This is where sparkly tank tops come into play.
Since fancy occasions come up throughout the year, sparkly tank tops can usually be found in retail stores for all of your birthday, Fourth of July and Easter needs. But with the glut of Christmas/Chanukah/Festivus/Kwanzaa/New Year's Eve celebrations on the calendar this month, sparkly tank tops are in particularly high demand, and retailers are rolling out the big guns -- er, sequins.
While recently perusing the displays at my favorite cultural facility -- the mall -- I found sequins on more than just tank tops. I discovered full-body tube dresses splattered with sequins. I discovered gnarly snakeskin fedoras bombed out with sequins. I even reconnected with my favorite piece of roller-rink throwback attire, the body suit (you know, that thing that resembled a leotard but had snaps at the crotch so that you could pee without stripping entirely), with more sequins on it than Liberace's floor-length fur.
We've gone sequin-crazy.
Personally, I consider this type of holiday wear to be the STD of modern fashion. But then, I can't be taken seriously on any level of fashionability because I wear Uggs. With stretch pants. Regardless, sparkliness is definitely set to overload, while I'm still trying to figure out why this type of embellishment has come to mean "fancy."
At Shirt Folding Store, my employer, we call the area where we hang our influx of sparkly inventory the "OMFG It's Like Totally New Year's Eve N' Shit" section, or simply the "Tranny, Tranny, Fierce, Tranny, Hot Mess" section. Because that's all it is: a bunch of shiny shit made for the office Christmas party, created to replace dresses, pencil skirts and blouses, high-waisted dress pants, etc.
We apparently no longer have the desire -- or ability -- to dress to any kind of "nines" anymore. We just want to be comfortable. Comfort outweighs style. Comfort outweighs professionalism. Comfort outweighs dress codes and social norms for clothing that might have to, gasp, be dry-cleaned. It's like we got married to comfort, and now we have given up on looking like anything more than that sequin-and-denim-wrapped thing in the corner.
As a culture, it's time to make a New Year's resolution to stop dressing like sparkling sacks of potatoes. Because, really, while being a Hot Tranny Mess is cool in certain circles, not everyone needs to be married to the idea of being Forever Lazy.
