Well before his public meltdown, Kanye West had already done the most uncool thing ever: He got married, had kids and moved to an upscale enclave of Los Angeles. His latest Yeezy collection for Adidas (which includes schlubby sweatshirts, tracksuits and athleisure basics) is filled with sly references to his newfound life as, well, a suburban dad.
A.P.C. came around with high-waisted pleated chinos, fanny packs andsocks worn with shorts. The label also has orthopedic-looking sneakers; their designer hashtagged them #dadshoes on Instagram.
A spring show for Balenciaga brought baggy blazers, bleached-out jeans and oversize shirts. To drive the point home, some of the male models were accessorized with children. Vogue called the look“dadcore.”
Dads are now at the center of the style universe. And their ethos, dad-ism, is part of the mass move to the unique and the downright fugly. There’s a reason that men in general have chosen to look so bizarre: “Designer brands have become beacons of fugly precisely because people have replaced shopping for things with posting them and then re-’Gramming them,” Nick Sullivan, the fashion director of Esquire, has said.
Dads in specific, though, are “the OG hypebeasts”; The Wall Street Journal recently declared that “‘Dad style’ is now in fashion. Yes, even the jeans.” GQ gave fathers a full-throated fashion endorsement, proclaiming that “the coolest sneakers to buy right now are ones your dad already owns.”
How did we come to the conclusion that orthopedic footwear, light-wash jeans and all the other trappings of dads were cool?
That hot ‘retired millennial’ look
“This is a logical extension or evolution of normcore,” said Brian Trunzo, the senior men’s wear editor at the trend forecasting firmWGSN. He calls the look “retired millennial.” “There’s something uniquely American about it, and very real, red-blooded man, like, ‘I’m going to wear a baggy plaid shirt with relaxed khakis because I’m chilling and I’m comfortable in my manhood.’”
Emily Segal, a founder of the design and technology think tankNemesis Global and a former member of K-Hole, the trend forecasting group that helped identify the normcore phenomenon, has a more expansive view of the movement.
“I don’t think it just has to do with being a dad,” Ms. Segal said. “What we call dad style is stuff that is self-consciously unsexy, or even un-self-consciously unsexy.”
“Brands are trying to produce mystery in this overexposed atmosphere,” Ms. Segal said. “They’re doing it by either picking something extremely random or something extremely obvious. Dad style is both.” (...)
‘30 is the new 20’
Fashion, of course, doesn’t exist in a vacuum and the rise of dad style also dovetails with several sociological shifts taking place.
“There’s always something about coolness that has to do with resistance, not in a political protest sort of way, more in the sense of something being wrong,” Ms. Segal said. She points to brands like Prada, which has long experimented with bad taste and “ugly” fashion to subvert traditional notions of what’s cool.
For young men, traditional roles of childhood and fatherhood have become unmoored in recent years.
Millennials, for example, have started leaving pricey city centers and are moving to the suburbs. And young people are living at home longer than ever, according to a Pew Research Center study, because of high housing costs and lower marriage rates, which is upending the traditional timeline when young urbanites marry, have children and move to the suburbs.
Meanwhile , fatherhood has become cool in other circles. As Dazed, the British youth culture magazine, noted in an article, influencers like Mr. Abloh, Mr. West, the designer Heron Preston and the model Luka Sabbat have taken to calling themselves “art dads,” which loosely means someone with street cred.
Seen another way, dad style is perhaps one more example of the internet’s ability to subvert classifications.
A.P.C. came around with high-waisted pleated chinos, fanny packs andsocks worn with shorts. The label also has orthopedic-looking sneakers; their designer hashtagged them #dadshoes on Instagram.
A spring show for Balenciaga brought baggy blazers, bleached-out jeans and oversize shirts. To drive the point home, some of the male models were accessorized with children. Vogue called the look“dadcore.”Dads are now at the center of the style universe. And their ethos, dad-ism, is part of the mass move to the unique and the downright fugly. There’s a reason that men in general have chosen to look so bizarre: “Designer brands have become beacons of fugly precisely because people have replaced shopping for things with posting them and then re-’Gramming them,” Nick Sullivan, the fashion director of Esquire, has said.
Dads in specific, though, are “the OG hypebeasts”; The Wall Street Journal recently declared that “‘Dad style’ is now in fashion. Yes, even the jeans.” GQ gave fathers a full-throated fashion endorsement, proclaiming that “the coolest sneakers to buy right now are ones your dad already owns.”
How did we come to the conclusion that orthopedic footwear, light-wash jeans and all the other trappings of dads were cool?
That hot ‘retired millennial’ look
“This is a logical extension or evolution of normcore,” said Brian Trunzo, the senior men’s wear editor at the trend forecasting firmWGSN. He calls the look “retired millennial.” “There’s something uniquely American about it, and very real, red-blooded man, like, ‘I’m going to wear a baggy plaid shirt with relaxed khakis because I’m chilling and I’m comfortable in my manhood.’”
Emily Segal, a founder of the design and technology think tankNemesis Global and a former member of K-Hole, the trend forecasting group that helped identify the normcore phenomenon, has a more expansive view of the movement.
“I don’t think it just has to do with being a dad,” Ms. Segal said. “What we call dad style is stuff that is self-consciously unsexy, or even un-self-consciously unsexy.”
“Brands are trying to produce mystery in this overexposed atmosphere,” Ms. Segal said. “They’re doing it by either picking something extremely random or something extremely obvious. Dad style is both.” (...)
‘30 is the new 20’
Fashion, of course, doesn’t exist in a vacuum and the rise of dad style also dovetails with several sociological shifts taking place.
“There’s always something about coolness that has to do with resistance, not in a political protest sort of way, more in the sense of something being wrong,” Ms. Segal said. She points to brands like Prada, which has long experimented with bad taste and “ugly” fashion to subvert traditional notions of what’s cool.
For young men, traditional roles of childhood and fatherhood have become unmoored in recent years.
Millennials, for example, have started leaving pricey city centers and are moving to the suburbs. And young people are living at home longer than ever, according to a Pew Research Center study, because of high housing costs and lower marriage rates, which is upending the traditional timeline when young urbanites marry, have children and move to the suburbs.
Meanwhile , fatherhood has become cool in other circles. As Dazed, the British youth culture magazine, noted in an article, influencers like Mr. Abloh, Mr. West, the designer Heron Preston and the model Luka Sabbat have taken to calling themselves “art dads,” which loosely means someone with street cred.
Seen another way, dad style is perhaps one more example of the internet’s ability to subvert classifications.
by Max Berlinger, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Mall of America 1994. Martin Parr/Magnum Photos
