Styles that Stick: Ironic t-shirts
| Posted Oct 17th 2007 2:14PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: Men, Styles that Stick
Every time a hipster puts on an ironic t-shirt fished out of an Urban Outfitters clearance bin, he or she is making a statement. And that statement is "Yes, I am fully confident that my inner coolness is enough to counter this hideous shirt, and the visual cacophony that it inflicts upon all who cross my path". It's a loud and somewhat obnoxious statement, to be sure, but there is no indication that this trend will fade any time soon.
To be fair, it's not just hipsters. There are also the pierced heavy metal heads showing their supposed support of Phil Collins across their chests; the scrawny and pale-skinned inviting ladies to check out their gun show and/or pythons, and the girls proclaiming that they truly "heart" nerds when in reality, it's blatantly obvious that they're out of anyone and everyone's league. Anyone with an inflated sense of self-confidence can don one of these shirts and be on their merry way.
Wear your ironic t-shirts well, hipsters and all those brave enough to risk testing their cool mettle. There will come a day when you're too saggy and sad to pull off that little league shirt you picked up at Goodwill. This moment will come and it will strike you hard. All you will be able to do is sit to the side and watch the new generation of hipsters flourish and thrive in the ongoing trend of ironic wear.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-18-2007 @ 10:18AM
bombastinator said...
It's more than a trend i think.
I've met people who do this who don't even know what irony is. They just know that you don't wear things on your shirt that you like, you wear things that you don't like. They don't know why, it's just what is done. It long ago (like the 90's) became common practice for bands to stop printing t-shirts because they didn't want anyone to wear them, and thereby imply the band sucked.
I think people like it because it's sort of a protected form of hate speech. You can wear something on a t-shirt that is incredibly mean or awful, but because you theoretically might actually mean the opposite you get to escape responsibility for your behavior.
It can be a very seductive thing for the right person.
There may be some backlash going on though. On some web comics I've seen shirts on the characters that read "insert witty saying here" or "Ironic T-Shirt.". It makes me wonder how much damage you could do with one that read "Whatever it is that's popular to dislike at the moment" Meta irony maybe? Or just winding around and kicking yourself in the ass?
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