Welcome to RebuSaidSo, a fashion blog attributed to and focused on Men’s Fashion. My goal is to provide real and fresh perspectives on men’s fashion in today’s world and to showcase the subtly of improving your style and the psychology behind it.
GET TO KNOW ME
Hi, I’m Kaleb Yates, a student at Texas State University currently majoring in Advertising and Mass Communication. I’d like to think of myself as a creative, who pushes the envelope and is always ready for new opportunities. Its been a process finding my own style and groove; discovering your approach towards looking/feeling your best can be extremely difficult. Coming from a school system, where I was very limited on how and when I was able to express my personality and individuality, I had to force myself to discover and venture into things that may have made me feel uncomfortable. However, I’m glad that I took those leaps to find out what felt not only keen to me but natural to me.
I chose to do a blog about fashion, specifically for men because the world of fashion is so heavily centered around the woman. Now more than ever, I feel the realm of fashion is waning on the male viewpoint. Additionally, my intrigue of searching for and piecing assortments of fashion together have become a new small passion of mine.
I had much fun with this project over the semester and I’ve had not regrets, but if there was anything I could include or improve on it would be to have more people come into the blog. I wanted to shoot more video footage and incorporate more vlog aspects into my blog while still hitting the topic right in the center. I feel I came up with pretty decent captions for each of my post, however I feel that since I used my actual Twitter account that I should’ve made more of an announcement in a sense of what would be to come.
My best experience was being able to put on my reporter hat and interview not just people that I knew but a few that I didn’t. It helped improve my interview skills and gave me a new awareness of myself. This can definitely help me in future career aspirations and within everyday life as well. I would love to work at BuzzFeed one day and me learning everything that I have in this course and from this project has enhanced me as a creative.
From the data stats chart below, my best/most popular week was with my post about high-low looks; The week of March 23rd through March 29th of 2020. With a total thirty-four view and sixteen visitors. My most popular post was my blog post about assisting my friend in his high low look for his birthday in “‘Highs and Lows’ The Way It Goes”. I had a total of twenty-one views and I put a lot of effort into that post mainly because I had the greatest accessibility to the subject. The most surprising discovery I found was that I had views from Alaska and China! All of my social media stats were pretty lack-luster aside from the week of my most viewed post.
Boy oh boy, has life as we’ve known it has changed dramatically. What once was a world of freelance and contained disorder has now turned into a crippled mess. Coronavirus has affected every industry and line of work imaginable. Forcing us humans to reevaluate the foundational basis of each aspect of our lives. By just looking out the window you can visibly see an influx of people outside out reprioritizing their health. However, my short-lived fitness phase has passed and I’ve moved onto planning how I can bounce back aesthetically once this all blows over!
Image from Pixabay
After exploring new hobbies and interests while trying to maintain a newly acquired essential job, I decided to turn the focus on the future instead of the now. Without a doubt there has been a huge increase in online shopping. It’s convenient and saves time and money but I’d suddenly noticed something perplexing. Three and half weeks in and I began to do some serious shopping across the web. There were some pretty decent deals here and there but overall I hadn’t seem to find anything that match the quality I wanted with its pricing. Which led me to thinking, maybe I should dig deeper I visited Urban Outfitters and compared pricing and item quantity among the men’s and women’s department on two separate devices. I did my best to find items that were as closely similar in content, wearability, and pricing as possible. In total I had six items in each cart; For the women’s cart the total came out to sixty-four dollars with taxes added and the men’s was a whopping ninety-seven dollars with taxes.
You may be thinking, how ironic is that? Women whom are typically and logistically projected to shop more than men manage to save more money. However, it all made more sense when I sat back and really thought about. Since women are more socially conditioned to have grandeur interest in shopping, industries and companies target them more. In the context of the fashion industry, this leaves the space for interpretation of what is and isn’t worth buying. Additionally women are also more conditioned to be more aware of and actively maintaining their appearances.
