5 Fashion Trends I Hate

1.       Cargo sweatpants

Pro Club cargo sweatpants

Sweatpants are cool. Cargo pants are cool. But what idiot decided that they needed to be put together? Everything you wear puts out something about you based on the utility of the pant. Sweatpants express a priority of comfort, or that you’re a casual person. Cargo pants establish that you carry, uh, cargo? 99% of the time, whenever I see cargo sweats, there is nothing in the cargo part of the pant. So, what’s the point of paying extra money for pockets you don’t need? Cargo pants and sweatpants express directly conflicting values on people who wear them. Cargos are the opposite of the hyper-casual sweatpant. Sweatpants are mostly used for lounging around the house. Cargo pants are meant for like, mechanics and other laborers. It’s workwear, and while you don’t have to work to wear workwear, at least have the respect for workers to use the extra pockets for something, anything.

Verdict: Unacceptable. Death penalty. Immediately.

2.       All-over-print anything

$895 Dolce & Gabbana all-over-print

All-over print is corny and usually is mutually exclusive with high-quality materials, at least in my experience. Look, if you wanna wear an all-over-print hemp leaf tech-fleece more power to you. But I am just physically not capable of wearing all-over-print. Or tech-fleece. Or anything with a hemp leaf on it unironically.

Verdict: There’s probably someone that looks good in them, but that person is probably from the east coast.

3.       Crocs

These Balenciaga crocs are nearly $700

While making the film Idiocracy, wardrobe designers searched for a shoe that was both futuristic and stupid-looking. They landed on Crocs. I have nothing more to say. God forbid you’re one of the poor lost souls that paid for platform Crocs.

Verdict: Barely acceptable as ironic wear.

4.       Puffer jackets

$3,650 Louis Vuitton puffer jacket

Unless you’re in a 1990s east coast hip hop outfit you probably look very silly wearing these. There’s about a 40% outfit success rate when wearing puffer jackets. Studies show that suburban teenage boys who wear puffer jackets are 74% likely to enter a relationship and 60% less likely to be employed. They are also 30% more likely to litter on public beaches. If you or a loved one are suffering from chronic puffer jacket usage, there are resources you can reach out to for help. It’s never too late.

Verdict: If you can wear one of these and not look/feel like the marshmallow from Ghostbusters, go for it.

5.       The Dunk Clone Epidemic

These Vans Lowland shoes cost about as much as a genuine pair of Nike Dunks.

At this point, the Nike Dunk has been an iconic silhouette for years. Ripped off several decades before the 2020s, it’s almost guaranteed a given shoe brand with any streetwear/casualwear emphasis has its own Nike Dunk rip off. Even Airwalks have their own Dunk rip off. But I knew it was over when I saw Vans Lowland. If you own a pair of Vans Dunk clones, I’m not hating you for not being able to afford $300 for Nike SBs or whatever, but I am turning my head at Vans for having the audacity to rip off Nike. Seriously, are Vans so devoid of new ideas that they ditched the National Geographic collabs in favor of ripping off Nike? Especially in skate culture, Dunk clones are everywhere, and at least when it’s a brand like Lakai or Etnies, at least it’s skater-owned. Vans is a soulless husk of a corporation, a shell of its former glory. I would barely put on Vans if they came from the bargain bin.

No hate to any Vans enjoyers out there; I have seen Vans shoes that I thought looked alright (namely the Half-Cabs and the plain black Slip-ons.) This has nothing to do with people who wear Vans, average Joes looking for a shoe that will last if you’re not a kickflipping maniac. This has everything to do with the modern-day clothing corporation; anti-quality, anti-creativity, and anti-human. In my view, the Vans Lowland is the ultimate admittance of guilt; Vans throwing up their hands and saying “alright, we’re just trend-following to keep our business afloat. We give up.” This and charging $80 for a pair of jeans that other brands would charge $40 for are the nail in the coffin that tells me that Vans are not worth buying.

Verdict: Vans ruined my life

Maybe “My Sharona” Isn’t the Best Song to Play During the Passing Periods

“My Sharona” was a number one hit song of the late 1970s; released in 1979, the song peaked at the top of the Billboard Hot-100 charts. Of course, the 1970s was a very different time, and societal standards were very different. For example, even guitarist Jimmy Page was in a relationship with a 13-year-old groupie (yes, it’s as wrong as it sounds) at age 28. Iggy Pop even mentions in a song that he “Slept with Sable [Star] when she was 13.”

“My Sharona” is less predatory, although not by much. Sharona Alperin was 17 when she met the Knack’s lead vocalist Doug Fieger, then aged 25. Doing the math, when Doug Fieger was 18, Alperin was 10. Of course, the lyrics are a bit more suggestive than your typical 60s-70s love song, with lines like “Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind / I always get it up for the touch of the younger kind” being part of the songs anthemic chorus, now with a more sinister context; this line makes it entirely clear that her youthful age, not even old enough to buy alcohol in 1979, is a positive for Fieger.

Of course, the right to judge whether the real-world situation was predatory or not is neither here nor there for us on the outside looking in. While we in the modern world with the power of retrospect and scientific research can make our judgements with our knowledge about brain development, even Alperin herself stated that reflecting on the relationship she did not find it predatory. In fact, they continued to date for four years and the two remained friends well after the end of their relationship. Alperin even visited Fieger in his last days before his passing due to cancer. However, it is questionable whether this song is the kind of thing the school’s administration should be playing during between-periods, with the line “ I always get it up for the touch of the younger kind” reverberating through tiled halls, making references to the “dirty mind” of this 17-year-old girl, I wonder how members of the school administration would feel if a 17-year-old student in today’s world were to get picked up by a 25-year-old man.

I personally have a bone to pick with “My Sharona” beyond simply moral quandaries. “After the Love Has Gone” by Earth Wind & Fire was released that same year, and may have even topped the week’s charts had it not been for “My Sharona” taking the top spot. “After the Love Has Gone” is one of the most beautiful songs of the 70s, with a swirling composition and dazzling performance; it is a shame that such an annoying, ostensibly ephebophilic and creepy song could usurp a much better song’s place from the top spot, especially given that the lead singer of the Knacks looked like this. Ouch.

Doug Fieger, lead singer and rhythm guitarist of The Knack