Blame the Victims
The Darker Side of NYC Fashion
Illustration by Thyra Heder
click to enlarge
1. The Bikerati
You see them everywhere, like brown-shirted thugs roaming the streets of Milan in 1935. The uniform: little short-brimmed cycling caps, slim black cut-off jeans, snug, austere t-shirts, bulky chains around their waists, unadorned fixed-gear bikes, pencil-thin mustaches… Ok, we know they’re not fascists, per se, but groups of two or more give us the schpilkis, and these guys just make us nervous.
2. The Park Slope Dad and Baby
The unstructured baseball cap. The perfectly-manicured beard. The short shorts. The Crocs. There is perhaps no New York City creature as consistently poorly attired as the Park Slope dad. Unless, of course, you’re comfortable talking shit about babies, in which case it’d be hard to top the 18-month-old rocking an ironic t-shirt and a shiny new pair of Crocs, just like Dad.
3. The Goth “Couple”
If you can’t join ‘em, dress so you can fool ‘em into thinking you don’t care what they think of you: this is what happens when waifish, last-picked boys and pudgy, locker-room-dreading girls find solace in friendship (though she secretly hopes he’ll come around someday) and a subculture that encourages them to hide under yards of black fabric and more fright makeup than Elsa Lanchester.
4. The Androgynous Hipster Couple
It’s so challenging to find the most unusual oversized charm you can string onto a necklace. Perhaps it’s this one, this golden starling? Or perhaps this one, this platinum robot? Or nay, perhaps this one, where a starling is having sex with a robot’s face? Who’s to say? It’s a riddle wrapped in an enigma, shrouded in a layer of tattered transparent scarf, drenched in Sparks-infused sweat and powdered with the grains of someone else’s cocaine.
You see them everywhere, like brown-shirted thugs roaming the streets of Milan in 1935. The uniform: little short-brimmed cycling caps, slim black cut-off jeans, snug, austere t-shirts, bulky chains around their waists, unadorned fixed-gear bikes, pencil-thin mustaches… Ok, we know they’re not fascists, per se, but groups of two or more give us the schpilkis, and these guys just make us nervous.
2. The Park Slope Dad and Baby
The unstructured baseball cap. The perfectly-manicured beard. The short shorts. The Crocs. There is perhaps no New York City creature as consistently poorly attired as the Park Slope dad. Unless, of course, you’re comfortable talking shit about babies, in which case it’d be hard to top the 18-month-old rocking an ironic t-shirt and a shiny new pair of Crocs, just like Dad.
3. The Goth “Couple”
If you can’t join ‘em, dress so you can fool ‘em into thinking you don’t care what they think of you: this is what happens when waifish, last-picked boys and pudgy, locker-room-dreading girls find solace in friendship (though she secretly hopes he’ll come around someday) and a subculture that encourages them to hide under yards of black fabric and more fright makeup than Elsa Lanchester.
4. The Androgynous Hipster Couple
It’s so challenging to find the most unusual oversized charm you can string onto a necklace. Perhaps it’s this one, this golden starling? Or perhaps this one, this platinum robot? Or nay, perhaps this one, where a starling is having sex with a robot’s face? Who’s to say? It’s a riddle wrapped in an enigma, shrouded in a layer of tattered transparent scarf, drenched in Sparks-infused sweat and powdered with the grains of someone else’s cocaine.
