As a child of the 1980s, I am an expert on certain topics. I remember when MTV actually played videos and you could turn to ESPN for sports. I remember “The Simpsons” when it was just a short on “The Tracey Ullman Show.” I remember when women swooned over Jon Bon Jovi.
Oh yeah, I also remember how silly guys looked walking around with the collars on their polo shirts raised.
Apparently, this fashion mistake has started to make a comeback. I have come to tell the young men of today – stop immediately.
I went to an all-boy’s Catholic high school in Baltimore, so I have the credentials. When you graduate from one of those places in 1986, you carry pretty solid preppy credentials.
The thing about the raised collar is that, regardless of how cool you think you are, you are never cool enough to pull that look off.
I may have tried to walk around with this look a couple of times, but always had the notion in the back of my head that people were just going to laugh at me. They would have been right.
But I had a head start. I was a short, geeky kid with glasses and a big mouth. Of course I would have trouble pulling off a dubious fashion trend.
Looking at pictures from the past, however, shows that pretty much anyone who walked around with their collar raised looked pretty silly. Especially when so many of the pictures include a guy with his arm around a girl and a plastic cup raised in the air.
I don’t know how or why this fashion has started to return. What’s next? Way-too-short OP shorts? Really big decorative belts for girls? Mirrored sunglasses?
The thing about the 80s is that everything created an illusion of reality of cool, but things weren’t cool at all. We must have been drugged or something. Not only did people think raised collars looked good, we actually believed that Tom Cruise could fly a fighter jet.
At least these days, we realize Tom is a couch-jumping, psychiatrist-bashing, cradle-robbing nutjob. If we have figured that out, why do we let people walk around with raised collars?
When we went to the Delone Carnival earlier this year, we saw a bunch of guys wearing matching pink polo shirts and madras shorts. They all had their collars popped.
I didn’t know what to do at first. Slowly, I realized that the coordination of outfits indicated that they were mocking the fashion.
That was beautiful. When groups of teenagers are mocking their peers fashion sense – with color coordination no less – the jig is up.
So let’s all do the world a favor and turn down a collar when you see a poor, misguided young man walking around with it raised. He’ll thank you for it some day.
Or, you can take a picture of him, hold onto it and embarrass him in front of his kids in 15 years. That actually sounds like more fun.