Seasons Pass, Trends End

FASHIONTHE SEASONS PASS, TRENDS END.

everything changes.

BY BRITTANY SWEARINGEN

Summer 2018, qualified by the

rise of ‘athleisure,’ led us all in line to buy one of the hottest shoes among young fashionistas: The Fila Disruptor. The monologue from older adults described how our shoes were simply a carbon copy from their adolescence. As much of a seasonal staple as an item can be, an even stronger constant may be the inevitable expose on why the trend was such a deplorable mistake.

This may have sincerely been the longest summer of my life, marked by a transition of jobs, college plans and familial dynamics. It was also the summer that I wore my Fila Disruptors every, single day. The thing about fashion in the modern era is this: no matter how much I love my Fila’s and how dependent on them I became, one day I simply took them off for the last time – even after I had sculpted my entire wardrobe around the single sentiment, “Can I wear my sneakers?”

As I’m looking into my dorm room closet (doorless, of course) at my oh-so-beloved, all-white shoes, I’m struggling to make them fit into my style. In fact, I can hardly imagine what on earth possessed

me to think they ever worked so well, when now I’m almost certain they did not. But, that’s rather marvelous, isn’t it? The haze surrounding every trend and seasonal necessity that only the acutely experienced can peer beyond speaks volumes.

The carousel never stops turning. A new season brings new trends and new norms that we sink our claws into with unwavering ferocity, as if our items will not be flooding the online ‘depop’ community in six month’s time. A strange phenomenon occurs when you realize the stream only runs forward, and never backward. As I spend the day with family in my home, I realize the shoe doesn’t wear the same. The shoe itself has not changed, but I have. I’m suddenly far too snug AND loose in the same moment, as I try to remember how things were before. Much like my inability to imagine these Disruptors in the wardrobe I now know and love, I have difficulty remembering the motions in my life before I left home and the people that mean the most to me.

The seasons pass, trends end. Everything changes.

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