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Going for Baroque with Dr. Henrik Wilberg
93 Plays1 year ago
The Professor is in! This week, polyglot genius, Dr. Henrik Wilberg, is on the show! We discuss being late to the #menswear party, becoming the object of your students’ Whats App obsession, Stolen Valor: College Edition, the profound influence of subculture, the winding path to American citizenship, and more, on our longest episode yet!
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Transcript
Introduction with Dr. Henrik Wilberg
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Connor Fowler. And I'm Matt Smith. Welcome to Apocalypse Duds. We have tricked yet another accomplished genius into appearing on our show. We welcome our very first, but definitely not last, PhD, Dr. Henrik Wilberg. Thank you for your time tonight. Thanks for having me. That's right. Yeah, yeah, dude. I'm very excited about
00:00:21
Speaker
Yeah, the doctor is in and you might be the smartest person we've talked to compared to Connor and myself. So yeah, great to have you.
Dramaturgical Outfit Discussion
00:00:32
Speaker
So we're thinking of getting started with your outfit, the ensemble investigation, head to toe, toe to head, however you feel works, dramaturgically, as you said. Dramaturgically speaking, yeah.
00:00:48
Speaker
Hell yeah. Do I gotta stand up for this shit or what? Is that how it works? No, no, no. You can stay seated. You're an audio show. The shorts are on. There we go. Look at that. All right. So, yeah, yeah. I'm into it.
Weather and Fashion: Shorts Talk
00:01:09
Speaker
This is Zach DeLuca. Zach DeLuca is talking about this right now. Yeah, Zach and I are having a little back and forth about it. We're talking a little bit about shorts. Because today it was precisely the right weather for this, because it was still a bit chilly, but also has this underlying humidity. So shorts actually makes a little bit of sense. And then I had to walk the dogs. I had to put that on. But I had a fit on earlier today that was similar.
00:01:40
Speaker
My deck shoes, my doke deck shoes, those very expensive Japanese versions of vans. Okay, gotcha,
Footwear and Socks Style
00:01:51
Speaker
gotcha. But the port store is sweatless and they have a little bit more support than the other ones, so they are in fact, unfortunately, worth it.
00:02:01
Speaker
Yeah, the support is key. Yeah, you get what you pay for. Unfortunately, those corksholes are nice. Totally. I got the Anthony Madsen Sylvester socks, like the slouchy deck sock coming out of it. Very nice. I got the...
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, I got the, the, the polo, vintage polo, Andrew pleated shorts, fairly short, five inch ones, like the, the shorter of the two, you know, the Tyler would be remiss if I did. I have to ask, are they, are they like made in the USA polo? Just out of curiosity.
Polo Shorts and Origin Debate
00:02:50
Speaker
I don't know if actually this one is, I have like five of these. Yeah, yeah, totally. One of them is made USA. Some of them are like those like early NAFTA ones, like Dominican Republic ones. Yeah, yeah. I gotcha. At least I've looked into a lot of this, like to me, there's no real quality difference between the early.
00:03:14
Speaker
after stuff. It's when it's when like the, it's when the Macau stuff starts showing up that things go a little bit out downhill. Right. Right. And I mean, in present day, like, I gotta hand it to Polo, like they have a very
00:03:33
Speaker
a very solid quality inspection. Some of the stuff that it's like outlet made or whatever, I don't give a shit about that. The quality is terrible, but mainline stuff even today, it's still solid construction and they definitely don't cheap out on fabric and shit.
Ralph Lauren Polo Preference
00:03:53
Speaker
Sorry, that was just for my own edification. That is a closeted low head.
00:04:00
Speaker
that's how we met we met because he sold me this Ralph and Iraq so that's how this whole thing came to be yeah yeah um anyway yeah it's the polo day today because i also i have the i have the polo silk uh
00:04:22
Speaker
That's a Made in Italy Cornigliani blazer. Oh yes! Dude, some of the most underrated looking jackets. Yeah, fantastic stuff. They're just incredible. Yep. Super comfortable stuff. Perfect summer stuff I got.
Citizenship Ceremony Experience
00:04:43
Speaker
I've been through a couple of days. I got probably three.
00:04:47
Speaker
three of these like summer weight polo, polo ones for the dairy. I mean, I have the winter stuff as well, but this summer stuff is.
00:04:56
Speaker
is truly, we can talk about that in a second, become more like a polo. Convert of late, got rid of all of my brick stuff and now it's polo only. So like that conversion from the true Ivy to this sort of late Baroque Ivy of polo. Interesting. I'm writing that down now. Yeah, that's fucking perfect.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, I got a vintage champion sweatshirt from Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. They offered me a job once that I turned down, which puts me in the bracket. You are allowed, I can clear this up once for all. That means I'm allowed to wear the sweatshirt. Okay. Yeah.
00:05:52
Speaker
My personal rule is, can you wear, you know, that's a big question, stolen valor, stolen college valor. Can you wear something from where you did not go to college? The answer to that is no, you cannot. You have to either have gone there as an undergraduate, graduate school, or worked
Ethics of Wearing College Apparel
00:06:10
Speaker
there. Or, it's my own personal carve-out, been offered a job there.
00:06:20
Speaker
I'm tempted to this one as well or being invited to give a lecture that then maybe you can also wear it. They might give you some swag for free, right?
00:06:30
Speaker
The gift is like for free or if you're like, you know, I'm mulled over this when I, like a couple of years ago, I was at Brown and they had like the Drake's for Brown ties in the university store. Wow. The one that Mark Cho designed personally. Really? They're still on their website. No one's bought them in like four years. Did he go Brown?
00:06:59
Speaker
He's like a mega donor for Brown. Oh my God. Interesting. It's like, yeah, there's a scholarship with his like name and shit on it. I think that's like, and part of it is like, yeah. So he like had Drake's make this Brown university ties.
00:07:14
Speaker
They're pretty cool like club ties and thought about buying them like that's a bit of stretch. I can't probably cannot justify it even though I was invited to give a lecture. Hey, listen, you made a carve out before. I can do it again with that. That's that. But those are those are those are the rules. But this is a nice vintage champion one. So that means I can I can have I can have this. I got
00:07:45
Speaker
We talk about military later. I can give you my lowdown on what military you're allowed to wear or not. We can do that later. Okay, absolutely. Then Paris review, Paris review hat that I got, you know, during COVID or whatever. And
00:08:04
Speaker
a psycho diver. But earlier today, I was wearing earlier today another Ralph Lauren cotton flag sweater with pretty much the same outfit, except instead of the Andrew shorts, I had the Andrew Chinos because he was cold
Attire Diversity at Citizenship Ceremony
00:08:25
Speaker
this morning. So it's pretty much exactly the same fit.
00:08:28
Speaker
So you had a mid-day outfit change though. Yeah, I had a mid-day outfit change. I had to do some stuff around the house. I couldn't wear the flag sweater anymore. But I wore the flag sweater because today I became an American citizen. Congratulations. Wow, a big time indeed.
00:08:51
Speaker
It's been a busy day, so I did all that shit and everyone loved the sweater. Another sort of vocation is a little tough to dress for, kind of interesting to see what people went with, some went with very formal, some went quite casual, some went with sort of traditional
00:09:12
Speaker
a festive attire from the culture that they felt they needed to represent and they represented. So some saris and some sort of festive West African clothing as well, very colorful, very nice. That sounds like a wholesome occasion.
00:09:37
Speaker
Kind of is. I was at the school where like the sixth graders did like the Pledge of Allegiance and all that stuff. So is it just, I guess it's people from geographically around you? Yeah, they do round up. They do like, they do the immigration authorities do this through the federal court. So the federal court will have
00:10:00
Speaker
will have some off-site, not in the federal court building. They will do it at a school or something to invite. It's kind of weird that the children come and watch and watch people become American citizens as a civic lesson, as opposed.
