Low Fashion

I know that traditionally, complaining about “the clothes the kids are wearing these days” is a sure sign that you are getting old, but in this case, I think I can be granted an exception to the geezer club. I am here today to talk about some disturbing fashion trends, and I think you all will agree with me, and you’re not old, right?

Some time ago, I wrote about the recent phenomenon of people leaving the house in their pajama pants, going to the store, and thinking nothing of it. I still maintain that this behavior signals the end of civilization as we know it, but I don’t want to rehash that subject. Instead, today I would like to talk about actual clothing meant to be worn outside. Specifically the hip new casual wear.

T-shirts, for starters, have digressed in my opinion. I have always been a fan of T-shirts with words or logos on them – a style my grandpa did not understand or approve of, I might add – but today’s shirts have gone off track. T-shirt logos should be centered on the front or the back, or placed over the heart where the shirt pocket would go. These are the only three acceptable places for words or a logo, in my opinion.

T-shirts these days are starting to have logos and designs that are all over the place. Logos are off-center, and the artsy designs seem to consist mostly of swirling thorny vines, stylized fleur-de-lis, roses, ribbons with writing on them (usually something like “desire” or “passion”) and skulls. If you squint they look like the remains of a beauty queen and her sash after dying from being caught in a rose thicket.

Most of the newer designs are all climbing over the shoulder and onto the back of the shirt, making the wearer look as if they are tilting to one side. They look to me as if the person running the sewing machine got the fabric mixed up and sewed two backs together on accident.

What passes for a T-shirt design these days is getting really vague. I saw a woman the other day wearing a shirt that was otherwise plain, but had writing over one of her shoulder blades near the neckline. It said “fun-loving,” and appeared to be hand-written with a felt-tipped marker like a Sharpie. Was this a commercially produced garment, or was this woman labeling her shirts to correspond with a particular personality trait that she thought the garment highlighted? A few years ago, the answer to that question would have been simple, but these days I can't tell.

Now, I know logically that today’s T-shirt designs are just another trend in fashion, and my resistance to them is surely a sign of my age. I just happen to be too young for that to be the case, so today’s T-shirts are all wrong. End of story.

T-shirt trends are not the real issue here. I just had to get that off my chest, so to speak. The real problem is with the pants. Not so much the pants themselves, but the wearers.

There have been a lot of bad trends in fashion over the years. Togas, kilts, lederhosen, powdered white wigs, knickerbockers, Members Only jackets, Izod golf shirts worn with the collars up, parachute pants, acid-washed jeans, etc., etc. The list is too long and painful to go through.

Of all the weird fashion trends over the years, however, one thing has remained constant. No matter how goofy the look, the clothes always fit. Some were baggy, some were skin tight, but they were all manufactured to actually stay on the wearer.

The most disturbing fashion trend in the history of the world is today’s young men who wear their pants with the waistline hanging down below their butts. Even more so than outdoor pajamas, pants-below-the-butt signals in no uncertain terms that a segment of our youth is a total and complete loss. There is no hope for someone who would willingly relegate themselves to constantly having to grab their pants to keep them from falling to their ankles, and walking like an arthritic penguin when they need to use their hands for something else. This is truly the decline of civilization as we know it.

The insane part is, most kids I see with pants-below-the-butt actually have an oversized belt on the pants, making the pants even more top-heavy and susceptible to falling. The irony of the situation is, the level of brain function (or lack thereof) that it must require to put a belt on your pants-below-the-butt, compounding the falling down problem with the very device that was originally designed to solve the problem, would actually preclude the wearer from ever actually learning what “irony” means.

That’s really too bad, because from what I’ve seen, the kids who are wearing pants-below-the-butt, in my estimation, are the ones who will most likely attempt to run from the police on any given day.

The funny part is, after you’ve been easily tackled by a police office who is wearing a 50-pound belt, because your ½-pound belt made your pants drop to your ankles and trip you up because you had to let go of it to pump your arms to gain some speed, you end up in a jumpsuit with an elastic waistband.

Irony is totally lost on many of its victims.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


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