Love Yours

Denny Balmaceda @denny623 on Instagram

Hello everyone, hope you're having a good week. This week's topic on Dozer is going to be much less rage fueled I promise. We will be discussing the varying corners of fashion and the communities that form around them. I love the cultures the internet has created in the fashion community, so I just want to touch on that a little.

In fashion there are literally thousands of sub genres of style. There's Punk, Ballerina core, Americana, and Prep just to name a few. I love that communities form around these sub genres because they not only create a space to express your style, but they also encourage the evolution of that style by sharing ideas. There's also a lot to be learned when you engage. Through discourse you can learn about the trailblazers of the style, the music that's connected to it, as well as the other non-fashion related art that surrounds it. Preppies have sports that form their look in many cases. Golf and tennis are two of the most notable. To be honest there are also subgroups of style within those versions of prep. There are also numerous players in the game of prep as well. I mean you have brands like Polo, Lacoste, Vineyard Vines, and Rowing Blazers that open people to varying aesthetics under the umbrella of prep. These brands all fall under prep but they serve different purposes. Lacoste is a tennis brand; Rowing Blazers is a brand inspired by Oxford rowing teams; and Vineyard Vines is a boating and fishing brand. Honestly, looking back prep had a style for a lot of the sports I played. I played football for six years and if I think of some of the men who influenced the style, figures Mike Ditka and Joe Montana come to mind. Rocking short shorts and a wide short sleeve is a goated combo, I don't want to hear it. There was a time when I used to dress exclusively in preppy clothing but I stopped because I felt like I hadn't matured in my fashion. Little did I know there's a way higher ceiling to prep. In fairness I was in high school and all we knew were pastels and short shorts. I'm happy I ventured beyond prep and got aquatinted with other styles but I think I'm ready for a personal prep rebrand. I'll just add it back into the rotation. In this moment I think about what my style would've looked like back then if I was aware of the culture and depth of the clothes I was wearing. I'm still happy that I sought out other fashion because it's what I needed, and the beauty of veering off is that it allows me to mix my style with other influences. I remember in an interview A$AP Rocky did a few years ago discussed him going to the South and listening to UGK, Outkast, and Project Pat and bringing that music back up to New York with him. That experience influenced his sound moving forward. Now that I'm putting prep back in the rotation, I think it's important that I understand the essentials. Ah man, however could I get an understanding for this style without talking to people? Oh wow, is that the "Preppy Handbook" written by Johnathon Roberts and published in 1980?

It's almost as if there's literature that helps to inform culture I'm interested in participating in. Even if I didn't have friends to look to in the realm of fashion, I could find the answers in literature. And the same is true for other communities. Little did I know that a huge influence in the foundation of the goth aesthetic, are authors like Edgar Allen Poe and Daphene du Maurier (shoutout my best friend Seven for putting me on). I think y'all get the point. There's a bevy of information and cultural context in all of these communities. I know prep has influential movies like Caddy Shack and Rushmore but for the life of me I can't think of any musicians. The best fit that comes to mind was Bruce Springsteen, and I'm not too sure about that one. A better example for a different group would be The Cure and Bauhaus for the goths or The Clash and The Misfits for punks. To share a particular aesthetic with a group of people is a beautiful thing. Chances are there's an entire world of art behind the clothes you don. The communities I've discussed have obviously existed for a long while, but I can't deny the influence social media has had in propelling these communities.

The internet and social media have had a monumental impact on fashion and the communities that exist in it. I'm sure all of us are old enough to remember the strangle hold that the emo aesthetic had on the internet for like a decade. It was on MySpace and Tumblr for the most part, but even on Facebook the emo makeup was in every other girls profile picture. There wasn't a soul that hadn't heard Paramore or My Chemical Romance. The emo phase was so real man. I remember kids in my middle school arguing over who was a poser and who was actually emo. The emo aesthetic had existed for decades, but the internet introduced it to so many new eyes. People fled to it like..... wait let me workshop this. People fled to it like horses to hay? Hype beasts to crocs? Whatever, you get the point. It just highlights the power the internet has in connecting people who wear similar clothing. I mean shit, tell me you haven't walked into a Hot Topic or a Spencer's. Also look at the trends the internet has created. Y2K was bound to happen, so I won't even touch that one, but styles like cottage core derive from rural life in England! Fam that's such a particular niche it's not even funny. Or Goblin core that focuses on second hand clothes and has essential colors of black and green. I love stuff like that. It's the collaboration of minds that have an interest in something and turn it into an entire new way to dress. The creative energy is seemingly limitless. That brings me to the actual topic of today's post.... A.I. technology. Jkjkjkjk, but these groups really do help people find community in aesthetics. That's it for this week but I'm happy I discussed something I like. Now y'all know I don't hate everything.