Drip Or Drown
Hey everyone,
I’ve written several wedding speeches in the past, but I will be officiating a wedding for the first time later this month. Most of my creativity is going into writing that speech, so until then I’ll keep these newsletters relatively short and straight to the point. I wanted to use today’s newsletter to discuss a topic I know nothing about and see if you can help me here. That topic is fashion, and more specifically, teenage fashion.
There have always been popular fashions that would separate the cool kids from everyone else. This could be urban trends such as Sean John, Rocawear, or matching denim suits, or suburban trends such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, or American Eagle. Regardless of your hometown and where you were from, some outfits served as indicators of your place in the social caste system of your school. The average kid like myself was hoping to land somewhere on the sliding fashion scale between target for ridicule and admission to Regina George’s crew of Mean Girls. This is why every 2000s movie made for teenagers has a scene where they go shopping with their friends as part of the makeover montage toward becoming cool, but I digress.
Growing up, I would get some sum of money each summer to buy clothes for the new school year. I would usually have to allocate some of these to buy new shoes because I had grown out of my other ones, and the rest would get me three to five outfits to add to my wardrobe. I didn’t have enough to splurge on high-ticket items, such as Mitchell & Ness throwback jerseys, Coogi sweaters, or Avirex jackets. Nevertheless, I would add some reasonable items to my collection from some of the most reputable names in fashion at the time. From FUBU to Phat Farm to South Pole to Marc Ecko to Akademiks, I would go back to school each fall one year older and in the latest fashions JC Penney’s had to offer. This made me wonder if this is still happening today, and what those top fashion brands are.
This is an open-ended question for any parents, teachers, undercover police officers, or field trip chaperones who may be reading this. What are kids wearing these days? I assume everyone isn’t wearing high fashion labels and I assume school dress codes don’t allow for fast fashion either. What does the average kid wear to school if they’re not wearing a uniform? Is back-to-school clothes shopping still a thing? Have any trends come back that were big during my adolescence? I can’t be the only one who put fat laces into my shoes that matched my shirt. Or, have we moved past teenagers judging each other by their wardrobes?
Let me know.