Normcore: The Future Is Now

Being unique and special is so 2013. The future is all about middle-class conventions and being totally average.

You think you know fashion? In the words of the almost award-winning fourth-most-popular folk duo from New Zealand, Flight Of The Conchords, fashion’s a stranger. 

2013 is over, and if you know anything about fashion trends, the end of the year marks the beginning of a fashion revolution, and this year’s revolution takes us way back. All the way back to your dad’s closet from 1993.

Normcore. It’s about being normal. Maybe you’ve got a pair of Reebok shoes, stonewashed jeans, or white tube socks. Maybe you’re normcore.

But normcore isn’t about taking cool to the next level. In fact, it’s about taking cool and smashing it with a baseball bat just like in Office Space.

To try and explain it: today, there is virtually no difference in the fashion trends of young artsy hipsters and American tourists. Except some of the middle-aged dads who pioneered the trend have been quick to make a distinction.

“Oh, I’m trying to look a little cool” says CB arts teacher Mr. Robert Boriskin of the fresh normcore trend. Unlike the comfy dads of ’93, the young people who managed to make normal hipster are marginally attempting to be fashionable.

Or are they?

Dumb writers all over the nation have tried to pin down the origins of this beautiful phenomenon as if there’s some underlying expression of modern counter-culture anti-cool-but-actually-cool(?) rebellion. But it’s actually very simple– the super-comfy-chillaxin’/dad-vibe combo is utterly unstoppable.

“If there weren’t dress codes here, that’s probably how I’d dress every day” says Mr. Borskin.

But don’t think you’ve got normcore figured out. President Barack Obama is a major normcore icon. Some critics think he’s too normcore. But President Obama and Mr. Borskin only represent a sliver of the normcore cake.

You got your Portland dad normcore, your Bay Area dad normcore, your morning-after rave normcore, and even your Vermont dad normcore.

With all this normcore, you’d think it would described as something other than “the new world order of blankness.” Those are the words of K-Hole, the New York trend forecasting group  that coined the term (I didn’t know a group that pointless actually existed). The group says normcore is about being free of fashion stereotypes and the baggage of being too cool.

But I think it’s just a bunch of hocus-pocus. I think it’s all about comfort and the sweet sensation of a pair of loose-fitting jeans hugging my grateful body. But no one describes normcore better than Mr. Borskin.

“I’m trying to think if there’s any shoes I like more than tennis shoes…”

And without hesitation, the pottery artist said,

“No.”

So forget the mumbo-jumbo about why normcore exists. It’s here, and it’s here to stay. So come on. Get out, and find what being average as all Heck means for you.