The O-town Scene - Oneonta, NY
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/139921
Laygirl Fashion | By Emily Popek Embracing My Embarrassing Past What's the worst fashion mistake you ever made? If you're anything like me, you'd be hard-pressed to answer that question, because the list of possibilities is so long. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, so my early fashion legacy includes banana clips, shoulder pads, oversized acrylic sweaters and, yes, some acid-washed jeans (the ones with the little zippers at the cuff). Then there were the DIY projects. This was before Pinterest, before even the Internet (yes, I'm old), so we were just babes in the woods, making it up as we went along. The worst of the lot, I think, was when my best friend and I thought for some unknown reason that it would look cool to have jeans that were splattered with bleach. It didn't. Not even when we paired the jeans with the puffy-paint T-shirts we had made. Nope, that was not a good look for us. I remember some convoluted outfit I used to wear in high school that involved a psychedelic-print cropped top, a sheer purple baby-doll dress, a black leotard, black tights, Doc Martens ... and a big black hoodie over the top of everything. Not a great look for me. Here I am willfully violating the fashion dictum that "Red and green should never be seen except on the dress of an Irish queen," in about 1985. I swear my mom and I did not usually wear matching outfits. There was also some horrific floral romper-with-knickers creation that I obsessively filched from my sister's closet when she was away at school. I don't know why I was so into that thing. It fit in with the whole baby-dolldress-and-army-boots look of the early 1990s that I was pretty heavily into. Yeah, I'm just laying it all out on the line here. What, like you didn't wear silly stuff in junior high? The thing is, as embarrassing as it can be to look back on our fashion faux pas, I smile as I cringe at some of these outfits. Because after all, these silly ensembles didn't do anyone any harm. And at the time, they made me feel great. And isn't that what fashion is really all about? Emily F. Popek may have also owned a pair of bright green overalls. She is also assistant editor of The Daily Star. Mark Boshnack's music column will return in the July issue. June 6, 2013O-Town Scene 7