How will socialism work towards solving the clothing problem? The fashion industry, particularly the idea of "fast fashion" is one of the most exploitative industries on this planet and a lucrative business for imperialists, not to mention the environmental cost of all of these fabrics thrown away annually. Aside from working to abolish exploitation in a general sense, how could clothing differ under socialism in working towards a more ecologically friendly alternative? What about the gendering of clothing? inb4 utopianism, it can be interesting to speculate
Should we take a page from Edward Bellamy's Equality?
I think we can eliminate the idea of 'consumer fashion' where clothes have to be thrown out each season (at least for women) without arguing for making people wear paper bags. Clothes should be high quality and durable.
Black is arguably the best color so i'm with Zig Forums pot on this one, beige is pretty good too. Black makes you hotter in high temperatures so that's a downside.
John Rogers
While I personally think paper would be a bit silly (at least how I imagine it), I think the idea of disposable clothing in the way Bellamy described it is interesting, especially if one holds an interest in things like the socialization of domestic work.
We could always go for red jumpsuits. What could be more socialist than a society of people mandated by law to wear jumpsuits? Bourgeois individualism will stand no chance
We should set up more automated factories that put clothes together based on 3 or 4 presets in cheap, neutral colors.
It's important to clothe everyone, but there's nothing wrong with shit produced in factories by the truckload looking the part, and wearing such clothing will never constitute a legitimate form of human expression. I have no fucking problem with making factory clothing look as soulless as it actually is.
Luis Wood
Interesting I guess but ultimately dumb. We need less disposability not more. Plus who would actually want to wear that.
How about no. It's not a crime to want to wear something nice. You should just not be tired of it after 3 months.
Jayden Williams
Agreed. Though I mentioned that an ecologically-friendly solution is important in the OP, I meant disposable in terms of clothing that would then be recycled into new clothing or similar products. A while back I read some paper on a type of hypothetical clothing that would "grow" as a child ages, reducing the need to buy new clothes again and again. Idk how that would work but it was definitely an interesting idea. Depends on how it looks. Shitposting aside people wouldn't want to wear something that looks like a trashbag or identical Kampuchean-style black tunics
Colton Murphy
I get what you mean by the concept ofc but reusability is third after 'Reduce, Reuse' remember. We should first of all try to avoid waste.
I suppose, but it seems like overcomplicating the issue, better to just hand the clothes back in to the distribution hub after they're too small to exchange for a new set, and they will be sent on to the next parent.
Anthony White
High quality durable clothes would be made in localized factories which are all coordinated by a central plan.
Jackson Williams
FIRST change production, then the culture should be more alterable with different practices, awareness campaigns, and independent content creation (both clothes themselves and depictions of them being worn)
personally I would prefer to live in a place where people are very plain-clothed mostly but have festival days where people have flower garlands, body paint, scents, various accessories, etc all crafted from natural materials
Jaxson Ortiz
Everyone has state mandated high quality work wear. Industrial protective type shit.
I think the most important thing (along with obvious things like reuse and recycling) would be to change the materials clothes are made from. Stuff like synthetic fibers, for example, are really bad for the enviroment. I don’t know what would be best, but any sort of short-term use of clothing combined with recycling would be good in reducing laundry wastewater.
Nicholas Murphy
i got buy dem air Jordans shiiiiiit
Luke Howard
Black people and shoes has to be one of the worst manifestations of consumerism
Jaxon Evans
Everyone gets a democratically selected uniform. Clothing is not expression (if it's mass produced like all current "fashion" is) as that's just marketing propaganda. It's stupid how many people are manipulated into useless bullshit each second. Shoes, bags, clothes, etc.
I wear about the same thing each day. An undershirt in various, neutral colours, a (varied) plaid shirt over that, trousers, and trail shoes. I have a pair of boots if necessary and some trainers. If it's cold I put on my surplus scarf and my peacoat.
This is all I need. Of course, climate will change necessities.
Tl;dr we need uniforms
P.S. i wonder if that would cut down on tribalism? No one could say anything about or show off certain brans leading to judgement if there were none
Lucas Walker
everyone wears mao suits
Adam Jackson
What is this obsession with controlling people? In socialism authority should only be exercised when it provides a better alternative, if a few pretty outfits make people happy then who cares? Do you really want a USSR situation where people are seduced into anti-government activity because they want western records or whatever?
Ian Foster
Not to mention that for most of history people made their own clothes and dressed pretty similarly. No one would bat an eye at similar forms of dress (besides obvious gender-based differences) back then. Personally, I think people who complain about universally-mandated uniforms are suffering from bourgeois individualism. Our current attitudes towards clothing, as I'm sure you'd agree, are a product of capitalism's consumer culture. The only thing I would suggest would be to have a warm weather and cold weather variant of the clothing Like what you see in anime with differing school uniforms depending on the season.
