It’s called “messy authenticity,” and it’s the latest trend to clearly demonstrate America has lost its collective mind.
Looking for a Maison Margiela sweater with unfinished threads and gaping holes? It’ll cost you nearly $1,500.
How about a designer purse with fringed eyelets, frayed material, and uneven seams? That’ll be about $1,700.
How about a “Rag Chair” for your living room that’s stitched together with discarded fabric scraps? That will set you back about $4,000.
I first documented the “designs made to look imperfect” trend nearly 18 years ago. Distressed furniture was one of the first troubling examples.
As it went, people were bringing brand new chairs, tables, and dressers into their garages, kicking and scratching the bejesus out of them, then covering them in a lumpy, blotchy paint.
My sister, an interior designer, told me that people did this because they wanted an antique look, but real antiques are hard to come by. So they paid good money for brand new furniture that they spent hours making look tired and worn.
The blue jean trend was another regrettable example. In 2007, the owner of an upscale jeans store told me the jeans with holes and splattered paint were selling like hotcakes.
“People spend money on jeans with holes and paint on them?” I said.
“Yes, up to $700,” she said.
“But they have holes and paint on them!” I said.
“Yes!” she said.
She told me the best-selling jeans were either washed in dirt or smeared with grease — so that people who buy them can be as fashionable as the guy digging graves or changing fluids at the Jiffy Lube.
Since 2007 the trend for authentic-looking fake stuff has accelerated in some areas, but it is declining in others, and I think I know why.
As more Americans move to major metro areas — nearly 85% of us live there now — we’ve traded dirt, grass and sky for pavement, strip malls, and cookie-cutter townhomes.
We work long hours in gray cubicles doing bland service work — keeping our personal observations and human emotions to ourselves out of fear that HR will write us up.
The farther we drift from hands-on living and the freedom to be ourselves, the more we long for authenticity of any kind — even messy authenticity that is totally fake.
Then again, more young people are walking away from college and paper-pushing jobs to become electricians, plumbers, and carpenters. They’re rediscovering what we once called blue-collar horse sense — the joy of making and fixing things with your hands.
Our country was built by people who toiled with their hands. Ben Franklin started as a printer’s apprentice. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson farmed — most of the founders did.
Working daily in nature — wrestling with real problems out in the fields and the woods with the many animals they cared for — taught them humility, practicality, and authenticity.
To that end, the return of young people to the trades gives me hope. The more that Americans fix and create things, the less we will desire fake authentic stuff.
One design trend offers hope:
The “working-stiff” jeans of two decades ago have become more refined — the holes are smaller, the dirt’s rubbed in more gently, and the grease is applied in modest dabs.
It’s a start.
Tom Purcell’s column is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.