00:10:15
Speaker
But it's also an ad hoc real courtroom. So everyone's like sworn in and there's the hear ye, hear ye and all that. So it's the full actual courtroom, but it's in like a middle school, elementary school and middle school amphitheater, like outside, it's quite nice. Wow. Yeah, yeah, same. This sounds like the
00:10:40
Speaker
I don't know, just the most interesting type of events that I can think of as far as civic duty goes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit propaganda too, right? I mean, and saying like, this is how it is. This is the right way to do this. Right. Yeah. And it's like baked into like the daily thing at the pledge of allegiance that
00:11:10
Speaker
school children do every time, but then it's also like the oath of citizenship, which is quite, which is quite different and like surprisingly militaristic. Right. Yes. Enormous, enormous. Part of it, part of it is like a lot of it is to, is to swear, to defend the constitution with arms. Right. It's not just like an abstract pledge of allegiance or something. There's also, it's an oath of citizenship. So.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah, if you're bored here, you know nothing about this. And, you know, it seems like the citizenship journey is absolutely insane.
00:11:56
Speaker
just like the shit that you have to know. Yeah, it's like the actual process. I mean, I had the green cut for a while, but the actual process has only been since like I got my green cord like just before COVID in 2020. Okay. And that's kind of the earliest you can convert a green cut into a citizenship is after two years you can apply and then that works. It's not particularly
00:12:27
Speaker
particularly difficult once you've been there for a little bit right you have the green card it's
00:12:34
Speaker
But it's quite expensive and it does require you to go through, jump through quite a few hoops and stuff, yeah. Sure. I mean, for a citizen, for a natural American citizen, it is a challenging exam, right? This is what they talk about all the time, like, oh my God. The final citizenship at the beginning. Yeah, I mean, you got to get like six out of 10, right?
00:13:01
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, you only have to like, give it some consideration if you have if you're someone who has difficulty understanding English, for instance, then that that becomes a big deal. Very, very, I remember being in the room with people who, who, who were, you know, in their 60s or 70s, someone whose mother was about to be naturalized, and they still have to, you know,
00:13:24
Speaker
know, sometimes some very, very specific things. Right. Not too many of those are are
00:13:35
Speaker
are that difficult, but they can be quite specific. So some people need to get coached a bit more, but that was not the issue we had. The only amusing part is that a lot of it is very much still anchored in 18th century, well, 19th century law and 18th century vocabulary. So you do, for instance, have to swear to the fact that you are not a habitual drunkard.
00:14:07
Speaker
in those exact words.
Henrik's Journey from Norway to Ohio
00:14:12
Speaker
Those exact words. That's one of the funniest things I've ever heard in my entire life. Holy shit. That is still part of the United States citizenship files that you, habitual drunkards cannot become citizens of the United States. Oh my God. Wow. So today you became American citizens. I don't know.
00:14:34
Speaker
It very well could be. So today you're a citizen, and in our time researching, we noticed that you have gotten around, for lack of a better word. Can you give us kind of a brief history of where you lived and where you come from originally?
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, I was born in Norway, and I went to school there, and then I went to college in Vienna, in Austria. So I lived there for six, seven years? No, I think about six years. One of the few, or the only places I visited in Europe, and also what, the favorite place that I visited in Europe. Yeah, I love that place, which I can go back to at any point.
00:15:27
Speaker
I'll get back to that when we talk about menswear biography and stuff. Certainly, certainly. I played a certain role after that, but then I went to graduate school in the United States. I went through, I moved to Chicago and I lived in Chicago
00:15:45
Speaker
In fact, actually in graduate school, I ended up spending most of my time back in Europe between Vienna, Berlin and Paris actually. So it's one of those things that once you're in graduate school, sometimes you don't actually spend that much time at your home institution. But from about 2013 onwards, I think about 10 years ago, I spent most of my time in the United States.
00:16:09
Speaker
I finished my PhD at Northwestern University and then took a little time with that and then started getting some academic sort of shorter term gigs here and there in Indiana and in Chicago. And then before I moved to Minnesota in 2016 and stayed there for about four years.
00:16:40
Speaker
then moved to St. Louis during the pandemic and then to Cincinnati now. And I am an assistant professor of German at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati. So that's how it goes now. Not tenured, but whatever. Hopefully at some point. Yeah, yeah.
00:17:07
Speaker
talk about an insane system. I mean, yeah, get into higher ed, whatever. But so I guess we can start sort of at the beginning with your growing up, like what did you see growing up?
90s Norway Fashion and Infrastructure
00:17:25
Speaker
style wise, I mean, that's really interesting. Don't think about Norway now. I'm actually actually not not quite sure what people's ideas but
00:17:36
Speaker
This was normally in the night. It's funny because someone did say, you know, I think they probably have very trim trousers there. And I was like, I don't know what you're basing this on, but I kind of agree with you. Well, yeah, it's true that like the Scandinavians, but that's kind of the Swedes are mostly responsible for this. But for this sort of fashiony edge, that's how it goes. Within the Scandinavian.
00:18:04
Speaker
brotherhoods of nations, you know. The Swedes are the more fashion-forward, the Danish are sort of the schlubby, more lovable ones, whereas the the Norwegians are more the not-quite-with-the-times type of thing. But that has changed in a certain extent. But when I grew up with the 90s, nice clothes were almost nowhere to be found. Norweg was rich back then, but not like it is now.
00:18:30
Speaker
Norway now is kind of a bizarre, like kind of a bizarro land where just people's ink, it's kind of like if Americans simply kept the wage growth from the 40s and 50s until today, except for the, and the oligarchs didn't steal it all. Something like that, if that had happened, if that had continued,
00:18:58
Speaker
Most Americans would be making six figures, right? We shall ask, we do not.
Norwegian Lifestyle Shift
00:19:04
Speaker
But in Norway, that's kind of the case, to a certain extent, or at least in certain areas, like wealth has become kind of the norm. But Norway was wealthy back then, but it was more like a public wealth. It was like people would come to Norway in the 90s, like, this is one of the richest countries in Europe, but where no one, everybody looks like shit, what's going on?
00:19:30
Speaker
But instead, people had, you know, nice schools, nice public buildings, great roads and infrastructures, or the wealth was sort of more visible there before it sort of migrated into people's pockets later on. That's kind of what happened. That Norwegians sort of achieved and kept their purchasing power, whereas everyone else kind of lost it. For instance, like Norway didn't really have a recession in 2008, for instance.
00:19:59
Speaker
How do they manage to insulate themselves?
00:20:04
Speaker
because they got like the commodity boom from just before and after. Just like, you know, 2008 wasn't a problem in like Brazil and India and China and Argentina really, as long as the financials didn't signalize the factors. Norway is just this weird combination of
00:20:30
Speaker
an oil-rich or primary resource-driven economy that's also a high-tech, modern economy as well. So you get kind of both sides of the coin, so they can't lose, so to speak. That's also been the story until now. We'll see what happens. So tremendously wealthy, but that's kind of the boring story, but that's how it is. But it was still completely culturally fairly insular back then. There was not much.
00:20:59
Speaker
much going on, what they would have, like retrospectively, what did they have?
Traditional Norwegian Winter Attire
00:21:04
Speaker
Some like older forms were still around, for instance, in like, athletic wear, like those ski clothing from the 70s and 80s, since I was still around, I remember having and wearing some in the 90s still. Like the, you know, like, yeah, those great woolen sweat, classic woolen sweaters for skiing.
00:21:26
Speaker
those Norwegians. Yeah, they were absolutely worn. Sometimes they're often confused for like Icelandic sweaters, like kind of radiating neck patterns as well. But all of those kind of belong to the same sort of family of knitting patterns that LLB and just picked out one, there are two or three or four others that are as
00:21:52
Speaker
popular, and they were still what people mostly kind of wore in winter with like sensible winter, mostly woolen clothing, but nothing cool in any real sense. That did change in the
00:22:10
Speaker
I remember my brother was deeply into like skating culture.