I think I can speak for everyone when I say that our upbringings shape our goals. I can recall back when I was in high school and my mother didn’t want me to have a job while I was in school. Consequently, I couldn’t just sit by and do nothing; with money saved up from a summer job, I was able to become the younger male version of ‘Girl Boss’. I slowly began buying and reselling things off of Ebay and was able to make very small income for myself. Eventually, I had intentions to my small online shop be and start something more uniquely my own. However, without many resources or direction I wasn’t able to turn my ideas into tangible works of art; so instead meet someone who is taking on the world of entrepreneurship and fashion to create his own lane.
Since, I don’t own my own business I felt the need to reach out to someone who has first-hand experience with balancing artistry, innovation, and a diligent work ethic to match. This Houston, Texas native college student stuck me right away with creativity and a brass perspective on streetwear; and yep that’s his real last name.
What lead you to want to create your own business?
It started out with an interest in streetwear, which led to me realizing I have an interest in designing too. Basically discovering that I cannot only be a spector in fashion but a player in the game as well.
Where did you get the concept of VAGUE?
I didn’t see anyone approaching streetwear with a brand based on having no specific concept, so I decided to take that route. Also the word vague itself means uncertain or unclear and I felt that it conceptually aligned well with how I wanted to approach creating a streetwear brand.
Who inspires you from a business/ownership perspective?
This isn’t a person but I’d have to say Apple. The Iphone is the standard, almost like the t-shirt and the way that it’s marketed is top tier. That’s the same approach I’m working towards.
...Additionally who inspires you stylistically?
Kanye, Jonah Hill, A$AP Rocky, Princess Diana- just to name a few. There’s something about the way they piece their outfits together that I have an affinity for.
We can all agree how quickly things can feel in this day and age with swift news stories and ever so fast changing scopes on various media platforms. Many of times, making it difficult to sit down and unpack the true contents of that story. However in the realm of fashion that pace is slowed down to help reflect on the origins of how today is a reflection of yesterday. I casually went looking through HYPEBEAST, a contemporary fashion /streetwear blog for men and found an interesting article by Marc Wong discussing the current collection for Daily Paper, a menswear label best known for tying its designs to African heritage.
I first heard of Daily Paper when they did a collaboration with Puma in May of 2018. Incorporating elements of African patterning and color patterns with a more contemporary makeup. Their introspective outlook on fusing the two of these apparent abstract worlds drew me to discover more. Here they start a collaboration with Ghanaian artist David Alabo, where Alabo is said to derived his designs from his deconstructed conception of African culture in addition to its proximity to society as a whole.
The article here is short yet sweet as it gives insight onto the artist frame of mind; where he takes afrosurrealism and intertwines it with the culture of divinity using tarot cards to present them. The article profiles four out of the five design; The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress and Emperor. While I enjoyed learning about the artistic vision of Alabo’s perspective, I wish there could’ve been more to the article. I hope there would be more visual aspects there to pull me in more. However, I understand that it wasn’t too much to expand on as it was more of an introductory article used to present new upcoming drop for the brand. Lastly, the collab has dropped and is in connection to the longer running line for Spring/Summer 2020.
Recall back to your childhood when you were dressed without any concerns of your input as to what you were wearing. Thinking about It, may seem too elementary but the role of color holds huge importance in the realm of fashion. The vibrancy or opaque tones instantaneously pull us in; sometimes more than the actual collectiveness of an outfit. Here, I’m going to layout the essential understanding of the color theory/color harmony and how you can use it to benefit you while also manipulating it.
The Color Wheel
In the world of visual arts, the color theory is a body of practical guidance to comprehending the concept of color mixing and along with visual effects of a specific color combination(s). Within this concept there are also definitions or what are also known as categories to be of colors based on the color wheel spliced into three categories: primary color, secondary color, and tertiary color. The primary circle based on the colors red, yellow and blue are the colors that cannot mixed or formed by any other combination of colors. Additionally, you have green, orange and purple as your secondary colors and hybrids of the primary and secondary colors as what we know as tertiary colors.
