The Strangest New Fashion Trend: Dressing Like Your Third Grade Self
Nobody ever wants to grow up, right? The endless hours spent on the playground, the worry-free existence from responsibility — and, of course, the comfort-first rules for dressing.
Judging by the fashion trends this summer, it seems like we're all feeling a little nostalgic for childhood. Search for overalls on Pinterest and you'll find more grown-up fashion bloggers rocking the style than toddlers. Fashion websites left and right are touting bandanas tied around your neck as everyday wear. And beauty bloggers are playing with literal crayons as makeup tools (prompting Crayola to speak out against the unsafe practice).
One thing is clear: Looking like your third-grade self has never been more stylish. Here's how the top summer fashion trends are, unexpectedly, flashing back to our younger selves.
1. Overalls
Remember the days when you wore overalls emblazoned with your favorite cartoon characters? Sans the patches or bright colors you sported on the playground, overalls are no longer darling, but daring and cool. If you need some inspiration, Taylor Swift and Vanessa Hudgens are showing the way.
2. White Sneakers
As a kid, your parents might have made you wear dress shoes during the holidays or for family photos, but it was those little white sneaks that were your everyday staples. These days, the clear trend is for the white sneakers we could never keep clean as kids. Keds are back, everyone.
3. Cotton undies
Outgrowing diapers meant becoming a "big kid" who sported white cotton briefs that covered your bottom, until many of us graduated to lacy lingerie. Now we're turning the clock back: According to a New York Times article citing some intriguing data, sales are way up for "granny panties."
4. Bandanas
Remember playing dress-up as a kid? You can still rock the bandana and pretend you're in the Wild West, and no one will be the wiser. Like white sneakers, bandanas are another gender-neutral trend inexplicably cropping up everywhere.
5. Fanny packs
Before you got too cool for school and took up with that rolling backpack, admit it: You were wearing fanny packs, likely matching the ones your parents wore around their waists while keeping up with you in Disneyland. Fanny packs are back. Seriously. And in today's reincarnations, they're so chic no one will mistake them for the leather pack Dwayne Johnson used to sport.
6. Crayola supplies
As a kid, the number of colors filling your Crayola box amounted to bragging rights. Today's beauty bloggers have taken to colored pencils and crayons as makeup tools, using them as alternative eyeliners and lip liners in dozens of video tutorials — even though Crayola would rather they didn't.
Don't believe us that your childhood staples are back with a vengeance? Just ask this trendy munchkin:
