Are You Normcore?

Normcore — it was funny, but it also effectively captured the self-aware, stylized blandness I’d been noticing. Brad’s source for the term was the trend forecasting collective (and fellow artists) K-Hole. They had been using it in a slightly different sense, not to describe a particular look but a general attitude: embracing sameness deliberately as a new way of being cool, rather than striving for “difference” or “authenticity.” In fashion, though, this manifests itself in ardently ordinary clothes. Mall clothes. Blank clothes. The kind of dad-brand non-style you might have once associated with Jerry Seinfeld, but transposed on a Cooper Union student with William Gibson glasses.

Normcore! What is it? According to New York, it is “a theory rather than a look.” It is wearing… “normal,” ‘90s-ish clothes. (Though this slideshow gives normcore shoes a pretty bad look.) So maybe you are normcore? I, for one, will require more bucket hats. Congrats on maybe being trendy. [NY Mag]