Image from Pixabay
Color Harmony
Next, the concept of harmony surrounding colors is vital to understanding visual appeals. Harmony in relation to color among other other things, brings a feeling of collectiveness and overall allows one to better digest mentally and aesthetically what they see visually. When color harmonize it helps establish orderliness and dispels and notions of chaos or imbalance. Furthermore, from a psychological standpoint an overabundance or underwhelming amount of harmony can lead to over/under-stimulation; Moreover, moving further away from the idea of dynamic equilibrium.
Image from Pixabay
Withal, this ideal gives us color schemes. Color schemes can be analogous which are colors that are side by side along the color wheel, such as blue-green or blueish-purple. Comparatively, there are also complementary colors which are colors that are diagonal in retrospect to the color wheel; for example how well the colors yellow and blue go together or orange and green for that matter. As mentioned in my previous post, providing color schemes are essential tools in aiding the culmination of your own stylistic approach.
Color in Context
The world of fashion has moved from a hands on industry to one with more digital applications of designing and styling than ever before. Different fabrics and textures expand on the complexity of transferring some of those digital properties into tangible products. Think about a time when you purchased an item online and the stock photo didn’t match what came in the package. The content of colors digitally don’t always translate the best. Apart from that it can be even more of a challenge tailoring a look together when the colors are off. Below I’m going to through a time I ran into an issue of this nature.
Images from Pixabay
Below is a photoshoot I took from my past birthday. Alike my previous post on high-low looks, I followed a similar method in piecing my outfit together. I narrowed in on the factor of me getting new shoes and centered the look aesthetically around this abstract yet simple color scheme. My first color scheme was rooted from the blue-green color of the shoes and find materials that would flow well with my shoes.
We all have people whose style we admire and in most ways wish to emulate. I know for myself I’m most strongly drawn to a variety of people, places and things to assist me in formulating a look together. For majority of us, social media can now play a large factor in that process; especially a visually glamorizing site like Instagram. With a wide variety of content that has the ability to intersect smoothly and almost effortlessly with other equally large platforms such as Twitter and YouTube, Instagram has helped transformed the way we intake a variation of content.
Images from Pixabay and UnSplash
Instagram is one of the largest social media platforms in the world today; now gaining the enticement of an assortment of followers with who we’ve come to know as social influencers. Ranging from people of a more high profile status like Kylie Jenner or Kevin Ma, founder of men’s contemporary fashion and streetwear company HYPEBEAST to someone who started directly from a platform alike Instagram such as Jackie Aina a digital creator best known for her content in the realm of beauty and hair care. Whatever end of the spectrum you fall into, there’s someone or something for you. Alternatively ,when specifically pertaining to fashion many influencers tailor their content of style to follow what fits them best authentically. Granted,the vast majority of followings don’t always have the same resources and accessibility to fashion or style of the same caliber.
Consequently giving life to the ideal of high-low looks. A high-low look is essentially consisted of pulling various pieces with a range of values that creates an established conceptualized fit. It can virtually stem from almost anytime; a painting you saw, a movie or just your favorite musician sporting their own cool style. Regardless, it’s important recreate the look as you see fit. However, if you’ve never constructed an outfit with such complexity, it can become a bit tedious. Below, I’ll show you how a few simple guidelines can help you unlock your best style. Along with a few tips and one of my most recently pieced high-low looks.
The Keys to Curating a High-Low Look
Establish a focal point for the outfit: This can be any part of the outfit.
Choose an initial color scheme rooted from you focal point: Here you can focus on what color(s) best complement your focal point or overall look.
Be open and willing to change or alter your original ideas: Sometimes due to external constraints you’ll be limited in what you can find and piece together. Keep suggestions and alternatives close by.
