The Season’s Worst Fashion Trends

Those fuddy little people called fashion designers seem to have a thing for us men. We ignored as designers recommended dressing like androgynous schoolboys, and then tried to thram fluorescent pink short-suits down our throat or the time they insisted all respectable pants are skinny and end above the ankle. This season they’re recommending crop tops and plunging Vs! Rascals. Here’s our list of fashion trends to avoid like the plague and not just this season.

Crop Tops

Making its way into the worst menswear list are Crop Tops that Jennifer Lopez and Shakira wear to show-off their toned bodies. No matter how bizarre it may look, Calvin Klein Spring 2011 Milan runway recommends it, with a six-pack of course. We admit, for a brief period in 1980s, the bare midriff was a punk subculture style statement, but that was 1980 and probably under unlicensed marijuana. Today it is a trend so terrible the usually flowery fashion hacks will use the worst phrase in their arsenal for it – faux pas. Get one only if you are contemplating a lifestyle change not if you want to be taken seriously by your potential girlfriend, friends or employer.

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Flowers on a tee

True we all had at least one floral printed Hawaiian shirt growing up there is a reason you wore it just once in school after watching a Salman Khan movie.

This is one of the worst fashion trends that did the rounds last year and is already making a re-entry as flowers line up everything from shirts to shorts. The regrettable 80s fashion of tight, skinny pants worn with bold floral print shirts are gaining popularity – at a time when even Salman Khan has given up on them.

Shredded Jeans

The rockers of eighties made this trend extremely popular and now everyone from Deepika Padukone to Priyanka Chopra is wearing one. But men don’t hang in groups drinking wine all day and calling each other ‘girlfriend’, we also don’t wear shredded jeans. We don’t care if you think it’ll make you look like that guy in Metallica, we don’t care about the post-recession poor-geoisie trend and spending thousands of dollars on looking ‘poor’. Call us old fashioned, but we like wearing our jeans till the time it’s threadbare and distressed. It’s absurd why a grown man would spend extra to buy a pair of pre-torn, pre distressed, pre shredded jeans. What’s next pre-worn underwear?

Men’s Décolleté

In the no no’s of fashion, low v-neck t-shirts tops the chart, no matter what cinema’s hulk brigade tell you. Suddenly they were in fashion, and then suddenly they stayed back and have refused to go away anytime soon. Since 2009 Spring-summer (yes, it was since then!) men have deemed it fit to use a plunging neckline to flash more than just a little bit of chest. Retailers like Zara have gone to the extent of unofficially insisting the cowl necks are the new V-necks – they aren’t. Just get a polo neck or a round neck, do not tuck it into your pants and you should be safe.

Wrinkled Clothing

Another trend trying to make a comeback is Wrinkled clothing. While most have stayed away from this trend (saving wearing something straight out of the laundry bag only when running late for college), few have refused to grow up. We’re all for linen shirts in the summers – we’d even recommend them for the Noble or something and they do crumple by the end of the day, but that doesn’t mean you start wearing shirts that have never met a steam iron or even a board! Trust us – this isn’t the just crawled out of bed look, that’s when you go to work with scratch marks under your collar.

Harem Pants

The harem pants just got bolder, tackier and apparently male friendly! The idea of men wearing harem pants gives goose bumps, we’re all for riding breeches, jodhpurs we’d even wear it once to a hoity toity party with a monogrammed blazer – but there is no other possible excuse for a man to wear anything with a droopy crotch. Trust us it does not make you seem well hung. The trend was under control when women were the only ones enjoying it, but in a role reversal men have taken it hell lot more seriously by heeding Cavalli’s advice for SS-11 by adding animal prints and stripes (the stripes somehow remind us of Obelix). Even then, this trend is becoming popular (thanks to those jackasses-cum-celebrities on the red carpet), so boys, be afraid! Be very afraid coz this one will send you right on top of the hate-men’s list.

Meggings

The last trend you should never be caught in is meggings – if you know what they are then you already have a little crisis brewing inside you. They are a kind of leggings for men or men’s leggings (whatever) first sent out on Emporio Armani’s Spring 2011 runway in Milan. Truth be told, it’s tragically painful to see men squeezing themselves into a pair. You’re not Peter Pan or Jack Black. Snap out of it man.

From the June 2011 issue of FHM India.