Fashion is Awesome and the Kids Are Alright

On Christmas Eve, we went out to dinner as a family at a reasonably upscale local spot. There were men wearing blazers and slacks, women in evening dresses. To be sure, there were also those like me in jeans and a sweater - I said 'reasonably' upscale. And then there was my 21 year-old. 

Like, what even is this?

They wore an outfit that's a bit hard to describe, but maybe thrift gothpunk gets close. Black skirt, chunky belt, white t-shirt torn in the style of Sid Vicious, black men's suit coat purchased at, well, a thrift store. Funky eyeshadow and nubby spikes in their hair completed the look.

My little one was marginally more conventional, going with a skater hobo get-up that featured very ripped jeans and a baggy sweater over her Doc Martens. Very on-brand for her.

As it turns out, my kids are just two of many in their generation who've decided that convention is for other people in the realm of fashion. According to a Washington Post story that conveniently published on December 27, Gen Z don't give a damn about your rules. (You gotta read the article, if only for the pictures of the fashion on display. It's a riot of color and style.)

From the piece, describing the scene at St. John's in Queens, "...the student body — sometimes even the individual student — looked like a loud pastiche of late-20th century styles. There were miniskirts. Slip dresses. Bra tops, especially paired with gigantic blazers. Towering, chunky lug-sole boots and loafers. Skirts on men, cargo pockets on women. Thrifted items of every color, shape and era. It’s like a costume for ‘Clueless’ meets a construction worker."

That is my kids to a (ripped) T. 

And in recent weeks, the generation found a visible standard-bearer right here in the DMV. Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma showed up in the following fits at recent games:

I showed those to my kids, and they responded, "swag". Which I think is good. 

Gen Z has been through it like few other cohorts during this period of their lives. And they were raised by Generation X, casual, authority-questioning grungelords. As Ashley Fetters Maloy writes in the Post piece linked above, "Is it any wonder, then, that Gen Z — the born-skeptical children of Gen X — has similarly made “weird” its whole aesthetic?"

Weird is good, I tell my kids. Just don't ask me to dress like them.