Discovering Style

todaysdocument: May 8 is National Bike to School Day! SCHOOL...

Wed, 08 May 2013 11:06:44 -0400

May 8 is National Bike to School Day!

SCHOOL CHILDREN, WERE FORCED TO USE THEIR BICYCLES ON FIELD TRIPS DURING THE FUEL CRISIS IN THE WINTER OF 1974. THERE WAS NOT ENOUGH GASOLINE FOR SCHOOL BUSES TO BE USED FOR EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES, EVEN DURING DARK AND RAINY WEATHER, 02/1974

David Falconer, photographer. From the EPA’s DOCUMERICA Series

What did you ride to school? 10 Speed? BMX? Fixie?

wbez: verosays: This is what structural racism looks...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:54:41 -0500

wbez:

verosays:

This is what structural racism looks like.

Chicago, we have to do better.

Media criticism done on a napkin.

fishingboatproceeds: 88,000 notes?! (By the way, you can follow...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:03:46 -0500

fishingboatproceeds:

88,000 notes?!

(By the way, you can follow Sarah on tumblr. Also the President.)

Handknit Anchor Cardigan

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 06:50:52 -0500

Handknit Anchor Cardigan:

I’m not sure how I was supposed to resist this for $28. Best deal on the internets today.

closetfreaksblog: Lands’ End Canvas x Closet Freaks...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:57:21 -0500

closetfreaksblog:

Lands’ End Canvas x Closet Freaks #CanvasCheers Giveaway

Cheers to the New Year! In order to celebrate the beginning of 2013 we’ve teamed up with Lands’ End Canvas to outfit you for the winter in style. We’ve always loved the iconic American style of the Lands’ End Canvas brand and now you can too! Win all five pieces that Dustin is wearing in this outfit in your select color and size!

Men’s Wool Down Parka | Men’s Wool Plaid Bomber | Men’s Fine Gauge V-neck Sweater | Men’s 5-pocket Slim Fit Cords | Men’s Allen Edmonds Yuma Boots

Here’s how to enter:

TWEET the following using the “Tweet about the Giveaway” option in the Rafflecopter widget below:

Just entered the @canvaslandsend x @closet_freaks #canvascheers giveaway. My favorite item is: [link to item]

Simply replace the text “[link to item]” with the product link of your favorite item from the http://canvas.landsend.com site

For example, you can TWEET:

Just entered the @canvaslandsend x @closet_freaks #canvascheers giveaway. My favorite item is: http://canvas.landsend.com/pp/mens-wool-plaid-bomber~244891_-1.html

DON’T FORGET to copy and paste the tweet URL of your tweet into the RAFFLECOPTER widget below for you entry to count! You can tweet once per day and unlock more entry options through the Rafflecopter widget.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You don’t want to miss this killer giveaway! Good luck everyone!

- Anthony & Dustin

***Note that if any of the items are sold out, the winner can select something else to replace it. Otherwise, the prize will be the same items shown above in the winner’s preferred size and color.

Find us: FACEBOOK | TWITTER | BLOGLOVIN | PINTE REST | LOOKBOOK

smithsonianmag: Where Did Pabst Win that Blue Ribbon? “Go...

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:58:50 -0500

smithsonianmag:

Where Did Pabst Win that Blue Ribbon?

“Go get me a blue ribbon.” I must’ve heard my grandpa utter those words hundreds of times as we sat together fishing off our small dock. Even before I could read I knew which beer to grab for him – the one with the first prize ribbon on the can. I didn’t realize it as a child of course, but that ease of recognition was a testament to the power of branding.

Pabst Blue Ribbon beer—PBR to its friends—may today be best known as the preferred beer of old Midwestern fishermen and mustachioed hipsters, but that instantly recognizable ribbon is more than just a symbol or marketing ploy. Pabst did, in fact, win a first-palace award at one of the most celebrated events in American history. The year was 1893 (a time when everyone looked like a mustachioed hipster) and in Chicago, Illinois, America’s greatest architects and planners had created a fairground unlike any the world had ever seen, a utopian White City. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Photo by: Flickr user rob_rob2001

Ed note: The truth behind beer goggles.

The 1893 World’s Fair was a hell of an event.

The Evolutionary Mystery of Homosexuality

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:56:06 -0500

The Evolutionary Mystery of Homosexuality:

youmightfindyourself:

By David P. Barash
The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov 19, 2012

The mystery of gayness: Homosexuals reproduce less than heterosexuals, so why has natural selection not operated against it?

