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Fashion & Clothing: Follies, Fads & Social Norms

In Britain, you are normally never more that fifty feet away from an indoor shopping centre or tourist attraction. That's why I would never bother with coats such as these and always go for a Pea-coat or Reefer Jacket.
Mine's looking a bit tatty, if anyone can recommend a good outlet then I would appreciate it.
 
davidplankton said:
n Britain, you are normally never more that fifty feet away from an indoor shopping centre or tourist attraction
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Ermm...I shall think of this (perhaps not warmly) next time atop of Britain's only Arctic plateau.

I mean, you're right, on a cosmic consumer scale...your hyperbole carries the case.

But only if our island 'normality' is a metafunction of population density.

(ps I've always suspected that Great Britain (ie the biggest island in the British Isles) is probably a small continent. At least in terms of the massive variations that exist, of everything, thereon. There's unlikely to be an official minimum size for a continent...maybe the threshold attainment criteria for such a label should be a hybrid compound of qualifying factors. Not just geophysical bigness. Take quilts for example. And breakfasts)
 
Ermintrude said:
... There's unlikely to be an official minimum size for a continent...maybe the threshold attainment criteria for such a label should be a hybrid compound of qualifying factors. Not just geophysical bigness. ...
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There's no universal criterion (nor set thereof ... ) for what comprises a 'continent'. Different numbers of canonical continents are recognized and taught in different places. 'Continent' basically arose as an arbitrary way of labeling the largest contiguous mainland masses.

Having said that ... None of the more coherent schemes (e.g., based on continuity or geological affiliations) treat (or can treat) Great Britain as anything other than an outlying component of Europe (or, under some categorizations, Eurasia).

If the largest islands are to be considered for continental status, Greenland has to be at the head of the line.
 
Ermintrude said:
Ermm...I shall think of this (perhaps not warmly) next time atop of Britain's only Arctic plateau.
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Funnily enough, the only time I have ever been in a mountain-top cafe was in the Cairngorms. It even might have had restaurant status, I didn't notice being too traumatised by the ski-lift ascent.
That was twenty years ago, there's probably an M+S, Costa, TK Maxx and bowling alley up there now.

This is my idea of a coat -

the-last-detail-1.jpg
I don't know if I could get away with wearing one of those hats though. Not in Durham anyway.
 
davidplankton said:
It's a UK brand that has nothing to do with Japan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperGroup
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Ha, this is brilliant.

The company's products include frequently meaningless excerpts of Japanese text, inspired by the common Japanese practice of placing decorative English text on items to increase their fashionability and appeal, a phenomenon known as Engrish. The company explained to a Japanese television crew in 2011 that they deliberately use simple machine translation to generate Japanese text, and that they are aware that the texts often have no meaning.[12] The Japanese text incorporated in the brand's logo—極度乾燥(しなさい) (kyokudo kansō (shinasai)?)—literally translates as "Extreme dry (Do it)", the text in brackets being due to the translation software used offering alternatives depending on whether dry is intended as a noun (e.g., super dryness) or an imperative, (e.g., dry this shirt out).
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ramonmercado said:
Its not an eider or issue.
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Or something we should really be getting hot under the collar about. It's better just to button it, keep it zipped, and above all not let it become a hang-up.

Because there's always the risk of attracting unwanted interest from hoods. And fur's fur, there's no point in cloaking this in some kind of coverup, the proof will always out.

Yithian said:
Are they actually a Canadian company?
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davidplankton said:
Many years ago, so I have no sources, I read that Australia was considered an island and the biggest one there is.
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Some continent categorization schemes treat Australia as an island - the largest one - rather than a full-fledged continent.

If you categorize in relation to tectonic plates Australia, NZ, and New Guinea comprise the substantial dry land atop the Australian Plate.

It's all pretty vague and arbitrary, and the definitions and delineations have mutated over the centuries.

The concept traces back to, and has been emphasized the most among, residents of the single such 'continent' least justified to hold that status - i.e., Europe.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The concept traces back to, and has been emphasized the most among, residents of the single such 'continent' least justified to hold that status - i.e., Europe
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Something which contains, surely is said to be continent....and conversely, incontinent when unable/insufficient to contain. I hadn't quite thought of this resonance.

