Cold enough for a henley shirt
Finally getting into some cold weather. I’ve worn henley shirts for many years, and pulled one back out yesterday.
I started calling out themes with colors last year for reasons I have explained to a few people, and that I will explain more openly in another post. I then had the idea to start a weekly color shift last year, but only got around to trying a clearly communicated weekly color or pattern signal in the last month or so. The signal gives people a simple prompt to create from and communicate with each other about. It has been so thrilling and fun to see how incredibly creative people are with just one or two simple themes!
There are so many huge problems for us to work on as persons and communities and companies and nationstates, and of course this fashion signaling should not distract from that, but flexing the creative muscles and communicating with each other and having a bit of fun is an important way that all humans can get our brains creatively stepping into more solutions. So I’ll continue doing this weekly fashion signal for now. Sometimes complex, sometimes simple, always voluntary.
And of course this doesn’t detract from the importance of tradition. If anything, the shifting color and subtle creativity places more emphasis and recognition on the persistent traditional colors or uniforms or patterns or rituals in our lives, and the reasons for them, and further helps us build a history of understanding the importance of small details in layered communication with others.
In connection with reflection theory, I’ve started to use the term adaptors to call the skill of creating and reading and processing and understanding small clothing or other communication details from other people. Despite our sometimes simple nature as human persons, and despite the importance of recognizing and practicing tradition and stable imitation, the adaptor skill to read and adjust to small signals from others while retaining your own tradition and ritual (or slightly adjusting it to accommodate others out of politeness or gift or for other reasons) is a part of reflection-ability.
I have been updating my header image on this blog to match my choice over the last few weeks, in combination with wearing something every Sunday or Monday that corresponds to that, and also with sending out a more clearly defined written definition. Occasionally I’ve signaled with a book of a certain color, although many days the book I’m carrying is simply what I’m interested in reading and often critiquing or correcting.
The last few weeks have been red with hints of orange transitioning to a fiery orange sunset towards the end of the week (the first time I tried a signal with a mid week transition), then Zima blue, then bright orange with a neon green, then flat black with a neon green, then a patterned black or other patterned darker colors with some deep burgundy last week to lead up to a few holidays. I wore a black and red Sylosis shirt out on Saturday, while reading and critiquing the cute/acc book from Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic at lunch, which may or may not have added some further inspiration complexity for Halloween.
Another action I might begin regularly trying is to call out specific people or places or books or environmental factors that I encountered in the prior week or weeks that contributed to my color choice for a week.
With colder weather starting in many parts of the world, this week might be the last week of the year to really show some skin. I’ve been listening to BigXtheplug’s new album, and noticed his style of wearing hoodies and jackets unzipped with no shirt underneath. I thought of this pattern again when I saw Rosalia’s outfit at the WSJ Innovator awards on Friday (with a patterned black top showing some skin jaggedly straight down the middle). I also recently rewatched the latest Superman movie and have a crush on Mikaela Hoover. Her character in the film wears an orange henley-style dress. All of those thematically fit with shifting to more fall and winter clothes while still showing some skin.
I’ll update the header with a simple inverted triangle and vertical line (the color matters less this week), which fits thematically with the henley and with the open jacket style, and also fits a little bit with the meso-space-mountain visuals.