Skate Culture and American Punk Influence
00:22:16
Speaker
Maybe he was quite a good skater, you know, maybe not that obsessed, but with what came with it, specifically like the American punk music of like bad religion and that stuff very much into that and the kind of clothing that came with that. So the original kind of skater wave of the 90s was very much,
00:22:40
Speaker
which sports probably was the main sort of conveyor of the changes in fashion. The other one was the drippings or the filtering through of British
00:22:58
Speaker
sort of soccer, football, terrorist culture, and that kind of, that approach to clothing. Like the pre-Britpop, but also when the Britpop revolution happened, that was very much that, like Adidas tracksuit, Burberry hats, and all that. There was like elements of that in soccer games in Norway. People were sort of directly copying what they had seen going to soccer games in England.
00:23:25
Speaker
And English soccer was extremely popular. It was kind of the only real sports that was on live TV that you could see on the weekends. So everyone was fanatical about that, copying, buying the jerseys. And I remember having all the t-shirts and the sort of the athletic wear that went around there. Being a soccer player myself up until the age of 17, 18, that was a big part.
00:23:53
Speaker
that kind of sports culture, 90s Adidas, big deal, like the Samba come from that era, you know, I don't have them now. And they're still, right? The Gazelles and the Atmas, the Beckenbowers, the Mundials, all of those were were sort of the peak of that, of that
00:24:14
Speaker
of that culture alongside the music. So there's this British invasion that's always been, you know, based on sheer proximity, you know, Norway's always been one of the first places where British culture, sort of, or English trends, both in fashion music culture, gets their first footholds. So that was sort of the combination of that, yes, sports, soccer, British, terrorist culture.
00:24:44
Speaker
But the real sort of, there was a revolution kind of around, I would say, at the mid-90s when people in Scandinavia started embracing like American hip-hop culture.
Hip-Hop's Influence in 90s Norway
00:24:59
Speaker
That was the real, I do specifically remember this from my school days as like a very sort of noticeable change. I haven't thought about this in a long time, but I remember it now.
00:25:12
Speaker
Duh, I'm happy it's here. Not always the good stuff. It's interesting what was that... This will sound insane to any Zoomer, this kind of stuff. This stuff was not easy to get. But I remember there was a guy in my ear who had a puffer Wu-Tang jacket. It had a Wu-Tang logo in the back. Hard-fought. Hmm? Hard-fought, right? Where do you think he got it?
00:25:42
Speaker
There were places in Oslo where you could go in somewhere and give them a bunch of money and they would mail order it for you. That's how you got skateboards. There was nowhere else you could have catalogs. There was a renowned hip-hop or a record store that specialized in the most recent hip-hop stuff. This is sort of how it worked back then.
00:26:08
Speaker
There would be one or two nodes that would be very plugged into American stuff. They would get all mixed states, all new cities, everything. You didn't really know what it was. But there was one or two guys who could get that stuff for you. You could go there. You could take the train in there. You could go to them and give them all your money. And they would, some months later, you would get your stuff. Or if they had something new, you could buy it right then and there.
00:26:32
Speaker
And there was just one or two like weirdos who was somehow was plugged in. And this guy, Christopher, I remember, ran that store, who incidentally won the first season of the Norwegian Survivor reality show. It's the same guy. It's the same guy. An accomplished individual. He became a celebrity and saved his Christmas store by going on Survivor. Wow. You said he's Scandinavian Survivor? Yeah.
00:27:00
Speaker
The early 90s, late 90s. And so that hip hop culture was like the first kind of shot. And I was like, I don't know if I'm into this. I couldn't like the clothes. I couldn't really afford the music was sort of, it took me a while to get on board. But before long, I didn't actually embrace the fashion side of it, but
00:27:26
Speaker
I remember going and buying. I remember when those mid-90s outcast albums came out, everyone would go on the train into Oslo and buy it. And then that would be all you listened to. But I had friends who had spent insane amount of money on some of this stuff. And you could get polo, even. The low-head stuff was available. It was a store, a town that would carry
00:27:55
Speaker
carry some of that, some of the OG streetwear brands, even some of those first collabs you got like that. Anyone remember like South Pole? Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah. Echo, all of that. Yeah, absolutely. That was like my brother's, my brother too.
00:28:17
Speaker
Yeah, there was there was even a Norwegian brand like for for like, they usually made like work wear and EMT style like rescue and fisherman's clothing called Heli Hansen. Oh, yeah. They got bought up by some Japanese. I think they got some sort of kind of North Face style Japanese only version that became like a like a street one of those first streetwear
00:28:45
Speaker
sort of crossovers from from back then. So that was considered like very cool. Right. This wouldn't be an apocalypse studs episode if there was not an outcast mentioned. That's right. Yeah, I think we mentioned at least on during every single episode. Yeah, that's that really was like from another planet. If you feel like in the oh, I was in some insane shit as a mountain.
00:29:13
Speaker
I will forever stay in Outkast, Andre, big boy to a lesser extent, just because I don't like it so much yet. You know, it's really funny. At the same time, you know, that came out kind of as what was like, was in the US was kind of a differentiated regional thing came kind of as one title where we got like, we were listening, people were listening to Scarface at the same time as Outkast. Right, right.
00:29:39
Speaker
And like going back to what you were saying about the like skate punk culture and then like the, you know, hooligan culture that from soccer, like it's amazing to me because all of this is totally interconnected. And like, you know, like the fucking bouncing soul of a song about Adidas Samos, you know, like that kind of shit. Like it's it's just interesting to hear like this amalgam that you
00:30:07
Speaker
kind of grew up around all in one place. Because I guess it was similar here, like for myself personally, but a lot of people didn't have that same type of like crossover connection with shit.
British Cultural Impact on Norwegian Fashion
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah, and also how it yeah, I don't know how it what would knit it, knit it together that way. But yeah, it was always this kind of yeah, getting it refracted through like a prior, like a prior sort of, sort of cultural sort of reorganization, like
00:30:36
Speaker
Like I always went to through Britain or through, but that was the goal to have like to get as close to like London and New York as possible.
00:30:46
Speaker
and sort of culturally to be like the first person to could hear something like that. And with the earliest internet sort of, you could certainly like look up like urban radio playlists and hits and stuff, like stuff that you would never hear. So you can sort of read about it a little bit before anyone could even hear it, but it wasn't like... Oh, totally.
00:31:08
Speaker
So I remember if I'd made any purchase because the thing is I didn't really have any money to spend on any of it then because a lot of this was frighteningly expensive. And I had a friend who would like mail order stuff from the US all the time.
00:31:25
Speaker
And this was before sort of the customs got hold that this was a thing people did. So we usually wouldn't have to pay any customs and stuff, but people, you could buy all kinds of stuff. I remember a friend of mine would buy like this like home videos from cash money records with Master P and his friends are like shooting guns on tape and like doing drugs on like filming themselves with, you know, alongside
00:31:54
Speaker
Pretty much naked women, lots of money, giant guns, so there's chute and this like it. It was, I've never seen anything like it. It was incredible. My friend had like a huge collection of these tapes. I wonder what happened. I wonder if you can watch them now. Did anybody put them on YouTube? Well, that's the big question. Like there used to be so much weird stuff.
00:32:13
Speaker
And the question is always, did someone digitize that? And the answer a lot of the time is yes. But a lot of the time it's just gone. You never see it again. CKY, like early jackass videos we watched on VHS. Maybe it's out there. I haven't been curious, but there's a ton of stuff. Yeah, it was surprising. Like some of the music, I even remembered some of the music that I was listening to back then. It's like, yeah, you can't find that shit.
00:32:39
Speaker
Uh, yeah, maybe one more, there's one more sort of cultural musical element, which was like specifically French, uh, in inflection, which was sort of like the house music and electronic music of the mid to late night was very big on the cultural scene. It wasn't particularly, uh, for me, at least back then sort of, it wasn't particularly.
