The Lookbook · Era 09 of 10
The 2000s
Effort becomes the thing to hide
On the record
Effort became the only real embarrassment left.
What the room read
As photographed
- AUntucked. The whole statement is I did not try
- BBlazer doing no work. It is there to be dismissed
- CWatch and ring. The last formality standing
How it was built
As drawn
- 1Blazer unstructured. It is doing no work at all
- 2Shirt cut long so it can be worn out
- 3No waist, no line, nothing measured
- 4Denim breaking heavily over a casual shoe
What the decade expected
Six statements
What the room wanted
That you not look like you tried
How men addressed each other
First names, or a handle
What effort looked like
The only real embarrassment left
What got you excluded
Being overdressed
What the clothes were doing
Claiming not to be a decision
Cost of getting it wrong
Paid quietly, in rooms you never got back into
What it looked like
Era 09 of 10
Untucked. Distressed. Deliberately unconsidered.
The decade's real innovation was inverting the signal. For a hundred years, dressing up meant you took the occasion seriously. Now dressing up meant you were trying, and trying meant you were not senior enough to skip it. The most powerful man in the building was the one in a fleece, and everybody understood exactly what that fleece was saying.
The tie went first. The Men's Dress Furnishings Association, the American necktie trade body, folded in 2008 after sixty years, with membership down from around 120 manufacturers in the 1980s to twenty-five. When a trade association dissolves, the argument is over.
What replaced the suit was not another code. It was a scatter, and the scatter was full of small traps for men who had never been told anything: jeans that fit nobody, a blazer over a graphic tee, shoes bought for a different decade.
What it sounded like
Era 09 of 10
Informality as proof of authenticity. Speaking casually became evidence that you were not managing anyone's impression, which was, of course, a way of managing everyone's impression.
The word "authentic" did a lot of work in that decade and most of it was dishonest. A man in a hoodie on a stage is making a presentation decision. He is just making one that claims not to be one.
What it felt like
Era 09 of 10
Like effort was the only real embarrassment left.
You could be underdressed and it cost you nothing. You could be overdressed and it cost you immediately, because it read as either trying too hard or not knowing better, and both of those are worse in a status economy than being sloppy. So men resolved the uncertainty downward, permanently, and a whole generation stopped learning any of this.
What we kept
The collapse of formality that had no purpose left. Some of what went, deserved to go.
What we lost
The ability to mark an occasion. When everything is the same register, nothing can be raised.
On the pictures
Read this before you cite anything
Every photograph in the Lookbook is generated. None of it is archival. Where a plate states something as fact, the claim points at the historical record, which is checkable, and never at the picture above it.