Here are some promising possibilities.

Kin selection. Scientists speculate that altruism may be maintained if the genes producing it help a genetic relative and hence give an advantage to those altruistic genes. The same could be true of homosexuality. Insofar as homosexuals have been freed from investing time and energy in their own reproduction, perhaps they are able to help their relatives rear offspring, to the ultimate evolutionary benefit of any homosexuality-promoting genes present in those children.

Unfortunately, available evidence does not show that homosexuals spend an especially large amount of time helping their relatives, or even interacting with them. Not so fast, however: Those results are based on surveys; they reveal opinions and attitudes rather than actual behavior. Moreover, they involve modern industrialized societies, which presumably are not especially representative of humanity’s ancestral situations.

Some recent research has focused on male homosexuals among a more traditional population on Samoa. Known as fa’afafine, these men do not reproduce, are fully accepted into Samoan society in general and into their kin-based families in particular, and lavish attention upon their nieces and nephews—with whom they share, on average, 25 percent of their genes.

Social prestige. Since there is some anthropological evidence that in preindustrial societies homosexual men are more than randomly likely to become priests or shamans, perhaps the additional social prestige conveyed to their heterosexual relatives might give a reproductive boost to those relatives, and thereby to any shared genes carrying a predisposition toward homosexuality. An appealing idea, but once again, sadly lacking in empirical support.

Group selection. Although the great majority of biologists maintain that natural selection occurs at the level of individuals and their genes rather than groups, it is at least possible that human beings are an exception; that groups containing homosexuals might have done better than groups composed entirely of straights. It has recently been argued, most cogently by the anthropologist Sarah B. Hrdy, that for much of human evolutionary history, child-rearing was not the province of parents (especially mothers) alone. Rather, our ancestors engaged in a great deal of “allomothering,” whereby nonparents—other genetic relatives in particular—pitched in. It makes sense that such a system would have been derived by Homo sapiens, of all primate species the one whose infants are born the most helpless and require the largest investment of effort. If sufficient numbers of those assistants had been gay, their groups may have benefited disproportionately.

Alternatively, if some human ancestors with a same-sex preference reproduced less (or even not at all), that, in itself, could have freed up resources for their straight relatives, without necessarily requiring that the former were especially collaborative. Other group-level models have also been proposed, focusing on social interaction rather than resource exploitation: Homosexuality might correlate with greater sociality and social cooperation; similarly, it might deter violent competition for females.

Balanced polymorphisms. Perhaps a genetic predisposition for homosexuality, even if a fitness liability, somehow conveys a compensating benefit when combined with one or more other genes, as with the famous case of sickle-cell disease, in which the gene causing the disease also helped prevent malaria in regions where it was epidemic. Although no precise candidate genes have been identified for homosexuality, the possibility cannot be excluded.

Sexually antagonistic selection. What if one or more genes that predispose toward homosexuality (and with it, reduced reproductive output) in one sex actually work in the opposite manner in the other sex? I prefer the phrase “sexually complementary selection”: A fitness detriment when genes exist in one sex—say, gay males—could be more than compensated for by a fitness enhancement when they exist in another sex.

One study has found that female relatives of gay men have more children than do those of straight men. This suggests that genes for homosexuality, although disadvantageous for gay men and their male relatives, could have a reproductive benefit among straight women.

To my knowledge, however, there is as yet no evidence for a reciprocal influence, whereby the male relatives of female homosexuals have a higher reproductive fitness than do male relatives of heterosexual women. And perhaps there never will be, given the accumulating evidence that female homosexuality and male homosexuality may be genetically underwritten in different ways.

A nonadaptive byproduct. Homosexual behavior might be neither adaptive nor maladaptive, but simply nonadaptive. That is, it might not have been selected for but persists instead as a byproduct of traits that presumably have been directly favored, such as yearning to form a pair bond, seeking emotional or physical gratification, etc. As to why such an inclination would exist at all—why human connections are perceived as pleasurable—the answer may well be that historically (and prehistorically), it has often been in the context of a continuing pair-bond that individuals were most likely to reproduce successfully.

There are lots of other hypotheses for the evolution of homosexuality, although they are not the “infinite cornucopia” that Leszek Kolakowski postulated could be argued for any given position. At this point, we know enough to know that we have a real mystery: Homosexuality does have biological roots, and the question is how the biological mechanism developed over evolutionary time.

Another question (also yet unanswered) is why should we bother to find out.