00:33:01
Speaker
nailed to a particular fashion or direction or particular clothing item which much more like the more like utilitarian raver stuff of the 90s but that was definitely playing sort of in the in the background like the early Daft Punk stuff. So when I see it now like that terrific film called Eden about like the French house music
00:33:27
Speaker
world by this French director Mia Hansen Leuver. It's terrific if you've never seen it from like 2016 I think this sort of very much captures the sort of the club culture of the late 90s early 2000s as this sort of yeah blend of yeah American house and soul plus the
00:33:54
Speaker
French electronic scene with the English cool on top. It was now that I think about it culturally quite a good time and it probably wouldn't be sort of where I am sort of without it but it's a bit hard to sort of pick apart exactly what what stuck stylistically even though if you go back I had like polo rugby shirts and
00:34:19
Speaker
and Adidas Sambas and all that stuff back then. It kind of all comes full circle. Well, it's like a circle.
00:34:36
Speaker
Um, it's just, that's some, I think it's more like, like some horizons just don't get surpassed in a certain way. Right. Right. That's a great way to put it actually never quite fades. Like when, when something is some kind of something like that happens, it doesn't, it doesn't ever quite go away. But I mean, certainly some of that has to do with the cultural dynamics that begins in the late nineties that we don't really get.
00:35:02
Speaker
a new thing anymore that conceives of itself as such. The late 90s, early 2000s kind of was the last of that, where that sort of felt. The last horizon for originality. Yeah, it felt futuristic in that sense. I don't have that feeling. I don't have the feeling that the younger people in my life don't, that do that, do either. They don't have the same
00:35:30
Speaker
Well, there was like, of course, very much a 90s nostalgia as well, even though that was very sort of direct. It was more like a direct citation more than it was something that felt relevant. Like 60s music didn't feel relevant really in the 90s. It felt like a fun thing. It wasn't like something that anyone aspired to or wanted to go back to. Right.
00:36:00
Speaker
Certainly. But now, yeah. Yeah. So long winded answer. Where did you want now? Sorry. There's a bit of a long winded answer, but that is indeed the background of the way I think about it, sort of the way I grew up. I mean, you got to like a key point that we like to do on the show, which is like the outside shit that you're interested in.
00:36:28
Speaker
influences your sense of taste or style or whatever. That's a very important thing. And it may be music, it may be movies, it may be one of a million different things, but that's the question, is how did you get from point A to point B, B being the present, and what roadmap have you driven on this journey?
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so yes, was there an add on to that question? Should I? I mean, no, just just I don't know, man. You know, that's that's the kind of answer that we want to get to. And that was that was a really nice, like encapsulation of things. So where did they like go on that? Yeah, sure. Oh, yeah. Like I was kind of thinking of the same thing, like,
00:37:28
Speaker
There's usually a can type of answer to that in some ways for all of us. Like my dad, you don't talk about this. And I love the suit. Right. Right. Exactly. But like, you know, getting to the core of like, oh, I saw this, this and this. And like, even if it's 15 years later, I'm still thinking about it. It is such a such a nice way to approach it. And like, it definitely plays a role in everyone's life, I think. But people don't talk about it.
00:37:59
Speaker
Yeah, no matter what exactly what happened sort of with it, I can sort of remember that there are this moment where there was something was redefined sort of what clothing could be and what it could mean. And certainly that Wu Tang jacket was part of it. And I don't know, because that was like some of the craziest things I've ever seen. And that was something that, you know, I had no idea.
00:38:25
Speaker
There are like a few other sort of moments like that where he's like, okay, I had no idea that clothing could do this or be this based on what I had known before. And you sort of had to see it in real life to get there. Yeah, other than, yeah, whether that's exactly, for instance, my grandfather was a tailor, but that plays no role. And he was retired by the time I knew him really. Right.
00:38:54
Speaker
That is fascinating. He had a tailoring shop that they mostly work where for a while, like an actual like factory making, but stuff for like cafeteria workers and stuff, like nothing, nothing cool. Right. Yeah, like nurses scrubs, something like that. Maybe I don't know. They had employees at some point that must have been a name or a brand. I don't know. I have no idea. But he was like an alterations tailor that was already retired towards the end of his life.
00:39:24
Speaker
And he always wore like suits and three-piece suits that were around the house. Like every day he would like dress up and go to go to town and have lunch and go to a cafe and then walk back home. And he always had like pretty great suits that I don't know where he got those. I have actually no idea. Where my father would never wear anything nice really. He didn't really care for that.
00:39:51
Speaker
He had studied in the UK, so he had bought some stuff there. That was nice. But he didn't have any interest or will to do that. Whereas in other parts of the family, there's a bit more, maybe, of an openness to that. My uncle was, he died a couple of years ago. He was a kind of well-known Norwegian architect.
00:40:19
Speaker
He probably would have been a lot more well-known if he hadn't spent like 10 years as a Maoist in the 70s, or in the 60s and 70s. Han Pampers his career. But his house was like full of cool shit, like classic, proper mid-century designer furniture and stuff that he had collected over much of a lifetime.
00:40:44
Speaker
So I remember, you know, being around some of that stuff, kind of, I don't know, uh, uh, like lived in a house that was like, unlike any houses that any of my friends or that we lived in or anything. Um, after my parents divorced, my stepmother was an interior designer. So my father, like Marisone was an interior designer. And then also like, there was a very different life space going on. She had like a Mies van der Rohe chair, like original, still this thing in that house.
00:41:13
Speaker
I wonder what that is, but a couple of those chrome and leather things and some truly wonderful pieces of furniture that I kind of grew up on before I really had any conception of sort of what that meant. But I think later on I sort of, okay, that makes a bit more sense now that that shaped the taste in a certain way. The things had to be a certain way.
00:41:44
Speaker
just, you know, eating your cereal on a very nice chrome and glass table. Being taken to this like furniture shows around Scandinavia, for instance. So yeah, I must have, must have picked up something that, you know, don't really remember that, but that was certainly in the air and
00:42:10
Speaker
There's also the fact that even at my mother's house, it was a private school teacher. There was still this original 70s, 80s IKEA furniture, which is insanely expensive now if you kept it. The original IKEA, hardwood IKEA stuff is terrific.
00:42:29
Speaker
Um, um, so that was bad as well. Even though that was decidedly sort of normal stuff to own and have at the time. Right. Yeah. Even now today in my living room downstairs, it's like a kind of like a knockoff of the Ecornes, uh,
00:42:52
Speaker
chair, like, sofas that I remember from the 80s that a lot of people just had. But now they have sort of been elevated into sort of Scandinavian. They call it mid-century, but that's definitely like a 70s and 80s thing. Yeah, they put them in a museum. They're now like frighteningly expensive and, you know. It's funny how that works. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, those things. And you can still, people give those away in Norway now to this day.
00:43:24
Speaker
You just get rid of it. If there are any mid-century furniture dealers listening, book a plane ticket to go to Norway. You know, mid-century, I've caught up a little bit, like the actual, like, Danish made stuff. But the period after, like the the 70s and 80s Scandinavian
Scandinavian Furniture Appreciation
00:43:45
Speaker
furniture is still considered trash back home, where it's been caught up now here.
00:43:54
Speaker
Cause it's chunkier, it's not as sleek, you know? It's sort of kind of frumpier if you're not too careful, if it's like around heavy carpeting. It's the Scandinavian version of like grandma beach house nineties of American culture. Yeah, which also is like fully on its way back, like the furniture, like chairs with the skirt and all that stuff. Yeah. To my detriment.
00:44:25
Speaker
You know, I think this is the way of doing it, but, you know, it's, yeah. Right. Exactly. I try not to hate too much because I just don't give a shit about interior stuff or furniture. But yeah, some things you see and you just know it's bad, even though people think it's cool. Yeah.
00:44:47
Speaker
So you've been in the U.S. for a while and we know that you're a fan of tailored clothing. Has has being here kind of changed your perception of like trad or ivy or or tailored stuff in general? Yeah, certainly. Especially like the other
00:45:15
Speaker
It's also kind of a roundabout way because I came through like some tailored clothing. I've always had some interest in it. I don't really have like an origin story there. I guess I always liked, I remember like in high school, I was seeking out some vintage stores in and around Oslo mostly, but mostly like for, I remember like a corduroy blazer at some point, like some sort of wheat yellow one that I wore like my senior year a lot.
00:45:45
Speaker
Um, so it was always there. Um, uh, even had like a couple of suits and so on. Yeah. Uh, some tailored clothing was there, but that was more. Yeah. More like a year, sort of in the European, European style, uh, of the time. So.
00:46:07
Speaker
not something that I would be particularly proud of now. But in Vienna, what first happened was an encounter with old European style. And Vienna was kind of a good place for that because they had all the old gentleman's store were still around in the 2000s. Some of these old men's store where, you know,
00:46:33
Speaker
There's nothing on the racks. You have to like talk to someone even to get to see anything. Those kind of places where there just isn't something, you can't just browse a rack. You have to go in there and then show you certain stuff and you can try it on and so on. Kind of intimidating atmosphere, especially if you're a student.
00:46:54
Speaker
And they were also like some of the larger department stores there that had like some nicer, some nicer brands that would often be like on sales. You maybe you could buy it. But what they also had what they had, like the first time I in my life saw like bespoke shoes.
00:47:12
Speaker
There were still exist Alt-V and Shoe Manufaktu, like the old Viennese. They make like the Budapest style, you know, those like exquisite people. Right, yeah. In like almost always like a thick sole and like a pebble-grained leather. Terrific stuff.
00:47:36
Speaker
And I remember always like going home from bars and parties and walking by those workshops and stores that had like those most exquisite shoes in the windows like that. Did not really know that shoes like that existed and that he could have made bespoke. That was a mind blowing thing. But that old world style was sort of still alive to a certain extent.
00:48:04
Speaker
with the older bourgeoisie in Vienna, you could still see it. If you went to the concert hall or the museums, you could see some of these middle-aged people still engaged in this. I think to this day, the brand that makes those expensive green lotan coats are still there in Vienna, in the main street there. So all that is to a certain extent survived, but now it's been mostly replaced by
00:48:34
Speaker
designer stores for Eastern European shoppers. I think the classic stores are no longer there. This exquisite mahogany, gold, brass, interior, something that is something out of a different world. But that was sort of on my right. I couldn't afford anything. You could afford something because and that's also another. I never since it took a very long time for me to have like a normal job.
00:49:05
Speaker
That's an academic, but in a sense of, you know, payment, because I would usually, I would always be paid in, you know, scholarships, but usually in stipends that would be paid on like once or twice a year.
00:49:20
Speaker
So once or twice a year, I would be, I would be getting, you know, uh, 10 to $15,000 just paid into my account. But I have to, of course, this is going to last me, it's supposed to last me a year or six months or whatever. Um, but that means you can afford something very expensive if you're a bit stupid or if you can plan it. So very much like a feast and famine type of situation that would happen. I would buy something fairly expensive.
00:49:48
Speaker
that I couldn't afford otherwise if I had a normal job and made that monthly. But there would be the possibility of acquiring something like a pair of shoes or a leather jacket or something in the summer or in January whenever I got paid. I would sometimes do that.
00:50:10
Speaker
But that was a longer journey. It was Vienna first, then I lived in Italy for a little bit as part of the student exchange. And that's where like clothing, you could sort of see clothing made a difference in the everyday. And there were all these, if you lived in like a little town like I did, there were all these clothing shops that were independent small ones that would have
00:50:31
Speaker
Who knows what these brands were? They were just like people's proper names, like some shirt maker or something. It looked amazing. And I remember one of those expensive purchases was probably like, I bought like in 2005, bought like $300, like $250 pair of shoes. It's like a lot, like 250 euros back then.
00:50:52
Speaker
Big money. A pair of very nice Chelsea boots that lasted me a decade, I think. And places like that, where I would buy most of my clothes from these smaller shops, you sort of have to pay attention to some of the details. They would just have maybe three pairs of trousers in the store and it was like, okay.
00:51:19
Speaker
which sometimes I need a pair of trousers, like, okay, I have to figure out which one I want of these. There wasn't like in Italy, like there wasn't, unless you went into like a shopping market stuff, like big chains were usually banned from city centers. You couldn't buy anything like H&M or something even into the mid to late 2000s. They wouldn't have them.
00:51:41
Speaker
So they were all like smaller independent stores and you could find all kinds of interesting things. First time I saw like proper linen tailoring or something. I couldn't believe this stuff existed. That was perugia, like central lyrics, but I went to Rome as well. I went to Rome, there's like the
00:52:04
Speaker
Famous street that has all the shoemakers, like they should have spoke or expensive shoemakers there. And it's like, I could not believe this stuff existed.
Luxury Shoes and European Style
00:52:12
Speaker
But that was like, just for the eyes. I could not afford any of that at any point. But there was like a north star, you know, this is what you want.
00:52:26
Speaker
But in America, I remember when I moved in, it was difficult at first, because I didn't, where is the, where is the, where is this good clothing? And Chicago had like a couple of old school stores like downtown or on the Michigan Avenue, but there was nothing nice to be found anywhere. And I had like real difficulties like even finding clothing to buy, which like go to like a Nordstrom's or Macy's, even though that was like better than the disaster it is now.
00:52:55
Speaker
It was very difficult to find. The only thing I would buy was Ralph Lauren at Macy's in the early years. And see we come again, we come back again, right? That's what I know. It was easy. It was by far the best thing in there. You would walk into Macy's in 2009.
00:53:13
Speaker
There was literally nothing else. What are you going to buy? Like Hugo Boss or something? Of course not. But given the budget constraints and stuff that I could find nicer stuff, vintage.
00:53:31
Speaker
And that was around, you know, around the 2008 recession was sort of when the vintage boom began in earnest, right? I don't know if you can sort of recall exactly, but there was a lot of vintage stores in a more elevate, the first
Finding Quality Clothing in America
00:53:48
Speaker
sort of elevated vintage stores started appearing that had like a real curation started appearing in 2008, nine, 10,
00:54:00
Speaker
We almost have a question about this very thing. Yeah, is that where your interest in military comes from also? No, actually that came later. What I bought there was like wool cardigans, Harris tweed jackets and like quality
00:54:27
Speaker
with sort of coats and clothing that I couldn't really find anything good. I couldn't find any of that stuff retail. It's like a 2010, 11, we'd be like the, yeah, 11, 12, 30 is like the height of like slim fit stuff. Yeah, yeah. J. Crew was still, you know, above and beyond. J. Crew was the only place you could go and buy
00:54:58
Speaker
Even some banana republic to a certain extent still in 2008 and nine was acceptable. But at the very beginning it pointed to the Mad Men collection. Yeah. The first pair of selvedge jeans I bought was from Banana Republic of Oakland. I still have them. Oh, dude. I know people don't have been taught about the cap selvedge from that time period.
00:55:20
Speaker
Yeah, they have the face and they're not insane. I will never approximate. Oh, they're nuts. They're nuts. And like, not, you know, not to knock it, but like, they're also one of those companies that doesn't really skimp on fabric. And so if you go back to them, they bought the carabbo denim shits that everyone got. Right. Right. Exactly. They didn't want it down yet. So you could get like the early gap salvage was like that as well.
00:55:47
Speaker
Yeah, they were just shopping from the same pool of shit as everybody else. They just bought way more of it than everybody else. Yeah. And they were $50, $50, $50. Right, right. Exactly. They were accessible. Which is unbelievable. Yeah. They were carabbo that didn't sell it for $50 at the Gap in like 2011, 10, 11. Yep. That's when I was just sort of getting started. Yeah. I mean, I remember, I remember what the tags look like.
