Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Street Style Sightings: It's Come to This

I have a lot of posts that I am planning on making but have not found the time/energy, but, in this case, I feel I have a photo which should mostly speaks for itself. The day before I took this, I was discusing yin yangs (Or is it ying? Whatever, I say.) and whether they would soon "be back." (I predicted, with the current climate/rage for all things we wore twelve years ago , that they would indeed.) You may recall the yin yang fad of '96, when you had to have ying gang stud earrings. I had a pog with a psychedelic yin yang, and, for a colloborative student-painted mural completed that year, some of the cooler boys opted to paint what I think was a flaming yin yang, despite the fact that the mural had an undersea theme. They were hot, I tell you. Because they represented a beautiful, harmonious Eastern philosophy, like Feng Shui and Bhotan Rice Candy.

Anyway, the point is, dude is wearing a 1980's grandma shirt with fringe and practically puffy sleeves; one of the many Jerri Blank-esque items that now seem to adorn the bodies of hipsters/everyone else because the lines are clearly deeply blurred at this point. I will not pretend I didn't recoil in horror at this guy's shirt, but what capped it off, the day after the aforementioned conversation, was the Claire's (ne Dara Michelle) yin yang pendant he had fastened around his neck. 4 serious.

When will this madness end? Only with saving the stuff we bought last month and then rewearing it now because last month is like so ironically cool all over again.

9 comments:

Simone said...

Ah, as a youngster I was quite fond of the eastern philosophy of botan rice candy and white rabbits. I guess any candy with rice paper wrapped around it that you could EAT! whoa!

Anyway. Ahem. hoooly fucking shit does that guy look awful. I mean, my constant refrain here in new york is, "these people get laid?" And then I inevitably have to realize they're all sleeping with each other. Probably on, like, a futon with rainbow print sheets and pillow slipcovers from urban outfitters that have aviator sunglasses printed on them.

I would also like to state that I totally had, like, ying-yang symbol earings or a necklace or something when i was 10 years old. I think the ving-yang symbol may have been made of FIMO or whatever that stuff was that you like rolled into a cylinder and then cut to make disk-shaped beads. i'm waiting for that to make a comeback.

Anonymous said...

Do you think the ankh necklace revival will be soon to follow? I have a lot of circa 1994 jewelry purchased at street fairs that I would like to sell on ebay.

--Gaby

madam0wl, a.k.a Sandra said...

I don't think I've commented before, but I've had your feed in a reader for a while now (maybe via bitsandbobbins.com?). I like where you are coming from. I too remember ying yang bling. Though I think I owned more peace sign pendants... for me, back then before I got into grunge, I was all about the tie-dye and hippie crap. Ah, the cycles of fashion.

How old do you think that guy is?

Mary said...

madam0wl, i estimate he was like 21-ish. (just as a side note, i looked at this guy and then had to look away so i didn't explode.) so PROBABLY old enough to remember the 96 revival- which did indeed include lots of swirling/"psychadelic" imagery, as well as alien heads and/or peace signs, all of which, i shudder to think, should be coming back in some form or another soon. remember going to tower records and looking at the posters and them being all like swirly backgrounds with a flaming peace sign on them?

not to go too much on a tangent, but i think this fit into the warped 70's revival of the 90's, kind of like the original cover of dazed and confused and the return of flared pants.

ps: thanks for reading my blog!

yeah, simone, i'd also like to point out that this was yet another redhead gone to waste. also, the revival of FIMO- let's get on that! i think before the fire i still had a roll of FIMO to make charms out of. i remember going to the bead store and just picking out like 80 pieces of FIMO beads.

gaby, i saw a guy wearing an ankh necklace the other day. it was like four inches tall. but he wasn't a hipster, he had like long hair and baggyish jeans and was wearing wire-rimmed sunglasses inside. he was a mere loser. sorry.

Liina said...

The only thought that comes to mind with this post is: "Life is fascinating."

Anonymous said...

Oh my... I really don't even know what to say.

h said...

i see a lot of bad street fashion but i've never had this particular reaction to an outfit before: i want to beat him up. like a bully in 5th grade. i want to kick him and steal his lunchables.

Anonymous said...

i want to kick his ass hard! he looks like a funny little surrey with the fringe on top. demasculated men who fail to attain any sort of gender watsoever are my worst fashion nightmare. just another example of "no one's wearing this shit!" mentality. I used to have a joke about getting a tatoo of two dolphins jumping from the waves into a yin(g?)-yang symbol, but it wasn't meant to be like yeah I'm acutally going to desecrate my body with a yin-yang. but here you go! someones gone and done it!

Mary said...

i have no problem with guys leaning toward a stereotypically girl aesthetic. just, like everything, if you're taking rsisks you have to know what you're doing, which he clearly doesn't.