Many people have said that this is "Bob's Cafe." But I will disagree. I would like to emphasize --- and re-emphasize --- that this forum is NOT about my personal interests and desires. If it were so, there would be no need to ask others their opinions, I would just make the forum go wherever I'm headed in life. That is what happened at the Atrium. But I see more of a sense of responsibility to the community than that, and I am just one member. I am making decisions about the Cafe based on what I think is best for the community over the long run. That is why I appreciate that so many people have taken the time to give their two cents worth on this topic.At the end of the day, this is "Bob's Cafe" (and to a lesser extend "Bob & Carl's Cafe"). Any endeavor is going to be more successful if reflects the interests and desires of the owners.
Reading the above and seeing where things have gone, it seems that the Cafe today has turned into the Atrium of 4 years ago. Something will be done about that...
Apparently, X-Marks has done very well at their goal, and really brought a lot to the table. That is great! If that were the end of the story, I would just shut down the Cafe. However, I think that there is a "market niche" for kilts-and-skirts. I personally do not read X-Marks. Basically, because there is not much there that I'm interested in talking about (and that doesn't mean I don't wear kilts). Kilts are a narrow, well-defined garment; after a while, why bother talking about them, just wear them. It would be like an entire forum dedicated to discussing khakis and dress slacks. Actually, a forum about trousers would probably have MORE interesting discussion due to the much wider variety of trousers available. Also, X-Marks at least pays lip service to Celtic culture as an integral part of kilt-wearing, complete with forums on upcoming Highland Games. It's not a fashion site in that sense, it's a culture site. And that's OK.
But I want SkirtCafe to be a fashion site. It should to delve more into what I would call "skirted fashion" (whether the skirt portion is a kilt or skirt or a whatnot). Fashion is not just a piece of clothing. It is a language, a message, a non-verbal form of communication. X-Marks took an existing language (the kilt) and reinforced it. The CD/TV forums (and at times the Atrium) take an existing language (woman's fashion) and appropriate it in one way or another for men. I don't want to do either one at SkirtCafe. I want to see how we can work on developing a new language, that of skirted men's fashion.
This is not "fashion freedom." As far as I can tell, "fashion freedom" means you can wear whatever you want and still call yourself "Joe." Well, we've discovered that we pretty much all have that, at least when we're not at work. But it's not a USEFUL kind of freedom. In refusing to address the underlying meanings of fashion and claiming that it's "just clothing", fashion freedom leads to anarchy.
There's a parallel in words: we have "word freedom," meaning we can say whatever we like, even if it's vulgar. And now and then, people claim that gangsta rap music is harmless because the rappers don't REALLY mean all the awful lyrics they're spouting, and kids don't listen to the words anyway. But few people really believe that claim.
Well, we ARE saying things with our choice of fashion, and most of us want to understand what we're saying. By continually beating the drum of "fashion freedom," we're ignoring that, so it's hard to develop any new linguistic territory of men's skirted fashion. So instead, we just end up by default seeming to appropriate women's fashion.
Or another way to look at it: fashion is art. We're looking to expand the palette. But we're not looking to paint randomly.