I’d like to talk about distressed clothing. I think it has become an epidemic.
I understand its use in some circumstances. If you buy a T-shirt with the Star Wars logo on it, maybe it’s kind of cool if it looks like it came from 1977, with the letters faded and the colors patchy.
But, for one example, my college football team was in a bowl this year. I bought a shirt to commemorate it. The shirt says “2017” on it. So…why is it distressed? Why all faded and crappy when it’s clearly a new/recent shirt?
Perhaps it’s confirmation bias, but now I see it everywhere. Anything with logos, from sports to comics to movies to general words like “Los Angeles,” all with incomplete coloring and missing lines.
Can anyone in the fashion industry tell me what’s going on? Do people * like *this trend? Is there something I’m missing?
Because, due to underfunded mental health coverage and negative social consequences fewer shirts than ever are treated for distress/anxiety/depression.
My daughter has a $78 sweater that came brand new with holes and a mis-shapened bottom. It looked a little moth eaten. But apparently it is real “cool”.
I think what started off as stealth wealth with distressed jeans and thrift shop aesthetic, has become something else entirely now. High-end designers are more famous now for bleached flannels and moth-eaten hoodies than couture. With (OK let’s call it) fashion, the answer to “Why is this everywhere?” is probably “Because it’s everywhere.”
Until it no longer is, and then in retrospect it all seems like a bad dream.
I think bright, colorful, brand-new-shiney in anything is seen as ‘nouveau riche’ - like, ‘lookit me, I won tha lottery, I’m buying all new everything!’ Nothing wrong with buying all new everything, but some would look at the buyer with pity, seen just as trying too hard. Trying to impress. Not cool. Cool is self-assured enough to just throw on some old thing (even distressed designer ripped jeans costing $500 and a $100 faded distressed retro t-shirt.) The rich have no one to impress, duh, they’re rich! The newly rich are too eager to flaunt their new wealth in everyone’s faces.
The authentic t-shirts from 1977 ruined the economy and burned all the fossil fuels and now the new t-shirts can’t find a well paying job and are drowning in student debt.
See, I don’t get this at all. I don’t want to impress anyone, it’s that when I wear something new, I want it to actually look nice and clean and new. Otherwise I would just wear something old. I’ve got a zillion t-shirts that look old because they actually are old.
