Hello New Zealand

Snapdragons is always excited to make new friends, and we have recently made a new friend in Ali of Hitching My Wagon. Through my internet stalking, I know that she is living in New Zealand. Salut! So I was most amused when I came across this article, and I knew the first person who needed to read it was Ali. The article is an interesting run-down of the questionable "fashion" habits of NZ men.

While I don't think Aussie guys are this bad when it comes to fashion, there is most definitely an element of "tribal" or collective dressing amongst our men also - be it the Herringbone shirt & tie combo we professional girls love to see on our accountants/lawyers/brokers, or the Ksubi jeans and designer tee that are de rigeur for the Valley any night of the week, right down to the irritating hipsters who are clones of one another (despite insisting on their individuality).

The advertising tribe.

The sporting tribe. Pic

Here are some great points from the article (natch, click on the link for the full article):

* New Zealand men dress badly

* Few New Zealand men seem to enjoy an engagement with clothes at any level beyond the practical. Few enjoy clothes shopping and a surprisingly high number have their clothes bought for them, first by their mothers and then by their wives. Left alone, most men struggle to understand both size and fit.

* Kiwi men seldom take advantage of the ability of clothing to disguise faults or to enhance natural attributes. They misunderstand the power that well-chosen clothes have to attract the opposite sex. Instead, in New Zealand it seems the male body is a place on which, for the price of a free T-shirt, corporates can place their logos.

* New Zealand men dress tribally rather than individually. Corporate and sporting wardrobes provide refuge for those who can at least play by the rules, but few maximise the opportunities for individual expression those represent. Rather than becoming more sophisticated in their attitude to dress, contemporary New Zealand men have defaulted to a basic wardrobe of singlets, T-shirts, shorts, hoodies and jeans. With a few exceptions, this limited range of clothing – expressed in a dreary overwashed and worn palette of blacks, browns, blues and greys – describes the wardrobe of most Kiwi men.

* Experimentation with clothes is one way we determine who we are and discover our fit as an individual within society. How then did New Zealand men get to the point where access to individual self-expression through clothing has essentially been deleted as an option? The answer lies in recognising that the fashion choices made by Kiwi men are the direct result of the way masculinity has developed in New Zealand.

* The reason New Zealand men dress so badly is that if there is one overarching pattern that shapes the clothing choices of New Zealand men, it is their great fear of “looking like a poof”.

And then it all becomes a little cerebral. However - the points the author makes are fantastic, and I think these elements can be true of both sexes (to a point - we girls aren't so concerned about the "poof" factor!), and are definitely not just limited to NZ men.

I really like this idea:
If we took clothing seriously as an indicator of cultural confidence, we’d know something was wrong, because for clothing to have degraded to the level it has, there must be some underlying cause.


Pic

What do you guys think about this? Would love to hear from our NZ contingent!