1. Chicks shaving a little patch onto one side of their head and growing the rest long. Can we all finally, as a society, accept the fact that just because something looks good on Rihanna does not mean that it will look good on every random girl who ever worked at an Intermix? Rihanna could essentially smear herself with Elmer’s glue and roll around in Froot Loops and 20-something white chicks would be like “That is so cute, I knew crushed cereal in your bodily creases was going to make a comeback. I told you, Stacey.” But this is absurd, and must go. When random chicks just shave that awkward patch into the side of their head, they do not look “edgy” and “hot,” they look like they got a hold of a pair of trimmers for their more sensitive hairs and slipped as they were turning it on. Nothing about that hairdo looks even remotely intentional. And, speaking anecdotally, I went into my bank the other day and the receptionist was suddenly missing a sizeable chunk of hair on the side of her head and looked at me like nothing had happened. I wondered immediately a) if she had a boss of any kind and b) if she knows that this hairstyle will soon be looked back upon with the same disdain as white girl cornrows.
2. Chunky, humongous, platform-y heels. I feel like every decade flirts with this trend, which I guess is intended to make women look sleeker by setting them against the kind of footwear that Disco Stu would wear. If the woman’s shoe is the size of a state-fair melon, designers think, the rest of her will look dainty and adorable by comparison! Every pound of shoe takes off 3 pounds of woman! She’ll be a walking optical illusion! But the majority of women I see walking around with these super “trendy” horse hooves are already really tall and thin, making them look like when the vampires tromped through the pumpkin patch to find Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas, but they don’t, and one of them comes limping back with a pumpkin attached to his skinny little leg. That is not a good look on a real human being not in a Tim Burton movie.
3. Wearing ridiculous clothes that don’t match whatsoever and it being so cool. I think I’m beginning to understand the general theory, which is that if you’re really skinny, tall, and good looking, you can wear whatever the hell you want at any time and people will fawn over how amazing and avant-garde it is. I used to think it was just street fashion photographers looking to get some fame by taking pictures of bag ladies and passing it off as fashion, but I’m pretty convinced now that everything in the fashion world has been “done,” and now the designers are just blindfolding themselves and throwing darts at a chart with different clothing items on it. “Fair Isle sweater… snakeskin pants… riding boots… and… a Snuggie! Lagerfeld, send this down the runway immediately! Lowly intern, come wash my feet, I feel dirty. Don’t look me in the eyes.” Or, you know, whatever goes on. But I seriously can’t get over the concept that we’ve reached a point in fashion where you just wear your grandmother’s afghan couch throw with some cutoff denim shorts and people will trip over themselves to tell you how good you look. I’m not just being nostalgic for the time women wore tailored dresses and men wore suits — I’d settle for the eighties, when at least acid-wash jeans were paired with something resembling a shirt.
In all those movies about the future, they always show people in silvery standard-issue unisex jumpsuits. When are those coming already? 
