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Welcome to the Age of Fashion Outrage
Last week, Ssense dropped some Y/Project denim panties—aka “janties”—and everyone FREAKED!!! OUT!!! Mashable wrote about it. Fox News wrote about it. USA Today even wrote about it!
If it seems crazy that America’s largest general-interest newspaper would be mortified enough by a $330 pair of janties (hehe) to write a pearl-clutching news item, recall that this isn’t the first time this has happened. When a little outlet called GQ suggested that bootcut jeans might be making a comeback last December, there was a similar collective losing of the minds.
But it’s not just scandalous undergarments. Just this week, when Patagonia announced it would shift its corporate sales strategy, focusing on mission-driven companies instead of financial firms, the internet erupted once again, claiming that the “Midtown uniform” was “in peril.”
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now living in the age of the fashion freakout.
In order to trigger a fashion freakout, an item must have the perfect confluence of power (either an insane price or intended wearer) and ridiculousness. Fashion freakouts are often predicated on the assumption that rich people are dumb. “What kind of idiot would pay thousands of dollars for a T-shirt with a shirt sewn onto it?” “Can you believe finance bros are so evil that Patagonia banned them?” (That’s not quite what happened, but Twitter seems to think so.)
Here’s why: on the one hand, under the strobe lights of Paris Fashion Week, with some bizarre Talking Heads witch house remix blaring, a lot of crazy things look pretty normal. You get into the moment. I saw those janties on the runway and didn’t even blink. But once things start to hit stores, they lose their context. And a lot of extremely online people will notice these wild items when they’re just trying to find a great pair of Acne jeans or a Dries sweater, and they will be (rightly) horrified.
Designers have also become savvy about this. Bootcut jean deity Demna Gvasalia makes meme-clothing, well aware of the fashion news cycle that drives otherwise normal, moderately stylish people to lose it over platform Crocs and $2,000 Ikea bags.
But for others, the strategy is a more nuanced kind of brand-building. Y/Project’s Glenn Martens, who made the offending janties, is a young, avant-garde designer whose clothing is found mostly in small, independent boutiques. And yet he made international headlines when he put extremely huge Uggs on the Paris runways. The people freaking out have no effect on the business—it’s not like cool, plugged-in guys are going to stop wearing Y/Project because someone mocks their janties—and in fact the outrage adds a halo that potential buyers can coast off of. In other words, the bigger the freakout, the more the brand benefits, because suddenly everyone is aware of a designer that the potential shopper can feel he uniquely gets. Note that Shia Lebeouf started wearing Golden Goose sneakers after the internet lost it over their taped-up, destroyed sneakers. Who knows if that’s what put them on Lebeouf’s radar—but don’t get your janties in a twist. And for what it’s worth, Y/Project's publicity team clarified that “these are not denim underwear, but proper hot pants!”
So what will it be next week? My vote is Our Legacy’s “vast” jeans.
Drake Wore $1 Million Worth of Outfit
And do you want to know what? Whatever! It’s mostly watch, a Richard Mille RM 69 that goes for $750,000. Call me when he’s in that $650,000 Dior shirt.
WWD Wants You To Shame Someone at a Midtown Pret-a-Manger
In a ranking of New York power lunches, the paper suggests that “the ultimate power move is to take someone to a random Midtown Pret.”
Are We Overthinking Our Graphic Sweatshirts?
Maybe! Olivia Wilde’s just says “Sam Cooke!” and I love that!