Global Trend Report 2009 - Antwerp & Tokyo

BOYS

Belgian boys are out of control. They’re mixing and matching like they’re on a game show called

Mix and Match

! and the winner gets a dream date with Walter Van Beirendonck. You can see boys lugging shopping bags all around town, filled to the brim with clothing items gathered from thrift shops and young designers alike. Belgians aren’t snoots, and they don’t care if you bought your bag from a Peruvian indigent with a pan flute or from the cool kids at the Antwerp Fashion Academy—just as long as everything looks nice and drapey. It’s a little nutty, but on the plus side, nu-rave is finally dead and dreadlocks on white college students have decreased drastically, so thank the heavens for small miracles.

GIRLS

Belgian girls are all loose and cozy—taking the kind of outfit you’d wear when going out to buy some croissants on Sunday morning and making that an all-day look. It might seem lazy, but it’s way better looking than a tracksuit. Skinny jeans have all but disappeared, and everyone looks like a philosophy student from the 70s who may or may not be going through a lesbian phase. Colors are neutral, makeup is minimal, shoes are flat, and everything is loose except maybe a belt at the waist to show that you have some sort of shape. It’s subtly hot, in a bookish, intimidating way. On second thought, let’s see at least a small stretch of cleavage next time.

BOYS

Carrying over from 2008, the male fashion trend of straight guys dressing like they are extremely gay is still going strong in Tokyo. The country is full of creeps who squeeze their burdock-root-like skinny bodies into the tightest clothes they can find from head to toe. Their hair is usually a weird shade of blond and cut in a bowl haircut, an incomprehensible asymmetrical haircut, or simply left long and scraggly.

And don’t forget the deathlike pallor. Japanese guys are taking the metrosexual thing to such an extreme that they’ve become obsessed with their appearance. Not only are they scary skinny, their gestures and expressions are becoming increasingly effeminate as well—rendering gaydar virtually ineffective. Is this a sign of a bright new androgynous future, free from sexual biases? Or the dehumanizing effects of homogenization and too much anime? Only time will tell.

GIRLS

It seems that most girls are wearing some sort of Russian fur hat right now (just like everywhere else), probably because it’s a tad colder than in previous years. In fact, the fur thing seems to be infecting everything from jacket collars and sleeves to hot pants with fuzzy hems. A touch of ruffles here and there ups the girly level and keeps them from looking like a horde of 12th-century marauding Mongolian refugees. Layers abound, but inexplicably, girls in Japan are shortening up their skirts and pant legs the colder it gets. These girls have a long, illustrious history of choosing fashion over function, so what’s a few cold knees in the winter? Their grandmothers would laugh.