And what is 'Continental' in a US sense? When 'continental congresses' are referred to, either at a 1777 or 1812 timeline? It sounds vaguely familiar, but I'm unsure as to the significance of the term?
 
Ermintrude said:
Something which contains, surely is said to be continent....and conversely, incontinent when unable/insufficient to contain. I hadn't quite thought of this resonance. ...
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I agree with the semantic association ... Continence in this sense was a key term in my doctoral dissertation - one I concluded I couldn't avoid, even at the expense of the joking I fearfully anticipated and actually received. :cool:

According to Wikipedia, the English 'continent' dates back only as far as the 16th century, when it was derived from the English phrase 'continent land' and / or the Latin terra continens.

Both phrases allegedly focused on contiguity or continuity of land rather than what was contained within / upon it. The Online Etymology Dictionary:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=continent

... links the usage to Latin connotations of 'holding together; continuous', with no mention of 'containing' per se.

More about the history of the concept can be found in:

The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, by Martin W. Lewis, Kären Wigen (1997). The book can be accessed at Google Books:

https://books.google.com/books?id=fLT8X5E3bZIC&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false
 
Ermintrude said:
... And what is 'Continental' in a US sense? When 'continental congresses' are referred to, either at a 1777 or 1812 timeline? It sounds vaguely familiar, but I'm unsure as to the significance of the term?
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Good question ... I'm not sure how or why the pre-Revolutionary assemblies and organizations were given the label 'Continental'. My guess is that they were playing on the Euro-developed notion of 'continent' to connote all the relevant territories being explored and settled in their (British colonial) portion of the North American land mass. The contextualization at a level higher than the then-extant colonies alone was probably intended to acknowledge and accommodate prospective changes to the geographical particulars.
 
I managed to spot my first Canada Goose coat the other day. No doubt I will start seeing millions now.

Apparently the Jojo Bow is annoying schools now. I remember the Fergie Bow in the 80s. My brother was given one as a joke as he had long hair. There was also a time where we wore quite large thick ribbons but I can't remember if they had a special name. I had three and I still have them!

The JoJo bow, she says, is "more than just a hair accessory, it is a symbol of power, confidence, believing-ness."
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Believing-ness? Come away now!
 
min_bannister said:
Apparently the Jojo Bow is annoying schools now. I remember the Fergie Bow in the 80s. My brother was given one as a joke as he had long hair. There was also a time where we wore quite large thick ribbons but I can't remember if they had a special name. I had three and I still have them!
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These oversized Jojo bows don't seem to have reached here yet, but I do recall the Fergie bow, which was a fashion standard for years in these parts. In college they were particularly popular with education majors. We called them bow-heads. :p
 
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EnolaGaia said:
...Each of these companies has gone mass-market and upscale over the last few decades. By and large their products are still of reasonable or higher quality (Filson's stuff is still superb), but anachronistic in terms of technology / performance.
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I suspect that currently - at least in the UK - the worst offenders in the area of crimes against the wallet are in the so-called Bushcraft and weekend warrior...sorry...’tactical sportswear’ market. (Or what I would call the ‘All the gear – No idea’ market – from a common maxim used by members of the British Armed Forces to describe a certain powerful ally back in the 80’s and early 90’s; no offence guys....it’s certainly not applicable now.)

I've seen some breathtakingly expensive gear - neither especially robust, particularly well-made, or constructed from particularly technical material. Companies like Pentagon (Greek, I think) do perfectly serviceable copies at less than half the price – but some people clearly think quality is just about expense (expense should be a consequence, not a qualification). I’ve seen one company selling M65 type trousers at over £270.00 – they’re made out of poly cotton ripstop with cordura kneepad pockets – exactly the same materials as a pair of bog standard kneepad work trousers, which you could pick up for around £40.00.

(Oh, and seems they absolutely have to be described as ‘tactical’ – I mean, what exactly is a ‘tactical’ jacket: one that can organise an L-shaped ambush in a jungle at night, followed by withdrawal to an ORP and airborne exfiltration, all by itself...or is it maybe just that they have lots and lots of pockets?)

