It's officially fall, a lonely time of year when everything wilts and withers. Despite all this, autumn is actually my favorite time of year; the temperature drops, the lawn doesn't need to be mowed because it's covered in leaves and I get to carve creepy faces into giant orange fruit. But the best thing about fall is the clothes. Namely, I get to wear more of them.
Gone are the tiny tank tops and short shorts that require me to subsist on nothing but watermelon and iced tea just to get into them. They are replaced with sweaters, and with sweaters comes the ability to hide things—like cookies and potato chips. Diet Coke is out, regular Coke is in and I can sit on the couch and let my thighs get as big as I want. For this reason alone, fall is beautiful.
If you pick up any fashion magazine, it will probably tell you that the clothes you currently own are vile. Instead, the magazine says, you should spend thousands of dollars on an entirely new wardrobe suitable only for this season. Only then will you be hip and beautiful. Should you ignore the magazine's advice and wear last season's Gap T-shirt, people will mock and ridicule you forever. Also, you will never find happiness and will be destined to die alone.
Although most of us cannot afford a new wardrobe every season—and thus are doomed to a life of loneliness and despair—we can occasionally splurge on some new seasonal accessory. The following is an incomplete list of current fall fashions, brought to you exclusively by the Scene.
Trench coats are back this year, inspiring millions of us to dress like 1940s private eyes. This season, however, magazines have heralded pastel colors as the new khaki when it comes to these classic jackets. Somehow, I don't see Humphrey Bogart searching for the Maltese Falcon in a periwinkle coat with lavender lining. Although, come to think of it, most of his movies were in black and white. The end of Casablanca would feel much different if we suddenly learned he did it dressed entirely in pink.
Tweed is also popular this fall, and designers have intelligently stuck to the original earth tones associated with this material. With tweed, even illiterate fools can look like stuffy academics. Just as medical doctors are required to wear white lab coats, so must philosophy and history professors own tweed blazers with suede elbow patches. So forego the years of study and Ph.D. research; just buy a brown tweed blazer and you'll look like you graduated from Harvard.
You will be happy to know that Ugg Eskimo boots are no longer fashionable. Last year, women trounced around in giant sheepskin snow boots that made even the most slender leg look like an oversized sausage. Unfortunately, a new brand of hideous boot has arisen; patterned goulashes. This fashion sickness usually afflicts girls ages 14 to 25, but older women have occasionally been known to fall ill. There are no warning signs for this disease; one minute, victims seem fine, and the next they suddenly believe that bright pink goulashes with little purple flowers on them are a good idea, even on days when there's not a cloud in the sky. If you or someone you know has this tendency, please confiscate all rainy-day footwear immediately. Contrary to what you might think, Paddington Bear is not a fashion icon.
Football season starts in the fall, and soon the men will start breaking out their oversized jerseys and pit-stained Super Bowl T-shirts. Apparently the frayed baseball cap is still popular among male sports fans, especially if it's weathered just enough that it looks dingy but not disgusting. The Scene's hastily formed opinion of frayed baseball caps is this: they are stupid, but considerably less stupid than goulashes worn on sunny days, and therefore will be tolerated. Frankly, I long for the days when men wore real hats, like Frank Sinatra and his fedora. People could wear them with their new trench coats. Men should definitely take more fashion advice from Old Blue Eyes. But they can probably do without the ties to the mob.
And that concludes the Scene's account of what's hot and what's not this fall season. Of course, this information will be rendered completely useless in five minutes when the fashion magazines come out with another issue stating that tweed, trench coats and goulashes are out and shoulder pads, buttless chaps and snowshoes are all the rage. And of course, they'll be right. Again.
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