I was watching some sitcom from the mid-1990s the other day and I came away with two general observations:
1) Adding a monkey to a situation is guaranteed to make the scene hysterical.
2) Any fashion styles ranging from 1991 to the present will be embarrassing in the future.
Take, for example, the skort (the shorts/skirt hybrid), and overall shorts. These are fashion endeavors that should have stayed safely locked on someone's drawing pad. I can't really imagine who thought up the skort, but I bet it went something like this:
"You know, I've really been thinking we should find a way to add more fabric to these pesky skirts. They're so functional as they are. This must stop. I've got it. Let's add legs to the skirt!"
The worst of it is that I think right now we're caught in a fashion-time-space-continuum so bad that we are doomed to look back at pictures of our college years and lament, "What was I thinking?!"
I can say all of this because I am a Fashion Expert.
Fashion Expert. Noun. One with absolutely no knowledge about fashion or anything remotely aesthetic.
I got the chance to visit Los Angeles over spring break, a place that I have come to call Fashion Mecca, because it is inhabited entirely by Fashion Experts.
People from L.A. say that the great thing about fashion today is that "anything goes." For those of you not in the fashion industry, "anything goes" is the jazzed up term for "slapdash," which is the dumbed-down term for "clashing."
Walking down the street in L.A., you'll see a person dressed in neon green fishnet tights paired with a purple skirt that looks like it was rescued from Edward Scissorhands, a red tube top, and patent leather black pumps with rhinestones on them.
The best part is that the outfit only cost $400 from top to bottom. Not bad, when you consider shoes in Los Angeles range from $6 to $600.
There are actually only three types of stores in Los Angeles to begin with:
1) Frilly Stores. These are retailers that specialize in selling things that look like they should fit on a Cabbage Patch doll. Every piece of clothing should contain no less than 60 percent ruffle. Skirts from these stores must measure no more than six inches from waist to hem.
2) Goth stores. These stores contain everything that Frilly Stores contain, only in the color black. These stores also contain garments that rally against popular apparel - for instance the new Von Suck hats. These garments are, in and of themselves, becoming both outrageously popular and outrageously expensive.
3) Urban Outfitters. This store is fantastic because it has found a way to take shirts that should come from your local Salvation Army, and make them $30. They also sell furniture.
Oddly enough, not even the people in Los Angeles were ready for my hair, apparently. Two women at the airport had an entire conversation about me while I was standing at their counter waiting for my lost luggage.
Woman A said she liked my hair. Woman B said if Woman A wore her hair like mine Protective Services would take her children away.
I think they thought the airline had also misplaced my hearing, as well.
Meanwhile, these people didn't seem to mind that 40 percent of the airport was dressed in shoes so pointy that they could have doubled as weapons with which to hijack a plane.
So, from what I can gather from my trip to Fashion Mecca, on tap for the upcoming season seems to be bright colors, sparse fabric and plenty of throwbacks from 1983.
Accessories may be the most "anything goes" of the season. Mix equal parts Bedazzler, feathers and sequins and you have success this spring.
Purses are guaranteed to be hot as long as they look like Mary Poppins should be carrying them. The bigger, the better, fashion seems to dictate.
And lastly, mark my words, ladies and gentlemen: the tapered jean is on its way back, and it is not going to be pretty.
But then again, not much fashion is these days.
