053: a snack for later
Q&A w/ RAFTM Winnie Wang
Recently, I’ve been thinking about the concept of personal style. Not just my relationship to my own personal style but the relationships others have to their own style, as well as to trends. According to research from ASOS, twentysomethings are more committed to fashion and style than ever, even willing to give up other spending—gym memberships, streaming subscriptions—to ‘invest’ more in fashion. The age-old question of how to find your personal style dominates the comments of #ootd Tik Toks and has featured in almost all of the fashion/style newsletters I read. I want to write a longer essay about all of this, contextualizing it within another age-old debate—the difference between fashion and style. The two have always been used interchangeably, but they’re not really the same. While it might seem like a small thing, blurring the distinction between the two has the effect of undermining their individual importance and influence.
As I try to figure out the direction I want to go on this, I couldn’t help but think of RAFTM Winnie Wang1, who writes a newsletter on style and film, amongst other things, and is one of the best-dressed people I know. Winnie’s personal style is thoughtful and distinct—whether they’re purposely trying to tell a narrative or not, the story of their outfits is very clear. So I reached out to them to ask some questions about their own relationship with style and fashion. They responded with thoughtful answers—a thoughtful person begets thoughtful style—about cinematic inspiration and delving into the history of prep. They also weighed in on why people are still captivated by the myth of French-girl style.
When did you start caring about style and fashion?
My interest in style developed in parallel with my interest in cinema during high school, when I was an active user of Tumblr. I was fascinated not only by independent cinema and the French New Wave, but the characters that populated these films. I wanted to be like Suzy Bishop from Moonrise Kingdom, Jordana from Submarine, Grace Kelly from any Hitchcock film, Anna Karina from any Godard film, and fixated on owning specific garments or accessories that I thought would bring me closer to embodying them.
Her was another turning point. The film led me to discover Opening Ceremony, which created a capsule collection inspired by the film, and Band of Outsiders, which designed the shirt that Joaquin Phoenix wears in the poster. I fell in love with their clothes and searched for other New York-based labels with similar silhouettes like Creatures of Comfort, Rachel Comey, Sies Marjan and Maryam Nassir Zadeh.
Do you feel like your style has stayed relatively the same?
My style has evolved since middle school, but I’m still drawn to pop culture references, maximalist looks, and bright colours. I still put together outfits with a sense of play and curiosity, not worrying about whether they’re coherent across time. I still place physical and emotional comfort as the highest priority when I’m purchasing clothes or getting dressed for an activity. My dislike for conspicuous branding, love for oversized button-ups, and ambivalence toward denim have also persisted over the years.
Where I’ve departed from my original tastes: attention to fit, structure and material rather than solely colour. As a result, I can appreciate clothing in neutral colours far more (Issey Miyake, Studio Nicholson, The Row and Totême, for instance) and have been carefully building a collection of “basics” for the past few years.
Currently, what narrative do you want your style to tell?
To the extent that it’s possible through clothing, I’d like to communicate my interests, lifestyle and gender to the people in my life. I want my style to hold contradictions: curated and unfussy, eccentric and sensible, ostentatious and reserved, aware of and oblivious to dress codes. Beyond that, it feels futile crafting a narrative when style can be (mis)interpreted in so many ways. I could be reading/eating pasta/learning a language instead of spending time worrying about how I’m being received!
How important has fashion history been to your style journey?
I’ve never been interested in fashion history, mostly because much of what I’ve encountered through fashion publications and documentaries pertains to luxury houses. It feels so far from my everyday life, and aspirational consumerism is too closely tied up with ideas of affluence and excess for me to properly invest in. After listening to the latest season of Avery Trufelman’s [podcast], Articles of Interest, I’ve been on a frenzy tracking down vintage Ralph Lauren and J. Press with the knowledge that these brands I brushed off as WASP-y2 had been defined by Jewish designers, historically embraced by American hip hop artists and Japanese fashion enthusiasts. It finally felt like there was room for me, and that I could expand how preppy clothes could be worn too.
