Childhood plagued by fashion crimes
Kansas is a far cry from the fashion runways of Paris and Milan, but definite fashion trends — whether good or bad — pervade the Land of Oz. In recent memory, though, it seems the gods of fashion have frowned upon us. Looking back, it becomes all too apparent that the popular styles of late have been major fashion fouls.
We all wore these clothes. Some of us even liked these clothes. We hate to admit it, as we now realize the error of our fashion ways. But as embarrassing as it is when we see pictures of ourselves in our high school and junior high yearbooks, trips down fashion memory lane provide us with a good chuckle.
Journey with me now, if you will, through time and space to a land far, far away — a land that you hoped to forget but one that will always haunt you: The Land of Bad '80s Clothes.
The time: the 1980s.
The place: an elementary school, junior high or high school near you.
The crimes: wearing trendy but atrocious '80s clothes worthy of calling in the fashion police.
Our journey begins on the playgrounds of elementary schools everywhere. Although many elementary school fashion crimes are less serious in nature — fashion misdemeanors — and many can be attributed to the naivete of our youth, a few grade school gaffes are too hideous to be overlooked:
Velcro: No one seems to know why tennis shoe laces suddenly vaporized into fashion hyperspace, but one day children no longer knew how to tie a bow—they only knew how to velcro. You simply weren't cool unless you had tennis shoes held together by magical velcro strips. The more velcro, the better. If you could fit four or five velcro strips on one shoe, you were just that much cooler.
Friendship pins: Assembling the most aesthetically pleasing safety pins with brightly-colored beads was an integral part of every fourth-grader's life. Every recess period was spent trading these friendship pins that were oh-so-proudly displayed on our shoes. Unfortunately, it was more difficult to attach friendship pins to velcro shoes. Friendship pins were status symbols. Whoever had the most beads won.
Leg warmers: Everyone wore these fuzzy creations, but no one knew why. Were our shins really that cold? I think not. But the height of grade-school fashion was to coordinate your leg warmers with your sweater.
The second stop on our journey through fashion hell is junior high school. When we entered junior high, we began committing fashion crimes that were more serious in nature — fashion felonies. In junior high
we gained more control over what we wore. Our monumies dressed us less, but we embarrassed ourselves even more:
Overalls: Suddenly, dressing like Farmer Bob was big. No one knows why, but one day everyone arrived at junior high school dressed to plow the field. It was very important that you wore $80 designer overalls, but the more you looked like a country bumpkin, the cooler you were.
Poofy marshmallow bangs: Indisputably, the era of poofy marshmallow bangs, also known as "mall bangs," will live in fashion infamy for centuries to come. Marshmallow bangs defied all laws of nature. These bangs were big, and they were BAD.To this day, I'm not sure how many girls achieved this magnitude of poofiness, but the higher your hair was, the more in style you were. To turn ordinary bangs into gravity-defying marshmallow bangs required hours of careful work with both a curling iron and hair spray.
Blue eye shadow: It was in junior high that girls began to discover makeup, and somehow, they immediately discovered sky blue eye shadow. All junior high girls, it seemed, thought glittery blue eye shadow was the deal. They applied it generously and with reckless abandon, claiming that it somehow highlighted their eye color. Of course we now realize that blue eye shadow looks good on absolutely no one in the entire world.
Our final stop on this treacherous trek is that wacky four-year institution called high school. Here fashion offenses in the first degree were committed regularly. We
should have been old enough to know better, but the fashion foolery continued:
Brown leather shoes tied with strange squiggy knots: For the second time in our travels, we decided that tying shoe laces into plain old bows didn't cut it anymore. So, we began wearing brown leather shoes with the yellow laces tied into squiggy laces that stuck straight up. Why we simply couldn't tie the traditional bow is beyond me, but it was very important that we spent hours forming symmetric squiggy knots.
Acid-washed jeans: No longer was plain denim acceptable; in fact, plain denim was just plain uncool. The more lethal the chemicals your jeans were washed in, the better your jeans were. Any acid that didn't actually disintegrate your jeans just made your jeans cooler.
- Rolled-up jeans: Simply rolling up your jeans wasn't sufficient. No, no, no. As we all know, the only acceptable way to roll up jeans was to fold them over at the bottom once and then roll them up twice. Over one, up two. Each and every morning we performed this ritual. Rolling up our jeans served no visible purpose except to give everyone the appearance of having walked through a flooded area.
This concludes our fashion journey through time and space. Hindsight is always 20/20, but I hope we have learned from our fashion mistakes. The lessons here are simple: Don't wear safety pins on your shoes. Don't make your hair stand on end. Don't pour deadly acid on your jeans. And if nothing else, just tie your shoe strings in plain old bows.
April 6,1994 THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN SPRING FASHION
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