My best friend Jenn reminded me via bbm today about a certain pair of bell-bottom polyester pants I had in middle school, which I bought at the vintage store behind my house in Simi Valley. They were bright green, with semi-darker-bright-green dots on them. I used to wear them to school. Just like it was normal with a random t-shirt and shoes. As if my pants weren't blindly neon. After being reminded of that, I started thinking about some of the other fashion monstrosities I committed in my youth. Here are the highlights:
1) FUBU Tennis Shoes. In case you are not aware, FUBU is an acronym which stands for "for you, by you." The two pairs--electric blue and eye-watering pink vinyl--of shoes I used to wear were neither. I only bought them because the boy I liked at the time thought he was black.
2) Baby Phat Baby-T. Piggybacking on that last, I had a sweet light pink, ultra-tight t-shirt with a light blue cat silhouette on it, which I am sure made me look super hardcore (the braces helped too), especially when worn with the aforementioned shoes. Oh, the things I did for boys...
3) Super-bell Jeans. Did anyone else have a pair of these? In like 8th grade, bell bottoms came back in style and for some reason, I felt the need to go to the extreme. These jeans were super-tight in the hips and thighs, and then, right below the knee, just went ape-shit-crazy. They swooped out in huge denim triangles to about a foot wide at the bottom (they must have covered my shoes). Very cool.
I'm sure there were more fashion no-no's in my repertoire as an early-teen/high-schooler, but those three stick out to me the most (four if we include those green pants, but I would rather just pretend they never happened). For some reason, I was given the superlative of "Trendy" in my 8th grade year book for my efforts. (Though, everyone got an accolade--it was that type of school--which included seemingly completely made up ones like "Apologetic" and "Caring and Loving Towards Horses.") No matter what, I suppose it was kind of whoever doled out the titles to support my wacky sense of style. I was certainly much braver then than I am now.
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OK, those super bells? I would KILL for those. In high school, my friend Alison had a "raver' dude boyfriend, who we called "Shaggy." One of his criteria for acceptable pants was that they had to flare out and cover THE ENTIRE shoe. But back to fasion disasters past (and we're going way back, here). When I was in 5th grade, my favorite outfit was - ok, are you ready - and I mean, sit down here:
1. Black STIRRUP pants (and not even the tight kind, because my mother wouldn't let me wear those),
2. a TEAL turtleneck, longsleeve,
3. a YELLOW AND WHITE horizontal-striped SWEATER VEST, yes, VEST,
and
3. HIGH TOP CANDIES with not one, but two pairs of SCRUNCH SOCKS layered for effect - probably one white pair over a pink pair. To get the full effect of this, also imagine that it was around this time period that I convinced my mother to let me get a PERM (oh, and I had bangs, by the way), which only succeeded in making me look like a poodle and accentuating the pimples on my chin. For even further effect, reread this post listening to Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It."
Did I mention Wet-n-Wild blue eyeliner?
P.S. Please tell me you stayed in touch with "Caring and Loving Towards Horses."
ahhh! amazing!!!
caring and loving towards horses is my facebook friend, so it's kinda staying in touch.
i LOVE your 5th grade fave outfit. Thank you for sharing!
I too had a perm (got on in 1st grade and then in 3rd). However, in 4th grade, I decided I did not want a perm anymore. In fact, I wanted the top to be stick straight (like my normal hair) and the BOTTOM to be curly. Because that looked so so good, I decided. I wore a lot of loose legging/matching patterned tops that year to accentuate how hot my hair looked.
Teased bangs (I mean...outrageously high), stretch pants with the band that goes underneath your foot, plastic, animal-shaped barretts (I wore these until I was FAR too old), and tie dye (when I wanted to be a hippy in 7th & 8th grade).
I can’t go on – this is too painful.
Mmm...teased bangs...you didn't also grow up in New Jersey, did you? All I have to say was, there was a lot of Aqua Net sprayed throughout my youth to keep up with the Bon Jovi train that was barreling through my elementary school career. There was also pink frosted lip gloss. Somewhere along the line, my friends and I decided that white, or semi-nude lip coloring was also cool and "retro." So we walked around like these mod albinos.
I love all these fashion faux-pas confessions. we were a bunch of hot messes! :)
Ahhh yes, the stirrup stretch pants. I think I had them in black, purple and teal.
This made me remember the clothing item I always wanted and never got. Why you ask? Because your mom had to be crafty for you to achieve this honor. It was the crew neck sweatshirt adorned with ironed on decals of cats, puppies or any other [themed, think holiday or easter] decals, embellished with puff paint, sequin and beaded accents.
I remember being SO jealous of my friend whose mom made her them all the time.
Ahhh those were the days.
Also, I had brown/olive/black airwalks. Very feminine.
...thank God I had to wear a uniform for a few years there. I think my photo album and yearbook photos are very grateful.
AIRWALKS!!!!
I totally had a pair. I think my dad bought them for me at Costco though, so they were probably fake ones...They were so so cool!
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