There is a chilling moment at the end of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, when a human family, having escaped to Mars to avoid impending nuclear war, looks eagerly into the “canals” of their new planetary home, expecting to see Martians. They do: their own reflections.

It wasn’t terribly long ago that reputable astronomers entertained the notion that there really were canals on Mars. From our current vantage, that is clearly fantasy. And yet, in important ways, we are still strangers to ourselves, often surprised when we glimpse our own images. Like Bradbury’s fictional family, we, too, could come to see humanity, reflected in all its wonderful diversity, and know ourselves at last for precisely what we are, if we simply looked hard enough.

Unlike the United States military, with its defunct “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, many reputable investigators are therefore asking … not who is homosexual, but why are there homosexuals. We can be confident that eventually, nature will tell.

cbenjamin: 27 hours before the DC @mrsuitsupply store opens....

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 09:08:10 -0400

cbenjamin:

27 hours before the DC @mrsuitsupply store opens. What else would we be doing? (Taken with Instagram)

youmightfindyourself: waxandmilk: The films of Tony Scott...

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 08:29:31 -0400

Sonny Chiba triple feature

The Hunger (1983)

Top Gun (1986)

Beverly Hills Cop II (1987)

Days of Thunder (1990)

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

True Romance (1993)

True Romance (1993)

The Fan (1996)

youmightfindyourself:

waxandmilk: The films of Tony Scott (1983-1996)

putthison: Put This On Season Two, Episode 3: (New)...

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:03:04 -0400

putthison:

Put This On Season Two, Episode 3: (New) Traditions

Put This On, a web series about dressing like a grownup, visits London, where we examine how traditions are being reinvented in the birthplace of classic menswear.

We go to Savile Row, where we meet up with a historical guide to talk about the history of the world’s oldest tailoring street. We also chat with the tailor Richard Anderson about what’s special about The Row. Patrick Grant, the owner and designer of Norton & Sons, talks about how Savile Row can become a vital part of the international fashion world again.

Just off Savile Row, we go to the basement showroom of W. Bill, the world’s most legendary tweed merchant. Ray Hammet, who’s worked at W. Bill for decades, shows us around the stacks of wooly majesty.

In our PTO: Man segment, we talk with Ian Bruce, painter and member of the band The Correspondents, about re-imagining the SoHo dandy for the 21st century. He takes us through London’s red light district, and tells us why he doesn’t want to look like a painter at the end of a long day of painting.

We visit the tie factory owned and operated by Drake’s of London to learn how a high-quality tie is made, from fabric to finished product. Then we buy one to send to a supporter of the show.

Plus Dave Hill tells where sport sunglasses are and are not appropriate, in Rudiments.

This is the third episode in our six-episode second season. In this season, we visit the three greatest men’s style cities in the world, as chosen by our readers - New York, Milan and London.

—-
Watch it elsewhere:

Vimeo / Youtube / iTunes

Clothing Credits (Coming Soon)

—-

Buy Season One on DVD for $16

This episode was supported by our viewers and by The Put This On Gentlemen’s Association.

—-

Executive Producers: Jesse Thorn & Adam Lisagor

Director: Benjamin Ahr Harrison

Host / Writer / Producer: Jesse Thorn

Rudiments: Dave Hill

Producer: Kristian Brodie

Director of Photography: Charlie Cook

Sound: Kristian Brodie

#34 is me! readyplayerone: The Ready Player One Easter Egg Hunt...

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:52:32 -0400

#34 is me!

readyplayerone:

The Ready Player One Easter Egg Hunt is well underway and the leader board at ErnestCline.com is getting updated. Have you cleared the first gate?

readyplayerone: Hey Tumblr, we’re giving away 24 signed copies...

Sat, 05 May 2012 15:40:03 -0400

readyplayerone:

Hey Tumblr, we’re giving away 24 signed copies of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and all you need to do to enter is reblog this post.

We’re going to randomly pick a new winner every weekday until we run out of copies so start reblogging. The first winner gets pulled on Monday morning. Good luck and May the Force be with you.

My favorite book of the past year, hands down.

Everlane belts

Thu, 03 May 2012 07:50:13 -0400

I just got my “at-cost” Everlane belts yesterday, and I have to say, they are quite nice. $15 each? Huge bargain. I’ve been looking for new belts for some time, and I’m glad to finally be able to get rid of my old ones. These look like they will last a good long time. Quality stuff.

This. everlane: Our first At Cost Pop-Up shop is here.

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:12:27 -0400

This.

everlane:

Our first At Cost Pop-Up shop is here.

