In the spirit of prejudice, I wanted to share some indisputable fashion realities which I have noticed over the years.  As someone who frequently wears mismatched socks with holes in them and thrives on second-hand shirts, please note that I am not casting myself as an authority on taste, just reporting what I've seen...

• Anyone wearing a t-shirt tucked into jeans with no belt is 97% likely to be wearing New Balance sneakers.
  COROLLARY: New Balance sneakers are also extremely likely to be found combined with fat men in light-colored denim jeans, who may or may not be wearing a belt, but they will ALWAYS be wearing a wool overcoat.  So don't worry, you won't get confused.
  ALSO HERE IS SOMETHING ELSE: Is New Balance responsible for the horror that is 3/4-top shoes?  With all the choices I have to make on a day-to-day basis, do I really need to spend time figuring out of a pair of damn shoes is hi-top or low-top?  I think not, my friends.  When things like this put me in a loathsome state of mind, I often look for someone to blame for my troubles.  I have settled on my 10th-grade English teacher.  In addition to wrecking my brain with dilemmas like this, he was also convinced that A Separate Peace was, like, this amazing book, when it is in fact super-boring.
• The only men who wear blue blazers in combination with khaki dress pants are southerners.
  SUB-FACT: When I used to work at a hotel, these people were horrible tippers.  It is probably because they had spent all their money on shoe polish.  They always had on these shiny penny loafers that smelled like rubber cherries.
• All who wear skinny low-rise jeans with low-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars are hipsters, except for one person.
  COROLLARY: Not all hipsters wear skinny jeans with low-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars.  They have other options. 
• People who wear jeans with massive bell-bottom legs are often skateboarders, which is hilarious because you'd think someone on a skateboard would want to decrease their chances of falling and destroying themselves, as opposed to increasing those chances.
• People who wear aviator sunglasses are the coolest people in the entire world.

I hold these truths to be self-evident, fools.  I invite you to prove me wrong.

Since TravelZoo has yet to respond to my demand for truth, I'll shift my ire to another company today: Von Dutch.

With most fashion movements, the casual observer can track the designer's career from the point at which they suddenly seem to worn on the person of all the coolest peoples on the block to the point at which they are so ubiquitous that late-comers to the party are mocked with hilarious jokes about fashion.  As in, "Hey Sam, there's an extra stripe on your Samba Classics!  Ha ha ha ha!"  We all heard that one, I'm sure.  Right?  Hello?  See, because if you weren't quite sure what those super-awesome three-stripe soccer shoes everyone was wearing were, maybe you accidentally, unwittingly purchased cheap knock-offs so that Tory Thornton would think you were cool.  And then when you finally did get Samba Classics, no one who was anyone was wearing them anymore.  Right?  Hello?

Anyway, you remember those Calvin Klein shirts when cK1 first came out?  You know, where there was the smaller "c" and the big "K?"  And then you would see, like, "dC" for Washington, D.C.  I remember laughing particularly hard at the Muppet versions of these, where you would see "kF," over a watermarked shot of Kermit the Frog in a swanky set of briefs.

The point is, we saw cK1first become popular in its own right, then become a trope for other brands to spoof.  I have observed the same trajectory over the years with Stussy, Nike Air, and McDonalds' claim of "Over 99 Billion Served."

My question, then, is this: how did we go so quickly from "Von Dutch" to "Von Bitch" (the former being the official name of a company which apparently makes t-shirts, watches, and motorcycles, and the latter being an apparent joke at that company's expense)?

I can recall no time in my life when I found myself adrift in a sea of persons cooler than myself sporting edgy, expensive, fashionable Von Dutch gear.  Since being adrift in such a sea is my normal method for recognizing that a fashion movement is afoot, I consider myself appropriately mystified that Von Dutch is now well into its post-ironic phase. 

My theory at the moment is that it must have occurred while I was in college.  This was a point of low fashion awareness even for me.  The culture of the idealistic coven of liberal arts which I attended celebrated sweatpants, hoodies, and bed-head.  Those who spent time on such things as jewelry, cosmetics, and ironing were secretly snickered at, the conventional wisdom being that they had clearly been wasting their time on superficial matters whilst we dirty visionaries were plotting various social, artistic, and scientific revolutions.  Stay tuned for those, by the way.  They'll be along any day now. 

So the question is this: what did I miss?  Was Von Dutch a big thing?  And if it was, did it's bigness in fact fall neatly between 2000 and 2004, when I and my colleagues were more concerned with matters of naugahyde?

Looking out my window, I saw a little fly walking along the sill.  He paused for the camera.

I looked a little closer, and he appeared to be preening.  Getting ready for a big night out, I suppose.  

He was fixing himself up in what looked like a teeny tiny mirror

 I inched closer with my camera to see what the tiniest Manhattanite's fussing was for.  

H-o-t-t.  

As I type this, the little ham stopped by again.  

Clearly, he should go with second row, far right.

Usually, plumber fashion involves showing a wee bit of buttcrack, but Mario's a bit more stylish than Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.

Also, do you think it would be awkward if Toad found out about the custom underpants Mario had made?

Despite the supposed unfriendliness of NY, I get into a lot of pleasant conversations with random strangers about various items about me.  Here's the earthly posessions I carry with me that inevitably turn the most heads:

1. Kindle:  Got it for X-mas... love it.  Lotta people ask me my opinion on it, as they're thinking of getting one themselves.
2. iPhone Skin: Nobody asks me about my iPhone, as everybody has one in NY.  But add a little dose of tranquility and suddenly people can't stop asking about it.  I don't even use the phone anymore, I just turn it around and find inner peace.
   
   
    
3. Cracked iPhone Screen: I fixed it recently, but a lot of people want to know about what sort of rock n' roll lifestyle I must lead to actually crack the glass on my phone.  The answer: very rock n' roll.
4. My Exposed and Throbulent Wang: Bottomfree equality!
5. Christie's Jamaican Patties: They wanna know who in the vicinity could create a bite even holier than angel poop.

FCC guidelines dictate that bloggers gotta come clean if anybody got compensated to say any nice things.  Fortunately, it doesn't apply here because: a) nobody did any such thing, b) no viable business would ever try to sway public opinion through the 2log.  We cuss like sailors and our total number of page views since conception is two.  Despite our dot biz extension, we are a permanently unprofitable entity (except for our thriving hedge fund division).  c) Our lawyer sez those rules don't apply to us, because we're a 2log, not a blog.