A Celebration of the Remarkably Unremarkable
Your aesthetic is permanently in limbo–offbeat, eclectic–the embodiment of a society undergoing constant change. Your fashion can be described as slackercore, normcore, and comfycore (with a dash of slobcore). You listen to everything from New Order to James Blake, Bombay Bicycle Club to Frank Ocean.
You are a walking paradox, living in a world of powerful processors, high-speed internet and instant gratification, and yet you enjoy needless tedium. Six-hour crock pot carnitas, 10-hour smoked brisket, 12-hour cold brew.
Your ideals and creative sensibilities are very much forward, but you absolutely love appropriated nostalgia. Your aesthetic is conspicuously generic: a mixture of the extremes of fashion, between brand-name and basic. But your appearance is so understated, it just begs to be pointed out.
Your Kit:
A rad backpack
Okay, maybe saying “rad” isn’t as rad as it was three years go. But who cares? If you think “rad” is rad, then it is. Just like the Fjållråven Re-Kånken made from 100 percent polyester recycled from plastic bottles. You’re literally carrying your eco-friendliness on your shoulders. Just don’t get too carried away with telling everyone about it. It’s available in 13 colors, but this one in emerald just looks amazeballs. Is “amazeballs” rad? I digress.
An iPhone
It doesn’t matter if you have a 4S wheezing through its last charge cycles or you have the newest, most expensive brick in Apple’s arsenal. You’re used to iOS and any argument of affordability or better performance will do nothing to sway you into using Android. End of discussion.
A separate audio player
Audio quality aside, plugging into your blank, bezel-less slate to listen to music doesn’t quite do it for you. You need to feel something, if only for the short moments you pull out your audio player to skip a track. Luckily you’ve found an iPod Classic for sale on OLX and it’s a steal. Or, if you want something more obscure, you opt for a brand new Fiio M3. Here’s to hundreds of songs you will never get to on shuffle.
Retro headphones
You like high-fidelity audio and great isolation, and if it’s in a nice vintage shell, you are over the moon. Luckily a lot of brands are capitalizing on our fixation on old-looking things like this PRO4AA from Koss.
A stylish laptop
Your loyalty with Apple is more fluid when it comes to personal computers. Everyone is out to steal the crown and the veritable Game of Thrones has given birth to a bevy of good-looking and souped-up laptops. Take the Microsoft Surface Book for example.
Analog and digital cameras
Most days you just want a camera that you could use without having to make a second thought. Something that could take excellent photos with barely any decisional input from the user. Just like this mirrorless Canon EOS M6 which gives you excellent quality photos for both manual and automatic modes. And when you can be bothered to be more hands on (and more rebloggable), you have a film camera at the ready: a Nikon FE2 if you’re practical; an M-series Leica if you’re rich; or if you want something really special, a Soviet-era Zorki compatible with Leica’s thread mount.
Have these in your inventory and you’re golden. But of course, this checklist is merely suggestive. You do you, snowflake; you do you.
Also published in Gadgets Magazine March 2018 issue
Words by Robby Vaflor
Art by Theresa Eloriaga