Read Online Tales from the Back Row by Amy Odell - Free Book Online Page A

oil or misted with water to look like they had just walked out of a steam room, I thought—all of us there thought— That is cool. They were a runway trend. An off-couch, real-life trend, no. A runway trend: yes. Plus, Alexander Wang became the coolest of everything cool in 2008 because he could articulate the look of a rich hipster better than the rich hipsters themselves. Heproved his genius to the fashion community after he showed a whole collection styled with ripped tights in the runway show that made me realize, when I was just starting at the Cut, that I knew zero things about fashion. And then he followed it up with sweatpants, and people absolutely did not know what to do with themselves. Maybe it was just exciting for the coolest designer in New York to give us permission to wear comfortable bottoms. Elastic waistbands. Eating clothes. Or maybe he was just fucking with us to see if we’d go for it.
    I bought them without trying them on. They were $50. Fifty-­dollar sweatpants.
    They had a drop crotch, drawstring waist, and asymmetrical pockets halfway down the thigh. They tapered at the ankle, and I decided the best way to wear them was scrunched up around my calves.
    I wore the pants to work and to parties, but never just to lounge around the house. As a member of the very small club that took the sweatpants trend seriously, I felt soooo cool. I work in fashion, and I have Alexander Wang sweatpants , I would think when I had them on. I am cool .
    Note that never in the history of humanity have sweatpants been the thing that defined any cool person’s coolness. But this is what happens when you buy things at sample sales when you’re high.
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    I can never go to the Alexander Wang sale without buying something strange. I went once after I bought the sweatpants and left with a sleeveless mock-turtleneck cropped sweater and a jean mom skirt with crooked silver paint running up and down thesides. If it weren’t for that paint—which later started peeling, making it look unfortunately blistered—it would just be your average knee-length denim skirt for the kind of woman who wears Tevas and her husband’s old sweaters. But when I decided to buy those things, all I could think about was owning yet another piece of Alexander Wang, and Carine Roitfeld, the former French Vogue editor, who once was shot by street-style bloggers wearing a denim mom pencil skirt.
    I will get this skirt and look so street style at the next Fashion Week , I thought.
    A professional stylist later suggested I divest my wardrobe of said skirt.
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    Since working in fashion, I have acquired and worn a slew of things that are objectively ridiculous. Pink acid-wash shorts. Slacks with a crotch that hangs past my knees. A sweatshirt bearing a sequined tiger face. A fedora. I blame this on several things. One is impulse. The other is shopping with other fashion-oriented people. They love clothes that they haven’t seen before, or clothes that haven’t been popular during your lifetime, which is for some reason often equally exciting in a way your mother’s closet never was.
    When you leave the house in a trendy item, you won’t know how people will react to you or how you’ll feel wearing it. This is exciting the way vacations to new places are exciting. You don’t know what awaits you around each turn! Will there be a woman who looks at you in envy? A tourist who looks up from his map to gawk like you’re something he’s never seen before? Whatever it is, it’s all attention.
    Things you “shouldn’t” buy are known as trendy. Trend items are a “waste of money” because they’ll go out of style in a season. However, trend items are hands-down the most fun things to wear because, while everyone has a T-shirt, not everyone has a leather turtleneck crop top. And what fun is wearing a T-shirt when you could be