|
[Fashion] The Normcore Disruption (Or: The trend of dressing as bland as possible that buckled under its own hypocrisy and soft elitism)
(Note: This is a long one with a lot of preamble. What you're reading is my third or fourth attempt at conveying this story, and while I can’t promise you’ll be on the edge of your seat, but I can promise both general fashion drama and sneaker drama, all for one ticket). I read every comment on every writeup I post. In doing this, I can’t help but notice a sort of trend amongst a few of them. Something along the lines of, “I can’t imagine spending xyz amounts of money on shirts or shoes when the very basic essentials in my closet do me just as well.” And you’re absolutely correct in saying this. I will happily argue my beloved sneakers and various streetwear brands are good, but I’d never call them better. But what if I told you, just a handful of years ago, those very basic essentials that do you just as well were fashion? As in, those Mall Brands and ubiquitous wardrobe pieces we so often take for granted were co-opted by the fashion-fervent such that decades-old outlet sneakers were voted the best of the year and rich, beautiful internet models cosplayed as Joe Sixpack on some of the biggest platforms on the internet, to the extent that both sides of the fashion coin joined hands in irritated unison? That’s a loaded question. Let me crush it down to something simpler: What the hell is (was) Normcore? Fashion Styles: A crash course Styles, in the sense of personal fashion, are so numerous and technical at this point that the very outfit you’re wearing right now could inadvertently be considered one you’ve never heard of. The internet has only increased the speed at which these movements take wing. While throwing the words Fashion and Style and Trend in the same sentence may evoke embarrassing memories of teen magazines, the conceit of theming one’s wardrobe to one’s personal ethos is understandable and universal. Your clothes aren’t just what you own, they’re reflections of who you are (remember this). To that end, style begets community, identity, self-discovery, and monthly bank statements you try your best not to look at as you stuff it under a mountain of papers. Or maybe your style isn’t that deep, doesn’t “reflect who you are,” and the satisfaction you get out of fit pics is uncomplicated, aesthetic pleasure. I’d say the most popular style of the modern era would have to be Streetwear, which combines basically every counter-culture movement around the world into a unified voice that either whispers or screams depending on the taste of its wearer. On the exact other side of that coin is Prep, a self-explanatory exploration of high-maintenance, clean-cut beauty. Bohemian (or Boho) embraces looser, pattern-intensive fabrics along with a metric ton of cardigans. For those of us with a sharp, jangly taste, Punk is a ever-evolving yet locked in time style with decades of history and iteration. If you like Punk and Streetwear at the same time, congrats, you just invented Harajuku. From there we have Surfskate, Gothic, Sportswear, Military, Techwear, Lolita, dressing like a cowboy, and we’re still just on the surface of the deep, deep water of style. If I still haven’t named one that sounds like you, don’t worry, we’re almost there. Most people will fall under a blanket style we can kneejerk describe as “Casual.” You wear clothes because you’ll go to jail if you don’t. You wear a big coat out in the snow because it keeps you warm and, so long as it does that much, who gives a KitKat damn whose logo is on the sleeve. Doesn’t mean you can’t invent a style on the spot (“I got a lot of movie shirts; I’m Cinephile Chic!”) but maybe clothes never made this particular man. Even so, certain pieces have a way of becoming well-regarded constants in even the most fashion not-curious. Chuck Taylors are as ubiquitous as bottled water; one might even have them on with Saint Laurent. Levi’s are beloved on every point on the fashion spectrum. And who doesn’t have at least one hat or shirt blazoned with the logo of their favorite sports team? (sign off in the comments if you don’t). But trends all have one thing in common: they are rooted in the feelings and sensibilities of some era or ethos. By extension, fashion trends pick from some idea currently bubbling within The Culture. It was inevitable that a trend would carry over the most basic and nondescript of casual wear. This isn’t business Casual or Modern Casual or even Casual with a capital C. This is the 21st century's most favoritest thing: a neologism. 