JeffJackel.com

So I found this thing online that I can best describe as a photographic sociological study of style trends and how they define (or are defined by) groups of people.  Sounds funky, I know.  I’ll do my best to explain, but I promise you have to check it out yourself to really understand…

It’s called Exactitudes (www.exactitudes.com), and it’s the result of a 14 year collaboration between two Dutch artists, photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek.  These guys were interested in the patterns of dress that typified particular social groups within their area of Rotterdam and around the world.  They took hundreds, if not thousands of photographs of people with identical framing, lighting, and background; put the people in exact poses; and had them wearing the clothing styles that unite them into groups.  Looking at the result of their efforts now, each set of 12 photos is a visual record of our human psychological need to express individuality and distinguish ourselves from others.  As a whole though, the project takes on a contradictory air when you think about how these individuals are using their style to differentiate themselves, but their defining characteristics are societal trends… and they’re really just assuming a group identity.

All that might be too deep or ethereal to take on a Friday morning, so let me give you the lighter side.  I design clothing for a living.  I do my best to follow trends and I’m constantly trying to think about who wears what, who would wear what, and how those people would feel wearing the next garment that’s on my radar to make.  So, if nothing else, the little photography experiment these Dutchmen did can keep me busy for hours with those thoughts in mind.  Maybe you just want to thumb through the menagerie of pics to see twelve swim trunk-clad older Gentlemen in Rio de Janeiro, some Mohawks from Rotterdam, a dozen assless chap-wearing Leathermen, or  The Girls From Ipanema.