Don’t forget to stay around for the sponsor. Seriously,...

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:10:49 -0400

Don’t forget to stay around for the sponsor. Seriously, it’s worth it. Nice job, guys.

putthison:

Put This On Season Two, Episode 1: The Melting Pot

Put This On, a web series about dressing like a grownup, visits New York City, a place where style is defined and redefined through interpretation and reinterpretation.

Meet the ‘Lo Heads. With roots in 1980s street gangs, these Polo Ralph Lauren enthusiasts have made “aspirational apparel” a lifestyle. They once had to boost their Polo from stores and fight to keep it on the streets. Today, their culture is worldwide, promulgated by hip-hop. Their hero is Ralph Lauren - a working class New Yorker who understood that the fantastical power of style can be transformative. Dallas Penn from The Internets Celebrities, a dedicated Lo Head (and former member of the Decepts crew) with a collection of over 1000 pieces of Polo apparel takes us on a tour of this remarkable fashion subculture.

Visit Worth & Worth hat shop, a New York institution with roots going back to 1922. In recent memory, Orlando Palacios has made the shop a home for rockers as well as traditionalists, turning hundred-year-old machines to the task of reinterpreting hundred-year-old styles.

Meet Jason Marshall, a jazz saxaphonist with a classic style. He plays with bands ranging from traditional bop to hip-hop fusion to Aretha Franklin, but he prefers to wear tailored clothes when he does it, and explains why.

And in our Q & Answer segment, find out how to pack your suit for travel. We’ll show you a fold to keep it neat inside a rolling carry-on or suitcase, and we’ll show you how to keep your trousers on the hanger inside a garment bag.

Vimeo / Youtube / iTunes

Clothing Credits

Buy Season One on DVD

This episode was supported by our viewers and by Lifeway Kefir.

thesilentist: Babe Ruth in that shawl-collared logo...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 08:38:14 -0500

thesilentist:

Babe Ruth in that shawl-collared logo sweater.

Damn, I want that sweater.

Best. Sweater. Ever.

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 20:27:27 -0500

Best. Sweater. Ever.

MLB issues media dress guidelines

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:15:36 -0500

MLB issues media dress guidelines:

A couple of takeaways from this article. It seems mostly aimed at female reporters. But there is an overarching issue here, that people do not dress for work any more. As Jack McKeon says, “Today, it can look pretty sloppy. But that’s not just baseball. It’s generational.” This is a sad statement.

Oklahoma State, Oregon, Oklahoma upsets create BCS chaos - Stewart Mandel - SI.com

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:13:12 -0500

Oklahoma State, Oregon, Oklahoma upsets create BCS chaos - Stewart Mandel - SI.com:

The downside is that, in one of those only-in-the-BCS scenarios, the second-ranked Crimson Tide would be better off not winning their division. Despite losing at home in its biggest game of the season (9-6 to No. 1 LSU) and despite boasting victories over just three teams with winning records (10-1 Arkansas, 9-2 Penn State and 6-5 Florida), Nick Saban’s team will likely cruise into the BCS championship game with a win Saturday over 7-4 Auburn and an LSU victory over Arkansas. The same unwritten axioms pollsters have used to dismiss contenders in the past — that a team must win its conference championship and that regular-season rematches are frowned upon — might go out the window for lack of a better option.

stylegirlfriend: Things I think You Should Buy (from the...

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:55:20 -0500

stylegirlfriend:

Things I think You Should Buy (from the Versace for H&M Collection)

H&M tuxedo jacket, $200

Versace for H&M launched in the United States yesterday. It was a pretty big deal, but in case the shrill screams of excitement about the brand’s latest designer collaboration were out of your hearing range, let me tell you about it.

The offerings, for both men and women, are very much in line with what you expect when you think of Versace (which I know you do, all the time) - bright colors, bold prints, and bold architectural details like spikes and studs.

This tuxedo jacket? Doesn’t have any of that. Which is why I think you’ll like it.

If you live 1.) somewhere the collection is offered (it’s not in all H&M stores) and 2.) the store hasn’t been completely looted when you get there, I highly recommend you check it out.

We got into quite an animated discussion here last week talking appropriate wedding attire. If you think there’s a chance you’ll ever find yourself in need of a tux (as a guest or groomsman), you can pull this well-tailored jacket out of your closet. Along with the matching pants ($70), you’ll be good to go.

Being able to tell people, “Oh, it’s Versace,” is just the icing on the cake.

I can’t even pronounce nothing, pass that ver-say-see!