00:56:18
Speaker
Yeah, I got them right here. I submitted them to like heddles one and they were like jeans of the week or whatever. That's fucking insane. Holy shit. Those are wild. Nice. We're going to need a photo of those. Yeah. It's got like the helmet on the coin pocket. That is insane. So dumb. Yes.
00:56:46
Speaker
And the waistband, too. I remember that typeface. Classic, classic. Slim straight, but they're not too bad, actually. They're still wearable for me, but they've been repaired a couple of times. Yeah, certainly.
00:56:59
Speaker
But they're like, we're going to need a photo of those that we can post just just. Yeah, that was just a high. Good with that. I would be like a Harris tweed jacket, a vintage brook shirt that I would find, although I bought the non iron brooks for for a while because you could get that out of Salvation Army for almost no money. And they looked quite all right under like a sweater. Right. It took me a while to sort of catch on to the proper boxer cloth stuff.
00:57:30
Speaker
You're just sweat if it's non-wrinkle. Yeah, I know. I'm going to just grow sweaty collars. With a sweater on top of a plastic shirt? Especially if you wore a tie and you have the sweater on top, it would be like... If it was like zero degrees, you would be fine. But if it was a normal temperature, a normal earth temperature, you would be fucked.
00:57:54
Speaker
Yeah, disgusting. So yeah, I just like learned to take proper, I had to like have them like professionally clean otherwise they wouldn't. Yeah, it was terrible. That was weird. Yeah. Those were the days. Yeah, that was a kind of the uniform there and I had like a couple of, a couple of
00:58:12
Speaker
like one or two pair of shoes that I had bought in Vienna, like some Italian like suede chuckas that I had bought as a graduation present. Like one of those big splurges that I still have both. I bought those 2007 upon graduation. So, and I still have them. So that's my oldest surviving member, pretty much anything in my life. That's great. And that's a long time. Yeah. They got me through many Chicago winners.
00:58:40
Speaker
Like I didn't really know, just didn't baby them all, just like wore them to, I wore the sold out ones that I had them replaced after like 10 years, but I wore them every Chicago winter, that's it. That's awesome. Hardy. They also had a pair of Aldens. I bought a pair of Aldens at a vintage store in St. Louis, had no idea really what it was, but they were just like the, the broke, they kind of, kind of a rare, rare Alden actually came to me later. There hasn't been a production for decades.
00:59:09
Speaker
Um, like a full bare moral, balmoral brogue shoe. Um, yeah, whatever. Um, and that was like another thing I wore to, wore to shreds. Um, they are sort of meant to be worn to shreds.
00:59:28
Speaker
I was going to ask because I was looking at your CV and I saw all of the languages.
Passion for Language and Style
00:59:37
Speaker
We have a polyglot on the show here, many, many languages, easily more than five languages, perhaps 10 languages, which is a lot. How do you do that? And as a follow up question, we want your thoughts on clothing as nonverbal communication.
00:59:54
Speaker
Well, yeah, okay. Professor. Well, yeah, language is, I mean, the language stuff is, okay, that's kind of been my thing. It's your wheelhouse, you could say. Yeah, you know, it wasn't always what I sort of started out doing. But yeah, one thing led to another, to put it that way. So, but also was like a conscious decision from like my early 20s to like, okay, I got a,
01:00:18
Speaker
acquire as many languages as possible. One of them, of course, if your mother tongue is Norwegian, spoken by like five million people. Not a lot. So you've got to put in some like work and something other than English. Oh, I see. I see. So you had to. Yeah, well, not really. The problem now is like more Scandinavia to nowadays have gone kind of the way of the world that it's
01:00:41
Speaker
They're amazing English speakers, kind of all over Scandinavia, but they're no longer that great at sort of German or French. So that's sort of a pattern throughout Europe as well. They could become a lot better at English, but they could become a lot worse at learning the languages of their neighbors. But since I work with, you know, literature and philosophy and sort of that sort of a thing that happened along the way, that became kind of an important thing as well.
01:01:12
Speaker
But it does infuse kind of everything. I mean, sort of Italian stuff that's kind of made my own. I love it from the inside in a certain way. Same with French and all these kind of different styles. It's not just something that I admired from afar. It's something I know quite well and kind of know how it works sort of, yeah, within sort of the sort of
01:01:39
Speaker
semi-closed sort of semantic system within which it comes like Italian style doesn't mean something mean that's different it doesn't mean there's like different type of shoulders and so on it doesn't mean just just a different style it's like a real like appropriating something like that it's like kind of like a real commitment which is rare to share because I still do teach language it's not too pessimistic but it's very hard to convince
01:02:07
Speaker
younger folks nowadays to make that type of investment in terms of time. That's very much, that's very much out of touch with the speed at which cultures in different words are consumed and the readily available or seemingly readily available and taking the time to spend six, eight, nine months to get really on the inside. It's like a hard, it's a very hard sell nowadays. Students do not do... I feel she's a great shame about it.
01:02:36
Speaker
People do not do, students almost never do a year or study abroad anymore. It's hard to get them to do six months. You can maybe get them to do a summer program now, which is next to useless in terms of- It's not enough time, certainly. And they're not in school, so they're just doing some sort of curated program for them instead of the real deal, which is, you know,
01:02:59
Speaker
you better find a place to live in Italy in the next few days. Otherwise you don't have anything. So there's the phone. You got to call some sort of call up some random Italians convince them to live with you. Here we go. You are like four months of Italian. There you go. Stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then you and then you learn it. Well, yeah, then you learn it. But then, you know, yeah, it becomes sort of a part of
01:03:26
Speaker
I mean, four months in Italy versus four months at a university, doing an hour or two a week of Italian, right? You're going to learn in Italy, most probably. Yeah, but both works. Ideally, you do first one thing, then the other. But I have many stories. I've done this over and over again. I kind of did it.
01:03:52
Speaker
When I went to college, not to study abroad, I went for the real. I did it in a language I didn't speak German that well when I moved to Austria. I had to. I got quite adept at it. I repeated it in Italy. I repeated it in France. That's somehow even more impressive than just knowing you speak these languages fluently. Like the fact that you just threw yourself into that.
01:04:19
Speaker
Yeah, I'm kind of proud of it, but you know, at the time, I mean, maybe it didn't seem like much. It's kind of what I chose to sort of do. Right. Well, it's better than spending a ton of time studying, right? It's like you had experiential learning, which is like the best line. The payoff in monitoring sort of, payoff has sort of not really materialized just yet, but we'll know. Right, right.
01:04:46
Speaker
It's not in terms of, that's partly why, in terms of an investment, why it's a little bit more difficult than a certificate in some skill or whatever. Right. IT, something IT, learn to code. Yeah, that's nonsense. I mean, that's just to, you try to tell us in that, like if you're, if there's like an educational person telling you to do something, that means they're already at least five years late.
01:05:15
Speaker
So yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. That means that you should have maybe coded 10 years. You should have been learned. Yeah. Well, so in the course of our rigorous research, we came across your rate, my professor page where a student said, quote, he gives us cookies and rants about communism. So never a dull moment.
01:05:39
Speaker
We're in agreement with your students. In a way, you seem like a fun professor and possibly even a cool professor. Are you the cool professor at your university? What do your students think about your fits? I don't. Well, the fits yet. Well, I don't read my rate. I never read my course evaluations at all, actually, which gets me into trouble sometimes. I never read.
01:06:01
Speaker
I didn't actually know that there was someone that actually written on rate, my professor, whatever. Yeah. Oh, Bobby. And they said cookies. More than one person said cookies. So I think that's it. I think I did that maybe once. So that must have been, who knows? I don't know. It was really a standout moment. I don't know. Just calories instead of whatever.
01:06:25
Speaker
I know. It's kind of transparent, I guess, one time it is. But it was all right. I don't know. There is at Miami, there is a WhatsApp group dedicated to my fits. I know this. Someone student told me. I thought you were going to say nothing. I thought you were going to say absolutely nothing. And here we are. Oh, my God. So whose WhatsApp is it?