I'm like you though, I just wear pretty plain clothes everyday. I don't understand people obsessed with clothes.
Hudson Price
Spotted the economically leftist but actually reactionary.
For the love of god, not everything that doesn't interest you is wrong.
Carter Nguyen
this is where I grew up and live (I forget if we can embed YouTube or how to do it)
Sebastian King
Bruh, all my white and hispanic friends obsess over this shit and make fun of me for wearing just one pair of tennis shoes. t burger zoomer
Connor Nguyen
Honestly, the whole "live and let live" argument is bourgeois to the core. Uniforms won't be my hill to die on, but under socialism bourgeois culture must be ideologically combated and extirpated wherever it sprouts up. Hoxha recognized this, as did Pol Pot.
If someone turns into a wrecker because they want some cheaply-produced shitty music they should be punished tbh
Samuel Stewart
doesn't North Korea fight this by buying cheap copies of clothing and other articles to satisfy the people's interest in clothing and useless shit made in capitalist countries?
Adam Perry
I know they like to make fake Adidas and Hello Kitty merchandise
I feel like the hardliners are in the right here. Fashion has always been an upper class thing. Remember that the bourgeoisie spreads their ideology among the proletariat and while generic anti-consumerism is far from revolutionary, explicit consumerism causes one to dissociate from revolutionary politics. Fashion is one of those things you have to recognize as being a product of capitalism and not something that has to be kept after it.
I also think that efficient collective (utilizing economy of scale) washing and drying of clothes is the future.
This reminds me of something Orwell wrote in the 1930s about how mass production of clothing along with developments in sanitation and central heating were some of the biggest improvements for the working class. I know someone people prefer artisanal idealism over a scientific industrial approach but standardized factory-made clothing is the most ideal option.
Good point, while fashion is bourgeois, special clothing and accessories for festivites (which are modest and not decadent) really is something of the people. That's the kinda stuff you can leave to artisanal production.
Much easier to do this with fabric than with paper. The EPA says that paper can only be recycled 5-7 times and paper clothing (which was briefly popular in the 1960s) only lasts for a few wears at most. You can turn old cloth shirts and pants into childrens clothing, curtains, bags, or quilts.
Ryan Perez
Yes, fucking idiot. The lack of cultural freedoms was a key reason for the failure of the USSR.
Yeah, okay. You're no better than any other tyrant.
Landon Ward
hey leftypol here's a fascist server where you can post anything there are no mods all the fascist mods got banned LETS TAKE THIS OVER discord ==== .gg/QXkQwFb
Anthony Wilson
That would make sense. I have a lot of doubts about the durability of paper and its suitability as clothing anyway. Besides, the idea is literally taken straight from the pages of a utopian socialist novel.
muh freedoms and muh tyranny were still some of the reason it collapsed, even if you don't care about them, so it would be smart if you reconsider your position better.
Christian Young
I want a world where everyone makes their own clothes and makes clothes for their community. Or you can get automated mass produced generic clothing. Some of both.
Brody Fisher
That user can certainly be partially justified in calling me authoritarian on the cultural front, I won't deny it, but I definitely agree that the USSR and many other 20th century socialist states could have had a more rigorous form of political freedom and proletarian democracy.
Oliver Peterson
We'll still provide the tools and materials for the DIY crowd, though.
Jordan Mitchell
I think we're pretty close to a combination of those things, with the maturation of 3d printing and other techs. Mass customisation, essentially.
Elijah Martin
We should just end fashion companies and allow people to copy designs however much they want. Clothing factories would have specialized machinery to produce clothes in bulk while also maintaining a high degree of variation and customization. You'd have big online forums where people exchange endless digital designs of clothing that can get printed anywhere you want.
This shouldn't be difficult to realize with modern technology. It's an area where capitalism is really holding us back. For capitalism clothes have to belong to a brand. By appropriating and marketing certain designs capitalists are able to get people to pay them money.
The change would inevitably destroy the fun that is modern fashion, and replace it with a more organic culture based on what people personally want to wear.
universal mandatory nudism compulsory physical reeducation camps for the fat and unfit state issued air nikes
Austin Young
People individuating themselves is a good thing. We should just put an end to corporate propaganda telling them they need their products to properly be themselves.
Mason King
I've been to new york fashion week before so yeah, get rid of all of it for Christ's sake. Effeminate Dandies, Flâneurs, and Boulevardiers are peak bourgeois. Feminine personalities in general are hopelessly individualist and require suppression.
