Acts of fashion cruelty: Sadly, crop tops and barrel jeans lead clothing fads list
I’m not one to complain. OK that’s a joke. I do, in fact, love complaining. I’m skilled at it and some might say I even have a gift for it. My latest grievance is with women’s fashions. There’s a lot of “WTH?” clothes currently in stores.
The item that befuddles me the most is the crop top. I’ve been railing against the crop top for years. It started out as a little spandex top for the much younger demographic, but now it’s morphed into blouses. Good luck finding a top where you don’t have to worry about exposing your navel.
Even at the most traditional clothing stores, the crop top blouse is reigning supreme. Last week I was at a store I would define as preppy and saw a rack of lovely blouses in a Liberty of London floral print. Be still my heart, they even had ruffles. But the closer I got, the more I could see that all the blouses were cropped.
Why? Who decided to befoul the world of blouses by cutting them in half? Aghast, I asked a salesperson this very question.
Her suggestion was to wear high-waisted pants, so I could tuck the blouse in. I had to disabuse her of this notion by explaining that the pants would have to cover half of my chest to make this plausible.
And this is happening at stores where the target audience isn’t young women. Sure, these clothing stores like to pretend that 20-somethings are shopping there, but the only people I’ve seen making purchases are women of an age where they’ve had discussions with their doctors about managing hot flashes.
I could give an in-depth and quite stirring Ted Talk about this issue, I’m sure, but I’m moving on because I need to sound the alarm about a new style of jeans. Now before I disclose this style, I’d like to point out that we, as women, need to have this type of jean be our line in the sand in terms of denim design.
We’ve suffered through the toothpick jeans also known as the denim tourniquet, jeggings (aka jean leggings) and the ultra-low rise jeans (or as I referred to them back in the day, crack-a-doodle-dos). Now onto something that can only be described as an act of fashion cruelty against women: the barrel jean.
Right at this moment are you thinking barrel and then asking yourself surely they’re not shaped like a barrel? Woefully they are — as in a whiskey barrel most certainly was used as the sewing template. They’re voluminous from your hip bone and don’t taper downward until they hit your ankles.
I accidentally tried on a pair of these jeans and screamed like a wounded animal in the dressing room. Two women came to check on me, and as I opened the dressing room door I howled, “Who hates women so much that they would design jeans like this?”
It was right then and there that the three of us looked at each other and formed a healing circle.
I could go on and on about the spring fashions, but I’ve been given a word limit. Which is really a shame because there’s just so much more to complain about. I’m thinking the mesh shoe, which looks like you cut one of your window screens into footwear.
At this point I’m thinking that retail stores really need to start offering dressing room therapy to help shoppers process these clothing catastrophes.
Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.
