There’s nothing cute about this fashion guru

It’s a shame public indecency is a crime, because trying to keep up with the ever-changing fashion industry is enough to make me want to stop wearing clothes altogether.

I’ll admit it, I’ve never been on the cutting edge of fashion. It seems like by the time I get around to wearing what’s hip, those in the know coordinate this massive fashion shift to change everything around practically overnight, and when I get to school the next day, I’m still the only person not in style.

Maybe that’s why I was called Old School Hawkins back in junior high and got shoved into garbage cans so much.

Style. What does that mean anyway? I have a fashion of some sort. I think it’s described as nerd. You know, the khaki pants, button-up shirts or polo shirts. Sadly enough, while this is still a popular fashion, I don’t pull it off in the look good sort of way. I look like I put on my clothes in the dark and my mother never taught me how to match socks. Don’t tell me green doesn’t go with purple.

But even though I have never kept up with the fashion industry, my secret passion in life is to become a women’s fashion designer.

I know, it sounds a little weird. Most men dream of being a doctor, a lawyer, a member of G-Unit (oh, maybe that’s just another one of my dreams) or a sewer inspector.

Not me.

I want to be a big-wig fashion guru in New York that spends half the year in Paris, France. I would change my name to Sergio, have a midget consultant named Koko and smoke candy cigarettes. I would wear black horned-rimmed glasses and a Hugh Hefner-like robe all the time and adopt an unnatural lisp that would sound incredibly convincing.

Why go through all these dramatic changes? I need a good laugh.

I’ve long held that women’s fashion is very misunderstood. Most people seem to think women’s fashion designers are either women or flamboyantly gay men. I argue they are perfectly straight men with a sick sense of humor.

Fashion designers of women’s clothes are men that never got over the “I dare you days.” They sit in their high-story firms and think of the most outrageous things in the world for women to wear and then market it.

Think about it. What’s in style right now? Maternity shirts. These used to be the most feared articles of clothing by women. Having to wear a maternity shirt meant nine months of misery and looking two or three times bigger than normal.

But walk around campus and women everywhere are wearing these frilly, oversized shirts. Sure some of them are pregnant, but most are petite little things. Why do they wear this if deep down inside they know this makes them look stupid?

Because these fashion designers understand how to manipulate by using the word ‘cute.’

This is a word I have never understood but seems to control all fashion choices by women. As best as I’ve figured out, cute can mean adorable, small, tiny (yeah, I didn’t know there was a difference either), different or anything with a price tag of more than $50. And that’s just scratching the surface.

With so many definitions attached to one word, it would seem like it would be difficult to market. Not so. All it takes is a good copy writer, a woman who is dangerously too thin, a lot of Photoshop work and a magazine. Equipped with these things, a male fashion designer can get anything to be popular.

There are tons of these magazines out there. Trust me, my wife subscribes to a couple of them. A brief look at these magazines is enough to make me want to throw up. There are scores of pages dedicated to what the next great fashion is, who’s already wearing it and how much it costs. With the prices of these items floating around in the high hundreds, it terrifies me that people actually spend that kind of money on pieces of decorated fabric, but it also makes me excited to make my grand entrance into the fashion scene.

I would call my brand “QTBee.” My inspiration for my vast clothing lines would come from yearbooks. Not my yearbooks, mind you, my parent’s yearbooks. I would bring back the poodle skirts and the sweaters but make them more modern by adding my company’s logo across the front of the shirt or the back of the skirts. Now that’s hot.

I would hire models to wear these clothing lines and pay for ads in magazines. Women across the country would see my QTBee style and go crazy wearing the same things they spent their whole lives making fun of their parents for wearing. And all the while I would sit back in my New York penthouse, smoking my candy cigarettes and drinking a little juice box, smiling at how I took the fashion industry by storm.

Until then, I’ll continue to be perplexed at why my wife needs 20 purses and changes them on a weekly basis. Or why there needs to be a separate pair of shoes for every outfit. Or why on earth she subjects herself to wearing high heels when all they do is hurt her feet.

And she’ll continue to wonder why I will never buy a new article of clothing until one unravels off my body, or why I consider low-rise men’s jeans a crime against humanity.

I have a lot to learn in order to become Sergio, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to get back to work studying from Derek Zoolander on how to become an ambi-turner and from Meryl Streep on how to be the devil.

Seth Hawkins is a junior majoring in public relations. If you see him dressing trendy, pinch yourself, because you’re probably dreaming. Questions and comments can be sent to him at seth.h@aggiemail.usu.edu