Part of what it is, I think, is that a lot of Americans come ‘on holiday’ to european cities and keep wearing shorts and shit, because they are on holiday and the cities are hot as shit in the summer in Europe. Europeans on the other hand are all wearing long pants and dressed for work, looking nicely. From what I’ve seen New York is every bit as fashion conscious as London. The difference I just think is that men in the US don’t wear tight fitting girly clothes.
Nope. Not even close. I’ve been around, and Americans are usually the worst dressers in all situations. One reason being precisely the very american belief above.
You can twist it around all you want, but Americans dress like sh!t.
Don’t get me wrong, the US kicks ass on many levels, but fashion sense isn’t one of them.
If you’re equating tight girly clothes to fashion then I don’t know what to tell you. When I see a grown man in leather pants and a fanny pack in NYC, I instinctively know their continental origin.
TRH is mostly right, it’s because most of us just don’t care.
Well if equating european fashion to leather pants and a fanny pack is how you justify your perma-baggy attire, then, well, whatever floats your boat I guess.
Gotta distract them from your crooked British teeth somehow, am I right?
Good thing America was built on not givin a damn what you euros think. Now excuse me while I stick a feather in my hat and yankee doodle dandy down to walmart to buy some baggy sweats.
#Murica
I wish that was the case. The first colonists were actually kicked out of England for being too puritanical. They cared so much about what their English brethen believed, they wore out their welcome and got exiled to the land of plenty where they immediately sought to convert the natives. The very first Americans were actually complete losers.
And that’s why Americans still get so worked up about nudity. God damn puritanicals.
Maybe the puritanical slant had nothing to do with what their brethern would think as evidenced by their ostricization and often being jailed? Also, that only really applies to the MA colonies.
^What’s your point?
Well you pointed out that the puritans were clearly concerned about what their European brethern thought as a contradiction to whatever Mark said. I just pointed out that you can’t really assign the Puritan’s motive for their ideology to concern about what the Europeans thought based on the fact that they were ostrasized and imprisoned by the Europeans yet held their view. Also, the case you cited with MA Puritan settlers would not have applied to other colonies in the US.
I mean, it was a casual observation, not really trying to debate this in depth.
The bottom line is there are boobs on regular TV in Europe. That could have been us. Someone has to be held accountable.
Fair enough. I concede.
You cannot detach the concept of fashion sense from the physical reality of body shapes. The investment in self-styling, both in terms of cost and effort, has rapidly diminishing returns as the BMI grows.
I was at a high end mall in Boston a few weeks ago and it must have been European week or something. There were very fashion forward older men (mid-30’s to 40’s) in the mall with edgy looking hair cuts, black lether pants, Euro fitted clothes, stylish boots, the works. I was watching them somewhat amused because they all had a nice solid gut going that completly nullified the efforts and made them look rediculous.
In the US, you wind up with more of a bi-modal distribution. You either have people who are very fit and age exceptionally well, or you have rural and suburban people who are prone to morbid obesity. In Europe, they may not eat as poorly, but serious workouts in your 30’s and 40’s are rare and dinner can take 3 hours. So people tend to stay within a more reasonable weight range but lack any muscle definition and carry a nice pot belly.
This is true but guys that pack some extra pounds around their waist do themselves a huge disservice by wearing clothes that don’t fit well. Most of the time, chubbier guys try to hide it by wearing clothes that are much too big on them. Wearing well tailored clothes both looks better and projects confidence.
After a certain point, however, you’re right. There’s not much you can do.
Pants, shirts, jackets…should fit tailored and slim (not skinny). For that to look good…you must be fit. The problem is most Americans are fat so it would look bad and they go with baggy clothes. The other end is that most europeans (parisians especially) are skinnier than the girls they date (if theyre not gay) and they wear clothes that are too tight fitting and look equally ridiculous as baggy fat American clothes. Super tight pants are gay…fitted, tailored pants are good and you have to keep your physical fitness in check.
Europeans look like gays because theyre too skinny…Americans look like slobs because theyre too fat. Its a body problem…not a fashion problem.