Clothes for dudes basically comes down to t-shirts and trousers. And for shirts, one's mostly limited to brands, bands, and sports teams. Or, even fucking worse, some pithy comment like "not married and happy", or "have drink, me good", or whatever the feck people find clever these days. I oftentimes default to the H&M look, as it's the least corny looking style I see, and that's not saying much.

Women's clothes have all these cute tops with no shit written on it. There's more variation in colours and shape. You can mix it up by having a half top (whatever you call those). Don't want to wear a top and trousers that day, then wear a dress or a skirt.

Obviously the huge advantage of being a guy is that you can be ugly af, indeed I am an ugly fecking dude, and you're accepted. I assume it's harder for women in this regard, let me know if I'm wrong.

  • Mardoniush [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    The answer here is to embrace historybounding. Even embracing the masculine 19th century styles we still have opens up a lot of colour and shillouette options. A colourful tailored dress greatcoat with heavy waist suppression and full skirts is a great fit, for instance.

    And of course there's always the 1970s

    Though of course even here there's a lot of feminine styles to try too. It just gets more equal (and arguably tilted towards men before 1600)

    • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      The answer here is to embrace historybounding. Even embracing the masculine 19th century styles we still have opens up a lot of colour and silhouette options.

      My mind immediately went to Matt's description of Martin Van Buren's wardrobe, lol. Lace-tipped, orange-tinted silk cravats sound cool.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
        ·
        4 months ago

        For modern stuff, something like

        Show

        For a more 19th century look, I've always been a fan of the androgynous look of the 1830s (When feminine looks were hyper-feminine to compensate)

        Tight, steel corseted jackets with raglan shoulders, pleated pants for wide hips, 2.5 inch heeled Chelsea Boots (Elastic sides, very-modern!) and burgundies, dark greens and blues, russets, plums, and loudly coloured check pants.

        Show

        Obviously that stuff is hard to find or even sew today, given you need the skills of both 18th century and modern tailors to make the jackets. But you can lean into an archaic shilouette and raid both gender's racks at the store to gesture towards earlier, less rigid style languages.

          • Mardoniush [she/her]
            ·
            4 months ago

            Excellent, honestly I just want to walk down the street wearing this and not look odd.

            Show