01:06:51
Speaker
I don't know. It's like among students, apparently. It's been like... Wow! So they're like spotting you on campus and shooting you? I don't know, sort of shown me exactly what it is, but it's like where they are, that my fits are being discussed in group chats on campus. Yeah, I know. Dude, that's fucking amazing. They probably have cool nicknames for you. Well, I don't know. I mean, and there are students who come up and they can say like, we knocked out something that they do.
01:07:17
Speaker
Remark about it and I was like, oh yeah, I didn't know you could like just do it and people are take notice and are are are interested in but I don't know if you bring it sometimes I mean it can be one thing that
01:07:31
Speaker
that makes a connection maybe, but I don't know, it's never thought, there's maybe the advantage is that the campus is like kind of a place where you can still wear like some form of tailored clothing and no one will bat an eye. No one will ever give you the question of why you're so dressed up. If you're a professor, then you know, I guess that's what you do. Since there's no, since in terms of hierarchically speaking, like you're in the classroom, you're the only one, you're the one there.
01:08:01
Speaker
The kind of situation that you're in the classroom kind of justifies any kind. Be completely casual, you can wear a tie. It's not going to be weird in any way because you're kind of single out anyway, by virtue of being the professor, the person who teaches the class, being the instructor on record. You are sort of set apart in that way. No matter what your pedagogy or teaching style is, you can do whatever you want. So there's always been that kind of freedom and that
01:08:30
Speaker
the sort of choice that I can wear on any given day, what works, there's never ever a need to even consider the context of that, so that's fine. That doesn't bother me. Yeah, I've kind of gotten feedback on student evaluations probably since grad school.
01:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, but I mean, well, it shows that you basically I don't I don't really value that much as much being seen as like the cool. I don't know. It's especially now. Yeah, I'm joking. You I'm not saying do you consider yourself the cool professor? I'm saying do your students think of you in that way? And it's probably yes. The what's probably I mean, probably it's more entertaining and true. Try to bring a little bit of bit of
01:09:19
Speaker
a bit of like, yeah, entertainment values have ended. But I mean, I do ask students to do difficult things, because that's maybe that's part of my, my style. I'm not like someone who's like giving them like, an easy time was like, I asked them to do very difficult things. But I'm also trying to be more chill about that, even as I asked them to read something completely insane. But just to give just to give them experience, give them that experience of it. But
01:09:49
Speaker
I don't know. I certainly am kind of aware that I'm in the process of losing most direct cultural connections to people who are 18, 19. You're almost about to go over the horizon.
01:10:10
Speaker
could be breached to a certain extent. I could sort of be certainly aware of. But now it's become in the last couple of years, it's been, I'm not sure that that can be done or is even worth doing anymore. It's probably better now to just like slip all the horizon into like pure sort of eccentricity. There's no
01:10:34
Speaker
There's no point for me to sort of know that much about what's new, what's going on. From cool professor to rakish recluse. I don't know. We'll see what the next...
01:10:53
Speaker
with the next iteration. I don't know if there will be one. I've thought about this a little bit too. There's certainly a sense of, we haven't actually talked about this on the project with impending fatherhood.
01:11:06
Speaker
Yes, right. So that something is coming to an end. There's certainly been several cycles of different accelerations in the last few years. There certainly was one since I left grad school and started working and basically had some money. There was certainly a cycle that began then, certainly accelerated
01:11:33
Speaker
In 2020, through the pandemic, we had like a lot more time. That is sort of when my social media thing became somehow noticed by thousands, which is weird. Legitimized. Legitimized, it was like something you did. But then, so it certainly accelerated since then. And there's been like a continuous process of
01:11:55
Speaker
I put a lot of work, money and sort of sweat equity that are into, into what are sort of trying to get things the way I wanted them. With your, with the frequency of that certainly coming to a close now. I can certainly feel I'd like the
01:12:14
Speaker
It got rid of a bunch of stuff just lately. For instance, getting rid of a lot of the classic Ivy style stuff that I had. I got rid of seven Brooks sack jackets. Three, two perfect iterations of everything.
01:12:30
Speaker
because I was no longer interested in that particular pure Ivy-style form. And I swapped it out for the more Baroque 70s, 80s, and 90s Ralph Lauren stuff.
01:12:46
Speaker
kind of tend to prefer sort of the kind of a reversal of that argument. Who is it that basically about Ralph Lauren sort of seminal moment for sort of selling the fantasy of the wasp back to the wasps themselves. Right. Yes. Sort of shift. And that was like the shift from the original Brooks Brothers to the Ralph Lauren's of the 70s and 80s was this.
01:13:11
Speaker
was this moment where somehow it was possible to sell that look to the originators or those who were the custodians of that particular tradition. Well, I think I agree with Ralph in the sense that the 70s Ralph stuff is better than the Brooks Brothers stuff. Agreed, also agreed.
01:13:40
Speaker
Yeah, it absorbed better for not just it was kind of maybe probably always better in terms of purely in the pure stylistic sense. But I think it's better also if you're if you're like interested in the preservation of trial, that's the better. That's the better version to to aspire to.
01:13:59
Speaker
Right. So everybody buy Ralph's stuff and not Brooks Brothers. This is a Ralph Lauren. Our vast list. Maybe the shirts. I mean, I think I still I still get to keep the Brooks shirts. Yeah. Ralph shirts are all over the place. Yeah. They also don't have a shirt. Don't have pockets. Don't have a pocket.
01:14:18
Speaker
can't can't handle it's horrible i have like i have like probably six or eight of them here no chest pocket i don't like that i want to put my phone there yeah but um um that's correct yeah so that that so i guess that's kind of like the
01:14:39
Speaker
Not just like liking Ralph or like looking at the fix, but sort of kind of understanding the Ralph Lauren turn in the seventies when you really understand what it, what it was and how it related to what came before. So, okay. It's like, okay. Yes. That is actually the better version of, uh, American American style. And it's like slightly, um,
01:15:05
Speaker
Yes, slightly over top, like it's slightly on like the decadent or even a lot like over on the decadent side, you know. Exaggerated. Yeah, but for like, you know, like the best like maybe like the best Western films are the John Ford ones, but the better ones are still like
01:15:24
Speaker
when things start to get quite messy in the sixties and seventies, you know, where, where like the, where it starts to get grimier, dustier, bloodier, and like less more and less, less of a clear moral compass than American film is kind of the, the latter end of the golden age is often to me, like more interesting than the actual, yeah, the actual sort of moment of dispersion is often more interesting.
01:15:52
Speaker
than the actual heyday, I think. Right. Yeah, the film analogy really fits. Like, if you know anything about American Western film, that's a great encapsulation that I can, that I've probably ever heard. You can see it in like late John Ford himself, that stuff's starting to happen. But it's like, maybe like there are some, but yeah, you get the grittier,
01:16:21
Speaker
the gritty period. There would be no Tarantino without that period. Yeah, of course. And it would take us back to like the 90s version of that moment. Right, right. The love we just still have. I was watching some Tarantino films like just the other week.
01:16:39
Speaker
like true romance, the first time I'd seen that probably in 25 years. Oh God, yeah, yeah. It was terrific, absolutely terrific. Like all the details that didn't seem that important then, but sort of was, it was, yeah, it was absolutely terrific. And it was like a phenomenon that it's hard to describe now, like exactly what those films meant and the kind of cultural impact they had both stylistically to this sort of freewheeling
01:17:08
Speaker
slightly sleazy, kind of open, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, yeah, a truly, yeah, truly great moment. I enjoy coming back to now. Now that I'm not, I sort of can look back on it in a different way. I love it. Um,
01:17:27
Speaker
So that's kind of, yeah. Was it military stuff you still want to talk about? That sounds kind of a moment, I think.
American Military Clothing Appeal
01:17:33
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I just, I think we've had a lot of good ground covered on this. Yeah, we're going to be coming into an hour and a half now. No, it's awesome. If this is our longest episode ever, I'm here for it.
