Ed Hardy shirts are incredibly popular among a subset of douchebags. They are not all that popular among the rest of the population for two reasons. First, they are very expensive, and even if a person happens to like they style, it’s hard to convince them to shell out so much cash for a simple t-shirt unless there’s something about it that makes them really really want it–like the fact that their friends will think it’s very cool. Second, as Ed Hardy t-shirts have become more and more associated with douchebags, non-douchebags who might be willing to buy and wear one just because they like it might opt not to do so for fear that people will assume that they are a douchebag.
The result is that whatever initial popularity Ed Hardy t-shirts had among douchebags has turned into an exclusive association with douchebags.
To wit:
A couple of months ago, my 7-year-old son was wearing a tattoo-style t-shirt from Target. An acquaintance asked me “oh, do you like Ed Hardy?” I hadn’t even realized that there was anything Ed Hardy-ish about the t-shirt! I was in a quandary! Was this guy asking me if I was trying to make my son into a douchebag because I think douchebags are cool? Did he just not know that Ed Hardy shirts were associated with douchebags? I didn’t want to directly refer to the Ed Hardy/douchebag connection in case the guy really liked Ed Hardy or something and/or thought douchebags were somehow worthy of emulation.
So I just said “Not particularly. He just likes that shirt.” So I suppose I left the question of whether my second grader is a proto-douchebag open, but what are you gonna do?
Sad thing is that I actually really like the way Ed Hardy stuff looks.
Incidentally, I was looking through the OP’s first thread on the topic, and came to an outstanding definition of what makes a douchebag. I’ll repeat it here for reference: