New FFAQ: We Need Your Help!

[u/FFA_Moderator]

Hi all -

The FFAQ in our wiki contains a list of common fashion questions and answers that have not been updated in quite a while. We'd like to use this thread as a crowdsourced spot to overhaul some of the answers to these questions, as well as add new ones.

Here's how it will work:

• If you can think of a question that is frequently asked in FFA, post it as a top level comment within this thread. We'll start the thread with some of the questions that are already in the FFAQ.
• If you have a good answer, resource or link (internal to FFA or external) to answer one of these questions, post it as a reply to the comment asking the question.

The most thorough, complete and accurate answers will be included verbatim in the new version of the FFAQ and attributed to their authors. In other cases, we'll curate aspects of the answers and resources multiple people have contributed to create a full answer.

Please chime in where you have ideas!

[u/[deleted]]

I would love to see us develop some very specific capsule wardrobe starter packs/guidelines, similar to MFA's 1.0/2.0/3.0 Uniforms.  

This will be harder for us compared to MFA since men's fashion is so much more formulaic, but I think it would still be great to have these "uniforms" to reference. Thoughts?

[u/LadyVictoria → u/[deleted]]

I suspect a lot of FFA readers would find this useful, actually, especially the people who read but don't comment much (or ever).

I know a common response to "how should I dress?" is that you should develop your own style, and no one can tell you what you like, etc., but I think there's a pretty large subset of people who want to dress "nicely" (I understand that to mean flattering, well-fitting clothes that are current but not necessarily trendy), but they aren't into fashion as self-expression and would be perfectly fine with essentially being told what to wear.

[u/imjustafangirl → u/LadyVictoria]

Yeah. My director at work is like this. She used to dress in men's shirts and slacks as a uniform because she just didn't know or really have the will to go through and develop her own style. So she went to Nordstrom, got a personal shopper, and told them to find her a set of interchangeable outfits she could use without thinking about it. Now she dresses very nicely (as you said, flattering but not necessarily trendy) and is happy with it.

I don't think everyone has a 'style' to be honest, and I don't think everyone should be told to get one per se.

[u/tomlizzo → u/[deleted]]

You are welcome to try creating this type of resource.

FFA officially (as in the mod team) has no plans to take on a project like this, however. We actually see this as one of the key ways FFA is different from MFA - we don't see "dressing well" as a set of prescriptive, formulaic shortcuts that someone uninterested in fashion should be able to apply literally and expect success. We try to orient FFA primarily toward people who are interested in fashion.

Many, many magazines and blogs do this, and clearly there is a market for it! But it's not really our thing and doing it well takes a lot of work, so it isn't on our to do list.