Image via Complex Original
If you were to take a bird's-eye view of the timeline of men's style, you would spot countless mistakes along the way. The ever evolving nature of fashion lends us a lot of hits and misses, and looking back at things society has collectively co-signed can lead to a lot of face-palming. But as Alfred Pennyworth once told a young Bruce Wayne, "Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up." So, keeping that in mind, let's agree to never make these mistakes again. With the notion that knowing your history can help out your future, we took a cringe-worthy look back at some definite hiccups in men's style. It was slightly painful to research, but these are The Lamest Items of Clothing in Recent History
Sleeveless hoodies
The rise of the luxurious basic was not without its growing pains. The sleeveless hoodie entered the fashion stratosphere in 2006, rose to its pinnacle during peak Dov Cherney circa 2008, and tempered sometime after Justin Bieber completed puberty. The sleeveless hoodie—most egregiously propagated by American Apparel—reflected a transition period for men’s fashion and its community’s biggest spenders in 2014. It was worn by post-emo kids, Chris Brown and most recognizably on Pete Wentz. Equally related is the sleeveless BDG hoodie, distinguishable from it’s American Apparel counterpart by its white zipper. The fact that I've now written over 100 words on sleeveless hoodies makes me very sad.
Shants
If you weren’t wearing shants, which were pants that conveniently let you unzip the lower leg to turn them into shorts, were you even living in 1999? If the sweet tunes of "Enema of the State" weren’t regularly convincing you to abandon pants and free your legs from suburban oppression, what kind of childhood did you even live? If you weren’t breaking the bonds that were convertible trousers to show off your Airwalks, what were you even doing?
Newsboy caps
Lest you are a male offspring of one Marcus Mumford, or perhaps even the Wimbledonian himself, wearing a newsboy cap makes you look like king effboi of the west with a strong affinity for Elliott Smith and pickled whiskey. I think newsboy caps were actually collectively scoffed at during the “newsboy era,” which according to the Disney movie Newsies was around the turn of the 19th century. You think Yung Cowboy actually liked wearing that stupid hat? Damn Joseph Pulitzer and the New York World bricking the 1899 workwear alphet game.
Summer scarves
One of the benefits of living in New York City is being completely and willfully ignorant of any other environment in the country world. There may be a handful of places where the summers are mild and sometimes a brisk afternoon can bring the mercury down, but I don’t know because the summers here in NYC are a shit-smelling, rainforest sauna piece of hell. That’s the benefit of being in the center of the universe—I don’t care about your pleasant summer with warm breezes skimming over fields of barley. Take your oxymoronic summer scarf elsewhere.
Capris
In life, you have to make tough decisions. Not everything is always black and white, of course, but when life gives you choice A or choice B, sometimes you just gotta make a stance. So what is it, capris? Are you pants or are you shorts? Because you can't be fuckin' both. Stop straddling the fence and choose a side. If you need another reason why you shouldn't wear capris, here are 10.
Fingerless gloves
People who still wear fingerless gloves:
Ash Ketchum
Criminals who have their fingerprints removed
Weightlifters
Cybergoths
Somewhere along the way people convinced themselves it was okay to wear fingerless gloves because it was easier to type out text messages. So for around for eight years it was marginally tolerated that people wore fingerless gloves. And then the best minds from 'witchcraft, DONDA, Apple, the CIA, Braun, and Outlier came together to create gloves that could actually be used on a touch screen, simultaneously creating the most important sartorial function of the aughts and relegating finger less gloves to Complex’s Lamest Clothing Items of Recent History list. This is how history is written, kids.
Steampunk goggles
Lol, sorry breh, but life is not a Hayayo Miyazaki film. Things may suck once in a while in 2014, but nothing should send you running off to pretend like it's the year 1884 and/or 2084. Slightly better than when that Seth Green character in Can't Hardly Wait inspired a slew of dipshits to rock ski goggles, and only slightly worse than Google Glassholes, avoid anyone wearing steampunk goggles unless you want to hear a 13-minute comparison of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.
Two/three finger rings
Call me old school, but I’m a fan of the old, “If you can’t properly type with an accessory on your hand, you shouldn’t wear said accessory.” Rings that have more than more finger involved are wildly impractical. It’s the clothing equivalent of salt water taffy. Good in theory, but when you actually try and use it everything just gets stuck together and you get cavities and die. Most things that were appropriated from true badasses (brass knuckles, in this case) and reinterpreted for the accessory shelves of Express and Hot Topic will always have a spot on lists like these.
Chubbies
I don't know what Chubbies are. But I have three friends who have “liked” them on Facebook. I’ve kindly asked one of them to “unlike” the page so the ads would stop popping up on my feed. They’ve politely refused. Upon undertaking ten seconds of research, I’ve ascertained that they are the post-fraternity’s answer to Everlane, but for shorts. Their moniker stretches into the branding as well, and they’ve found ways to rename parts of clothing that already have a name. For example, they’re calling the “inseam” the “chub seam.” The most clicked article on Google talking about the company contains the following keywords: Forbes. Stanford. San Francisco. Frat Empire. George W. Bush. College ambassadors. I’m going to iron my Uniqlo chinos and tell them I love them now.
Toe shoes
You can go minimal and low to the ground with Nike Flyknit Free 3s, but you should fly too close to the sun/ground by going full Vibram. There’s already been a plethora of jokes made on behalf of finger toe shoes and a quick Twitter search will yield all sorts of fodder to fuel your hate for the #nextlevel #crossfit #riseandgrind #training #instagood. Proponents of the shoes will often cite a school of thought, commonly being referred to as “science.” Lol, nice try, weird cultish faction.