The Uniform

Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day. Black Issey Miyake turtleneck, Levi's 501 jeans, New Balance 990s. He did not arrive at this by accident. He visited Miyake in Japan, admired the way Sony dressed its workers in designed uniforms, and asked Miyake to make him a personal version. Several hundred black turtlenecks. Enough for the rest of his life.

The decision to wear a uniform is the most considered fashion decision you can make. It appears to be the absence of a fashion decision. It is the opposite.

To wear the same thing every day is to have already decided what the correct thing is. It is to have thought so thoroughly about what you wear that you have concluded the thinking is finished. The uniform is the result of a solved problem. Every other approach to dressing is the problem still being solved.

Virgil Abloh wore Arc'teryx. Karl Lagerfeld wore his own constructed uniform of ponytail, dark glasses, high collar and fingerless gloves for the last thirty years of his life. Mark Zuckerberg wears grey t-shirts. Barack Obama wore only grey or blue suits during his presidency. He described the decision as removing a trivial choice from a day full of consequential ones.

The uniform is not about fashion in the sense that fashion is usually understood. It is about clarity. The person who wears a uniform has decided who they are and what they wear is a reflection of that decision rather than a search for it.

The most interesting version of the uniform is the one that is clearly chosen rather than merely convenient. Jobs chose Miyake. Lagerfeld chose himself. Abloh chose technical outdoor performance gear worn as everyday clothing. Each choice says something specific about how its wearer understands the relationship between the body, the object and the world.

The uniform is the highest form of personal style. It requires you to already know who you are.

RIP STEVE

~ 9.95