As a society, there are specific fashion trends we all look back on and can pretty much agree were horrible mistakes. But some of these trends were only mistakes until recently, when they again became fashionable, mostly to people who weren’t alive when they happened the first time. Other trends are new, but equally unpleasant.
Identified below are some of the sure-to-be-wince-inducing mistakes currently happening, possibly even on your body. But don’t worry. If you find yourself wearing any of them, I offer a reasoned critique and a very doable solution to your dilemma.
SKINNY JEANS
Problem: Attractiveness is not defined by the number of people wearing something, or how it looks from the front. There’s a reason you can’t imagine someone saying, “I love the way your butt looks all saggy and how I now have an uncomfortable sense of what your body looks like without pants.” If you aren’t sure what I mean, take a photo of yourself from behind. See? You actually look like that.
Solution: If you can manage to get these jeans off of you, bury them and move away to a town where no one has ever seen you wearing such things.
ORGAN BAGS
Problem: Poor women. The things they have to do for fashion. (The attractive ones, I mean.) In this case they’re forced to carry around handbags that look like some kind of giant, shriveled organ. The only difference is that one can purchase a black-market organ for about half the price of one of these purses. And that organ will never go out of fashion.
Solution: Reject this bag the way your body would reject an organ. But with less death and more pride.
90% OF SNEAKERS
Problem: They may be at the other end of your body where you rarely have to look, but still. Other people have to see them and frankly, the emotional toll of feeling embarrassed for you is more than I want to commit to someone who would treat me so poorly.
Solution: If you don’t buy them, no one will make them. Please. Just think of the people around you, especially those lower to the ground.
PATTERNED HOODIES
Problem: There seems to be a segment of the population who wears these thinking they look tough in them. There’s nothing tough about wearing your pajamas in public, not even if you turn your hat sideways. And not even if you have the mustache of a tween.
Solution: Your little sister’s 12th birthday is coming up. Stuff your hoodie in a bag, throw in a copy of Twilight and she’ll have the best birthday ever!
X-TREME T-SHIRTS
Problem: I don’t debate the effectiveness of these shirts proclaiming the wearer’s awesomeness. These shirts proudly display your I’m-so-chill attitude (t-shirt) combined with your but-don’t-mess-with-me threat (textured fonts and grungy flourishes). The difficulty is that no one can maintain such a contradiction indefinitely. Not even you, no matter how awesome you are.
Solution: Tear your shirt off right now, before it explodes off of you.
GENIE
PANTS
Problem: I haven’t seen these in real life because I don’t live in New York City, so I’ll have to let Lucky attest to their existence (and tell me where I can buy them!). These magical pants from the Middle East won’t give you the power to grant a wish, unless that wish is to convince the world you don’t care what you wear, so long as you’re clothed.
Solution: Pull these over your head until the air runs out.
If you disagree with me now, please wait a few years before posting your comment.
19 responses
You’re already too late for skinny jeans – they are on the way out for hipster. And I have to say that I prefer them to their replacement: high-waisted denim ala 1986. Muffin top and camel toe are preferable to everyone looking 4 months pregnant.
Ditto on the hoodies… that’s already over. Hoodies are already the item that locks someone into a fashion time period, like the flannels of the late 70s (which came back in the early 90s).
Ted , I enjoyed reading this immensely. I hope to read more of your work.
Funny story… my husband, soon to be ex unfortunately, is going through a mid-life crisis and is wearing some of these items. So as silly as a 16 year old looks in these things, picture a balding 38 year old.
You made my day.
Be Blessed!
Good lord if this wasn’t just the most wonderful way to start my day. Thanks Ted (sorry about your wife though)!
Good work, Ted.
The genie pants were big in Israel a few years ago but they’re called “diaper pants” here. Enough said.
Josi, things may be on their way out, but there are still a lot of people wearing these things right this moment. Those are the people to whom I’m speaking. Also, what’s cameltoe? Are those shoes made from actual camel hooves? They sound exotic.
Barbarann, I’m so very sorry.
Immensely pleased to see skinny jeans on the list and also to hear from Josi that they are already on the way out. Bad fashion in 5 years AND at their inception. Although I have to disagree with the statement, “muffin top and camel toe are preferable to everyone looking 4 months pregnant”.
No, not really, they are equally terrible visions!!! To all of you out there who actually ventured to wear these jeans, do you actually enjoy wearing tight, uncomfortable jeans and having feet that look as big as clowns?
My add to the list: short shorts — even if you have the body to wear them, they make you look like you should be working at Hooters, and if you don’t have the body to wear them, well…..
