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One thing that troubled me when MA-1 jackets, tapered track pants, Nike Air Maxs etc began becoming considered “fashion items” about two years ago was that many people (internationally) didn’t want to be cognitive to the complex layers and references that came with them, and weren‘t interested in discussing them.
I think in numerous ways sportswear (through a fashion scope) is linked with minimalism and a 90s taste for basics (what has been rebranded as normcore). 1990s fashion imagery centered around a construction of realism and deliberate anti-glamour. Placed in the fashion centerfold, it advertised the ideal that anybody could be fashionable. Young people of the 1990s were born into their parent’s hangover after Black Monday, with the Gulf and Rwanda underway, while the AIDs epidemic seeped into the decade. Passive-aggressive, disappointed, and disillusioned generation X visually pulled fashion from its catwalk pedestal. You had a generation openly hostile to the old-guard ideas of high fashion. Much of the 1990s dress came out of this complacent guilt breeding the desire for basic/everyday (including sportswear), minimalism, the uniform of utility (a lack of frivolous excess), and deconstruction. Collier Schorr and Corrinne Day’s respective work are so crucial to its visual codification.
So really it's no surprise that post-recession with global unrest and violence, a return to this imagery is so appealing. During the 2010 UK student riots this image of a young man in black balaclava, black hoodie, black bottoms, and sneakers uniform was inescapable. Air Maxs are the sneakers you think of when considering the banlieu/gopnik/lad culture of European sportswear, the most popular sneaker in fetish communities, and currently one of the most co-opted sneakers in fashion.
That’s Jean Paul Paula in the above photo, who I think is one of the few stylists that co-opts sportswear in an interesting way. His work is one of the few usually discernible from the rest and I like that masculinity, femininity, queerness, and fetish are constant themes in his work. So I find an acid wash denim jacket and track pants with hot pink hilarious, but for a different reason than schemedream.
Uggs were also designed by men for men. Maybe apathy! can tell us about that if they’re Australian.
I think in numerous ways sportswear (through a fashion scope) is linked with minimalism and a 90s taste for basics (what has been rebranded as normcore). 1990s fashion imagery centered around a construction of realism and deliberate anti-glamour. Placed in the fashion centerfold, it advertised the ideal that anybody could be fashionable. Young people of the 1990s were born into their parent’s hangover after Black Monday, with the Gulf and Rwanda underway, while the AIDs epidemic seeped into the decade. Passive-aggressive, disappointed, and disillusioned generation X visually pulled fashion from its catwalk pedestal. You had a generation openly hostile to the old-guard ideas of high fashion. Much of the 1990s dress came out of this complacent guilt breeding the desire for basic/everyday (including sportswear), minimalism, the uniform of utility (a lack of frivolous excess), and deconstruction. Collier Schorr and Corrinne Day’s respective work are so crucial to its visual codification.
So really it's no surprise that post-recession with global unrest and violence, a return to this imagery is so appealing. During the 2010 UK student riots this image of a young man in black balaclava, black hoodie, black bottoms, and sneakers uniform was inescapable. Air Maxs are the sneakers you think of when considering the banlieu/gopnik/lad culture of European sportswear, the most popular sneaker in fetish communities, and currently one of the most co-opted sneakers in fashion.
That’s Jean Paul Paula in the above photo, who I think is one of the few stylists that co-opts sportswear in an interesting way. His work is one of the few usually discernible from the rest and I like that masculinity, femininity, queerness, and fetish are constant themes in his work. So I find an acid wash denim jacket and track pants with hot pink hilarious, but for a different reason than schemedream.
Uggs were also designed by men for men. Maybe apathy! can tell us about that if they’re Australian.
I kept most of my wardrobe at my parents attic somewhere though. Reminds me to pick-up my old school house vinyl collection.
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