SF Fashion: Is It Really That Bad?
By: Reyhan Harmanci
Yes and no. Trebay latches on to the idea of "tribes" — that SF'ers are a fractured bunch, with different neighborhoods having their own identities. Function and physicality are more of an issue here, too, as even the "Holly Golightlies" — in the form of the lovely ladies found behind the counter at Tartine — vanish on bicycle, not taxi cab, when done with their shifts. Ignored in the story was any sense of diversity — most of the pictures feature pale people — but he gets a few good lines in — "a Friday night at Nopa the communal table can sometimes seem populated by men dressed to mow your lawn" — without harshing on the Bay Area too badly.
Trebay's perspective, as nuanced as it is, has an out-of-town, wacky-SF tinge. We turned to two locals — Dwell senior editor Aaron Britt, who writes a men's fashion column called The Pocket Square for the Chronicle, and Lorraine Sanders, who maintains the SF Indie Fashion blog.
Sanders found Trebay's column to be lacking in two critical points. First, although Trebay threw in the word "sustainable," he never addressed the local movement. "There are tons of people here who are focused on the local community of designers, craftspeople — who are not interested in looking like the pages of a glossy magazine," said Sanders, adding that those same people weren't acting out of ignorance — "everyone knows who Tom Ford is." Also, Trebay didn't delve into "the tech-based fashion scene."
"This is one of the most interesting things going on in fashion right now," she said, name-checking Moxsie in the South Bay and Chictopia.
Britt found more to like in Trebay's piece but suggested some ways that the casual and fitness-inspired trends could have been explored further. "One thing that I thought was nice and smart was the emphasis on athletic bodies," he said, "I also really liked his comment that there was no 'it bag' or shoe of the season." The reason, Britt continued, was that fashion here is ruled by the fact that the whole notion of "seasons' doesn't apply. "We have to have a hoodie at the ready," he said, "I think that our absence of season derails us from the fashion industrial machine."
Additionally, Britt had no patience for the idea that SF (and the whole Bay Area) is full of unfashionable people or governed by tribes. The notion of good-looking clothing that also has function just makes more sense in Northern California than in Manhattan. "New Yorkers can be insularly urban — they never leave New York," he said, "San Franciscans are happy and anxious and active in leaving the city. There's so much outstanding nature, which encourages this notion of layers, of performance in your clothing."
So there, New York. You need to get out more.