On Men’s Fashion.

Today, Kate and I stopped at the Tangier Outlet Mall on our way home from Ann Arbor (happy birthday, Justin!).  I only made it into 4 stores: Nike, J. Crew, Banana Republic, and Gap.  It would have been 5, but apparently the Big Dog outlet no longer exists.  This was massively disappointing news as there was a Big Dog outlet in this shopping center as recently as 2006.

[As a quick aside: how on earth did Big Dog hang on for so long?  No Fear and the guys who made those awesome two-sided Looney Toones t-shirts went out of business (as far as I know) years ago, but Big Dog persevered...why?]

No, this isn't me. Yes, I did own more than one shirt like this in middle school. Yes, it had the backs of Taz and Bugs on the back of the shirt.

Back to the matter at hand, I realized a few things while shopping today:

Gap has been selling the exact same things for the last 10 years.  I’m not sure how they have an outlet store, since they could legitimately recycle everything in the store (minus the GAP sweatshirts from 1995 that they are still trying to sell) in 6 months and no one would have any idea if they had sold it last year.  I say this not to criticize Gap – because frankly I’m impressed.  They have not had to change at all.

All of the recent trends in men’s fashion are stupid.  Let’s go down a list of what I would describe as becoming “popular” for men in the last 2-3 years.

1.  Graphic T-shirts.  Probably the dumbest item on this list.  Every time you purchase a graphic t, you have to think to yourself “In about 6 months, there are going to be as many people wearing these shirts as there are wearing acid wash jeans.”

2.  Cardigans.  I have no problem with cardigans, they’re just not for me.  I’m not depressed/emo/indie enough.  Please note that by ‘indie’ in that last sentence, I meant “trying to be a punk while dressing preppy.”

3.  Vests.  Every time we see a vest while we’re out, Kate wants me to buy it.  She loves them.  I think they look like you forgot to finish dressing yourself.

4.  Big belt buckles.  While I don’t own any, these I can actually get behind.  Mostly, this item was an excuse to post this picture of Joel.

2 sarsaparillas, coming right up.

Thankfully, men’s fashion by-and-large doesn’t change, meaning I can still get away with single-colored sweaters and t-shirts most of the time — which is a good thing because I can only imagine how my graphic t-vest-cardigan-texas sized belt buckle look is going to go over.