salaryman is much more nomadic
Jo – 13:24
A freelancer of sorts
Jo – 13:24
That goes back to my initial question I guess, you have all these people buying Gore-Tex shells (albeit many are just Windstopper which is a step over a nylon windbreaker) and thinking it works because Gore-Tex is “the best” regardless of the fact if they encounter rain outside maybe once a month or live in a warm climate where something lighter would be better.
XEONIQ – 13:25
My Impression is they know it’s a scam
Jo – 13:27
Many will admit as such
Jo – 13:27
But the feeling from my pov is they are all a certain type of consumer
Jo – 13:27
It feels like the technical metrics of the materials are signifiers and the brands are symbolic totems, they rarely seem to look at clothing in practical terms as tools.
XEONIQ – 13:27
We have all these lovely materials to represent a range of lifestyles and needs, but it just regresses to people throwing away money on brand names. Again I attribute that to overcompensating with hypebeast labels and streetwear in general.
XEONIQ – 13:27
There’s a point there maybe with barthes’ and baudrillard’s theories on consumption
Jo – 13:27
A certain book mentioning a Japanese women living at home but spending a million yen on dress
Jo – 13:28
Strikes me as relevant here, in the halcyon days of Japan’s Bubble economy
Jo – 13:28
Young creative people spending millions of yen on fashion items they didn’t even wear
Jo – 13:29
So you think that techwear (or expensive technical fashion) is merely just an aspect of advanced consumerism?
XEONIQ – 13:31
Similar to Japanese during the height of the bubble economy spending excessive amounts of their incomes on fashion items.
XEONIQ – 13:31
And the performance has little if anything to do with it
XEONIQ – 13:31
I assume that was very male brain stupidity
Jo – 13:31
They didn’t actually get fashion
Jo – 13:31
Yea it does seem something very “male”
XEONIQ – 13:32
Which is for better or worse
Jo – 13:32
Obsessive about metrics. And collecting and quantifying things sometimes to the extent that the practical value of the collection is inferior. Reminds me of those guys with a collection of dozens of diving watches with 200 meter depth ratings and the most water they see is in a bath tub.
XEONIQ – 13:32
Not strictly technical
Jo – 13:32
It’s a very car guy mentality
Jo – 13:32
Which yeah I get to a degree
Jo – 13:32
But a coat doesn’t have 500bhp
Jo – 13:32
I wonder if the “gorpcore” trend is kind of a collective “fuck you” to techwear and hypebeast brands that have been thoroughly played out as a streetwear meme and over run with low cost polyester mimics of that aesthetic style, typically in all black. Gorpcore still seems to have some of that interest in with wanting “performance” and protection but is more aesthetically diverse in colours and silhouettes at the very least.
XEONIQ – 13:32
I’ve seen people who were crying about techwear being dead now using “gorpcore” tags on their outfits they share on social media, outfits that would easily just fall into a techwear classification otherwise. People perhaps just really want to move away from the hypebeast aspects of the scene that have plagued it for years and years.
XEONIQ – 13:33
Gorpcore seems like 75% outgrowth of outdooring and vintage
Jo – 13:33
25% of sad consumerism shit
Jo – 13:34
Yea there does some to be a subset into more vintage 70’s style outdoors gear and some other that seems to dabble in futurism. Wonder if that will fracture eventually.
XEONIQ – 13:34
The vintage stuff largely leaves me cold unless it’s repurposed to something new or in a new look. I can’t speak for everyone but I know I did appreciate the somewhat romantic appeal of futurist techwear (not really the office application from Outlier or Lululemon) as participating in something that looked forward and not backwards to better empower the consumer and wearer.
XEONIQ – 13:34
I think that is what makes the techwear people who just brand whore in hypebeast clothes with no consideration of their lifestyle or climate all the more sad to me. They could have worn anything, created their own individual style since they apparently have so much disposable income and free time. But instead just bicker about which brand they should support lol
XEONIQ – 13:35
So to go back to what we started talking about.
XEONIQ – 13:41
What do you think for a colder climate, the “performance” features you actually want in your day to day casual clothing.
XEONIQ – 13:41
For me in the tropics, it’s definitely a looser fit as skinny and tight fit stuff just doesn’t breathe and insulates more. The looser fit helps with being able to be more active in it, which most people are in warm weather here and there’s a big fitness culture. Quick dry is important for me because it does rain often and while I find that cooling I don’t want to walk around drenched. Where I do want things waterproof is the backpack and that’s really been a challenge to find over the years.
XEONIQ – 13:41
In Canada it’s surprising what people walk around in during winter especially uh when we get our deep freeze in Feb lol, always see a couple guys walking home from the gym in their tank and shorts, I think it’s one of those cold exposure treatment meme things. Finns do similar iirc. But baseline would be something that breaks wind I think and that’s really all it needs to be, then an appropriate amount of layers for temperature. The kind of go to uniform for a lot of men in Canada especially in the winter isn’t particularly technically minded except for their jacket
Jo – 13:43
You’ll see knit sneakers in a foot of snow type of thing
Jo – 13:43
Sure, but there must be a few considerations you might make personally, not the average consumer, that would make daily life in a colder climate more comfortable at the very least, if not performance oriented.
XEONIQ – 13:44
Hat, gloves, down jacket is really about the extent of my consideration
Jo – 13:45
The thing is
Jo – 13:45
Like your nylon pants example above would be nicer in the snow than denim jeans I imagine, block wind better, not stay wet etc.
XEONIQ – 13:45
When it gets to a temperature where you are actively thinking about these things
Jo – 13:45
Minus 10
Jo – 13:46
Minus 20
Jo – 13:46
Aesthetic considerations go out the window
Jo – 13:46
I often joke that fashion doesn’t exist for about 6 weeks here in winter
Jo – 13:46
So it’s a different mindset I am in temporarily atm, different from how I think about dressing the rest of the year
Jo – 13:46
Yea, and I guess any layers will do when it’s just “cold”. It seems like you have to really think about it when it’s hot or even just warm out so you aren’t carrying all this extra gear and sweating horribly.
XEONIQ – 13:46
You’re fine until you’re not lol
Jo – 13:46
Interesting difference between hot and cold climates there in terms of consumer fashion utility. That’s something I didn’t really think about. You could make do in the cold with layering a lot of generic clothes and the techwear at that point provides what? Pockets? Some weight savings? In the heat though the ultra light and breathable techwear really helps over wearing jeans or whatever; and especially if you don’t want to just be wearing shorts all summer. I find that funny given how many people express that techwear is impossible in the summer.
XEONIQ – 13:47
It’s ironic because yes it does get fairly hot here for a few weeks but I will still try to dress fashionably
Jo – 13:47
And the utility comes in accessories that compliment the fit
Jo – 13:47
Shoulder bags mainly
Jo – 13:47
A ‘technical’ tee
Jo – 13:48
So maybe one of lulu lemons which I like the slim cut and the material is usually very nice
Jo – 13:48
You and me will respectfully disagree on that point, I can’t handle Lulu’s poly tops, even with the silver fabric in them they reek after a few hours IME. Maybe I just stink.
XEONIQ – 13:49
I just know
Jo – 13:49
That the lulu tees compared to what I have experienced with say my old sports uniforms lol
Jo – 13:50
It’s night and day the lulu is just much nicer,
Jo – 13:50
And the longevity has been better so far
Jo – 13:50
But I mean I would hope Lulu is better than some whatever Adidas blank lol
Jo – 13:50
I’ll champion cotton tops til the day I die
XEONIQ – 13:51
We are starting to waffle so I think that wraps it up for the topic.
XEONIQ – 13:51
Hah alright
Jo – 13:51
Was fun, and I think we should keep it up regularly. See how reception is.
XEONIQ – 13:51
Later.
XEONIQ – 13:51
Ty ty and yeah, maybe it’ll be a bit more free flowing too
Jo – 13:52
Night
Jo – 13:52
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