You know you are getting old when the current fashion is not just ugly, bit unfathomable. When you simply have no idea what the heck they are trying to convey.
What is baffling me now is, I think, a variation of female hipster fashion. The look involves a variety of soft neutrals- beige, shell pink, grey and black. There are a lot of stripes and 90s style tiny florals. Crochet, lace and tulle are big. The clothes themself are shapeless or very oddly fitting. People wear them with lots of layers and accessories. Also, all of this sometimes involves rompers.
I don’t get it. Can anyone help me understand what is going on here? I know there is some kind of retro involved, but what? Some of it seems kind of delicate and feminine, but then the bizarre fits throw that off. Some of it recalls lounging on a beach, but again, not really.
So, fashionistas, can you help me out. What is this look supposed to evoke (besides the bargain bin at the thrift store)? I can’t help but think it is ugly on purpose…is it? Are there any rules to this look? Where did it come from?
I don’t believe I have noticed this (I am fashion blind the way some folks are colour blind), but your description sounds a little like Annie Hall plus 35 years.
This is how my daughter dresses, except no tulle. Or perhaps she hasn’t found a piece of tulle pink or purple enough. She’s 24. I’d post a picture of her but, no. Boho chic were the search words I used to find this.
Other things my daughter wears: feather earrings, graphic t-shirts, ballerina shoes, scarves, tight jeans. But I think any young girl wearing any style wears tight jeans.
Sounds like a reprise of the early “material girl” look. It was supposed to look scrappy and trashy and had a punk-inspired “I-don’t-give-a-fuck-so-sue-me” aesthetic. Also as featured in “Flashdance”: oversized, unfitting jersey sweatshirts with the collars cut out and sagging, men’s sweaters worn unflatteringly by women, combined with fitted dancewear leggings or tights.
ETA: agree with the boho look, but the addition of tulle, lace and lots of necklaces, puts it into material girl territory. I think.
Sorry. I am technologically unable to link to anything (travelling with no real computer.)
But check out the Urban Outfitters website for some ideas. I used to like that store, but last time I went on it was full of baffling and seemingly purposefully unstylish stuff.
Ok, I can see the Flashdance influence, and the boho influence. It seems all a bit too sloppy to really be material girl- its not at all sexy, as far as I can tell- except that may the odd fit of stuff exposes some skin The accessories are more like lots of scarves or an oddly sized belt on a garment you would not normally belt.
I have a friend who dresses like this. I know intellectually she is stylish, but I just can’t parse the look. She will wear stuff like a loose navy and grey striped harem legged jumpsuit with a thin elastic waist and the back straps tied to be like a racer back. There are also high waisted pleated shorts, dresses with oddly fit tanktop styles uppers, high waists, and short poofy flowered skirts, and lots of odd sleeveless long shapeless vest-things worn in layers.
Okay, but if you can post on the SDMB, and you can see other sites on the internet, how can you not be able to at least cut-and-paste or, at worst, hand-type a URL into a url tag?
Anyhow, it looks to me as though what you’re talking about is just the latest mutation of the recent fashion trend neo-grunge. (The link is an article from April 2010 but I think you’ll more or less recognize the look.) No, it’s not particularly pretty, but nobody seems to think it’s supposed to be. As one blogger put it, the idea is to “Be the mess you perceive in the world.” :dubious:
OK, I think I sort of know what you’re talking about. I have a 20-something daughter and she dresses rather… creatively. Naught to do with me, she frequents Forever 21 and I’m looking in the ‘mom clothes’ shops. I’ve seen her in: skinny tight jeans, boots, two or three tissue-paper thin tank tops, several necklaces and big fluffy scarves, topped with (get this) a lacy babydoll nightie (that I wore when I was her age and gave to her!)… They’re just having fun. There’s time enough for dark Anne Klein business suits with knee length skirts and sensible pumps, or any other work uniform.
I see this style all the time in the Portland area. It’s just hipster thrift-store fashion that went mainstream. It probably started off with poor college-aged students and broke twenty-somethings who made style out of discards from Goodwill. Most of the hipster types I know are rather avid thrift, sorry, vintage store shoppers.
The style itself makes quite a bit of sense if you think about it from this view. A nice fashionable coat for the winter will probably start at around $100, but for that price, you can buy several different sweaters and shirts plus a few different scarves, add some leggings and a nice antique skirt or two and you have a warm and interesting wardrobe for the winter as opposed to one boring coat.
The hipster scarves are what get me. I went canoeing last summer, it was hotter than hell, and saw several people–also canoeing, mind you–dressed in shorts, tank-tops, and those stupid hipster scarves, looped around and pulled tight on their necks. WTF?
Even Sven, what you’re seeing is the standard uniform of the American hipster. Early fomenters of the style wore clashing, thrift-shop clothing because they were trying to be ironic and kitschy. Occasionally, people still dress ironically, but it’s often difficult, or even impossible, to tell who is trying to be clever and ironic, and who is earnestly following the trend to fit in.
Those “hipster scarves” are Keffiyah and you’re supposed to wear them as protection against sun exposure, so there you go. I wear them all the time when I’m hiking and floating on the river.
Okay, so can someone explain another thing I keep seeing? I can’t give you pics because I can’t give search engines descriptions that produce results (mostly because the new google image search is a lot less narrow than it used to be and constantly barfs up things that have no relation to what words you entered)
Anyway, it’s always girls between mid-teens and mid-twenties. They wear jeans and tight tee-shirts, which they for some reason pull down to mid-hip level, which always makes them look a. fat and b. oddly shaped since the shirts aren’t cut to go over the hips so hem of said tee-shirt digs into their hips/top of their rear end in a really unflattering way. What are they trying to do with this look??
I have got to get out of the house more, or hang out at different places, because I do not believe I have seen any real people wearing the described outfits, ever.
Okay, but if you can post on the SDMB, and you can see other sites on the internet, how can you not be able to at least cut-and-paste or, at worst, hand-type a URL into a url tag?
I’ve seen her in: skinny tight jeans, boots, two or three tissue-paper thin tank tops, several necklaces and big fluffy scarves, topped with (get this) a lacy babydoll nightie (that I wore when I was her age and gave to her!)… They’re just having fun. There’s time enough for dark Anne Klein business suits with knee length skirts and sensible pumps, or any other work uniform.