Ermintrude said:
On a related note.....after doing some related 'jacket sleuthing' online, I'm amazed to discover that Fjallraven (which I used to buy back when I originally was still hill-fit, in the 1980s) which was a brilliant Scananavian outdoor equipment manufacturer, is now also being worn as high-end high street fashion....
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I favour Fjallraven stuff for outdoors: sturdy and well constructed - the G1000 fabric can take an awful lot of punishment. I’ve had some of their gear for years, and the Skogso is my staple jacket. I’m really picky when it comes to trousers for walking/bouldering etc and I find most marketed as outdoor strides to be unfit for purpose...and uglier than a bag of spanners; the only brands I’ve found that do a proper job for me are Fjallraven and Haglofs.

Yes, it’s all relatively expensive – but I work on the ‘buy cheap...buy twice’ principle. I still have some stuff from the early 90’s and I’ve recently discovered that there’s a very healthy market for old-school mountaineering/outdoor gear on Ebay; sometimes it pays to be a bit of a hoarder!

All outdoor gear you need to put time into maintenance: in Fjallraven’s case that means waxing; performance fabrics need reproofing; down jackets are a thundering pain in the arse to clean. The thing I really can’t stand is waste: I have no objection to people mugging themselves to buy an item they don’t really need, but it makes me cringe to see how badly some people then treat the stuff.
 
Spookdaddy said:
I suspect that currently - at least in the UK - the worst offenders in the area of crimes against the wallet are in the so-called Bushcraft and weekend warrior...sorry...’tactical sportswear’ market. ...

(Oh, and seems they absolutely have to be described as ‘tactical’ – I mean, what exactly is a ‘tactical’ jacket: one that can organise an L-shaped ambush in a jungle at night, followed by withdrawal to an ORP and airborne exfiltration, all by itself...or is it maybe just that they have lots and lots of pockets?) ...
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In the US market, the 'tactical' buzzword may or may not be indicative of anything beyond simple hype ...

Generally speaking, 'tactical' and 'BDU' (battle dress uniform) terminology (when it distinguishes anything at all ... ) most often connotes that the garment is identical or similar to military-issue combat fatigues (BDU) and / or civilian versions commonly issued to (e.g.) SWAT personnel (tactical). This means the garment is baggy, functional, and includes multiple large pockets. Like their military counterparts, these garments are intended to be generic working attire basically suitable for anywhere / anything and relatively disposable / replaceable after hard use.

More often than not, 'tactical' garb is neither as optimal (performance-wise), technologically sophisticated, nor as convenient (style- / feature-wise) as similar garments more specifically designed for particular activities or lifestyles. For example ... If you want an all-purpose jacket / parka for casual around-town use and / or working outdoors, a military style field jacket will do just fine. If you need a jacket that will keep you warm / dry for days on end in the wilderness, go to the sporting goods and invest in a high-tech waterproof shell.

If you really need garb for hard use (dirt, muck, etc.) it's often the case that workwear (e.g., for carpenters, etc.) is better designed / constructed than military / SWAT stuff.
 
Spookdaddy said:
...Yes, it’s all relatively expensive – but I work on the ‘buy cheap...buy twice’ principle. I still have some stuff from the early 90’s and I’ve recently discovered that there’s a very healthy market for old-school mountaineering/outdoor gear on Ebay; sometimes it pays to be a bit of a hoarder! ...
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Totally agree; same here ...

I lost most everything when my residence was destroyed in a 2013 fire. During the recovery effort, I restocked (and frankly extended) my armory of high-end outerwear by patiently shopping the second hand market. I now have a wider inventory of same- or higher-quality items in as good or even as-new condition - all typically obtained at no more than 25 - 40% of retail.
 
Coal said:
Take a look at 'Carp Fishing Magazines'. Ye Gods, talk about playing soldiers, it's just a fish, get over yourselves.
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Hmm, I'm beginning to see a potential market here - tactical swimwear for fish: full Gore-Tex body sleeve with adjustable cordura gill covers, kevlar fin armour with built in RFID blocking technology, and camelbak hydration system. (Okay, that last bit might be a little superfluous, but it'll look good on the spec).

Shit...I missed out the 'tactical' thing. (And there should also really be the phrase 'MOLLE compatible' in their somewhere.)
 
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