2014 and the nymag article Magazine articles rarely begin trends, but they do have a way of solidifying them. At the very least, this is where most will be given a name. Some of the most well-loved and well-hated terms and phrases in art and fandom begin as journalists and cultural critics simply trying to describe a phenomenon. Sometimes these get out of hand (the writer who coined the Manic Pixie Dream Girl name would later ask everyone to stop using it) but critical shorthand in the context of fashion is useful for communicating what exactly some high-profile designer or average fashionista is going for. For all intents and purposes, a New York Magazine (technically The Cut, an imprint of nymag) article published in 2014 was the boots on the ground moment for what writer Fiona Duncan dubbed Normcore. Earlier usage of the term can be traced back to trend forecaster K-Hole, but it was here that the trend was given a face. Duncan had observed a sort of glamified version of what she had seen in college students and tourists in the NYC area. The difference here was in the sort of person flexing stonewash denim, blank tees, mall brands, and what we’ll be calling Dad Shoes. For one thing, these people were beautiful. Am I saying you aren’t beautiful? I’d never. What I mean is the patient zero of Normcore was the sort of person whose personal maintenance and internet presence was beyond the sort of clothes they were now sporting. Perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect nails, and perfect, modelesque silhouettes. What were these folks doing snapping Instagram fit pics in what looks like Buffalo Exchange bargain material? Apparently, making an artistic statement. Normcore at its roots To understand normcore, we need to understand its closest relative: anti-fashion. A sort of fashion Dadaism, anti-fashion is a catchall in critique that refers to any collection or individual outfit that runs counter to the trends of today. I wouldn’t call anti-fashion a style in and of itself. The term describes a phenomenon that can be found in many others. But this a word thrown around in discussions surrounding the aesthetics of early Normcore. The style is broadly categorized by a knowing lack of pomp. Less “these are the clothes I have” and more “these are the clothes I want.” Loose, comfortable pieces in desaturated colorways. There’s a sense of nostalgia to the end result, something we can at least partly attribute to the worn feeling of the various piece's composition. Take stonewash denim, a staple of the trend. Rather than cleanly colored, surgically stitched pants you’d find in selvedge denim, stonewash is faded, worn-down, and existing in a state of either perfect boot cut or absurd cuffing. This gives the look a thrifted appeal. Paired with this is footwear often hand-picked for its blandness. Like, not even Vans are bland enough for what Normcore is going for. Footwear tends to skew Sears in its aesthetics. All of this together paints the picture of someone with at least some interest in clothes with visual appeal yet holding strongly onto the utility and availability of these bland, bland items. The counter Normcore served to what was traditionally considered “good fashion sense” was one of the more interesting aspects of the style to its early adopters, as social media personalities and articles at the time would tell you. The Couture Counter(?) It’s fair to say a lot of what is considered high fashion carries a stigma. Less the designs themselves and more the people who buy them. To that end, Normcore was both a gateway into fashion consciousness as well as a middle finger to the established norms of what the word means. These weren’t just baggy, acid-washed jeans and blank black sweaters; these were uniforms in the war against Hype. That is, if you were to believe the philosophy presented by think pieces and forum posts in late 2014-early 2015. To bring back the conceit of the fashion styles listed earlier, Normcore was yet another expression of who you are through what you wear. In this instance, you’re normal. But you know you’re normal. You don’t buy anything out of your budget simply to fit in with what you’re expected to fit in with. You don’t buy anything because of the name attached. And while your outfits are considered, they aren’t loud for the sake of it; Normcore stands out by blending in, as it was popular to say. Alright, so enough definitions. “I like my basic clothes, my basic clothes can be just as reflective of my self as anything else, fuck Supreme, ra ra.” The thing is, attempting to define Normcore, as many journalists and early proponents and myself have tried to do, raises more questions than answers. For one, the concept of dressing “normal.” Okay… how exactly does one quantify “normal?” Normal exists in relation to the abnormal, sure, but what would abnormal then be? Normcore was observably a trend running counter to the sorts of fashion styles that tend to gather Instagram likes, but is inherently oxymoronic by any definition I just attempted. In regard to self-expression, Normcore doesn’t do a whole lot to express who someone is. Only who they are not. So, who is this for? Surprise, its actually still just about what you own Look at this shoe. Now back to me. That shoe you just looked at is the Balenciaga Triple S, and it costs north of one-thousand dollars. How, you may be totally justified in asking? It looks like something an uncle would buy at Sears. Trends, baby. Now, not everyone interested in the Normcore style was buying thousand-dollar shoes. Not everyone was interested in the Normcore style, period. Despite how I might have made it sound, I wouldn’t call what Normcore received online as any sort of embrace. Internet fashion spheres were quick to notice the hypocrisy, if not the short-sightedness, of a fashion style centered around not having a fashion style. On top of this, no one browsing Instagram fit pics would ever see Kendall Jenner sporting boot cut jeans and Yeezy Waverunners, a