Fashion Impossible

Welcome to my first blog on Walls’ Street Journal. If you’ve accidentally stumbled across this page whilst searching for America’s most popular newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, I suggest you make a swift return to Google, as you will probably be extremely disappointed. For anyone reading this through choice, thank you very much for your time, and I hope you find it entertaining. But if it turns out to be about as entertaining as ‘Friends’ spin-off ‘Joey’, I will delete it, forever deny it existed, and hope it never comes up in conversation again. A little bit like when BNP leader Nick Griffin tried to deny saying this.

So I have decided to make my first blog quite light-hearted, and base it on the recent fashion trends that are spreading across the UK like chicken pox in a nursery.

It seems like you can’t go anywhere nowadays without seeing people sporting Snapback hats. Snapbacks were a common sight in the early 90's hip-hop scene, but have recently made a huge comeback. I only really began to notice the trend reappearing after British ‘hip-hop’ duo, Rizzle Kicks, burst onto the mainstream music scene. The Snapback has become so popular, that it has a song dedicated to its existence.

The main purpose of this song is to answer the burning question on everyone’s mind, “Yo brudda, what hat’s dat?" But seeing the rate that this trend has caught on makes me wonder how anyone can not know the answer to that question. Next time you go through your city centre, count the amount of Snapbacks you see. If you see less than 15, your city clearly isn't cool and trendy.

Another trend that has started appearing wherever you look is mens t-shirts emblazoned with a half naked woman. I'm not really sure where this urge to become a walking ‘Lads Mag’ has come from, but here’s my opinion. Now, I’m sure I’m not the only straight guy to admit that if there’s a picture of an attractive half naked woman in eye-shot, I will definitely have a cheeky look, it’s just natural. So this begs the question why straight guys would choose to wear these t-shirts, unless their intention is to attract the attention of other straight guys. I can’t decide whether they just haven’t realised that that’s the only sort of attention they’ll get, or whether they simply enjoy male attention…

Chinos are probably the most common item of clothing in the UK at the moment. The Chino Army seems to grow by the day, and I can unashamedly say I am one of them. But I do feel sympathy for the old blokes who've been rocking Chinos for years with no recognition, when they were quite clearly the trend setters here. Like I say, I don’t have much against Chinos, especially as I own some myself, but the one thing that bugs me are the saggy mustard coloured ones that make people walk like they haven’t made it to the toilet in time. Not a good look.

I've also begun to notice that a lot of guys have started wearing huge boots, that quite frankly should only ever be seen either on a battlefield or in a wrestling ring. And unless you intend on body slamming someone in the middle of the street, I don’t see the point in them.  To me it screams “I was going to join the army, but I’m too scared, so I’ll just stick with the boots.”

A lot of these fashion trends seem to have sprung up with the introduction of boy bands like JLS and The Wanted, who all look as though they’ve just taken part in River Island’s interpretation of Supermarket Sweep, and grabbed everything they could possibly carry.

It shows the huge influence that mainstream music and media have over what is seen as fashionable at any given time. If you look back through history, you will see that this has always been the way. But recently, unlike previous decades, there now seems to be only one dominant style. Take the 80s for example, there was punk, mod, skinhead, metalhead, hip-hop and so many more, and although these obviously still exist in today’s society, the ‘Hipster’ style or ‘Spice boy’ style (as one of my friends describes it), is clearly dominating.

And I think the thing that annoys me most about recent fashion trends, is the fact that children as young as 9 are wearing Jack Wills gilets, chinos, huge hi-tops and snapback hats. I don’t understand what happened to childhood, at age 9 I was still donning flashing trainers and Power Rangers t-shirts. Again, I think this transformation has come about through the constant reminder of child celebrities like teenage ‘heart-throb’ Justin Bieber. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say the only solace I can take from this bite-size, pre-pubescent pop-tart’s quite frankly ridiculous rise to fame,  is the fact that it’s almost a certainty that he’ll have a mental breakdown before he hits 40. 

Thanks for reading, any feedback would be welcomed :) 

follow me on Twitter @danielwalls91 to see more of this sort of pointless ranting, and abusive tweets I occasionally send to Piers Morgan.