Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Part III: Social Climbing


After the first few marquis menswear blogs (the aforementioned A Continuous Lean, along with Put This On, The Sartorialist, and Sartorially Inclined, the like) were established, the small-but-mighty cloud of menswear civilian-journalists was fast outgrowing the clunky, remedial back-end layout of Blogspot. They needed a more instantaneous, more user friendly, and (above all) better looking interface. Around this time (2010-2011), tumblr. began to rise to prominence in the microblogging stratosphere. With its clean, flat-navy layout, lightning-fast “reblog” feature, and the ability to customize your blog as endlessly as you could imagine, it was all but fate that tumblr. was the next of kin to step into the spotlight of menswear blogging as a tool and platform.  The most pivotal moment in the past 5 years of menswear culture, the crassly-title coffee table manifesto, “F*ck Yeah, Menswear,” was spawned from an originally-anonymous tumblr. blog of the same name that both highlighted and satirized the good, bad and ugly of the underground menswear scene. Lawrence Schlossman, co-author of both, writer at Sartorially Inclined and current editor-in-chief of Complex Magazine stepchild Four Pins, was looked to as the model for any regular-ass dude that felt a passion for quality, luxurious clothing. In the midst of his involvement within the scene. By going directly to the developers at tumblr., he was responsible for the identity of this entire subculture as we affectionately know it today: “#menswear.” This umbrella term still encompasses insider news, finger-on-the-pulse trend reports, self-shot “What I’m Wearing Today” posts, and, possibly most paramount, premature photos of clothing that wouldn’t see a storefront for another calendar year.

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