The first two seasons of Articles of Interest presented a way of engaging with fashion history that addressed everything from safety regulations to environmental impact to class and labour with an investigative lens that was incredibly compelling. The latest season, though, dedicated seven episodes to one topic, demonstrating the extent to which there can exist multiple histories for a single style, spanning centuries and continents.
A vintage dealer recently told me that one of her customers wanted striped button-up shirts from Ralph Lauren, and when presented with a similar style from Brooks Brothers, rejected the offer. Having just learned the legacy of Brooks Brothers—that they’re the oldest apparel company in America, introduced ready-to-wear suiting during a time when everything was made-to-measure, and inspired every single preppy brand that came after it—I exclaimed, “But Ralph Lauren is Brooks Brothers!” at the same time as the dealer. I now see certain histories as valuable to understanding influence and culture, which in turn helps when browsing through vintage stores, styling items and knowing their worth.
For you, is there a difference between style and fashion? If so, do you feel like you have different relationships to the two?
For me, fashion speaks to a relationship with the world and encompasses history, design, trends, and, perhaps most importantly, commerce. There’s some sense that “fashion,” as the term is typically invoked, addresses consumerism, corporations and the global market. We hear about how the fashion industry is responsible for environmental pollution and labour exploitation, how it generates over 1 trillion dollars every year, etc. In the cerulean sweater scene from The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep doesn’t talk about the particulars of the garment or craftsmanship, but that the colour was used in luxury fashion houses and filtered down through department stores to a clearance rack, and that it represents millions of dollars in jobs.
Style is how individuals relate to themselves and respond to their surroundings: what someone is comfortable in, how much time they spend getting dressed, how they wish to be perceived. It’s driven by personality, interests, insecurities and lifestyle. I’ve never been interested in “fashion” for the reasons that Miranda Priestly claims it’s important, which is why I generally don’t read fashion publications, most of which shill sweaters hastily compiled by an underpaid market editor or report on trends I have no interest in engaging with. Instead, I like asking friends how they would describe their style, where they like to shop, the process by which they acquire their garments, how an item makes them feel. The closest a publication has approached this is Man Repeller’s Office Apropos series (RIP).
We’ve both written about the myth of French girl style, and you recently mentioned you had a similar feeling about Stockholm girl style. Why do you think we’re drawn to these narratives of effortless style? (And why, do you think, is it largely associated with Europeans?)
The pursuit of effortlessness derives from the desire to display that we possess an inherent charm or elegance. It’s not sexy to try, to dedicate time to the frivolity of fashion so we must hide that we strive toward being stylish, but we live under a patriarchal system where beauty is rewarded, so we’re resigned to hide any indications that we care while caring. The no-makeup makeup look is rooted in the same logic. Women are encouraged to minimize or conceal the amount of time they spend on presentation to appear more authentic or intellectual.
Europeans are excellent at constructing a specific idea of beauty rooted in eurocentrism and branding it as effortlessness. North Americans, in the view of Europeans, are sloppy, lazy and careless with our sweatpants and leggings. We’ve inherited similar ideas, but are culturally punished less for trying, which is perhaps why we feel comfortable wearing athleisure casually or acknowledging that there’s maintenance involved in “successfully” being a woman. I’m not sure whether it’s as deep as gender essentialism, but there’s something worth untangling for someone who’s smarter than me.3
More Winnie
“Eighty-five years on, Stella Dallas remains a style icon,” Little White Lies
Subscribe to a snack for later
Reader and Friend To Me; coined by Rachel Tashjian.
In a recent dispatch of her newsletter, Magasin, Laura Reilly discusses the return of WASPishness to fashion
I think parallels can be made about French-girl style and what the beauty industtry calls “the five-minute face.” Jessica DeFino writes about the cost of the five-minute face in her newsletter, Unpublishable.