Now Let’s Meet The Client
Eric
This year, Eric turned twenty-two and wanted to delve a little deeper into a more snazzy and somewhat trendy look that still had its own stylistic approach. Of course per usual, he elected me as his own personal public relations manager and being that he’s my best mate, I took the job.
Without much to work with and such little time, I had to work fast and be as faultless and detailed as possible. For his past two birthdays he’s had a two-piece suit and then a simplistic button down ensemble with more casual everyday alternative for later. However, for this year he told me that he wanted to change it up while still making a statement regarding like after 21. He told me that after watching the late Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video with his signature red leather jacket. Although, I knew this would be a challenge I was see how we could recreate this idea.
In attempts to mimic the style and color scheme, I came to realize not only how expensive red leather jackets are in particular but additionally how difficult it is to find such a jacket that holds the standard of quality we had in mind. It was either quality or the benefit of cutting down on the overall cost. In addition to this we had just a little under a week and a half to find and order everything. Which led us to seek out another color/color scheme that would compliment my client’s interest and taste.
As far back as I can remember every Sunday, I would dread entering any kind of thrift store alongside my mother. Goodwill, Salvation Army or some family owned business like Thrift King (a well known shop in Houston)– you name it and we were there. She was infatuated with finding crafty and intricate clothing pieces; Intertwining her frugality and sense of style into one. Prices were obviously much lower than the suggested retail price; especially since much of the clothing at hand was very outdated/ out-of-season. Moreover, of course initially I didn’t care much but once I began high school, that all changed for me.
Transitioning from a daily basis of being in dress-coded khakis to then being able to wear nearly whatever I desired, was a full on-slot of freedom of expression that I never had been able explore before. It was almost like taking a new class at school or something. I was learning about all sorts of things such as– brands, designers, fabrics, etc. I taking advantage of the low prices and acquiring really nice finds like the few below. However, my fun seemed to come to a halt, once Macklemore came into the picture.
Image from Pixabay
Can We Go Thrift Shopping?
You might recall rapper Macklemore’s 2012 breakout hit song “Thrift Shop”, which parades the experience of shopping for gently used items in thrift stores with the expectation of having a grand and inexpensive visit. Just like that the scope that was on the thrift experience opened up greatly. Many journalists and articles reported otherwise that they wasn’t any direct correlation between traffic within thrift stores or their sales revenue but I felt different. Based upon my personal experience, stores across the board were increasing prices and definitely had an increased traffic flow. If their rates of conversion were matching or not, I had no idea but I just remember feeling somewhat crowded and cheated because thrifting now became trendy.
Image from Pixabay
Next thing I know there’s a whole host of new shops popping up around every corner. Most of which are appealing and marketed towards a much younger audience such as Buffalo Exchange and Plato’s Closet. These shops centered their content around brands that the younger generation were interested in and began up-cycling them. For those who don’t know up-cycling is reusing former older pieces to recreate something to gain a higher quality in value. This reissued quality is going to play greatly into the up-rise in the latter on realm of the furthering of variations of differentiating thrift stores and the online market as well.
My Tips on Up-Cycling
Look for clothes that you no longer wear or have stylistic interest in
Try and recall what you paid for those items
Self-Assess them and draw up your own value for each item
Lastly re check and even possibly include a friend to see how you could reinterpret each item into an outfit
these tips will help you not only make some money but create space for new flare!
Still Sliding…
Today, thrift stores aren’t popular per-say but still rather trendy, mainly because of the way the newer generations view sustainability and preservation. In addition to this, the internet and the focus on online shopping have taken the focus of traditional shopping methods and made it almost completely digital. Despite me giving Macklemore a hard time for exposing my not so little secret, I’m glad to have found my own groove from maneuvering within the thrift store.
While I am an avid online shopper, I still head over to the thrift stores near me to take a gander. Below are some of my latest and most like finds from a variety of places.
Rebu Said So 