perfectly casual getup on first, innocent glance, and say she’s one of us. Here, we can start to put together who exactly Normcore is really for. You know how, in college, you’ll meet people eating Cup Noodles, squishing roaches in their modest apartment, lamenting their finances with a coy smile on their face, only to check their Snapchat around Christmas break and see them relaxing at their parent’s massive house, where money seems to seep through the walls? I hate to generalize, but this is where the drama really starts to germinate. By late 2015, and this is still very much early days for the trend, fashion spheres across the internet had already labelled Normcore as a sort of cosplay poverty. Not bankrupt, but it was clear by this point that the persevering proponents of Normcore were purposefully dressing below their income belt for the sake of fitting in with us peons. And I don’t mean that in a “Bill Gates buys $30 slacks” way. I mean that in a “those Waverunners Kendall Jenner was wearing cost at least $500” way. At the same time basic Dad Sneakers and black sweaters were taking precedence over high fashion, those same high fashion retailers were pivoting to designs that had long been considered “ugly” by the very standards high fashion had set themselves. And the internet fashion sphere was quick to both notice and push back. No more celebrating the very attempt to put together appealing outfits from one’s meager resources; if your fit was ugly, it was ugly, and damn whatever trend justified it. Not to say the design pivot towards more casual-presenting clothes was bad (I love Yeezy Waverunners and will defend them to embarrassing lengths), however, seeing as individual fashion styles are all rooted in the same earnestness to express oneself, the one style that was abjectly not that was inevitably going to be cannibalized online. Of course, high-end imitations of low-end styles are only one side of this coin. Trendy but still affordable pieces were always hallmarks of the Normcore style: Carhartt beanies, New Era fitted caps, cable knit sweaters, to name a few. Even the style so focused on not having a style prioritized certain pieces that soon became necessary for proper representation of the aesthetic. Even so, none were as pervasive or as despised in the wider fashion sphere as one infamous pair of trainers. We could’ve started the writeup here and encapsulated the Normcore trend just as well, so sweeping was this item’s influence, its fandom, and its hate-dom. Is this item aesthetically pleasing? Is it the perfect microcosm of “stand out by blending in?” Is it an abomination, an ugly parasite that does not deserve and never has deserved its customer base? Did this item, twenty-years old at the time of its cultural boom, deserve to be awarded as one of the greatest of the decade? Better question: How about some sneaker drama? The Fila Disruptor II Fila is nothing new to anyone who played Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast. A century-old sportswear brand from Italy, Fila is identifiable by bright splotches of red and blue that don nearly all of its products. It’s well-known, but not popular. Considered less for its aesthetic factor and more for its “I need athletic clothes to beat up while I do athletic shit” factor. The primary footwear release from Fila had long been the Disruptor II, virtually identical to the Disruptor 1, and looks like this. Wow. Sexy. In an era where shoes have only gotten sleeker and stripped-back in their construction, Disruptors are chunky in a way that looks like they’re daring you to call them out on it. The sole is big for the sake of being big, adding an inch or two to the wearer’s height. The stitching is comprised of enough yards of linen to make Karl Marx blush. The tongue sticks out like it wants to French kiss your ankle. Its brand name is plastered on its exterior no less than five times, like the shoe is the star of Memento and the mystery is how to get back to the Journeys store in the mall. It’s an Air Force One that got drunk, fell down the stairs, and got a neck tattoo. It’s like if someone looked at the character models in Sonic Adventure 2 and their only criticism was that the shoes aren’t big enough. The sole must be ribbed because triangles are the strongest shape and the whole thing would buckle under its weight otherwise. Neil Armstrong slipped these on to go take a piss break at the outhouse on the moon. … I don’t love them. But it’s not about me; the early appeal of the Disruptors is much like the early appeal of Normcore as a whole. A hallmark of the style was chunky, ugly sneakers. Running parallel to that was clothes that could be bought for a steal compared to the high-priced expectations of fashion. So, events played out a bit like this: Chunky, ugly sneakers take precedence over more expensive footwear. Rich co-opters of Normcore turn to Boutique fashion like Balenciaga’s $900 Triple S. People notice that the $60 Fila Disruptor looks sorta similar to the Triple S and buy that instead. Rich co-opters of Normcore start buying the $60 Fila Disruptor, making the shoe certifiably “in.” I almost wish it were more complicated than this. Like you’ll find all trend pieces go the way of, Fila Disruptors are a product of a sort of hype ouroboros. Their