Thursday, March 26, 2009

Ugly Ugly Ugly! The Clothes of the 90s

What I'm Listening To: Creeps Me Out by IMA Robot

Uh, I just want to start out by apologizing for not writing last week. It was my sister's wedding on Sat March 21, and so in honor of my sister's happy nuptials as well as a mea culpa for not writing, I've posted a picture of my sister in a classic 90's outfit. BTW, this was in front of my dorm room door at UW Madison. Gotta love that Charlatans poster! Whoohooo!

So last night I'm sitting having pizza with some friends after the free spa experience we had at some basement in Brookfield. Yeah, check it out at www.prettycity.com if you'd like. And like any group of women, we got to talking about clothes, and out comes this long drawn-out story about how that one time back in the day at Forever 21, Charlotte Russe, Deb and some other teen-time store and they got a buttload of super cute clothes...all for under $100. Uh, did I mention that it was super cute stuff? They even got luggage, for cripe's sake!

Then the story segued into finding someone's high school graduation photos in the car, and what she was wearing, and how, because it was the 90's, it wasn't so cute. And how now there's all these super cute (stop counting how many times I've said super cute, 'kay?) stores like Deb and Forever 21 and H&M that totally WERE NOT AROUND when we older ladies were all in our 20's. ARRRRGH!

I just want to tell you a little bit about me in the 90's. Well, for one thing, I went through my 20s during this decade. Yes, my 20s, the years when my face was fresh and clear, the years when my ass was minuscule, the years of my glowing youth and beauty. Yeah, I forgot to mention, these were also the years when I thought it was OK to dress in men's clothing, pretty much all the time. I mean, this is the time when I actually thought a sexy club outfit was a pair of leggings, a HUGE chambray shirt that went to my knees, and topped off with men's brogues and a HUGE black blazer. I looked like a man who forgot his pants. And seriously, I thought this was a HAWT outfit. I remember, I wore it in San Francisco when I just got there, and we went to the cluuuub. I met this nice 30-year-old guy....and I was 24 at the time! Gosh, I was smokin'!!! Being SF, he was probably gay, though, and just thought I was a very femme-looking man. Oh well.

What pisses me off is that I feel like I WASTED my 20s -- my cutest years, mind you -- wearing the UGLIEST outfits ever. I just want to say for the record -- it wasn't just that 90s fashion was terrible. Because it was. We had no fashion role models during the 90s besides "Saved by the Bell - The College Years" and "Friends". Sorry, I know it's hard to believe, but I think that I owned one of the tops Screech had on during that show. I know, sad, right? And christ, I think I had more cardigans than Phoebe. No doubt! Combat boots and shorts, as my sister so elegantly demonstrates in the photo above, was the outfit du jour for the tragic hipster. At least in Madison, that is.

But it wasn't just the fashion black hole surrounding me at this difficult time. It was ME, and being 5'11" in a 5'2" world isn't always easy. I mean, I wore men's pants because, uh, it's the 90s people, and there was NO online shopping, so I couldn't find long pants for women anywhere except specialty stores where they charged $100 for some rayon jobbers with an elastic waistband. Yeah, uh, I don't think so. So I wore men's jeans and men's shoes (try finding a cute shoe in a size 12 in 1995...come on! I dare you!). One time, my roommate came home and she's like, "Do you have a man in your room?" and I'm all like, "Uh, no. It's my first month here. I should be so lucky!" and she's like, "Well then, whose shoes are those in the kitchen?" and I had to confess and tell her they were mine. So embarrassing, I must say.

So now it's almost the end of the first decade of the 21st century, and as far as the eye can see there are celebutards and barely talented rawk stars with their own clothing and perfume lines, and everyone and anyone has a cute outfit on!! Even prostitots like Miley and Co. have access to foxy clothes and fun shoes and accessories that I couldn't have even dreamed up when I was their age. Are they wearing men's shoes? I should think NOT! Are they thinking that a patched cardigan and a ragged t-shirt with a flannel tied around their waist is a cat-sound of a look? Um, they probably wouldn't even wear that to scrub out the toilet. Lucky dawgs.

I just sigh heavily when I think of all the dorky outfits I thought were hawt back in the day. Remind me to show you the photos if you're blue because you will LAUGH your ass off. So I'm making up for lost time and wearing all the cute outfits now! Except I won't wear anything above the knee or below the boobins. Is that bad? :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Finally! Someone agrees with me, everyone's always saying how the 80's were the decade fashion forgot, and I'm like, have you even looked at the 90's, eeeeew!!! Grunge, when basically people tried to look ugly, the 90's were just nasty in every sense of fashion, and now they're talking about a grunge revival, I grew up in the 90's, grunge was not fun, I just remember the 90's being super depressing, I hope people in the next decade are cooler, and stop dissing the 80's and take a hard look at all the mistakes they made in the 90's.