Nicholas Ward
*bourgeoise style individualism
Henry Sanders
It's just marketed "individualism." There's no individuality in consumed goods. Especially not mass produced ones.
Wyatt Scott
We need to reinvent individualism in a way that stresses the agency of the individual over his own community. This is an incredibly important aspect of individualism, since the individual is really just the focus of a bunch of influences from his environment. If you don't give the individual control over their environment, you don't give them control over themselves. That's how capitalism traps us.
Nathaniel Barnes
With the level of clothing industry we have today we can easily make standardized clothing with surprising amounts of freedom in style with a fraction of the infrastructure.
The first step is conscientization. No more fucking consumerist autism, hoarding huge piles of clothing you will wear twice in your life or getting new clothes every season.
Second part is setting good quality standars for clothing so people feel atached and motivated to have responsible amounts of clothing.
From this mindset we can set up our continental/ global clothing suplying guidelines. With 100 shirt designs available in 100 colors we have over 10k possible combinations just for torsos. And trust me 100 by 100 is a laughable number it could be 1000 by 1000 and we would still be miles behind the millions upon millions of shitty designs we have today. Repeat the same process for legware, underware and winter clothing and we have the entire world supplied with varied quality clothing.
But this is just the basics, local sewing workshops/clubs or factories can suply regions with traditional and custom clothing and allow for people to create their own designs with good equipment and materials. If you really care about "expressing your individuality" move your ass and make your own clothes to prove you really care.
What I'd like to see is a comeback of people making their own clothes. But probably impossible in this technology age.
Asher Bailey
Gorpcore, motherfucker. The worst thing that could happen is that you actually have to go outside and find it difficult to form a connection with nature through your Twaron (TM) long johns, GoreTex (TM) jacket liner and Dyneema (TM) hardshell.
There's nothing inherently wrong or bourgeois about fashion as such. The problem lies in the capitalist mode of production, wherein clothing becomes an image of identity to be sold to people believing they can be like those advertised if only they shop at the Gucci store. Fashion is nevertheless art, and the USSR, especially in the early days, had a vibrant and unique fashion culture that newly liberated women could partake in that upheld and glorified the working class and socialist values. This was gradually deemphasized by the bureaucracy, leaving an unfortunate weakness that was be exploited by western intelligence under the guise of "cultural exchange" during the Khrushchev thaw.
One of the main problems with modern fashion is the societal acceptance that "normal" people can and should only select ready-to-wear clothes, while haute couture and bespoke clothing or clothing you design and produce yourself should be reserved for the bourgeoisie. This symbolic relationship between classes manifests itself as one where the outfit you pick each day is often the badge indicating your social status, reproducing the social relations which exist by determining who will even associate with you, sometimes but hardly always subconsciously.
One of the only posts in this thread that aren't a mental waste or a response to mental waste.
Anyways, Socialism will obviously change how people consider fashion, along with how they will think about a lot of things. Trying to pre-plan the "socialistic" way to "do fashion" automatically trends to this ultra-authoritarian nonsense, in no small part because of how braindead these ideas are.
Mason Perez
this board has really come to shit huh
Jackson Robinson
This. We really aren't all that far off from achieving 3d printed clothing. Only thing holding us back are the bourgeoisie artificial market on clothing. Imagine how upset they'd be if anyone could 3d print a set of Jordans.
Ayden Rodriguez
This variety is pretty illusiory though. Just varying the colors and the prints doesn't make an item different, for instance, everyone considers these shirts to be "the same" in a way. When socialists think of centralizing clothing production we are literally feeding the conservative myth of orwellian dystopia under socialism where everyone is the same. You are correct in saying that clothing production needs to be local but are retarded in the "just DIY dude lmao" part, this is literal regression into lower forms of society
This is true but real individualism is not everyone wearing what are basically state-provided uniforms.
When i talked about making your own clothing i really didn't mean in the autist teenager way. Most of the variety in shirt designs like the ones in your picture are just stamps or prints. If someone wants a shirt with a super comrade design, instead of the society making millions of copies the person can go to or email the nearest clothing workshop or factory and ask for a custom shirt. Stamping techniques can be used with minimal infrastructure and the machinery can easily be included in a neighborhood sewing club, you just need to bring one of the standard supply colored shirts and voila infinite custom shirts. If you want something more sophisticated there are dgital cloth printing machines that can output, on demand high res prints of any file you feed, all you need to do after is to sew the shirt, someone in your community might help you if you need. Again if you really like captain comrade to the point of wearing him in a shirt it will be worth the effort. Anything else falls under impulsive buying that should be shunned.
