Weird Fashion
Image Courtesy: Strike FSU
Last week, Adidas unveiled its collaboration with Estonian rapper and conceptual artist Tommy Cash: a meter-long version of the iconic Superstars sneakers (for those of us still trapped under the Imperial system of measurement, that’s over three feet of leather and laces—on each foot). The replies under the tweet announcing the collaboration were a mixed bag, with some users contemplating the number of snacks they could sneak into movie theaters wearing the new Adidas shoes or how much easier it would be to hide their embarrassingly large shoe size, while others were left wondering why on earth such a thing as excessive as a meter-long shoe needed to exist. If you know anything about Tommy Cash as an artist, this collaboration shouldn’t be surprising; a quick scroll through his Instagram profile will show you he doesn’t just stray off the beaten path when it comes to things like fashion and selfies and art, he runs straight into the wilderness. In our increasingly-peculiar times, the rest of the world has a real chance to join him in the forest of fashion oddities.
Avant-garde designers like Vivienne Westwood, Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, and Rick Owens make fashion a word incapable of having a single, solid definition. Is fashion an art form? Is it a dream—or a nightmare—that comes to life on a person’s body? What does it mean that humans can wear their emotions or project their fantasies onto themselves through dresses and shoes and jewelry? By doing away with conventions and tired trends, the strange concoctions of avant-garde designers get at the very heart of fashion itself, which lies in the ever-shifting landscape of human imagination. Not everything can be considered fashion, but fashion can be anything.
Recently, a friend of mine showed me a pair of new earrings she had made with a hole-puncher and some earring hooks. Hanging from both of her earlobes were library cards from our town’s public library, an iconic (at least in Coral Gables, where we’re both from) relic of our childhood. I thought it was a genius idea and asked her if I could give her my old library cards to turn into ear accessories. Quarantine, with its stretches of empty time and boredom, has allowed me to sift through my wardrobe and experiment with my fashion sense in ways I never would have before. I no longer care whether an outfit idea I have might be too bizarre because I have spent a full year locked away in an identical array of gray sweatpants, soft hoodies, and fuzzy socks—at this point, the weirder the outfit, the better. When it’s finally safe to go out in public again when dressing up is no longer a rarity but a Friday night custom, I will be ready with my strangest fashion takes. So, when I came across the Tommy Cash Superstars on my timeline, I was not taken aback or confused, instead, I took them as a sign of the weird that I hope will come to infiltrate the post-pandemic fashion world.
Strike Out,
Writer: Roxy Rico
Editor: Cali Robins
Graphic Design: Valerie Esquivel
Tallahassee