Are You There, God?

[September 5th, 2001]

Check out this balled-up freakout of trend anxiety, hair misery and brand slavery:

MUSCLEMAX14: "I REALLY NEED HELP WITH MY HAIR IT ONLY LOOKS GOOD WHEN I SPIKE THE FRONT. AND WHAT CLOTHES ARE GONNA BE POPULAR THIS YEAR IM GOTTA LOT OF ABERCROMBIE I USED TO WEAR BANANA REPUBLIC LAST YEAR AD GOT JOKED ON."

The above web post is bursting with loads of adolescent back-to-school fashion anguish. The poor kid's driven to such distraction that he or she can't spell (well, we can only hope that's the reason).

The return of fall pushes all those pain/pleasure buttons: It's the true hour of renewal, time to revisit your routine (10 pounds lighter and two shades tanner) with new notebooks in hand, your mind a clean slate.

September smolders with such intensity that my first-day-of-junior-high outfit is still tattooed on my psyche (gray T-shirt printed with Asian characters and a red sun and a pair of ill-advised Guess zipper jeans).

That's why I passed through Meier & Frank's hallowed downtown doorway with a highly personal two-pronged mission:

Map the trajectory of teen fall trends from report to retail. M&F's traditional retail is a decidedly middle-market approach and smacks the back-to-school right in the gut. Why focus on teens? The pubescent set tracks trends most literally--and faithfully.

Ask and answer the following question: Do fall's trends give us the chance to make ourselves over and begin anew (which is, of course, the whole damn point of going back to school)?

For my assignment I carried a sticky note scrawled with these words: "denim," "sparkles," "punk," "preppie" and "equestrian." Seventeen and Teen magazines told me these were, like..."FALL'S HOTTEST LOOKS!!!" (Hmm...weren't they also last fall's hottest looks?)

My first stop--Juniors on Four: As the elevator doors parted, a denim army greeted me, jeans as far as the eye could see, hanging at attention on little clip hangers. Glitter jeans (sparkles, check!), studded jeans (punk, double check!), Paris Blues fringy jeans with raw edges (punk/equestrian, checkmate!). Over in tops I found sparkles (Weavers Girl T-shirts spattered with glitter), more equestrian (Fang Rough Riders T-shirt), and the preppie look (Q&A long-sleeve polos at $14.99). So far the fashion forecast and the clothes matched up neatly--too neatly.

Next stop--Young Men on Two: I continued to explore the preppie/ punk continuum in the boys department. In the Ralph Lauren section I found polo shirts in loud true-prep colors (pink, honeydew, yellow, purple) mingling promiscuously with eck?.complex denim skater shorts. It's important to note that we won't go into the sprawling Tommy Hilfiger "brand boutiques" except to say that denim + sparkles + punk + preppie + equestrian = Tommy.

Coincidence? You make the call.

But the biggest news here is the lack of news. There is no intense trend shift, nothing nearing the ripples caused by the rise of sportswear chic throughout the '90s (Nike, adidas, Reebok), or the Mary Quant miniskirt of the '60s--let alone the shockwave that struck when the mannish suits of '44 switched over to the New Look excess of 1945 (of course, there was a war on then).

And the whole '80s revival was funny ha-ha at first, but honestly: Must we continue to relive the whole hidebound decade year by year? Have we hit a cultural plateau, an era of such narcotic blandness that there's nothing of note to shape fashion's landscape? Can we say that George Bush's monthlong vacation on his Texas ranch fueled the preppie/equestrian redux?

Sounds lame, doesn't it?

Not that this matters to the average Portland teen, who wants to build a "right now" (read: acceptable, popular) look--trendy, not trend-setting. If we seize on that simple and humble goal, M&F's B.T.S. tag, "School.Ready?" seems less a forbidding scold than a frisky call to action. Who knows? To today's '80s-born teens, maybe these milquetoast "trends" don't seem so tired. Maybe those of us old enough to know better can recapture fall's energy--that flutter of new beginnings--by indulging in a little light back-to-school shopping, teen style. The first thing to catch my eye in Juniors was a Fang T-shirt, neutral-colored, printed with glittery Chinese characters and a big red sun. Only $16.99 for punk, sparkles and a reminder of my once-fresh autumn optimism.

Things are gonna change, I can feel it.