01:17:50
Speaker
Yes, you can get stuff, but yeah. But there is that also with film as well. This can be the one thing I'd add about military, because that's sort of what makes, what makes American military good is that it has been sort of laundered through new Hollywood cinema of the 70s. Totally, totally. And that's like the real difference between military here and military in Europe. In Europe, it still has
01:18:20
Speaker
even with the best of intentions, it often has some very bad connotations that hasn't really been worked through. Either it's like the military surplus that I remember, like when my brother was in the military, you could buy the sweaters that are very warm, but they don't look particularly gray. I don't like, despite people liking some Swedish military stuff, I don't like it very much. All the NATO stuff, I don't like it.
01:18:48
Speaker
some of the French and British stuff looks cool, but it's like, I don't know, man, there's no, I don't find that there's a, yeah, it hasn't gone through that cultural refining process of some of that. It doesn't quite have the same panache. It doesn't, it has like, there's a little bit of it in like some like 60s French films about Algeria or whatever, but not really. It doesn't look the same way, it didn't have an,
01:19:17
Speaker
a lot of that stuff just simply didn't happen. Like that integration of military wear into the counterculture movement never happened. So without that sort of cultural reprocessing, then I don't find it particularly attractive. So for me, it kind of has to be American military. Understandable. It's because we're the best.
01:19:47
Speaker
Yes, we are. It's your day to say we, which is fucking awesome, man. We're definitely going to have to have you back on to talk about all of the other shit that you bring to the table that we did not even discuss on this episode.
01:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, a couple of moments like, you know, like the, like a couple of moments of synthesis, like discovering like Drake's in 2017. Totally, totally. This is how you can articulate these things together. And, but only then, and this may be interesting to end on, like only then, like 2017, 2018, only like a few years ago, that the internet really play an important role in the development of my personal style. I didn't really,
01:20:40
Speaker
take you weren't like a tumblr it was never no i had no internet presence uh of any kind really except like how we would have known about you yeah i sort of missed completely missed the train on that i've never had i didn't really even know what tumblr or or any of that stuff was um there was like a vintage guy in chicago told me about pity walmo what that was and showed me some pictures and i was like
01:21:08
Speaker
This seems like a lame part of Florence, I don't think. Oh man, great. Yeah, I guess having gloves in funky colors, I guess that did appeal to me, but it's like, I'm not gonna do that. Yeah, you're mostly in a lot of ways that you miss this whole, I mean, I am very fond of it because of the time period and because of my placement in the blogosphere, but
01:21:37
Speaker
it's it's almost a little bit more pure that you just completely skipped that that whole internet menswear obsession although yeah you should be hitting it at the right time because that's just coming back yeah i don't know it's like arriving arriving late to the to the party in that sense i never uh
01:22:01
Speaker
But yeah, but I wasn't rounded around some people who were, I guess, big online, but I didn't really know that that was that that was a thing. So, yeah, I did the there was I didn't. Yeah, I didn't order any buy any clothing really online until like maybe six, seven years ago, the first time I bought anything that wasn't.
01:22:30
Speaker
But maybe, maybe it would have been different. I don't know if there was a, would have been, would have been a very. Well, I think you're at the press of the second wave of internet menswear culture. So we're going to have you on after you've gotten some sleep from being a new dad in a couple of months. And then we will, the dad, the sort of this dad turn will be an interesting one because it will, yeah, I will not
01:22:58
Speaker
purchase any clothing for a long time, I suppose. Part one. And it will be a different kind of thing. But I think I'm ready to... I've been working towards this for a while. Since I'm not that gluttonous or...
01:23:13
Speaker
in terms of my consumption was never sort of something I enjoyed. It was more kind of more like an obstacle. Sometimes travel is a bit like that. You travel to see new things, but at a certain point you travel so that you don't have to do it later. Like a lot of the stuff I buy, I buy it now so I don't have to do it later, which is usually vindicated because I recently looked up what one of my fills and bags now cost that I bought in 2014.
01:23:43
Speaker
It's frightening actually that it's like more than double now than what it was back then. That seems insane. Inflation baby. We're stepped in too. We're ready for it. Yes, but this is another part like the sort of the clothing, both vintage and new is being sort of being swallowed by sort of the asset inflation part of the economy is frightening. And that means that it will be
01:24:12
Speaker
Uh, like I was into wine for a bit in the 2010s. It happens. And that's something that you become the, like the, the best things to drink. You are no longer even remotely affordable, but they really used to be. I mean, you could, you could buy, uh, you could buy some of these bottles, uh, in most good wine stores in American cities, like not that long ago.
01:24:37
Speaker
for like something that you could splurge on for a celebration or something. But now it's just the best things will just go completely out of reach for someone who isn't even like actually wealthy and not just, you know, upper middle class or whatever, let alone for someone who's.
01:24:54
Speaker
stuck in the stagnating millennial, sort of low wage, no, yeah, that type of, that type of Elisa. So a lot of that. So clothing will go the same way. So I did as much as I could while I could. And now it's probably close to over, I suppose, in terms of real acquisition about a certain level. I think that that has reached
01:25:25
Speaker
reached it's uh the end of that cycle i don't think that this is that then it's not if it's yeah it's about to just also disappear over the horizon then people always say there's going to be other things but not so sure there's there's uh we're sort of running once we push through the 90s in terms of a vintage clothing there won't be that much that would be that would be um
01:25:54
Speaker
possible respect for later. When J. Crew, Ludlow suits are trendy and vintage, I'm gonna fucking walk into them. What I want to know is where is all that lost J. Crew catalog stuff from the 90s? Where is all the vintage stuff of that? I never see it. I see a fair amount. Probably destroyed or on a beach and on a beach in some country. You have to think that they weren't as widely distributed.
01:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, you forget that he wasn't the J. Crook today, right? He was just like... Right, exactly. It was still somewhat regional or in big places, but fucking Abercrombie, American Fitch... Sorry, Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle and Gap were in literally every mall on the planet. Yeah, that's the shit you see. It makes more sense, though.
01:26:43
Speaker
Well, Henrik, dude, it's been a really fun conversation, and I'm totally serious about having you back on in a few months. We're on the record. We're on the record saying that this will happen. We're on the record, but we always give our guests a chance to shout out anything they want to, so have at it.
01:27:05
Speaker
No, that's not much to say. I mean, you can follow me on Instagram, at agewillberg. I could still use a couple of bumps to get to that mythical 10K influence. Nice! But wouldn't that be something, eh? Get to the same K. Instagram has really kind of collapsed in this. But it's actually, in a sense, slowly getting back to being just a fun place again and not... Total!
01:27:32
Speaker
place where too much happens because that's probably, that's probably good as well. Um, uh, so, uh, that's like the only, the only thing that I have, there's nothing else that I have too. Awesome.
01:27:48
Speaker
And if you're listening in Cincinnati and see the the world's coolest professor walking around Tell them that you you listen to him talk on apocalypse diets. That's that's what we're gonna It happens a lot. I get recognized on
Remarkable Happenings and Comparisons
01:28:02
Speaker
the street. Like that's awesome Several places it's happened several places here. It's happened in like other cities Which seems insane, but it's but it's yeah
01:28:16
Speaker
Well, I mean, you just got one of those faces. I wanted to say this earlier. Yeah. I wanted to say while you were talking about how your students perceive you, but I feel like having a WhatsApp group dedicated to what you wear is the 2023 equivalent of Robert Williams in dead post society. So I think it's awesome that people recognize you.
Closing Remarks and Contact Info
01:28:43
Speaker
But, uh,
01:28:44
Speaker
Yeah, thank you again for coming on. We are at Apocalypse Studs on Instagram, apocalypsestuds.gmail.com if you've got any questions, comments, concerns, or just want to send us some stupid fucking memes. I'm Matt Smith.
Sign-off and Future Promise
01:29:00
Speaker
And I'm Connor Fowler. And yeah, we'll see you next time.