Sweatpants Forever? Noooo!!!!

By Erica and Karen

We were fascinated by a recent New York Times article entitled Sweatpants Forever.

Our first reaction was--sweatpants forever? Oh, no. Not for us. What was this all about? So we read on. And discovered just how crazy the fashion industry really has been. 

We had been bothered for years about designers selling us clothes at the wrong time. We rather liked seeing summer colors in February, they gave us hope. But heavy brown coats in August? What a downer. And we were not inspired in either season to buy way-off-season clothes. So why was it this way? Why did designers seem to be out of sync with the women who were buyers?

The article explains, though it is difficult to make sense of it all. Out-of-season clothes were only a small part of the craziness. Other things are sickening, like the burning of tons of unsold clothes in order to maintain the brand. Some things seem just myopic, liken the multiplication of shows, and fast fashion.

The conclusion, however, makes no sense at all. 

Women will not live forever in sweatpants.

The conjecture that they might do so is dependent upon the implicit assumption that we will never go back to living in a society larger than our homes. Or that because we have been doing that for a few months and will do it for a few more means we have lost all sense of style. Those assumptions are faulty.

We agree with Marc Jacobs: ordering online, in a pair of grubby sweatpants, is not our idea of living life.

We will go back to living in society. When we do, we will want to convey through our style who we are. Just as people in the public eye do, and men on the hot seat. We will once again enjoy shopping for clothes, we will once again enjoy dressing up, and we will once again enjoy dining and drinking with friends. It will take some time, but will not be forever.

But it sounds as if the fashion industry, as it had become, deserves to die. And to be replaced by something less dependent on speed and money, and more responsive to style. Real style. To paraphrase Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent: Fashion fades, but style is eternal.

We are not like some gentlemen, who buy Saville Row suits and are happy to wear them for the rest of their lives. No, we like to change elements of our wardrobes every now and again. But we don’t buy fast fashion. We buy style, and we wear style for more than one season or one year. 

If this story is correct, the fashion industry forgot what the point was. It was never going to succeed if it was all about the fashion industry. It can only succeed if it is all about the people who want clothes with style.Who want well made things with flair. Who want summer dresses in summer and winter coats in winter. Who are not interested in inflated prices because clothes have to be burned or designers have to do four shows a year, to which we are not invited anyway. 

We know a few local designers who are in sync with our approach, and we hope this development will help them succeed. They talk to us, and they design what we like. And we have yet to ask them to design sweatpants.