Fashion Nonsense: A Satire

High fashion: 17th century style

A few days ago I saw a woman walking downtown wearing yoga pants and Crocs. That’s not unusual, but it was pretty obvious that this person has never assumed the Lotus position and wasn’t on her way to do some gardening.

There’s often a big gap between “fashion” and what’s merely “fashionable.” I marvel over the basic contradiction in North American society between individualism and the desire to look like everyone else. Do fashion and commonsense even know each other?  

It’s not like this is new. Check out pix of Baroque era men mincing about in powdered wigs, dotting their pancaked faces with fake moles, tottering in their architectural shoes, and wearing garish clothing that made them look like mutant tropical birds. (See above) Watch some old movies where all the men wore hats, ties, and worsted wool suits–even in summer. (Remarkably they never seemed to sweat.)

Full confession: I too have sinned. In the late 1960s I grew my hair long, wore a bandana headband, had several blousy flowered shirts, strings of love beads, and bell-bottoms so wide my legs disappeared. I also had a fringed leather vest and moccasins, but envied my buddy Mike who had an entire fringed ensemble. Whenever Mike moved, he was out of focus.  If he had but carried a long rifle, he could have been Buffalo Bill’s body double. In the ‘70s I briefly had a particularly ugly pair of 3-inch stack-heeled shoes. Hey, when you’re only 5’5” those babies almost made me reach for an oxygen tank. Later on I owned a polyester leisure suit and I’m not proud about that.

Let’s not let our Canadian friends off the hook. In the 1980s I spent time in Montreal, where I observed that all the women were supposed to dress like they just walked off a Paris runway, whilst the men looked as if they just waded out of a Paramus swamp. When I visited last summer, the women still looked overdressed, but the men upgraded to looking like French existentialists too bored to notice their attire.

Cue current wicked dumb fashion:

1. Crocs are today’s jellies.

 

Please leave in garden with the dude below

Remember “jellies,” those molded plastic shoes lots of young women wore until they collectively said, “Damn! These are really uncomfortable, unspeakably dumb-looking, and make my feet smell like I bathed in raw sewage?” Crocs are just like that, only uglier.

2. Ripped jeans and rip-offs.

When I was a kid my mother patched the holes of my ripped jeans. She used old denim if available; if not, any material she had, as if the humiliation of the makeshift patches were intended to warn me not to tear them again. She would have grounded me had I asked to spend $100 on jeans that look as if weasels shredded them. She had a word for such garments: rags.

Ladies: When buying a handbag or a pair of nosebleed heels, never spend a sum that is greater than your college debt.

3. Tattoos

Yeah, I know scarification is an old art form. It used to be, though, that mostly Maori, U.S. Navy veterans, and sideshow freaks had tats. Now scores of people you barely know will brazenly pull up their shirts or push down their trou to display their ink. Ironically, much of it is on parts of their bodies they can’t even see.

4. Boxer shorts underwear.

I guess that’s because you just never know when you’ll be called upon to spar a few rounds.

5. Mullet dresses.

Can we just agree that any and all forms of the mullet are a really bad idea–even for a tooth-challenged hockey player?

6. Shorts that aren’t and other spatial distortions.

Ummm… aren’t long shorts an oxymoron? Is the point of them to make it appear as if your waist is connected directly to your ankles? A female corollary would be Uggs and short skirts. One's hemline should always be longer than the height of the footwear.

7. Twenty going on fifty fashions.

What’s up with gear like nerd glasses, pork pie hats, nouveau poodle skirts, retro mod, the calico renaissance, the return of Butterick patterns, and patterned shirts so ugly a drunken Scotsman wouldn’t wear them? To my young friends in your 20s: You really don’t want to hasten the process of what you’ll look like when you’re 50!

8. Rhinestone cowboys.

If you’ve never ridden the range or been closer to a cow than a milk carton, don’t wear cowboy hats or boots.

9. Geographically inappropriate clothing.

An acrylic sweater in New England is like a bikini in Greenland. If you wear pastels up this way, though, people will want to know why you look a Florida verandah. The flip side is that no one south of the Mason-Dixon needs a pair of Bean boots. Other geographic misfits include white suburbanites dressing like Mexican campesinos, Andean llama herders, or Jamaican Rastafarians. Don’t get me started on cos-play.

10.  Of yoga and sweat pants.

I get it that people are often in a hurry, so I’ll overlook the occasional transgression, but I still say you shouldn’t wear athletic wear unless you actually take yoga classes or work out.

Is this the part where I ask you why you’re considering sartorial advice from a guy who now thinks high fashion is a clean t-shirt?

Rob Weir