26
October

How To Wear The Oversized Clothes – Baggy Fashion For Guys

By avi maxwel / in , , , , , /

There was a time when wearing clothes so baggy they needed a staple gun to stay on was less of style move, more your mum making sure you could make it through puberty in the same school blazer.

But if you graduated any time in the last 15 years, chances are you grew up to enjoy clothes that were designed slim and flattering – clothes that didn’t just hang on your shoulders. For the majority of the 21st century, menswear has been dominated by skinny cuts.

Under the influence of Hedi Slimane at Dior Homme and later Saint Laurent, men’s wardrobes were shrink-wrapped around the mid-2000s. It was all muscle shirts, slimline tailoring and indie bands in skinny-fit everything. But in recent years, the fashion pendulum had swung back.

It was partly a reaction to what came before, but the oversized trend also went hand-in-hand with the rise of hip-hop fashion and athleisure into the mainstream. Kanye West’s longline tees and chunky hoodies were one part, the billowing suits of Kim Jones, Demna Gvasalia, Patrick Grant and Virgil Abloh another.

Compared with spray-on jeans and nip-and-tuck tailoring, this is comfort as fashion. Wide-leg trousers, slouchy blazers, boxy tees and blanket

Read more

08
October

Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion by Charlie Porter review – style revolution | Art and design books

By avi maxwel / in , , , , , , , , , , , , /

When Virginia Woolf invited TS Eliot down for a country weekend in 1920 she concluded with “Please bring no clothes”. This was not a suggestion that “Tom” should arrive in East Sussex naked. Such a possibility was unlikely anyway since at this point the poet was still working as a buttoned-up clerk at Lloyds Bank. Eliot was famously wedded to his three-piece suit to the point where, Woolf joked, he would have worn a four-piece one if such a thing existed. What she meant by “bring no clothes” was that at Monk’s House they did not dress for dinner, change for church (there was no church), or worry about getting their best clothes grubby in the garden. This was Bloomsbury, albeit a rural version, and the clothing conventions to which the rest of upper-middle-class society had returned after the first world war had no place there.

Fashion journalist Charlie Porter is spot-on with his suggestion that the way the circle thought about clothes was part of a wider revolt against the late-Victorian society in which its members had been raised (Woolf was born in 1882, Eliot six years later). Choosing not to wear black tie for dinner or gloves “in

Read more

04
October

Amazon turns to AI to help customers find clothes that fit when shopping online

By avi maxwel / in , , , , , , , /

After recently turning to generative AI to enhance its product reviews, e-commerce giant Amazon today shared how it’s now using AI technology to help customers shop for apparel online. The company explains it’s now using large language models, generative AI and machine learning to power four AI-powered features that will help customers find clothing that fits — an ongoing challenge when shopping online and the leading cause for apparel returns.

According to a study by Coresight Research, the average return rate for clothing ordered online is 24.4%, which is eight percentage points higher than the overall online return rate. In addition, retailers and brands said online returns had grown over the past two years. Often, that’s in part because today’s consumers will buy an item in multiple sizes or colors and then return those that don’t work out, as the process of home try-ons and shipping items back has become easier.

To address this challenge, Amazon has introduced AI into the online shopping experience in four ways: in personalized size recommendations, a “Fit Insights” tool for sellers, AI-powered highlights from fit reviews left by other customers and reimagined size charts.

With the personalized size recommendations, Amazon Fashion used AI

Read more

30
September

Record online deals on toys, electronics and clothes coming this holiday season

By avi maxwel / in , , , , , , , , /

By Matt Egan, CNN Business

NEW YORK – Online shoppers will be offered record-setting discounts this holiday season as retailers attempt to entice inflation-weary consumers to buy, according to projections released Thursday by Adobe Analytics. And the company predicts the strategy will work, with online holiday sales climbing almost 5% above last year.

Retailers are poised to offer up to 35% off listed prices this holiday season, with the deepest discounts applied to toys, electronics and apparel, Adobe said in its annual holiday forecast.

The company expects consumers to seize on these deals, and spend aggressively even as concerns about rising costs and the health of the economy continue to linger.

Consumers will likely spend $221.8 billion via online shopping between November 1 and the end of the year, according to Adobe. That would represent solid growth of 4.8% year-over-year, an acceleration of the 3.5% growth in 2022.

So what will people be buying? Adobe says the hottest sellers this season will include LEGO Minifigures, Kanoodle 3D, Barbie the Movie products, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Madden NFL 24, iPhone 15 models and Birkenstock Bostons.

Where are the deepest discounts

Discounts for toys are seen peaking at 35% off listed

Read more

13
August

I’m 70 years old — why shouldn’t my clothes convey my sexuality, and sense of style?

By avi maxwel / in , , , , , , /

Editor’s Note: This piece is excerpted from Lyn Slater’s “How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon” with permission from Plume, imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC. © 2024 by Lyn Slater.

(CNN) — In the fall of 2019, I received an e-mail from a group of Parsons Fashion Design and Society MFA students who had been given the assignment to make a collection of clothes for “seniors,” as part of a course that involves creating designs that focus on disabled, plus-size, transgender and aging people. The students were divided into four teams, with each team charge to find a muse/collaborator within their respective category — to ensure primary research and a meaningful outcome. The students asked me for an interview, hoping that I might become their muse.

The students had gone around to senior centers, asking what older people want in their clothing. The answers — focused more on issues of fit, comfort and disguising signs of age — had discouraged them. Though these elements are important, the students seemed to want an aesthetic of age that could inspire them; they want to make old age high fashion, something beyond just function. (I think to

Read more