availability and value price made them a no-brainer for anyone looking to get in on the latest “thing,” and its popularity among those who can do a lot better than availability with value price, ensured their prevalence in the fashion zeitgeist. But appearing on the feet of Ne-Yo and Emily Ratajkowski wasn’t the only thing contributing to the Disruptor’s rise; nostalgia, or the burgeoning love for defunct or seemingly defunct brands was, and still is, very in. I remember at the height of the Disruptor’s prevalence a good number of people who thought Fila had gone bankrupt long ago, but nope. We now lived in an age where Foot Locker was reportedly selling out of the shoe entirely. It was doing better than Vans! (unthinkable where I’m from; In Seattle they give you a pair of Vans with your birth certificate). As for sneakerheads, well, they sounded like me just a minute ago. In sneaker collecting circles, unanimously, some of them having only seen these shoes for the first time, hated the Disruptors in the sort of bipartisan dogpiling you rarely see in the community. Of course this meant memes, and a change.org petition, but it also meant an echo of the criticisms facing Normcore as a whole. In short, a sort of “okay, so we’re the dumb ones for buying into sneakers because of the name and the hype, but in that case, what the hell do you call this?” I don’t doubt that at least a few people took to the Disruptors totally divorced from whatever hype they carried, nor do I understand, but the sneaker community could take some solace in the fact that this was a disposable trendy fashion piece like all the other disposable trendy fashion piece. One that no one was ever gonna take seriously. Right? Right. 2018: The highest of highs and the lowest of lows Footwear News is one of the largest and most respected sites for sneakers, general fashion, and all things hype. At the end of the year, the FN Achievement Awards recognizes the best and most important releases among athletic brands, designers, and starting in 2014, the all-around Shoe of the Year and you can probably gather where this is going. Yes, at the end of 2018, the winner of the Shoe of the Year award was none other than the Fila Disruptor 2s. Now, FN’s article announcing the win did do its best to explain the decision, noting the shoes collaborations with designers like Liam Hodges and Pierre Cardin, as well as its surge in popularity and ubiquity across the whole retail spectrum. Nevermind that 2018 was the year of the Cactus Jack Jordan 4s, the Yeezy 500s, the Concords (that’s a shoe that needs a writeup, my god), as well as my beloved Levi Jordan 4s that I will fight for until the skin wears off my knuckles. Nevermind the fact that Disruptors did not show up on any other high-profile Best Of 2018 list. Nevermind that pretty much nobody with a vested passion for shoes beyond Instagram trends remotely liked these things. They had won, regardless. Unfortunately, this would be both the Disruptors, and Normcore as a whole’s, final win. Normal becomes normal again From here on out, every Normcore and Normcore-adjacent hashtag was bombarded with scorn and borderline cyberbullying. Four years is already a very long half-life for a fashion trend, however, and these hashtags were already looking a little barren. By this point, articles about the death of Normcore were outnumbering those sharing even the most remote of praise. Normcore’s death was a slow one, and largely came down to a general waking up to its hypocrisy and self-celebrating nature. It rejected couture, but still defined itself by a sense of superiority. It was for everyone, but only the rich and/or beautiful were ever truly celebrated. Its garbage sneakers were awarded for their impact, only to return to as irrelevant as they were just months before. The thing with “standing out by blending in” is, inevitably, blending in is all you’ll be doing. The entire episode was summarized succinctly by Kristin Iversen of Brooklyn Magazine, wherein she wrote, “… maybe even more insidious, is the idea that a “normal” style is something that should be happily embraced. There’s a reason adolescents rebel against their parents. And there’s a reason that young adults reject the teenage style choices that are now part of normcore. The reason is that we grow up, and many of us figure out that our identity is something to manipulate, it’s a thing we can control, a narrative for us to construct.” There is, I find, a sort of accepted norm to every fashion style, regardless of whichever one you gravitate towards. Looking a certain way, owning certain things, subscribing to a certain philosophy even. And while I do love the community that builds around any one style, I do agree that a style whose sole motive is to fit in with everyone else is abjectly counter-intuitive to the idea of fashion as self-expression, as community, as art. Am I happy Normcore is dead? Well, I’m not happy that someone somewhere lost a style that maybe made them feel like they had a gateway into something that might’ve felt inaccessible before. And I hope those people found something new out of all of this. And I hope they found some new shoe that isn’t Fila Disruptors. submitted by /u/freemanboyd to r/HobbyDrama [link] [comments]
|
r/HobbyDrama |
freemanboyd |
Jun 13, 2021 |