The New Year's Charms
In 2025 you will finally have to decide: are you more of a Jesus-as-carpenter type, a mossy underbelly of a stone type, or a bug-like bow type?
Hi! It’s that time of year in which I remind you, lest you forgot, that my true skill where fashion is concerned is conjuring up basically baseless “predictions” as to what the coming year will see where the general public’s proclivities are concerned. I develop these ideas with bald solipsism, half an amalgamation of things I’ve seen bubbling under the surface of my very limited corner of the internet and half a manifestation of things I HOPE we’ll see develop based on personal prejudice and childish dreaming. I feel like that’s the most honest way to present a “trend forecast,” as I’ve mentioned in the past—they all seem to be either always already proven and more an acknowledgement than a prediction, or a wild swing in the dark that connects not because of your guess but in spite of it. The latter are my favorites. Here’s to a mossy, carpenterial [sic], charmed 2025!
Oh, and FWIW, this bootleg Fallen Angels cap (a top three favorite film of mine with scant official merch!) was probably my late-in-the-game favorite purchase of 2024. $35 and there’s a Chungking Express one too.
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Much has been made of the past year’s swell in decking out purses and totes in charms and chains, or “bagmaxxing” as dubbed by
in an article I’ve since frequently cited (Kendrick Lamar’s fanny pack, above, is the most interesting take on this I’ve seen as of yet, but that could be a side effect of my years-long love of enamel pins [my big pandemic-provoked vice]), and I believe last time I did, I mentioned that I could see this crow-like concentration extending to other accessories sooner than later. This is the biggest gimme of this post, as it’s already a fairly well-documented phenomenon (though not yet totally adapted by the commercial core of the fashion world).
Boat shoes are a great starter point for DIYing flashy footwear, as their “lace” isn’t designed to be structurally integral or done/undone frequently but is a handy platform upon which to string beads and charms as seen above.
Trainers are a bit of a logistical step up—the above look like they’d be a nightmare to lace—but they sure look great and offer a ton of real estate to cover with charms, pins, and even vamp-traversing chains.
The last charm-friendly accessory I’ll suggest (though there are many more out there—belts immediately come to mind) is a cap. The above reminds me of the below cap by Poche (RIP), which I loved so much that I copied it long ago, just with sewn-on doodads instead of badges:
My second little idea of what’ll be cool in the coming year is the humble (or not-so-humble, in the case of Masami Hosono’s Kapital version above that zips into a handy leather-cased pillow) olive green, [preferably] safety orange-lined nylon bomber jacket. I found the above for sale but be ready for a financial jump scare if you click.
Something about the styling above struck me—as a nonbinary person who believes in the simultaneity of masculinity and femininity in each and every human, the word “tomboy” has long since felt kind of beside the point, but it might be a handy word to describe this specific aesthetic that feels like it creates a unique sense of masculinity BECAUSE of the model’s feminine traits. It’s as if “girl wearing older brother’s clothes” were a gender in and of itself, distinct from “girl.” Little details like the scrunchie around the wrist and the sliver of skin peeking out from under a just-too-short T-shirt are what get me, but the jacket also feels tempting in and of itself as a Lindsay Weir-like talisman/shield designed for daily wear, rendering the rest of a look, no matter how uninteresting, potent in its messaging. Basically, I feel like I could get away with being really lazy and boring with my clothing choices if I just covered up with one of these puppies, and that’s always a hard proposition to resist.
I also liked the below Ann Demeulemeester look ostensibly inspired by the above jacket:
Whatever makes me love Kim Kitsuragi (should I remake that weirdly popular post from the old Wordpress site?) makes me love the combination of safety orange with utilitarian nylon, even when deconstructed in a sort of wearing-a-belted-tarp-y way. Hopefully not just my inner cop.