Picking out clothes when you’re a teenager should be fun; part of self-expression and all that good stuff my guidance counselor told me about. But where I grew up, self expression was out, Abercrombie was in. The year was 1996. It was August before my 6th grade year, and if you weren’t wearing a label, kids-gone-fashionnazis would assign one to you: dork, nerd, or loser. The fastest way to get all three of those labels was wearing tapered jeans to school. I smile now as I see the bigger picture. Half a generation later, high schoolers are wearing those same tapered jeans that labeled kids “dorks,” and looking super cool.
Shopping with my mom back then, she was surprised to see low rise jeans with bellbottoms, now called flares. “Fashions come back every twenty years,” she explained to me, as if she was teaching me a great life lesson. The 90s were a rehash of the 70s, which made my mom feel old.
Ten years later, we’re updating the 80s. I don’t feel old but I am beginning to see the cycles of fashion my mom warned me about.
What is cool now will be “so last year” soon enough. Eventually it gets so old that it’s “vintage” or “old school,” and once again allowed into the upper echelons of the fashion hierarchy.
Vintage T-shirts are a prime example. Now that the 80s are coming back, the same T-shirts that people wore during that era are coming back. They even look like they really have been kicking around for twenty years. It’s so not cool to wear your mom’s old clothes, but now it’s ok to wear new clothes that look like they could have been your mom’s.
Over the past couple years I’ve been seeing the slow move into 80s land with off-the-shoulder sweaters and cut up jeans. (The difference is, in the 80’s they bought jeans and cut them up at home, now we pay extra to have some low-wage workers in China cut them for us.) I knew the 80s were truly back when USM students proudly sported tapered jeans for the first day of school. Previously, tapered jeans were what your grandfather wore to do yard work. Home-schoolers wore them because they only had social interaction with their moms. And, in the teenage world, tapered jeans were a one-way ticket to ridicule, plain and simple. But now they’re back and I’ll have to get used to it.
Always being a little bit behind, I’m still exploring the flared jeans phenomenon and I’m sort of getting attached. At least flats are back. It’s hard to pull off four inch heals without the boot-cut pants. Along with these trends come the leggings, except this time they’ve been cropped for a modern look (or are we actually reverting farther back into the 60s?).
Only those who are extremely dedicated to their Pilates classes can get away with wearing leggings as pants. For everyone else, long sweaters and tunics are the answer to the question “How do I cover my ass?”. At least we’re past the bare-midriff craze of the late 90s.
The mini skirt is back as well and now you can wear it even if you’ve got cellulite to hide, thanks to the comeback of our forgotten friend: black leggings. I’m beginning to like where this is going as long as it doesn’t lead to leg-warmers.
Men’s fashion is finally changing as well, thanks to the emo scene. Pants are cut tighter and lower, and slip-on sneakers are making footprints all over town. We might call this “emo,” but the inspiration seems so Billy Idol that it’s practically plagiarism.
I like it. Girls, I know you want to show off your figures, but isn’t it time we let the men have some of the fashion pains? Besides, the whole baggy pants thing is getting old anyway.
I guess that’s why fashions change. Things get boring. People want a reason to buy new clothes every season. I guess it takes about twenty years for a pair of pants to go from cool to geeky to forgotten. When it’s forgotten those people who decide what’s hot and what’s not, pick it up, dust it off, and reintroduce it as the greatest thing since, well, since the last time they showed us something “new.”
The 80s are back, but I don’t feel old yet. When the 90s come back I’ll be discouraged, especially if anything that has to do with grunge becomes mainstream again. But I think I’ll really begin to understand my mom’s feeling of distaste when I take my 11-year -old daughter school shopping and see these fashions of 2006 coming back yet again.