Gotta agree with Josi’s observation about the rise (hah!) of over the hip jeans. Bad, bad move. I see people tuck their t-shirt in them. I liken them to the hipster moustache. A person takes a lot of time acquiring a certain amount of cool and then thinks its time to spend a little of it. What they don’t realize is how quickly the moustache burns your cool and they have to discard it. Those jeans are like that for women. Nobody can pull them off. They are a black hole.
I’m going to need an alternative to skinny jeans and pronto, given the nerve damage and all. I’m looking forward to pulling on my acid washed, mom jeans that have been in my closet since 1984.
skinny jeans aren’t new, they just went mainstream and they might fall out of the mainstream, but they’ll always be here, somewhere.
And my ass looks pretty damn great in them, if I do say so myself.
I don’t think that anyone’s arguing that skinny jeans are new; the argument here is that they are bad fashion. In the past, now and in the future! Your ass may look good in the jeans but I doubt much else does! That’s kind of like me wearing a hideously ugle shirt simply because it makes my boobs look fabulous! Fashion is usually about the “whole picture”! Well, it should be anyway!
nope, front looks good too, sorry.
I can assure you that’s a matter of opinion! Just like I can assure you that when people “pegged” their jeans in the early 90’s (even though I did it too) it was an atrocious look (I somehow knew it at the time too but that’s what everyone else was doing so…)! Hum, could that be the case here? Everyone else is doing it, I’m used to seeing it so it must be fashionable? Right? Yeah, NO! See, what you may not have is perspective that comes with age! Ask yourself in ten years if you still think it’s a good look! Hey, I wonder if those women who used to wear leggings (you currently sport the denim version of those) in public can look back now and say, “yeah, I looked HOT!”? Just because a fashion is popular does not make it a good one! They certainly make for some entertaining recollections of times gone by though, so by all means keep sporting them!
I think this article is GREAT!
Are we really going to go here?
Well ok I’ll bring out my dead-horse-beatin’ stick.
Fashion is just that, fashion. It has it’s time and place and at that time it DOES look good. Then later, maybe you look back at pegged pants from the 80s (no wait, 50s, right?) and you think, I looked so silly back then because obviously your perspective and context has changed and the current fashion is different (or the same from the past). Yeah, we get it.
But who cares? Unless you strive to be so fashion-neutral you may find yourself naked (but then, that would probably become a trend too), I really don’t think you or anyone can escape it. So what if we look back and find these trends silly? They’ll probably come back eventually and our kids will look at old 2-D JPGs of ourselves and be like, wow you were so cool Dad!. I know because it happened to me. I know because I essentially dress like my dad did in the 70s and 80s (he never liked bell bottoms and chose to wear “straight leg” 501s, which at the time were damn slim.)
I mean, the article is fun and silly and pointing out what the author perceives as bad trends we might make fun of in the future and I don’t doubt it. It’s just that skinny jeans in particular have come and gone so many times already and they keep coming back (and people have been saying they are “on their way out” for several years now), that making fun of them is cheap sport.
If you don’t like them, don’t wear them. But if I see a trend of anti-fashion nudists come along, I’m blaming you. 😉
Would anti-fashion nudism be such a bad thing? I know I’d be more likely to exercise if I knew there was a good chance my belly would be hanging out there for everyone to see instead of safely draped by a t-shirt.
What I don’t understand in this piece is the hating on sneakers. Show some love–shoes don’t have to be boring.
Jesse, not to pick on you or anything, but I’d say that fashion is, in a way, more than just fashion. It’s design, too, and not all designs are created equal. Fashion may come and go, but it’s got to be functional and good looking. There is a reason the men’s suit has remained pretty much unchanged for a hundred years–when made and worn correctly, it is both functional and pleasing to the eye. When it has diverted from that (zoot suits, super wide lapels) it failed in both of those respects.
Skinny jeans look bad. They look bad from the behind and they’re a little too revealing in the front. They’re uncomfortable, getting them on is a little too much work, and they give the impression of trying too hard.
I guess all I’m saying is, just because certain fashions may have their time and place, it doesn’t mean they look good. And while there’s nothing wrong with looking silly, it’s good to be aware that you look silly when you’re doing it.
“Skinny jeans look bad. They look bad from the behind and they’re a little too revealing in the front. They’re uncomfortable, getting them on is a little too much work, and they give the impression of trying too hard.”
Those are all opinions. Some people just flat out don’t agree with that. To me, they look great, feel great and are practical, esp. for cycling around. Also opinions and rebuttals.
Italian and many other European designed suits are quite different than American suits. Mainly they are fitted and “skinny.” Hah.
Jesse, you are wonderful.
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